Hello! Sorry for not uploading yesterday, I spent some time by the sea and it was much needed. Today, I am back with a new chapter and, quite honestly, this was a joy for me to be able to write. In my own mind, this chapter begins a new era of stories. There's been a lot of changes in my life over the past 6 months and one of them is the way I write. Along with work and house responsibilities and life in general, I slowly began to notice that I was burning myself each chapter I wrote and was writing less and less because of it. It sounds silly looking back but I always wrote these chapters in the one sitting and took a leap of faith to pace myself a bit more, writing in two, sometimes three sittings. Sometimes I get into a certain headspace and I need to learn that just because something worked before, doesn't mean I shouldn't adapt! That personal thing aside, I hope you enjoy this. I visited something I've always wanted to do and that is the relationship between Eli and his mother, Kathleen. And of course, the second half is Eli and Lucy :)
Disclaimer: I own the story and the OCs mentioned! Just a heads up, this chapter portrays the early signs of dementia in Eli's mother so if you find that upsetting, probably skip this one!
Some stories almost don't get told. Some of them are so much a part of the thread of a person's fibre that they almost don't get shown the light of day. And they kept tucked away. Not exactly a secret. Just lost along the way.
People say that the eyes are the mirrors to the soul but I believe tales can be exactly this way too. Every single moment that I get to reflect, I feel fortunate that not only do I get told these precious stories tucked away for hardly anyone to see, but I get to actually see into lots of different worlds and moments in time as well. This story is one of them. So let's begin.
Eli wasn't sure what to expect. After he thanked the nurse in the hospital in the very heart of the Ammon Region for telling him the correct directions of the ward that was his destination, although he was filled with the knowledge that he could at least find his way, he was suddenly less sure about what exactly he was going to find.
Nevertheless, with one hand buried firmly in his pocket as if he was going to find answers there and another hand clenched against the side of his leg – grasping flowers close to him – he kept his head down and he followed the arrows to where he needed to be.
He had had hardly any time to adjust to being back in a region that he once called home, let alone to make sense of the jet leg bustling around in his brain. Still, he made his way into the corridors and he followed the arrows as diligently as he could and he even effortlessly remembered the nurse's instructions, making his way to the correct ward with a mind full of fog that he hoped would still be lifted.
A different kind of veil was alleviated when he found himself in the correct ward and after another nurse there had showed him to the cubicle that he needed to find himself in. When he saw the face of the woman gently sleeping there in the bed, all of his previous anxiety of not knowing what to expect was removed from his mind and he could see everything that was there to see.
Even though he had only just spent many motions of the clock's hands deliberating which flowers to buy and whether the most expensive ones were expensive enough, when he saw the face of the woman, they became the last thing on his mind as he ditched them on the floor as well as his backpack in order to go and see her properly.
Eli had been severely unsettled. He knew that his mother was getting old and from tales from his oldest sister, she was becoming deeply forgetful too. Upsettingly forgetful. He knew that he could just about take on the chin when he phoned her up and within a couple of seconds she had already forgotten who was calling. But he didn't know if he could cope with her vacant eyes looking back at him.
Fortunately, when Eli arrived at his mother's hospital bed, he was met with two sleeping eyes instead of ones gazing into a far off world that no one could comprehend, and he knew that he should be eternally grateful. Because of this, he practically brushed off details that the nurse in the hospital room was telling him, how his other family members had visited frequently and that she had gradually gotten used to being there and most importantly, all of her health checks had come back fine.
It had just been a bit of a funny turn, Eli was told. His mother was healthy and after a good rest and making absolutely sure, she would soon enough be free to go home.
He didn't care about anything else. All other words were insignificant to him and he just wanted to know if his elderly mother was in good health or not. She was in spite of it all. And after what felt like an eternity, he was left alone to catch up with Kathleen and to try and prise open those sleeping eyes.
Eli cast a glance down to the cubicle floor where he had carelessly discarded the flowers like they were an unwanted daisy chain on a school playing field. For half a second, he wondered if he should make it up to them, reaching for them and using them to rouse his mother. Surely the crinkling of cellophane could do the trick and maybe even the scent of fresh lilies wafting into her nostrils.
And then he wondered - could she even smell them with the breathing tubes tucked neatly into her nostrils?
He didn't know.
Shaking his head as if he had been having a private conversation with himself about all of these things, he decided to just resort to what had always worked. He sat himself down on the edge of her bed and reached for his mother's hand, clutching a claw that was fragile but still very much belonged to the person who had given him life.
Eli began trying to bring her back to him, at first feeling like a child who had had a nightmare and was waking a sleeping parent.
"Mama?" he called to her, both of his surprisingly sturdy hands wrapped around just the one of hers, his stubby thumb offering his mother a gentle squeeze to try and encourage her away from wherever she was. "Mama?" he asked again, his naturally wide eyes becoming those of his past self before two lines traced between his eyebrows, the whole trying to act more his age. Whatever that was. "Mom, it's me. Are you going to wake up for me?"
He had been reassured that his mother was fine and that she never was in any danger of slipping away but for a heartbeat that felt like he had missed a couple of steps on the stairs, he was paranoid that he wasn't going to be able to wake his sleeping mother.
Then, in a twist of fate that happened just a couple of seconds after Eli finished talking to Kathleen though it felt like a bit of a lifetime to him, the sound of a brief snort appeared from behind breathing tubes.
She had let out a snore! And then that snore awoke her more than the presence of her son and his diligence in trying to wake her.
Before Eli knew it, he began to have two eyes the hue of the ocean blue looking back at him and to his absolute agony, for a good couple of seconds that felt weirdly drawn out yet sped up in one, all he had looking back at him was a vacant stare that was almost like the veil of fog might have lifted from his mind but had now been passed along to steam up his mother's eyes.
