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It’s mid-september in Columbus, but fall has come late this year. The leaves are still just beginning to turn and the nights are still warm. This has always been Josh’s favorite time of year, the remnants of summer struggling to keep a hold in still velvety evenings and frosted rooftops in the morning. He likes the feeling of change.
It’s been over six months since he’s been home. His red eye came into Columbus this morning, and he supposes that he could have gone to his family already. But something has kept him away. His parents moved away from his childhood neighborhood years ago, to a nice little suburb full of other quaint retired couples. He misses his mom and dad like crazy, and he knows that his sisters and his brother are already there for the weekend – it’s a reunion of sorts, since his family have all spent the past year and a half complaining that Josh’s newfound success has made him all but impossible to make plans with. He wants to see them all, he does – but something is keeping him from going.
Instead, this morning when he left the airport, he had stopped by the small flat that he’ll be renting in Columbus for the next six months to drop off his few belongings, and took a taxi to a small diner in downtown that he had always loved. He had coffee – black – and eggs – fried – and two pieces of toast. And then, he had caught a taxi to the neighborhood where he had grown up, and he had begun to walk.
Josh knows that so often, when you return to the places that you were before, they will seem to have grown smaller. They will seem less glamorous, or less splendid, or maybe quainter and sweeter than you remembered. The difference between the you that lived there before and the you that walks there now will be reflected on the cracked pavement sidewalks and quiet canopied streets.
This time, Josh does not feel as though his home has grown smaller. He scuffs his feet through the first coat of fallen leaves and slanted afternoon light and he feels transported. A certain smell is heavy on the air – cut grass and molding leaves and the last barbecues of the summer – and it takes him back to when he was young. Nothing is smaller or bigger or less magical than it was. He can feel everything, feel the enchantment of being young and reckless even ten years after leaving just in the way the autumn air feels against his skin.
Josh feels something else too. It’s an ache that is lodged somewhere within his chest, a bittersweet sort of pressure that reminds him that the timing of this return isn’t just random. He breathes deeply and the tightness loosens just a little. It’s not so much sadness, not so much grief. It is just an aching.
It has been ten years since the hardest summer of his life, and there has not been a day since that Josh has not felt just a hint of that ache.
The two years following that summer had been the darkest and the most unforgiving of Josh’s life. Since, he has tried so many times to explain to himself and to his family and friends what happened to him, but he just – can’t. There are no words for it. Before everything had happened, Josh had been slotted to start at Full Sail University in Florida in the fall, to follow his burning dream to become a musician. After – none of it seemed to matter. Josh couldn’t even see past tomorrow, let alone months or years into the future.
The day of the funeral, he had ridden home in a silent car with his family. It had been an evening not unlike tonight, the air warm and the sky streaked with blushing clouds as the sun set. It had been gorgeous, and Josh had hated every second of it.
As he had lain in bed that night, there had been two voices raging inside his head. One had been his own, desperate and choking and searching for some way to escape the wave after wave of pain that was lapping all around him. The other –
The other had been his voice.
It was the voice Josh loved more than any other thing on Earth, the voice he would never hear again, and in that moment, Josh hated it. The voice told him that this was not the end, that the morning comes after night, that he just needed to breathe. Breathe.
Josh couldn’t listen.
There had been a knock on his door while Josh lay paralyzed in bed. His mother had slowly pushed her way inside, past dirty clothes and untouched food. He could feel her separate grief, her own worry and desperation, but it was distant. Everything was distant.
“Josh,” she had begun, and there was a tremor to her voice that seemed to arrow straight through Josh’s insides – but he couldn’t let himself feel it, was too overwhelmed by his own pain to try to cope with hers as well.
She had continued on in her shaky voice, being strong for him. She had told him that she was sorry, that she could not imagine what he was feeling, that she would always be there for her little boy. She told him that it was okay to hurt. She told him that he may have lost the love of his life, but he would always have his family.
She said, “Josh, take all the time you need. Take anything you need. But please – don’t shut us out. We want to be with you through this. We want to help. We love you, Josh. I love you.”
A week later, Josh was living on the streets of LA without a penny to his name and 106 missed calls from home.
There had been no plan when he had left. All he had known was that he needed to get away – and so he did. He ran, and he ran, and he kept running for two years. He found every way he could to escape the reality of loss, everything he could to drown out the two voices in his mind. He ran, and he crashed, and he burned.
And then one day he had met someone who had seen hope in his scattered ashes. Her name was Debby, and she was wild and alive, and she had been like a bucket of ice water to the face when Josh was in the deepest darkness he had ever faced. He owed his life to Debby, and he would never forget it.
After Debby, the changes kept coming. He went home. He told his mother he was sorry. He skated around the neighborhood with Jordan. He got ice cream with Ashley and Abigail. He hugged his father for the first time in years.
