Chapter Text
Today the preacher is talking about repentance.
There isn’t a day that’s gone by that Basil hasn’t thought about repentance. He remembers it from this very room when he was a child — learning of Commandments with a capital C, practices that had to be followed to a T, lest you suffer Hellfire for eternity.
This preacher is different from the one he remembers. Not quite so severe in tone and manner. Not the same one who officiated Mari’s funeral, thank God, or else he wouldn’t have been able to look the man in the face.
He’s talking about Jesus dying. He’s telling a story of a criminal that was hanging beside him, and in those final moments of his life, repented, and Jesus told him they would be together in Paradise.
Basil remembers this story. He remembers thinking it didn’t make any sense — because if you could just repent at the end and earn salvation, then what keeps you from doing bad things up until then?
“Does this mean we can continue to sin without consequence?” the preacher poses, “Well, Jesus’ perfect sacrifice cleansed us of all our sins: past, present, and future…”
There isn’t a day that’s gone by that Basil hasn’t thought about repentance. He remembers aiming shears at his gut and thinking — if God only knew how sorry he was in his final moments, sorry enough to inflict any degree of pain imaginable upon himself, dull blades chewing through flesh — then maybe he would see Grandma again, and they would be together in Paradise.
“If we trust in Christ for our salvation, then we also must not take his sacrifice in vain by living sinfully…”
Maybe he would be able to apologize to Mari personally.
“Regardless of what we’ve done, we are wonderfully made in God’s image, and he loves even those who stray from His path…”
Basil is fairly certain he wouldn’t be saying that if he knew what he’d done. Faraway is such a small, boring town when it comes down to it — yes, Basil is fairly certain he’s committed far worse sins than anyone else in this church, or even this town.
Aubrey shoves his shoulder with hers. “Hey, stop thinking so hard, you’re gonna have an aneurysm.”
“A-ah, I’m sorry,” Basil whispers back. He's hunched in the pew, so she looms slightly over him as he blinks at her.
Aubrey rolls her eyes good-naturedly. “What did I tell you, Basil?”
“Yeah, yeah, I know… Take what’s helpful to you—”
“And don’t take the rest of this shit so seriously.”
Basil glances nervously at the preacher — ‘cause despite his lack of practice, he’s pretty sure you’re not supposed to curse in the house of the Lord — but he’s still talking, and apparently no one else heard her.
Well… not like there are many people around anyway. The Baker family is here as usual, along with two other old ladies, both of whom he recognizes from Grandma’s funeral. So… pretty much the same crowd that’s here every week.
Aubrey takes it a lot more seriously than she lets on. She finds comfort in it, he guesses, but despite his best efforts, he can’t really figure out how to. He keeps trying, because she deserves at least that from him, but…
There’s always been something wrong with him, and he doesn’t really foresee that changing.
…It’s okay. At least he knows now that absolution is found in amends, not in death. Death is a far too easy solution; it can’t save him.
…
If only there was a way for him to make amends.
☼ ☼ ☼
It’s an unspoken rule that Aubrey walks Basil back to his house after church. Just like it’s an unspoken rule for them to visit Mari’s grave after the benediction, and just like Aubrey gives him a moment at his grandma’s, while she talks to Mari privately.
Her doing so doesn’t make a lot of sense, since her house is on the way, and Basil’s just one crosswalk over, but she started doing it the first week and Basil couldn’t find the courage to ask why, so he lets it happen. Maybe she thinks he doesn’t know how to cross the street on his own.
“Alright, see you next week,” she says as she stops short near the step.
“S-see you!” he says with a watery smile that she can most certainly see through. And then Basil shuts the door.
On the inside, he’s alone.
Basil has been alone for so long that you’d think it would be comfortable by now, maybe even sought for, but instead he feels this gaping hole in his chest, like he’s being eaten from the inside out. It’s torturous — he might as well be hung up on that cross himself, begging to just die already.
…But it’s really nice that Aubrey invites him to church on Sundays. It’s really nice that they’re — well, tentatively friends again, that he got his first friend back. He wouldn’t say their friendship is anything close to normal, though — he wouldn’t say they hung out like the typical kids about to be seniors in high school.
