Work Text:
Sky
He can’t see the sky.
He’s lying partially on his side, and he can’t see the sky.
He doubts that even if he wasn’t stuck in this position, in freezing cold waters as the pain slowly seeps through past the edge of alcohol, he'd be able to see the sky anyway. It’s so dark. It’s almost pitch black, and the heavy rain and thick trees above him do nothing to aid his vision. He blinks anyway, as though the motions will miraculously brighten the sky above him.
Sometimes, without any prompting or accompanying message, his Mum will send him photos of the sky back home in Kent. Rose dusks, cerise dawns, and cerulean days cover a vast majority of their text messages. Anything she thought pretty enough to maybe improve her estranged son's day. Anything to remind him that she existed. Anything to catch his attention. Anything to say, please, please respond to this. All messages were read, some were appreciated, and very few were answered.
When he was younger, five years old, he remembers going to see his Dad in Glasgow. It had been his first time away from his mother for so long, with a man practically a stranger to him. He had stayed for three weeks, and on the final night, he had snuck out to the small, fenced-in back garden. He and his Mum didn’t have a garden. They never had. At the time, they didn’t even have their own flat. All they had to call home was a spare room at his maternal grandparents flat. All the young boy wanted was to lie in grass on land he could pretend to call home, and stare at his own portion of the universe.
He could see the sky that night. There had been very few clouds, and the full moon had risen to its highest mark. But try as he might, he could not see stars. No North Star, no orions belt, no shooting star. As he aged to six, and then seven, and beyond, he knew it was light pollution. Glasgow was much bigger than Chatham, after all. There were bright lights at all times, a never-relenting neon buzz. At the time, however, he thought it was punishment. The sky had been punishing him that night for not going to bed at the time he was supposed to. Punishing him for wanting more than it could provide. Punishing him for being so greedy. For being bad.
He wasn’t sure what this particular skyless night was punishment for. There were too many faults to pin only one to this. Was it for assaulting Jimmy in that bathroom, forcing a kiss that wasn’t welcome? For leaking that god-forsaken picture of Jimmy and Rowan? Betraying their trust and causing them both such misery over the past week. Confirming their darkest assumptions about him. Maybe it was all about distancing himself from his mother.
Whatever misdeed it had decided on, there was no doubt that this was the sky punishing him again. It had punished him for sneaking out by withholding his stars, denying him the simple pleasure of their shine in the night sky. And now it was punishing him by taking away his sky entirely. He is going to die here. In this river, entirely alone. With the constellations turning their backs to him, they solidified his solitude.
He closes his eyes and see's glow in the dark stars on a childhood roof. He sees blue mornings spent walking to school. He thinks of nights in different contents, different stars, but the same sky.
He falls asleep.
When he wakes up, he can’t see the sky. But what he can see is the blurry outline of Jimmy Kaga-Ricci. The younger is crying, maybe. He thinks he can feel Jimmy shake from where his head rests in his lap. Or maybe it's himself. The river is getting colder, but even Jimmy's cold body provides phantom heat. Rowan is there now, and he’s shaking his shoulders.
The sky may have left him, but Jimmy and Rowan had not.
That girl is with them. Angel. an angel sent from the sky. How funny.
They’re arguing about taking the knife out. He doesn’t know what knife they’re talking about. He’s still tired. He wants to sleep, and so he does. He closes his eyes and imagines the dusk falling over London from their flat window. It had always seemed so cold in the flat, so clinical. But now he wants to be nowhere else.
The final time he wakes up, he’s in a hospital bed. He’s loopy; he can’t think straight, but he doesn’t feel any pain. Rowan and Jimmy are asleep on chairs next to his bed, both looking thoroughly wrung out. The curtains are open, and the sky is turning pink.
Lister bird watches as the sky he loves so, and rasps out his thanks. He thanks it for its presence, he thanks it for its beauty, and he thanks it for its forgiveness.