#jax. ( ʳᵒᵘᵍʰ ˢᵉᵃˢ ʷⁱˡˡ ᵇᵉ ᶜᵃˡᵐ / ʰᵒˡᵈ ᵒⁿ ʷʰⁱˡᵉ ʷᵉ ʷᵉᵃᵗʰᵉʳ ᵗʰᵉ ˢᵗᵒʳᵐ )

[wickedpaths]

some unasked for pain for the one and only @mindshatters​

readmore for length. tw cancer, tw death.

the rain is softer than he remembers.

overcast skies are washed out into fading grey as he wanders along quiet roads. he still remembers so much: remembers scenes and pictures from his childhood like through a view-master - like dias clicking into place, forcefully yet comforting as they push themselves in front of his inner eye. the sharp steep towards the barrens as he rests cold hands on the railing of the all too familiar bridge, the abandoned clubhouse as he gets his shoes dirty in the mud of the kenduskeag shores. it’s still there, hidden under layers of fresh earth --- years and years of rotten foliage turned into dust turned into mud turned into forgetting. the now closed pharmacy --- mr. keene’s name nowhere to be seen, instead a faceless, generic drugstore chain that breaks through the foggy air with stinging neon lights. 

it’s all still here, he thinks, like a picture underneath a picture. i know how this road looks today, i can see it; but the memories are there. they’re still there, even though blurry and shapeless like ghosts from the past are supposed to be. 

it’s all still here.

he makes it a point to not think about where he is going: let’s his body decide, hands buried deep into the pockets of his chinos. lets his feet carry him wherever they feel like going, slowly wandering through town until he thinks he might turn into a ghost himself. not a soul is to be seen, not a whisper of the wind in leafless trees. a town full of families, full of people who used to be someone --- until derry buried it’s claws into them, into their very hearts with its cold, lifeless grip, its whisper of death even now, even now. even twenty-seven years later, he can feel it, feel it tugging at his core, pulling and driving him in ways he doesn’t understand. 

the spring in his step has left him the second he had set foot into town again --- his life seems aeons away, as if he has never lived it at all: as if he’d always been waiting for this call, as if something inside him knew he was just wasting time, trying to build a life that was bearable until the time came to leave it. the thought of myra briefly crosses his mind -- what she would be doing now, what she would look like with her apron tied to her fleshy hips and her meaty cheeks covered in sweat from cooking. how the steam from the pot would be filling the kitchen, fogging up the windows, and how he’d stare at the blind glass, wishing he could get up and draw a face, a smiley face that looked sad despite its painted on expression. it feels like watching a movie, a movie about a distant man wrapped up in blankets of fear that felt like safety when he didn’t look too hard. the american dream, cars, money, good food. he had it all, didn’t he? and if it felt like a lie, who was to say that a lie had to be bad? when it helped you through nights filled with terror and nightmares, how could it be?

lightning fills the sky for just the blink of an eye. like a photograph of his misery: he knows he will never forget this particular moment, how he felt, what he saw. sharp forms of naked trees against the sky, drowned in the angry, dusty pink of the lightning bolt that cracked to earth with force. how the air felt electric, how his hair stands on end as he walks down the street towards an unknown destination. ( it’s fate, isn’t it? or something much more cruel. ) no, he will never forget again.

but you did before, didn’t you? left behind a childhood that crushed you to death, that pressured your entire being into a cold, hard diamond, smooth on the surface, formed by overwhelming love and heart-wrecking trauma. a child filled with pain and fear so profound that the words just simply didn’t exist, that even today it only feels like a vast, dark emptiness that festers inside him and makes him hold onto rituals and habits that should be long cast-off. and still, you forgot: forgot what it felt like to be that kid, forgot what you fought for, what you promised. you forgot and then you remembered, but only the things you needed to remember: who mike is. what you did, what you did when you were just a child, what strength felt like when you held those familiar hands in that divine circle. seven of us. seven. seven hearts beating in unison, and then: another heartbeat, a weaker one, one that jumped and jumped and jumped and never seemed to find its rightful rythm.

eyes had been blind to where he was walking, too enraptured by introspective and memory to pay attention to where his feet carried him, but that heartbeat -- that heartbeat, that hand -- not the one he thought it would be. not bill, not richie. not.. no, not beverly. 

he should remember. he knows he should remember, feels the purpose of that heartbeat echoing in his every cell, knows that the knowledge is still there. a name, one he hasn’t thought about in years ( hasn’t spend a single second of his life not remembering / deep down / buried buried buried so deep because it was too much it was too much for a heart so young he should have lived oh god how he should have lived how he deserved so much more how he deserved the world and then he got nothing but death ) and at once, he knows where he is even though he doesn’t know why.

the cemetery is contained in old, broken walls: thick stones stacked atop each other in frantic patterns by unpracticed hands centuries ago, too high to be anything else than silent reminders that the dead do not rest easy in this town. the gate is rusty metal, feels wrong under the palm of his hand as he pushes it open. its creaking goes through mark and bone, like a shrill scream of agony, and he almost wants to leave. but it’s not his decision anymore, being pulled forward with force as he keeps walking, gate falling shut behind him with a bang like a gunshot. no turning back now. whatever it is you need to remember: oh, how we are going to make you remember! how you will feel it all! every second of immeasurable pain, every minute spent crying over lost friend, oh how you will feel it!

he knows he has arrived before he even lays eyes on the inscripture, before the engraved letters spring into form. the name - the date - the name - the date - the n a m e : the name, the name he had sworn to never let ring out, the one he had repeated over and over and over and over because it could not be real it could not be happening this is a nightmare and i will soon wake up surely it is just a dream but it is not oh god it’s not a dream this is reality and how will i ever live with that how can i go on if nothing makes sense anymore when everything falls apart in your palms and you try to hold onto it with shaky hands that grasp nothing but emptiness a hollowed out space that once held your entire heart and now it’s just an abyss that eats you alive and

his knees go weak with the sheer weight of remembering, and suddenly the world goes black.