Which is fine, really. He didn’t expect her to forgive him at all, and especially so quickly. His therapist tells him he deserves to stop torturing himself over mistakes from years ago… but his therapist also thinks the worst of those sins consist of vandalizing a photo album, so it’s a pretty low bar.
And, save for one time — when Aubrey returned his photo album to him at Sunny’s behest, and Basil admitted the real reason he had those shears out in the first place — he and Aubrey don’t talk about it.
There’s really only one person who understands, and that person…
Well, here’s the thing. Sunny doesn’t talk on the phone. If he already doesn’t like talking in person most of the time, he finds it even weirder to speak into an empty room. They keep up a little, over letters or by email, but at least half of his communication is meaningful stares and body language, which don’t translate anyway.
Sunny came back twice with his mother to visit Mari. Once in October, and once for her birthday in March. He visited Basil for an hour in the afternoon each time, and never anyone else as far as he knows.
So Basil misses Sunny. He doesn’t mind admitting that. That’s another thing he defaults to extensively in his counseling sessions, when the real root of the issue can’t be addressed. He talks about how alone he feels, he talks about missing Mari, missing feeling like a part of something, missing feeling wanted. He talks about how he and Sunny were together when they found her.
But there are just as many things he doesn’t talk about. He doesn’t talk about his parents. He doesn’t talk about what Aubrey and her friends used to do to him. He doesn’t talk about plunging his shears into Sunny’s eye — even though his therapist obviously already knows the basics, since that was the incident that landed him here in the first place. His therapist has assured him that he’s an impartial party, but Basil doesn’t want him to dislike him, when it comes down to it. He doesn’t want to sound like he’s bringing it up to make excuses for what he did. He doesn’t want to paint himself as the victim when he’s not, because he did that, the blood is on his hands and he did it, he did it, he did it—
Basil gives a shaky exhale, and tugs on his bangs to ground himself. Okay. He’s okay.
Sunny’s perfectly safe and fine, and he’s only a forty minute drive from here anyway, so if something was really wrong then— well, not that anything would be wrong, but—
Deep breath, Basil.
He told Polly he could make his own lunch after she left, but right now that sounds like more effort than it's worth. Basil wants to put his time towards something better. He opens the closet and grabs his boots.
☼ ☼ ☼
It’s what you’d expect of an early July day — pleasant enough to sit around in, but uncomfortable when you’re doing much more than that. By the time it's noon, he’s been working outside for an hour. The sun is directly above his head, and Basil decides he’s done. Really, all he’s accomplished is some weeding, but that will hopefully make it easier to plant something new that will actually grow. His flowers from early spring all got eaten by deer…
He gratefully returns to the air conditioning, peeling off his heavy gloves and setting them down on the dining table. He can feel the hair slicked to his neck.
He pulls one of the chairs out, shucks off one boot, and starts to work off the other when…
Knock, knock.
Basil freezes in place. A moment passes.
Then another.
His first instinct is to ignore it, to see if they knock again because maybe the first time was a fluke, but… He clearly heard knocking, right?
It’s wishful thinking, to trust that the knocker will knock again, but Basil waits a minute, just to be sure.
It’s quiet…
Maybe he can just ignore it, but maybe if he does, then that means there’s someone loitering on his stoop. And the thought of that reality is a lot more unnerving, so Basil knows he should just check, but…
Maybe Polly forgot her keys, and also somehow forgot where they keep the spare? Maybe Aubrey suddenly got a whole lot more polite? Or… maybe it’s a Jehovah’s Witness??
Of course he forgets his boot is half off in the midst of all this, so he stumbles in his attempt to walk, and then shuffle-hobbles to the door, working his heel back into place. He takes a steadying breath, opens it, and…
“Sunny?”
A nauseating concoction of emotions leak into his gut. Guilt, joy, relief, sadness — but shock cuts through it all. Sunny stands in front of him with a somewhat guarded expression, his hands balled loosely at his sides.
