Terminal
Summary: If it takes a thousand years, I will wait for you and I will find you. Because after all, it wouldn't be a true goodbye if we never saw one another again. Spamano. Songfic to 'A Thousand Years' - which belongs to Christina Perri.
This story can be read on its own, however it was written with 'A Thousand Years' by Christina Perri in mind. Open that up on a new tab and listen to I on YouTube for the full effect.
I'm sorry, all of you.
I DO NOT OWN THIS SONG.
Edit: It has been brought to my attention that pasting the song's lyrics into this fic is not allowed, so I have removed them. Thank you everyone for reading and reviewing so far!
Terminal
"It's the ocean, Lovi. It's the ocean. Isn't it beautiful?"
Antonio looks down at me, where I stand next to him, holding his hand though I don't realise ever having taken it, salt water pooling around our feet, the smell of the sea filling our minds, the roar of the water filling our ears. I'm 19.
"No. It's just a big boring bit of water," I answer sullenly. "Like someone's emptied a big bathtub onto the beach."
Antonio laughs at me and squeezes my hand, the childlike sparkle of laughter in his eyes making my heart beat that little bit faster.
"But it's beautiful. So still, so silent, as we stand here watching it now, yet it can roar up to be a mighty, powerful force whenever it wants. And it's so big. You just think, Lovino, the water we see here is the only thing between us, and Africa. We could be the only people looking at it now. The closest people for miles and miles and miles, the sea stretching out in between. And it's so massive. Doesn't it make you feel small, Lovi? Doesn't it make you feel like you're a tiny bit of nothing in the presence of something so big, so infinitely huge that you could never change its course or do anything that would have an effect whatsoever on it?"
I scowl, pulling myself out as I find myself caught up in his words. "If you want to write poetry, go live in England," I grumble.
Antonio laughs again, the deep green colour of his eyes swirling into my mind like a whirlpool, pulling me under. "Yes, but I look at the sea and realise just how small I am in the scale of everything."
"You're bigger than me, bastard."
"Yes, but you're so much bigger than me in ways other than height," Antonio says, a fond smile lighting his eyes.
I look at him and he carries on.
"You're nowhere near as small as the ocean may make you feel, Lovi. You're going to grow older and become an adult, and have your own hopes, and dreams, and enough love to sort out the world's problems for ever," Antonio tells me. "You could do anything."
I look away. Antonio's hopes in me leave me a little breathless and unsure of what to say. "I'm just a 19 year old. I'm just a...just a boy."
"Oh no, Lovino," Antonio says to me.
The colours around me, the blue of the sky and the sea surrounding me, the golden sand at my feet, Antonio's soft chestnut hair, the warm olive glow of his skin with my hand in his, the grey-green-brown rocks beside us, all seem to swell and intensify, filling all of my senses at once, overwhelming me, making me truly open my eyes and smell the water and hear the seagulls calling out across the sea and taste the salt on my lips and in the air, and I look at Antonio and Antonio looks at me.
"I promise you, Lovino, you are so much more than just a boy."
I've always known I was different.
I know there's something wrong with me.
With my body.
I know no matter how much Antonio tries to help, and no matter how much treatment the doctors give me, and no matter how much they all try to do everything they can, I know there's no way to get rid of the terrible wracking coughs that split my mind and my soul and my body in half, no way to stop the ever present pain in my chest, no way to end the war my body is fighting against itself.
I know.
I know that one day for me there won't be a tomorrow.
And that has always been the case. I never really have known any different, because before I was diagnosed, I never stopped to think about it.
And now it's just the way it is.
"Antonio. It's happening again," I call weakly.
There is a curse from the hall and Antonio races into the room, instantly there for me, knowing what my words mean, knowing what they mean for him, for me, for us.
"Come on. I'll drive you to the hospital."
Antonio. My flatmate. My best friend. My protector. My salvation. My anchor when it hurts so bad I feel like I'm going to spin off this world forever. My tie to reality. My...
I know Antonio would be my everything if I asked.
But how can I ask, when I am so sick, so ill, so constantly in and out of hospital that one day there will have to be a goodbye between us that will go on forever and ever and never end.
Because I know a goodbye is not a goodbye if the two people parting do not meet again.
An unfinished goodbye is just sorrow and loss and it means it is the last.
That is not what a goodbye should be.
