Octavia remembered the way they’d looked at her pile of blankets. Half a dozen scraps of cloth in various fabric types. “Those synthetic fabrics don’t breathe” they would cry, as though she was committing some great sin.
They didn’t understand that that was the point. They didn’t breathe.
Blankets, towels, heaps of fabric–they may have been something to keep her warm and dry back during the old days, but they developed hundreds of uses after the end of the world.
She could wave a white towel to show she gave up. She could clog a drain with a microbial, moisture wicking blanket lining.
She could hold onto the soft comfort of the velour blanket someone had gifted to her. She couldn’t even remember his name, just the fact that he’d been a truly nice guy and not a predator in drag (Kang-soo*, that dirtbag). Blanket-guy had bought her the camel colored blanket while they were at some outside venue. He’d gotten her a coffee too, and the way he’d looked at her had made her start thinking that he was falling in love with her.
She couldn’t remember his name and his face was a blur, but his kindness had remained with her for all the years after the end of the world. He’d become one of her sweetest memories of her life before.
She wondered what he would be like now if he had survived. The thought had entered her mind with a Terminator fanfic, one where Clair Dane’s character from the original timeline never ended up locked in a bunker with John Connor.
She ended up falling in love with him because she didn’t meet him again until after the end of her world. She’d met him at the lowest point of her life and he’d entered her world like a miraculous hurricane, saving her from the machines and her own misery. She hadn’t watched him grow from acne covered young boy into humanity’s messiah. He hadn’t been there to save her, and she’d lived through all the years of machine rule.
Meeting him after she’d seen misery meant that she’d had time to lose some of her idealism and wake up to reality. She grew up to love him as the memory of a sweet boy that liked her and as the amazing man he’d become, scrabbling in the dirt without her.
Together they became a great team. And then, at the end of the story, John makes the decision to send someone back to protect her… and incidentally ensure that young-her and young-him ended up together. It had seemed like a happier ending after all of the hardships she lived through, but then the epilogue had shown a future-her and John that had fallen out of love and barely tolerated each other. “Happy ending?” had been the last words.
Octavia didn’t believe that her time travel boyfriend was out there, but she occasionally imagined a scenario where Blanket-guy had survived the apocalypse. She liked to imagine him growing up strong and sure, gaining valuable survival skills. He would pass through the area for some reason and they would see each other. He would be single and a bit lonely. They would find a life together.
Until then, she had her velour blanket and her mounds of fleece and cotton. She had the house she lived in and the struggle laid out in front of her.
* * *
*Kang-soo, the street name for the indomitable Lord Brummel Beausby, a lady hiding from the Golden Emperor’s justice. She has been accused of killing her twin brother Sebastian. She’d heard their orders were to kill her on sight. She’d had no choice but to run. To give up everthing from her previous life.