“This is s-so funny, ‘cause I was just thinking about— I mean, Sunny, what are you— I didn’t know you were coming, I um…”
He eyes a shape modestly half-tucked behind Sunny’s leg.
“Is that an overnight bag?”
Sunny leans down to pick it up, and holds it out to Basil pointedly.
“Wh… You want to stay here?” This seems sudden. Actually, scratch that — this is beyond sudden. Earlier, he didn’t know the next time he’d see Sunny. He’d been banking on next October, and now…
“Guest room,” Sunny mumbles, not looking at him. His voice is warm — kind of like… cedar wood, if Basil had to put it into words — and it sends another queasy ripple through him. It still catches him off guard, if he’s being honest: so different from the voice he remembers most clearly, but also perfectly similar.
“When did you decide on all this?” Basil asks before he entertains Sunny’s plan any further. Knowing him, the answer is probably something like this morning. Once he gets an idea in his head, he stops at nothing until he gets it. He’s stubborn like that.
Sunny shrugs, but Basil can see a shadow of sheepishness on his face. He sticks out the bag a little further, his arms beginning to tremble with the effort.
Basil crosses his arms. “You didn’t think this through, did you?”
Obviously, that gets a rise out of him. His eyebrows furrow as his mouth contorts into a pout.
Basil doesn’t dare think of the alternative — that Sunny simply came because he knew he would say yes. It’s embarrassing… but to be fair, it’s Sunny, and it’s Basil, so maybe he has a point.
“Come on,” Basil concedes, taking the bag from him. It’s not as heavy as he imagined, which means one of two things: 1. He’s stronger than Sunny is, or 2. Sunny is being dramatic. Probably both.
Basil’s grateful for the excuse to look the other way as he leads him back through the hallway to the door on the left.
He put it off for a long time, but eventually he cleared out Grandma’s room. He donated her clothes and her bedding, disassembled the furniture, sorted through her other belongings. Basil kept some things – family photos, an antique tea set from her closet, about half of her jewelry box. He found a broach shaped like a sunflower that he wore to church sometimes. He kind of hoped one of her friends might recognize it — recognize him as her little boy who used to tag along to grown-up church and smile as bright as the flower on his chest — but they never said anything. If they noticed at all.
So the room is mostly bare. With the money he got from the other half of her jewelry, he had just enough to buy new bedding, and he took from his own savings to get a new rug. That was wishful thinking, because he didn’t know who he expected to stay here… or maybe he just wanted to prove he could maintain his house himself — because it's his house, not his parents’ — and now he’s glad he did.
Sunny sets his bag at the foot of the bed, since there’s no nightstand.
“I hope this is alright, Sunny.” Basil’s hands are clasped behind his back. “I- I can buy some more decorations, if you’d like.”
Sunny stares at him, then slowly shakes his head. Right… That was silly of him… “S-sorry,” he whispers.
Sunny blinks at him. Stands still for a beat. Then turns and heads into the hallway without a word.
“Wait!” Basil protests, fumbling for the lightswitch and nicking his shoulder on the doorframe as he stumbles into the open. “Where are you going?”
Sunny is more of a leader than he looks — or no, that’s not quite it — more like he does his own thing, and doesn’t mind whether you follow him or not. He stops for only a second to look back before he keeps walking.
Basil rushes forward to beat him to the door.
“D-don’t mind the mess!” he yelps.
His room is immaculate save for some specks of potting soil on the floor, all of his belongings in their place. Basil wrings his hands. They both know that’s not why he’s so nervous.
This is the first time they’ve been in here since… He means, what he means to say is that, the other times Sunny visited were short and casual, and they stayed out in the living room.
Sunny has Basil pinned to the floor. Basil feels gashes split open on his face and arms, skin peeling away from itself. Sunny’s bony fingers dig into his forearms, snapping past the strings that pull his muscles taut. Basil’s not afraid anymore, but he is desperate — his stomach sings out for the blade meant just for it — he sees an eye tear open on Sunny’s face, and he wrenches his wrist from his grip and aims.