And I can't be with Antonio because my dying body literally will not be able to make it past my 22nd birthday, and if the earth has had enough of me at that age, if that is all the time I am allowed before God, or whoever is up there in charge has given up on me, how could someone like Antonio possibly love me at all?
"Terminal. That's what it is, Antonio."
We are in the hospital this time. I am submerged under a plethora of blankets, somehow still cold, Antonio himself draped over a chair beside me as if he no longer has the strength to support himself.
Antonio is muttering under his breath something that sound like "No no no no..." over and over, a broken mantra of fear and pain. I'm as scared for my closest friend as I am for myself.
The cancer struck me at 18, destroying Antonio's life along with my own. 18. I'd come of age, only to then be diagnosed with a life threatening illness. Like life's gift to me for surviving 18 years of this stupid world. Thanks, whoever the hell's up there for me.
I have been told I can't possibly make it to 22. And I am 21 right now and only getting older with every lousy second that passes by.
There had been medicine, at first, but no, it seemed my cancer was as stubborn as its host and refused to even lessen. At all.
"Terminal," I repeat. "Terminal. It means-"
"I know what it means, Lovino!"
Antonio looks shocked to hear the angry words come out of his mouth. He presses a hand to his lips. "Mierda, Lovino. I-I'm... I'm sorry."
And I am suddenly struck by how alone Antonio looks. He is broken. As broken as my lungs, and heart, and muscle, and blood, and pretty much everything else the cancer has had a mind to have a crack at so far.
"Antonio..."
Antonio looks up at me. He looks smaller, shrunk into himself, grief-stricken and desolate. His eyes, though still beautiful, aren't as bright as I remember they once were.
He loves me, I can see. He loves me, and my pain is killing him.
And in that instant, seeing him so vulnerable, so scared, so alone, I suddenly know what I've known all along. He doesn't have to go through this alone. Neither of us do.
My doubts fade.
Why did I ever think I couldn't love him back?
"Antonio." And I reach out and my hand brushes his side.
"I..."
I know what I want, but I am so scared, so absolutely terrified, because this is Antonio, my perfect Antonio, who hurts when I hurt, and cries when he hears me cry, and keeps me company when I stay up through all those sleepless nights wondering is there a God, will I go anywhere else after I am gone, when will it happen, what will it feel like. Why me?
Why me?
Antonio swallows. "Lovino, I..."
I know.
I know, and it is hurting, hurting so much. My fingertips brush Antonio's shirt, soft fabric on skin.
Antonio understands.
Just that little bit closer.
Antonio looks at me and takes my hand. Folding it in his own, spreading the warmth, love shining in his eyes.
"I..." But I trail off; knowing my eyes, my face, my fingers will say the rest.
Antonio.
I...
One...step...closer.
And Antonio takes the final step, crouches down beside my bed, folds his hands around the sides of my head where my hair should be, and presses his lips softly to mine.
This is it.
This is the no turning back.
This is the truth.
This is the truth, out, in the open.
Antonio knows how I feel.
I know how he feels.
We need each other.
Before we'd been going through it together, but still so alone.
So, so alone.
When we didn't need to.
Bastard.
And I pull him closer.
"Why me, Antonio?"
The question has come back, inevitable, as it always does. Again I am swaddled in a heap of blankets, curled up tight in the hospital bed I now occupy so often it has practically got my name written across it in bright red letters screaming 'terminal'.
My hair is just starting to grow back from the chemotherapy, patchy and thin and spiky like it's not sure if it's supposed to be there or not. I hate it and it's nothing like what I had before.
I sigh. "Why me?"
"I don't know, Lovino. Maybe that was just the...path chosen...the way it was meant to be."
Antonio has his arms around me, sitting behind me on the bed he's not technically supposed to be on, his head against my shoulder, lips pressed to my neck. Me. Lovino Vargas. 21 years old. Terminal cancer patient.
"I don't get it. Why? I could have been anything. Anything at all. But instead all I'm able to do is stay in hospital and wait and hope and have that hope knocked away again, and then have to wait some more. It's... It's not fair, Antonio."
"I know, Lovino, I know." And he starts rocking me back and forth, like a child. And though I know before my life became a cycle of pain and sleeping drugs that knock me out so quickly I never stay awake long enough to see Antonio slip into the bed beside me, before I began to wake up everyday from these sleeping drugs with Antonio curled next to me, his arms around me, before I realised how small I was on this earth, what insignificant effect I had on it, before I ever stopped to think maybe I wasn't invincible, I would have shoved him away, and called him a soppy bastard, but now... Now I let him, because it's comforting and it makes me feel loved.