However, before Eli could clutch her claw in desperation or his own eyes could squeeze together in utter panic, Kathleen left behind all of her dreams and started to settle back into reality that she was actually in. She showed her son she was gradually becoming herself again by mirroring the squeeze of a thumb that he had previously offered her.
Then, her weak lips couldn't stop themselves from showing a smile behind a plethora of wires, slowly beginning to realise that the calls within her dreams had not just been confined to there. Eli was really with her. Eli was really back again. He was home. She didn't have to worry anymore.
"My sweet Elijah…" she croaked initially, her voice not used to speaking after a couple of hours nap. And yet, as put together and a beacon of integrity as she had been when she was far younger in age, even there and then Kathleen showed off her own frown as she knew she had to try again, the sound that escaped her not being good enough for her liking. "You've come back to me."
For half a heartbeat, the side of Eli that always craved saying it exactly how it was wanted to remind his mother that it was hardly him who had been slipping from the world's grasp in recent months. He might have been on the other side of the world to her usually, but he was still the one out of the two of them who was just a phone call away. Mostly.
Then, a miracle occurred and Eli decided to let the truth go. As if a puppeteer was controlling his mouth and he had no say in anything, the corners of it quirked upwards and displayed fondness. He started to hold each of her hands in each of his as he spoke to her once more.
"Of course I was going to come and see you." He told her, lifting one of her hands to his mouth and carefully kissing a patch of sun marked skin while avoiding the wires that were injecting his mother was something entirely different than a son's devotion. "I came as soon as I got the call." He added when his lips were no longer dodging wires.
This was another bit of truth but this one was able to be put out into the ether. There was nothing that could tear him away from his work and his routine usually. But a call like one he had received from his sister wasn't exactly the norm and when he found out their mother was in hospital, there was nothing that could have possibly stopped him from getting on the quickest plane in Mistralton City that could take him to the region which had once been his home.
"My sweet Elijah." Kathleen pulled her hand away from her son's but just for a second and just to pat the hand that was reaching for her, showing that she was equally as loyal to him as he was with her. Especially now he was done with the silly ideas that he had had as a teenager. Her devotion was clearer than ever.
This time, however, as Eli was called his birth name and with some added sweetness too, he couldn't hold back what he wanted to say and he couldn't stop himself from reminding his mother who he felt he really was.
Clutching both of her hands all over again as if he knew that this was a bit of a blow that needed to be softened, he held them underneath his own chin, reminding her before it was too late:
"It's Eli now, Mama." He told her, giving her another kiss, this time on the knuckles so he didn't have to spend his time clumsily avoiding wires and wasting the time that they did have under the same roof. "It's been Eli for a very long time now. Remember?"
At first, Eli watched his mother smile as if she did remember. Then, as the words sunk in like a heavy rain storm draining into the desert sands of the region that she had birthed him, not only a veil of confusion washed over the bright eyes of Kathleen but a wave of fear engulfed her as well.
Her eyes started to prick with water as if the heavy rains of some parts of Ammon had made their way into her irises, threatening to flood. Kathleen dropped his hands but wasn't strong enough to push them away.
"I don't have a son called Eli." She began, testing these words. After a swallow, she knew that she was certain of them and tried them out again, this time with more certainty and trying to sit herself up in bed to prove them. "I don't have a son called Eli." Vacancy of the eyes was still there. But they also mirrored how her own flesh and bloods could sometimes be, round orbs quivering inside sockets. "Who are you?"
Immediately, Eli realised what he had done and he needed to put it right. For one terrible heartbeat, he couldn't ignore the perverse agony of how glad he was that these words had been said. He welcomed the first sentence because he had been told that one before but minus a few words and that had been pure and utter hell for him coming from his father.
With a shake of the head to dismiss his previous feelings as well as to begin to set his mother straight, he took a chance by taking her hands all over again before settling on just the one that was shaking the most, reassuringly holding it by both insistent hands of his.
"You know who I am, silly." He spoke to her in a way that he would never have dreamt of speaking to his father. Eli didn't lean down to kiss his mother's hand that time but he held it underneath his chin again by his way of offering her just one more. "I am Elijah, I suppose. You can call me that because you named me that. It's your sweet Elijah, you just said so yourself."
Eli didn't let anyone get away with using his birth time and this was an exception as well as referring to himself as sweet just for his mother's sake. Holding her digits close to his baby smooth chin, he watched and he waited for his mother to remember and to relax too, waiting for the wave of reassurance that he had offered to her wash over her.
It took some time. Eli had never realised how annoying the sound of a clock ticking was before that day. Eventually, thank goodness, Kathleen's shoulders began to unclench and she could stubbornly encourage herself into a sitting position with not only a lot less urgency but with the help of Eli who she now remembered to be her son called Elijah.
She nodded to him, a smile creasing over her face once more as he not only secured pillows nicely behind her back but even went the extra mile of fluffing them for her too.
"Of course." Her eyes creased but no longer with fear and instead the age on her side. Eli had to learn to fluff the cushions for her with just the one hand as she realised that she couldn't not be connected with him for very long at all, reaching for his thumb as if their family roles had been reversed. "The only son of mine, Elijah." She allowed the taste of these words to reach her mouth, revelling in them and speaking them back to him like she often did to others when she told people how proud she was of her only boy in the big, distant city of Castelia. "So beautiful. But looking so different."
Eli would've earnestly continued fluffing his mother's cushions with just the one of his hands with all of his might if given half the chance. But he decided to sit back down on the bed with her, this time on the opposite side, the corner of his own eye creasing inquisitively.
"Different?" he couldn't help but repeat, seeing his mother from an angle before straightening the slope of his neck again, only then realising that he had pulled a muscle somewhere in there from sleeping funny up against the plane window.
Eli might have kept switching the position of his head but he still attentively watched his mother nod her head, for a rare occasion completely sure of her own words.
She resumed patting his hand as if it was a dog that had been behaving very well indeed.
