Chapter 1: May Fourteenth
They told you that seeing a doctor might help, they said that laying in bed for days wasn't normal anymore because it had been a full year and a half. It's like tragedy has an expiration date or something and people decide for you just how long you're allowed to grieve before you're considered "unwell".
You've got 365 days of laying in bed and talking softly over bitter coffee to no one in your apartment and you know you've gotten better because when you started out, you were hallucinating that he still lived with you.
Nevertheless, you have been to a lot of doctors. You always give them the benefit of one visit, and you're fully capable of telling them what the problem is but they don't have any cures. They tell you to take this and that medicine and you thank them and put on a smile, but you never go back there and the medicine just sits in a drawer by your bed.
Even though you keep telling your friends that you will get over whatever this is your own way, they give you a card for a doctor you haven't been to yet. As always, you oblige them and now you've got a doctors appointment; not the lollipop at the end of the visit granting doctor, the kind that you put on sweatpants and ride silently in the car with someone to go see. A certain kind of doctor's visit where you and them keep clearing your throats in the car and the sky is grey because it's not a good day and you haven't met any good days in a long time.
The building that Doctor Maryam's office is located is a small grey building tucked in between two warehouses on east 68th street, and you're positive you've passed by it a million times and never noticed it. You look up at the building for a minute and then duck inside, expecting the dreaded psychiatric clinic waiting room coldness and looking away from everyone awkwardly, but instead when you walk in the room is empty. You walk up to the desk and they tell you she'll see you right away.
Dr. Maryam's office is bigger than the front part of the building and decorated with a kind of elegance you weren't expecting for this side of town and such a shabby looking building. You sit down in the cracked leather chair in front of her desk and wait for her to come in. You tap your foot, pick at the stuffing coming out of the arm of the chair, touch stuff on her desk even though you shouldn't and after a moment she strides in.
She's tall and very slender with short black hair, wearing a short black dress, and a long doctor's coat with her name tag on it. When she sits down in front of you, you think she's pretty with her pale skin and dark makeup. She's like no doctor you've ever been to before. You hope your friends haven't inadvertently sent you to some place where they do lobotomies with a spoon for five dollars.
"Let me just look over your paperwork to make sure everything checks out and then we can get started okay?" She smiles and start flipping through the pages that you had filled out a week ago that had come in the mail.
"All right, let's begin." She tucks the papers away and waits for you to start talking.
"What am I supposed to say...exactly?" You usually tell them the gist of everything in big spiel but it's not coming out today like it usually does.
"Whatever you want, tell me what happened or tell me what you had for breakfast one day together. It doesn't matter where you begin." She reassures you and you stare down at the floor while you think.
"I want to start on May fourteenth, because when I woke up it smelled like something was burning in the apartment..." You begin. You tell her all about the first day that Gamzee slept over at your house, you tell her all about his almost burning your kitchen down trying to make food, but before you can tell her much more she stops you.
"So, do you want to start on that day or do you have another one in mind?" She raises an eyebrow ready to write down your answer.
"What do you mean?" You look up and meet her gaze.
"You don't seem to know why you're here, do you Tavros?"
"No." You admit.
"Then why did you come?" She smirks and folds her hands in front of her on the desk.
"Because everyone wanted me to, they think something's wrong with me because I don't want to do anything anymore. Except, I never wanted to do anything before, either. I was okay with doing nothing with Gamzee forever."
She nods a bit and opens her drawer to pull out some keys.
"You know, a lot of people come here when they lose someone. I've been doing this for a long time now and I can honestly say, I never thought anything was wrong with any of them. They were missing someone. If that makes them crazy then we all are, right?"
You nod, no one's ever said something so true to you before. You think she understands who you are now and you're not afraid to be here.
"Most people who come here think that if they could just have one more day or go back to be with that person they lost, they would be okay afterward. For some of them, a little more time would make all the difference in moving on."
"Yeah, if only." You laugh awkwardly and pick at the holes in her couch nervously.
"Would you? I mean, if you could have more time to go back and select memories and be with that person, would you want the time?" Her smile seems to turn mischievous right before your eyes.
"Of course, but who wouldn't?" You shrug and she stands up, grabbing the keys and putting them in the pocket of her coat.
"I think I know what could help you, come on." She opens the door and holds it open for you. You contemplate bolting for the main exit once you walk out into the hallway but you don't really think she would hurt you no matter how shady this place is, right?
You follow her down the short hallway to an exit, and focusing in the center of her back you decide that you don't care if she's leading you to your death, because you stopped having anything to fight for a long time ago.
If this will help everyone stop looking at you like that, you'll do anything. You know the look, the kind of look people have on their faces after bad accidents, and there are blue and red lights coloring their eyes and clothes splattered with your blood. Yes, ithat/i look.
Dr. Maryam leads you outside and over to a door that you know is the warehouse next door to it. She just might be taking you in here to steal your kidney, who knows. There's no turning back now.
Before she opens the door, she turns to you and puts her hand on your shoulder.
"Tavros, you have the time now okay? The time you said you would want if you could have it. All you have to do is walk through this door but... you have to understand that you can't change any of it okay? If you try to change the outcome, it'll just keep taking you back to the first day of your memories until you get to the end again. You understand don't you? That you have to let him die at the end right?"
You nod, and suddenly you feel like crying because you think this is a sick joke your friends have set you up on because that is something some of them would do. You think when you go through the door, there'll be someone to throw something in your face or say "gotcha!" like they have done to you before on birthdays and just random pranks.
