Work Text:
Distant, muffled voices echoed down the hall Daniel was walking through.
It was the same hall he walked through every day growing up. Familiar in a bittersweet way.
He recognized the voices. His mother’s sweet but tired tone, Barbara (who gave him free lollipops at the grocery store), and his aunt.
He knew he was ten. He could feel it. But he wasn't sure why the hall was so foggy. He could tell it was a dream, because of the fogginess, though it was still mysterious why it was there.
He’d gotten good at recognizing the difference between a dream and real life, so he wouldn’t be scared by either.
But even still. He never knew why they tended to be foggy.
He kept walking further down the hall, which didn’t have any of the doors it was meant to have. The end of the tunnel was glowing white, illuminating the fog in the dark hall.
‘Mom?’ He called.
The voices stopped. And then a different one came. The most unfamiliar familiar voice that existed in his life. It was hard to make out any of the words before, but these ones he understood. “Little Man? What are you doing?”
He tensed.
‘D-dad?!’ He started running, the whispering voices getting louder and louder, more excited, and more overlapping.
He reached the end of the hall and flung the door open (‘Daddy, you’re-’) and got hit with a blaring light like a train of joy passing over him, hitting him dead on but not knocking him over.
He looked around eagerly, panting.
His face fell.
Nothing. Absolutely nothing. The room was empty. No one and nothing.
Just an empty white room.
He could feel his frown deepen.
A single piece of paper blew around.
He walked slowly into the middle of the room, his steps echoing.
Upon picking up the paper, he saw it had 7 words on it: Have a good life, Little Man. Goodbye.
Wind whistled in a lonely fashion behind him and he could feel his chin scrunch up.
He turned the page around, and on that side was a hyper-realistic drawing of a maple leaf.
He looked around the room, as if the provider of the paper might be hiding on the ceiling.
***************************************
Esme walked outside, shielding her eyes from the patchy sunlight through leaves before looking around. Daniel wasn’t anywhere in the house when she woke up, so she went to look for him in their yard.
She spotted him fairly quickly, sitting on a big rock, facing the forest right in front of him.
She could only see the back of his head, his hair messy like always.
She walked over, and when she got right next to him, his glossy gaze didn't break, and he continued staring ahead with a blank fixation.
“Daniel?”
“Hm?”
“You okay?” She put her hand on his shoulder and looked where he was looking. There wasn’t anything interesting there.
“Yeah…” gaze still straight ahead of him. “Yeah, I'm doing great.” He twirled the maple leaf in his hand.
***************************************
Carlos held his son’s hand as they walked through the park after another great father-son Saturday afternoon there.
Carlos doubted Daniel would remember many, if any, of these trips from this time in their life. But that did nothing to stop him. In all truthfulness, these trips were mostly for Carlos himself. After all, Daniel would only be a toddler so long.
Right then, said toddler was holding Carlos’s hand, skipping, and singing something incomprehensible about dinosaurs. Then he suddenly stopped and stared intently upward before screaming an excited boyish yell and declaring “I WANT THAT!”
Looking where Daniel pointed, Carlos saw a maple leaf ready to fall off one of the park trees. Red in the center, yellow at the tips, and orange connecting the two colors.
“Ah.” Carlos smiled. “A rare park leaf.”
“I WANT IT!” Daniel jumped.
“Ah, but how badly do you want it?”
“The only thing! The only thing I want!”
Carlos faked dramatic surprise. “What?! The ONLY thing?! That's crazy! I guess you better have it, then!” He picked the little child up and walked closer before holding him up to pluck it off the tree.
For half the walk home, Daniel smiled at or giggled over his maple leaf, but then a very unruly and unwelcome crisp breeze blew it out of his hands and he screamed in despair. “Daddy, catch it!”
Carlos shook his head and looked at the distant leaf blowing away too far, high, and fast to catch.
“Sorry, bud.” He sighed. “Can't.”
“Aww!”
“I know you’re sad, kiddo. But that's life. Sometimes, you can't have the things you want.” He turned his son’s head to face him. “But you'll always have me. And you'll have a good life, Little Man. Remember.”
***************************************
Daniel remembered. And he twirled the maple leaf in his hand.
‘I miss you, dad.’