14. Emmanuel

The shivering dew. The crystalized wood, curved macabrely around the body she'd forsaken. The glass of the walls of the greenhouse.

The piano.

Beverly reached out, but the keys didn't reply to her pressure. She gazed at the inky crickets, frozen in an eternal waiting line. Her father tried to play as Peter Lake walked by.

O, come.

He was hesitant, mathematical. He was a journalist, not a poet. He had no passion left to spare.

O, come.

Beverly shuddered off the glossy black wood. The string, tense, maroon, trembling. Peter Lake had stopped breathing in the hallway.

Emmanuel.

Little Willa was still in the tent, seated on the unmade bed. Her feet hanging weakly from the pillar of mattresses. She hadn't brushed her hair and it thundered erratically around the whiteness of her face. That adorable little face…

The governess was guarding the shell she'd left behind and waiting for the proper services to arrive. She was crying, but making no sound.

Cecil was hiding all too well.

Beverly smelled rust, ice, ash, fingers. New York never found itself scarce of coins. But she had no time to do a proper search. She was light on her feet, waving elegantly in the mist, but she had more important business to attend to. She kept herself rooted to the Coheeries, like the corpses in the greenhouse. A dead spring, idiotically expecting a resurrection.

She's no longer there, that is just a body.

Flames flickered somewhere downstairs. In a room of darkness and smoke. Its throne, too often occupied, now vacant. Oranges licking at the worn-out leather.

Isaac Penn's eyes rolled away from the window, seated before the piano. And Beverly plastered herself to the back of his neck. She crawled in goosebumps up his arms.

I wish you could hear me now. And heed my words.

She'd promised to be Peter's hero. Crickets were stuck in their jails of blackened paper.

"You couldn't help yourself, could you?"

Isaac Penn was slamming into the keys and screaming and the whole ordeal nearly made the house tremble.

"My daughter is dead!"

Water dropped from the ceiling and Beverly feared that the sky itself could crumble at the thunder of her father's voice.

Father…

Peter Lake hung limp as a sock puppet from the collar of his shirt, from her father's hands. His face was contorted in panic and terror.

Did you know that there are people in the Coheeries who don't even know you have more than one child?

He was weeping again. His body twitched, rabbit-like, as if he were snared in snakes of wire. A field mouse between the fangs of a cat. He was taller than her. Or, at least, taller than she'd been, a few hours before. Now he'd been reduced to a shadow of dust. Grey, black, brown. She was everywhere and he was so alone…

Did you ever speak of me? No… I think you did. Perhaps, then, you merely excluded the detail that I was yours… One more drop of your blood. One more piece of your heart, taken to be shattered.

But he spoke, he spoke loudly.

"Honor."

And his brow twisted in a flash of retrieved rage. And Beverly listened to him. And Isaac did, too.

In a way, I pity you for this. I understand it, despite it all. You loved Mother very much.

She had already seen his lips moving, long before he walked into the room… but she hadn't heard the words.

"You couldn't even acknowledge her as your own…"

But I'm hurt by this… And Peter speaks the truth.

She hadn't had any way of foreseeing the misery in this voice. It barely resembled a human voice at this point.

I wish we could have spoken about this, and sorted it out. Before I could go. That our last conversation would have ended with us seeing eye to eye. I would have liked that…

"Beverly knew more than I did, more than I ever could… She needed me, and I listened… I listened, because no one else would…"

And I also wish, now, that I could compel you to be gentler… In general, gentler…

His voice, a mound of china shards she found herself stepping on. Every word, a cut. Each breath, her own.

To your last child… Poor Willa… She deserves better than this…

She slipped into him and tried to stay there, attempted to bleed into him and calm him down, but he was breathing too fast, and she had nothing to cling to, handless, boneless. She could do little but be carried by sunlight and air. She ran circles in the white of his eyes.

And to Peter, too… I know you barely know him… I know he's not exactly what you wished I'd find…

Isaac Penn was letting go. He had no more words to say.

