The Selfish Sickness
by Positively
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DISCLAIMER: Hidekaz Himaruya owns the characters of Axis Powers Hetalia.
WARNING: This is where discussion & analysis of suicide and depression get pretty heavy. I'm an amateur so this is undoubtedly handled with less ~finesse~ than an ~artist~ but I do my best. So beware of self-harm triggers and somewhat melodramatic abject misery. Also, shout-out to rooms 411 everywhere! Also, a lot of self-indulgent Catholicism references. As a rationalist, I know I'm not supposed to think this way, but religion is beautiful. Sue me, I'm a Jungian.
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What do you say to your brother after he's just tried to kill himself? It's something that not even Morbid Matthew has really considered before. Is there a book he can buy, he wonders idly, waiting in line to get Francis' room number. Is there protocol, is there a greeting card.
"Visiting time ended two hours ago," the receptionist is saying to every panicked, exhausted face that appears before his desk. Frightened people seeking an audience with their loved ones with appendicitis, broken arms, sliced-open wrists. The receptionist looks exhausted himself, unsympathetic even, apology driven out of him by repetition. He must cause shit-fits on an hourly basis. He must hate this job. Matthew really doesn't give a fuck and for once in his life he's feeling a little confrontational.
"Just give me the room number," he snaps, too tired to even sound sorry about it. "So I can go straight there tomorrow morning? Please?"
"Sir, visiting hours—"
"Do you seriously think I'm going to break in?"
"Why the room number?" Angie asks outside. "What can we do with that if visiting hours are over?"
"We can break in."
They find his room on the fourth floor. Each door has a little round window. Matthew peers into room 411, but it's too dark: lights out. A porthole into the deepest part of the sea, beyond light. He's lost sight of his brother.
He's suddenly filled with a strange and immovable terror that his brother isn't in there, that he actually died and this room is empty, lights off nobody home, he will never see Francis again. And he can't he won't open the door and prove his theory right. He can't see that the darkness has swallowed his brother. It's like being seven again: there is a monster in the closet but as long as I don't move, as long as I don't open that door, I will be a-okay.
I can't do this, Matthew thinks. I can't do this.
"He's probably sleeping," Angie whispers. She leans into Matthew's side warmly, and he can feel her eyes on his face. Matthew realizes that she's exhausted, staggering beneath the weight of unsleep and grief.
"You're probably right," he whispers back.
Angie takes his hand and leads him back down the dark hallway. The glow from the stairwell illuminates her brave face. They soldier on, hand in hand, impossibly small in the light.
They spend the night in the same bed because being alone right now seems unnecessarily masochistic, even to Matthew. They don't talk about it, mostly for the same reason. Matthew wakes up in the morning to Angie getting up to go to the bathroom, and his stomach rumbles, and it's just absolutely ridiculous that these mundane bodily functions continue even after something as earth-shattering as your brother trying to die.
My brother tried to kill himself.
Matthew doesn't let himself think about it. He does. He doesn't. He thinks he might be sick.
"C'mon, we should have breakfast before we go."
This is so surreal. Let's have eggs and toast and tea before confronting suicide. From breakfast to madness. Matthew supposes that Angie's behavior is what they call grace under pressure. He isn't surprised to find that he hasn't got it.
The glass-top stove has shattered, they discover. At first Matthew suspects a cosmic joke, some spontaneous act of chaos to add to the general absurdity of the situation. Explosions for the hell of it. Then Angie says, "Must be how they found him in time," picking up the tea-sticky shards of Mama's old china teapot.
The images come to Matthew's mind before he can stop them: Francis, making tea with Mama's china. Francis, thinking too hard about her and himself. How she made everything stop. Thinking about the razors in the bathroom, just a staircase away. Francis, wandering away from the stove without bothering to turn it off. Francis, trying to die, a little too shallowly. Francis on Mama's bed, bleeding out slower than he thought. And suddenly: the sound of shattering glass from the kitchen. Maybe he was on the verge of passing out at that very instant. Maybe he thought it was the sound of death.
He is really going to be sick. Angie looks over at him. "He's still alive, Matthew. He's alive."
The hospital is completely different in the light, and Matthew can't quite reconcile the two. Last night it was too dark to be real. Today is so bright, too bright, light washing away color and sharpening edges to a point that makes him nervous.
