Happily Ever After - Part Two

by Rossi

The white porcelain of the toilet edge was cool under her cheek. Allison sat back, then hiccoughed and hung her head over the bowl again, mouth open wide. Her stomach contracted sharply, and her eyes burned as another gout of vomit erupted from her mouth. After what seemed like an eternity, it passed, and she sank back down, tears running unheeded down her face. Her head swam, the cubicle spinning around her, and she fought to stabilise it before she ended head-down in the toilet again. She grabbed weakly at the toilet paper, sending the roll spinning and ending up with a small pile of it. It was impossible to wind it back onto the holder, so she simply wiped her mouth with the bundle and then let it, and her hand, fall limply onto the cool tiled floor.

She wished vaguely she were dead. At least she wouldn't get the hangover tomorrow that would no doubt be a doozy.

There was the sound of the bathroom door opening, a gentle tap on her cubicle's door, and she braced herself for either the recriminations or the comforting that was bound to follow.

"I really fucked up, didn't I, Kaz?" she said weakly.

"I'd say you did, yeah." But the voice wasn't Karen's.

"Raphe?" She slid over slightly. The movement made her dress ride up higher than was decent, but she wasn't really noticing these minute details, and opened the door a crack. "You're not s'posed to be in here."

"Yeah, I know. So you'd better let me hide in there so I don't get busted." For some strange reason he was _grinning_ at her - Allison couldn't figure out why, when she was the Most Selfish Moron on Earth. She said as much.

"Yeah, but you're _our_ moron. Now, you gonna let me in? Or do I have to take the next cubicle and do that weird thing you girls do where you chat through the wall?"

"Can't have that, you'd start questioning your sexuality or something, you manly man, you," Allison agreed, and slid over some more. Fish squeezed into the cubicle, and sat opposite her on the floor, knees drawn up uncomfortably in the tiny space. For a long moment they simply looked at each other. At last Allison looked away, partly because she couldn't bear the compassion in his eyes, but mostly because she was seeing double and it was making her ill again.

"Why?" she asked quietly.

He didn't need her to explain what she meant. "It's her mutation. She... well, you know butterflies don't have a very long lifespan?"

Allison nodded, a sudden chill gripping her chest. An image of the butterfly house at the Melbourne Zoo came to her: dying insects, their wings faded and torn, beating out their lives in forgotten corners whilst their offspring fluttered gaily around them. "But Fatimah's a person," she protested weakly.

Fish sighed, wiping his hand across his face. Now Allison could see how drained he was, how utterly weary. And how defeated. "And that's what makes this so _stupid_. She _is_ a person, but her damned mutation has decided that along with the butterfly wings and antennae and hollow bones, she gets the rapid metabolism and the reduced lifespan." He scrubbed his hands through his hair, sending it onto spiky confusion. "All the tests prove it - I'm not sure how long she has, but it's not more than a couple more years. She's literally burning out."

There wasn't anything to say to that. Allison hung her head, the enormity of the situation too much to process, the idiocy of her earlier outburst too shameful. Across from her, Fish was quiet too, but Allison saw, when she lifted her eyes at last, that the muscles along his jaw jumping with the effort of clenching his teeth, and there were tears brimming in his eyes.

She didn't even think - she simply reached out and took his hand and squeezed it.

The tears fell, then. Blindly, he reached for her, and she scooted forward on the cold tiles until she could hug him back. He clung to her as if he was drowning, which was, she thought, what he had been doing. The thought was confirmed by the sob-choked words that forced their way out of him, a story of a losing battle, the struggle to save someone close to him and having to admit there wasn't a solution, of long nights' research, of test after test, of the trust Fatimah had in him that he felt he had betrayed. There wasn't much to be said: she just held him for as long as he needed her to.

***

"Do you think we should check on them?" James asked nervously, glancing towards the bathroom door.

"No," Fatimah said, quietly but firmly. Karen raised an eyebrow at her. "They need time to sort things out," the small girl elaborated. Then she winced ever-so-slightly, touching her forehead with trembling fingers.

"Babe? You okay?" Adrian leaned across in his seat and lay his own hand on her forehead.

"I'm tired, that's all. It's been a long day, and it'll be a longer one tomorrow. Can you take me back to the hostel?" Fatimah barely needed to finish the question; Adrian was already scooping up her jacket from the back of her chair and helping her to her feet.

"We'll come too," Karen added, standing up as well.