"You've changed your hair." She observed, patting the canine of his own claws a few more times before, with that other hand of hers, Eli knew that she was beckoning his face closer to hers so she could run both of her wired hands along the shaved sides of his hair. "It's different." She reiterated, as if she was convincing her son as well as herself of what she was seeing. "I don't like it."
Eli drew back away from his mother when she was done ruffling the top, straightened length of his hair as well but not because he was offended and the chuckles that escaped the taut side of his mouth showed exactly this.
If anyone could get away with saying things exactly how she saw them then it was his mother and he couldn't be mad at her. Certainly not in her condition. And, well, it would have been a bit hypocritical, wouldn't it?!
With a flicking motion of his head as if he suddenly realised that he was shy without the veil of his hood that he had been asked to take down as soon as he entered the hospital building, Eli started to run his hands along his own hair and head, tracing exactly where Kathleen's frail digits had just been.
He explained to her.
"It's straight now." He didn't mean to speak to her like she was a child but that was probably just because that was how he often felt inside and now their roles had been reversed. "If I was going to get a job out there in Castelia City then I couldn't stick out like a sore thumb." Kathleen nodded but the sparkle had dulled from her eyes. "It's easier to keep it straight. It's more like who I am now."
Eli observed his mother's eyes brightening all over again and this time, she nodded with more vigour. He hoped that she wasn't nodding with relief but he knew exactly what that emotion was when it washed over a person.
After initially not only worrying about what kind of state he would find his mother in but also fretting of all the things he might say to her and might have to say to her, he had been surprisingly chatty. But there and then, even though his hands didn't leave hers like the loyal dogs like both he and they were, it had seemed the rival animal had got a hold of his tongue and he didn't exactly know what to say anymore.
Once more, the thought of flowers popped into his mind and he wondered if he should really make the effort to go and grab them off the floor that time before a nurse accidentally squashed them against the ground with her pumps.
But even in his silent state he knew that another release of his hands from his mother's ones might not only confuse her but fill her with fear, suddenly realising that she didn't know who he was like how was often the case when a stranger with his exact monotonous tone of voice rang her up each Sunday on the same time on the dot.
In the next few moments, however, Kathleen showed that she was seeing things clearer than ever and the next couple of seconds proved this also. While introversion filled her son's eyes, diamonds filled her irises and she was actually the one to break contact away from Eli as she raised a single finger in the air before her whole body turned, wanting to reach for the little velvet box that sat on the bedside cabinet.
Apparently Eli wasn't the only one who had brought gifts along.
He might have been in a little bit of a state of silence and reclusiveness, but he was still attentive as ever towards his mother and caught on to what she was trying to do from the moment that her left shoulder swivelled towards the deep purple box.
Eli sprang up off the bed as quickly as someone with his slow movements could muster and he moved around to the other side of the bed, just pointing at the culprit first of all and not wanting to do an impolite thing by taking hold of something that might not be for him to even look at, let alone reach for.
"Is this what you want, Mama?" he asked, giving Kathleen quite the stare for a couple of annoying ticks of the clock to make sure that her hand had stopped pointing in remembrance and was definitely gesturing for him to go ahead and take hold of the mysterious box.
In actuality, it had been the nurses who had been berated into not looking at the box and certainly not moving or even touching it.
Eli ignored the curiosity swirling around his mind that failed to be scratched most of the time and subserviently took hold of it for his mother and tried to hand it over to her. However, even his intuitive self was left in his own state of confusion as Kathleen refused to take hold of it after she had tried to turn her whole body towards it.
This didn't make any sense to Eli and her flapping motion of her dominant hand made even less sense to her. Still, he lowered himself back onto bed with her and gave her time to explain in her own way.
She remained surprisingly alert.
"It's what you want, Elijah." She began, initially filling him with even more befuddlement before she elaborated. "I bought you something of mine and I want you to have it." the corners of Eli's eyes began to crease as it tickled him that in the moments of clutching her chest before being taken to the hospital, she went out to buy a gift for her son who may or may not have the time to visit her in hospital. "I need you to have it. In case I don't last much longer…"
Amusement was ripped out of Eli's chest like a band aid being pried off sore skin. His eyes widened far more than their usual state and he almost dropped the box in order to swiftly take hold of his mother's hands.
Somehow he managed to hold all three things in just two hands.
"Don't be so silly. You'll probably outlive us all." He told her dryly and with not a single inflection of his voice but anyone would have been able to tell that he meant it from the subtle swaying of his pupils in his eyes. He meant it. And he so wanted to believe it.
Eli got away with speaking to his mother in such a way before but it could have been shown that that would not be the case anymore from the way that Kathleen's face contorted. Her son watched her. But in the next couple of minutes he realised that she was trying to find the right words.
"I need you to have it. And I need you to open it right now." She informed him. Eli told this and even he knew that there was nothing to argue about and there was nothing to fret about either. He was free to let go of both of her hands to slip open the velvet box. He hadn't had the chance just yet as Kathleen added just one more thing. "Do you have a lady in your life yet?"
Eli felt an exasperated chuckle threatening in his throat all over again but after the last time, he wasn't so quick to allow it to be set free. In fact, he did his level best to stifle it and tilt his head at his mother on the one side instead.
Then, it was as if the cogs had begun to turn in his clouded mind and he began to piece together the puzzle of everything that was being put forth to him. It suddenly made sense why Kathleen had chosen to ask that question in the seconds before he opened the box.
Once he followed her command, he laid his eyes on the box containing a cushion of black to beautifully contrast the rich hue of the purple exterior and took in the ring that was waiting to be taken out as it was then tucked into the slit of the box.
Eli slammed the lid shut. Not out of impoliteness. Not out of dismissiveness. He needed to look into the diamonds of his mother's eyes rather than the ones that lay encrusted inside the ring of the one that he knew he recognised from photos.
