15. Hatred
CW: I wrote a conversation near the end where a character shrugs
off another character's mental health issues as "optional pain." I intend for this moment to be
reflective of the damage that grief can have on one's empathy, so this is
NOT meant to be interpreted as a positive thing to say - but just in case you're
sensitive to this discussion, reader discretion is advised.
"Why are you stopping, Athansor?"
The white horse was named Athansor.
Beverly read his name in the whiteness of the sky. The shimmering flick of a coin. The burnt-out golden haze that gleamed off its eyes.
Cecil… Where was Cecil?
"Do you expect me to put up with this forever?"
Peter Lake's black eyes were lost to a fog of silver mist. His dark clothes screamed into the whiteness of his surroundings. He whispered to the horse but his voice carried no ice, only tiredness.
"You abandoned my life…"
My life…
Oh, Peter…
"You let Beverly go…"
He wobbled now, soundlessly, and he watched the sky as the stones piled on into the clouds. Buildings, upon buildings. Shattered glass, cloaking the sky that had once enthralled her.
Beverly Penn, a star. A scream. A hypocrite.
She had awoken in the sky that evening, her prayers answered at last. She'd been whisked off the storm. The wind. The rain had stopped splatting hypnotically around her.
Say "America".
And here she was now. She had refused to spend any more than a handful of hours in her throne of starfire.
She'd forsaken her seat and walked back down, to the summer-starved kingdom she'd never wanted to rule.
Returned on her own, by choice. She'd put on emerald earrings and jumped into the sea and let the depth swallow her whole. Sunken back to the city that howled in her honor.
Burn in Hell, drown in Heaven.
American water, rain, fallen, crystallized into frost, clinging to Peter's brown-green coat, his vest, his hair.
A breadcrumb, a whisper of sundust. The carriage's curtains were thick and maroon. For a while she genuinely struggled to take a peek inside.
Though barely, she managed. Wisps of glassdust and winter smoke.
She was a tinge of orange on Willa's eyelashes. Pink and cream, on her gloved little hands, a fairy of nothingness. A mind-numbing emptiness. Invisible.
She threw a handful of mist in her father's direction, tried to slither a cold breath down his neck. Foolishly trying to indulge his gaze, which was stubbornly cast away from the child seated beside him.
Be gentle to her…
Peter had whispered this, as he returned to New York… Beverly wished she could answer him. She wished he knew not to see things so simply.
Gentleness should be saved for others who were in greater need of it.
Beverly was dead. That, which was being driven away. That, which was being taken such good care of. A shell.
She was everywhere else but there. It didn't matter to her, how gently her empty carcass ought to be handled.
Be gentle…
She wished the living were treated as gently as the dead. Now that she had forsaken her heartbeat, she understood this human unfairness.
But her father was a journalist, not a poet. And try as he might to achieve such lifeless stares, such colorless irises, he had never been dead.
Be gentle to your child…
And the curtains were thick. And the carriage was a little unsteady, on the back. And Isaac only winced when little Willa spoke.
"Peter is gone."
Peter Lake was getting off Athansor's back. He walked, empty-handed, into Grand Central Station. Cecil was not there.
"Peter is gone," Willa whispered again.
And this time she received a reply.
"I know…"
Isaac Penn's ghostly voice rang as hollow as the body they were traveling with.
"Is…"
Willa hesitated, then she licked her lips, sniffed, her delicate cheeks tensing ever so slightly, and managed to finish her question:
"Is he coming back?"
"Why should he come back? Beverly is dead."
Beverly is dead.
How many times had these news been shared, in just a few hours? How useful were these repetitions?
Say "America."
American water cloudied the city. Snow was nothing more than crystalized rain.
Willa was silent for a moment.
"Is he coming to the funeral?"
Yes, baby, he is.
It would be snowing thickly. And Peter Lake would be there, though far away, without a hat, without an umbrella, bone-colored flakes descending upon the darkness of his coat.
He would wave a hand. And Willa would wave back. His black eyes would be vacant. A city, abandoned to ruin. Night turned to decay.
"I don't know."