"What about Fish and Allison?" James asked.

"They'll make their own way back. Besides, if I know Allie, she'll be horribly embarrassed by the whole scene and things will run a lot more smoothly if she has some time to get it out of her system. Without us hanging around asking if she's all right." Karen smiled and took James' arm. "C'mon, Blue."

"If you say so, I s'pose..." James allowed himself to be led out of the restaurant, pausing only to pay and to apologise to the manager for the scene earlier.

"Is fine, is fine. Your friend, she be okay?" he asked, looking genuinely concerned. Adrian nodded.

"She's just not feeling well and had some bad news - our other friend is looking after her."

"Very good then. You have a good night." The little man waved them cheerfully out into the cool autumn evening.

***

"I'm sorry."

"Allie, if you apologise one more time I'm going to flush your head down this toilet, upchuck and all," Fish mock-threatened with a shaky laugh. He accepted the bundle of toilet paper Allison handed him and blew his nose loudly. "You acted like an idiot out there, but you had a reason, us keeping it secret and then springing it on you like that. We should have told you sooner. Karen wanted to, but we didn't know how."

"No, that's not what I'm sorry about. Well, I _am_ sorry about that, but I meant I was sorry for acting like I did after the B&S. After... you know."

"Ah." Fish was quiet for such a long time, looking down at his hands, that Allison squirmed uncomfortably.

"I know I hurt you..." she began, thinking he was expecting something more, but he interrupted:

"You were doing what you thought was best. Not very well, I'll admit, but I did put you on the spot. And you were right."

"I was?"

"Sure you were. I just didn't want to see it. Everything you said... I can see it now. It might have been good for a while, but sooner or later one of us would have had to choose between the other person and what they love the most. You with the farm, and me with my medicine. Yeah, I might've been able to take up a practice somewhere there, but you saw how much the heat got to me after a couple of days. I'm not adapted for that kind of climate." Fish shrugged, but there was a note of bitterness in his voice. "Sometimes this mutant thing just sucks."

"It does," she agreed. "But just because I might have been right doesn't give me an excuse to treat you like that. I was scared, and I lashed out." She hung her head again. "Like I did tonight, with Fatimah."

"You always hurt the ones you love," Fish said, with a brief mischievous grin. It looked odd with his reddened eyes and tear-swollen face.

"Still fancying yourself, I see," Allison replied in like spirit. Then she sobered, as much as she was able with a good part of a bottle of wine still in her system. "I do care about you, mate. Just not that way. Sometimes... I wish I did."

"I know you don't." Fish reached over and squeezed her hand, but there was something guarded about his expression, like he was holding something back. Before Allison could probe further, he said: "Now, can we get out of here? My arse has gone to sleep."

"Your arse and my legs both." Best to leave it, she decided. With a grunt, Allison laboriously levered herself to her feet, bracing her shoulder against the cubicle wall. "Ow."

"Ow indeed," Fish agreed, rubbing his bum as he stood up as well. "You gonna be okay?" he asked, noticing the paleness of her face and the slight swaying.

"No, but it's all self-inflicted. Right now I'm just after a big bottle of Gatorade, a couple of aspirins and a place to crash."

"I think we can manage that." Fish held the toilet door open. "After you, mate."

***

"Night, babe." Adrian kissed his fiancee tenderly, then straightened and looked at her mock sternly. "You make sure you get plenty of sleep, all right? No sitting up and gasbagging all night."

"Of course I'll sleep. I have to look my best for tomorrow, and I can't do that if I have big bags under my eyes, can I?" Fatimah replied, laughing a little. "Besides, I am sure Karen would have something to say about it if I didn't."

"Too bloody right I would," Karen growled from where she was pulling the t-shirt she slept in out of her pack. The household had secured a six-person dorm for the weekend, paying for the extra bed rather than having some stranger trapped in their midst. The spare bed was draped in various wedding outfits; the girl's dresses on hangers dangling from the ladder to the top bunk, the boys' pants and shirts spread carefully on the bed itself. Fatimah's dress in its anonymous grey garment bag occupied the safest corner, well away from people traffic and accidental curry stains.

"I'd better go, babe - it's going to take me an hour to get home as it is. I'll see you tomorrow."

"You'd better," replied Fatimah, stretching up on tip-toe for another kiss. "We've got something organised, remember?"

