3. The cold
The morning brought no clarity. Not the first, nor the second, nor the third, nor the countless others that followed.
Days rot into nights and Peter Lake walked spirals around the cemetery.
By the time spirals turned to lines, and lines to crosses, and crosses to nonsensical patterns of curves and jagged edges, he'd forsaken the awareness of the days. Numbers swallowed by a sea of insanity.
His only food during this time came in occasional nibbles at the flesh around his nails, though hunger never dawned on him.
The gravedigger didn't return.
No new tombstone erected throughout his search. No mourners. No visitors. Nothing but what he'd originally found.
Nothing at all.
He scanned name after name and cause after cause and year after year until his vision unspooled itself into a pit of swirling greys.
He knew he'd gone there for a reason, on instinct, as soon as he'd woken back up in this new, hollow existence.
He knew there was a reason.
He knew, and all at once he didn't know.
He knew nothing.
O Come… Come who…?
The sun breathed weakly beyond walls of foam-like mist, snowflakes suspended like flies in a web. New York City's mountainous buildings, towers of light indigo poking out like blades of grass.
Had he known grass in his lost life? Grass in its pure, unadulterated form? Green and soft, specked with flowers?
Snow molten to dew? Gone in a space in time altogether?
O Come, O… Come…
His clothes had dried, frost made it bed between the folds of his garments. Black hair dotted with snowflakes, stray strands looping before his eyes as he read, again, again, stone after stone.
Eventually, Peter Lake got so used to the cold that it ceased to annoy him.
For a new irritation arrived in this tide of snow and fog.
Awareness of it dawned leisurely. Blooming within his throat, a viscous thing above his chest, clogging his breath.
At first the coughs were occasional reminders of his existence. Sound, his alone, dry and sudden.
Slowly they intensified. He only grew alarmed when they directly affected his already-arduous search for a forgotten name.
Now every time he tried to read, a cough would thicken the fog, turning it into a swirl, bending him forward.
And with every curse he gave, a new cough cut through his words, shredding his voice into mindless thumps and grunts.
I'm not cold, I'm not uncomfortable…
More murmurs breezing past.
The names didn't help. The walking didn't help. All of this had been a waste of time. And for his idiocy, now he was sick, too.
Annoyance became pain.
I'm- Cough!
Pain paved way to madness.
The search for a name became the search for an exit, but it was too late, in every way. And Peter Lake had been there a very long time, and the gravedigger hadn't returned, and- Cough!
And he was alone, and he was brainless, and none of these stones were legible anymore, he'd kept his eyes so open for so long that now the cold threatened to frost them over, too. White and grey and blue and white again. Cough- Cough!
And he could no longer breathe properly, his nose stuffing, the cold webbing across his face like the hand of a ghost, and he was afraid of breathing through his mouth and thus feeding into the need for coughing, but he had no choice, he- Cough!
And meanwhile a silent crowd shouted in his brain, locked away somewhere so deep and secret it was impossible to discern the words, the names, the names.
I'm…
What? He was what?
"I'm-"
Cough!
His face flushed.
I'm lost…
Winter had scooped him up in its terrible embrace and its affection had finally given way to illness.
The coughing preceded the fever.
I'm so lost…
And it was the fever that finally put him to sleep.
He suddenly fell like a bag of potatoes, mid-march, and didn't bother trying to get up. Snow cushioned his descent, though he hit his shoulder on one of the tombstones.
He'd drowned and lived. Now he fell ill and lived, too.
And so tired…
He stayed down for what felt like an eternity. Sleeping, awakening, then sleeping again. He couldn't move anymore.
In dreams he saw ginger hair and a little white hand and the curve of the moon.
And he decided to not care until he'd recuperated his strength. Until the cold had bled out of him, the fever subsiding, the coughs fading, his nostrils clearing.
Don't think… Don't think at all…
Perhaps he'd already gone completely insane, but the heat flooding his face felt strangely soothing.
Despite his discomfort, the fever provided something new to his suffering. It was not bitter or sharp, like the winter reigning over the graveyard, or the fog curtaining all meaning and exits, but thick, and heavy, and honest, and it emptied his mind of all other things but his immediate discomfort.
It weighed him down and allowed him to rest.
You don't know anything, anyways…
And this was peace, in a twisted sense. A hauntingly-familiar sort, that he may have once been content with in his forgotten life.
Not the lack of pain, but the acceptance of it.
So don't think until you're ready to move again…
Peter Lake's cold became his company for a while. As he lay, alone, in a snowy cemetery, under the shadow of a sharp-rimmed tombstone.
Had he been less exhausted by oblivion and illness, had his fog thinned out just enough, had he had the strength to lift his heavy eyes to the stone hovering next to him… he would have found the name he'd been unconsciously searching for.
Author's Note: To anyone who is here today, thank you for reading.
I had a very bad cold this winter break and I wrote down most of this chapter when that was happening. It served as inspiration big time, given that making Peter obsessively encircle the cemetery after returning to life and therefore catching a horrible cold because he's out there for days, weeks, perhaps even months or years (I want to be vague about how much time passes for now... for obvious reasons), is not something I originally thought about. So. My own horrible cold had a deep meaning XD Cause I'm very happy with this chapter.
Yay. Back to Peter's suffering :3 Honestly, I missed elaborating on his more-painful moments... and I deeply messed up by forgetting how crucial Peter's legitimately-horrible life is to his arc in the film. That is for sure the biggest issue I found in my original Part 2, in removing his amnesia plot and his separation from Beverly.
I know I've also stated before that I intended for Peter's suffering to not be such an overwhelming aspect of my descriptions of him, cause he already suffers in the film but I lean into his suffering a lot in my stories, and I run the risk of simplifying him to a pathetically-tragic character if I'm not careful... but in all honesty, Peter Lake is admirable to me because he manages to prove himself capable of surmounting all his pain with compassion and humanity. He's worthy of miracles because his humanity is miraculous, given all the sh*t he goes through.
In fact, one thing I want, and you're already seeing it (and also seen it in my more tragic chapters of ASITL and moments of TFOTM), is to also make Peter's painful moments instances where he himself presents a more aggressive and morally-grey behavior. That way I'm emphasizing that Peter isn't necessarily better than other people, he's done very bad things in Pearly's gang and he himself is a deeply flawed person, his humanity is a choice... but I'm getting ahead of myself :3
So, yes, I do need his pain to be a crucial aspect to his characterization, otherwise I'd be betraying the very nature of his character in the movie. That is precisely what I missed in TFOTM, in my fear of painting him too tragically and therefore "simplifying him". I took away what made him so important to me to begin with.
That said. This chapter, and also the previous chapter, go into the many instances where I take a brief clip from the film and... elongate and intensify it immensely XD When Peter returns to life in the movie, he goes to the cemetery, finds a gravedigger who asks him one question, and Peter confirms that he has no idea why he's there or who he is anymore. That's it.
The transition from past to present time in the film is very abrupt, in fact it just happens and we are shown snippets of Peter in the cemetery, looking pensive, and Peter chalking down the redhaired girl on the streets. Though I don't intend to make every chapter one day or one year of Peter's very long wait for clarity, I am going to elaborate on everything I can, as I've always done.
As always, thank you for reading, here's your hug, I'll see you back here very soon! *hug*