Chapter Text
Shane stood frozen in the doorway, unable to process what was in front of him. Tears tracked down his face before he even realized he was crying: one, then another, then a steady stream that wet his cheeks and pooled at his chin. His heart was in his throat, pounding so hard that every beat pressed against his Adam's apple. His chest felt fragile, thin as an eggshell, unable to hold any more of this.
He couldn't feel his body. His hands were shaking, his fingers gone cold, while a dull, deep ache spread from the center of his chest out to his shoulders. He tried to breathe, but the air caught in his throat halfway down and never made it further.
Ilya got up from the bed, slow, almost dazed, his face wrecked, his eyes still glassy. Tears fell down his cheeks. For a second he looked like he didn't know where he was, like the room had come loose around him.
"Shane-"
Shane took a step back.
Ilya stepped closer anyway. He didn't say anything else. He raised a hand and brushed Shane's forearm.
Shane recoiled as the touch burned him.
"Don't touch me!"
Shane's voice was almost unrecognizable, faint and broken.
Ilya swallowed.
"Shane, I-"
"Don't."
There was no anger in his voice, and that was the worst part. Only a devastation so total that even screaming would have cost more than he had left.
Shane turned around and walked out of the room.
He went down the stairs without realizing his legs were moving. They felt unsteady, but they kept going. Behind him, Ilya's footsteps hurried after him.
"Shane, wait-"
"Don't follow me."
Ilya kept coming.
"Please, Shane, let me explain."
Shane stopped for a second at the bottom of the stairs and closed his eyes. A fresh wave of tears spilled over.
"I said don't fucking follow me!"
Then he walked out the door.
The night air hit him instantly, but it did nothing to stop the trembling running through his body. He crossed the driveway almost at a run, reached his car, and yanked the door open.
Ilya caught up a few seconds later.
"You can't drive like this."
Shane sat in the driver's seat and put the key in the ignition.
"Shane, look at me."
The engine started.
Ilya stood by the car door.
"You can't drive."
Shane looked at him through the window.
And he laughed.
A short, terrible laugh, empty of humor. The kind of laugh that belongs to someone who's stopped being able to tell pain from madness.
Ilya stood frozen. Shane put the car in gear. Tears kept coming, out of control now, as he stared at Ilya through the windshield.
"Why are you crying?" he asked, his voice cracking. "Go fuck that whore, why don't you?"
"Shane."
The car started rolling forward.
Ilya took a step back. For a second he hoped Shane would stop. That he'd turn around. That he'd give him even one chance to explain.
Shane didn't look back.
The car disappeared down the road.
Ottawa was dark. The streets were nearly empty, lit only by streetlights and the headlights of the few cars he passed. The snow along the shoulders held a pale, dirty light, and the bare branches stood out against the sky like black veins.
The moon hung high, almost full, its light filtering cold and thin through the clouds, making everything look far away, unreal.
It felt like the whole world had emptied at exactly the moment Shane needed it most.
He drove without knowing where. He hadn't picked a destination, hadn't pulled up GPS, hadn't thought about a route. He just kept moving.
His hands gripped the wheel too tightly, his eyes tracing the road through a film of tears, the rest of his body somewhere far from his mind.
He was sobbing uncontrollably now.
Not quite crying anymore. Deep, ragged sobs tore out of him, shaking his chest, making it impossible to breathe right.
Inhale.
Nothing.
Inhale again.
His lungs wouldn't fill.
His heart slammed hard enough to hurt in his throat, his temples, even his hands.
Then that sensation he knew too well took over before his mind could catch up.
Racing heart. Trembling. Rapid breathing. Nausea. The edges of his vision closing in.
A panic attack. The kind that didn't leave room for anything else.
His phone kept buzzing.
A notification.
Then another.
Then another.
Texts. Calls. A pileup of noise on the screen.
Shane didn't look. He couldn't.
Tears blurred everything, and the taillights ahead smeared into long streaks of red. For a few terrifying seconds, he thought he wouldn't be able to see the road at all.
He pulled over.
He sat there for long minutes, both hands on the wheel, his forehead nearly touching his fingers, trying to force air into his lungs. He couldn't. His body had forgotten how.
Every breath came too shallow; every attempt to calm down turned into another sob. His heart kept hammering, his breathing stayed ragged, broken by small sounds he tried and failed to swallow back.
Finally, he opened his eyes.
He didn't know where he was.
For a few seconds he stared at the road without recognizing it. Then something past the windshield caught his attention.
A treeline. A curve in the road. The dark shape of hills under moonlight.
Familiar, though he couldn't say why.
Shane wiped his face with the back of his hand, smearing a wet streak across his cheek, and looked again.
