Title: Unclouded
Summary: Once upon a time Edgar Vargas had friends and family. Now he doesn't. Sometimes, you trade pain for clarity- sometimes, you get both.
Musical accompaniment: http:/youtube .com /watch?v=YDxigPT21dw.
Author's Note: This is actually an interesting piece, because the promp was the music above rather than a phrase or a plot bunny. I believe that this fandom can never have enough Edgar Vargas, in all his many incarnations, and thus I bring you:
Unclouded
It's raining.
Outside the window, the air is silver with billions of tumbling drops, and the leaves of the trees are white where the sky reflects off their wet curves. The world is dulled. The world is smooth. Thunder rumbles through the mesosphere, lightening reflects off the black mirror of the street.
Edgar is alone.
His radio is playing some melancholy piano piece, a beautiful thing that sinks into his chest and drags his heart to the barrier of his ribcage. He can feel it tugging, yanking on worn places and black spots, dark painful places that he doesn't want to examine. The music plays on, smooth as the rainfall outside, violet and blue and silver-white.
Edgar is alone.
He wraps his arms around his knees, because that's what he's seen lost children do and it seems to help them. He presses a hand against the window, because the window is freezing cold and his palms are hot from where he's been rubbing them together, over and over, mindlessly.
Edgar is alone.
He has no mother. He's used to that by now; cancer is slow and ugly but at least it gives you some warning. He has no father. That still hurts, and he tries not to think about it; if he ignores it, ignores the disconnected phone line and the for sale sign in the old neighborhood, it's almost like his father is away on business. Moved back to Florida. Busy.
He has no cousins, no grandparents, no siblings. Small family, and his mother's parents stopped answering their phone after Madre and Father got married. Long time ago. He never met them .Wonder if they're still alive. Doesn't much care.
Edgar is alone.
There's a white flower hidden in the glimmering leaves, on the other side of the glass. He thinks he sees purple lining on the very center, hidden safely from the wind and rain in its own little cocoon. He wonders what a flower is doing in the middle of winter, how it survived this long. Winter kills everything. He ought to know. Him and his goddamn bad luck, his stupid… his stupid curse—there's no such thing as curses but the joke always made him feel better about things, up until now.
Edgar is…
He has no family. He has no friends. He's never had many friends, two or three at a time at most—but he always had parents, and books, any book he ever wanted. Friends came and went, elementary school friends who never called after you moved away, middle school friends who got boyfriends and grew up without you, high school friends who had fathers in the military or play rehearsal, and after all that he's used to being alone. It shouldn't bother him. He should be used to it.
Edgar…
He has no friends. He had one, but now he doesn't. He went to church, yesterday, and sat in the pew. He looked up at the cross and the stained glass, and he tried to figure out what it was telling him. He waited. He waited for an answer, a sign. He waited until the room went dark and he couldn't see his own hands clasped in front of him, and he waited for somebody, anybody, to explain to him why the fuck he's so alone. Why he doesn't get to keep anything. Why every time something good happens to him, every fucking time, something comes along and rips it out of his hands and breaks it against a wall.
Edgar is so alone.
He doesn't want to think about it. He doesn't want to think. He presses his other hand against the glass and tries to freeze himself, drain out the heartache. He's not good enough. He's never been good enough. He knows this is classic reflex, he knows that if he were treating himself he would say, "it's not your fault, you couldn't have done anything. This is not a reflection on you."
But god, he hadn't been good enough.
And now Edgar is alone.
He looks down at his hands and thinks about how just days ago, he'd been waving goodbye. If he'd known, if he'd known then he would have stopped and hugged the kid and told him how important he was, and he would have felt that fluttering in his chest that he always chose to ignore. But he didn't. He didn't say anything because he was sure that the kid knew.
(But I'm sorry it has to be like this. Tell Mr. V- tell Edgar that I'm sorry. I hope this isn't too hard on him.)
One line. As if they hadn't spent every Saturday together, as if they hadn't chatted almost every day, as if the kid hadn't asked him for advice on almost everything, as if the stupid copy of stupid Dante's Inferno sitting on his lap hadn't had been left on his doorstep last Christmas with a tag reading 'in the spirit of the season. I expect an A for this.' As if he was only a blip in Edgar's life, a lone note in a symphony of "real world' adulthood. As if the last year and a half had meant nothing.
And now… Edgar is alone.
Edgar isn't afraid of death. Not anymore. You can't fear something that stands on your threshold and shows you its face. What's death but that last train ride away from home, just as painful as anything else might or might not be? He's got nothing left at home. He hurts anyways. Death holds no surprises for him.
Edgar is alone.
And it's a lot like being free. Strings broken, untied and untangled, he's frozen and he's unfettered, and it hurts like he's dying slowly from the inside out. The sky is gray, but he's unclouded. Everything is crystal clear now, and sharp as glass. He knows the answer. Nobody loves him. The kid never loved him. He wasn't enough. And he'll know better next time, if there is a next time.
And it's all so clear.
Thunder rumbles through the sky, low and unstoppable. It passes through him like he's made of air, hollow and floating above this window seat with his frozen, transparent fingers pressed against the panes. He has no friends, no family—he's unclouded. Edgar is alone.
It's raining.
END
(Of a sort)