Chapter Text
So.
Riz had been doing better.
Really.
He had been.
Better than he had been in high school, that's for sure. Much, much better, leagues better, light-years better, than he had in college a few years ago. He had been actually been sleeping more regularly (semi) (somewhat) (occasionally) (his sleeping schedule had been locked in around 5 hours instead of less than 4, so technically he was doing better), not forgetting to eat (as much) (as he used to), he hadn't needed to have (that much) caffeine in a while (yesterday night). He was less (significantly) (frequently) stressed, he was still a little stressed, he had to be, a string was pulled taut for a reason the opposing pressures kept it from crumbling it had to be he had to be, that's where he thrived, he couldn't just relax, he had so much work to do.
He had his real licensed investigative work and he was finally almost done with his degree and he had to finish so many things before graduating with his master's and he was pretty involved in a ton of cases and being a full-time agent of the interplanar taskforce, so he couldn't not be stressed.
But.
All in all, he'd been doing good. Better, he'd been doing so much better.
It wasn't much, but it was something . It certainly wasn't as bad as it used to be. But. It still felt like he was just teetering on the edge of falling back.
One step forwards, two miles back.
Sometimes, it felt like who he used to be, who he still is, was this small but significant part of him, not one that wrenched control from his actions any longer, but just nudged at him a bit. And he ignored it. He was so good at it. At ignoring all the things about himself he didn't like to dwell on. (He just didn't have the time.) (He always made sure he never did have the time.)
At placing those tiny enormous parts of himself he could never really shake completely in an airtight cement box and dropping it into the ocean of his head. It was easier that way. It was manageable that way.
It was good.
So.
In a way, Riz was doing better. Much better than before. So much better. He had quite literally never been better in his entire life.
But.
(It took him too long to realize he had built his house of cards on quicksand and he was sinking fast.)
Sklonda was sick.
(He was sinking. Fast.)
She had been sick for a while now. Riz has known this. He had not thought about it. He did everything he could to not think about it. He did everything he could to fix it. But he had known about it.
Riz had already been mourning all the time they would miss when she was just five feet away. He hadn't been down to visit her for a long while. Not properly in a few years, really. She insisted she was fine, it was nothing really, and he should just focus on college and work and taking his time and slowing down and doing better, and he had let himself believe her.
He had to believe she was fine.
Riz does what he can from Bastion City, from several hours away, many miles away, too far away, but it still never feels like it's enough.
It's never enough.
He doesn't take time off of work, pretty much ever. He couldn't afford to. He was busy, with college, with work, a bit of tutoring on the side, some pro bono cases he'd picked up, every bit of work the IPTF let him do in the material plane, a smattering of helping out the bad kids whenever they messaged in their group chat, whatever mystery has caught his eye that week that absolutely begged to be solved. He had lots to do.
Living alone in a tiny apartment/office in the fringes of Bastion city, the cases there are a dime a dozen. He never worries about not getting work, and takes on as much as he possibly can. Perhaps, as always, a little too much.
And his courses and research and thesis and graduate studies had only gotten more intense and time consuming the closer to getting his degree he got. All his academic advisors, professors, and fellow students had staunchly advised against his heavy course load, but he knew he could do it easily.
It was a lot of pressure and a lot of stress, but that was the only way he knew how to function, under all that. If he didn't have all of that, he didn't know what he'd do with himself. He doesn't know who he is if he isn't being useful, if he isn't working, if he isn't busy busy busy.
(The string is being pull pull pulled so far.)
He was just always too busy. And that was fine.
Riz was fine.
And Sklonda was fine. They were both fine. They always were (even if they weren't they were they had to be they had to be there wasn't another option).
So.
They were both busy. They were both fine.
(Except they weren't.)
She always seemed untouchable before, like she was invincible. He had never thought that death could reach her in a meaningful way.
Of course, that has never been the case. His mom was strong of course, but she was only a person. Of course she couldn't outlast everything the world threw at them. No one could.
No one could.
But they had hope. She'd be getting better. The treatments had been working to stave off the worst of it. It was an incurable nasty genetic thing, something no healer in the world could fix. They tried. He'd tried so damn hard to fix it. They couldn't.