Even if he didn't slap the box shut because of any of these things, he almost wanted his words to sound this way when he said them as he couldn't believe that his mother was parting with something – in his mind – so very prematurely.
"I live with a girl and she is my friend. You know this." He told his mother flatly, not because it was a lie and not because he was exhausted with reminding her. Eli just still couldn't believe what she was trying to give her. But his patience hadn't worn thin, and he decided to show this while taking hold of her one hand as the ring box latched inside his left palm. "It's not that serious. Certainly not serious enough for you to give me the engagement ring that Father gave you." A small twinkle had managed to slip away from the ring and present itself in Eli's eye in spite of it all. "I cannot accept."
Eli waited to hear the words that he must accept. While he knew that his father had been the hammer in the family home all of those years ago, he knew that his mother was equally as capable of forcing her ideas to come to fruition in her own way.
He sat Kathleen and waited to hear these words or at the very least, offence that he was not accepting what she had deemed so important to bring with her to hospital for him. With the inside of both cheeks tucked firmly in between the sides of his teeth, he waited for her strong self to come back to him and put him in his place.
But this didn't happen. Nestling closer against the cushions behind her and not out of comfortability, slowly but surely, Kathleen started to copy the brief jewel in her son's eyes even if a look of vacancy was clouding behind this other gaze.
"What's she like, this girl? What's her name?" she wondered, asking with such a girlish side to her that Eli had never seen before that he at first focused on this, not realising that she had started to slip from him a little bit and was acting as if the girl was a stranger when she had actually been put on the phone to her once or twice by Eli. "Why didn't you bring her here, foolish boy?" Kathleen couldn't help but frown and interrogate her son when she found out that she was an intelligent and kind girl and her name was Lucy.
Eli hesitated for a moment and not because he needed to panic that his mother was forgetting things once again because he had since noticed and he knew that it was something that came and went in waves.
He took a pause as he decided to think about his answer, raising his spare hand that wasn't being used to clutch both his mother and a curious box to massage that aching muscle of his neck that wasn't exactly giving him too much grief.
Eventually, he had to hope that he could somehow be both parts prompt and honest because his mother's eyes were embodying moody sky.
"She's back at home looking after Jordan's fish." He answered, unaware of the fact that his voice had changed, not exactly in pitch but more so like the quality sounded more syrupy escaping from his throat. Eli didn't have the time to grow aware of anything because he used this as an opportunity to get his mama back, squeezing her hand all over again. "You remember them, don't you?"
Kathleen went on to clearly get her wires crossed but not so badly that she couldn't find her voice at all.
"Very sweet young lad, is that Jordan." She replied and all Eli could do was let out a single syllable kind of throat noise as he prayed that although Kathleen's eyes were clearing once more, that the fogginess didn't mist up his own eyes and make their way into his mind. Some might have tried to sit further up as more insistent words made their way into her mind. But there and then, she began to help herself to lie back down. "Does this Lucy look after you?"
The disarray that captured Eli's brain for its own at certain times might have been a stubborn and a tricky fiend to manoeuvre but somehow it met its match for the question that came from his mother.
Perhaps out of sheer surprise that she had remembered a name that was just spoken to her and seemingly the conversation too, Eli found himself at answering far more promptly than the usual length in which he liked to ponder his responses and he also discovered that the truth couldn't help but be on the tip of his tongue.
Such a double rarity!
"She… She looks after me very well." Eli found himself confessing, his irises revolving around in his white sockets and certainly not because he was telling a lie but more like because he had never said these words out loud. He had not even said these words to himself. "I mean, I don't think she necessarily tries to. She just is always there. And that's enough."
Kathleen nodded her head as if she could perfectly picture everything from these few vague sentences with actually not a whole lot of detail. She could almost kid herself that she could see things for exactly how they were, and what exactly her son's life was like when he stepped back onto the soil of Unovan ground.
How he and Lucy didn't exactly share much apart from the occasional kiss but were content enough in each other's company that they had both decided to save on rent and live with each other. The nights that they shared; the darkness of her on the sofa with a book and him a few metres away from her in complete and utter silence but their quiet intimacy filling the air.
A great deal of trust must fill more than the air but Eli's heart, Kathleen somehow understood to herself, because he had gone away and left her in charge of those precious fish that had once belonged to his dear cousin.
Maybe she really could picture all of these things. Who was to say that, when she went distant behind the eyes and was seemingly in a whole world of her own, she wasn't seeing into the worlds of others? She might not have been able to explain it. But maybe she knew anyway.
"And do you take care of her?" Kathleen wondered, there and then very much in the physical world from the way that she came out and asked her son this question.
Seemingly mirroring the time that passed between him saying something and her continuing the conversation, Eli didn't find an answer on the tip of his tongue or even one to put out into the ether until the clock hand had swung around in quite a big motion.
It was nearly at a whole new hour and Eli's time in the cubicle would soon be up if he didn't hurry and answer his mother.
He encouraged the furrow between his eyebrows to soften as if he didn't need that there any longer and he sighed out such as sigh that was if he needed to make room inside of him for this confession towards Kathleen.
"I don't look after her as well as I probably should." His words came and if his tone had been just that slight bit deeper than they would have come across as regrettable rather than factual. Eli brushed his own hand underneath his chin rather than his mother's. "It's something that I need to learn."
Kathleen began to sink further back against the cushions behind her and attempted to regain her position from when her son first entered the room. He was prompt to plump the cushions behind her neck this time.
And mother was prompt to reply to her son, too.
"Well," she began; causing Eli to hear such a sigh as he perched back next to her all over again that he began to wonder if she really needed those breathing tubes after all. "When you learn to take care of Lucy as well…"
Eli knew exactly what his mother was going to go on to say and because her eyes had briefly flicked towards the barrier of the ceiling, he had a second to raise his own eyes towards the ceiling and revolve them around and around.