It makes me feel loved.
I twist in his arms and kiss him again like how I love being able to do at my leisure, and he kisses me back, hands going to where my hair should be thick, long, and chestnut brown, to pull me closer.
Antonio loves me.
I know it already, as easily as knowing my own name.
And I realise. I realise that in spite of everything, in spite of my future, the limited time I've got left, the hospitals and the pain and the medication swirling in a big loud whirlpool around me that makes me want to shut my eyes and press my hands to my head and scream, that despite all this, I love him too.
"I love you, Antonio," I murmur against his lips, and his arms go to my waist.
"I love you too, Lovino. Always have done. Always will," he whispers back to me, and I know it's the truth.
I suddenly don't know what to say, so I kiss him again, putting all my thoughts and feelings and hopes and fears into that one kiss, letting Antonio know how I feel.
I'm finally letting go of the fear.
I have Antonio.
And as long as I do, I know I'm safe.
Safe.
Well.
From some things, at least.
"I want to go to that beach again."
The wind is blowing around my face, and I hope it makes the power and the strength and the determination and the need behind my words even more apparent. The two of us are standing outside the hospital, because at last, I am allowed to go home for a little.
And normally that would make me happy.
But I know that this is the last time.
The last time.
I know it is. I can see it in Antonio's tight-lipped fear and the doctor's small smiles and the sickly light of the watery sun, and the bleak sky above me, and I know, one more time, before I go, I have to go back to that beach.
"The beach?" Antonio asks.
"The one we went to when I was 19. Back when I still had hair. Back when I still had hope in the treatments," I say without thinking.
I can tell my words affect Antonio as he presses his lips together. "There is still hope, Lovino," he says, and he says it so desperately that I want to believe him.
But I can tell by the pain in my lungs and chest and my bones and my heart and every other bloody thing in me with a mind to fall apart, that it's not true.
It's not true.
"No, Antonio. It's finally happening. After all these years, I know it is happening. I... I'm dying, Antonio."
Antonio is immediately by my side. "Don't you say that! Don't you ever say that!"
And I can't stand the pain in his voice but I can't stand this either. My voice cracks over the words. "I have to, Antonio. It's the truth. It's the only way I can cope."
Antonio's fists clench so hard his nails must be drawing blood from his palms. "No, Lovino! You still have time left!"
And I'm crying and laughing and shaking my head all at once. "No, Antonio, I don't. And I can't pretend-"
"Stop it! Stop it now!"
And Antonio's hands are shaking so much I can't believe he hasn't fallen apart yet.
"Lovino." My name comes out from his mouth scratchy and thick. And he turns to me, takes my head in his trembling hands. He wets his lips and takes a shuddering, heavy breath. "Lovino, I love you. But I need there to still be hope. I...I need you to still believe. Because if you don't, how the hell can I?"
I turn away, tears leaking down my cheeks. "I believe in you, Antonio. I think that's all I do believe in."
He doesn't reply for so long it pains my chest.
Then he moves, turning away, pulling car keys from his pocket. He looks back and slips his hand into mine. "Come on then. Let's go see a beach."
And that we do.
Antonio drives me back to the very beach we went to all those years ago. All those treatments ago. All those days of praying and hoping and despairing and crying ago.
And he takes my hand and we stumble out onto the sand, feet sinking and slipping in the golden dunes, until we reach the sea.
It's bigger than I remember.
And now I can understand what Antonio meant about it making you feel so small.
I am tiny.
I am one person on a world so huge that all the ocean I could ever possibly see at one time, it filling up my whole sight, is nowhere near all of the sea, in this one tiny section of the word.
I lean into Antonio and he rests his chin on my head.
I can feel his tears leaking into my hair.
"I'm sorry," I say.
"For what, Lovino? What on earth could you possibly have to be sorry for?"
"For leaving you like this. For loving you and letting you love me and then just letting life go like I am."
"It's not your fault."
I don't say it, but in my mind I'm screaming that that's what everyone always says, but why then are they all healthy and I'm the one with the cancer cells that refuse to go away and the pain in every bone in my body and the tears streaming down my face and a broken hearted Spaniard beside me whom I have to leave behind?