But. She was fine. She was busy. They had just made plans the day before to take a break and come down in a few weeks sometime around the Moonar Yulenear (when he could maybe catch a break). She was fine. He was going to drive down and they were going to get coffee and talk shop and catch up together. She was fine.
They never got that coffee.
(She wasn't fine.)
When she died, it was all of a sudden.
(It always was.)
He thought he'd have more time.
(He always does.)
So.
Neither of them were fine.
(The opposing pressures increase. The string snaps in twain.)
Getting the call from the hospital on his way from a late night stakeout to the first of many early, early morning classes after having worked on various cases throughout the night, answering while driving even though he knows it's a bad idea (and this is exactly why it's a bad idea).
Hearing the bad News.
(“Hello, am I speaking to a Mr. Riz Gukgak?”
“Yes, this is he, and uh to whom am I speaking to?”
“This is the St. Owens Memorial Hospital, and I understand that you're the emergency contact for a Sklonda Gukgak, correct?”
“Yeah, that's my mom, what is it, what's wrong, is she ok?”
“Well, I'm very sorry to tell you this Mr. Gukgak, she passed just a few minutes ago, we did all we could, but she had been having health complications for a while now, and it was just a matter of time-”)
Slamming down hard on the brakes in the middle of the speeding highway. The few cars on the road this early blare their horns and swerve and curse all around him as he stays stuck in the middle of it all. He nearly crashes the car from shock.
His crystal drops at his feet along with his ability to function. His heart stops working and falls out of his chest. Panic and fear and nausea and horror grip his throat as he fumbles with the steering wheel to shove everything spilling out of him back in.
He jerks the car over to the side of the road and scrambles out to suddenly vomit in the lane shoulder.
This isn't real.
He tightly closes his eyes and wipes off his mouth.
He curls up in the dead yellowed grass by the highway.
No.
He doesn't want to believe it. It can't be. He can't. He knows it has to be true, but he can't. He can't.
Oh gods.
He can't.
(Warning. The flashing check engine light turns on. Or it would have been on all along if he hadn't clipped that pesky wire long, long ago.)
The world has ended for him many times. And this morning it has yet again.
His eyes open again.
The clouds continue on, as though nothing of significance has happened. The nearby birds chirp delightful songs, completely unaware. The trees sway softly in the light breeze, at peace in their ignorance. The cars rushing by on the highway move along, busy busy busy. The ants on the pavement carry away crumbs from thrown out litter, and how fair is that, that their entire world has not ended.
And Riz is here.
The world is still moving for everyone else. How. How.
How.
Riz is 26 years old and finally almost done with college almost has his master's degree in forensic sciences and investigative journalism and his mom was sick and just died and he's sitting on the side of the highway outside his car having just thrown up his mom just died he wasn't there he wasn't there his mom just died she's gone now he's alone he can't.
(Riz is 9 years old and almost through elementary school and his dad was sick and just died and he's sitting on the side of the couch having just thrown up his mom tells him his dad is gone and he wasn't there he wasn't there his dad just died and he's gone now they're alone he can't.)
He can't.
But.
He's fine though.
(The check engine light is still on. It's always been on for a very long time it's never been turned off. Riz still ignores it.)
He's fine.
(The check engine light is blaring.)
He's been doing better. He was doing better.
But.
He's. Fine.
He's.
Fine.
Whatever happens next, he doesn't remember at all. It's blacked out. Just a blank empty space of time.
This is fine.
Next thing that he's distantly aware of is that he's on the road driving again. In the opposite direction he had been going. Far away from the outskirts of Bastion city, and back home. To Elmville.
He doesn't stop.
The drive up to Elmville is a haze, a blur of cars rushing by and racing thoughts he can't contain and he can't. Of the things he can't say out loud. If he does, he thinks he might just break finally. He can't afford to break. He doesn't have the luxury of time.
He forgets to email his professors about his sudden unexplained absences, he forgets to call his current clients to let them know the cases are off (it wasn't anything serious, just following around a cheating spouse, finding lost pets, stealing a few items back from feuding family members.) He forgets to charge his crystal and it dies. He forgets to pack anything useful in his briefcase, or bring anything he might actually need with him (except the weapons he brings with him everywhere). He forgets to put on any music or podcast or the radio and drives in complete silence, barring the usual clunking and thudding of his beat down car.
