Disclaimer: I own no part of The Fantastic Four and I am not profiting from this story. It's purely for fun.
The pain never goes away. They say it sits there, waiting, until you go back and face it. Well Johnny's tried to face it. Every year he's sat at that corner, every year he visits the grave.
Nothing. The pain will not go away and every time the cars just roll by in a trundling anti-climax. There is no catharsis, there is no crashing wave of emotion. He never feels as little as when he sits there, watching.
Of course, when he sees these things on TV or in films, people revisiting the scene of the crime, the home of their traumas, they see it all over again. The whole thing plays out in vivid techni-colour; a painful and explosive rekindling of memories for the sake of the audience. Johnny doesn't think about that as he watches an old security guard hobble back from a nightshift somewhere, it would seem too much like failure. The truth is, he wouldn't have been able to see the whole thing again if he wanted to; he's never remembered it. He thinks he might remember the presence of policemen and the sounds of the ambulance but both are so vague he can't be sure he didn't just steal the idea from somewhere else or that his mind didn't simply make them up to fill in the blanks. His dad had asked him a few days after, with a voice hesitant and raw from emotion if he wanted to talk about it, about what had happened and, even if he had started talking again by then, he knew he simply wouldn't have had anything to say. He didn't know what had happened.
On the nights when his sister crawled straight into his bed, wrapped around him like a shield, clinging to him like a child, she used to wake with nightmares. Used to watch it all again with sleeping eyes and even then, as he'd stroked her hair with fingers not as soothing as their mother's and an emptiness too old for his short years to understand, he'd thought how he would have liked that. To be able to wake in the terror of his sister, sob with the same incomprehensible grief that she sobbed into his pyjamas, feel so much, like she did, that he wasn't able to tell which pain to pick and could only cry. He wished he could have some of the sadness his daddy had, so that he could try to hide it too, wished he knew how to drench the glass across that photo with his own tears after he'd dried it from his father's, wished that people wouldn't look at him with all that sympathy he knew he had never earned.
A life-weary teenager biked past, slumped close to the handle bars.
A month after the funeral he had found words again. They'd been worried. His dad had been saying stuff about doctors that he didn't understand, one that would listen to him if he'd liked. Susie had just begged with words into his pyjamas or with her eyes over breakfast or with screaming on the hard days. So one morning when his dad had said "Would you like toast or cereal for breakfast, Johnny?" and when his sister said "Please answer him, Johnny" without given him a chance to really hear the words, both of them using his name and making eye contact like the doctor told them, he'd whispered a simple "Toast, please". They had both been so happy. He hadn't felt that either. They'd started getting excited, asking "Can you say…?" like he was a baby again but he had complied and the tears in their eyes didn't look so sad that morning. So he took up language again, and one night, watching cartoons when he was curled against his dad, Susie on the other side, he'd remembered how to smile again, how to laugh. He'd liked that, it was easier than talking and sometimes he was sure he meant it. Before too long he started playing up at school again, just little things like flicking paint at that kid with glasses or sticking his tongue out at the teacher when she glanced over and his father would be told and he'd speak sternly but it was worth it every time for the relief that shone in his eyes.
Gradually, imperceptibly, it all stopped being an act and slipped into something genuine. He found himself chatting inanely, laughing freely, winding up authority whenever the opportunity arose and delighting in the half-hidden and exasperated smiles it provoked. What they deemed to be his 'recovery' began to shape the boy into the man.
But every year, he thought as a red Porsche purred by, he became the boy again. He had slid out that morning before the others woke, silent, hooded and masked with dark glasses and came straight here. The act of sneaking out was completely unnecessary; his sister would know where he was and so the others would learn too. But he did it anyway. It was unavoidable.
A dented heap of a car rattled past.
He had felt it coming for days now; the odd creeping sense of detachment. Everything had started losing significance. He began eating less, sleeping more and only speaking when spoken to. For the past two days, barely even that. He wasn't angry, he wasn't sulking and he wasn't hurting. He wasn't anything.
Constantly, there was a notion of guilt. Not the actual feeling but the thought that it would be fitting.
A sports model tore through the street, far faster than it should and his chest tightened ever so slightly, ever so fleetingly. It was a reaction, he supposed, but not one that any part of him knew how to interpret and so it was forgotten.
A chain link fence sat across from him. He'd propped roses on it. They were a pale yellow that wasn't really like the colour of his mother's hair at all and roses had never been her favourite. She would have pretended to like them though, he knew that. Or maybe she would have loved them immensely just because they came from him. He wasn't sure, he'd never had the chance to ask.
And he wanted to apologise.
He wanted her to know that he was sorry. That he missed her, that he loved her. Honestly and truly loved her. How he was sorry that he had never told her how proud he was because he was too young to know pride back then, even when he felt it and how she would be proud too. Of him, maybe, because he was a hero now, just like he'd told her he'd be and of Susie because she was a hero too. And so fantastic. A sister and a mother to him, love and authority and everything she'd always been, and most things his mother used to be. Most of all he wanted to say how so very sorry he was that here and now, and when it always counted most, he wasn't really sorry at all. He wasn't anything.
A mother's son should always be something.
He couldn't apologise for that though. Not whilst he didn't feel it and when he felt again it would be too late and he was sorry for that too.
The sun was rising higher now, and it glinted off the windscreen of a family camper van that drove slowly, probably to reserve the sleepy peace within.
He'd been here for hours. Susan would be awake by now. She'd be worried, no doubt and he crossed the road between a scooter and squad car and made for the flowers. The scent of rose was strong, became harsh and invasive when he crushed a petal between his thumb and forefinger. He closed his hands around the heads and the floral perfume was overridden by the familiar rise of smoke. He didn't watch the roses burn as he turned back to the road, but they weren't like her anyway.
Wind caught the ashes as he opened his hands and he watched them fly. He'd seen the likes before. And it struck him, in a distant kind of way, that a poet could read meaning into the fact that his mother flew as ashes and he flew as flame. He didn't try to fathom what that meaning could be though, poets always were emotional people.
When he met his sister's eyes as morning ended, he saw the sting of memories and remembered nothing. When she cried into his shoulder that afternoon, he sensed the tears and felt nothing. When she crawled straight into his bed that night, wrapped around him like a shield, clung to him like a child and begged him not to be silent tomorrow, he said nothing.
When his sister woke from her annual nightmare he wished his annual wish; that next year, he'd be strong enough to feel the pain that never goes away.
He would never be able to face it like this.
A/N: Please review!