Title: No Light In Your Bright Blue Eyes
Characters: Vivi, Arthur, Mystery, Lewis mention
Word Count: 3106
Warnings: AU kind of? Other than that none.
Summary: You can't choose what stays and what fades away.
A/N: I've seen a lot of fics of Vivi remembering Lewis and they made me want to write Vivi forgetting. It kind of morphed. And became a game of how many times could I not write Arthur and Vivi's names.
I realize it's very unlikely that she would have completely forgotten about Lewis, but it was fun to think about.
Chapter title is a line from No Light, No Light by Florence and the Machine.
Disclaimer: Don't own them. Not for profit. Just for fun.
Sometimes she dreams of purple.
It's raining when he finally wakes up. She's not in the room when it happens. She had wanted to be there, wanted to make sure he saw a friendly face. And she feels a bit guilty that she left the room, but she's not the one being fed intravenously and she needs to eat something. Besides he hadn't even moved on his own for two days. So she feels a bit guilty for leaving, but not much. Until she gets back. And then she's feeling guilty for a whole other reason.
He doesn't notice when she comes back. He's staring out in front of him. She stops in the door and waits for him to see her. He's shaking. Really bad. And she's not that surprised when he pulls his knees up to his chest and tries to hide. He still hasn't seen her, but she doesn't care. She's not going to stay in the doorway and watch him fall apart.
He doesn't move when she walks over to the bed. He doesn't move when she says his name; barely above a whisper. He doesn't move when she touches his shoulder. He doesn't move at all. Normally she doesn't do this. Normally it's Mystery who comforts him. Normally it's – it's Mystery. But he's not here and she is. So she crawls up on the bed with her broken friend and he finally moves. Wraps his arm tightly around her, hides his face in her sweater, and cries.
He's asleep when she comes in a couple days later. The nurses told her he would probably sleep a lot over the next couple days. They told her it's normal. She guesses it is, but now that she's not waiting for him to wake up at last she doesn't want to wait for him to wake up at all. His face is all scrunched up like it is when he falls asleep upset. She had always thought it was kind of cute. Now it's not. Now it hurts to see. He shouldn't fall asleep like that.
He has the newspaper she brought him. He fell asleep reading it. It's a couple days old now. She had looked through it before she gave it to him. Hadn't been that interesting. She wondered why he asked for it.
She sits on the edge of his bed and pulls the paper from his hands. He had it open to the obituaries. She scans the names and pictures.
Gregory O'Brien, Alice Matic, Marty Aquino.
Loving father, good friend, volunteer, generous giver, kind to all.
Always the same mush in different sentences. Nobody says anything bad about the recently dead, but the dead don't care. The dead don't care what people say about them after they're gone.
Most of the people on the page are older. There's a couple with younger dates scattered in between them. She skims over the names. Mick. Fabi. Henry. Dominik. And somebody named Lewis. She stops on his. He was about her age. Died the same day that Arthur lost his arm which is kind of weird.
Beloved son... tragic loss... dearly missed... It's more sentimental puke dressing up the fact that someone named Lewis died when he shouldn't have.
He doesn't have a picture, but she has a weird feeling he was tall. Tall and strong. It's stupid really. As stupid as the trash they wrote about him. If he really was as good as the obituary said they should have written him a better one.
He deserved better.
Probably.
She asks him about the newspaper when he wakes up. He doesn't answer. Not verbally anyways. Sort of curls up into himself; his arm wrapped around his knees to grab at the stump on the other side. He's crying again, a kind of whimpering cry. And he's hiding his head again.
She hates it. She doesn't know what to do and she hates it. She hates his crying. She hates her just standing. She hates it. She hates the hospital for keeping him there, and she hates the doctors for taking what was left of his arm, and she hates the cave for starting it all. And it makes no sense to hate a cave, but she hates it all the same.
So when she pulls him towards her and wraps her arms around him, she does it a bit too tightly. She's squeezing really hard and it's probably hurting him, but he's clinging to her now and she can't let go. She hates letting go. He's breathing with big gulping breathes that aren't helping at all and he's gasping something like a mantra but she can't really hear it. She doesn't really know if she wants to hear it.
She doesn't understand (and she hates that). She doesn't know what to say (and she hates that). She wishes she were anywhere but here (and she hates that most). But she stays.
She's there when his gasps turn to whimpers. She's there when those whimpers turn to whispers. She's there when the nurse comes in to check on them. She's there when the sedative the nurse gave him starts to kick in and he fades away. She's the last thing he sees before he's back under. And then she leaves.