The blood pours hot and fast like bacon grease. It drips onto his face and melts the skin away. Sunny collapses — maybe he screams, or maybe he just drops silently like he does everything that summer — and instantly, the shoulder of Basil’s shirt is soaked through. There’s no horror of what he’s done. (Not yet). It doesn’t matter. There’s no coming back from this.
Basil shoves Sunny off of him and clambers to stand. He takes his shears back. His ears don’t work, so the terrible squelching sound it makes ripping out of Sunny’s head doesn’t make him vomit. He points the blade back at himself. He sways woozily on his feet. He aims.
He misses, mostly. He draws only a big, jagged line across the side of his abdomen, and then he collapses, his limbs falling limp in the pile of Sunny’s.
Basil is Lazarus-ed. “I got… a new rug,” he says. It’s all he can think to say. He should have gotten all new flooring, but it was too expensive. Their blood is probably still rotting the wood underneath.
Sunny looks at the nightstand, not the floor. “Where’s your photo album?” he asks.
“Oh, um! Right over here.” He quickly locates it on his bookshelf. Sunny sits on the bed. Basil hands it over, but stays standing as Sunny turns the cover.
“Um… You know, if you like it so much you really should have kept it…” Sunny skims the first few pages. “I mean, since you were moving away and all, I really thought… I mean, why did you send it back anyway?”
Sunny flips to the fourth page and doesn’t look up. “False pretenses.”
“False… pretenses?” Basil asks. What did that mean?? Like ulterior motives? Sunny didn’t think he’d been trying to be mean, did he? He really did want him to have it. “W- What do you..?”
“Basil,” he says. Sunny’s eye contact is sudden and intense. “You didn’t know I was moving until dinner. Before that, you said you were glad to see me, but only for a few days.”
He freezes, to the very fiber of his mortal body. Ah so… he had said that, hadn’t he?
“I didn’t think you noticed,” Basil admits, looking down.
“I didn’t,” Sunny says. He pauses. Something like sorrow stirs in his eye. “At first.”
Hindsight, huh? If his other eye was in the afterlife now, did that make him better at it?
“D-do you want it back?” Basil pleads. Could that fix this? “Please, you should just keep it.”
Sunny shoves it back at him like he’s been burned.
“Not because —” Basil starts to amend, but Sunny insists, “s’ yours.”
“Sorry,” he says again, miserably.
Sunny sighs. “I think you need it,” he explains, “I want you to need it more than I do.”
I want you to want to be alive, he means.
☼ ☼ ☼
When Basil gives away the stack of polaroids, he feels he’s giving away most of his soul with them. The man takes them and disappears through a door behind the counter.
He’ll be back in not too long, Basil knows, but the only person he trusts to touch them is Sunny: Sunny, who stays here too as Basil clutches the empty photo album tighter to his chest.
Sunny nudges their shoulders together. “He’ll be back,” he whispers. Basil nods. He thinks about flipping through in the meantime, but he knows what it looks like already. Sad and barren; a book of captions. Like epitaphs tied to no one’s soul.
After a minute listening to the gentle whirring of the scanner in the back, they settle down in these mustard-colored plastic chairs to wait. They might be here a while: there are about fifty pictures after all.
“So this was your therapist’s idea then?” Basil clarifies.
Sunny shakes his head. “Mine. After therapy.”
“Didn’t you tell her you were coming here?” Basil asks. Isn’t seeing Basil something he should get permission for, or… or something? Didn’t she think he was going to hurt him again?
Sunny gives him a half shrug with a glint in his eye. “Did she ask?”
“Touché.” Basil can’t help but giggle under his breath. So he isn’t the only one who doesn’t tell his therapist everything. He’s glad. He’s glad Sunny is here, regardless of how it came about. “It’s a good idea, Sunny,” he says, more to his original point.
Sunny shoots a glance at the door like he’s hoping to say something privately. Basil waits.
Half an hour earlier in his room, he asked Sunny what he needed the photo album for, if not to keep.
As an answer, Sunny pulled a wad of paper out of his shorts pocket and handed it to him.
