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Your assistant, Dave, stays by your side when there’s nothing to stay for. Not even much of you, but you don’t understand that. A lot of you is gone, you’ve been told. They said you even used to be able to talk, and you were good at it, too.
Your assistant, Dave, brings you a tiny model of the city and tells you it’s yours.
“Used to be yours,” he clarifies, rubbing at the back of his neck and looking more in the direction of your exposed toes than your face. You think. It’s hard to tell. “Well, you gave it to me before - before, um, you know. But I wanted you to have it again, even though I don’t have all the nice heartfelt shit to go along with it that you did when you, you - yeah.”
His shoulders are drawn up, and the lines of his suit sharp and neat as always. You are used to thin, patterned gowns open at the back that make walking around when you’re told to drafty and unpleasant; and you’re used to wrinkled whites and beiges of doctors and nurses. Your assistant Dave always wears suits with sunglasses.
He gives you a small, awkward looking smile. You smile back at him and pat his hands where they’re clutched together on his lap, like you pat the nurse’s hands when they bring you cans of Cola.
You look down at the little city and remember it, vaguely, how at night it would cast the silhouette of a tiny world against your bedroom wall from your nightstand.
He’s watching as you walk your fingers along the roads, from your neighbourhood to town hall on a route you remember taking in your shiny black car.
“It used to be yours,” your assistant, Dave, says again, quieter. When you look back to him he looks away and clears his throat.
-
You have other visitors. Sometimes, you have visitors for your visitor.
“Hello, sir,” the girl, Rose, says, and you think you’ve seen her before. The feeling is becoming so frequent it’s beginning to bother you; it feels like there’s so much in your own head that doesn’t belong to you anymore. There’s so much missing, and you can almost feel the space left behind for nothing but shadows.
But you just grin at her, ignore the feeling and enthusiastically shake her hand.
She smiles back you in an odd way that reminds you of your assistant Dave, and then turns to him where he sits by your side, a bundle of papers on his lap he doesn’t look away from. You touch the roof of the little library with your fingertips, gently, keeping the city balanced on your lap. It needed repairs, you remember. You think you were supposed to fix it, and you must have, because it looks fine now.
You overhear them talking, but aren’t really paying them much attention.
“Are you just going to wear those for the rest of your life now? Is this some ironic backwards fuck you to Top Gun?”
You hear a grumble. You run your fingertip across the tiny Skaia Memorial Library plaque.
“I brought you both soup,” she says, holding up to twin containers filled with something thick and yellow. “It’s your favourite, sir. You had some last Christmas - in fact, you were the first person to offer to taste it. And the only one to find it edible.”
Your assistant Dave gives her a look, mouth straight, thin, eyes hidden as always, but she just places the container down in front of you, on the wheeled table over your bed next to some empty cans of Dr Pepper you’ve positioned there.
They look so alike, you think, and then you remember they’re related, and visiting their house in winter because her brother Dave was too sick to make the meal at your home.
You pat one of her hands in thanks, and she curls a finger around some of yours for a moment. You like this girl, Rose.
“I’d ask you to take care of him for me, but you always did,” she says, and she swings your hands slightly before letting go.
Dave is leant over his paper, writing. Scribbling. “Damn right I did.”
She hums. “I wasn’t talking to you.”
At this, you straighten. You gesture to his paper and he stares at you, baffled. You keep jabbing your finger at it, more and more desperate by your own silence, and he finally understands. Hastily, he turns a random, important looking document face down on your Dr Pepper splattered table and offers out his pen. It’s fluffy, shaped like a bird with a plastic beak and googly eyes. You remember, he always had funny things like this at his desk.
You write, in big, clunky letters that are unfamiliar to your mind and the muscles in your hand. It’s frustrating, and the end result is messy, but legible: I’LL DO MY BEST.
They stare at the message for a moment that fills you with anxiety and self-consciousness, and then she lets out a pleased laugh, and at her side, he blinks at you. The smile that quirks at his mouth is bright and more natural than usual. It’s sweet, and you remember it with warmth: you remember Dave calling you ‘Mister Mayor’, handing you a morning can of Sprite while he sipped his coffee through that smile.
She sits with you both while you eat. It’s carrot and coriander soup, and you eat it all, and then what he leaves, which is almost all of it. When she leaves she kisses his cheek, and then yours, which flusters you a little. She taps the message in front of you with a long finger and a wry smile.