He drives for hours on end, not focusing on anything except a single minded focus on getting to the destination, and chain smoking through packs of cigarettes like a puffing chimney set ablaze. He swore he'd give it up some day, but he figured it was one of the better of his old bad habits. He always did give back into old habits so easily.
He doesn't stop.
When he finally gets to Elmville, he still doesn't stop until he reaches the hospital parking lot, and then it's midnight, he suddenly remembers everything he had to do, it all comes flooding back, but he can't remember the drive up at all. Everything past the News is a faint blur, and when he tries to think about it, he gets nauseous and shaky and he is choking and he can't think and can't breathe and can't move and he can't-
Oh gods he can't.
So he doesn't. He doesn't think about it. He doesn't think he doesn't feel. He just doesn't feel like anything is even real anymore.
He doesn't cry because once he does it makes it real and it's not real he doesn't want it to be.
It can't be.
He stops.
Riz sits in his car and stares at all the stars he can't see from the city through the dirty cracked windshield.
He knows he should go into the hospital, but once he does, that makes it real. Once he leaves the parking lot, it's over. That's it. It's real then. It's real.
It's real .
So.
He sits in his car till the sun starts to peak out from the horizon. When the deep darkness of the world gives way just a bit and the cool morning dawn breaks itself over the world. Then.
Then .
Then, he goes into the hospital. Then it's real. Then his mom is dead and she's never coming back. And he misses her. She's gone.
He misses her and she's gone and he misses her and she's gone.
He's at the morgue now.
The doctors say they need him to verify her body. And Riz has seen (and been and made) dead bodies plenty of times before, so it should be quick and easy. It should be. He doesn't understand why it's not easy. He doesn't understand.
How is it not easy. How is this so hard.
He sees Sklonda laying on that slab in the morgue, and she doesn't look at peace or asleep or anything. She just looks small and dead. He can tell immediately she isn't breathing or moving or anything. Just dead.
He doesn't understand why this is so hard.
And then he can't breathe or move or think or feel or do anything. (He is not dead yet, he frantically presses a hand to his wrist and then to his neck to feel for his constant rabbit quick pulse that reminds him of that, just to double check, just to make sure, just so he knows. Not dead yet. He just has to make sure. He just has to know.)
But. He still has to choke out an affirmation. (“Yes that is Sklonda Gukgak, yes that is my mom, yes she is dead.”)
And then it's real.
He still has to make sure she's really real. He reached out to touch her hand. And. And gods she's so so cold.
He still doesn't cry, he can't. It's real it's real. It's too real. He can't.
He can't.
What happened next, he doesn't remember.
But next thing he knows, he jolts into alertness, hands snaping to the gun absent from his hip holsters (there was a no weapons rule in the hospital) and he realizes his head and neck hurts badly and he is now sitting in a rather uncomfortable chair in some empty hallway rather than standing in the cold morgue with his mothers dead body.
Oh. His hands fall away.
Really, he should stop doing that, the not remembering. It's so gods-damned inconvenient. He could miss something. Probably dangerous too. Someone could get hurt. But, it's fine, he's fine. It's not really hurting anyone else yet so. It's fine.
He's fine.
He doesn't even know the last thing they said to each other. He thinks it must have been some sort of goodbye.
(“I love you, talk to you tomorrow, I'll see you soon, bye”)
Because it usually is.
It always has been.
But he doesn't know for sure.
He'll never know for sure.
(He doesn't know the last thing he said to his dad. It must have been a goodbye too. But he doesn't know for sure.)
Now. Now it's real, now he cries.
One of the nurses asked him if he'd like them to call someone for him. He doesn't say anything. Just shakes his head no and they leave him be with a big stack of papers and a plastic bag of Sklondas personal effects.
He reluctantly digs though it for any semblance of a distraction.
He sorts through the old purse full of random bits and bobbles, her wallet and keys with some keychains on it, her crystal, a pair of giant just barely goblin sized sunglasses, a packet of tissues, half used chapsticks by the dozen, a tiny pocket notebook, several pens, some small various rogue type things, lockpicks and such, files and cases she had been working on, old receipts and scraps of papers, and what he recognizes as some of his own files, from years and years ago, one of the very first business cards he ever made by hand.
