Chapter Text
“Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.”
-Maya Angelou
“Dying is the easy part
living is the trick.”
-Atticus Poetry
Frigid. Sterile.
Pain, surging and rippling through his skin, sharper than the antiseptic sting of the too-bright hospital room. Hospital room? Was that right? No it couldn’t be.
Beep beep beep
Ringing in his ears.
Machines, garish and cold, blare in ragged rhythm, counting out the seconds of his life unspooling.
Unravelling.
Maybe he can finally get some damn rest.
He gasps once, then again, until even the air has abandoned him.
Weight falls away, piece by piece, until he no longer feels the body that has betrayed him. The ceiling dissolves. The walls melt into a dull, dun mess of gray.
And then something shifts-
And it all goes quiet.
She was a funny thing, Death.
He had run from her all his life . Feared her. Yet he had looked her dead in the eyes, invited her in, then cowered and ran. She had reached out her tendrils and swallowed him whole.
She had given him a head start, and he had taken it. At first with delicate , trembling uncertainty, a fawn finding his legs, lurching from one tentative stride to the next till he found his footing and broke out in a run , giddy that he was finally free from her clutches. She was not worried, for she knew he would tire quickly. Though he shined bright, she knew he would burn fast. Still, when she saw him at the finish line, exhausted and broken and maimed by sadness , she couldn’t help but feel a twinge of regret for the life he could have lived , had he been given an easier path to tread. Maybe he could’ve outpaced her. Maybe maybe maybe. Maybe in another life, she had told him. Why not this one, he had answered. She did not reply. She knew he would not remember her answer.
He lied.
His fear of death wasn’t really a fear of death. It was a fear of time. A fear of dying before he had the chance to live. Maybe that’s how it was meant to be. Maybe maybe maybe.
He floats.
No pain. No heartbeat. No sound but the echo of his own name. Untethered, a ship without an anchor. The rope had been severed.
Ahead. A liminal glow. Intimidating , but warm and steady. Light that is never undappled. Light that does not falter.
Behind. A faint pulse of shadow, unfinished songs and faces not yet forgotten. Unsaid things on the tip of his tongue. Indelible lies and half truths and so much grief and laughter and that funny feeling of both and neither at the same time.
Somewhere in the space between is a choice. It isn't spoken, but he feels it - like an outstretched hand, invisible but real. Go forward, and that everlasting light will take him. Feather- soft .Comforting. But awry. Amiss. Lacking the clarity that he has searched for his entire life.
Turn back, and something unknown waits. A new beginning. A second chance. But at what cost?
how does someone so invariably alienated from the human experience take comfort in something as human as dying?
How could he?
He hesitates. He has loved. He has lost. But he has left so much undone.
And in that hesitation, the light shifts-
And he falls.
Air slams into his lungs.
He feels himself hit the ground.
But the world that greets him is not the one he left behind.