Before he goes that night, he looks at the note for a while, thoughtfully, while you determinedly stack your cans into a tower to match the one the city that used to be yours. Then he folds it, the lines as neat as the ones crisp in his suit trousers, and puts it in the inside pocket of his jacket.
“I’m holding you to this,” he tells you, and you grin widely, amused. “It’s in writing in everything. One hair on my head, man, and I’ll see you in court.”
There’s always a moment of him standing at your bedside, fidgeting with his hands or whatever’s in them. You just look up at him expectantly, happily. You are extremely fond of your assistant Dave.
He reaches out and squeezes your shoulder with a stiff hand. It’s dark now, and he’s wearing those shades and his mouth is unreadably straight, but you think he looks a little sad. “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”
You nod. Smile. His hand is limp on your shoulder, thumb rubbing absentminded, light circles over the bone. You see the movement of his throat when he swallows. He gives you that awkward smile again, and then he goes.
-
Other people visit, sit by your bed and talk to you in strange, light tones - like a child. You are polite with them, but they infuriate you. Luckily, their visits are never long.
Other employees visit, and you’re much happier to see them.
The next time you see the girl Rose she brings your intern, Kanaya, who apologises for taking so long to see you with wet eyes. She touches your hands, fixes your hair. She says she has a suit for you at home she’s been meaning to get to you, and she had custom made as a present for your - and then she cries again, and you and Rose rub her back through it. Your assistant, Dave, brought you a notepad a few days ago, and you tell her as neatly as you can (you’ve been practicing) in your infuriating, unfamiliar scrawl: I MISSED YOU TOO. VISIT MORE. BRING THE SUIT.
She laughs, wetly. Her eyes are shiny when she says goodbye, but she kisses your cheek and says, “It was lovely to see you again, sir. I’ll be back soon.”
One morning, your assistant Dave even brings your other intern, Karkat, with him. He sits at your bedside and fidgets mostly, gives you some pained looking smiles and a can of Tab that makes you so excited you reach for his hand and squeeze it tight enough for him to yelp. They sit by you while you work on your city: the girl Rose brought you some paints since the colours of the buildings have dulled. They both rustle through documents, write a lot, and pause to give you long looks. When your assistant Dave goes to the bathroom, your intern Karkat touches your knuckles with his fingertips and tells you haltingly that he missed you, so much, and you’ll always be the best man he knows.
You squeeze his hand, but it hurts you and makes you angry to hear. You wish you were who you used to be. You feel so guilty for not remembering the city you play with used to be yours, that you gave it away, that you spilled cherry Coke all over your best suit so Kanaya made you a better one for a special occasion you don’t remember, that you met Karkat first when he was in highschool and he didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life.
You’re angry because when they tell you these things, it sounds like stories ripped from another man’s life, and compared to him you feel small and insufficient, stone next to marble.
Your assistant, Dave, asked you once when it was just the two of you and your plastic city in your hospital room, asked you, “Do you remember after you w- I mean, after you gave me the city, do you,” he stopped, swallowed, “remember what I gave you?” and you spent so long wracking your brains, so desperate to have one of those locked doors spring wide open to you again, and the wait made something hopeful appear in his expression when you looked back at him.
NO. I’M SORRY. I’M REALLY TRYING.
He’d looked down at the note for a long time before nodding, stiffly. He’d sat back in the chair, and you thought you could see the life flood out of him for a brief second when he sat that way, collapsed in on himself, breathing shakily. “It’s okay, I know. It’s fine,” he mumbled. “Don’t be sorry. I’m sorry for bringing it up, I shouldn’t’ve... Don’t be sorry. Please.”
After he’d left, you’d tore the note to pieces, scattered across your sticky table, and then shoved them off with a furious swipe of your hand. They drifted to the floor like confetti, and you almost remembered something, because that’s all you can ever do.
Almost. You are almost the man you were.
You hit yourself with your fists, banged your head off the wall behind you. Your hand shook with anger when you tried to write, in the flowing, intelligent handwriting that used to be yours. I’M SORRY. I’M SORRY. I’M SORRY. I’M SORRY. I’M SORRY. They all looked childish, stupid. But you kept them, because that’s as close as you can get to giving them to the man you used to be.
-
Your memories come back in quick flashes, precious scraps of a person who lives trapped inside you somewhere.
