Chapter Text
The ceiling has a crack in it.
I’ve been staring at it for… I don’t know how long. Hours. Days. Time doesn’t feel real anymore. It just stretches and folds and disappears. I blink and it’s morning. I blink again and it’s night.
I don’t remember the last time I ate, I don’t remember the last time I slept properly, I don’t remember the last time I felt anything except this… weight. This horrible, crushing weight in my chest.
My Mari used to lie beside me and trace shapes on the ceiling. She’d laugh and say the crack looked like a rabbit. Or a cloud. Or a heart.
Now it just looks like a crack.
A broken thing.
Like me.
The door creaks open.
Light spills into the room, too bright, too sharp. I flinch and pull the blanket over my head.
“Hero…?” Kel’s voice.
I don’t answer.
I can’t.
He steps closer. I hear the plate clatter a little in his hands. “I brought you dinner.”
My stomach twists. Not with hunger, I don’t feel hunger anymore, but with something like nausea. Like guilt.
I don’t want food. I don’t want anything. I just want My Mari.
“You didn’t eat breakfast,” Kel says. “Or lunch. Or-..”
“Kel.” My voice comes out sharper than I meant. But I can’t take it back.
I sit up slowly. My head spins. My eyes burn. I know I look awful. I know I smell awful. I know I’m scaring him.
I hate that I’m scaring him.
I’m scaring my little brother.
My sweet baby brother.
“I said stop,” I mutter.
He swallows. “I just want you to eat.”
“I don’t want it.”
“But Her-”
“Kel.” It snaps out of me before I can stop it. Loud. Too loud.
Kel’s eyes go wide. He looks… hurt.
I look away. I can’t stand it. I can’t stand him looking at me like that. Like I’m someone he doesn’t recognize.
My sweet baby brother doesn’t recognise me.
“Why can’t you just leave me alone?” I choke out.
Kel flinches like I hit him. And that’s when it happens. The thing I’ve been holding in for weeks, the grief, the guilt, the fear, it all cracks open. Like the ceiling. Like me.
“She’s dead,” I whisper. My voice breaks. “She’s dead, Kel. Mari’s dead.”
Kel’s face twists. He looks like he wants to say something, but he can’t.
“She’s not coming back,” I say, louder now, shaking. “She’s not walking through that door. She’s not going to smile at me or laugh or- or…”
My throat closes, and then I’m crying. Not quiet tears. Not the kind you can hide. Ugly, shaking sobs that rip out of me like they’ve been waiting to escape.
I cover my face with my hands. I don’t want Kel to see me like this. I don’t want anyone to see me like this.
“Hero-” he whispers.
“GO!” It bursts out of me, why did I yell? He’s worried.
“Just.. Go!”
I hear the plate hit the desk. I hear Kel’s breath hitch. I hear his footsteps backing away.
Then the door slams open.
“Henry?!” Mom’s voice. “Oh sweetheart!”
She’s beside me in seconds, arms around me, pulling me close like I’m a little kid again. Dad’s hand is on my back, steady and warm.
I can’t breathe. I can’t stop crying. I can’t do anything except fall apart.
Somewhere behind them, I hear Kel slip out of the room.
I want to call out to him. I want to say I’m sorry. I want to say I didn’t mean it.
But the words won’t come.
All I can do is cry into Mom’s shoulder while Dad whispers that everything will be okay.
It won’t.
Not without My Mari.
- Henry “Hero” Desoto, Age 16