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Basil sighed into his cupped hands. His heart laid in his mouth, still pumping albeit arrhythmically, but exhausted, twitching. His stomach still felt like it was born of knots, but it felt like another stomach was made around it, and slowly he was being digested by himself. His ring finger brushed against his swollen eye, faint trickles of pain danced around his face, but he didn’t notice it anymore. He didn’t care anymore.
Basil was tired.
Hero let out a cynical, breathy chuckle from the other side of the hospital room where he slouched against a locker.
“Your name’s still Basil, right? You didn’t lie to us about that, too?”
Basil weakly shook his head. Hero pulled himself to his feet and slowly plodded over to Basil’s bedside. He reached out a gentle hand to run through Basil’s hair. Instinctively, Basil leaned into Hero’s side, desperately holding on to whatever comfort he could get out of the man.
“I don’t…” Hero took another breath, “I don’t hate you. I don’t blame you. It doesn’t… It doesn’t matter how it happened.” Hero explained gently.
“It's okay to hate me,” Basil replied, his voice small and high.
“I know, but I don’t. Mari died, Basil. Part of how she- I thought she died meant that I had to come to terms with the… fact of it all.” Hero looked down and grimaced tightly, his hand stopping mid-hair-ruffle, “It didn’t matter how she died, she did. And I’ll die one day too, and so will you. So will everyone. For so. Goddamn. Long. I thought she was miserable, that poison in her head, the thing telling her that she was never enough, I thought it won, and she spent her last breath in misery.”
Basil didn’t say anything. How could he say anything? Hero’s cold logic had froze his words in his throat. He didn’t know if he found it scarier that these words were coming from Hero’s mouth, or that he completely understood what he’d said.
“But she wasn’t. She was happy, or, uh, happier. I can’t cure the dead, Basil. But the living is a different story. And you, the both of you… You radiate pain.”
Basil let out a sigh that he had been holding for four years. He closed his eyes fully, ignoring the pain, the tears.
“We’ve always been the one who kept the peace…” Basil spoke, “But it’s never been like this. I don’t know if we can patch everyone back together.”
Hero didn’t reply.
Sunny was scattered across the floor like a broken window. His guilt shrivelled up by the bedroom door, his fear laid under the bed, his curiosity hid behind his bookcase, his misery bound itself to his chest, his chest being the only thing that felt like anything. He craned his neck from his position, lying flat on his floor, to look at the specific clump of imaginary hair. A tiny, almost cute eye poking out from it. Ah, misery.
Sunny was in pieces.
But it wasn’t just his.
Sunny once told Kel that people are prisms. Light is only itself undiluted when thrown through a prism.
Sunny’s head hit the wooden floor again. His arms wouldn’t lift, his legs would only twitch, and he let out a sigh, careful as not to remove the black smoke from his lungs. If he got rid of that, he’d surely float away.
Maybe if Sunny went away, he would run into the others again, wherever they were, as far away from him as possible. He’d float into the aptmosphere like a lost balloon, up, up, beyond the sky, where the air gets thin, and he’d sigh out a great cloud of black, heavy smoke as he felt the ice clasp his neck and soothe the life from him.
Noone knew how to talk to Sunny. What to say. That was the worst part. Noone blamed him, noone wished death upon him, noone asked ‘what if?’ Except for him.
“Hey Basil, Hey Hero. Everything okay?” Kel asked. Kel’s voice wasn’t made to be soft. It was meant to be bright and audible, the kind of voice which was always loud, but never obnoxious. When Kel was quiet, his voice cracked, a huskiness crept in, a fear underlined his words.
“We’re fine, don’t worry.” Hero soothed, smiling, inviting Aubrey and Kel in with a hand. Hero had since pulled up a chair to sit next to Basil’s bed. He had his right arm around the kid’s shoulder, “How’re you two doing?”
“I’m… alright. Aubrey’s still a bit shellshocked, though.” Kel explained, scraping two chairs up for him and Aubrey to sit on.
“it’s just…” Aubrey began. Her words felt as lost as her gaze, “…four years.”
Basil looked down.
“You kept all that shit from us for four years. How much did it hurt?”
Basil looked up.
“You’re both dumbasses you know that right? Like yeah, it sucked, and we would’ve been mad. But we would’ve always forgiven you. I know you know that. Why did you torture yourself for four years??”
Basil didn’t have an answer. He just looked back down, regret stained on his face.
“Aubrey, they were 12” Hero reminded her.
“I know, I know. I’m not actually mad I’m just… ugh… I don’t know… mad. Not at you, just at… life. Why her? Why that? Not for us, not today. I ask ‘why her’ every day to do with me. But why her? Why did you have to be there for it?”
Aubrey’s words felt tangible, they felt like they littered the floor, all she did was pick them up and reassemble them.
“What next?” Kel asked, leaning forward, “I can’t just sit here. You all know how much I hate sitting down. So, what next? Everything’s scattered like it’s been blown into a hundred pieces… friendships, memories… people.”
“We put things back together.” Hero said, “We start with people. We piece each other together again, slowly. Sunny isn’t the only one who feels scattered. We all feel like that, some of us just have the energy to keep moving despite it. We slowly pick up the pieces we dropped in the last four years and we turn them into us. Not how we were, but who we missed out on being, after all this mess.”
“And how do you suggest we do that?” Aubrey pointed out.
“We remind people who they are.” Kel said, “Sunny used to tell me that people are like prisms. You throw one emotion their way and it hits them and explodes into thousands. We remind each other who we are. We pick up scattered memories.”
“And we make friendships over them again?” Basil asked.
“Exactly.” Hero stated, “Listen… what’s done is done. And people are hurt, and some are gone, but we can pick up the pieces and create something better of ourselves, ramshackle as it may be. But we’re not planks or stone, we’re people. And over time we’ll grow and fit and change. We’ll have each other to guide us.”
“We stick together, this time.” Aubrey finished.
“We stick together.” Hero agreed.
“And someone needs us right now.” Kel pointed out.
“Well then, what’re we waiting for?” Hero asked, “Basil, can you walk?”
“Yeah.”
Kel walked to the hospital room door, letting out a sigh that he felt like he was holding since birth.