He carefully organizes it all on the floor of the hospital, commits it to memory, then scoops it all back in the bag.
And in another smaller plastic bag, her wedding ring on a thin chain. She hasn't worn it on her ring finger in years, but she always kept it close.
(It's pair had been dissolved along with his father's body when he was eaten by Kalvaxus.)
He almost feels like laughing at how fitting it is for him to have one ring. Not as though he needs two, he's never getting married. He slips the chain around his neck and holds it close.
Then he has a lot of paperwork to do, and it gets a little bit easier to handle when he has something else to focus on doing. When his hands are too busy working to do anything else. When he doesn't have to think about the fact that he is all alone now, his family is all dead and gone, dead and gone, except for him.
He can't think about that.
He can't.
So he doesn't think about that. He does what he has always done and throws himself head first into the work like it's all he knows (and maybe it is). He does the paperwork, fills out forms, makes sure all the pieces are in order, and that makes it easier to handle.
He can do paperwork easy. (Why is this so hard for him to handle? Why? Why? )
And all too soon he's done with the paperwork. And now there's nothing to do about it.
He doesn't want to think about it. (Why doesn't he want to think about it? Why? Why? ) So he opens his own little pocket notebook reserved for clues and starts making a to-do list:
-take care of funeral things
-clean out apartment
-email teachers and clients
-pay off bills?
-get coffee
-go back to bastion city?
He finishes the list all too quickly. He doesn't know what to do next.
Does he stay in the dreary hospital or leave? Is he finished here? Is there more work to be done here? Can he stay here forever? Can he ever leave? Does he want to leave? Once he leaves he'll never see her again. Can he do that? Can he walk out of here intact? Will he ever be whole again? Will a part of him always be here with her? Will he ever be real again?
He doesn't know. He doesn't know.
Riz turns in the paperwork to the doctors.
And he walks away.
As he's leaving the hospital, the nurse at the front desk offers him a stack of pamphlets, some regarding funeral arrangements and various services, a couple about the hospital debt, another for grief counseling, and a few more for various therapists.
He gratefully takes all of them and immediately throws out the ones for grief counseling and therapy once he gets outside. He's fine. He thinks he's handling this remarkably well, actually.
He's fine.
(Not that there's anything wrong with counseling or therapy, it's just that. Well, it would be pointless for him because he's fine, nothing is wrong, he's fine, nothing's wrong-)
He's fine.
Nothing is wrong.
He. Is. Fine.
But he'll read over the others once he's home.
Home .
Oh.
Riz is sitting in his car, in the hospital parking lot, for a while, blankly staring off, his hands moving of their own accord through the hospital issued plastic bag of Sklondas belongings, and then he is holding her keys. Her car keys, to be exact.
He closes his eyes tightly and presses on the emergency alarm button, unsure if it would even work. If she had driven herself to the hospital, or taken an ambulance, or if a friend had taken her or what but-
“BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP!”
Ah. So she took herself. Of course she did.
He quickly scuttles and follows the beeping to her car, older than his and twice as beat up, but still good enough.
But.
Does he leave her car here? Does he drive hers back and leave his here? Does he drive his to the apartment, walk all the way back to the hospital, then drive hers back?
Maybe. It's time consuming, but he didn't feel right about just leaving her car here, and he didn't know what to do with his own. So.
He stops the beeping.
And he gets in her car and drives back to the Strongtower luxury apartment complex. Home. The taste of home on his tongue burns. It's not the same as he remembers it being.
Then he starts to walk back to the hospital for his car.
It's a long cold walk. And sure, he only has his button up and a vest on. And it's practically on the other side of town. But he'd made longer walks. And besides, he's already come this far. No turning back now. So he's fine with it.
He's fine.
It's something to do at least. On his walk, in the near freezing early, early morning light, Riz thinks. And he thinks and thinks. About what to do now, about how. How to do anything now, except push through and push everything else down and out of the way…
It's all he knows how to do. It's all he can do.
And he just doesn't know. He's at a loss.
On his walk, he spies a 24 hour convenience gas station that he doesn't quite remember being there before and stops inside to get an energy drink and more cigarettes. He ran out earlier. And he could stand to have something to do on the rest of the walk back.
