Chapter Text
If but for a moment, there is peace lingering in every crevice of the world, present on the wind and sweet on the tongue. Where the air is normally heavy with burden and worry, today all that can be found is sunshine and a pleasant sleepiness. If he closed his eyes and eased himself into the park bench, Len is confident that he could be lulled to sleep by nothing but the melodic chirping of the birds and the warm sunshine caressing his weary face. Instead, he sits upright, somehow relaxed and rigid at the same time. If he listens closely, he thinks he can hear a rustle somewhere behind him rippling through the neatly trimmed emerald lawn. But if he turns his head to look, no matter how quickly or discrete, he finds nothing by wildflowers and butterflies fluttering in the breeze. And somehow, accompanying this mysterious sound is a deep ache of grief and bittersweet joy alike, churning in his stomach and mixing until he’s unable to distinguish one ache from the other.
He sets these feelings aside, burying them under the tranquility the air seems to supply him. He lets out a breath, shoulders relaxing as he leans into the park bench. The sun beats down on his flaxen hair, filtering through slivers of air between branches which are thickly laden with lush leaves. A breeze saunters by wistfully, bringing another bout of rustling in the tree leaves above his head. He shivers and goosebumps ripple throughout the surface of his arms, and he almost scolds himself for not having brought a jacket. But the sunshine pouring through his windows assured him of good weather, and though the breeze is chilly, the sun stays true to its promise.
He sighs. The laughter and battle cries of children at the nearby park are carried over to him by the wind as they undoubtedly sprint through the maze-like structure of bright plastic that serves as their playground. Usually, he would perceive these sounds as a cacophony of shrill cries and bratty shrieks, especially on a day as still as today. But the tenderness of the afternoon has tamed and soothed his temper and typically waning patience, and in place of annoyance he found only the bittersweet throb of yearning for the specific innocence and care-free nature that only children have.
He’s long since crossed over into the “adult” reality of bitterness and reluctant compromise, the gleaming purity of childhood pried from his fearful fingers in one fell swoop. And, as the endless days stretched before him, he realized that the only thing left in him was the growing resentment that had moved in after the abduction of his contentment. Now, in the wake of his footsteps, cold glares and seclusion follow closely while the paranoia traveling with him on his shoulder prompts him to double-guess anything and everything. The paranoia, somehow, isn’t the worst. In fact, he thinks that he's gotten used to its company, and that he's become well-accustomed to it. Still, he thinks it'd be nice to experience companionship once again, with someone other than his aunt, who's only ever home half the time, anyways.
But here, in this strange world which surely must be a dream, he doesn't feel an aching pang in his chest. A grim hope bubbles within him, one where he’d sink into the mattress and never come up for air, to close his eyes and never wake, trapped forever in a world of painless dreaming.
But for now, he chooses to stay in this terrible and wonderful temporary dream, where he can be warmed under the sun without a care in the world. He’s savoring the feeling when he looks to his right and the grieving, bittersweet ache breaks through and washes over him.
She meets his gaze with a smile that he hadn’t seen in a long, long time. Her canines are slightly crooked and her rosy lips nearly disappear as they curl into that mischievous yet endearing grin he’s associated with her. "What’s the matter?” She says, scooting closer to him. The warmth radiating from her is dizzying, and he swallows hard. “You didn’t think you’d get rid of me that easy, did you?”
He closes his eyes, gently. He feels the breeze ruffle his hair. He smells the smoke from a nearby barbeque. He hears the children's laughter and the birds calling to one another. He feels the sun on his skin. He counts, slowly, to five before he opens his eyes again, and when he does, she's still there. She doesn't notice his period of silence, instead gazing out at the street and passing cars with amusement. And then he finds it within himself to smile again.
"Believe me,” He says, “I couldn’t get rid of you no matter how hard I tried." Something within him had expected the deep pit hollowing out his stomach to gradually fill back up, to untangle itself when he’d forced a smile onto his face and banished the tremor that would’ve plagued his voice when he spoke. But his stomach remains as knotted and empty as before.
