A death -- and a choice.

[channe]

"…the treatment accelerates the symptoms of the Flux, giving the patient's body a better chance of fighting it off before they're too weak. We've had some luck with children before, so Jozef should be fine. And, if it doesn't work, we still have Bryce…"

---

By the sixth day, however, it is obvious that the little, listless body on the hospital cot will not rally; that Jozef Kaczmarek will not rise, except to the final embrace of the One God. This realization shudders through his assembled family like a silent tsunami; and then, the nameless nurse who has been tending the child winces at the mother's awful keening, and trembles at the darkness in the eyes of the oldest daughter.

The last minute of Jozef's short life is spent in a spate of small, high, terrible coughing, blood staining little milk-teeth and spattering on his mother's battered boots and dirty dress.

Since those six days began, the miracle-worker Bryce Larose is himself suffering in a room down the hall; it is not his fault that the earlier promise to the Kaczmareks goes unfulfilled. It is not his fault that Janessa suffers from the Flux, herself, that Bryce had possibly overextended himself, that the treatment does not work on everyone, that the nameless nurse tending five-year-old Jozef had, possibly, been incompetent in her fervent desire to help. It is not anyone's fault that the Doctor had not returned yet.

A lack of fault wasn't going to be enough to pacify Agnieszka Kaczmarek.

---

And this is life after such a death:

Agnieszka and her brother Piotr skip the wake. They go drinking at the Broken Dagger, where a sympathetic bartender slips the young regular the piss-poor ale for free. Five beers and quite a bit of serious talk later he'll stagger home, slamming the Dagger door violently behind him, his concern for his wife and twins growing with the setting sun. Agnie will remain, drinking still, her grief twisting her thoughts toward the murderous -- here at the bar, a pathetic little half-mirror of her teacher, all misguided revenge and ale-soaked imprudence.

Rhaena will talk a drunken Agnie down from marching over to the hospital and doing something incredibly stupid; following that, Trilby will make her angry enough to burst. It is almost incredible, really, that she makes it home in once piece.

On the quiet walk home, Rhaena beside her, she thinks about Jozef, and the rapidly-darkening future.

---

"...so we might be able to get by. Maybe. Damn it."
"Get by? Piotr, it's the end of the world. Jozef meant everything to Ma."
"Agnie, be serious."
"I am serious."
"Seriously drunk."
"Frack you, Piotr. I'm not gonna let anybody else die. That's the deal with us, ain't it? No matter what happens, we do for each other. We do what we have to."
"An' what are you going to do? Wave yer hands an' grow bread outta yer ears? You don't dance all that pretty, Agnie, and you were never no good at pocket-pickin' --"
"I'm not talkin' about that. I'm talkin' about -- oh, hell. You can make eighty shillin's a pay-period wi' the Brotherhood. Imagine what we can do with that kind o' money."
"Agnie -- no way. You're not doing that. I won't let you."
"Watch me."
"Be serious, Agnie!"
"Ok, then I'll pray to God and he'll rain apples on our heads and make the bugs go away, jus' like he listened to Momma's prayer to save Jozef. Frack God; frack waiting. I can fight and they can pay me to fight. Pay buys bread an' medicine. I ain't never been more serious in my life."
"Agnie --"
"Shut up and drink. There ain't no other option."

---

She wakes up at dawn with a roaring headache and a cockroach clambering up her arm, and a thought. It's not the first time she'd had this thought -- just go to Ariane, have her write a letter, you can be in Thessilane and on your own and away from this forever -- but she brushes it away, like usual.

Such a cowardly action isn't good enough for a Kaczmarek. Kaczmareks did what they had to in order to help each other survive, didn't they?

That's how it works, in a world such as this.

"None o' this'll happen again, Mamma," she whispers, planting a kiss on her mother's sleeping forehead. A sweet kiss, really; a daughter's promise. Her sword-hand touches the woman's shoulder lightly. "They'll 'pologize to you for what they did t' Jozef. I'll make sure o' it. And I'll make sure we all get through this."

Imagine what we can do with that kind o' money...

---

By noon, no doubt, the girl who had once spat at the very mention of the Order of Straka will be dressed in Brotherhood grey and black.

That's how it works, in a world such as this.