The world was gray.

Eliza hadn't expected how quickly the fog would roll in, how thick it would cloud the sky, how heavy the gray would fall. She could hardly see anything before her, and even with the gas mask her heart was racing so fast that she could hardly breathe. The sound of her own breath was loud in her eyes, echoing against the mask and racking around her head. Breathe slowly, she told herself. Save your air.

If she brought herself to her hands and knees she could make out the grass. It was the only color left in all the world for all she cared. The grayness took up the rest of the space but the grass was a muted green and so she crawled.

In the corner of her eyesight in the mask was a small radar counting the toxicity. The hand was in the red. Critical. The other mask was still in her hand; she had to find Bianca.

She saw her black boots first, a pop of color in the otherwise gray planet. At first she could not tell if it was real, if she could see the black or if the mask had a leak and her vision was blurring because she lost air herself. It had to be a century old, this mask. There were only four left and the bunker was empty with no bodies found so the others had left and had they left those four behind because they were defective? She should have tested them before. She should not have assumed their safety. That was naive, Ez, stupid gullible.

But as she neared the boots led to a pair of black ripped jeans, and a dirty white t-shirt, and a blue bomber jacket, and her mess of black curls and it was her body and Eliza couldn't tell if she was relieved or terrified or hallucinating it all.

She threw the gas mask over her face before she checked her pulse. She had to be alive. It hadn't been long. She'd been in the bunker no more than thirty seconds, the crawl could not have been much more. She'd get her back, she'd do CPR, she knew Terra could do it. She saw her try on Jamie. Jamie was already lost.

Bianca had a pulse. Weak, fading, but there. The fog was thinner right upon the grass. She'd made it, and now she had a mask, and now she could breathe. She was almost half a foot taller than Eliza, carrying her back would be difficult. She had to do it though, she hadn't left the bunker to lose another life. She still heard the gunshot when she closed her eyes.

"Let's go," she whispered aloud as she draped Bianca's limp arm over her shoulder. She couldn't take her across the ground, she'd have to stand. Hunched over, yes, but it would get her back. The bunker door was not far. Three yards from the storage shed. Perhaps she could see it.

They stumbled upon the bunker door, the silver metal camouflaged with the heavy gray, but as she tried to pull up the hatch she found it locked and so she flailed her fists against it, pounding over and over again to grab their attention, to beg them to open the door.

"I found her!" she screamed, "Xavier, open the goddamn door!"

There was sliding window on the door, a small bar where whoever was inside could look out. She was still pounding when the saw a flash of brown hair shut the window, plunging the bunker into darkness save for the yellow lights and the message for her was clear as the blue sky on that first fateful morning above.

If you go out there, you're not getting back in.

Xavier kept his promise.

"Fuck you!" she screamed, the words so hard she felt them slicing in her throat, using more air than she should have. More air than was smart. She tried to swallow the anger in her mouth, send it down to her heart so that it would pulse through her veins instead of waste her seconds. Their seconds.

Three yards from the storage shed, a dark shack with supplies they'd scavenged from below. She pulled Bianca back up and ran. Their seconds were ticking by.

The shack's door didn't quite reach the floor, but there were five orange blankets they'd found in the cabinet where she'd snatched the gas masks. She rolled one up quickly, hardly able to see in the darkness, and wedged it within the gap. There could be no air. The windows too, who knew if the air could seep in there as well? If the air could seep in there then they were already dead. She couldn't allow that.

When the blankets covered every gap she could think of, she looked back at the radar on the mask. The hand was in the green. Safe.

~*~*~*~*~*~

When Bianca opened her eyes all she remembered was falling. Not the gray nor the fog, simply the ground. Her heart beat fast when she realized she did not know where she was, like the cryopods so long ago. She remembered that; she exhaled slowly. Her last nightmare would not repeat. She coughed into her arm, the force so hard it hurt her chest.

"Holy shit," a voice said, she recognized it as Eliza's. "Thank God."

"What's going on?" she asked, her voice more raspy than she'd expected. "Where are we?"

"Storage shed, toxic fog," Eliza said. Bianca squinted, trying to narrow her vision to see the girl clearly. To see if they were alone. "Fog came in fast, everyone else got into the bunker."

"And we didn't?" she asked. "I—I don't remember."

"Your shit of a friend wouldn't open the door for us," she muttered. Bianca wasn't sure she'd ever heard such an anger in her tone, it was hotter than fire, burned more than the flames.

"Xavier?"

"Fucker left you out to die."

"I'm sure it's not that simple," she shook her head, closing her eyes to keep the world from spinning. "I don't understand, it had to be more complicated."

"You're too nice," said Eliza. Bianca couldn't help but crack a smile. She was sure that was the first time someone had said that about her. She was never very nice.

"How long has it been?"

"Not sure," she said. "Ten minutes, maybe?"

"Where'd you find the masks?"

"Down in the bunker." She didn't mean to say it aloud, and she watched as the crease between Bianca's eyebrows furrowed as she began to understand.

"You were down there," she said. Eliza gulped; the question she did not want to answer was just on the other side. "You left to save me. Why?"

"Jamie died because I didn't close the walls," she said. "Marko's group got lost because I couldn't fix the radios." She left the third one out. Some things did not have to be said. "I knew where the gas masks were. It was that simple."

"Neither of those were your fault. Nobody's ever blamed you." The sadness hung in the air as humid and heavy as the fog outside. She paused. "Nobody would have blamed you for staying in the bunker."

"It reeks of death down there," she said. "I think I would have choked.

~*~*~*~*~*~

"Are you gonna try to sleep?" asked Bianca. The hours had ticked by now and the fog had not cleared. They saw nothing beyond their windows, just the two of them in their gray-lit shack sitting upon wooden crates and rolling pebbles across the splintered floor.

"I can't," said Eliza. "It's hard to fall asleep. I'd rather be awake."

"You'll have to sleep eventually," she said. "We don't know how long the fog will last."

"I will when I have to."

There was a question in the back of Bianca's mind, a concern she had not shared with anyone else in the camp. Memories were dangerous, even just a glimpse could turn her into an enemy. "Do you remember anything, Eliza?"

"No," she said. "No, I don't." But then she hesitated, as though the next question crossed a bridge she had spent her whole life fearing. "Do you?"

"There's a face I see in my dreams," she said. "I don't know him though, he's not one of us."

"I guess they can't wipe everything."

"He's probably dead."

"Everyone we knew is dead." Silence, and then the words from which there were no turning back. "I hear a gunshot every time I close my eyes."

"From the woods?"

"From before."

"So you do remember."

"I try to forget."

~*~*~*~*~*~

They watched as the fog got brighter, a light shining through it so that the gray was replaced by white so blinding that they could not stare yet they could not tear their eyes away. The sun had re-emerged from its clouded prison, lighting the planet again.

"It's burning off. It'll be over soon."

"Hey, Eliza?"

"Yeah?"

"Thank you." 

a/n

very different sort of chapter but I've had this one planned for so long so that's fun!

beliza's friendship hits me in the uwus

there's a big teaser in this chapter. did you spot it?

QUESTIONS:

-how will Xavier's decision to not open the door to let them in affect his relationships with Bianca or Eliza? With Ronan? With Terra? 

-who is the face Bianca sees? Is this an actual memory?

-wtf is Eliza's gunshot? we've heard about this a whole bunch of times now... 

-does anyone ship Beliza?