Beverly clung to Peter as he climbed to the attic. She felt heavier here, in these slender labyrinths of stone and woodsmoke. She was a cough of dust, pregnant with tepid sunshine.
Don't disappear…
She'd begged him…
She'd been so afraid of losing him, just the night before. That he might vanish into empty air between her arms. A stupid fear, really. Because they'd been latched together, limbs entwined, bodies cocooned into one another, the thickness of his heartbeat against her cheek. Peter Lake had spoken to her gently.
And his voice had been like the smell of black tea. Or chocolate. Or champagne. Beautiful… All of him… He was a beautiful reality…
Don't vanish into silence…
And she'd left. She'd disappeared.
You'll be seen again, but not by him.
She'd become her own fear.
He will never see you or feel you as you are…
She clung to him dearly, however way she could.
Dust. Sunlight. His raspy breathing. The rusty air he feasted upon.
Dust. Dust…
… as long as you're up here and he's still down there.
"I don't really care what he does," Isaac said, then.
And Beverly plastered her shapeless hand to the glass through which her father stared out. Willa was crying but making no sound.
Peter Lake would laugh under a deluge of snow and tears would be running down his face, and Beverly didn't understand why…
"Peter loves Beverly," Willa murmured. She clenched her little jaw, black eyes flaring through a sheen of unshed tears. And she murmured, then: "You should care what he does…"
And Athansor would be running to and fro, and men would fly as he galloped, and the city, oh, the whole city would tremble…
"I'm sorry, Willa…"
Dust…
The smell of paint…
"But I'm tired of caring… I'm tired…"
Breaths… In, out…
That face she adored. With its lines and its maps, all faded, the muscles numb and purple… That shapeless black hair…
He would be sinking…
Peter…
"Dad," Willa whispered.
"Peter isn't sick," Isaac Penn muttered. "He has no right to my concern… His pain is optional and so is whatever he chooses to do with it…"
He would sink…
Peter!
"Beverly loved him," Willa whimpered. "I love him… He- He helped us… He fixed the furnace… He saved you…"
Peter!
"I've watched like a fool as death came for your mother and your sister," Isaac murmured back. "I've known death… I don't trust death… I won't pity a man who goes to it all on his own…"
'His pain is optional.'
A journalist was no poet…
In that case, so is yours…
Beverly desperately wanted to shout. But the universe was a rusty spoon. A galaxy, a cog. The smell of metal plagued her nostrils.
So are the many things you choose to do with this pain…
Peter Lake knew machinery. He understood. He would speak, if he were in her shoes. He would speak…
I said I wouldn't resent you, and I don't…
Willa winced again and Isaac Penn hesitated. He stared out the window. The carriage wobbled.
I just fear you…
Beverly watched her father's lips move before he found his words anew. And he spoke and she heard him. And Willa looked away into her own window.
"I don't hate him… I'm just older than him. And tired. So tired…"
I fear what might come of this…
Peter was lain down upon a hut with a baby blanket coiled in his arms. He stared, owl-eyed, at the walls.
"I don't hate him," Isaac Penn repeated.
I fear for Peter… And for Willa… And for you…
He clenched his jaw, his brow furrowed, and then he said:
"But I wouldn't have stayed in the furnace room, had he been the one lingering… Had our roles been switched… I know it makes me sound cowardly… but I'm not proud enough to pretend that I would have done otherwise… I'm too old and too sad… and too tired, to concern myself with a chosen death…"
A new hesitation.
Peter's pain is not optional…
Dust. Ash. Snow…
Neither is your own…
Her father would sleep before the fireplace. Ember crystals raining delicately upon his face. His papercut-ridden fingers stiff with exhaustion.
Only hatred is optional…
Willa would find him. She would not even try to wake him.
And hatred is an option that arises from pain…
His hands carried the scars of fruitless labors. A newspaper born out of his desperation to save a doomed daughter and to support a doomed wife.
Don't be hateful, Father.
Beverly had no eyes to weep with. No moans of pain to burrow within her throat. Gentleness needed to be reserved for the living.
