Chapter Text
Wheatley and Chell were the last people in Rafael’s room that night. They’d smiled at their parents weakly, apologetically. “I’m sorry,” They said.
Wheatley knew what that meant. Chell knew what that meant. The two of them stared at their child, their rising little star, and said nothing.
“I wrote letters,” They said, with a little laugh, “They’re in braille, though. Sorry. Might take you a while to read them.”
Another long, painful silence.
“Can I have a hug please?” They asked, “I want a hug.”
Their parents came forward and indulged the request. They accepted their hug gratefully.
“We love you so much,” Wheatley whispered.
“I’m sorry we couldn’t do more for you,” Chell said.
“It’s not your fault,” They said, “I love you guys so much. So, so much.”
Their folks left the room in haunted, painful silence. They wanted to be left alone.
A long time passed where Rafael basked in the affections of their family. The fever made them feel cold, but they were under probably four blankets. They didn’t want to sleep, quite yet, though the call was so tempting. They wanted to reflect for some time.
They’d made a begrudging peace with the disappointment that was their music-career. It was not enough, really, they’d not really done half as much as they wanted to. It was a disappointment, certainly, but they’d touched some people, they supposed. They’d done well. They made good music, they learned a lot for a nineteen year old.
They wished they could have been the headmaster. They had a fighting shot. They always wanted to teach.
They wished they could’ve seen the world with music. They had plans to send their siblings postcards and small gifts from every place they visited. It was a shame that someone else would have to be the Reyes-Wright to travel the world… But a shame that they could deal with.
They wanted to have seen their siblings’ various weddings. That was a great disappointment. Not seeing the important highs of their life, not seeing them get married or have children, not seeing as their hairs started to turn grey. They tried to imagine themselves as old, as a dignified singer with the age and stateliness and skill to back them.
They couldn’t. They could barely even really manage to gather an image of themselves as they looked now. They could only really imagine their smudge seventeen-year-old-face in the mirror, and even then, that memory was fading. Sophie still was blurry and nineteen, a little baby-faced. Maya and Luis still almost identical versions of each other, though they’d gathered from dad and everyone else that now they looked quite different. Luis, then, broad shouldered and though still lithe, very handsome. Maya, athletic and muscled. They couldn’t picture it, really.
Rafael wanted to be there for their family. They were the most guilty about that.
They shouldn’t have to experience this.
Well, true enough, but what could you do? This isn’t your fault.
And it wasn’t. This was a sleeping, secret little problem that lay dormant for years, and by tonight, would no longer be a problem. They wanted to survive until the morning, just to have the last few hours of life, but they had no measure of knowing when the sun began to rise.
It had to be enough for them to merely reflect.
It’s not a long trip, to wherever people go. Or at least I hope.
They wondered, then, if there was something waiting for them. Thoughts, first, came of hellfire and brimstone, the daunting image of the great unknown bad enough, but the simple thought that they hadn’t done enough in this life made their stomach churn.
They put it out of mind.
You did a lot, for nineteen. You did a lot. You spread a lot of music. They paused for a moment, imagined the fuzzy faces of the audience members at one of the shows they performed at. At least one of them. You helped at least one of those people. You had to have. You had to have told one of them the message they needed to hear.
They closed their eyes. They were content with that.
I hope I did that for someone. I really do.
In that moment, they felt a weight leave them. They smiled into the darkness. The pain in their bones began to dissolve. They felt the strength return to their body. They felt as though if they opened their eyes again, they would see with beautiful clarity, sharper color and clearer edges than they even remembered seeing when they were young.
But they didn’t want to.
Rafael had dropped their cross of self-denial.
They vaguely recalled the doctors saying four months, and then smiled despite themselves. They’d only made it two.
“Guess it’s time to go,” They said aloud, to nobody in particular. “It was a pleasure. I’m glad I was alive. I’m glad I got to sing. Thank you.”
They allowed the weight of their chest to pull them down, down, down…
And fell into a long, dreamless sleep.