She laughs sardonically. An emerald leaf flutters from the tree above, quivering in the air before gently landing in her similarly-shaded hair. He pauses to study her, if but for a moment appreciating her after so long. The freckles scattered across her face and shoulders are all but faded, faint remnants of something she’d once dearly loved and hated at the same time. The roots of her hair are fiery red, fading into the lime-green that both her almond eyes and the rest of her hair boast.
He takes the leaf from her hair. She glances at him, and he throws the leaf at her as soon as her gaze meets his. She looks down at her lap, where the leaf lands, and picks it up. She lifts it in the air, examining it against the sunlight. “Alright…thanks, I guess?” She says. Then she smiles. “Oh, shit, look! It’s almost the same color as my hair!”
“Mm. It’s too green,” says Len. She shoots him an annoyed look.
“Hey, I dunno if you’ve noticed, but my hair is green.” This time it’s Len’s turn to shoot her an irritated stare.
“Uh, yeah, I never said it wasn’t,” he says, “I just said that the leaf is too green. As in, it has more green than your hair.”
She brings it closer to her eyes, studying it closely. Then she brings it away from her face and says, “Well, I never said it was the same color of my hair, I said almost.”
“I mean- yeah, but it still feels too green even for that comparison.”
“Green is green, is it not?”
“Sure, but that doesn’t mean every single shade of green looks alike-”
“Bullshit.”
Len turns in his seat toward her, gesturing with his hands as he talks as if he’s an exasperated, desperate teacher trying to tutor a clueless 3rd grader. He feels a lot like that, at least. “Okay, are you seriously going to sit here and tell me, like, olive green looks almost exactly like- like, I don’t know, mint green?”
She looks him in the eye, stone-cold and serious. “Yes.”
He stares. Then a laugh suddenly spurts from his lips, and following this breach comes a deep, rolling laughter from the empty pits of his stomach. It broils and bubbles up from its depths, climbing his throat and bursting into the air, incredulous and baffled and joyous and genuine. Her eyes sparkle, and the corners of her lips tug up into that lovely grin of hers as she snickers.
A feeling of contentment bubbles up in Len’s chest. He steals a glance at her. Her chin-length hair is a jungle of lime-green waves curling wildly at the ends, shining under the sun like glistening peridots. The wind whips the longer front pieces of her hair, the ends curling softly toward her collarbones, and she wrinkles her nose and tucks them behind her ears. “Jesus,” she says. “Where the hell did all that wind come from?”
A visceral feeling of gratitude, grief, and shame tugs at him from within, trying to unwind and unravel him until he’s nothing but a heap of pulsing and hidden emotions. He opens his mouth, his heart stuttering and a terrible ache crawling into the back of his throat as his eyes grow misty.
“I…” missed you. “...don’t know.”
She shrugs on the orange and white crop jacket she’d been holding on her lap, zipping it up and covering the green halter top she’d worn the last time he saw her. She casts him a strange look. “What? Why’re you looking at me like that?” She asks. She crosses her legs, pulling her white skirt, hemmed with a pale yellow silk ruffle, over her thighs. She holds her hands over her skirt, as if to secure it from the mischievous breeze. He looks away.
“I’m…sorry,” He says, his voice crawling meekly from his lips. It comes out rougher and hoarser than he intended. “I’m sorry.” She doesn’t say anything.
A feeling of warmth encases his hand. He looks over to find that she’d scooted closer to him, and where one hand stiffly rests on her skirt, the other rests on his, tenderly and quietly. He shivers, feeling as if his chest were collapsing in on itself, and he blurts out in a more desperate, grieved voice, “I’m sorry.”
She rubs her thumb over his hand reassuringly, the gesture gentle and forgiving. Her voice is soft, quiet, and sympathetic. “I know.”