"You wouldn't forgive me it I forgot, babe." With a final kiss, Adrian disentangled himself from Fatimah and looked over at Karen. "Want to walk me downstairs, Kaz? There's a couple of things we need to go over, make sure there's no stuff-ups tomorrow."

"Sure," Karen said, although the flatness of her voice betrayed her tiredness.

"Tomorrow, babe," Adrian said, blowing Fatimah a kiss. As the pair of them turned to go, James reappeared - he'd realised he hadn't called Cynthia to let her know he'd arrived safely (and hadn't accidentally hijacked the plane with his powers) and had bolted for the phone as soon as they'd returned from the restaurant.

"You're off, then?" he said to Adrian, who nodded.

"Yeah, need my beauty sleep. Have to show you mugs up, don't I?" He extended his hand to James, who shook it with a minimum of interference from his circuitry. The stresses of the day had played merry hell with his control... and by the way the shadows in the hallway were moving of their own accord, Karen's as well. "See you tomorrow, Jim."

"The joke's already been done," warned Karen as James opened his mouth. He caught her slightly sharp tone and decided discretion was better than a bitten-off head and closed it again without any wisecracks.

"Catch you then," was what he settled for, and watched as the pair headed down the dingy corridor.

James opened the door to their room, only to immediately close it, ears and face flushing bright red. "Sorry!" he called through the cheap panelling.

"It's fine," came Fatimah's muffled reply. "Come in - you're safe now."

James opened the door again, a bit more cautiously this time. Fatimah was tying up the laces of her pyjama top: all of her clothes fastened at the back with laces or ribbons or velcro to allow her wings mobility and to prevent damage.

"Can you help me, James? I can't quite reach the middle ones..." she asked, apparently unconcerned that James had almost walked in on her topless.

"S-sure," stuttered James, coming forward as she turned around. He fumbled with the ties, accidentally including his thumb in the first bow he tied and uncomfortably aware of the smooth olive skin beneath his fingers. "Um, so, you, ah, nervous?" he asked, desperate for something else to focus on.

"Quite a lot, actually," Fatimah said with a nervous giggle. "All the people, Adrian's family... the ceremony, the weather...there's so much that could go wrong! Do you know, I think I am more scared about this wedding than I am about dying!"

James' fingers froze in the act of tying the last bow.

"James?" Fatimah twisted around, jerking the ribbons out of his hands. "James, are you all right?"

He gave a strangled laugh. "Well, funny that, but _no_, I'm not. I don't really see the humour in the fact that you're... that you'll..." Unable to say the words, he spread his hands helplessly, the circuitry covering them writhing in his distress. Fatimah waited for him to finish, face filled with compassion.

"The word you're looking for is 'die', James. Perhaps if you make yourself say it you will begin to accept it," she said at last. Her voice was gentle, but held the note of determination that had been more and more evident in the time since her diagnosis.

"'Accept it'? How can I? And how can you say that?! You're barely twenty and you're standing there talking about dying like it's no big deal! Aren't you angry? Or scared? Or don't you care?" James tried to pull away, but Fatimah caught his hands in her own, ignoring the tendrils of circuitry that wrapped around her fingers.

"James, listen to me," she said earnestly. "You don't understand what it's like, and I need you to." Unable to withstand that tone, combined with those large dark eyes looking into to his, James nodded reluctantly. "You asked me if I am angry or scared, and I am, both of those things. But not for myself. I am angry that Adrian will have so little time with me, that my friends will have to suffer. I am sad to leave the people I love, and I am scared about what will happen to them when I am gone. But I can't feel those things for myself."

"Why not?" James asked, voice thick with conflicting emotions. "You're not the bloody Dalai Lama, Fatimah, so why the sudden saintliness?"

"When my mutation came, I went into a cocoon, yes? And when I came out, I was like this, changed. But the wings, the antennae, they weren't the only things that were different. _I_ changed, in myself, my personality, my attitudes, my outlook... I'm not sure how to explain it, but I came out of that cocoon knowing things would be different, that there wouldn't be as much time for me. The same thing that makes a butterfly aware it only lives so long and drives it to live as much as it can during that time. And that was what gave me the courage to leave my father, to make my own life, to marry Adrian. Knowing that I had to put as much life as I could into the time I had left." Fatimah paused to let her words sink in, and then went on: "Yes, my mutation will kill me, but it also gave me a whole new life, one much more fulfilling than the one I would have had otherwise. If not for being a mutant, I would have obeyed my father, married the man he had chosen for me, been the dutiful Turkish wife and mother and raised my children to be the same. But instead I've had freedom, and love, and met the best friends anyone could ever have..." At this point, Fatimah's composure slipped, and her voice trembled. "You asked me if I care that I am leaving you, and I _do_ care, more than anything. I don't want to go. But I must, and I would much rather my remaining time be spent _living_, instead of dying. Do you understand, now?" He grip tightened on his hands, and James could feel their slight shaking. He bit his lip and nodded, not trusting his own voice.