It's an hour or so later when Riz makes it back to the hospital. He would have been there sooner, but he stopped every so often to gawk at all the new things in town he hadn't seen in so many years. There was a supermarket now, Super-shop-spell-savers-mart. A real mouthful.
The Elm Valley mall was gone, torn down and made room for more parking for the Supermarket. Half the places were closed down and abandoned, or torn down, or renovated and unrecognizable now. Houses and streets that used to be there were gone and turned into something else, and new ones took their places. New people, new things, new places. It was different. Almost unrecognizable. The playgrounds he grew up in were gone, the corner stores torn down, the buildings abandoned. The place he lived in for most of his life was not the same as it was in his childhood. The town, it had always seemed like it was locked in a time of its own, was changing. Without him. It had already changed, and he hadn't been there to see it. He missed it.
Everything had changed and moved on without him there to see it. The unfamiliarity of it all gnaws at his gut. He doesn't know where home is anymore.
He'd missed so much.
Gods.
He'd missed it all hadn't he.
The town he doesn't recognize any more twisted him up and spit him out, raw and frantic.
He drives his car down the once-familiar-now-somewhat-unfamiliar streets, when it starts making a questionable clunking shuddering noise.
He looks at the dashboard with a start. The check engine light is off.
It's fine.
He pushes through, it might just be fine. Normal.
The clunking and shuddering gets louder and less easy to ignore as he keeps going, slowly trudging down the street.
The check engine light is still off.
So he keeps going, pushing through it.
And then the engine starts smoking.
And the light is off.
And he can't.
He can't just keep going with it like that.
He still tries to.
And then he really can't ignore it any longer when the smoke entirely impaired his vision of the road.
So he reluctantly pulls off to the side, hazard lights blinking. At least those still work.
Tapping the check engine light, and it doesn't do anything. Hm. He looks at the car engine, still billowing out smoke.
Hm.
He turns the car off.
The smoke clears after a bit.
But now his car is stuck on the side of the road, and there's absolutely no way he can push it to the apartments (he does try. It does not work), and his crystal is dead, and he doesn't even know if any auto shops are open this time of morning or even open at all because the town has changed so much but never enough and he-
He can't.
Riz grabs everything of importance, gets out of the car, futility locks the doors, and walks the rest of the way back to the apartments.
He can't deal with it right now so.
Later. He'll do it later.
Riz walks all the way back to the apartments again and goes next to where he parked Sklonda's old car. And he realizes he has to do something about her car as well. He can use it for himself, at least for right now, but. He doesn't know what to do with it later. Once he gets his car fixed up, he doesn't really need two cars.
He scratches ‘deal with car’ onto the list, then goes up the stairs to the apartment and goes in with the same key he's had since he was a child.
The apartment is just as he remembers it. A bit cluttered due to having it for so long, but not messy. A tiny kitchen, living room with the pullout couch that used to be his room, now partly an office space with a desk, door to the bedroom and bathroom closed. Rundown and decrepit as ever, but that's home. It was home. Somehow, it doesn't feel like home without his mom there.
It will never be home again.
This place, this room, this apartment, this town, that he lived in his whole life is never going to be home again. His childhood home will no longer be his after today. Tomorrow it will be someone else's.
He'll have to carve out a new one for himself alone.
Alone…
Gods.
He can't.
He doesn't let that sink in. He can't. He pushes past it and frantically searches for a distraction, anything to do that isn't thinking about it.
He can't.
The next big ticket item on the to-do list is the funeral arrangements, but seeing as his crystal is dead, and he doesn't know where a charger is, and he didn't bring his laptop, he puts it off. At least he has the pamphlets to refer to later.
The only real spot of mess in the place is Sklondas desk, piled high with scattered papers and towers of books.
Good place as any to start. He goes to her desk, looking through her unfinished cases and work.
Riz realizes he'll have to go through all this as well.
He adds it to the list and gets to work. He starts reading and sorting them.
It's well past night time by the time he's finished with the desk. He hasn't moved from that spot at the desk except to robotically make a cup of coffee every time he noticed he was empty. He has the cases and papers divided into several different stacks and pages of notes in his notebook about each them.
Things he can get rid of, old papers and stuff. Things he'll keep and hand off to one of his moms coworkers. And things he doesn't know what to do with. That stack is much smaller, but it won't leave him alone.
