Chapter 3: The fear of succeeding
Doctors in the past have told you that going to sleep at a decent hour will help you stop being sad all the time and you thought there was something to that because you used to find yourself awake at 3am staring at Gamzee's pictures telling him all about your day and the things he wasnt doing because he wouldn't come home. And now you've forcefully held him in bed with you in this time loop like holding someone's head underwater but instead of breathing in the ocean they're breathing you in. you've got enough time now to last you a lifetime so all the time you spend sleeping is time you don't spend talking to him and that's something you can't risk.
You see you've lived through about sixteen May Fourteenth's now and you have to admit you're getting slightly tired of the blaring smoke alarm and the runny eggs every two months when you reset the cycle but you're not ready. You see you have a theory that if you keep doing this soon enough you;ll have lived a lifetime with him
If given the chance your months with Gamzee will equal a year and then two, three even and you will never get old and you will never die. In a perfect world, which this time loop is you can have anything you want and none of it matters because at the end of the two months all you have to do is make sure Gamzee never reaches the middle of June and nobody gets hurt.
Today, you've built sand castles by the water and you've kissed waves worthy of their own stories. He isnt that talkative but he says he can build better sand castles than anyone on earth and you believe him.
You can't remember for the life of you why you both never actually did any of this the first time were you so busy doing that you never took that roadtrip he suggested to all your friends? What was more important than watching the expression of joy on his face when you ran around the roof with sparklers just because it was a wednesday?
And now that so much time has passed in the memory loop you think maybe you were just fighting or working; things that don't matter.
It doesn't matter now, you're starting to smile again and you're hearing your laugh again for the first time in a long time.
In the morning when you wake up, you expect it to be june sixth again, the day Gamzee bought the car which you fully expect but instead when you wake up, he's gone and there's a note scribbled by your bed that he'll be right back.
Initially you don't think much of it, you walk to the kitchen and sit down at the table staring out at nothing but then it hits you, it hits you all at once with bare feet and sensitive 6am hearing, the phone ring. You freeze up, you havent felt like this in a long time. For awhile after Gamzee's death you used to flinch at the sound of the phone ring because it reminded you of the one you got calling you down to the crash site. But the more you thought about it there was no longer a reason to be afraid of the phone beause you knew that the worst possible thing had already happened so there was nothing they could tell you could be worse than that day.
Nevertheless you pick up the phone expecting it to be your friends telling you something funny or what they got up to last night but instead you hear
"Is this Tavros Nitram?"
"Yes?"
" I'm sorry there's been an accident..."
"It's not today, that didn't happen today!" You yell and throw the phone on the table.
With your heart racing you run into your bedroom to find the number to Dr. Maryam's office, the card is taped to the mirror and you dial her frantically, misdialing seceral times before hearing the ring on the other line.
"Tavros.." She says in a stern motherly way like when a child does something bad.
"The accident didn't happen today, its supposed to happen two weeks from now, I cant, I cant go down there..." You're hands are shaking as you try to get dressed at the same time to get down to her office and make her change it.
"Why can't you? You've seen what's at the end of the rainbow before right? So why cant you see it twice? Did you not live through the same May fourteenths and were you tired of his voice in the morning?"
You don't have any answers, sure you've seen him dead before, and you've lived through many days but this is one you can't trump.
"You know I won't go don't you? You know I refuse look at the light gone from his eyes don't you?!" You scream.
"So, you're going to leave him down there alone? Gamzee deserves for no one to come be with him while he's laying on that road is that what you're saying?" She raises her voice an octave.
She's right; he doesnt deserve it and you're tired of fighting it.
"I'll go." You whisper
"You can do it?" She sounds a bit skeptical.
"I can." You nod and let the phone slip out of your hand.
In the mirror you get dressed, neatly buttoning up your shirt and combing your hair. You leave a long note for your friends incase they show up looking for you both.
You could drive to the site, but you can barely walk so you wander aimlessly down the street until you get to the sound of sirens and blue and red lights flashing and splashing in the reflection of your glasses.
You walk right up to the mangled piece of purple hell car, and you lean down to touch his blood on the road. When they bring you over to him, you wont move until they agree to let you see him right then and there and suddenly they think they don't have the right to stop you.
They pull back the sheet, and there's your boy, the one with the big shiny eyes and smile that's comparable to nothing else but pure brilliance.
You feel your insides turn to liquid at the sight of his bruised and swollen face and you lean down to kiss his cheek because you have done everything you can and you still lost him. Because you kept skipping the week that Gamzee died his death moved up a few weeks so it would happen just the way it was supposed to, and subconsciously you knew it would because time couldn't wait on you forever could it?
After the police talk to you for a few minutes you wave your grieving friends and his family away from you and start walking away from the screams of the cars and the people.
You used to think any place could be magic if you wished for it hard enough, you thought if peter pan could never had to grow up and the magic would never die there that some how all your hoping would make it true for you you're not Peter Pan.
There is a bridge close to your father's house that used to link the broken pieces of your family from the city he lived to the city where you and your mother lived; a bridge that brought Gamzee from one city to your city and closer to you. You run your fingers along the rusty railing of the bridge, it's effortless for you to pull yourself up to stand on it.
You used to think flying was impossible, and that fear was monster's under beds but fear is waking up alone and screaming on the inside but smiling on the outside. Fear is being afraid of yourself when you lose control but at the same time liking your madness.
They forced you to let go of Gamzee, and you did and now you're forcing them to let go of you. Yeah you could recite a lot of the stuff you learned in therapy to yourself but you're not looking to be saved here you're done with disapointments entirely.
"Gamzee, I can live through a million May fourteenth's with you, and I can put just the right water to sand ration together to support your sand castles but I can't be alone. You're a bastard for dying, you hear me? you're a bastard for not waiting for me to wake up so I could go with you. And I love you..." You lower your head a little "...endlessly in fact."
If someone had asked you two years ago where you thought you would be two years from then you're sure you would have jokingly said still working at the cofee shop, if only thingswere still that simple.
It's easy for your first foot to slip off the railing, its easier still for you to lean forward and leave solid ground. The hard part if anything is the feeling going down where your breath catches in your throat and for a split second you're scared.
Fear is a funny thing, because even though you are scared you can't wait to find the bottom. Your head is cradled by jagged rocks and your body is learning the language of mangled bones and bleeding; fluent even in the body language of a dying boy.
Waves, waves wonderful enough to have their own story are crashing into your mangled body and who knew it felt just as good riding on top of them as being pulled under them into a water coffin.
May twenty first.