Chapter Text
The wind blows softly, the satin purple curtains dancing with the gentle breeze. A mild, afternoon sun peeks through them, bouncing off of the walls and into the paper atop a small table propped up on Mona’s bed. She holds the pen in between her fingers firmly, making every careful stroke to make sure her handwriting is legible. What used to be perfect longhand has deteriorated into scribbles and careful letters, but she perseveres still.
She must write, she thinks, if she wants to preserve anything. After all, it was what she did best. Across the bed: shelves upon shelves of books and journals, accompanied by framed excerpts of her pieces—pieces of paper she’s treasured the most that embroidered her name on it with words that only she could string together like that.
It was always pretty, her writing, and she wore those proudly until it all slowly started falling out of her head and into a cesspool of black tar.
Lest it drowns her, she has something tangible to leave behind. But that’s a story for another day. For now she writes, she whispers her heart’s contents into a piece of paper.
Scaramouche, the letter starts, the upward curve of the ‘s’ sliding up beautifully before coming down in connection to the ‘c’, before blending into the rest of the letters and then curving up again at the end of the ‘e’—smooth and soft and tender , just like how his name rolls off her tongue so nicely ever since they were children.
I love you still, and I am a fool.
I haven’t got much time left and I am spending my final waking hours writing to you, oceans away from me. I am a fool.
However, I would like to believe that this time spent on you is not time wasted—on the contrary I don’t think I have anything else better to do anyway. Albedo would put me back to bed if I ever sneak out again, and Fischl has too sharp of an ear to ever let me slip away from the house.
So I am writing a letter to you.
The city looks pretty this time of the year—remember when we used to go outside and pick flowers off of the fountain at the plaza? It’s very unfortunate that I can no longer carry on that tradition, even on my own. But Albedo and Klee brought me some flowers a few days ago, and they’re as beautiful as ever. But of course, the funny thing about mortality waiting by your door is that its presence is as loud as ever, the looming darkness eminent, and so even the most beautiful of flowers will wilt to its touch. Death, as it seems, may be contagious in ways that we are not aware of. Of course, I would rather not say this out loud, I think Albedo has had enough of me going on and on about it.
It’s quite hilarious that I feel most comfortable talking about it with you, whom I have not seen in forever. Ah, but it was always like this with us, no? This air of comfort, of permitted vulnerability that allowed us to be honest with each other to the best of our abilities. You’re very cruel, haven’t you had the heart to at least spare us a goodbye before you flew out after graduation, and so urgently too?
I’m joking, I understand why you had to leave immediately.
Are you doing well? I heard from Jean that you are quite a businessman. How’s Signora doing? Venti’s still quite bitter about the time she kicked him in the stomach that one time.
Can you make it back, if you have the time? Or write me back. I apologize for being too forward. Am I being too selfish for missing my best friend? Perhaps so.
But I have been selfless for all my life, allow me to allow myself to indulge in my selfishness for a while.
Do you not miss your most wonderful, most beautiful, most adorable friend?
The purple envelope closed off with a wax seal, dried flowers and all.
—
“Did you really send out my letter?” she asks, Albedo sitting on the foot of her bed, flipping through the catalogue of medicine she has to take before taking the tablets out and carefully placing them on his palm.
“I really did, I promise,” he answers, focused on his task, inching himself closer to her and hands out the pills. She takes it all in one go, and he gives her a glass of water to follow.
“Then how come there’s no response?”
Albedo shrugs, getting off the bed and adjusting the blanket to cover her properly, “Maybe he doesn’t have time,” he finally says after some time, and promptly leaves. But as he was about to close the door, Mona calls him out.
“When you receive a letter from him, do not open it, okay?”
He hums in affirmation and closes the door softly.
Do you remember when we were walking off to Starfell Lake, we found two dead swans and filled their bodies with flowers?
Do you remember what you said then?
In more ways than one, that’s how dying feels like, at least to me. Like life is being scooped out of my body, black tar filling the gaps and then emptying the vessel once it's full—and when I’m nothing but a corpse, I’ll be filled with flowers when I’m six feet under. I look at the flowers I’m being given: in the hospital, in the house, in the mail—and I imagine that they look at me the same way we did the swans then: with pity, with adoration, with the desire to somehow make the ugly beautiful.
I imagine myself now, half my body already in the grave, slowly being filled with flowers long before the tar takes over.
And in a way, it’s beautiful, no?
I am adamant in making something beautiful out of this ugly thing residing inside me, so that when I’m nothing but a wisp in the minds of the ones who grew with me, I’m nothing but a pretty little thing, a star shining brightly in their sky of memories.
Will I shine in yours?
