Hello y'all! Long time no see.
Thank you all who've sent me messages asking how I'm doing and thank you all who've kept reading this fic and writing reviews. I have no words to thank you enough, you can never know how much it means to me.
My life is the same misery as always, you know it all already, depression, anxiety, you name it. And this whole pandemic thing hasn't made things any easier. :( Yet I've been unable to turn any of that into writing - even if my life is eerily similar to Fay's, with all her problems (and I don't even have Matsuda to cheer me up, sigh.)
I'm trying to get back into writing now. It would really help me to deal with all that's going on in my life. Keep your fingers crossed, my friends! Let's hope there is light in the end of the tunnel (and not Light Yagami, I might add)!
Anyhow, here we go:
Fay stood under the oak tree, the wind blowing right through her, making her black skirt dance around her legs. It was singing in the dead grass, in the empty and bare branches of the ancient trees all around, the calling of winter, of dead things, of memories almost forgotten.
She had dirt on her shoes, and she was chilled to her bones. It wasn't just the wind though, not just the february weather - that kind of cold she could keep out with jackets and scarves and woollen socks. It was another kind of cold. The one that sneaks on you like a shadow, unwarned, uncalled for, and makes a home in a broken heart, like an uninvited guest that never leaves.
"Mom, it's so cold!" Lily's voice broke through Fay's darkened thoughts. "Can we go, please?"
"In a minute, sweetie." Fay replied, letting go of Lily's hand. "First the candles."
"Again?" she made a face.
"Yes, again. It's for your father, honey. This is how we remember him."
Fay knelt down, took a candle from her pocket and a lighter from another. She placed the candle in the mud, in front of the simple headstone, that had barely any writing on it. Just the letter L, and the dates of his birth and death. October 31st 1979, November 5th, 2004.
Such a short time. Such a short life.
Oh why can't it be me, lying there in the bed of roots and leaves? Why can't it be me, instead of him?
But her hands didn't even shake as she lit the candle, her hands so used to this task already. The tiny flame flickered in the wind, like her life, her worn but resilient spirit.
"Mom?"
"Yeah, hon?" Fay turned to look at Lily, the tiny miracle that was her daughter, and her heart ached with love as it always did, when she looked at her.
"Are you mad at me?" she turned her huge, green eyes up, the wind blew her black hair around her pale face.
"Why would I be mad at you, sweetie?" Fay replied, and stuffed the lighter back to her pocket.
"'Cause I don't really remember Dad."
How could you honey? He was dead before you were born.
But Fay shook that thought off. She knew better than that.
"Oh, sure you do. The man with bare feet and a lot of hair? You told me you'd seen him."
"Yeah, but not in a loooong time."
That made Fay give out a sigh.
A couple of months. A long time for a four-year-old. It would soon be so, that L's rare visit's to Lily's life would fade into a dream, into a memory, into nothingness. And Fay would be left alone with her longing.
Alone, truly alone now.
L was gone, forever gone. The candle on his grave site was all that was left, the ashes she had laid on that grave five years ago, now turned into atoms of this hill, of the oak tree, of the countless flowers that would bloom on this hill when the spring came.
No one is truly ever gone, Fay. The atoms of our bodies have been created in the hearts of dying stars. And when we die, they will be undone again, they will become part of this world, of the cycle of life. When a dead body decomposes, the carbon atoms of the proteins, of the DNA and other molecules will join with oxygen, and thus carbon dioxide is created. And that carbon dioxide will provide life for the trees, for any green plant there is. Death is hardly the end. It is simply a change, an opportunity for something else to be born.
Even if Fay heard the words in her mind, clear as day, she knew that wasn't L's voice, not really. It was just a memory, a shadow of something he had once said to her, when standing on this very hill, watching a funeral. It must have been A's or B's. She couldn't remember.
Gods, there had been so many of them, and there were more to come. Roger had arranged for Mello and Matt's remains to be buried here too - they would hold a small ceremony in a couple of days. Fay wasn't looking forward to that. She hated funerals, but then again, who didn't?
Watching the flickering flame, the one single candle in front of the headstone, Fay couldn't help but to wonder how many of the Wammy's kids would end up fertilizing the trees and grass and flowers of this hill.
Would she lay here once as well? Or Lily?
That thought broke her heart.
Enough. Enough of this already. Kira is gone and Lily is safe. I cannot spend the rest of my days waiting for the next bad thing to happen.
But it wasn't that easy to shed off feelings. She let out a sigh, that felt like breathing out her soul.
Some days just were like this, she knew. Some days she woke up with longing and sorrow that felt like it was rooted deep in the marrow of her bones, and it stayed there from dawn till dusk and she just couldn't shake it.
Those were the days she walked up the hill, with a candle and a lighter, and stood by the carved stone until her feet felt numb and her tears ran out. This was what she'd been doing for the past five years - this was the place where not only L lay buried, but her tears and sorrows too, her secrets and her dreams.
The dream of the life she should've had with L. That had been promised to her, but now would never be.
Sometimes she felt like she was dead already too, her bones the ones that decomposed in the ground, and the little creatures that crawled in the roots of the oak tree were feeding on her blood.
"Mom?"
Lily's voice made her start, made her dig her way up from the darkness.
"Yeah, sweetie?"
"I'm gonna be late." she pouted, her hands stuffed deep in her pockets. "From my riding lesson. And I don't wanna be, it's so much fun."
"Yeah, alright." Fay shivered, the cold wind had cut through all of her clothes, and she hardly felt her fingers. It was a good thing she had forced Lily to wear a warmer set of clothing. "I have somewhere to be as well."
"Aren't you gonna see me ride?" Lily looked up to her, as they started their way down the hill, her tiny hand in Fay's.
"Not today, hon. Don't you remember? I have to go to the airport."
"Oh. Your friend is gonna go home."
"Yup." Fay replied, revealing no emotion. "That's right. And what kind of a friend would I be, if I didn't even take him to the airport?"
"A baaad one." Lily stated in a very serious tone. "A very bad friend."
"You're right - and that's not what I want to be. So let's get you ready for your riding lesson, and I'll go while you are there. I'll be back for dinner, and then it's going to be just the two of us again, okay? Just like it was before."
"You promise?" Lily asked, her honesty cutting through Fay's heart like a dagger. But she couldn't blame her, not really. All kids want their parents to be exclusively theirs - and she had left Lily for six weeks. Fay knew she'd be paying for that abandonment for a long time to come.
It really had been too much to hope for, that Lily would have accepted Matsuda immediately. That they could just hop on to be a happy family, like nothing of the things they'd lived through, had ever happened.
"I promise." she said. "I cross my heart and hope to die."
As they walked down the path leading back to Wammy's, Lily's fingers gripped on hers like vines that grew on a tree branch.
You know the drill - time to write a review, guys.
