Title: i know you care
Playlist/Inspiration: I Know You Care- Ellie Goulding, Keep Holding On- Avril Lavigne, Both of Us- B.O.B ft Taylor Swift, Human- Jon McLaughlin, Ronan- Taylor Swift, the movie Now Is Good
Disclaimer: I own nothing you recognize.
Warnings: nothing, really. It's fairly sad though, so if that's not your thing, then..yeah.
This is one of those things in life you never plan for.
Mostly because you don't want to think about like things like this. Sad things.
But a lot of the time you avoid things like this because you are selfish enough to believe that it wasn't going to happen to you.
He had been selfish. He had believed everything could go right.
But it didn't matter if he had planned for this or not.
He never would have been ready for it, anyways.
/
"Do you know what neuroblastoma is?"
No, he does not know what neuroblastoma is, damn it, and he has no interest in finding out what it is, either.
They both stay silent.
"Well, it's a tumor." Dr. Carey continues. "And we found it in Alex."
Ally chokes.
"What can we do?" She whispers.
The doctor sighs. "Well, he could have a fairly decent chance at surviving if we put him on multimodal treatment immediately. But it's expensive-"
"That's fine." Ally interjects. "We'll pay anything."
Dr. Carey purses her lips. "I don't doubt it. But it's also a very aggressive treatment, very hard for anyone, let alone a four-year-old child."
Ally nods, trying to absorb all of this information.
"I don't know what to say." She admits.
The doctor looks pointedly at Austin. "Care to say something, Mr. Moon?"
He shakes his head. "No."
His wife glances over at him and takes his hand in hers, interlocking their fingers.
"What do you think we should do?"
He doesn't know. He's panic-stricken.
Usually Ally makes the decisions for their family, because she thinks about everything rationally and thoroughly, and he made impulse whims on the fly just from his first gut instinct.
His system didn't turn out successfully too many times.
"I-I think we should do it. Do whatever it takes." He stutters. To his surprise, Ally nods in agreement.
"Yeah, I think my husband's right. We need to do this."
The doctor nods and adds something to her notes.
"We can schedule an appointment for Monday, okay?"
Ally nods.
Austin remains silent.
/
"Mommy, why do the leaves change colors in autumn?" Alex asks from his car seat in the back.
Ally runs her hands through her hair as Austin drives. "It's because of this thing called photosynthesis, and it means the leaf's life cycle is over. You'll learn all about it in middle school."
Austin blinks at this and she knows they're both thinking the same thing: what if Alex didn't make it to middle school?
But she couldn't afford to think like that. Alex would make it to middle school.
Her son nods and swiftly falls asleep.
It's then that she allows herself to cry.
The sight of this breaks Austin's heart into pieces. He could never deal with seeing Ally cry. He'd always thought that she was one of the strongest people in the world, and seeing her in such a vulnerable state was intolerable for him.
Whenever this happened in high school, he would wrap his arms around her and assure her that things would get better, that everything would be okay.
He doesn't know what to say now.
His first treatment is radiation. Alex cries and Ally squeezes his hand until she is forced to let go.
"Austin, I can't watch." She whispers, tears slipping out down her face.
He nods. "Let's go outside."
The radiation therapist soothes Alex until he is almost asleep, then leaves the room to watch from the monitor.
Out in the hallway, Ally's tears turn to full-out sobs and he clutches her tightly to his chest.
"He's not feeling any pain from the therapy, Ally. It's just like an x-ray. It's going to help him." He tells her.
"It's killing him!" She yells. "That goddamn cancer is killing my baby!"
At that, Austin cries. But he has to stay strong. He has to make sure they're not going to fall apart. He has to be there, for Ally, for Alex.
"Shh." He whispers softly, rocking his wife back and forth in his arms.
"Ally. Ally, look at me."
She wipes a tear from her cheek and looks up him, red eyes and salt-stained skin.
"You and me? We're invincible, okay? We're going to make it through this, and we're going to stay strong for our son, okay? But we're gonna be okay. We're gonna do this together, and we're going to be okay."
Ally nods.
"I love you." He tells her. "I love you, and I love Alex, and we're all going to be okay."
His wife purses her lips. "I'm just so scared, Austin."
"I'm here, okay?"
She nods and wraps her arms around him, just to feel that he's alive.
He is warm and he is real and he is solid and he's the one thing in this world that has always been there, always been around when she needed him.
"I'll always be here."
Five months into treatments, Alex's tumor had not lessened very much, but it had not grown either, and that was the thing that she was so desperately grasping onto.
If things weren't getting better, at least they weren't getting worse.
Admittedly, sometimes she wondered if all of this treatment was really curing her son, or if it was really just prolonging his misery.