"Thank you for bringing me here."
"No problem at all, Lovino. It's beauty brought together in one place. I couldn't deny anyone that. Least of all you."
And it is. It is beautiful.
And it makes my chest ache and my body numb with hollowness.
This may be the last beautiful thing I get to see.
And then I think of Antonio.
No.
He's far more beautiful than the sea.
More beautiful than some bathtub emptied out onto a beach.
I want him to be the last thing I see.
And thank God, I think that may be possible.
I'm sitting on the sofa in our apartment and Antonio is standing in front me.
All I've ever wanted, all I've ever needed, right here watching me with so much love in his eyes it's almost painful to look directly at.
And the cancer is taking him away from me.
Or rather, it's taking me away from him.
And ripping up both our hearts with it.
But I take his hand. I force myself to smile, to laugh, to be happy.
Because what's the alternative?
Sinking into death with nothing to leave behind but an empty body and a trail of relatives who never knew me anyway?
It's just not fair.
But I have to be brave. I have Antonio to look after. He's as broken as I am and I don't think he can manage alone.
No, I won't let the cancer take him away from me.
I will be brave.
Standing in front of me, he's the most beautiful thing I think I've ever seen.
And though I hurt, although everything hurts, Antonio's here and that makes it easier.
Makes it easier as I realise all of a sudden I'm starting to fall.
Slowly, as though suspended somehow, but definitely falling.
My hand slips from Antonio's grasp.
I'm falling.
The floor comes up as if to hit me over the head and I'm so tired, so sick of this that I nearly let it.
But Antonio comes to catch me before it has the chance.
"I think this is it, Antonio."
"Don't say that, don't ever say that."
"No. It is. I can feel it."
"No...Please."
"But it's ok. I'm here, with you."
Antonio makes a strangled sobbing noise and pulls me closer.
Closer to him.
I'm not alone.
I can feel it, all the years of treatment and yet knowing it was hopeless, have been leading up to this. It was inevitable. It was always going to happen. Every breath I drew, every hour I spent in hospital, everything, has been leading up to this, right now.
My chest shakes without my permission.
"Antonio, stay with me."
"I will. Of course I will."
And he's crying now, and so am I, and he's just holding me and we're both sobbing, crying for all that we have, all we're going to lose, at the unfairness of it all, at my youth, at the life I could have lived, the life I could have spent with Antonio, the love I have yet to give.
We cry.
Before I stopped to think that maybe I wasn't as indestructible as I thought, it was safer. Better.
Or was it worse?
Taking it for granted that you're safe, thinking nothing's going to happen to you, you're going to grow up, grow older, fall in love...
"You're nowhere near as small as the ocean may make you feel, Lovi. You're going to grow older, and become an adult, and have your own hopes, and dreams, and enough love to sort out the world's problems for ever."
If Antonio wants to be a poet he should go live in England.
But then I'd have to come with him.
And I'd have to leave my country and my beach and my home behind.
But then again, as long as we're together, does it matter where we go?
Where Antonio is.
That's where my home will always be.
I'm getting closer to it. I can feel it.
"Antonio, I love you, okay?" I say.
He sobs again, quietly this time. "Me too."
I nod. "So don't forget me."
"That would be impossible, Lovino."
There is a soft pause and I notice something. "You've stopped calling me Lovi, you know."
Antonio is too bemused by my absurdly random comment to carry on crying for a second. And then he laughs. "Yes, I have, haven't I? I didn't even realise."
And I start to laugh with him but have to stop as the pain in my chest spikes without warning and I double over coughing.
I know suddenly, that now, if I take one step towards it, towards oblivion, I'll be gone.
Just one step.
Gone.
I realise it's up to me.
"I've got to be brave, Antonio. You've got to help me be brave."
"But-"
"No."
I know Antonio is scared. He's more scared than I've ever seen him, and he was always the first one to find out I had cancer, that I had less than a year left, then that I had a month, and then a weekend, and now, only several minutes.
"Antonio. I'm not leaving you. You don't need to be afraid."
"But, Lovino, I...I can't breathe when you're not around."
There is a silence in which I listen to both our heartbeats. "Who says I won't be around to help you breathe?"
And then Antonio breaks down.
And right here, held in Antonio's arms, in the house we share, on a sofa, surrounded by love and warmth, it doesn't seem like a bad place to die.