And more – he found music again. One lazy afternoon, he had felt a tug in his chest and had walked, trembling, down the basement stairs. His drum set sat hunched in the corner, dusty and in ill repair, but still playable. He had picked up his sticks – and it felt like he hadn’t put them down since.
Debby had not lasted forever – not many things do – but she was one of the most important things to ever happen to Josh and he never let her think otherwise. Music did last, and Josh had suddenly found himself part of a band, and they were playing for twelve people and Josh was drumming with everything he had, and then they were playing for twelve thousand people all screaming along, and Josh was crying onstage because eight years ago he thought he wouldn’t live another month, and now here he was.
Josh had found music, and he had found his family again, and he had found a new girl named Ashley with a voice like sex and chocolate and hair the color of electricity, and he had found a version of himself that he thought would never exist – a version that could feel alive again.
The one thing he had kept to himself, the one thing that had stayed consistent through near-death and rebirth, was the voice. His dearest friend and closest enemy. His constant. It was the voice that made him promise every day to stay alive, the voice that he owed his life to just as much as Debby. It was still there, and he wouldn’t have had it any other way.
Ten years later and he walks through a night just like the one so long ago, a warm night with blushing clouds as the sun sets. Two boys skate past him, laughing and yelling the way teenage boys do, and Josh feels the voice whisper in the back of his mind. Everything here is so close, so familiar. It is the place where the voice had a name, had a face, had a body and a hand for Josh to hold and a heartbeat. This place feels like the beginning and the end of everything Josh has ever felt, his culmination.
He turns right at a street corner – and there it is.
The house is sagging more than it was ten years ago, its shingles more bleached from sun than ten years ago. It is set back from the road and the houses around it have been remodeled since, so that it seems smaller than it did back then. There’s a “For Sale” sign posted in the front yard, and Josh feels a guilty relief that he won’t have to see the Josephs tonight. He’ll look them up when he goes home. Out of all the things he has to regret, one that has caused him the most pain is that he has not seen them since the funeral. They deserved so much more than that.
The house isn’t as neat, nor as lively as it was when Josh knew it so well. And yet – it is alive. He can feel it. He can almost hear piano chords, can almost smell the jasmine that was so thick in the air that summer, can almost hear the voice – the real one – can almost hear him –
And finally he thinks it.
Tyler.
Tyler’s voice comes back now, all in one rush, not the watered down version that has whispered in his mind for so long. Josh sits down on the grass in the Joseph’s old yard, and he can hear Tyler singing so clearly it’s as if no time passed at all, as if he is back in that awful and wonderful three months in which he fell in love with Tyler and watched him die.
Josh realizes that he’s crying – just a bit – and laughs wetly to himself as he wipes his cheeks self-consciously. After Debby had broken the dam that he had been hiding behind, he used to cry every day. But in recent years it’s become less and less often. He thinks that this might be the first time he’s cried in months.
But if there is a time for it, it’s now.
Josh lies back on the lawn and gazes up at the twilight sky, soft blues and purples that haven’t quite edged into black yet. There’s a single dim star flickering into life almost right above him, and he fixates on it. Tyler’s voice is still flowing in his mind, and he begins to sing along softly.
Now the night is coming to an end.
He imagines that the star is Tyler, burning brighter with every second as light fades and crickets begin singing. In his mind, Tyler is singing to him
The sun will rise, and we will try again.
Josh suddenly remembers a night shortly after he first met Debby. Nights were the worst times for him during those years. Hours spent drowning in the darkness, nothing to distract and nothing to drown out the things he was running from.
He remembers being in a dingy motel room, one where he had been staying for a week while Debby was trying to find a place for him to live. He remembers being drunk, so incredibly drunk, and he remembers how he was suddenly more hopeless than ever before.
Crumpled in that hotel room, he had felt a culmination of a different kind. It was not closure, it was defeat. He had felt beaten, exhausted, unable to keep running. And without running, he didn’t see any other option. He could not face the past, and he could not run from it. He was stuck.
That night, he had been so close to throwing in the towel, ending the game. He had been ready.
But as always, the voice had been there.
The voice had been there – Tyler’s voice, and it had suddenly been clearer than he had remembered it being since he had heard the real thing. It was there, and it was saying, over and over, that line.
The sun will rise, and we will try again.
Josh remembers how much it had hurt, to hear that voice and those words again after so long. He remembers how completely it had torn him open. But the following morning, as he had watched the sun rise through ratty motel curtains, Josh remembers that morning as being the first time since Tyler died that he had felt hope.
There are more stars now, but Tyler’s star is still the brightest. Josh is crying again, not sure when it started but no longer feeling the need to stop. He gazes up at the sky, and the tears refract the stars into a billion more twinkling lights, till all he can see are brilliant spots of light against the dark.