"Good." Fatimah smiled, a watery kind of smile, but underneath James could see the serenity she had been developing for the past few months now, and that, more than anything else she said, convinced him that whilst it would be hard for him to accept it, her death was inevitable, and she knew that. With some difficulty she let his hands go - his circuitry had gotten quite entangled - and hugged him. He returned the embrace awkwardly, not wanting to hurt her; she felt as fragile as fine bone china in his arms.

"I'm, uh, I'm going to go brush my teeth and get changed for bed," he mumbled when the moment had ended. "And you should get some sleep. Big day tomorrow, you know."

"The biggest," she agreed solemnly, before breaking into another of those eerily beautiful smiles. "Goodnight, James," she said, kissing him lightly on the cheek and then turning away from him to clamber into her bed.

"'Night," he replied, and went to grab his bedclothes and toothbrush out of his bag.

***

James was returning from brushing his teeth in the communal bathroom when he met Karen at the door of the dorm room.

"You look beat," he commented. Karen gave him a tired grin.

"Me and the rest of us. I swear, this wedding party is going to resemble 'Night of the Living Dead', what with Fatimah pushing herself too hard to get there, Fish with his chronic sleep deprivation, and Allison with what will be a truly spectacular hangover if there's any justice left in the world."

"Ouch, remind me not to piss you off," James winced. "You have a really nasty, catty streak."

Karen grunted. "Yeah, well, I'm not feeling particularly charitable right now. No doubt 'Saint Karen' will be back in force tomorrow, but at this moment you're dealing with Karen the Human Being. And after the past few weeks, I'm too damn tired to give a fuck." At James' worried frown, she managed a smile. "It's okay, I'm not really that mad at her. Just... you know."

"Definitely." James shoved his toothbrush and toothpaste into the pocket of the shirt he was wearing over his boxers and grabbed her arm. "C'mon."

"C'mon where? It's almost midnight, Blue." Despite her confusion, Karen allowed herself to be led down the hallway to the lifts.

"Family tradition, the night before a wedding. The maid of honour and the bride's housemate have a drink in the hostel bar."

"Are you kidding? It's late, there's the wedding tomorrow, and I really don't think..."

"See, that's the problem." James punched the button for the lift and was rewarded by the noisy rattle of the brushed metal door. "You've been thinking way too much for the past few months, and you need a break, before the insanity tomorrow. More than that, you need to give Karen the Human Being an airing, before she suffocates." As he spoke, James hustled Karen into the lift and hit the ground floor button. "And since Fish has got enough on his plate, and Allison is in no fit state, and Fatimah's asleep, well, that leaves me. You don't have to unburden yourself or tell me any deep dark secrets, but you _are_ going to relax, whether you want to or not."

"We have ways of making you not stress?" Karen joked in a truly bad fake German accent.

"We do. Don't make me get out the comfy chair and the nice hot cup of tea." The lift stopped and the ageing door groaned its way open again.

"Blue, you _are_ aware you're wearing your Marvin the Martian boxers, aren't you?" Karen asked, trying one last ditch effort to bring the determined technopath to something resembling sense.

"Yes. And what a fashion statement they are. Besides, we're in a backpackers' hostel. Clothing is preferred, but not required, if the guy I saw wandering down the hallway with nothing but a towel slung over his shoulder is anything to go by." James led the way into the small bar, furnished in what could only be described as 'student sharehouse chic', with battered couches, a threadbare pool table, and a bar that looked suspiciously like their kitchen table back in Hope Street. "Right, sit there, don't move, and I'll be back in a sec," James ordered, reaching into a back pocket that didn't exist for his wallet. His expression turned sheepish. "Um, you don't happen to have any money, do you? I'll pay you back when we get back to the room."

Giggling, Karen handed over a twenty. "Great way to sweep a girl off her feet, Blue," she teased. "Make mine a Cock Sucking Cowboy."

James looked slightly pained. "You're not going to make me ask for that, are you?"