That's when he placed it.
He hadn't chosen this road. He hadn't thought about this place once during the drive. But while his mind had been consumed by pain, his hands had found a route he hadn't driven in years, one his body remembered better than he did.
The lake spread out in front of him.
Meech Lake.
Shane sat still, staring at it through the windshield, tears still wet on his face. For a moment he thought he was wrong. It had been so long he shouldn't have recognized it at all. And yet there it was.
The lake lay vast and quiet, frozen solid, its white surface catching the moonlight where it broke through the clouds and scattered pale across the ice. No one around. No voices, no engines. Just wind, and a silence Shane hadn't known he still carried.
He stayed in the car a few more seconds.
Then he cut the engine.
The silence that followed was enormous.
Shane opened the door and got out. The cold hit him immediately, pulling his shoulders in. He stood by the car, shivering, looking out at the lake. He didn't move. His breath was still short, his eyes swollen, his face wet, but something in him had gone still.
Not peace. Not yet.
Just a familiar place. A fixed point.
Right now, that was enough.
Shane shut the car door and started toward the guardrail. Every step was heavy, hesitant, but he kept going. The closer he got to the lake, the older images surfaced: a little boy in an oversized blue coat, a warm hand holding his, Yuna's voice asking if he wanted to sit or keep walking.
His mother.
His throat tightened all over again.
He'd had a normal childhood: a home, a family, people who loved him. He hadn't grown up starved of affection. The problem was that even surrounded by people, Shane had often felt like he was standing on the other side of a glass wall. School only made it worse. Things that came easily to everyone else took constant work from him. He didn't always understand when a joke was supposed to be funny, or why everyone laughed at that exact second. Sometimes he'd watch his classmates laugh together and wait a few seconds, trying to figure out what he'd missed. Usually, he found nothing. He didn't care about cars the way the other guys did, never talked about engines, and when everyone else started getting interested in girls, that curiosity never showed up in him.
There was nothing wrong with him. Not in his own mind.
He was just being himself.
To everyone else, that didn't seem to be enough.
So, he learned to stay on the sidelines, to watch before speaking, to study expressions, tone, the way people moved around each other, trying to pick up rules that seemed to come to everyone else automatically. The harder he worked at fitting in, the more it wore him down.
Some days he came home from school completely drained, unable to stand even the sound of a door closing or a TV on in another room. The world felt too big, too loud, too much all at once.
Yuna always noticed.
She never asked him to explain what he was feeling, especially on the days she could tell he wouldn't find the words. She just looked at him. And when she saw him too tired, too lost, too worn down by the day, she'd take his blue coat, the soft one he'd always loved, off the rack, drape it over his shoulders, and say:
"Let's go to the lake."
Shane never asked why. The lake had become the place where he could stop trying to figure everything out, the place where he didn't have to keep pretending.
Out there, he didn't have to laugh when other people laughed. He didn't have to find the right response, hold eye contact, fake interest in something he didn't care about. He could just sit next to his mother and look at the water.
His mind finally had room to breathe.
Meech Lake had always done that for him. It never erased whatever was hurting him, but it let him find his footing again, let the noise in his head settle to something bearable.
Shane reached the guardrail.
He stopped, rested a hand on the icy metal, and looked out past it.
His legs still trembled from the panic attack, his heart still too fast. His eyes were swollen, his face wet, his breath still catching on the tail end of old sobs.
Cold worked its way under his shirt. His fingers ached, his hands had gone nearly numb, and the wind bit at his face, drying his tears for a second before the next ones came.
He pulled his shoulders in.
He should have worn a coat.
It was back at the house.
That house.
The house he'd left just a few hours ago, thinking he'd come back with hot soup and a Diet Coke for his sick husband. God, how stupid had he been.
Now he didn't even know if he could call it home.
He kept walking. Then he saw the bench.
Not the one he used to sit on with his mother all those years ago. That one was probably long gone. This one was new, darker, snow piled along the seat.
But it was there.
Still.
Steady.
Shane looked at it for a few seconds.
He liked that this bench knew nothing.
It didn't know who he was. Didn't know what had happened tonight. Didn't know Ilya, didn't know about their marriage, didn't know about the ache tearing through his chest right now.
And it didn't care.
It would just stay here. No matter what happened.
Shane stepped closer, brushed the snow off with his hand, and dropped onto the seat. The wood was freezing, but he didn't move. The cold cut straight through his pants and into his legs. He wrapped his arms around himself, chasing warmth he couldn't find, and let his head drop.
His phone buzzed in his pocket.
Again.
Then again.
Shane pulled it out.