And in there he finds a sealed copy of her will.
Hm.
He moves to the next thing, cleaning out the fridge and kitchen. He doesn't need most of the things there, he already has enough coffee pots and a functioning microwave at his office, so those will go to the get rid of pile. But some real cups and bowls and plates might be nice. He's just been using paper ones to cut down on doing dishes. It's not a bad idea, using these might actually be cheaper in the long run.
He digs through the cabinets and takes out the pots and pans that have seen so much use and rust. He might as well take those too.
He does all the dishes that were still left in the sink. It's only a few bowls, stained coffee mugs (not counting his own small collection he'd inadvertently started since arriving back here), and silverware. He wonders what she had eaten last. If it was good. Looked like it was some sort of rice and curry. He wondered if there were any leftovers. He puts the dish soap and scrub brush in the keep pile once he's done with them.
Moving to the fridge and cupboards, makes him realize he hasn't eaten in…however long it's been since the other-other-other day (he swears he was doing better really). But, there isn't that much to eat out of the cupboards, and he's not even hungry anyways. Cleaning those out is easy work, the non-perishables go in the keep pile, and the much smaller amount of expired and perishables he quickly takes care of. He won't waste it.
The fridge, most of it he didn't know what to do with. There was no way he could transport anything frozen and still have it be any good. But he can do something about the fridge.
As not hungry as he thought he was, his body digresses and is grateful to finally be fed. The leftover takeout of curry and rice is just as good as he thought it might be.
It's the last time he's going to taste home.
Gods.
Riz doesn't think about it.
He can't.
He needs to do something else. Right now. Furniture. Something about all the furniture. He puts together a list of all the furniture in the apartment, the ones to try and keep, and most of the rest can’t go anywheres.There isn't that much in the first place, but he doesn't have room in his place for even that, nor in his rather small car. That's a problem for later then. He'll probably just have to get rid of it. He doesn't exactly want to. But he probably will have to.
He doesn't want to do any of this. But he has to.
He has to.
Move on. Move. Do something else. Quickly.
Laundry. Yeah. He can do something about that. He takes a few of his mother's crisp button ups, they would match nicely with some of his father's old suits he's tailored to fit himself. He sorts the rest to give away, and has a small keep pile of professional clothing from both his parents' now empty wardrobes and some soft old tee-shirts.
Sklonda's bedroom is mostly already cleaned up, he just has to sort through all of her things. He wants to keep everything of hers. He knows he can't. He keeps what he can. He can't.
He can't.
Gods. He can't .
If he dwells on any of this for even a moment, he’ll lose all momentum and be stuck. If he stops swimming he will surely die. If he stops going full tilt at every waking moment he will surely die. He will surely die. He is going to die. He is dying. He is dead.
Just like his father. Just like his mother. Just like him.
All of them are dead. Everything is. It’s all just gone. Dead and gone. All of it. Everything.
He can’t.
His brain does that annoying not entirely remembering thing again. And he comes to on the hard floor of the apartment. It's dark out. He distantly remembers it being lighter out just a moment ago. He couldn't say how much time had passed at all.
It's fine.
Whatever. Back to work he doesn't have time for this. He picks himself up with shaky arms and stuttered breaths. He doesn't have time for this. Come on. Sklonda’s room is done, onto his own.
Come on.
His ‘room’ had once been the pullout couch and a curtained off portion of the living room. The curtain had long since been taken down and the pull out bed was in permanent couch position. So nothing really to clean out there. It's been empty for a while now. All the mystery clue conspiracy boards have been filed and stored in his office, all his other things packed away. All gone. Like he was never even there.
Was he ever anywheres.
He remembered the secret office space behind the wall. He truly doesn't know how to deal with that either. He puts it off.
He doesn't even tell his friends about it. He doesn't say anything. He's always been very private (he didn't bring up his dad's grave when it was 10 feet away from them). Riz does what he has always done and bottles it up.
This is how he stays functioning.
He pushes it all down and gets back to work.
All of it.
He can't.
If he wants to remain functioning, he can't . He has to keep working. No matter what. He doesn't have time for a breakdown. He has to keep going.
Riz takes a deep shuttering breath, and gets back to work.