"Just remember, this is for healing okay?" She unlocks the door and shoves you inside and you fall forward into darkness.
After a minute you can feel something soft under your head and you open your eyes facing your wall. You feel the softness of your bed sheets and grimace at the amount of sunlight streaming in through your window. You suppose you either stayed up too late watching too much TV and that was a dream, or you got knocked out by that weird doctor and your friends came to get you and put you in bed.
You move the covers around trying to get up. Okay... your friends put you naked in bed, that's just... not strange at all.
You reach over the side of the bed for your underwear and pull them on, stumbling to your dresser to look at yourself in the mirror. Well, you seem to still have your kidney, that's an upside. On the downside, you don't think you'll be seeing any more doctors again for a long, long time.
Wiping at your eyes and pulling on a shirt from the top drawer, you take a quick glance at the calendar and immediately look again when you see the year. It's last year's date. Oh, maybe you just hadn't gotten a new calendar in a while, that's completely normal. In your apartment, there are a lot of things you haven't moved since last year and that's expected since you haven't been doing much either.
A scraping sound echoes from down the hall and you jump, grabbing your lamp. In this part of town you expected break ins, but damn it. You really don't need this on top of everything else. You're just getting back on your feet, you got taken to a warehouse and hit over the head by Doctor Strangelove, and now someone's robbing you.
Gripping the lamp tightly, you inch down the hallway and the closer you get to the kitchen, the louder the scraping becomes and there's smoke in the hallway making the smoke alarm go off.
When you hop out in front of the doorway, you stumble back in shock with your back against the wall.
It's official, you're really losing it now, because what you think you're seeing is Gamzee attempting to cook you breakfast and he's burning down your kitchen iand/i swatting at the fire alarm all at the same time.
You want to scream, like this is some sick joke created by someone who wants you to lose the last bit of sanity you own.
He turns around with a plate of something black and smoking that you can only gather is eggs.
"Hey, you're awake. I made breakfast." He beams at you and pull your knees up to your chest and appreciate his voice and the way the sunlight is playing and dancing in his hair through the open window. You take a few deep breaths while you wait for it to disappear like the hallucination it is.
When you don't move, he pauses and looks back over at you.
"Tav, you okay?" You nod and make your wobbly newborn colt legs find their way over to your table.
Once he sits down across from you and smiles, you remember this day. This is May fourteenth, of last year. The first day that Gamzee slept over at your house and made you breakfast because this was the day he had decided on you. For months you both had been skirting around what to call your relationship, and this was the first day you didn't wake up alone in your bed with a note by your pillow that said 'have a good day, see you later.'
Everything Dr. Maryam had said was starting to make sense. She asked you if you wanted the time to go back and be with him for just a little while, and you had said yes. But... this couldn't be for real, she's just a psychiatrist. You smile as you watch him spill jelly on the table like he will do every morning after this to your dismay, except this time you will revel in the chance to put your term paper down on that spot only to have it rip when you try to pick it up and yell at him at the top of your lungs.
If this is real, you will revel in his attempts to tape it back together later and fall in love with him the morning after, when you wake up to find he's stayed up all night recopying it by hand. Yes, and you'll bask in the scream of frustration he'll give when you tell him all he had to do was print it out again at the library downtown for a few cents.
"Tav, you're gonna be late." He hands you a glass of orange juice and you take a wobbly sip trying to keep your head on straight. You don't want to go to work, you want to throw your arms around him and tell him to lock himself in the apartment with you so he will never leave and you would never have to know what the apartment sounds like when he's not in it.
Your hand shakes and you spill the orange juice on the table, and he jumps up before it spills in his lap.
"Sorry." You try to find something to clean it, but he just laughs and wipes it up for you.
"It's all good bro, go ahead and get in the shower before you're late."
You nod and get up, dreading taking your eyes off of him for even a moment because you fear this will all go away if you do.
You make your way down the hall and start shuffling through your clothes with blurry vision and you don't care what clothes you wear because you remember all of this and you didn't know how much it could hurt the second time around.
Grabbing your clothes you get inside the shower with the clothes you slept in still on, and sit there hoping the hot water wakes you up. You hear the dishes clinking in the sink, and dry, hyperventalative sobs start up in your chest as you pray this all away. You're positive you must be losing it and even if you aren't seeing him again, knowing how it has to end is too much, even for you.
"I'm gone, okay Tav? Have a good day!" You hear him call and the door close behind and that's when you lean your head against the shower wall and stop caring how your soaked clothes are weighing you down, along with the force of your crying.
After a moment, you hear the bathroom door creak and you look up at him staring down at you. You cover your eyes and sigh for him to go away.
He takes his shoes off and climbs in the tub with you with his clothes on too and cups your face in his palms and starts kissing your forehead and your temples.
"I'll stay with you." He whispers and pulls your shirt up over your head and puts it on the towel rack just above your heads. He turns you around so your back is pressed up against his chest and he starts washing your hair. The soothing feeling of his fingers running through your tangled curls makes you close your eyes, and even though every hot steamy breath you take makes you feel as if you can't breathe, you know you're going to be alright.
This did not happen on May fourteenth the first time around, and you're not sure if it was sitting down in the hallway before breakfast in shock, or spilling the orange juice that caused it to change, but you're glad it did because this is ten times better and you never want to wake up.