Stay alive, stay alive for me.
In the ten years since he has heard Tyler’s voice anywhere other than his mind, Josh has listened. He has listened subconsciously, he has listened desperately, he has listened against his will and he has listened in moments when it was the only thing that kept him going. But not once has he been able to say something back.
Tonight, though.
Tonight, Tyler is everywhere. Josh can feel him in the grass pressed against his skin, can feel him in the warm night air and the scent of a fading summer lingering all around. He can hear him so clearly, and he finally finds something worth saying back.
He reaches in his pocket and grabs hold of a small keychain. He holds tight, and takes three shaky breaths.
You will die, but now your life is free.
He finds his words, and he speaks.
“It’s been ten years. Ten years as of today,” Josh begins, struggling to keep his voice steady. “Ten years since we’ve talked and ten years since I’ve kissed you and ten years since you called me ‘love.’” He keeps his eyes fixed on the star that belongs to Tyler, but it’s becoming harder and harder to see straight with the tears swimming in his eyes.
“It’s been ten years, and goddammit, I hate you for that. But Tyler –” He pauses, breathes deeply, finds the strength to go on. “Tyler, I wouldn’t trade a second of it. Not for anything. I loved you – I love you – so much. Sometimes I can’t believe it, how much I can still love you, after ten years of not seeing you. But I do.”
He’s crying too hard to continue now. The world is a blur and he can still hear soft piano chords and his fist is so tight around his keychain that it hurts. But he takes another three deep breaths and he thinks Tyler’s name and knows he has to finish. He has to say the words he’s been trying to find for ten years.
“I never told you this – but my mom once said to me that there would be days that I hated loving you. And I’m not gonna lie and say she was wrong. There have been days – hell, there have been months, years even, when I could barely even think your name without wanting to bring you back just so I could kill you again.”
He chokes on a laugh that sounds a little like a sob. “Sorry, that’s harsh.” The Tyler star winks at him. “But it’s true. I have hated loving you. But…”
He pauses, needing these next words to be perfect. He needs to make sure that the energy that was Tyler Joseph will hear the exact things he has been trying to think for ten years.
“Tyler Joseph, loving you will always be the best thing I’ve ever done. I’m not – I’m not saying I’m never going to fall in love with anyone else again – you know that’s not true if you’ve been looking out for me. What I’m saying is, nothing else – no one else – will ever be like you. You’re my forever. You’re my ending. No matter what else happens, it will always be you. Tyler, you – ” He can barely speak from crying, but he has to. “You’re the song that’s been playing in my head for the past ten years, and you’ll be the one playing till the day I die.”
It’s getting hard to breathe around the tears and the desperation of his words, and so he gives himself a break. He breathes, and grips his keychain, and gazes up at the star, and hears piano notes floating through the air.
“I’ve come to terms with you being gone, I think. I’ve reached a truce with the pain, and I think I’m okay now. I’ll be okay. I’ll stay alive, for you. But, I just want you – I want you to know,” and he’s crying harder than ever, trying so hard not to break off before he says everything. “I want you to know that it’s been ten years and I still wouldn’t trade it for the world. It’s been ten years and I’m still – I’m still the luckiest goddamn bastard. We were, you know. We were the luckiest.”
He takes one more breath. It’s time to let go.
“We were the luckiest then, and I’m the luckiest now. I am the luckiest for loving you, and for living even when you were gone. And I – I’m going to keep listening to your song, Tyler. I’m going to listen to it every day, until I don’t have any more days left. I promise.”
He feels drained, and he feels complete, and he feels a culmination. An ending and a beginning and a loss of the most powerful kind. He feels simultaneously that the stars are bending down to kiss him and that a gulf the size of the Pacific Ocean has opened within him, and he does not care. There’s peace in endings. There’s forgiveness in letting go.
Piano notes dance up and down his skin and his tears begin to dry.
Take pride in what is sure to die.
Josh Dun reaches in his pocket and pulls out the tiny Finding Nemo charm he has carried for ten years, the one that was in the small plastic bag of belongings they were left after Tyler died in the hospital. He grips the charm and holds it against his chest, looks up at the sky once more.
“One more thing, Ty,” he says, and this time his voice is soft. Steady. Healing.
“It’s been ten years, and you haven’t let me get lost. Not once.” He closes his eyes, hears the familiar voice whispering in his head. “Thank you, Tyler. It means the world to me.”
Josh stands. He brushes the grass off his legs and arms. He looks back at the house, then up once more at the stars. He breaths deep and slides the keychain back in his pocket.
On his way home, he sings to himself about love, and forgiveness, and trying again. The voice whispers along.
It has been ten years, and everything has changed, but in this moment, nothing has.
He wouldn’t trade any of it for the world.