Sophie, from her place outside, didn’t cry. She just stood there, in the cool air. She had no idea what compelled her to be out there, that night, but she was suddenly very glad she was.
“You’re welcome, Raf,” She said, in the vain hopes that maybe their ears caught it before they went, “And thank you for being here at all.”
Luis and Maya kept their ears to the thin wall for several minutes after, waiting for a cough or a ‘just kidding’, but nothing came. Finally, Maya turned to Luis, and for the first time since they were children, had tears in her eyes.
“Luis?” She asked.
Luis only nodded, then opened his arms as his twin fell, face-first into a hug.
Chell didn’t like the feeling of loss. It felt like Wheatley all over again. Actually, frankly, it felt worse. Their whole life was in her care. She had only one job, to protect them, and now she had the ultimate understanding of her complete failure to do so.
But she paused, at their last words. They bounced around her mind as she sat, alone.
“I’m glad I was alive. Thank you.”
She was only happy Wheatley didn’t hear that.
Wheatley stood in the hallway, dumbfounded, absolutely dumbfounded. He had just watched the life slip from his child, heard their last words into the mist. He was overwhelmed. Flashes of their music came to mind, when they sang to that baby, Deep River, every single instance that Wheatley had ever heard them sing, over and over again.
And then, the thoughts stopped when he thought about what they said.
Thank you.
“No, no,” Wheatley said, a low murmur as they stared at their sleeping form in their bedroom, “Thank you, Rafael.”
A star lost from the sky. The night all the lesser.
He could only pray Chell didn’t overhear.
The funeral was small. The Cardinal Singers attended - as per Rafael’s last requests, they didn’t come in black, they came in usual, lovely red suits. Rafael’s traditional little purple hydrangea lapel-pin that Chell had gotten them, now a permanent part of the uniform. It was handsome. Wheatley found he quite liked the addition.
It was an, unfortunately, somber affair. This was the only deviation from Rafael’s instructions.
As everyone went up, spoke their eulogies, the choir sat in a block of red, heads down. Only one of them had the plan to speak, the rest, Rafael explained, “will hopefully be a pleasant surprise.”
As the conductor - their teacher, Wheatley recognized - stood up and went towards the podium, her expression haunted.
“Hello everyone,” She said, carefully. “My name is Doctor Sarena Desmond. I was Rafael’s teacher and principal at The New Detroit Vocational School. I, later, became their choir director, and then their coworker in the Cardinal Singers. We have lost a star in the night sky, the choir of angels have gotten probably their best singer.”
She took a breath. “Rafael asked me to play this recording for you, and then show you something they had done. It was important to them that this happened.”
The woman put her head down as she pulled out her phone, sync’d with the speakers, and hit play on the recording. “Hello everyone!” Came their voice. A stab went through Wheatley’s heart. “It’s Rafael, here, delivering my official final message from beyond the grave. Pretty strange, huh? Hearing a dead persons voice. I wanted to say, firstly, thank you. I will live and die eternally grateful for everything, and I mean everything that you all have done for me. Thank you for believing in me, for attending my concerts, for your kind words, and for your love. That’s really the thing I’m most grateful for. I was loved so much… That’s not something everyone has. I struck it so lucky, didn’t I?”
They trailed off into a laugh, and there was a long pause. “I was never a good composer, I always wanted to be but it wasn’t what I was good at. Doctor Desmond used to call it the muse. I got the muse, awhile before recording this message. I wrote something, for the first - and, unfortunately, last - time in my life. I like it a lot. Please don’t take it as a goodbye. I really hope you don’t take it as a goodbye. It’s not a goodbye.”