But he was here, so she's grateful.
Austin had to cancel his national tour for the time being, something she knew hurt him, not much because he wanted to go, but because he hated letting down his fans.
"I can't just leave you and Alex here by yourselves in the midst of all this." He'd explained, his eyes conveying all of the confusion and sadness he was feeling.
She'd wanted to argue, but she couldn't.
Trish had given one of her long-distance press releases from New Zealand, where she and Dez (also her husband) were working on a full-length, professional-grade version of Claws: Dun-Dun-Dun, explaining to everyone that Austin and Ally were going through a very upsetting period of time and that they would always appreciate the fans' continued love and support and they hoped to be back soon.
Ally had asked him if he thought things were really going to get better.
He'd told her yes, but he wasn't sure if he truly believed it anymore, or if he just said it because he thought he should.
Alex had been transferred to Miami Children's Hospital's Cancer Center, periodically receiving radiation therapy along with chemotherapy and several other forms of treatment.
They hadn't registered him for a school, preferring to keep his life as simple as possible so that he had the fewest things to worry about. When (and if) he got better, he could go to normal kindergarten like any other five-year-old that did not have a high-risk tumor.
He knew that sometimes Ally felt a bit spiteful when she saw other mothers with young children, healthy, happy children with all of their hair and cancer-free. But it wasn't so much spite as a desperate want, a desperate wish that Alex could go back to being a normal kid.
But he was the child of Austin and Ally.
He was never destined to be normal.
There are good days, days where Alex is happy and pain-free and blissfully unaffected by the fact that he has a malignant tumor in his abdomen. The days where he can act like a five-year-old.
Like his fifth birthday. He, Austin, and Ally had laid in his hospital bed all together and watched a Rays game on TV.
That was a good day.
Those were the days Ally was happy.
Then there are the bad days, the ones where results come in and things seem to be slowly but surely getting worse and it just feels like the whole world was out to get them.
Those were the hard days. Alex would have to go through some rigorous treatment and Ally would blame herself for everything, she would cry and she would yell and she would take all the canned foods out of the cabinets and throw them to the floor just to hear them smash against the matte wood.
He would be there, as promised, he would scrape the tomato paste off the planks while she sobbed and then he would take her in his arms and let her hit his chest in frustration.
Sometimes, on particularly terrible days, she would tell him to leave, or worse, threaten to leave herself and then he would grab her wrists and kiss her and remind her that she was loved.
He knew that she sometimes questioned why he didn't seem as affected, why he was always solid.
And then he would take a step back and look at his life and there would be the answer.
Alex was suffering and Ally was gradually becoming more and more destroyed.
It didn't matter how he felt anymore. He had to put up this strong front, he had to remain stoic for the sake of his family.
Plus, it didn't help that paparazzi would be willing to take any opportunity to see him breaking down.
He wouldn't give them the satisfaction.
About ten months in, things changed. It wasn't a stagnant process anymore.
A new tumor had formed, and because his kidneys had been weakened by the original tumor, treatment options were running dangerously low.
"What can we do?" Ally said, voice cracking.
Dr. Carey shook her head. "There's not very much. We can try to administer oral chemo daily, and it might slow the tumor from progressing, but otherwise… a month. Maybe two."
Ally emitted a gasp-y squeak sound that almost made it seem as if the breath had been knocked straight out of her.
He would've performed CPR on her if he had remembered how to breathe himself.
"Okay." His wife said.
"Okay?" Dr. Carey asked quizzically.
"Yeah. Okay." She stood up out of her chair and picked up her purse.
"Let's go, Austin." She said softly, grabbing his arm.
He nodded and lifelessly got up from his chair. He gave Dr. Carey a small wave and she returned with a small smile.
Trailing Ally out the door, he felt lethargic, as if he had just woken up from a deep, long sleep.
He didn't want to get up.
Some stupid rationalization made him think that this was the best way to handle things.
See, this was why Ally made all of the decisions.
He started making excuses to not go to the hospital- important interviews, meetings, felt sick- and Ally would give him this look of disdain that made him feel a horrible twinge of guilt in his stomach but she'd simply take Alex up in her arms and drive away.
And then he'd curl up in their bed and cry.
He figured this was the best way to go about things. The more distance he created between himself and his son- himself and the world, really- the less pain he would feel.
Really, it was better this way.
He hears the door open one day and he nearly jumps out of bed.
Ally appears in the doorway, arms folded over Alex's favorite stuffed bunny, which she'd forgotten to take with them in the first place.
His name was Stuffles.
"So, the GQ interview didn't work out?" She says softly.
He sighs. "Ally, I-"
She puts her hand out and shakes her head. "Stop. Just stop."