I'm with the one I love.
"Antonio."
"Lovino?"
"I think it's getting easier."
"That's...that's good. I don't want it to be hard for you."
"I feel like... If I take one step closer, I'll...I'll be gone."
Antonio breathes for a moment, taking it in. "So I'll hold your hand when you're brave enough to take that step."
My lip trembles. "Thank you."
This time knowing Antonio has been wonderful. Everything has.
I always believed I'd fall in love and live happily ever after.
And I am in love.
And I am happy.
The only thing that I think I'm sad about is the fact that I'm still just so young.
How will I know what Antonio looks like when he's grown old? How will I know if the world ever manages to sort all of its messes out? How will I ever know about anything past this moment now?
Will it all just
Stop?
Will I still be on this earth?
Will I be someplace else?
Someone else?
Oh, Antonio.
If it takes a thousand years, wherever I am, I will wait for you, and I will find you.
Do you hear me?
If it takes a thousand years.
"Antonio."
"I'm right here, Lovino."
"Don't you leave me."
"Of course not. I never will."
"Thank you. For... For everything."
You were the one who saved me, Antonio. You always were.
I...
I think...
I think that you are what's kept me here so long.
Without you, alone, I would have lost all hope long before that.
Why me?
Why does life have to pick me? Like, oh, look, there's a little Italian boy who's barely grown up yet, how about we knock him down with a fatal illness, oh yeah, and let's throw in this perfect Spaniard, to give him hope and make him love and feel for the first time, and then we'll knock it all away from him before he turns 22.
I reach for Antonio's hand before I even know I've moved. He squeezes it tight, and I feel like all my love for him, and all his love for me, is seeping between us, changing and filling me up, filling me up till I feel I could burst.
I love him.
I always have.
I always will.
But I'm one step away.
One step closer.
One step closer and I'm gone.
A small dandelion, plucked in the spring before it's fully grown, the bright colours just starting to show through, but stopped, cut off, left carelessly on a window ledge, and though it was hoped the yellow wouldn't fade and it might still have grown, it wilted, curled in on itself, gave up, died.
Gone.
The smell of salt in the wind. A distant call that makes me want to run to the water.
But that's a memory now.
"It's the ocean, Lovi. It's the ocean. Isn't it beautiful?"
Yes.
Yes, it was.
And I never said so.
Thank you for showing me, Antonio.
Thank you for everything.
I remember your lips on mine.
I don't want to forget.
I don't ever want to forget. I want to take that with me.
Wherever I go next.
And for the first time, I realise I'm not scared.
In fact, I think I'm nearly there.
Just...drifting.
Yes.
Drifting is nice.
I remember as a child, holding my mother's hand. Keeping me safe. She was never around when all this happened.
I never knew my father.
Why?
I realise I never knew.
I never knew.
And now I never will.
Mum.
Antonio.
Antonio, who knows what terminal means.
Does my mother know what it means?
Antonio does.
He knows what it means for me.
What it means for us.
We are terminal, Antonio, both of us, not just me.
An end always had to come.
Terminal.
Inevitable. We can't quite last forever.
Not like this.
But maybe terminal doesn't quite mean that.
After all, it's not a goodbye if you don't see one another again.
Thank you.
Whoever brought Antonio to me.
It was worth the wait.
Antonio.
You are everything to me.
Everything.
Everything.
I'll see you again.
I promise.
Do you hear me?
I promise.
I love you.
I feel like I've loved you longer than I've lived.
21 years never was enough to cram all of my love for you into.
Don't you go yet, Antonio.
This isn't it.
This isn't the final goodbye.
Because a goodbye isn't a goodbye if we don't see one another again.
If there is no hello.
So goodbye Antonio.
And I'll wait for you.
I'll be waiting.
I'll be waiting.
If it takes a thousand years.
I will wait for you.
And I will see you again.
And we will be together.
And I will love you all that time I'm waiting, all those thousand years in between.
I will love you.
Don't give up on me.
This can't be it.
There's nothing crueller than too short a time.
But I'm waiting.
I will always wait.
I believe in you Antonio.
I'll be there to help you breathe.
And we'll meet again.
So goodbye.
Not forever.
Because otherwise it's not a goodbye.
Just...
Just keep that in mind.
I love you, Antonio.
So at least for now...
Goodbye.