When we were crouched then, carefully stuffing the swans with flowers, I quietly whispered to you the time bomb ticking on my body, in which I confessed that I, too, was going to be like the dead swan, in a few years time. I remember how you looked then, how you held my hand solemnly, and stuffing a flower in my palm before closing it, how you whispered that you would be the first one to give me my flowers when the time comes. And perhaps it didn’t mean anything to you then—but to me it did, and it still does, because it was the first time ever that I wasn’t met with pity, with a forced promise to “try and make it for longer”—it was nothing but a simple acknowledgement of an ending we cannot evade, and a simple promise of being there to see it through, to say goodbye.
Ah but those are nothing but promises left behind in the years that has passed, I just hope that when you read these letters, you remember those moments, and there will be a time in later years of your life when you think of me: and perhaps it is better that you do not see me off, so I stay young in your memories, I stay as healthy as I could be, and at least in someone’s mind I am still preserved, fresh flowers and all.
And so perhaps it is cruel of me to ask you to love me back, or to ask you to even dig out those feelings long left in the past, because it’s asking for someone to commit to a body that physically cannot, and I will simply not allow you to be in pain because of me, because of something neither of us can control.
But please allow me to indulge in these letters, my silent confessions, my final words to the only love of my life, my parting message to the universe—my universe—for I was merely a passing star in your sky.
But I am bright, I will go out with the sparkles twinkling even after I have long passed.
—
There are days she cannot hold a pen, her hands frail and shaking. This was one of those days.
With the summer storm rustling outside, she grips the pen tightly with her hand, trying to press it onto paper, trying to hold her breath as she struggles to write. As the tip touches the paper, the pen slips out of her grip, flying off into the other side of the room before rolling off into the wall.
It takes everything in her not to wail as she bit her lip, her entire body trembling in order to cease a waterfall.
Everything kept inside will eventually shatter, she discovers, when Albedo finds her on the floor hours later, weeping while curled up to herself, muttering “I just want to write a letter,” repeatedly as she tries to catch her breath, as she tries to take control, as she tries to crawl into where the pen had landed.
—
The hospital walls are so sad, whoever decided that green was an appropriate shade to surround the dying with deserves to burn in hell.
A funny thing happened today—one of my doctors had joked around with me about never having a boyfriend—and I suddenly remembered that I would be dying a virgin, except for the one night we shared.
Do you remember that? We tried so hard not to make a sound, because Fischl would hear, and we were giggling so hard that nothing had really happened, and the night had just been spent doing everything except have sex.
Though in retrospect, I think we had been more intimate than we had ever been, and perhaps we didn’t need to do it in order to bare everything to each other, but looking back now I wish I’d at least have gotten laid at least once. Have you had sex now? How does it feel?
I always imagined it to be wonderful, to be this awakening experience where you transcend into another plane of existence and you realize how you really feel about this person—because that’s when you truly connect, that’s when you truly give them parts of yourself that you will definitely never recover. But it seems like with us, I didn’t need to sleep with you to give you all of me—well—the parts of me that are not sick.
And even now, even when all of our memories are nothing but buried in the past, I’m still giving, I’m still trying, because I think I want my memories to be preserved by you the most. Is it too much to ask? I’m sorry.
Somehow I just want you to remember me the best. At least, remember the prettiest parts. Nothing about the gruesome hospital visits, nothing about the days where I’m immobile, nothing about that at all.
Just us, just in our pleasant times, just in this image I will make of myself in your head where I will be young forever. Can you do that for me—think of me that way?
There’s a part of me that wishes I was less sick, that I was less doomed to be doomed, so that I could’ve fought for us, so that I could’ve fought for you—but this is the fate that I cannot change, and I’m simply thankful that I was privileged enough to have spent at least the best years of my life with you, and that you had allowed me to make a presence in your life as well. Did I give you good memories? Did I make just as big of an impact in your life as you did in mine? Have I been good?
I see no importance in how people perceive me, but somehow, several years down the line, how you think of me makes me nervous.
Have I been good, Scaramouche? Was my love enough, and can you feel it still in these letters?
—
As Albedo enters Mona’s room, he’s already familiar with the face that will welcome him. He nods a ‘no’ in response, and carries on with his daily routine of helping her take her medicine.
“Why do you bother,” he mutters idly, taking the medicine out and onto his palm.
“I have no idea,” she answers, taking the medicine and taking a sharp gulp of water.
He smiles at her, the smug smile that says I can see through you , and says, “I think you know exactly why.”
Silence.
“Does it not hurt?”
She smiles at him, a sad smile—but also a content one: defeated, but accepting, “My foot is already on the grave. This is nothing I can’t handle.”
I hope you are happy.
In my mind I can see you thriving, living the dreams you whispered to me in our youth. I hope you are proud of yourself, and I trust that the younger you would be. Are you in love? Are you eating at the right time every day? You always skip meals. Did you get a dog, just like you always wanted?
Fischl has a giant bird that she keeps with her at all times.