He knew that Kathleen was going to drum it into him that he must bestow this ring upon Lucy sooner or later. And she knew herself that these were the words that she was going to utter so she didn't feel the need to speak them. There and then, she also knew that she so wanted to close her eyes so she didn't give into this either.
Eli knew exactly what was going on. But call it tiredness or paranoia or straight up a son's love for his mother that still needed her around despite that he had long flown the nest and left her life, he needed to be certain that she was okay and she wasn't slipping away from him into a whole other realm that she couldn't be savoured from.
"Mama?" he called to her, fist clenched firmly around the ring box as if, if she really was leaving him then he would do anything to honour her wish. The other hand of his gripped her one but not in an effort to hurt. Only in an effort to rouse. Only in an effort to keep what was hopefully still there with him.
Nothing. Silence. The clocking making its way to two o'clock in the afternoon.
But then, thankfully, another heavy breath from Kathleen from behind her breathing tubes before she opened one eye, almost wryly, and squeezed her son's hand, her being the one to reassure him this time around.
"I'm just resting my eyes." She told him and in that moment, such dizzy relief filled Eli's mind that he wished that it was he who had the oxygen tubes in the nostrils! He squeezed his mother's hand all over again in a silent language as she gripped hold of his. And yet, it was the words that she would go on to say in the next few minutes that would have a tighter hold on him. "I mustn't forget… I need to give you something…"
Kathleen began to equally forget as she did remember as her eyes fanned shut all over again, still gripping tightly on Eli's hand to continue informing him that she was still with him and she wasn't going anywhere.
Sometimes he was clueless to messages unless they came at him directly and verbally. But this was one that Eli effortlessly deciphered.
He had a wholly different feeling not only capturing his throat and causing his tone to wobble in that moment.
"You've already given me everything, Mama." Eli told his mother and it wasn't until he had said these words that he realised that, as well as wholeheartedly meaning them, he had never realised that he had kept this sentiment locked up inside his body.
His lower lip fell into his mouth as he prepared to let go enough for her to not answer him and to fall asleep and for him to need to trust that she would eventually wake up after another nap.
However, Kathleen still had more fight left in her and not just the kind to battle up against the urge to fall asleep. Her eyes might not have twitched open but her hand twitched inside Eli's before her other one loosely poked at the ring box inside his clutch that he had never meant to hold so tight but now was becoming almost as part of him as it was for his mother and father too.
"Promise me…" she started again and, not that she knew it, these two words made Eli think that no matter what and no matter what words she would go on to say, he would adhere to them. "When find that someone where you can give each other everything, you will give this ring to them…" Kathleen of course spoke those words of the same sentiment all over again. Eli chuckled. He almost tearfully did so. But then, the last two words that were uttered between them made him realise that this was a commitment that he would keep no matter what. "Promise me."
There was urgency in his mother's voice. He hadn't heard that for such a long time. He knew that this was a part of her that risked getting lost as bigger amounts of confusion, unsettlement and fear became the biggest part of her fail personality instead.
So because of this and also because of the fact that his mother had altered her tune just slightly while possessing the same sentiment, Eli knew that not only would he comply with whatever she asked but this seemed to be something that he couldn't say no to.
He didn't want to say no to it. Eli wasn't as strange as people or even he made out. Like lots of people, he too just wanted to find somebody to love.
"Okay, Mom. I absolutely promise." He at long last told her, not sealing the deal by putting the ring box in his pocket because he didn't do that until he left the room but by reaching up to his mother and giving her a kiss against her wrinkled forehead.
And then that was that. Kathleen had got her words across that possessed both her dazed mind and her crystal clear one so that she knew that she could give into sleep and gratefully so. Soon enough she was snoring behind her oxygen mask all over again but not waking herself this time!
And Eli was left pondering the promise that he had made and whether he could really honour the commitment that he said that he would see through.
Years later – decades later, in fact – Eli was thinking the exact same thing with the ring in the same box tucked inside his clenched hand that was resting against the leg of his long, ethnic tunic as the end seams of it swished around his ankles.
Furthermore, he was wondering if his mother was onto something after all. At the very last minute, she stopped so insistently talking about the girl that she had never met face to face and allowed the recipient of the ring to be a mere someone – and someone of no clear cut gender any less.
Maybe his mother not only saw but also accepted more of him than he had ever realised while she was alive. This was alive in his mind on the day before his wedding and a great many other things too. But no matter! No matter, was what he eventually told himself. He had a finger to slide that particular ring onto after more than two decades. And the hope that it would be accepted was more alive inside him than the excitement to walk down the aisle in the next twenty four hours.
But he probably shouldn't tell Justin that!
This was the thought on Eli's mind as he made his way up from the lobby of the hotel to where all of the guests were staying and invited himself into one particular room with a knock before swinging the door open once permission was granted, his heart twitching in his chest far more than his exposed stomach in his native Ammon dress wear.
Momentarily, he again wondered what kind of scene he was going to be walking into because it wasn't rare for the woman with hair the colour of a paling sun to be in company, whether it was her good friend Katie or it was a tattooed fiend, as Eli liked to call him!
But when he found Lucy, he found her alone and not only that but he didn't need to fret about beginning any sort of small talk because, like was now the case once again, they simply fell into reacting.
When she saw his get up, Lucy couldn't help but immediately stand up from resting against the window sill that looked out onto the south of the Galar Region and discarded the book she was reading without a second thought, as if there and then was the only story that she wanted to be a part of.
Her natural reaction tried to be hidden with a demure hand over her mouth but then she couldn't help but set her infectious chuckles free, her eyes lighting up the room as though the sun was in the sky during that evening of early September.
"Oh my goodness! Look at you!" Lucy exclaimed, her hand giving up after a couple of seconds and falling back down to her side as her wide smile was fully revealed also. She watched Eli for a rare occasion actually look down at himself and followed the movement of his eyes, taking in the small gap exposing his stomach in between a glittering wesekh and his pleated kilt in various shades of gold, blue and teal as much as the rest of his outfit. She gasped before a palm rested flat against her own chest. "Oh, give us a twirl."