She takes another step closer to him.
"What are you doing, Austin?"
He looks over at her sadly but remains silent.
She smiles spitefully through teary eyes.
"Bullshit. This is just a load of bullshit ,Austin. Your son needs you. I need you.
How can you just run away from everything in a time like this!? You said it yourself, that you'd 'always be here', so what, now you're just backing out on your word?! You're the one person in this world that is capable of making me feel better throughout anything and I just don't think I can handle it if you tear away from me!"
"I'm hurting, Ally!" He screams.
"So am I!"
Silence falls over them and he just shakes his head.
"I just need to get away from here." He mumbles, angrily making his way to the door.
"Where are you going?" She calls after him.
"Away."
He slams the door behind him.
"Coward!" She screams into an empty house.
Hugging Stuffles close to her chest, she sits herself down on the floor and sobs into his soft velveteen ears.
"What am I going to do now?" She whispers.
It shows up on the cover of USWeekly and Star the next week.
"Austin Moon checks into the Hilton…. Without Ally?"
"Austin Moon and Ally Dawson-Moon: Headed For Divorce? Details on page five."
She does not turn to page five. She does not care to know how they understood her personal life, which, quite frankly, she did not understand herself.
Plus, a nurse was beckoning for her to come out of the waiting room.
The nurse, Mona, grabs Ally's hand.
"Call your husband. You both should be here now."
The sadness in her eyes tells Ally everything.
"Oh my God." She whispers. Her knees go faint and she collapses onto Mona.
The nurse holds her and lets her sob it out until she has no more tears left inside her.
"God damn it, he's not answering." She groans after the fifth time of calling.
"I need to go get him. I don't care what he thinks he's doing, he needs to be here. Do I have time?"
Nurse Mona nods. "I think so. We'll try our best."
Ally rushes into her son's room, where Dr. Carey is reading him The Giving Tree.
His strength is all but gone, and his eyelids are halfway shut.
She grabs his hand delicately.
"Alex? Alex, listen to me, baby. Mommy's going to go get Daddy, okay? And then I'll be right back. Okay?"
Alex moves his head the in a minute nod, the best he can do.
Ally feels herself tearing up again.
"I love you. So much. And Daddy loves you, too, you know that, right? We will love you forever."
She leans over and kisses his head. "I'll be right back."
She pounds on the door of his hotel room.
"Austin Monica Moon, open the goddamn door."
A sullen, disheveled, unkempt Austin Moon open the door and sees his wife, puffy-eyed but still beautiful.
"Look, Austin, I don't care what's been happening with us over this past week. Our son is dying.
You need to come with me back to the hospital."
His heart skips a beat, something he last felt on his and Ally's wedding day. Except this was basically a polar opposite feeling.
"Okay." He chokes.
When they get to the hospital, Nurse Mona greets them with the news: Alex was gone.
He's never felt so much regret in his life.
Ally immediately breaks into full-out sobs, and instinctively, he takes her into his arms.
Tears of his own fall softly into her hair, which he strokes tenderly.
"I love you." He whispers, pulling her as close as he can.
It just seemed like the right thing to say.
She nods.
"I know."
Attending your own child's funeral is probably the single hardest thing in the world to do.
Jimmy tries to help bring the mood up by hosting a reception at the Moon's house.
However, they still end up not being able to have any fun and somehow he ends up out on their patio.
After Ally makes the rounds of greeting people and collecting their cards of condolence, she sees her husband sitting in one of the chairs out on the patio, staring out over the pool at the night sky.
"Hey," She says, sliding the glass door closed behind her.
"You know, distancing yourself from the world is never going to get you any further from the pain." She tells him, sitting down in the chair next to him.
He nods.
"I just hate myself for thinking that it would. I never got to say goodbye to him."
She smiles over at him. "I know you care. He knows you care."
"I know he forgives me, and I know you forgive me. The main problem here is forgiving myself."
He sighs. "You both were always much better people than me."
She chuckles. "That's not true. You're wonderful, Austin."
"I could never be as wonderful as you."
She smiles shyly.
"Think they're looking for us?"
He looks back at the festivities happening inside their house and laughs. "Nah. Most of them are too drunk by now to care."
She laughs as well. "True."
He leans over and takes her small hand in his. "You think we're going to be okay?"
Ally shifts her eyes to look up at the night sky. One star seems to shine brighter than the rest of them, sparkling radiantly, just for them.
She nods. "Yeah. We're going to be okay."
/
fin.
A/N: To be honest, I like this more than it probably deserves to be liked.
Apologies for my less-than-accurate portrayal of childhood cancer/neuroblastoma. I hope I didn't totally screw up.
Love you guys!
(:Tessa:)