18. Senseless whispers

Tiptoeing, wink to wink, and light to light, Beverly trembled back downstairs.

Peter Lake had yet to eat, yet to sleep.

Cecil had yet to fulfill his promise.

All will be well in the end.

New York rustled in the breeze like a house of cards. The Coheeries glimmered in sheets of diamond snowfall.

Little Willa's heartbeat had numbed down with slumber. She wasn't as sad, now, as she dreamed. She had but a handful of hours to wade through an ocean of silence and muffle out the truth.

And still she'd wake in the morning, every morning, and know she was alone, without a sister, without a mother. Only with…

The journalist. Seated before the flames. Asleep, too.

Beverly saw him as he was. As he'd be, some time later. She didn't quite know when. Willa would find him. She wouldn't even try to wake him.

All will be well…

Were dreams little pools, too? Lakes for her to dip her toes in?

Were there any other surfaces she could reflect herself on? This green mirror that received her… She hated the color of this dress…

Beverly Penn let her father inhale her. His breath was thinner than Peter's. Cooler. Weaker.

Don't leave her alone.

She longed to speak. She shivered with greed. She'd told Peter Lake that they had time to talk about everything, and anything, and here she was, afloat, unseen, a plague, contamination, poisoning the oxygen.

The little girl, with her tiny gloves and black eyes. The thief in the attic of Grand Central Station. The journalist, the widower, the father of a dead girl.

Don't abandon Willa, Dad.

She was their illness, a pain in their chests. She was in their breathing. She consumed them and they consumed her.

You let me go. You cut your own pain out. But spare Willa's pain…

Beverly drew loops of moonglow on Peter Lake's shoulders. She traced the shadowy labyrinth etched into the wrinkles of his shirt.

"I never told you I dreamed of you…"

She burned, setting herself ablaze, and she engulfed Isaac Penn's fallen eyelids. His pale skin, his white hair. The leather of his chair.

Peter Lake's eyes were growing blacker around the eyelashes. As if the ink in his irises were bleeding out into the skin of the eyelids.

In these quiet hours, Beverly found out that she could speak to him, in some form that harbored no pain.

"I took your hands… You were lain back, like… like a puppy… With your eyes shut tight… Laughing…"

She realized it didn't hurt to speak to him of trivial matters. Dreams, for example. Feelings. And places. Places they'd been.

"I also never told you how much I loved… heh, your terrible attempts to sneak up on me, every morning…"

Things that couldn't affect the path he'd been so adamantly drawn into.

"You're a lot of things, Peter… But you're anything but subtle… You're a terrible liar… You cannot pretend you're not there, when… when…"

Water. Salt. The taste of him.

Beverly closed her eyes and let herself forget that she was dead.

"When you're here… Why would you ever let me believe… that you're not here… when you are…? Peter…"

She had no voice for him to enjoy. No way to reach him, regardless. Why, why couldn't she tell him what she knew?

Tomorrow… Tomorrow, I'll be buried… You'll be on the bridge… Peter, Peter, don't go to the bridge…

She was presence alone. She spoke of stupid things that she knew he already knew.

"I loved the way you ate the eggs I cooked for you… How you grinned…"

But she did feel his heartbeat as it dimmed down. His breath weaken, become gentler. And she felt content, then, despite it all.

He almost began to fall asleep at some point, too, but he still refused to yield.

Say "America."

She wept into his back, deep into the night. While she also stared at her father, through the flames of the fireplace, and at her sister, from the window, the liquid moonlight, dripping, glinting at the stars. She was enraged. She was so lonely…

Green earrings caught the glimmer and she cowered into the shadows, underneath him. His dark chest, his wrinkled shirt.

No. No… I'm not going back up there… Not yet… I can't leave them and Cecil isn't here…

She was full of nightmares she couldn't share. Peter and her father both walked toward their deaths and she could do nothing about it.

Isaac Penn slept in his chair, before the flames, and Beverly didn't exist anymore. She knew everything and yet she could speak of nothing at all.

Nothing important, at least.

Say "America."

Maybe this was also the burden carried by her dreaded nurses. The withdrawal of painful truths, at the expense of beautiful caresses and senseless whispers.

It was enough.

It had to be enough…

"No matter what you do," she murmured, then, sweetly, to him, "I will understand… I promise…"

Rust… Salt… Beverly let herself breathe for a second.

She spoke anew.

"I will love you…"

Painlessly.

I love you completely. I love you painlessly…

"Like I love you now," she breathed. He breathed. "Like I loved you when you went down into that furnace… When you woke up… When you held my hand and told me you- you wanted to dance with me…"

Beverly draped in milky greys across her lover's shoulders. She rested beside him.

"I cannot hate you… You're kind… You're my miracle…"

She watched her father as he rested. The fireplace drank into her fingertips.

"You already have a ticket... You already have a place in the sky... I don't care what Cecil says... If I'm miraculous, so are you..."

The attic creaked, the sky of paint trembled.

Night gently brightened and dawn began its return.

And then, before it could extinguish completely…

"He'll go blind at this rate…"

… the fire spoke to Beverly.

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

Hello! I hope I didn't rush this, but this chapter is very much a transition, and I hate writing transitionary chapters because I always feel like they're just filler. I tried my best, but I need to keep moving forward, cause now the fire is talking XD And I need to address that.

Beverly finally has another spirit to talk to, at long last, and Cecil will be back soon, and Peter's POV will be back soon, and... I'm SO excited :3 I can't wait to have interactions between characters again.

In general, I can't wait to get all of these characters grounded, in a way that they can all work and function well together. Because character dynamics and dialogue are the best part about writing, in my opinion - that's why I liked Peter and Beverly's dynamic so much. I loved having them together, just talking, and now... well, now I can't have that. Not yet, at least. It's part of the journey that I chose to keep. So... I need to deal with it. And I do, and I will.

But still, having Beverly be completely alone, with no one to talk to, for around 7-8 chapters, has slowly drained me, in some way. I like parts of it, again, I love writing about Beverly's mentality during all this, hers is a fascinating perspective to explore, but I want her to interact with people again so badly. Which... I suppose I kinda fell victim to the whole effect I wanted to add to Beverly's POV? My plan all along was to make her isolation maddening, to the point that the reader is as desperate or as depressed as her, before she can actually interact with other people again. So... I guess I did it right, because I can't wait to get her out of her isolation XD

It's 1:12 am for me right now, I have college projects to attend to as well so I'll try to post new chapters whenever I can, I promise I won't be long. I hope you enjoyed this transitionary chapter, and that you're doing well. Thank you, as always, for reading my stories. It means the world to me. Here is your digital hug: *hug* Night-night. See you next time!

(Oh, and yes, I incorporated the "Places we've been" line from the movie, into my re-interpretation. Finally :3)