Eli's smile had been pinched to the corner of his mouth as he looked down at his own inherited outfit and it certainly put on a more intense display of that when he heard the words that Lucy then said to him.
Straight away, the corners of his nose creased and his head swung from side to side.
"No way! No twirling will be occurring." He told her, breaking some more of the distance between them both as he further entered the room. When her hand remained over her heart and she died down her dazzled laughter in order to tilt her head on the one side, showing him eyes that gave his a run for their money in their roundness, he wanted to fold his arms over his chest before he realised that he had to do better. And also, he realised that there was no point not giving into her. "Fine." He conceded. "The smallest of twirls."
Lucy's expression brightened all over again, not that a moody disposition had taken over her anyway. Her two hands found each other as she waited for Eli to comply.
After he did indeed adhere to her request and she saw the way that not only the light of the hotel room bounced off every inch of his outfit but the whites of his eyes and his equally pearly white teeth also, it was her turn to break the distance between them both.
A gentle smiled graced her lips as her hands departed in order for one of them to touch the gold threaded arm of Eli.
"A wonderful twirl and a wonderful outfit." She complimented. In the same way that Eli knew not to fold his arms over his chest and prematurely expose the ring box in his hold, Lucy realised it probably best not to fondle the material of that outfit even if her hand did linger there. "You look so handsome. Justin will be thrilled." She added.
It was if the sun in the sky that was known to be elusive in the Galar Region had taken control of Eli there and then with the even bigger beam that he couldn't stop himself from portraying as he heard Lucy's words.
Before he could tone down his reaction, he gushed.
"Oh, I hope so. I never felt comfortable in these robes until I saw the sparkle in his eye and I knew I should wear them with pride." These words escaped from him before he could think about stopping them. When Lucy merely smiled knowingly in response, Eli had the time to realise that they were less than an hour away from the rehearsal dinner and everybody was dressed up to the nines. "Sorry." This single word purposely escaped him. "You look wonderful too, my darling. Absolutely exquisite, as always."
Eli's eyes followed Lucy's hand at last dropping away from his arm and as they traced it down, he also fully took in the whole of her outfit, from the lace and beaded mesh sleeves all the way down to the gothic skirt and tights that complimented her sleeves with similar embroidery.
He should have known that if she was going to be floral tomorrow then she would simply have to utterly contrast it on that particular evening!
Lucy looked down at herself too as Eli took her in but she merely smiled, her hands drawing back together before she waltzed backwards towards the window sill, leaning there once again.
Subconsciously, Eli started to see her from an angle from the moment that she spoke to him once more.
"Thank you." Her eyelashes with thick mascara danced together, her soft brown lipstick not smudging for a single second no matter what kind of smile she was portraying. "I have a feeling that I'm going to match your fiancé more than I'm going to compliment you."
A gentle, close mouthed smile graced Eli's lips as, just like Lucy was suggesting, he too knew that his future husband favoured the classic black suit out of anything else that he could possibly wear for a fanciful evening. And she was correct. He had already cast his hungry eyes over him, knowing that in a couple of hours that he would no longer be able to see him before the wedding and that he wanted to fill every inch of his mind with his memory, even if he didn't dazzle in the same way that Eli did with his own outfit.
Rather than thinking of this, though, he knew that it wouldn't be too long until Lucy studied him some more and noticed the box he was holding so he knew that he had better get that conversation rolling.
He approached her, now that he was broaching the subject, feeling butterflies back flipping in the pits of his stomach.
"My love," he commenced, fully breaking the distance and leaning up against the window sill with his former life partner but falling a couple of inches shorter than her. "I was wondering how you would feel if I gave you a gift ahead of the wedding tomorrow?" In his mind, his tongue wrapped clumsily around his own words. "Would you be okay with that?"
Upon hearing this, Lucy's spine straightened and Eli was forced to appear even more of a head shorter than her. Her mascara laced eyelashes clapped together, her perfectly manicured hand holding back onto the window sill for support.
"A gift?" she repeated, meadow eyes locking onto the face of Eli and watching how he confirmed her repetition with not a nod of his head but a tilt of it instead, the corner of his right eye only just slightly squinting. "For me?" Lucy couldn't not show her surprise before she added, smiling attentively at the deep violet haired man. "I thought I was the one offering a gift tomorrow. You know, something borrowed and all that for Justin."
The thought of this caused a clamp to constrict around Eli's heart but not in an unpleasant manner. He needed his own, ring box-less hand to fall behind him against the window sill, steadying himself for a different reason.
"That's very true." He confirmed with a loving smile that not only revealed his white teeth but also the natural joy bouncing around in his irises. At last his head shook before he explained. "This isn't a wedding related gift even if it may seem that way. It's just… a gift and I hope you'll be comfortable accepting." He forced his eyes not to look down at what was in his hand even if Lucy had started to spy the box tucked against his other palm. "It's something I should've given you a very long time ago but funnily enough, giving you it now feels even more right."
Though she was often cool as a cucumber on the outside and was there and then, Lucy's heart was beginning to quicken in her chest. She might have tried to steady it with that soothing hand back against her own chest but she didn't want to feel her pulse thumping against her palm.
Lucy breathed through her intrigued anticipation and looked back over at Eli rather than the box in between his clutch that she told herself couldn't possibly be familiar. And most likely contained something other than a piece of jewellery inside.
"I'm touched." She said and when I heard this story for the first time, I wondered if she felt that way about the idea of gift giving or that Eli was being so kind, not wanting to push something on her if she didn't want it. "What is it?"
Without an explanation, the deep purple ring box was switched from being in Eli's hold and it found itself between her palms instead. She could no longer press her pointer fingers together to soothe herself or for any other reason.
