Chapter Text
Nicholas Wilde was eleven years old the last night he talked to his mother: old enough to understand what was happening - but, he would decide later, too young to appreciate it.
She sent all the nurses out of the room, sometime way past his bedtime, he was sure, and it was just them. Him perched in his chair, and her sitting up in her bed, and the beep and whir of the medical machines. His paw in hers. She was as strong and present as ever. But something had changed. Something smelled different.
"The doctors say I have to stay here, Nicky."
"How long?"
"A few more days, at least. You can stay with me, if you want."
"But what about school?"
"Your teachers know you're here with me. I talked to them yesterday, remember?"
She had his paw with some focus he hadn't noticed before, not even when they'd arrived here in their neighbor's car yesterday afternoon.
"I want to be in bed. At home. This one isn't the same."
"I know, sweetheart." His mother smiled at him. "We can go back soon."
"Promise?"
She squeezed his paw even tighter, and her eyes crinkled at the corners. Nick had to look away from the tear rolling down her cheek.
"You know what those mean now," she said. "Promises. You remember what I taught you."
"A promise-" Nick frowned. He did remember this. "A promise is the most important thing you can give someone else."
She nodded and recited the rest along with him. "Backed by the full faith of your entire relationship with a person. I want you to remember that, Nicky. Your whole life."
And she made him promise to, right there in the hospital ward. To keep going. To stay in school. To stay out of trouble. He knew what it meant, in some abstract way. That she was talking to him while she still could. Preparing him for when he'd have to be strong all on his own, for the first time. When he would have to survive.
He'd promised her that, too, even though that future scared him.
"How will I know I can do it? If-" Nick had to swallow the lump in his throat. "If I can't ask you for help?"
She drew a deep, long breath. "Everyone meets that moment, Nicky. And none of us ever know if we can handle it, until we try."
"Mom." Her tears were infectious. Nick let them be.
"I love you more than anything, Nicky. And I know how smart you are. I know you'll learn."
But Nick had to wonder if he'd promised to do more than he could. He didn't feel very strong, not right then, when the subtle, massive change brought him out of fitful sleep at her side later that night. When all he could feel was desperate, bone-deep helplessness, that made him shrink into the corner of the little lobby outside, because none of the doctors knew what to do with him. They wouldn't tell him what he already knew, even when he asked.
He spent his first night truly alone in the world under the cold fluorescent lights of the hospital waiting room, and didn't sleep again.
The second, and the third, and the fourth night - he had a real bed again, but it was an unfamiliar one in the foster home that wasn't his, that didn't feel right. He slept there anyway. Made the effort, for his mother's sake, to fit in and make the best of what he had. He'd promised.
And each night, when Nick couldn't help the tears, the creeping knowledge that no, he wasn't brave enough to do this himself - he still tried. He didn't want any of them to see.