He's quiet beside her on the ride home. Not really even moving besides his hand slowly scratching Mystery's back, but he's not paying much attention to the dog draped across his lap. It's more reflexive scratching than anything. Better than the freakish look on his face when he first saw the dog. She had thought he was going to puke right there in front of the van and then they'd have to go back to the hospital and do everything all over again. But he'd swallowed back whatever was wanting to come back up, climbed in, and only winced when Mystery gently laid down beside him.
He's staring out the window now. his head leaning back against the headrest. She lets him just sit. He'd been pestered by doctors and nurses and with their luck any wacko who decided strolling through intensive care was a good use of a free afternoon.
He has the sort of look on his face that he gets when he's working through a difficult math problem, but a bit sadder. Like a sad Einstein. She almost smiles at that. It shouldn't be funny, but it is. And his hair being messed up from the hospital isn't doing anything to help.
She's going to tell him. It is kind of funny and maybe he won't laugh, but maybe he'll smile. Even just a little. A little smile will be better than sad Einstein staring out the window.
And she's about to open her mouth when he finally turns to look at her. Well, kind of looks at her. More like through her. "I wants to do something for Lewis." He says.
She flicks her eyes over to his, but he's looking out the window again. "Something small. Just you, me, Mystery." The dog perks his head up at his name. "We missed the funeral, but I thought maybe we could do something." He trails off.
She waits to see if he's going to continue, but he doesn't. He's done. Which is okay. Only she can't remember anyone they know named Lewis. There was a the Lewis in the newspaper, but she doesn't know how he would know him, or why she should. She doesn't even know why his name's stuck in her head.
She pulls off the highway onto their exit, slowing down the car. He's looking over at her again. She should meet his eyes, but she can't. She needs to answer. She doesn't really know how though. So she's blunt. Don't know a Lewis. Never have.
He kind of gasps, kind of hiccups, kind of chokes. She's not sure which. Maybe all three. And then he's quiet. Just staring out the window again. Doesn't notice anything. Like he's in shock. Like he's seen a ghost.
She doesn't see him for a while. Or hear from him either. He's closed off. She goes by all the places she can think of where he would visit. He's not at any of them. No one's seen him.
A week goes by. Two. He won't answer her calls, her messages. He hasn't come in to work. Lance can't reach him either. Three weeks. She goes by the apartment building. He's not at home, or if he is, he isn't letting her in. She has a key, but it's not much use if she can't get into the building. A month since the cave. A month to the day. She calls one last time. He doesn't pick up. She leaves a message, an ultimatum. She's coming by the building. If he doesn't let her in, she's not coming back.
He does. She finds him sitting on the couch. The tv's on, but it's muted. There's take out containers on the counter, dishes sitting in the sink, and all of the curtains are closed. His prosthetic arm is off. It's lying on the other side of the room, bent at an awkward angle like he's thrown it. Galahad has food and water, but his cage hasn't been cleaned in who knows how long. It's a mess. And he's just sitting there. Hasn't even looked over at her. Just staring at the mute tv screen.
She starts on the dishes first. Makes sure they clang nice and loud as she's washing them. But he stares at the tv. She scrapes out Galahad's cage and takes out the garbage, banging the door both when she exits the apartment and when she comes back in. No response. So she lugs out the vacuum and cleans up the last of the mess. He just sits there. He might as well be dead.
She's done and he hasn't moved. She stands behind him, staring at his head that's staring at the mute tv that's playing reruns of Parks and Recreation. He looks like a sad puppy waiting for someone to pick him up and hold him while he cries. A sloppy wet pile of feelings and angst and hurt. Maybe when she'd first come in. Maybe she would have sat with him and hugged him in the middle of his weepy self pity. But she's been ignored too long and she doesn't really have any pity left.
So she walks past him and grabs the fake arm from it's lonely corner and marches right in front of him. She tosses the arm in his lap and he finally looks up at her. All red rimmed brown eyes glazed over like a baby deer trying to find it's mom. She wants to punch him. She wants to yell at him. Instead she grinds it out through tight lips and teeth that are actually doing a good job of keeping back the worst of it. You can't just sit here. You have to get up and move on.
His face is kind of shocked, then frowns and he looks like he's about to say something, but she's already out the door.
That night she gets a text. Two words. I'm sorry.
She wishes she could make him wait like he made her. She wishes she could make him squirm. But she forgives him. And brings over pizza and a movie the next night. The curtains are open again. He's had a shower and he's shaved, still with the ever present goatee. He's not wearing the arm, but it's sitting nicely on the table. When she asks him about it he shrugs and says it hurts but he's working on it. She leaves it at that.
He's quiet during the movie so she's glad she chose one with tons of shouting and explosions. Not her usual, but it's okay. She kind of grabbed it randomly off the shelf of the tiny movie store. The clerk barely glanced at her, any conversation that could have happened drowned out by the board gamer tournament in the back of the store. It really was a surprise that the store was open at all, but apparently the lure of gamer merchandise and the nostalgia of actually renting DVDs kept it floating, if barely. She didn't really care. It was cheap and it was entertainment.
