Patience grave.
Alzheimer's!Levi x Reader.
[hello. This one is a sweet one I guess. Please note that in this fic Levi has Alzheimer's in the moderate/medium form. This means he has difficulty in catching words and framing sentences. But it is not too severe, like, he forgets his loved one, no he doesn't. Okay? I guess. He just forgets small things and stuff. Plus their age is not mentioned so you can just guess. They are old. Not too old. And note, I'm not a doctor so I don't have an absolute knowledge about Alzheimer's so forgive me if there is a mistake or two. Read it. Lol i wrote it so fast there are probably many mistakes. Plus the writing is a bit stupid and eww. I kind of forgot what my style was lol. Huge thanks to @Juliewoods0. If it weren't for you, I probably would have thrown away this idea too lolol]
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There are innumerable qualities in human beings. One fascinatingly questionable trait was being able to perceive emotions, letting them roll into the premise of one's brain and directing one's actions. This trait was known to be produced by the red palpating flesh dubbed as heart. But you knew better. No matter how much your heart wanted your husband to pull a tiny string of remembrance from the palace inside his mind, he couldn't do it.
That was when you gave up hope on the silly idea of depending upon your heart for the purpose of fulfilling your glassy-eyed desires. Many people say,'Follow your heart, it knows the best.' But your heart wanted a rampage of emotions; it wanted to set the fluttering inconsistent wings of capriciously uncoordinated emotions loose.
"I'm home," you called, dragging your weak sight over the living room. Tucking your silver stained hair behind your ears, you called again in the same tone hoping to get an answer which was unadulterated by the weak memory of your husband. If you counted correctly, you had left him for just a meager one hour to collect supplements in a frivolous attempt to make pasta. Both you and Levi were jingling on two sides of the scale of equilibrium when it came to judging who stood a stronger ground in kitchen. Neither of you could produce a five star dish but were able to make decent food to lead a decent living.
You touched the smooth golden band on your ring finger, fingertips dragging the precious metal along the column of your bent digit. Pocketing it, you washed your hands over the sink, the warm water forcing out a staggering sense of peace from your heart. Your head moved time to time in an attempt to catch the figure of Levi.
"I heard you...no need to..." Levi exhaled loudly, his face contorting, fingers tapping in a relentless fervour, "...yell."
"Of course, dear," you spoke in a soft timbre, one which was incapable of provoking the monster named chaos inside Levi's brain. "What would you like? Vegetarian pasta?"
Levi shook his head, whispering an audible 'No'. You tried to carry the conversation by asking questions whose answers were aligned in a sole lane comprised of 'yes' and 'no'. You didn't want to pour poison onto Levi's conscience; you didn't want to ask such questions which Levi had to answer with full fledged sentences because it would only make him feel as if he has lost the ability to catch words and sew them into coherent sentences. It would burn his pride and drown his self-respect. You knew it. Yes and no's were a safe sanctuary.
"Non-vegetarian it is, then." You smiled along the words, trying to quiet the nerves which were assaulting your insides. Worthless and useless they were, always pushing you into believing what was brimmed with falsity. 'Trust him and trust yourself,' you told yourself. "Did you paint today?"
You could hear him shift on his chair, the fabric of his shirt sliding along the smooth leather of the furniture. He didn't answer, though. Perhaps your tone was too low for him to hear. That was alright, it was a tax which old age had to pay, nothing abnormal, nothing unusual. Old age seemed like a bomb, when it explodes it leaves hunks and chunks of memory behind, unreachable and perished. Memories which you couldn't touch, pure and placid. And it is even worse when a certain disease comes as a hurdle in the way of life, deliberately taking recollections of substances as if it were picking straws one by one from a heap of downsizing hay. Never putting those straws back too.
You went to work on dinner, which was tougher than you thought it would be. You admitted your temporary defeat by breaking the aluminum seal of a carbonated drink and letting it hiss as it slid down the length of your oesophagus. It was time to serve dinner.
Levi happily ate the pasta and spoke nothing. In his younger years too he had not been a fan of proper verbal exchange. Though he had always said, I appreciate an unhindered conversation, it never felt like he was willing to spend that precious little spare time of his debating about middling topics which the mundane world presented in front of him. You would often tease his pride by calling him Your Graceand he would reciprocate the honor by calling you My Queen.
But those times were an offspring of frivolous minds and formidable souls which could crush down any barricade of oppression. The years of being a teenager. Relentless harmony of a young beating heart always avoided resistance which the barbarous world so chivalrouslyoffered.
"Did you paint today?" you repeated the question with a small upturn of lips. He just nodded, not being a fan of speaking while eating.
"It is in my room," he replied, letting you dab his mouth with a napkin, "but it is no good....though."
You nodded, but gave him a slight push on the shoulder. "Of course it is good. It's always good." The plates clattered when you dropped them in the sink, proceeding with the usual chore of washing them.