"Damn straight I am. It's too late for beer. Just be grateful I didn't ask for a Screaming Orgasm." Karen's expression turned impish. "You _did_ say I was supposed to relax."

James sighed. "That I did. One drink with a stupidly suggestive name coming up."

***

And that was how, upon their extremely slow return to the hostel (walking, the first taxi they flagged down having refused to let Allison remain on board after she hadn't been able to go five hundred metres down the road without asking for it to stop so she could be sick), Allison and Fish found a boxer-clad James and a giggling Karen staggering back down the hallway to their dorm. The two girls engaged in drunken hugging and elaborate, slurred apologies, whilst the two boys - rather unceremoniously, since their respective journeys to the hallway had been... interesting, to say the least - lugged them into the room and deposited them onto the floor where they promptly passed out. Out of consideration, James spread a doona over their slumbering forms.

"Pub?" suggested Fish, straightening his back with a small wince.

"Pub," James agreed emphatically, remembering to grab his wallet this time.

As they descended in the ancient, grumbling lift, James gave Fish a lop-sided grin. "Looks like you had fun getting Allie back."

"Tell me about it. I think she's chucked up meals she hasn't even had yet." The medical student shook his head with a small laugh. "What the hell did you do to Karen?"

"I decided she needed some time off, and she punished me by making me buy her every cocktail with an obscene name she could think of." James winced at the memory. "Tell me again why we put up with them? It's not even like we're getting any sex out of it, are we?" Fish remained silent, but turned very red around the ears. "Are we?" James repeated.

The door rattled open. Fish coughed.

"We _are_?"

"Well, I dunno about _you_, mate..." Fish couldn't help a small smirk as he stepped past the stunned James into the lobby again. The shorter boy came to his senses barely in time to get out of the lift before the door closed - it beeped rudely at him as he squirmed out. He caught up with Fish at the front door.

"Seriously? You and Allie?"

"Of course me and Allie. Kaz'd have me for breakfast." Fish picked a direction and headed down it, sure there would be a pub somewhere; Karen claimed his ability to sniff out pubs was a secondary mutation.

"You and Allie had sex." James seemed to be having problems with this concept. "How did this happen?"

"The usual way. Didn't you do sex ed in school?" James realised what he'd said and punched Fish on the arm as they walked down the windswept Sydney streets.

"That's not what I meant. When was this?"

"At her parents place last February."

"You had sex in her parents' house? With them there? And Mr Ferguson didn't set the dogs on you?"

"It's not like we did it on the kitchen table, Blue." Fish chuckled at the image. "It was in the back of her brother's ute, if you must know."

"You and Allie had sex in her brother's ute? The last of the great romantics, aren't you?"

"When in Rome, mate. It was during that B&S Ball she asked me up for - I'll have you know utes are considered posh at those things."

"Sure." James was about to say more, but at that point the "Tooheys" illuminated sign signalled they had indeed found a pub.

"Evenin'," Fish said to the large Samoan man in the universal uniform of the bouncer - black t-shirt and jeans - who was standing at the door. He made as if to grab the door handle when the bouncer's snort stopped him.

"Nice try, boys. Like I'm going to let your friend in dressed like that. Or should I say 'undressed'?"

"Huh?" James looked down at his boxers and shirt - his toothbrush was still in the front pocket of the shirt but the toothpaste must have fallen out when carrying Karen back to the dorm - and his be-thonged feet. "Damn, knew I should have put some sneakers on."

"And the rest," the bouncer said, indicating James' boxers.

"These? Oh, this is the new style, didn't you know? Cartoon-character shorts, everyone's wearing them down in Melbourne. Guess you Sydneysiders are a bit slow..." The bouncer's face hardened at that, causing Fish to grab James' arm and tug him back along the street.

"Just joking," he told the bouncer over his shoulder as he hustled James away. "Have a good one."

The bouncer merely grunted, arms folded across his massive chest.

"Jeez, Jim, you trying to get us beaten up by Sydney's not-so-finest? If it was contusions you were after, I'd be more than happy to help you out with that, mate."

"Is it my fault he didn't have a sense of humour?" James looked down at his clothing. "I think this might cause a problem."

"Nah, there has to be somewhere that'll accept your version of haute couture," Fish said optimistically.

"I guess if we don't we could always find a coffee shop or something."

"And then we could talk about our feelings and have some kind of epiphany, hey?"

James gave Fish a long look. "Sometimes I worry about you, mate."

[next part]

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