She leaves pretty quickly after the movie's done, credits rolling along to some newish pop song. She has to admit it's kind of catchy. Kind of. There's a couple pieces of the pizza left over. She packs them up and stuffs it in his fridge when he's not looking. He'd protest if he knew, tell her she paid for it so she should keep it, but he needs it more than she does at this point. It's better than whatever take out he's been eating, anyways.
She hugs him, reminds him to at least try using the arm, and walks out into the hall. He waves goodbye before closing the door.
She doesn't say she forgives him out loud. But she kind of wishes she did.
It takes him a week to actually ask her to come over, a couple more before he starts going out on his own, almost another month before he's getting back to joking and little pranks. And when her phone buzzes the calendar reminder in the middle of a grocery trip and announces that it is Boo's Birthday he's the only one she can think of who would have punched it in. It's just the kind of silly thing he'd do. She doesn't know who 'Boo' is though. Maybe from something they watched. There had been a ton of Disney on that weekend. It doesn't really matter though. As long as he's coming back.
She gets him back into solving mysteries soon after. A couple heavy hints dropped in texts. Some cases casually pointed out in conversation. Some other cases not so casually pointed out. She 'accidentally' leaves little clues at his apartment every time she comes over. A book on vampires or some other unnatural being, pictures of supposed sightings, maybe even a written testimony. He knows what she's doing. And she knows that he knows. But she waits. She gives him room. Or at least she tries. Still, it only takes about a week or two until they're climbing back into the old van ready to head out again.
She jumps up into the passenger side, Mystery clambering over the seats to get to the back. She turns over to see him in the driver's seat, but he isn't there. He's still outside. He's standing right outside the door staring at it with the blank almost sad look he gets sometimes.
She leans over to shove the door open, giving him her crazy grin. She knows he can't resist it. She only uses it in emergencies. And his face kind of looks like it's an emergency now. He blinks and kind of smiles a smile that doesn't quite kick the almost grief out of his eyes, but it's something. He climbs up beside her, shaking her head.
"Sorry. I forgot I drive." She gives him a playful shove on the shoulder. Who else would drive? He almost laughs at that, almost, but for the rest of the drive he's silent as the grave.
She finds a purple sweater in her drawer almost a year after the cave. It's crammed way in the back, stuffed next to her old scarves. Her drawers are a mess that she ignores most of the times so she's not really surprised that she finds it there. Her scarves aren't even meant to be in that drawer. She tries to fold them in a basket in her closet, but somehow they always find a way to escape. He would laugh at that. Escaping scarves on daring escapades across the wild and dangerous landscape that was her room.
The sweater's not hers. It's way too big for her. Besides she doesn't really like to wear purple. It's a nice colour, but not really her. The shoulders are too wide. And the waist is too. Really it's too big everywhere. It's not a girl's sweater. Probably a guy's. Pretty big even for a guy. She doesn't remember having a guy over in the past year, or at least a guy that would have left a sweater.
She folds it up neatly, a privilege the rest of her clothes never get, but she feels like she should. And she lays it gently in the bottom of her bag. It might be his. She'll have to show it to him the next time they meet up.
They're coming back from one of their more successful mysteries when she remembers the sweater. It had been sitting in her bag, folded neatly at the bottom piled under the rest of her junk for almost two weeks. The only thing neat and orderly in her bag. She probably wouldn't have remembered it except that it had been raining and she was trying to find her glasses cleaner which had migrated out of it's pocket to the bottom of the bag.
He pulls out onto the highway singing along with the song on the radio. It reminds her to look up that catchy one from their movie night a while ago, and she pulls the sweater out and brushes the crumbs her lunch from two days ago left on it.
She looks over at him, still obliviously singing along. He's never worn purple as far as he can tell. It doesn't look like it'll fit him. And he doesn't usually wear sweaters, but who knows. He's a crazy kid sometimes.
She asks. His singing kind of stutters to a stop when he turns and his faces get really pale. He just stares at the sweater she holds out to him. She has to remind him to keep his eyes on the road. He snaps back to face out the window, no smile.
No. No he doesn't know the sweater. He doesn't know who it would belong to. He doesn't say anything else. She shrugs and tries to re-fold it, but a van dashboard isn't really that good for folding things on so it kind of ends up getting balled up and shoved back into her bag. She'll take it by Goodwill then. Maybe someone can get some use out of it. Except looking at it scrunched up in her bag she kind of doesn't want to let it go.
Sometimes she dreams of purple. She doesn't know why.