They trudge up the stairs to the fourth floor. Matthew's hand jerks away from the door handle, too bright, too sharp. Too real. Angie closes her hand around his and twists.
Francis is saying to the nurse, "You know, if I were anywhere but here I'd be making a move? You are such a lovely woman. But I know mental illness is not exactly sexy. Ah, well. My arm hurts like a motherfucker. Can I get more morphine?"
"Oh, don't say that," the nurse protests unconvincingly. "And no, you've had enough." She's checking the bandages around his left arm. Then, relieved, "Oh, look, you have visitors! I'll just leave you three alone, then."
Francis sighs and stares into the middle distance.
Why won't he look at me, Matthew demands of the floor, the air, the god he doesn't believe in. He's just tried to off himself and he doesn't even give me the courtesy of eye contact. But maybe he's just searching for the right words, like Matthew himself has been doing unconsciously for the past eighteen hours.
Angie, thankfully, is more down-to-earth than her brothers, and she knows that there are no right words for this situation. She approaches Francis' bed and hugs him around the neck, careful not to jostle the IV. Red blood, type B. Like Mama's. Like Matthew's.
"Francis," she says. "Francis." She's crying and Matthew tamps down on the urge to tell her be quiet, you don't want Mama to hear you cry, she'll get so mad, you'll get hurt. He finally follows Angie and sits down.
"Why?"
"Shut up, Matthew," she chokes. "Not the time."
"It's a valid question," Francis reasons, still not really looking at either of them. "Albeit one that dear Matthew really doesn't need to ask. He knows."
"What the hell are you talking about? No, I—"
"Both of you. Just stop. What he means to say, Francis, is that we're both so happy that you're oka—alive."
Francis shrugs. Matthew is surprised at how dearly he'd like to punch him in his miraculously functioning lungs. "It really is quite incredible that I am, you know. Coincidence of coincidences. The mailman was pushing the bills in the mailslot just as the stove—I'd left it on—got so hot the glass shattered. He walked right into the house! Saw the light under the bedroom door and knocked, asked if anybody was hurt. I told him I was bleeding to death, and next thing I know, I'm in a hospital bed."
What do you do when your brother is being nonchalant about his narrowly-escaped would-be-self-inflicted death?
Oh god, Matthew can't think about it or he'll puke. He really will.
"What if he had ignored the sound? What if he'd acted like a normal human and left when nobody responded to his knocking? What if he'd decided to just leave me there to bleed to death? Fate is such a fickle fiend. Funny, isn't it?"
"No."
"Well, no, I suppose not so much."
There's an uncomfortable silence. "Did you go into the room?"
"No," Matthew snarls. He wants to be sympathetic, he knows the situation calls for it, he knows that this is perhaps the worst time in the history of bad times to be pissy and selfish. But how can Francis just lie back in that hospital bed of his own making and politely inquire as to whether or not they had inspected his near-death scene? Does he think it's funny? Is he being dramatic?
"Ah. Heads up, it's a bit messy. The stains will have set by now. I wonder if the paramedics left my note?"
Angie stands abruptly. "I am going to vomit," she says, matter-of-fact tone rivaling Francis' as she slams out of the room.
A beat.
"Poor girl. She's stronger than us, Matthew." Finally, finally, Francis turns to face his brother. He's in his mid-thirties now, approaching his forties, Matthew realizes with a pang. Small lines around his eyes and his forehead. Frown lines, not smiling ones. His eyes are as piercingly blue as ever, heavy-lidded. He wears the shaggy and romantic hairstyle of a younger man. It's unsettling to have a near-dead man staring you down, Matthew discovers, not least because of what he says next.
"Pain and blood, beginning and end. Everything in between is just a mindless, silly struggle to keep the inevitable at bay." No, Matthew thinks. No, no. The words eat at him, remind him too much of his own thoughts. "And you know that, don't you? It's why Angie's stronger than us. She has something to keep her going, to keep her strong. The ability to ignore. You and me, though. Our great weakness, the Bonnefoy curse. Stricken mad with knowledge. Only we didn't turn to hedonism to make it bearable, as Bacchus did."
"Francis, shut up."