Sometimes their return is exciting, pleasing, and other times it makes you furious, and your terrified nurse, Jake, has to come tell you please don’t hit yourself, sir. You remember a lot of your assistant, Dave, and you remember the first time you discovered freckles on his cheeks while he did up your tie for a speech, and you remember how he’d take off his suit jacket and roll up his shirt sleeves when you worked into the night, and you remember how embarrassed he’d been when you showed up at his house last Christmas with a coffee and a can of Sprite, and he’d been in a Power Rangers T-shirt and his boxers.
You have tried to convey all this to him, but all you got to write was I REMEMBER YOU, and then he had reached for your hand, stilled it in his own and looked at his fingers curled around yours. “I know,” he’d told you, and you’d seen the lump in his throat move when he swallowed, “Dave. Your assistant.”
-
They can’t keep you in here forever. They send you home, eventually; but you have no family, no wife or children, and they tell you it would be best to have another person around.
Your assistant Dave signs a few forms. He asks if you’d mind him living with you for a while, pen-tip hovering over a clean black line. He asks if maybe you want Kanaya and Rose or Karkat or Mr Egbert or someone else instead. You answer, honestly, I WANT YOU, and he flushes, says, “Jesus, fuck, I guess you’ll always be playing me that way.”
You pack your things up together, and Dave mumbles the entire time.
“You think this place is bad, but the office is so crammed full of chocolates and flowers and gift baskets and goddamn get well soon cards, if I move my leg under the desk five goddamn balloons full of well-wishes will pop one after the other like this is fucking World War 3 and the enemy is dropping explosive love and support on us from all directions.”
“Are you packing empty cans of soda? Are you taking those with you? You are. Okay. On our way out of here I’m swerving us over to rehab and telling them you have an unhealthy dependency on Tab - which sucks so bad, by the way.”
Then, when everything appears boxed away, he pushes a hand through his hair and looks to you. “You ready? That everything?”
You gesture to the long bag hooked over the door with your suit in it, and then you take it into the bathroom with you and change. It has a little tag attached, but when your intern, Kanaya, came to give it to you, she seemed to have forgotten it was there, and hastily scrubbed out some of the words before leaving it with you.
Dear XX XXXXX Sir,
Congratulations on XXXXXXX XXX XXXXXXXX Getting Out Of The Hospital.
You Deserve It.
Love, Kanaya
You try not to linger on the scribbles. You think about the Love, the misdirected Congratulations instead.
When you come out, your assistant Dave stops fiddling with your box of empty cans and looks at you, then stares. You wish you could see his eyes, because you never seem to remember them right.
“Wow,” he says, voice softer than usual. One of his hands clenches and then unclenches again at his side. “You - that’s a good suit. That is one hell of a suit. You look - you - I forgot how you looked in clothes-clothes, and not shitty hospital gowns. And you look like a man who knows how to fucking wear a suit.”
You laugh, a little bashful. You had liked your reflection in the bathroom mirror. The two of you in suits together washes you over with momentary, warm nostalgia, and it surges back to life when Dave takes a few hesitant steps towards you and adjusts your tie.
“Still doing it crooked, sir. But I believe in you,” he mutters, but you know it’s for you to hear. The fumbling movements of his hands distracts you a bit. “We will overcome this crooked tie crisis. You will ride home surfing a wave of perfect Windsor knots, believe me.”
He smooths his hands across your shoulders when he’s done and just - looks at you, for a while. At your suit, anyway.
“I guess this is what you would’ve worn if...” he says, but you know he only intended to say it to himself from the apologetic way his fingers curl against your chest.
He looks up, facing you. You’re so close your noses almost touch. You see that familiar, friendly splash of freckles across his nose and cheeks. You can almost make out the shapes of his eyes through thick black frame - and you see enough to know how intently they’re looking back at you.
“Ready?” he breathes, and you answer with a hesitating nod.
-
People wait for you outside the hospital. They shake your hand and talk to you expectantly, and all you can do is smile at them, silent, until their cheerful expressions drop.
“He’s gotta get home,” your assistant Dave supplies, one hand out between you and a camera lens.
They ask you both questions all the way to the car, and he answers for the first few, hand spread across your back, and then he ignores the rest when you reach the passenger’s side of his car.
He drives you in silence, which you think is odd. If he doesn’t have a stack of paperwork on his lap, he’s normally always talking - it’s comforting, familiar to you. He jokes and rants and mumbles, and the sound of his voice warmly curls around your head like smoke, overwhelms your insistent thoughts.
