2023-02-15 2:55:59 ¶ ●

I know the implication in Basira getting rid of Jon’s spare clothes from the archives was that they were ruined when the flesh attacked, but wouldn’t it be so much sadder if it was because of how his absence affected them?

You know how smells stick to fabrics better than most things? Even if you don’t know a colleague that well there’s a good chance you know what they smell like, even subconsciously. But everyone in the archives knew eachother well, even if they didn’t like it.

With Jon gone everything was left to Basira, we all know how much she had to do to hold the group together, even at the expense of her own emotions. Perhaps she could tell herself it was for the benefit of others that she bundled up the neatly folded clothes, still strongly scented with that fresh, bright, laundry powder smell.

After all, she’d seen Martin standing there in the office, before Peter Lukas showed up of course. Standing there like he’d been looking for something, the cupboard open but his arms hanging by his sides. The smell of clean clothes in the air and a tear on his cheek.

And Melanie, her anger almost as potent as Martin’s grief, but her tears were tears of anger. She’d been looking for a pen-Jon always seemed to have them on hand, but being in that office, that scent in the air mixed with the musty smell of the old books in the place that has her trapped, the place that caused the death of friends, that stripped her of her liberty.

And so perhaps as Basira held a bin liner full of slightly dusty clean clothes and a handful of pens from a desk drawer, she told herself she didn’t feel guilty. She had to do this, for the good of her team. Or at least what was left of it.