The Lone Wolf

18, Grief

Warning: this chapter contains depictions of loss and grief which may be difficult for some readers to read. Please continue with care. 

And don't worry, Fox won't stay like this forever.

~

Grief has its own way of leaving its mark. It rips open your heart and leaves you to bleed out alone, your core still continuing to beat despite the blood it keeps losing. It tears open long gaping lines down your back, impossible for you to reach and patch up on your own, left bare and exposed for all to see. It paints permanent tears on your face, even when it may be dry. It steals the light and color from your eyes, the laughter from your lungs, the strength in your legs. A piece of you is gone forever, and even when you manage to heal well enough to regain your light, your laughter, your strength, you are still not the same. Scar tissue is not only for flesh. It stays with you forever, until you breathe your last breath.

Grief can be monstrous. Grief can be soft. Grief can come to visit in fits of rage, fuel to an unending fire. Grief can step up behind you with hardly a sound and rest a gentle hand on your shoulder. Grief can hold you underwater and only let you gasp for air when you're on the brink of drowning. Grief can hug you tightly, for a long time, and whisper reassurances in your ear. Grief can continue to come back only to reopen your wounds. Grief can come as an echo of home. Grief can pass by briefly, as calm as a breeze, to remind you that it's been too long since you last remembered.

Grief is a unique agony. Those who have felt it understand its complexity, how deep and how tight its roots can grow and fill up space.

Fox knew grief too well. He would never not know grief.

Fox was seventeen when his mother became ill. It was a kind of sickness that had no cure, and it slowly ate away at her. She struggled to do daily tasks. She struggled to walk. Over the course of just a few months, her body deteriorated. Fox watched his mother grow weaker and weaker, until one night, she couldn't get up anymore. Fox had known, deep down inside, that he didn't have much longer with her.

Fox was seventeen as he sat next to his mother's bed. At the start of the night, she talked with him. Little by little, her words started to make less sense. She asked for something to write on. He gave her a pen and some paper. She wrote words that had no connection. Fox could only watch as she stared at what she wrote, unable to comprehend it herself. Eventually, she stopped responding to Fox, and she lay still in her bed.

"Mom?" he called, soft in the silent room. "I love you."

She didn't say it back. Fox's heart sank. He held her cold, unflinching hand.

She stopped looking around. It looked as though she was falling asleep, but her eyes remained half-lidded. Half present. Fox could see blood on her teeth. Not a lot, just a faint speckle on the edge of her gums; her mouth was slightly parted to help her breathe.

Her breaths grew shorter and shorter. Her lungs flexed weakly, trying to keep oxygen within her. Those breaths grew farther and farther apart.

Her lungs gasped once. A longer amount of time passed before her lungs gasped again.

"Mom?"

A long moment passed. She didn't take another breath.

Fox cried his heart out in a room that he was now alone in.

~~~

Fox had seen death many times in his life. He'd seen it happen in brutal and abrupt ways. He'd seen it drawn out in agony. He'd seen it happen peacefully, soft like a breeze. He'd seen them all in their aftermaths. Stiffened bodies, exposed flesh, silent hearts, empty eyes.