Basil frowned as he unfolded it and silently read the header, ‘How to Scrapbook: Everything You Need to Know’. He was confused at first, because his photo album wasn’t exactly the same as a scrapbook, but then Sunny said, “‘s for Mari.”
A memory book, of sorts. He wanted to collect stories and pictures of her from the people around town, to put together a collection of them all in one place.
Basil was apprehensive — he had more experience disparaging Mari’s memory than honoring it — but when Sunny handed him a second paper, ‘Photocopying: A Beginner’s Guide’, it became more evident. Of course.
Sunny needed copies of his photos, because no one else had pictures of their friend group as they were wholly before she died.
Basil asked if he really wanted his help, because he was nervous, and he felt guilty, and he didn’t want to taint this for him, but Sunny only creased his brow as if to say, ‘why wouldn’t I?’, so Basil suggested bringing it to the copy shop.
In the yellow chair, Sunny finally nods. “I realized that I never thought of her as she actually was,” he explains slowly, “I don’t want to think of her as something…”
“Something… scary?” Basil fills in.
Sunny gives a so-so gesture. “She deserves to be remembered as she lived.”
“Yeah,” Basil agrees quietly. He’s guilty of that, too. For years, he tried not to think of her. To think of her was to think of rope and cold heavy limbs. To think of her was to think of the worst thing he’d ever done.
They wait another ten minutes. Finally, the guy comes back out. Sunny pays at the counter, and then they go to a table up front to put the originals back in. Sunny tucks the new envelope of copies under his arm.
Basil sets the album down. The afternoon sun comes in sideways through the glass front of the building, making the album’s nameplate gleam as brightly as the day he got it.
Mari clasps her hands together with delight as he carefully rips off the wrapping paper. She’s his best friend’s sister — she’s older and responsible, someone to look up to. And she took out of her own savings to buy this for him, and Basil wants to be like her so much, and he matches her bright smile with one of his own. He runs his fingers over the metal.
He opens up the cover. Black marks still show beyond the corners where the photos go, overlapping scribbles from when Sunny took a marker to it. It came off of the photographs with gentle scrubbing and whatever Aubrey used, but not so much the paper backdrop.
“You remember the order, don’t you, Sunny?” he teases as he spreads out a fan on the table to see them clearly. Sunny nods with sincerity.
Basil finds the first one easily. He turns it over and reads the caption:
My first photo! It's my best friend, Sunny, trying out his new violin. He's starting to take lessons again so he can play at recitals with his sister, Mari. So exciting!
He kept this one carefully tucked in his bedside drawer for a month and a half after Christmas, but it was so special to him that he knew it had to be the first photo in his album.
It’s the only one which bears the same caption written on the back of the photograph itself, which Basil transcribed word-for-word into the book the day after his birthday. He remembers that distinctly, kneeling on the floor, his little body bent in half over it with his face scrunched in concentration.
As he works the photo into place, Sunny already has the next one ready, and they trade off like that, alternating, until Basil holds the last polaroid gingerly in his hands.
It’s Sunny with his violin again, but this time it doesn’t matter that the violin looks whole — it’s already as good as broken. It begins as something innocent, and over a series of fifty photos, it sours.
Basil feels sour, too. Sour because he remembers that two of his closest friends had taken turns ruining his most treasured belonging. Because it had not only been defaced, but coveted and stolen, and then taken apart and discarded. Because last summer, Sunny and Kel had gone all around town on a friendship quest to put it back together, and even Aubrey got to be there when the pieces were mended in a perfect symbolic moment. Because they fixed his book and called it good enough, not caring that he was still covered in marks and scattered in pieces, because everyone was together again… everyone except Basil.
Now, as he straightens the final photo, it feels like something is slotting back into place.
It’s been on his shelf for a year, but only now does Basil have his photo album back. He closes the cover and holds it, whole, to his chest.
Sunny tilts his head slightly and blinks at him. “Home?”
Basil’s Memories: a gift from Mari — the least Basil can do is give Mari’s memories back to her in turn.
“Okay Sunny, I’m ready.”