Now that she was casting her gaze down at the velvet ring box that was in her hand's rather than her former life partner's, memory started to creep up her neck like ivy sneaking up the back of a fence.
Lucy, however, told herself that she was getting her wires crossed. She began to open it to prove to herself that it wasn't the piece of jewellery that she actually had been offered many moon's ago. But in the end, she was proven incorrect.
Her eyes practically became as round as the ring nestled inside the box from the moment that she wholly saw it before they swung over to Eli, for a good couple of seconds wondering what on earth he was playing at giving her that sort of ring on the night before his wedding day.
Fortunately, he was there to explain himself, encouraging himself to stand taller in order to look equally into her eyes.
"I've wanted you to have this for a very long time and I know now is the time." He told her, speaking past the fact that Lucy wasn't exactly reacting in the way that he had hoped, instead appearing like a rabbit in the headlights as she looked between the boomerang of a ring and the silhouette of him. "If you don't wish to have it, I do understand. I hope you're not offended. My mother told me to give it to the person who gave me everything and I can't help but feel that is you."
Lucy could feel Eli's watchful, studious eyes on her as she couldn't help but clench her jaw together, looking more so down at the ring in those moments even if both that and the presence of Eli was burning into her.
How foolish she had been to convince herself that that wasn't the same ring that Eli had proposed to her with not too many years after Kathleen had given this heirloom to her son. She knew that he didn't mean it to be this way from how understanding he was that she might not want it but she couldn't help but feel a bit slapped in the face.
But maybe it was her own emotions that were doing that, stinging the side of her face, rather than anything that Eli was doing.
"I think you should probably give this ring to your husband." Lucy managed to look at Eli for an extra time before her gaze fell back down to the ring winking at her, and rather than shunning it, she lifted it closer to her face as if it was an ice pack that could soothe her bewildered blush.
A frown of the same quality started to tug Eli's well-groomed eyebrows closer together, inadvertently breaking the distance furthermore with Lucy as his head tilted.
"I've already given him enough rings." He argued, before realising how his voice sounded towards both her and his future husband. A shake of his head came, shuffling his curls around as he corrected himself. "It belongs to you, Lucy."
Her eye twitched as she heard her name rolling off the tongue of Eli. She wanted nothing more than to be easy about it – to feel easy about it – and understand why he was doing what he was doing and wrap her arms around his neck and feel the rushing of not only such gratitude towards him but pride for him.
However, there was something stopping her from embodying all of this. There was something stopping her from being able to accept.
"Are you sure you don't wish for Katie to have it?" she posed and she didn't need Eli to say the actual words for her to realise that she was already the holder of the wooden ring that he and Justin had shared when their hearts first became entwined. Both of them were realising how many different rings there were bouncing between that relationship! "Think about it, Elliot." Lucy lowered the ring box from her face but didn't quite hand it back over to him. "You're going to be a step-father starting tomorrow. Don't you wish to pass it to one of those children? Or to the children that you and Justin will inevitably have?"
Eli's lower lip found its way into the rest of his mouth after he sucked on the top one, twitching slightly. He didn't feel as though he had the time to grow giddy all over again, this time regarding the future he was going to go on to have with the very special man in his life.
He began to look over at Lucy with a huge bout of exasperation, even if he never lost his patience with her.
"Don't you think I've thought about all of that?" he asked her, wideness latching onto his eyes furthermore before a peculiar chuckle escaped from his lips, looking down at the ring in her hold and the person who seemingly didn't want to be its owner. "You are the only person that it feels right to give it to. But it will only feel right to me if it feels right to you." Eli's eyes slowly began to soften even if they remained their natural amount of set wide inside sunken lids. "You don't have to accept."
Completely subconsciously, a wall was broken down between Lucy and Eli as, without thinking, she realised that it wasn't like when the ring was first offered to her. He wasn't trying to get into a lifetime entanglement with her. And he wasn't going to be angry with her if she turned him down.
Still, Lucy hadn't heard enough. Although her cheeks were beginning to warm at the sentiment of suggested continual loyalty between the both of them no matter which people they were soon to begin a future with – whether it was then set in stone or a complete surprise – she needed more.
Lucy needed to say:
"I do want to accept." She confessed, giving Eli the sensation of a rolling wave of relief washing over him even if he didn't allow air to escape from his nostrils to prove this. This was the first time Lucy was showing that he hadn't actually offended her. "Just… why?"
Eli was no fool. He understood why she was asking exactly this. The both of them weren't wrong; there had been countless rings bestowed between Justin and Eli's many attempts of a relationship and some of them were still in their possession and others had been given to others for safe keeping.
From the wooden ring that had served as both a lifelong tie and a weapon, to the engagement rings and wedding rings soon to be thrown into the mix, there had been a lot of physical ties linking both Justin and Eli's lives together.
Lucy just didn't understand why on earth Eli would want her to have the heirloom she knew to be passed down from his family rather than his future husband and, quite frankly, the air inside his lungs.
She would soon learn.
At first, Eli didn't know quite how he was going to sum it all up even though he had been thinking of what to say for the last couple of days. And he showed this by his eyes revolving with exasperation and letting out a sigh. But it was towards him and him only.
"Because, Lucy," he tried to start but straight away, the words were catching at his throat. He, however, continued through the sensation of barbed wire wrapping around his prominent Adam's apple. "My mother told me to give this to the person who gave me everything. God, without you, I would still be that miserable confused bastard who could only dream of finding a man who loved him." Eli swallowed and despite focusing on what he wanted to say, he still felt the gentle, almost winged hand of disagreement that Lucy offered him against his cheek. "I wasn't able to honour many commitments to my mother, let alone you. But if you are willing to accept, I would love nothing more than to grant this one alongside you both."
When Eli was finished saying what he needed to say, Lucy's eyes couldn't help but become one of the many puddles of the Galar Region even if she did fiercely blink, but not because she was embarrassed about showing any sort of emotion in front of him.