Please… Please…
Yet again, Isaac Penn said: "I don't hate him…"
Cecil…
His old voice, torn to pieces. Wet paper. Spilled ink.
I need you, Cecil…
Willa glanced at him numbly. She reached out one of her tiny hands and touched his sleeve. Valleys of sadness shone across the darkness of her gaze.
I need someone to talk to…
Beverly was a gust of wind. She let Peter inhale her and forced herself to be pleased by this alone.
I need someone who'll hold Peter's hand for me…
Author's Note: To anyone who is here today, thank you for reading.
I hope I didn't disorient you here, maybe I was a little too ambitious and got ahead of myself XD Cause I was trying to connect 1) Beverly's fragmented conscience, which accompanies Willa and Isaac as they take her dead body in the carriage, as well as Peter as he returns to the city (ie. chapters 80-81 of "A Star in the Lake"), and 2) Beverly's visions of the future. I hinted at the fact that Cecil can "see" the future, so Beverly has the same ability. I don't want her to know everything that's going to happen next, but I do want her to know what is awaiting Peter in the near future, cause it's a particular route I want her to go through. That she is helplessly watching him go down a path she knows will end in him being thrown from the Brooklyn Bridge. I will talk about this in the next chapter, I think. I want to explore this.
I was a bit hesitant in adding that last part of Isaac and Willa's conversation, at first. Because I think that it's a little triggering for him to be so cold toward Peter's current emotional state. I hope I didn't offend anyone with this.
I said I wanted to paint Isaac in a more sympathetic light, cause I made him out to be a little too cold in ASITL, and I want to present him as a tragic figure here. And despite how cold I made him out to sound with his dismissal of Peter's mental health, I think it could add a lot of potential depth to the way that Isaac deals with pain. In how he views people who "choose" to go through pain.
"Your pain is optional" is actually something that I jokingly tell some of my friends from time to time, when they are over-stressed with college work and/or challenging tasks that they actively choose to participate in or to worry about too much. I decided to use this phrase here in a more critical light. A sort of subtle "self-critique" of the true meaning behind some of the things I say as jokes.
Because, no, pain isn't optional. Hence what I made Beverly "say" in the end of this chapter. Pain is not optional. Peter's pain is not optional, he has every reason to be hurt - and so does Isaac. This is what I was trying to do in this chapter: to show the complicated reactions one can have to pain, or to a situation like this. I wasn't trying to paint Isaac negatively, just to link the coldness I gave him in ASITL to the pain he has gone through. Therefore, I wanted his indifference to be read as tragic. Because I have realized over time that most human flaws have some tragic explanation behind them - loneliness, betrayal, loss, etc.
And, in my own way, I have known this. This is why I love the character of Peter Lake and the message of "Winter's Tale" so much. I have already pointed out that Peter goes through pain but never chooses to turn himself away from his own soul. He never loses his humanity. So he never chooses to turn hateful. That is the beauty of his character and why I feel such a tenderness and admiration for him.
In the movie, he never actually considers a darker path, not as far as we see, but in TFOTM, well... maybe I change that. But who knows. I mostly want him to have a nice dynamic with Cecil, and we're gonna get to that soon, I promise! I know I'm going slowly but I get excited writing this, I love it too much :3
I have lived through pain and loss of my own, and one of the results I have witnessed from these experiences is bitterness - like the disdain that Isaac feels here toward Peter. How he doesn't want to worry about Peter (by the way, I specifically made sure that it was clear that this is Isaac's choice - he chooses not to worry, to spare himself the pain, but his indifference is a choice, one he makes to protect himself, not because he truly feels like this), who is actively "walking" towards a death that Isaac has already experienced twice.
So I hope that, despite how brutal I wrote Isaac's dialogue here, that the motives I tried to give him, as well as the tragic reasonings behind his opinions, are understandable, even relatable to some people. I don't want to be too hard on Isaac anymore, but at the same time, I don't want to paint him like a perfect human being who completely changes his demeanor from being cold to being incredibly warm. I'll take it slowly. As always.
Again: thank you for being so lovely, so patient, and for checking out my fanfics about this beautiful and underrated movie. Thank you. See you again soon!