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“I didn’t think I could live without him.”
It comes apropos of nothing, during a rare moment of solitude for the both of them. Between hovering parents and being on the look out for the Prophet’s followers, they’d barely had a moment to themselves. It was Kieren that had suggested they take a time-out, knowing they both needed some time to just breathe.
Simon looks up from his book, watches Kieren draw, and for a moment he thinks he imagines the softly spoken words. But then Kieren is drawing breath and saying, “When Rick died. I felt like… like the world had lost colour now he wasn’t in it.”
Simon closes his book, “You don’t have to-”
“I do,” he says simply, not looking up from the sketchpad, and continues like Simon hadn’t interrupted, “My hands wouldn’t stop shaking, after they told me. Every time I picked up a pencil, I’d shake and I’d have to put it down again until it stopped. I couldn’t draw… thought I’d never be able to draw again.”
Simon watches him from the couch, drinks in the sight of him cross-legged on the floor where he’d settled hours ago with his pad and pencils. He was drawing now - hands sweeping and cutting across the page in a dance that held Simon spellbound - but he couldn’t see what Kieren was creating, and that was ok with him. He was content to watch the way the fading light caught his hair and the way his lips formed each word carefully, like he was rolling them around his tongue before turning them loose.
“I don’t think anyone understands what it’s like for an artist who can’t create art. It’s like a void in your soul - it sucks everything into it until there’s nothing left, and I started thinking… I thought what’s the point of me? What am I doing here when he’s not? So I surrounded myself with his ghost and ended it where it started. Kind of poetic, really.”
Simon’s heart hasn’t worked for so long he’d wondered if he even had one, even before the Rising, but now it hurt so much for the young heartbroken boy that it’s impossible to deny. He leans forward until his elbows pressed into his knees, closer but not close enough. “Kieren-”
“And suddenly I wasn’t dead anymore. I was Risen.” He huffs a breath like the word amuses him, but he doesn’t smile. “And my world was black and grey again. I didn’t bother picking up a pencil when I got home. Rick was still gone, so what was the point? And then Rick came back and I thought maybe… maybe, you know?”
He knows exactly, and he knows what’s coming next and he doesn’t want to hear it and doesn’t want to stop him either so he says nothing.
“Then Bill…” Kieren pauses then, hand perfectly still on the page, and waits for a beat before he can continue, “Rick was gone again. Before I’d even had a chance to make things right. But it was different this time, I didn’t realise it until after. I don’t think we’d have ever made things work, not like they could have worked between us. I realised I’d made my peace with that because everything was different. I was different. And then there was Amy, who was so full of life even when she was dead. And you, who looked at me like I was… like I was special. Like I was beautiful.”
“You are.”
His lips twitch then; a soft uptick that Simon desperately wanted to kiss.
“And I realised something else, too. I’d started to draw again. I drew Amy in the graveyard, and Jem when I knew she wasn’t looking. And you.” His hand lowers slowly from the page to his lap, “I drew you. My world was suddenly alive with colours again because the two of you demanded it.”
Simon slides forward until he’s on his knees, and even when he’s inches away there’s still too much space. He reaches out with both hands, cups Kieren’s face like it was the most precious thing, and stares. “I’m not going anywhere.”
It’s a promise he intends to keep, but Kieren’s answer isn’t what he expected. He shakes his head and reaches up to him, hands around hands, finally looks up, “I’m not trying to make you promise anything, Simon. I’m trying to make you understand. You and Amy brought colour back into my world, I love you for that, but I’m not that boy anymore. I can’t be that boy anymore. Do you understand?”
Simon want’s to say he does and it’s on the tip of his tongue to agree, but the look in Kieren’s eyes makes him hesitate, makes him think twice.
And Kieren - beautiful Kieren - just smiles, moves a hand to his cheek, and says, “What I’m trying to say, Simon Monroe, is that from now on I’m going to live. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from Amy it's that dead doesn’t mean lifeless, and I won’t go back to being lifeless again. Not now I have my colours back.”
Simon stares. His thumbs are brushing back and forth over the edge of a cheekbone and for a second he wonders how he got lucky enough to be given a second chance..
“Well then, Kieren Walker,” he says, a smile pulling at his mouth, “We’d better start living.”