The screen was covered in notifications: texts, missed calls, more texts, all from Ilya.
He wanted to throw the phone onto the ice and watch it shatter. He wanted it to stop vibrating, wanted the world to stop trying to reach him.
He didn't have the strength. He was empty.
Exhaustion sat on him like something physical, like every muscle, every joint, every bone had turned too heavy to lift.
He let the phone fall into his lap.
And that was when the present gave way to memory.
For a moment he wasn't on the bench anymore. He was grown, alone, gutted.
He was twenty five years younger.
A winter morning, a bad day at school. His classmates had laughed at him over something he couldn't even remember now. All that stayed with him was the feeling they'd left behind. The feeling that he was broken.
When he got home, Yuna took one look at him and understood. She didn't ask what happened. She took the blue coat off the rack and held it out.
"Put this on."
Shane looked up at her, his eyes still bright with unshed tears.
"Why?"
"Because we're going to the lake."
"Right now?"
"Right now."
He'd slipped into the coat. A few minutes later they were in the car. For most of the drive, he stayed quiet, watching out the window. Then he spoke.
"Mom?"
"Yeah?"
"Why don't the other kids get me?"
Yuna kept her eyes on the road.
"Because sometimes people need time to get someone."
"But I try to get them."
She gave him a small smile.
"I know."
"Then why don't they?"
She was quiet for a few seconds.
"Not everyone knows how to look long enough to really see a person."
Shane looked down at his hands.
"Am I broken?"
"No." The answer came instantly.
"Then why am I always alone?"
Yuna reached over and squeezed his fingers.
"Being alone doesn't mean you're broken."
He looked back out the window.
"Do you get me?"
She smiled.
"Not always."
He turned to her.
"You don't?"
"No. But I can stay with you even when I don't."
Shane had pressed his head against the glass. That answer stayed with him through every year since.
Yuna never promised to understand everything.
She promised she'd stay.
Shane opened his eyes.
The lake was still there. The bench was still beneath him.
Yuna wasn't.
No one was.
No car door would open to tell him to put his coat back on. No Ilya waiting at home. No one to wrap their arms around him and tell him it would be okay.
He had lost his home.
He had lost the man he loved, his husband.
He had lost everything that, a few hours ago, he'd believed was his whole life.
And now he sat alone in front of a frozen lake, without even a coat, the cold working into his bones, the tears still coming.
His phone buzzed again. Shane looked down. One name stood out among the notifications.
Rose.
He stared at it.
He couldn't call his mom. She'd hear his voice and know instantly something was wrong. She'd panic.
Rose would answer.
She might not understand right away what was happening. Shane might not even manage to explain it, not in the state he was in, his throat tight, his breath ragged, the words stuck somewhere between his chest and his mouth.
But Rose would answer. And maybe just hearing her voice would be enough.
That soft, familiar voice that, even in his worst moments, made him feel like he wasn't completely alone. Like he wasn't stupid.
Shane dragged his thumb over her name and hit call.
"Shane?"
Hearing her voice broke something loose in him. He opened his mouth, and nothing came out. He tried again, breathing through broken sobs.
"Rose..."
"Heyy," she said gently.
Shane hung his head. Tears dripped onto his hands.
"I..."
His voice gave out completely.
Rose stayed quiet for a few seconds. She didn't ask what happened, didn't tell him to calm down. She knew him well enough to know that when Shane hit this point, questions only made it worse.
"Where are you?"
Shane stared straight ahead.
"Right now... I don't know."
"Shane, are you safe?"
He nodded, even though she couldn't see it.
"Yes."
"Send me your location."
His fingers shook so badly it took two tries to tap it through. Rose went quiet for a moment. Then, just as calm:
"Okay. I see you."
Shane closed his eyes.
"Rose, I..."
"I'm here."
A noise came through the line, then the jingle of keys.
"Where are you going?" Shane asked, his voice still broken.
"I'm coming."
"Y-you don't have to."
"I want to."
Shane didn't answer.
A few seconds later, he heard a car door shut, then the engine turn over. Rose didn't say anything else. She just stayed on the line. Shane kept crying, curled up on the bench, and on the other end of the call all he could hear was the muffled sound of Rose's car cutting through the dark streets.
And for the first time since he'd walked out that door, he wasn't completely alone.
“E non puoi spiegarlo quando davvero accade. Quando senti addosso tutta l’irrimediabilità della condizione di essere umano. Mentre senti il tuo corpo sbattere prepotentemente contro le pareti dell’anima. Il momento preciso in cui il dolore arriva e il mondo che conosci finisce. E ne inizia un altro.”
— Rossana Soldano, Come Anima Mai