When he’s quiet, it’s loud in your head. You can hear all the possible thoughts in his, all the things he’s making sure not to tell you.
You look out the window, re-memorize your city in actual size. It’s beautiful and big and you love your plastic model but it doesn’t really do it justice.
He glances at you after a moment. “You okay?”
You nod and smile at him. You want to go home.
-
The house is much bigger than you remember. You have a whole room of things you won’t need anymore. It’s your office, and every time you sit in its big black chair you hope you’ll remember what you’re supposed to do there.
You can’t avoid it forever; Dave intercepts every phonecall, every newspaper or story on the TV, but you still catch the sight of your own face in greyscale and high-definition, next to headlines and reporters that call you a tragic. You were a great man who would have made a great mayor, but you were in an accident and now you will never be the same, and that’s as far as your story will ever go. If you still had a voice, you wonder if you’d argue with them, but all you have is your obnoxious, clumsily written notes that say, GOOD MORNING. DON’T EAT ANYTHING. I’M MAKING EGGS.
You feel guilty when you think of him, all your workers, all your supporters. You remember your intern Karkat falling asleep at his desk at midnight, and your assistant Kanaya missing dates to be by your side, and your assistant Dave barely having a life outside of you and your campaign.
He’s not your assistant anymore, you suppose. You don’t have employees or supporters anymore, only former employees, past supporters. You do still have (your former assistant) Dave, as much as you ever did.
IF YOU’RE NOT MY ASSISTANT WHAT ARE YOU? you ask, pushing your pad across the dining table towards him. He reads it, chewing consideringly on the eggs you made. His hair is messy, pyjamas creased, and sunglasses still on. Looking at him, you almost remember something.
“Just... your Dave,” he says, voice soft and sleepy, and then he shrugs takes another bite without looking at you.
-
After a few weeks, you can walk around outside without being watched or approached. You are effectively forgotten in the city that was almost your own, but you still love it, in a way that’s started to hurt your heart. It’s no approximation; it’s real.
It’s less colourful than your plastic one, the one you paint in bright bubblegum pinks and caution tape yellows. The one that you pretend never left your bedside table. The one that’s still yours.
-
You are discontent. You spend more time in the office you don’t know what with, going through files and documents that offer you no information, only half-memories, blurred pictures in your mind. It’s frustrating and makes you feel hot and fiery, trembling with an anger you have nothing to do with.
You don’t know what to do anymore. You don’t know, you don’t know.
On a black line, you find the sharp, elegant signature that used to belong to you, and you begin to tear and crush and beat your fists and wail, the only sound you’ve made in months. You can’t stand yourself, but you don’t know which one exactly: the one who towers over you, or the one you’ve been left as down below.
It becomes hard to breath. Your chest hurts. You can’t stop hitting the desk, the tender scars on the sides of your head. You make noises you’ve never heard from before, and you sound nothing like you remember yourself, and you hit yourself harder for it.
You hear someone else and then hands touch yours, pry them from where they’re clutching at your head. Your eyes are squeezed resolutely shut, but Dave is saying, “Jesus Christ, Jesus fucking Christ, please stop, please please please,” and the tone of his voice is scaring you.
Slowly, you open your eyes. He looks back at you and his eyes are exposed, wide and deep red with long, feathery lashes. You remember something.
While you stare at him, stunned, he gives you a pained look and pulls you into his arms, hard, tight.
“I’m sorry,” he says into your shoulder. The words are muffled and small. “I’m really fucking sorry, but don’t - please don’t -”
You interrupt him with something you couldn’t say better in words.
-
You remember winning. You were so surprised and elated your hands shot in the air and you spilled your drink down yourself as your first act as mayor. Kanaya had poured you cherry Coke in a wine glass, and tutted when you showed her where it had ended up; then she grinned, wrapped her arms around your neck and said congratulations, and she’d get you a better one, anyway. Karkat wiped down your stained suit jacket for you in the bathroom, even though you told him not to bother, and he talked to you a mile a minute about how happy he was for you, all the things you could get done now. You went home late, happy, and Dave came over at three in the morning, looking at you from the step outside your door with big, anxious eyes. You invited him in, gave him the model of your city. Said you were proud of him. He’d done so much for you, too much, and it was time he pull away a little and have a life of his own. He’d snorted. Put the model on your desk, said thanks, okay, I will, and then he looked at you for a moment. You both took a deep breath, and when he kissed you on his tiptoes your hands were already out, ready to keep him steady.