...Dealing with ADHD at work... soooooo frustrating, srsly. Tooo many things in your head and you can't focus at any of them properly
Anyways, probably last update before Christmas, so... Merry Christmas everyone! \o/
Twenty-Eight
The house breathes memories in and out as I step out of the car. Some of them are from Emma, and they sting like alcohol and fire on an open wound. Hiccup's hand slips into mine after he makes his way to me around the car. I'm standing still for too long.
"Come on." He says, giving himself the first few steps to the entrance.
It is nearly impossible not to laugh at Nana's Overland comic welcome reaction. Dressed on loose boring-pinkish robes, fluffy pantuffs with ears jumping out of the toes and glasses almost as big as her face, the cheeks pulled down towards Earth gravity making her look like an overly-grown bulldog.
Yep, time and snow has affected her as well.
"Jack my dear!" She says, grabbing Hiccup's face with cat-like claws and kissing his chubby cheeks.
"Nana, I'm here, that's my friend Hiccup." My eyebrows furrow and I try to hide the wish to laugh at Hiccup's stupefied expression.
Only then her eyes pierce through the glasses and recognize the unrecognizable. "Oh, I knew there was something different…" She mutters to herself mostly, walking past him with slow unbalanced steps.
"Can't we just step inside first?" My dad yells after grabbing his last bag from the car. "It's freezing out here."
We all rush inside the house, the few snowflakes falling from my shoulders as I take off my coats and scarfs.
As soon as the lights in the house makes sense, I see how Nana Overland has been spending her time. Knitting. Over a hundred furrow nets are spread throughout the house, on the coffee tables, over the kitchen's island, the dinning room tables and at every possible utensils she can cover with multicolored threads, like a spider's web. Eventually, she'll have knitted enough to cover the roof itself.
The chitchat between dad/Nana (his mom), is divided between the news (not Emma, apparently it is too much for her to take all at once), the new acquaintance (Hiccup, she still cannot believe that it is his actual name), where is (my mom) Mary, how I have grown and…
"Where is Emma?" She asks.
The thing about getting old is that even your brain has an expiration date. And hers is on the red right now.
Because when dad explains her what happened, she remembers the funeral. Somehow she has gotten the news when they sank her body in the earth, but eventually, she forgot it. The memory lost somewhere in that thread of knitted blankets. If I dig up hard enough, I could snatch the memory and push it back to her head.
But instead, by hearing 'Emma', Hiccup's brain settings turns from 'awkward introduction program' to 'Emma's alert program'. His hand slips to mine and he says clearly for me to show the garden I used to play.
I nod once, and my feet follow his commands before my own. I don't even want to go to that stupid garden, but I need to get out of here.
As soon as we slide the glass door to see the snow-covered garden, several stone gnomes guarding the grass. I remember how Emma used to sing to them, they would clap and cheer and ask for encores, but only for her to see.
Only then I notice how heavily I'm breathing. The air is made of iron and my lungs are made of paper. Any minute now, my heart might just stop.
"Just breathe." Hiccup says softly. He makes it sound so easy that I would love to hit him, but I can't even do what he says.
Emma is here, even that I cannot see her.
Hiccup's fingers grab the skin on my cheeks, forcing me to look at him, straight into his eyes. And just for a second, I forget everything.
He leans in to kiss my lips, and that is the first time it doesn't leave me breathless. It makes me breathe again.
"Better now?" He asks, smoothly.
"Yeah." I reply, looking from his eyes to his cheeks, his lips. Everything feels quiet for a second.
He sits next to me; Hell, I did not even know I was on my knees, next to one of those scary gnomes.
"How are you feeling?"
"I don't know." I say, and honestly, I don't. "I feel as if Emma was here, Hic." He keeps himself quiet, only listening. "I feel empty, but at the same time it feels so heavy, I don't even know how I feel." There is something stuck in my throat, because soon I'll start to tear up. "I feel like if she was coming out from behind those trees at any moment, and she'll be screaming for me to go and play with her, but if I go then she'll kill me too." Yep, the tears came. "I am tired. I am so tired of this." The tears only slide down my face, but it's not that mess of sobs and cries, I just stay here. Staring at the trees and letting Hiccup hear every thought that comes to my mind. "I don't know what to do anymore. I don't want to keep pleasing dad and I don't want him to hate me. And I don't want to hate myself as well."
To that, Hiccup finally hugs me, but not pulling me to him, but around my shoulders as if he needed support as well.
"I just want all of this to end." I tell him.
"I know." He says, quietly. "What do you want to do? Like, right here, and right now."
I force a dry laugh. "I just want to collapse, right here and right now."
I can feel his gaze over me. "Then do it. Just… do it with me."
And so we just let go of gravity and right here, right now, our bodies fall backwards on the snowed grass. It's cold, but also soft.
All the weight falls over me as well, but it doesn't crush me as I thought it would. I hold Hiccup next to me, so his arms are laced around my neck as my hands hold him by his waist.
