Work Text:
Dan dies the day after Halloween. He doesn't know it, because he hasn't known the date for several months.
It's ironic. The Day of the Dead. The day he dies. They’re the same day. November first. The first of November. Primero de Noviembre .
The first thing he remembers is talking to Max. Maximus. Maxo. His partner. Not that he knew it then.
The last thing he remembers is white. Blank walls. Nothingness. Coldness. Solitude.
Except it isn't really solitude, because there is a worker leaning over him. They don't have a face, but he thinks they're trying to be kind.
He starves to death. It's a simple death. It is agonizing. It is anything but quick. He’s sure he lives longer than he thinks he does. But he stops remembering after the worker comes in.
The worker comes in at the end, and Dan knows that this is it. He knows he won't survive the second the worker sits by his head. He's been laying on the ground for days. He doesn't have the strength to move.
The worker moves him so his limbs aren't uncomfortably twisted, dumped in the same position since the final test. Then, the worker lifts his head and rests it on their legs.
They spend the last few hours just sitting there, keeping him company. He doesn't know if they were assigned to this or if they'll be terminated for it, because this is the first kindness he's experienced since April third.
So that's how he knows he won't wake up.
Dan misses his son. He misses Maxo. He wants to go back. He doesn't want to be the mess he is now. He is all skin and bone, nothing more and nothing less. His skin is perfectly scarred with ruler-straight incisions.
They've run out of things to test him for. They know how each of his organs work, intimately, completely. They know what each of his bones look like, inside and out and upside down and right-side-too. They know what can kill him and what cannot. They know how he works, and so they know how most of the island works.
And he has outlived his use. So they put him away in the room he's known for what feels like years, and they let him waste away, cradled in the lap of someone who does not care enough for him to save him, but cares enough to show a little humanity, but only at the end, only when he will die, only so he will not remember it later, because there will be no later.
If he could cry, he would, but he’s not sure if they’ve removed his tear ducts or if he’s dehydrated. He just knows he can't cry, and that he wants to.
He can't talk. He doesn't have the strength to. He blinks slowly and imagines himself asking for help. He used to scream for it, but the word doesn't mean a lot to him anymore.
Still, he pretends that if he asked for help, the faceless worker would help him up and lead him away. Not even out , just somewhere else in the building. Dan had heard voices every now and then, drifting through the halls. Some louder than others, but still. A voice meant an islander, not a worker, not one of the bears.
Maybe if he had yelled louder, they would have heard him. If he had screamed at the right time, saved his voice for when it counted, didn't scream when they cut him open, waited until after. Maybe then he'd be somewhere that wasn't here. Maybe then he’d have someone to talk to.
But he’s here, dying in the lap of a stranger, with no partner and no son and no home and nothing. He didn’t have anything to begin with– no armor, no weapons aside from a pickaxe made of stone –but it was about the feeling. He’d had freedom, and now he has nothing.
The effort it takes to frown is herculean. He does it anyway, because he’s out of a will to fight, but he’s got enough sadness welled up inside to at least want to express it the last time he can.
The worker dips their head down a little. Just a small nod, or maybe a frown in response, as much as someone without a face can frown. Their blue vest reminds Dan of a better time.
He pretends it is the sky, and he closes his eyes.
Dan dies on November first, the first of November, primero de Noviembre, the Day of the Dead, and he dies without ever having gotten to say goodbye.
(The first thing he sees when he wakes up is Trumpet. He cannot tell if he is glad that he cannot cry anymore. He scoops his son up and hugs him tight. He apologizes until he cannot speak anymore.)