"Why are you so angry? I mean, I know my actions aren't exactly admirable, but you're taking it awfully personally—"
"And how the fuck should I take it, huh? Tell me. Are you saying I shouldn't take it personally that I don't mean enough to you to keep you from wanting to die? Francis—"
His anger eventually overcomes his coherency. He fumes. Francis sighs. "Contrary to what you seem to think, Matthew, my life does not revolve around yours. My will to live is not entirely dependent upon our relationship."
"How dare you accuse me of being self-centered! You? You're the one lying in bed with thirty stitches in your arm! Because you don't give a fuck—"
"And why should I?"
The words are cold, Francis' tone foreign. It feels like a black magic spell, dark and wrong. Matthew wants to run, but he bravely soldiers on. "You promised to be around—to take care of me and Angie when Mama died! You promised, and you haven't finished taking care of me. I still need you, Francis, I'll always need you."
"But these woods are so lovely, dark and deep."
Matthew throws his hands into the air. "I don't even like Robert Frost!"
Francis chuckles. "You always were the one to get my little jokes. We are more alike than you think." There is a knowing look on Francis' face, one that Matthew understands, and the anger starts to build.
"No. No. I know what you're trying to say, and no. I would never do this to the people I love, I would never just give up-"
"Don't fool yourself, Matthew. You, too, believe in nothing, right? Isn't that what you decided the day that Mama died? We are nothing." Matthew's hands clench in his lap. The hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Wrong wrong wrong but so true, too true. "It only gets truer the more you think about it. I understand it as well as you: nothing matters. Either you don't really believe in what you say you do, or you are just like me. A suicide waiting to happen."
"Please don't," Matthew whispers. Don't make this a self-fulfilling prophecy. But of course he's considered it. Suicide. Not just the way everyone considers suicide, and not in the deeper way that all philosophers consider suicide, either. He's made plans. Imagined his funeral. Composed a fucking pro-con list.
Written a note.
Talked himself out of it over and over-it would destroy Francis, Angie's life has been difficult enough, there's so much more to learn...he distracts himself from that possibility, that choice, that Do Not Press button, tucks it in a corner and tries to ignore the way it watches him constantly.
But he's always known, in the back of his head, that it wouldn't be enough. There is madness in his blood, and it claimed his mother and now has come very close to claiming his brother. For all he knows, his mother's entire family in France has offed itself already. Matthew is poised to go the same way. He thinks too much, and he gets too sad, and he doesn't quite believe that his own life is inherently valuable.
He is afraid, has been afraid for years, that Francis is right: he is a suicide waiting to happen.
"I—nuh—" As far as dramatic parting words go, it's not very impressive. But he really is going to be sick this time, or maybe his head is just going to explode, his heart is just going to give out. Because he can't do this. No. He can't think about this right now. He can't do this.
"Matthew, what—" He collides with Angie, on her way back from the bathroom. He keeps going.
"I have to get out of here," he whispers, already several paces beyond her hearing. He can feel her, frozen and staring at him in front of room 411, but he keeps going.
Ten years ago, Matthew did not step into this church for his mother's funeral.
He doesn't remember much about the service because 1) Angie was crying and when you're a big brother with a sad little sister you mostly forget about yourself in favor of her and 2) it was the first time he'd seen Francis in five years. Looking back, he remembers holding Angie's hand and a red rose, preserved in one of those little tubes of water. Michael was there and so were a couple of his teachers. Michael hugged him and said he would be taking care of the two of them for a while, Francis too if he wanted, and Matthew's teachers expressed condolences and hugged him. He mostly felt nervous and confused and shocked.
The shock didn't wear off until the graveyard, but he doesn't think about that now.
Mostly he remembers how upset he was that his mother wouldn't be getting a full Catholic funeral and burial (because she'd died in a state of mortal sin). "But she was a parishioner at the cathedral," he would whisper when anybody asked how he was feeling. "She loved the Church. It's not right. It's not right."
An hour of nearly every Sunday of his life was spent here, until his mother died and a bit after. He was an altarboy from age seven to twelve, and sang in the choir for extracurricular purposes in high school.
Spiritual apathy was his thing after Marianne died—after all, he only identified as Catholic because she took him to church every Sunday—and he'd been a radical atheist since something like tenth grade. But there's meaning to be found in tradition, even tradition based in something you think is untrue or wrong. Repetition becomes ingrained, and you start to imbue it with powers beyond the natural. Humans have a tendency towards superstition, even if they consciously resist it.