At that point, Doctor Desmond made a motion with her hand, and the choir stood up, and slowly began to file up towards the space left of the grave, in front of everyone. “I didn’t want to say goodbye to anyone, so I didn’t really, even though I probably should’ve. Sorry for being selfish in that sense. This, actually, is a love letter. To you. All of you. To everyone, really, but mostly to you guys. Pardon the… Incredibly Christian undertones to this. I’m just surprised I managed to write it at all. I bet you can tell which parts are about who. Just… Enjoy it, for me, okay? It’s the only thing I ever really made completely by myself. This will be the first time it will be heard, ever, outside of my head, so please enjoy. This is called My Flight For Heaven.”
The recording went silent afterwards, finished. Doctor Desmond silently put up her hands, the choir slowly took a breath. They left a gap for where Rafael would have stood.
They began humming, a beautiful, low hum. The lines of the hum wove in and out of each other, the entire choir’s eyes closed, the Doctor Desmond conducting slowly, carefully.
“Charm me asleep, and melt me so
With thy delicious numbers,
That, being ravish'd, hence I go
Away in easy slumbers…”
Wheatley’s heart stopped. He suddenly felt as though he might faint.
“Ease my sick head,
And make my bed,”
With that, Chell grasped, suddenly, for his hand, and squeezed it tightly. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the choir.
“Thou power that canst sever
From me ill,
And quickly still,
Though thou not kill
My fever!” They began to grow louder and louder.
“My fever!
My fever…”
They backed away just at the last note, and stopped singing for just a second. The note rung in the air.
“Fall on me like the silent dew,
Or like those maiden showers
Which, by the peep of day, do strew
A baptism o'er the flowers.”
He could tell the siblings had rested their heads on one another, one of their hands coming from the other side of him to put a hand on top of his and Chell’s.
“Melt, melt my pains
With thy soft strains;
That, having ease me given,
With full delight
I leave this light...
And take my flight!” They held that last word for a long, long time.
“For Heaven…
For Heaven…
For Heaven…
Heaven…”
They returned to the same humming from earlier, but this time it had some different, imperceptible meaning. As it finished, the silence that stretched across the fields was a perfect, complete one. Not even birds sang. It was somehow more impenetrable than after they had sung that child to sleep, all those years ago.
Wheatley was broken from his thoughts by the feeling of his tears hitting his lap. He was the first to move, looking left, then right, at his wife and children. Sophie was the one that had put her hand on his and Chell’s, as Luis put either arm around her and Maya. Maya was stone faced as always, Luis and Sophie cried silently. Chell cried, too, but for as many tears came down her face, she was smiling.
She's proud. Wheatley thought.
I’m proud of you, too, Rafael.
Doctor Desmond turned back around, and bowed. A low applause came from the audience, but the stunned silence said more. “Thank you, everyone.”
The rest of the funeral was in silence. They lowered Rafael into the ground, buried them silently, and then, finally, as everyone else left, Doctor Desmond approached Wheatley meekly.
“Mr. Wright?” She asked softly.
“Yes?”
“Firstly, my deepest condolences. If it’s been hard for us, I can’t imagine how difficult things are for you.”
“Thank you,” Wheatley said, slightly numb to the well-wishes by this point.
“But,” She began, “We want to ask… We would like to dedicate a statue in front of the theater to Rafael, and if City Hall agrees, the theater itself.”
Wheatley stared stunned at her.
“I just thought I’d ask,” She said, and scratched the back of her neck, “It’s a lot. I wasn’t sure you’d want that for them. The other thing we wanted to do was amass the collection of recordings we have. The school wants to sell it to further fund the school or the Singers, but it’s rightfully yours, technically. We can discuss that stuff at a later time.”
“Yeah, could we?”
“Of course,” She said. “Thank you, for even considering it. We wanted to do something for them.”
~~~~
The statue was a beautiful bronze color. It was from the moment they had stood up during their last performance, their arms splayed slightly at their sides, their head tilted, that strange, half-pained-half-peaceful expression on their face, that curious smile on their lips.
Wheatley could almost hear the words of the song.
At the footplate, their last words, as supplied by him.
“I’m glad I was alive. I’m glad I got to sing. Thank you.”