Work Text:
“Everything goes away, Jack Sawyer, like the moon. Everything comes back, like the moon.”
- Stephen King, The Talisman
Death was always part of the deal. They understood that going in—no need for stupid platitudes, like this is the easy part, like we’re not kids anymore. When had it ever mattered how young they were? When had they ever gotten free passes?
They had a few lucky breaks, that was all. A few big goddamn heroes to keep them safe. But if there’s one thing any gameplayer knows about luck, it’s that luck runs out.
Lucas should have known that. Lucas should have known that Max was playing a losing hand from the start.
Four chimes. Four deaths.
Lucas should have stopped her.
It was a time when I was the happiest.
Was I there?
That’s presumptuous of you. But yeah. You might have been there.
(When the time came, the only time that mattered, he wasn’t.)
Lucas hates hospitals, but if all goes well, they should be out of here in forty-eight hours. Most people in comas wake up within the first forty-eight hours.
If they’re going to wake up, that is. If all goes well.
He buries his face in his hands. It’s hour seventeen.
Lucas hates hospitals, but that doesn’t feel like an important enough thought to say out loud, even to Erica, who’s been a weirdly good listener since—since. Everything Lucas has said, even just, “Do you think we should ask the nurse for ice chips? I think those are supposed to help with d-dry mouth—” has her on her feet, ready to go. She moves with purpose, which is more than he can say for himself, since.
She looks older, too—more like Mom. The furrow in her forehead, the sorrow in her eyes.
Part of the deal.
Mom hasn’t gotten here, yet. Lucas only knows that Mom and Dad made it out alive because of a payphone call that miraculously went through. The phonelines are still up, but their house is on the other side of a forty-foot-wide gate from the hospital. Meanwhile, the traffic is jammed up so bad every way out of town that it will be hours, maybe even days, before anyone can drive all the way around the far reaches of the gates.
That’s assuming there is a way around. That’s assuming that any of this ends.
The hospital doesn’t have ice chips because of the power outage; the generators are running essential functions only.
It’s hour twenty-two.
Max! Max, wake up. Max, please. Max—
(He wanted to die if she did. It would have been easy enough: the house was crumbling around them, three floors up. Jason was torn in two. Lucas could have stayed where he was, Max in his arms, only one heart still beating between them. Lucas could have dragged them both towards the gaping, molten jaws of the gate, instead of away. He could have just waited, like he’d waited already: too long.)
Then Max started breathing again.)
There’s so much you didn’t get a chance to tell her. Six months ago, you boasted to Mike that you always got her back, that there was no break you couldn’t mend. You chalked it up to your ability to learn the magic words, when really, you were skating on thin ice. Afraid to scratch the surface.
(No break you can’t mend—
—until Max’s bones snapped like toothpicks.)
The hospital has a library. They found that out at hour eleven.
Max is stable. Critical, but stable. Limited brain activity, but stable. Words are losing their meaning all over the place, yet Lucas leafs through the stack of books Erica brings him until he finds something he knows.
The Talisman, King and Straub. It’s a pipedream. It’s a lucky break.
He knows that going in.
“Fathers die, mothers die, uncles die even if they went to Yale and look as solid as bank walls in their three-piece Savile Row suits. Kids die too, maybe.”
His voice is growing hoarse. Erica brings him some water.
Lucas takes it, and drinks it, but he almost chokes. The tears are still there, knotted in his throat.
“They can hear,” he says. “People can hear, you know? Even when the other senses are gone. Even when they can’t—can’t feel. Or see.”
Max’s eyes, white and red. Max’s voice, the last thing he lost.
I’m not ready.
“Hey,” Erica says. Her hand’s on his shoulder. He can still feel. Lucas can’t do anything but feel.
It’s hour thirty-six.
Her birthday’s in February. She learned how to drive at eleven. It was one of the only good memories she had with Billy, him teaching her to drive her mom’s car so that Susan would have a massive freak-out when she came outside.
The first time she saw fireflies was in Hawkins, June of ’85, and she squeezed Lucas’s hand and cried.
When hour forty-nine comes, he holds her hand. He kisses her forehead. There’s so much he didn’t get a chance to tell her, but that’s because there’s never enough time—there never could have been enough time. When has it ever mattered how young they are?
She’s still breathing. Lucas can see. Lucas can hear.
(Lucas can’t do anything but feel.)
“I can bear to tell you no more— only that they comforted each other as well as they could, and, as you probably know from your own bitter experience, that is never quite good enough.”