Nostalgia is a manifestation of that superstition—the search for meaning in memories of old—and Matthew indulges in it. The downside of Notre Dame de Quebec, of course, is that it's the cathedral for the Archdiocese and therefore very busy and impersonal. A lot of people come to see the archbishop. You've got to be pretty old and qualified to be a priest here, and pretty damn good to sing here.
If Matthew does say so himself.
It's Wednesday evening, the night for choir practice—or at least it was three years ago—and he was hoping that they'd practice up in the loft for Christmas. The Midnight Mass is a huge deal here: a three-hour-long production with a ridiculous number of preludes and readings. They used to pass out small candles to all the parishioners. The 8:45 and 10:30 services are commercialized for the CEOs—Christmas and Easter Onlys—and those masses are so barren compared to the real deal. The magic of Catholicism—of any religion—is in the ritual. Matthew thinks a lot more people would truly believe if they just went to one Midnight Mass or Dawn Mass or one Easter Vigil.
The loft is empty. They must be singing in the choir room above the church office, he thinks sadly. In the front pews, the bent-over women in veils whisper over their rosaries. A couple of tourists light a votive candle. Matthew kneels in the back of the cathedral and crosses himself—old habits die hard.
He thinks about Francis. He can't. He thinks about what Francis said.
They are neither of them whole.
And he's no Prince Hamlet, he isn't about to spout out some immortalized monologue on whether he should or shouldn't be in a frickin' church. He's not some tragic hero. He's just a scared and lonely boy who wishes he could figure out how to stop being so much like himself instead of like everybody else. And the answer, of course, isn't to die, to turn himself into something rich and strange, like that's supposed to solve anything.
Maybe that's the difference between him and his family. They took themselves too seriously. Matthew can't. He's just another human, another animal on a planet that will outlive him by a billion years.
But what if it's in his blood? Or worse, in his head?
Oh, god. They were all he knew. They were all he knew. As he was growing up, the only human interaction he received (that was deeper than a mutual recognition of existence) was from these two people. These two people who have wanted so badly to die.
He shares literally everything with them, Matthew thinks. Their genes. His memories, the way he was raised, he was always watching them. He worshipped them both.
What is that supposed to mean for him? How can he escape this fate?
"God," he whispers out loud. It echoes, a plea unheard.
He remembers the procession at Midnight Mass, the church submerged in pure darkness until the ushers lit the candles of the people sitting in the back, those people using their candles to light their neighbors', passing the light on until it spread through the entire congregation. The people singing O Come All Ye Faithful, as one, and the sacristan flipping on all the lights as they reached the final verse: Venite, adoremus dominum.
Palm Sunday. Holy Thursday. The Garden of Gethsemane, the Via Dolorosa, Were You There?
He remembers the year Marianne took him to the Easter Vigil and they stayed in the church to dawn, until the only people left were a few old widows with veils and rosaries, and the priests, and Marianne and Matthew. He stayed awake to see the sunrise—to see the son rise, as the archbishop told them softly. Gloria, Alleluia.
There are some stories that are truer than fact. Some things you can't help but cry over.
Matthew leaves the cathedral, untouched by the eyes of any in the pews.
Francis.
Matthew would like to kill him slowly. He wants to take care of him forever.
He shoves his hands in his coat pockets and wished he'd remembered his scarf. Then he remembers Francis, and remembering to put on a scarf seems like the stupidest thing he could have done that morning. On his phone, there is one new text from Angie: I read in the newspaper they're about to demolish my old orphanage in NYC.
Matthew can't bring himself to reply. Is everything Angie has ever known going to be blown up or burnt down or both? My family is so fucked up. My family is so fucked up. Everywhere he turns, he sees his suicidal brother, his war-torn abused sister, his dead mother, his distant father, his stupid self. My family is so fucked up.
So he calls Alfred.
"Hey, Mattie! I didn't know you were going to leave right after your exams! I would have said goodbye."
"Yeah, I was. I was going to...but."
Matthew starts tearing up. It is so indescribably good to hear Alfred saying his name in that bright voice, unaffected by all recent events. There is something else out there. There is more to this world than my personal experience. Matthew remembers Angie calling him self-absorbed and doesn't really know what to do with that right now.
"Okay, well, no big deal. I mean, classes don't start back until...damn, I don't think I ever checked. Do you know?"
