falling away like leaves
Edmund, PG, Angst.
Warning(s): AU/AE (in which the Pevensies grow old). Also, Alzheimer's disease.
It's always autumn in his mind.
Not because he loves the red-orange colors of the leaves, the smell in the air of chimneys, the returning to school for classes.
Mostly because those days are gone.
But also because of a different reason. Because some eyeless, noiseless monster is eating away at his skin, at his memories, at his life.
The things he held in his mind, in his dreams, were memories, but not recognizable as memories. His life but not recognizable as his life. They were only fairy tales, they were never truly real.
The faces floated heavily over his bed like doting mothers or rainclouds, halos of worried gazes. The three he saw most were called Peter, Susan, and Lucy, but sometimes referred to themselves as Queens and King. And they look worriedly at him, calling him Just and hoping perhaps he'll remember.
A part of him thinks they might be right. His memories fall away, but not before visiting him a last time. Nightly he sees grand castles, vast oceans and faces familiar to him as the ones of the visitors decked in crowns of brilliance. By morning he feels exhausted, like he'd never slept at all.
He doesn't know they're leaving him. Both the memories and the people. Because of course he doesn't know they're in fact his memories, he doesn't remember them at all once they're gone so there's nothing to notice as gone. The people because he forgets when they'd last been to see him, so he doesn't notice if they haven't visited him for days, soon weeks, so that in the end when they don't visit him for months at a time it doesn't matter. It's all the same when they come to him: he doesn't know who they are, they don't know who he is. They call him a King, they call him Just, but it doesn't mean anything.
His brain is falling apart in pieces out his ears, but he doesn't feel anything, his nerves cut and gathered away by the barrel. His memories are falling away like leaves, falling to the floor like locks of air and being bitten by the wind, dusted away carelessly.
It's always autumn, always.