it’s a day like any.

tiny feet tipper-tapper over mint-green laminate floors, echo suppressed by seemingly randm paintings and the occasional houseplant every here and there, by colorful curtains that cannot hide the stale visuals of a hospital.

it’s a day like any.

he turns the corner where he always turns the corner, knocks swiftly on the door just for the sake of it before he barges into the room, arms full of new comics and old promises and a bit of giddish excitement because he’s allowed to stay an hour longer today.  ( at the arcade, of course. dear mother would never allow fragile boy to be in the presence of sickness. so: he improvises. )  

excitement drains when he finds the room empty. a second of confusion: has he walked into the wrong room? the numbers on the door deny it, so do the paintings and the polaroids and the stack of toys in the corner. ( a broken firetruck. an old police car. childish games that are secretly still very much enjoyed. ) with a shrug, magazines are discared onto the empty bed, and then he tries to find a nurse, more tipper-tapper, more laminate floors.

the worry only actually starts to set in when he finds the nurses’ room empty, too.

heart is suddenly going harder, breath going shorter, and nervous hands find his aspirator at once. it’s fine, he thinks. maybe they’re just busy. maybe he is getting some sort of treatment right now. he will be back. 

and so he sits, alone ( scared ) on dark-blue chairs neatly put in a row in the waiting area. he buys a soda from the vending machine down the hall, he waits. he gets one of his comics from jax’s room, he waits, flips through pages without actually seeing them. he buys some candy from the other vending machine down the hall, doesn’t eat them, waits.

he should be back by now.

he really, really should be back by now.

and finally: finally, a nurse, eyes puffy and red, cheeks glistening, and he gets curious. it’s a cold curiosity, one that doesn’t seem to be his own - one that observes, like he is an unfazed bystander. just steps out of his body, watches himself walk over to the nurse with wobbly legs. watches his mouth move as he asks the question, innocent interest, and the nurse seems choked up and maybe she is crying. no, she’s definitely crying, eyes as sad as the empty sea, grey and stormy. watches her shake her head, just once, before she continues down the corridor too fast, as if fleeing a scene of a murder. but she’s not fleeing from a murder, now is she? she’s fleeing from fate, from cruel, unforgiving fate, from not fair not right not how it should be.

he watches himself sit back down, and he rips open the packaging of the candy, eats the chocolate bar, feels nothing, tastes nothing. he looks very small from here, very small and very alone, like he is the only person in the world right now. like time is standing still for just a second, and everything goes so quiet that your own breath rings like booming thunder in your ears.

it’s not real, he decides, throws away the wrapper, picks up his comic and goes to jax’ room. he sits down on the bed, a hand smoothing over the covers. they’re very cold, but that doesn’t mean anything. nothing means anything, really, he decides, so he’s just going to wait here until jax comes back and they’re going to read the comics and maybe play cards or just stare out the window in the kind of meaningful silence children sometimes fell into: the one that held all the wisdom of the world, that held so much purpose in the most profound way. the silence that said: i am here, and i’m not going anywhere. this life is mine, and i will live it to my full potential, because that’s what kids do. they grow up ( or die ), they go to school ( or die ) and learn things, they play baseball in the summer ( or die ) and have snowball fights in the winter ( or die ) and then they grow up and become adults and pass their childhood on to their own children.

or they die.

but that’s not what is happening here, because it’s ridiculous and just cannot be.

ridiculous.

he walks over to the board with the polaroids, filled with smiling faces of nurses and other staff, of eddie and jax and jax alone and eddie alone, names scribbled in warped letters on each one, and dates. so many dates ( and yet, still not enough! ) - dates of birthdays, dates of a next meeting ( today ), dates of important things that don’t matter anymore because he is dead and there’s no pretense or elaborate lie that can change that fact.

except that’s not what’s happening here. just another minute of waiting and he’ll come back. everything else is just ridiculous and not true and if he’s crying it’s just a coincidence and doesn’t mean anything.

the memory is vivid and bland at the same time, like it’s happening right now and yet never happened at all. fingers trace along engraved letters on the tombstone as sobs shake his body. how could he forget? how could he forget the one that he had sworn to never forget?

it’s derry, he thinks. it’s this godforsaken evil town that sucks all of the happiness right out of you and leaves nothing but a vile taste in your mouth. that’s what death tastes like, he thinks. it tastes like forgetting and fading away.

he's on his knees in front of the grave, hands shaking as he places them neatly in his lap, tears burning in his eyes. if he was religious he would probably pray now --- pray that jax could forgive him, that he knew he had never intended to forget. but he’s not religious, and so the uttered words vanish before they have even left his mouth.

i hope he knows anyway.

i hope he knows i never stopped loving him. not really.

i hope he knows that i will never forget again.

we were just children, and yet we were so much more. 

and then we weren’t at all, and maybe that’s the cruelest of realizations: that no matter how big, how important the thing feels when you feel it, it won’t last. it will fade and disappear, and then it will be no more.

( except that’s not what’s happening here. there are things you will never forget: like the trees and the lightning and the distant thunder rolling across vast lands. like the way the wet grass feels under your trembling hands. like the way jax’s name burns into your retina like fire. like the way your heart aches and aches and aches and breaks. these are the things that last. and if pain is everything that’s left of you, then so be it. i will feel it, i will embrace it, i will cherish it. i will make it a part of me, will fill that aching void with the agonizing hurt that’s you, because you cannot feel it anymore. )