But he's a good man… And I love him very much…

Peter trembled as he escaped the piano room. Beverly trailed behind him. A whistle formed by the tail of his coat. The rays peeking out from the open windows.

I love you too, Dad.

But she did stay with Isaac, too. A single breadcrumb, dropped into his hair. Teary sunshine sliding under the wrinkles around his eyes.

I don't want to resent you… It will only weigh me down… And I'm already underwater. I can only sink so far.

She kissed his cheek. She was a puff of the breeze. A subtle flicker of smoke, snaking up from the piano box.

Please be gentler…

And Beverly tiptoed downstairs in droplets of white-gold. And the curtains waved a little as she traveled. And the white horse neighed and she interpreted as a greeting. Peter Lake's face had gone from purple to grey.

He was whispering, now, "Be gentle to her…"

And at some point the white horse stopped walking and Peter spoke to it numbly. And then they kept going, slowly, back to the city.

And Beverly didn't forsake them just yet.

Be gentle…

Cause Cecil was still nowhere to be seen.

Author's Note: To anyone who is here today, thank you for reading.

Here is a shorter chapter than usual. This is not my best, I fear, but... I do like the words Beverly says to Isaac. I'm happy with how that particular section turned out.

I revisited Chapter 79 of ASITL for this, naturally, and I feel like it adds a more sympathetic light to Isaac, to know that Beverly not only doesn't resent him for what she heard at the New Year's Eve party (which, as you can see if you revisit Chapter 79 of ASITL, Peter does not do - in fact, he does the very opposite, he is constantly thinking about it in the chapters I wrote afterwards), but also continues to love her father, unconditionally.

I feel like I wrote Isaac to be a little too antagonistic in my re-interpretation of the movie (not as an antagonist, just antagonistic), so I want to fix that in Part 2. Which is this. "The Flight of the Magpies." Look forward to more Isaac character development, later. Cause I do think I was too harsh on him and I want to explore him more, now that I have his daughter's POV. And now that Peter has left the Coheeries. Cause Beverly will not leave the Coheeries just yet. Since I write her to be a part of air and sunlight (I have a lot of fun writing about and thinking of the ways in which she "touches" the other characters, that one part where I imagined that she could crawl in actual goosebumps up Isaac's arm made me very happy :3), she can be in more than one place at once. She is in Isaac's hair, in the white of Peter's eyes, shining down on Willa's face, blazing down on the governess, etc.

Like I said: I love writing her as shapeless, it opens up so many possibilities for me. I feel like I'm being extra creative with Beverly's behavior as an entity. So yay, me. *pats own shoulder XD

Lastly: I decided to finish this chapter faster than usual, too, cause... today has been a terrible day. For many reasons. I'm better now that I've written this. Now that it's almost 1 in the morning. Now that I've written a lengthy Author's Note and felt good about my own writing. But... I was extremely sad an hour ago.

Yes, as always, it has to do with my family. My brother, to be more specific. Well... more like, my brother's effect on my parents' mental health and behavior. I'm scared for them. I'm getting actually scared...

Most days I'm alright, for real. It's terrifying, how typical most of these explosions of sadness have become for me, in the span of just eight months. But, to be honest, I haven't been doing completely okay for a while. I've had worse moments, and better moments, but overall, once in a while, I have a day like this. I've been open about it in my Author's Notes before.

So that's why I hurried onto here and began to write like mad. I finished Chapter 14 in the blink of an eye.

I have always said that I wish I had a Peter Lake in my life. That I knew, for certain, that a person like him exists. Or that a message like the message this movie sends (that our lives are always meaningful, that there will always be at least one person that is destined just for us - a savior, even, or someone to save), is real. That it can actually happen. I wish I could be sure, in some way, that a miracle like this is feasible. That lives truly are meaningful. That the world hasn't gone to sh*t just yet... That a character like Peter Lake exists. That the message he carries is not just a dream.

So I believe that's why I so love to write from his POV. And from Beverly's POV. Cause... I exist.