Work Text:
Quiet.
For the first time in days (decades?), he was alone. Not just within himself, but also without. Truly alone.
With a tired sigh, he pulled the door closed behind himself and crept across the room to the small oak table, the dragging of his Sunday shoes on the wooden tiles no more than a hushed whisper.
Still, she would have reprimanded him, he acknowledged peripherally. ("Quit dragging your feet, Samuel. It'll leave stains on the tiles. We've just had them redone, you know how much that cost us!").
She'd been like that a lot, nagging. Mostly about the little things. She'd always paid attention to the little things. Perhaps because he never did.
He ran a hand across his face, not for the first time noticing the bags under his swollen eyes, the new worry-lines around his thin-lipped mouth.
Quiet.
It was just so quiet.
Even the once so reliable, steady ticking of the large grandfather clock she had inherited from her parents could not seem to reach his ears anymore.
For a moment, he was compelled to walk over and check on the black monstrosity, to make sure it hadn't stopped again (she never liked when he forgot to wind it up). Yet the pendulum's peaceful swing told him that it wasn't the clock's mechanics which were at fault but rather his old ears.
Then again, maybe it was his old heart.
He had never expected her to go before him. She had always been healthy and fit, despite a slight case of arthritis in her hands which turned worse when the days became colder. 8 years her senior, he had firmly believed to be the first to pass away, to slip away quickly after heart attack number 3 (she'd always had to remind him to take those silly little pills) or to suffocate from his lung blackened by 60 years of smoking his pipe (she'd berated him, lectured him, then hid the pipe, the tobacco even, to get him to stop, which he never did).
When her fever spiked, she'd only asked for some tea ("Maybe a bit of chicken broth. There's nothing a good chicken broth can't cure.")
As it turns out, there were quite a few things it couldn't cure. Pneumonia, for one.
She passed away two days later in the local hospital (which she had last visited nearly 5 decades before, giving birth to their youngest of three).
It all seemed so impossible that he still turned around every morning to give her a peck on the cheek and a gruffly muttered greeting, that he still opened the door to her tiny drawing room at night to let her know he was going to bed.
Still, he was not in denial. He had cried, of course (even in the hospital where others could see), had cursed God and the heavens and the Pope, and doctors and nurses and life itself, lamenting the injustice of it all.
But now, there was nothing left of that. Now, there was just numbness.
Even at the funeral, he had stood calmly as the rain drenched their small congregation ("You forgot your umbrella again, didn't you? I swear, if your head wasn't screwed on…"), had solemnly accepted condolences from family and friends whose eyes were red and brimming with unshed tears when he had none left.
Leaning heavily on the back of the small but sturdy chair, feeling every bit as old as he was and then some, he pushed himself up and shuffled into the kitchen.
Coffee. Some coffee would be fine. Coffee had always managed to wake him up.
Rummaging through the cabinets, he found an old mug of his (an ugly thing she had brought back that one time she had taken a trip to the sea with her sister), a spoon and some cream. After placing the mug on the cup rest, he pushed the soft power button and watched the display flicker to life. It was a modern machine their oldest had gifted them ("It tastes just like it does in that fancy Italian restaurant, Samuel, don't you think?") and which had made her feel so metropolitan. She had always cleaned it meticulously, oiled its little gears, polished the front until you could see your reflection in the stainless steel.
The machine huffed at him and he pressed the button he had come to know meant 'make coffee' ("See? There's a teensy-weensy bean on it, remember? Just push that.").
But there was no coffee. Instead, the machine huffed once more and a new symbol appeared on the display, flashing at him in an angry red.
He creased his brows in consternation and his finger shot out to the array of knobs with all sorts of pictograms he had never bothered to learn about. Yet as if his hand had been smacked, he stopped himself ("Oh, don't you dare just pressing all the buttons and breaking it! You know it cost Casie a pretty penny to give us this! Let me do that").
He lowered his eyes and reluctantly turned the machine off, its sharp hiss almost cutting through the dulling blanket surrounding him.
Turning around to head back to the living room, he glimpsed the mug still placed neatly on the cup rest. That eyesore. With shaking fingers, he grasped the colorful container and ran his thumbs along the uneven rim.
He was truly alone.