In the back of his mind, a sharp feeling of chagrin and bitter anger spreads like a blistering heat at her sympathy. As he speaks, he feels his heart shriveling inside his chest, ashamed and desperate to finally be still. “Don’t- Don’t do that,” he says. He pulls his hand away, holding his wrist as if to secure his hand from wandering back to hers somehow. A cool rush falls over it as the warmth from her hand fades quickly, evaporating so quickly that it almost feels like it had never existed. He can’t bring himself to look at her, so he keeps his head locked in the other direction, his eyes trained on a patch of grass in front of him. “Don’t feel sorry for me.”
Her gaze bores into him, sad and frustratingly compassionate. “You can’t keep doing this to yourself,” she says. “You can’t keep blaming yourself like this. How’re you supposed to…live, like this?”
“I’ll figure it out,” he says hoarsely.
“The only thing you should be figuring out,” she says, “is how to forgive yourself. Let go of the past, you know, all that shit. Not this.”
“It’s-” The words catch in his throat. He swallows hard but finds no relief, his throat still cramped up and tight. His nails bite into his skin, sharp teeth digging into the skin and nearly breaking it. “It’s my fault. I can blame myself, because it’s my fault.”
A soft touch caresses his hand, so subtle and benign that if it weren’t for the feeling of fingers trying to pry his hand out of his own iron grip, he would’ve mistaken it for the mild graze of a butterfly’s wings. “Len…”
“It’s my fault,” he repeats, his voice a hollow echo tinged with despair. His grip loosens in defeat, exhaustion suddenly settling into his weary bones. The fingers hold his cold hand, rubbing his skin as if trying to smooth out the indents his nails had left on his skin. “Isn’t it?”
Her voice is hesitant. “I…”
“Tell it to me straight,” he says. He closes his eyes, eyelids suddenly heavy and burning. “It’s my fault, isn’t it?”
Silence. Then, quietly, as if afraid to hear her own voice, “Yes.”
The children’s cries and laughter diminish gradually into nothing more than a whisper, and the breeze comes on stronger, colder. He shivers, unsure if he does so because of the sudden change in temperature or because her word of confirmation rings within his head. A strange, sick relief worms its way under his skin, wrapping around his chest and squeezing until he feels as if his ribs are going to shatter like glass. He licks his lips, his mouth suddenly dry. “If I could take back everything I said that night, I would,” he says. “I’d…I’d do everything different. I know I can’t take it back, I can’t just…go back and fix it. But I think about it all the time. I think about it a lot when I go to bed and- it just plays over and over and I can’t stop it. I can’t stop blaming myself even if I wanted to, and…I know you don’t want that, but I- I can’t help it. It’s all my fault and I can’t do anything but think about it and wish I’m anyone but me. If I could go back to that night, I’d do everything different. Then you’d…”
His voice wilts as it escapes from him, as if the air itself had smothered it and forced it to wither before him. And as it perishes, its ashes carried away by the frost-tipped wind, he watches with a mild feeling that he’s shrinking in his seat, growing smaller and smaller until he inevitably winks out of existence. But he stays there on the park bench, an overwhelming feeling of emptiness and desolation about him like a cloud thickening in preparation for a storm. Still the same size, still the same living and breathing human being, still himself. His stomach churns, cold dread washing over him in chilly whispers, ebbing and flowing tides of grief and anguish at this revelation.
The fingers that had been holding his trembling hand, warm and soft, are cold and light now. It takes him a moment to realize that there are no fingers holding him at all, no warmth and compassion sitting beside him patiently and sorrowfully. He wants to reach out, to desperately look for her again, but his limbs are too heavy to move. He can barely move his lips to form the word on his tongue, heavy and delivering unto him a dull aching pain. He moves his head to look over at her. His lips part to call out to her but his voice dissipates into the air before it could form the words.
And when he finds the seat beside him vacant as if nobody had ever been there, all he can do is smile bitterly as the wind freezes him over.