"The twelfth." Matthew is walking quickly, circling the Vendome Restaurant, around to the Montmorency Park.
"Oh wow, that's like a month away. We can still call each other, right? I mean, if that's not weird..." Alfred laughs sheepishly. Now isn't really the time to be worried about what's supposed to be socially acceptable, not that Matthew would really know to begin with. "Soooo...how do you think your Bio exam went?"
"Don't remember."
"Oh jeez. That's not usually a good thing." Matthew collapses on a likely-looking bench. "But I'm sure you did fine. You're Matthew. Uh, I'm pretty sure I aced my French. God, I hope. Scores'll be up in a couple days."
A man and his daughter are walking on the path, hand in hand. They wear mittens. She has a puffy pink coat and a little hat. It looks handmade. Maybe her mother knit it for her? Or maybe her mother is dead in the ground, maybe her mother never loved her, maybe her mother was too busy being sad.
"Matthew? You still alive?"
Matthew breathes in, holds it. Breathes out.
"Yes, I'm still here. I'm still alive."
"Good! Hey, are you okay? You sound a little...spacey."
"No, I'm just. Are you busy?"
"Right now? Hell, no. Just crammed up in my room, playing Fallout 3. Pretty sad, right? I bet you're doing something amazing, like reading a forty-thousand page book or learning Swahili. Right? Am I right? I bet you're reading. Do you mind talking to me?"
"No. No, I really want to talk to you."
"Admitting that is kind of against dude-bro code, Mattie. But your secret is safe with me. I won't tell Gilbert." A small pause, the sound of a bag of chips being opened. Probably Doritos. Doritos are Alfred's favorite. "Is there something specific on your mind?"
"Yeah."
A boy runs to the father and girl from behind, trying to jump up on the man's back. But he doesn't quite catch hold and falls backward into the snow, laughing his head off. "Daddy, you were going to leave me back there, weren't you!" He doesn't sound offended, though.
"Going to elaborate?" Alfred sounds vaguely amused.
"And what would you have done then?" the father asks of his son, playfully.
"Gone exploring! Fought monsters!"
"Matthew?"
"Fought-what?"
"Are you going to elaborate?" Alfred sounds more worried than amused, now.
"Monsters!" the little girl cries. "No such thing!"
"No," Matthew whispers.
The man has lots of dark blond hair, and when he lowers himself to their level his bangs throw his eyes in shadow. "There are monsters," he tells them gravely. "But they hide. They have many different forms."
"Like what?"
"Why?"
"Sometimes people," he turns to meet the boy's eyes. "Sometimes things. Bad things."
"Matthew, why? Why don't you want to tell me what's on your mind?"
"Bad things? Like drugs?"
"Yeah, like drugs. And the stuff they cause. Anger. Hatred. Sadness. You're too young now, but in a few years you'll see it everywhere."
"I don't believe you," says the girl, walking ahead of them both, nose in the air. As they pass Matthew, the father throws out a carelessly graceful greeting. "Comment aimez-vous cette neige, frère?" How do you like this snow, brother.
"J'ai oublié mon écharpe," he replies with his usual gracelessness. I forgot my scarf.
"I see that," he replies at the same time Alfred asks, "What did you forget? Is someone else there?"
Oh yeah. Alfred. "Sorry, distracted. I don't really. I'm not really up for talking right now. You can hang up if you want."
"No. Unless you want me to. Whatever, dude, your choice."
Matthew has never felt so helpless in his life. It's Christmas break, and his brother has just tried to kill himself, and his sister is losing her childhood home, and he can't protect either of them—not from themselves or from the cold world around them. And he starts tearing up, and the pressure is back, in on his head and nothing is right everything is wrongwrongwrong especially him and there's nothing he can do about anything and-
"Matthew?"
"Alfred?"
"Whathuh?"
"Why don't you tell me about your game. Put me on speaker?"
"What, like narrate what I'm doing?"
"Yeah," Matthew says. His voice is getting even more choked up. Breathe in. Hold it. Out.
"Okay, sure."
Matthew makes his way back to the hospital, the hand on his phone going numb. Alfred talks inanities, sometimes about his game, more often whatever comes to his mind. Every once in a while he asks if Matthew is alright, if he's still with him. "Yeah," he says. He doesn't add thanks to you. Even in this state, he knows that's just not something you say out loud.