In the same way that his throat had felt constricted with the desperation to convey everything that he wanted to say, Lucy's collarbones and her neck were prickled red from everything that was transpiring between them.
For a long time, Lucy didn't know what to say. And for that same length of time, Eli began to wonder if she had changed her mind and if she couldn't accept his offer after all. That would have been a shame. But it also would have been okay.
Thankfully, none of this needed to occur.
Taking a breath to settle her nerves that were rattling around inside of her chest as well as the unconditional love that she knew that she felt for the man who was still the love of her life no matter what, Lucy didn't realise it but she gave Eli everything he needed to hear when she at last spoke to him.
"Which finger should I put it on…?" she asked and immediately, Eli couldn't stop the gasp that managed to fight its way past the barbed wire and escape out into the rest of the air.
A shake of the head and glossiness capturing his own eyes, he told her and he couldn't stop himself from resting his forehead briefly against hers with a heart that felt fuller than ever before.
"Your choice." He vehemently told her and after he pulled away from the skin to skin contact with a swipe of Lucy's pale foundation blurring against his far richer forehead, he watched her think to herself with a smile that could hardly contain her two front teeth before she waggled her finger at him.
Even he couldn't possibly be clueless to not only what this meant but what she was suggesting when she gave the ring box back over to him containing the stunning piece of jewellery. Eli didn't hesitate to accept, pulling the ring away from the velvet cushioning and taking hold of her hand before sliding it onto her dainty finger.
"There you go." he said as he hardly dared breathe, never believing that he would ever see that ring glistening against her porcelain skin and certainly not under the circumstances that they were then in. In an act that was somehow more intimate than anything they had ever done together, Eli couldn't stop himself from shyly chuckling as his own right finger brushed hers, looking down at both of their rings together. "We're matching." He told her, yes, looking down at the rings but then finding it more appealing to gaze into her eyes.
They were truly a meadow that he could frolic in for hours. He might have walked away from their romantic love to pursue a path that he knew that he was born to tread along, but he never for a moment stopped having a sparkle in his eyes just for her.
He really had meant everything that he had told her, you see, and he meant furthermore everything that he didn't say. She was his beginning and without her, he felt that he would hardly have anything. He would hardly be anything.
Now, he was on the cusp of being a husband. And he couldn't have been further from being blind to the role that she had played in all of that.
"Thank you." Lucy told Eli simply, breaking him away from any thoughts that he was having and although she had noticed the smear that she had accidentally left on his forehead, she knew that he wouldn't mind and touched her forehead back against his as she informed him more with her actions. His jaw clenched with emotion underneath the ring-less hand of hers that cupped him there. "I'm so happy for you."
In a single heartbeat that felt like best kind of drop in a stairwell, Eli suddenly decided that the last two moments of contact were no enough and he needed more.
Before she knew it, Lucy was wrapped around in the tight embrace of him and she could feel the energy of everything that he was, everything that he had been, and the excitement of who he was to become, tucked up inside the jewels of his outfit.
They might have spiked against her own skin. But the words that he would go on to say as he nuzzled her would no doubt soften any of this.
"I'm so happy for myself and I'm so happy that you're happy." He told her, this time not minding if his words formed clumsily and if his tongue rolled around them with sheepishness. He could feel her heart beating through his wesekh and he didn't wish for this to stop. "Your happiness has always made me happy." He confessed to her. She pulled him closer in return and her eyes fluttered shut, breathing him in and breathing in his words as he concluded them. "No matter whose husband I am, I will continue to be devoted to you and that feeling inside of you."
And with that, Lucy experienced a feeling that Eli was so very familiar with. She did not know what to say. She simply did not know what to say. There were a great many things that she would have liked to say – so many things that had been rattling around inside of her for month after month – but there and then, she knew she had to take a leaf out of his future husband's book.
Actions were going to speak louder than words. And when they exclaimed, Eli got the message.
He felt Lucy's arms wrapping further around him and not letting him go and he knew that, he might not have found the wife in her that he once expected, but he had found the lifelong friend instead. The two of them had been bound by choice and their lives together and now they were bound by not only the decisions that had been made but the ring upon Lucy's finger.
She had the blood of Eli and his family pulsing against her skin whenever she needed it the most. And because of this, she could be reminded of things greater than herself.
As I look back, I know that Kathleen can continue to rest in peace, wherever she found herself after she exited the earth. Her son not only honoured his commitment towards her but by doing so, he linked himself together with the person who showed him how to love and the person who would continue pouring his own efforts into that cup of love for the rest of his days.
Eli might have once felt like he couldn't do right by anyone but on that day, that couldn't have been further from the truth. He had at last become the man that he was always meant to be. And that was a man that, funnily enough, if his father had been around to see, he would have been able to rest further in peace also.
Achmed would have been proud. But, you see, some stories don't get told. Some things you never know. Some you do. But some you don't.
How bittersweet is that?
The End.
There you go! Thanks so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed :) So far, writing in several sittings rather than 10,000 words during the one session in 4 hours (that sounds bonkers looking in hindsight-) has been really good for me and I've fallen back in love with the process of writing. I'm glad that I personally can see that it worked for this one - and I think both half of the stories are of the same quality rather than declining near the end as it used to happen when I got weary writing. I loved tackling both halves of this chapter. The development of Kathleen's character has been an interesting one because, while we know that she stood by and did nothing as Eli was forced to leave home for being gay, you can see here that in ways she is still devoted to him. And he certainly feels the same for her, funnily enough. I've written a lot about Justin and Katie and their own devotion to each other in spite of everything and Eli and Lucy are the parallel dynamic to that one. It was great to write a story about unconditional love, and to go more into Eli's heritage, as well as a brief glimpse of a region of my own based off Egypt! Thanks again and I will be back on the 28th with the final chapter of Dear Darlings so see you then :3