Can you finally cook?
To be honest, I cannot form a coherent picture of you in my brain: where you are, what you’re doing, how you’re doing. But I can only hope for the best, and I hope my manifestations are true.
Are these letters reaching you? Am I reaching you?
Albedo once told me I seem like I’m writing to no one, and maybe I am, but that’s okay. Because to be fair, in a way I am, because I’m writing to the version of Scaramouche that probably doesn’t even exist, that probably doesn’t even care, and these letters might not even be read—instead thrown into the trash or lost in transit—but that doesn’t matter to me.
I believe that if I will it hard enough, my feelings will reach you, and if you ever feel a sudden warmth on a cold day, I hope you know that that’s me trying to send you my love.
I think indeed it’s funny and pathetic that after all this time, it’s still you, but I do not mind. If I could only give my heart to someone once, it is all yours, and even when I am dead it will remain beating, it will still call for your name, and perhaps in the next lifetime where everything is finally made right and all of our wrongs and lacking is filled, we could thrive.
We could perhaps fulfill the promises made to each other—and live happily together.
Please do not feel burdened by my feelings, I don’t intend to pass them on to you—and I’m perfectly fine with not being reciprocated. It’s selfish, as I had said before. Perhaps I’m just saying this to be perceived. I just want to feel seen by you, for the last time, even if it isnot directly so.
Am I seen, Scaramouche? If you see me, am I smiling?
—
Klee sat beside her, putting flowers in her hair when Fischl barges in the room, “You have mail!” putting a smile on Mona’s face.
She hasn’t smiled in weeks, not after being put out of commission suddenly, not after being sent in and out of the ICU, not after being almost dead for five minutes, and then alive again, not after time had finally given an ultimatum on her like a limited-edition item whose time is slowly ticking away—the beat loud.
Fischl hands her the letter, neatly sealed in a white envelope. She almost tears it open, the thick ivory paper meeting her. Upon folding it open—
She folds it back neatly, tucking the envelope underneath the piles of books on her bedside table, the smile fading away.
“What was it about, Miss Mona?” Klee asks.
“Nothing important,” she says through gritted teeth, trying not to cry.
—
I love you still, and I am a fool.
I haven’t got much time left and I am spending my final waking hours writing to you, oceans away from me. I am a fool.
But it doesn’t matter—it’s this love that has propelled me forward, and in more ways than one has kept me alive. And perhaps it was foolish of me to think I could at least be affirmed for one time, for the last time, but I am happy to be foolish if it would be for you.
Albedo asked me if this was all worth it, what with the pen getting harder to hold each day. And it is.
What matters is the love we put out into the world, not the love we receive—and I am content to have spent my energy trying to fill you with all my love. How can I be mad at you for letting go of the past, when it is the right decision?
We are not alike—you have a life to live, and I have time ticking audibly, each passing day a distinct day closer to the fall. I can indulge myself in living in the past, but you cannot, and so I only wish nothing for you but happiness, nothing else but the fuel to push forward, nothing more than the will and the desire to keep on going.
I wish for you to be filled with so much love, for that is my fuel, and I can only hope that it is yours too.
And it is, isn’t it?
I hope you exist for love, just as you did all those years ago—but not to get love, but to give it, because only then it will naturally come back to you. After all these years that I have asked myself and asked the stars whether you loved me, now I need no answer.
But does it hurt to hear it, even for the last time?
And so here is my confession, if you could just come close to hear it:
I loved you intensely then, and I love you just as tenderly now. If I could only hold your hand and touch your face, if I could only take you in my arms and keep you close—I will—and I would never let go. Perhaps in another time, in another space, perhaps heaven would be so kind to let this work, perhaps we could live long enough to see each other again, perhaps we could bask in the love that we have, and even if you do not have enough for me…
My love is more than enough for the both of us.
I’m sorry for barging into your life like this. But will you let me indulge in this intimacy for the last time?
Can you close your eyes for me, and imagine me for a little while. Dressed in white—in that frilly dress we picked out from the thrift store—my hair adorned with flowers and the star charms you bought for me.
Am I smiling, Scaramouche?
—
And she lay like that, in her white dress, a dead swan filled with flowers as Albedo and Fischl and the others surrounded her. Her smile, solemn and accepting—the first time in a long while that she had not been violently fighting against her fate.
On the other side of the world, an intermittent knocking on a door of an apartment downtown. A silver-haired girl opens the door, dressed in white, hair neatly tied up in a bun, a veil pinned at the base.
“I’m sorry ma’am, but several letters were mistakenly delivered a few blocks away that was meant to be delivered to your unit, but the sender wrote the postal code wrong—is this the residence of a man named Scaramouche?”
She smiles politely, taking the clipboard and the man’s pen, promptly signing the form, “Yes, I’m his fiancee. I can take the letters.”