The night took a thunderous turn. Lightning incandesced and with one flash the atmosphere shimmered as if it were sheathed with fresh air of daylight but the blaze died down as soon as it gained life. What remained was a steady roar of thunder and a sky which was saturated with obsidian waters and clouds sailing in turbulence, whilst burning stars gave it a dotted appearance.
You knew it'd be a tedious task to tuck Levi in bed while the nasty weather made him more and more confused. The loud sounds, flickering light and and your constant shush 's were making his brain whirl as if he had never encountered a storm before. The peace inside his mind was trying to find its way out but a not-so-courteous disease with a whip in its hand was acting like a disastrous resistance. The disease had so kindly received a name, Alzheimer's.
You pulled the blanket over him and yourself. He seemed like a restless ball, all the sounds around giving him a big headache. You spent the whole night biting your lip.
The next day was akin to any other day in the calendar. Same routine was followed so that Levi wouldn't have to face a hard time in an unsimilar situation. His day to day questions were calmly answered by you, "The key is in the bowl."
"No, your medications are in your drawer, the one next to our mirror."
"Ah, the word you are trying to find is 'forgot'. It is a very hard word. Sometimes I also have problems remembering it."
People around the small globe of your life pitied you. You, who had to go through so much pain so much fatigue and so much of Levi's unbearable behaviour. You could have laughed but the other brainy part of you caned the notorious part into shape. You only had the power to nod, even though their fiery words and faux sentiments seemed to have provoked your inner irritation but not towards Levi, towards them. The society. As cheesy as it might have sounded, you told them, "No, that's not the matter at all. I don't have the heart to give up on the man I love." Which indeed was the truth.
The world didn't revolve around what the heart says, they said with a crease in the brow.
Indeed. It should have, but itdidn't.
You should have already burnt (as people advised) that stupid and ridiculously hysterical idea of hope. But before burning such a thing you wanted to hold it in your hands, to perceive it, see if it is as pure and white as freshly fallen snow or if it is as dark and stale as a devil's interest. But at the end, burnt objects always pick up the colour black.
You couldn't give it up hope, of course. No matter how much people wanted you to. You had faith in hope and you hoped that your faith remained as it was.
Plus the number one thing in your list to burn was pain. You didn't know if it would pain even more if you were to burn pain itself. The fire of anger was a dangerous thing to play with.
You scooted your chair closer to the mahogany table whose sides were carved with intricate designs of roses. 'Roses aren't even that beautiful,' Levi had always said while pressing the butt of his cigarette onto the rose pattern just to show his discontentedness. The irony was that he himself had bought the piece of furniture from 'Crest the best Woodwork' at the first glance. Your husband was seated at the other end of the table looking at magazines in bored fashion.
You rummaged the drawer that was a plus point in the table. Looking for a particular document, you came upon a withered white flower which was flattened against the wreck of photo albums. It irked you for a second, how the hell did a white daisy enter the drawer. It looked old, to be honest, too old. It seemed almost brown, but the arrangement of petals told you that it had been a daisy once plus it had several white blotches too. 'Oh gods,' you giggled as your brain took out a memory of several years ago.
You couldn't help but smile at the daisy, or the thing which was once a daisy. When you and Levi were younger, perhaps in your twenties or so, both you and him had often engaged in fights. Verbal fights which were an offspring of his incapability in understanding personal space. But he had insisted that it was your incapability. You had scoffed. It wasn't an incapability though, it was lack of restraint and endurance. He was always monotonously dropping comments which irritated the piss out of you. He could be so rude sometimes. And you, because your patience was forever lacking, passed poorly structured sentences which seemed to have been dipped in a gallon of venom. Levi was a constant tease. But these arguments never took a disastrous turn because of a silly thing you came up with.
According to the silly thing, whenever you or Levi were showing signs of soreness (in attitude) and animosity, the angry one had to pluck out a daisy from the garden (neighbour's garden, to be precise) and had to put it on a 'grave' . The grave was not akin to an actual cemetery but it was composed of a napkin which was folded and refolded to make it look like a tiny gravestone. The gravestone would be perched on the surface of Levi's mahogany table whilst the flower would be settled right in front of it. You called it the 'Patience Grave' . The antagonized person who lost his forbearance and self-restraint had to do the task. It was embarrassing, actually. A grave for the dead patience. "May your patience rest in peace," you used to say.
Most of the time it was you who had to do the deed. Levi was a cynical fuck who knew how to supress emotions like a professional. You knew his tongue was like a pair of rusted scissors which was prolifically proficient at cutting your patience out from your body. The colony kids called him really 'cool' just because he was so good at playing basketball with them. You wished you could slap those children and forcefully bring them to support you. Nevertheless, Levi loved you like there was no tomorrow, no dawn, no dusk, no life and no earth.
"I love you," you muttered through your chapped lips, putting every ounce of affection that was left in your body. You didn't know if you were crying or not, there was only you and Levi to witness that. A wife and a husband. A lover and a lover. You rolled the stem of the withered flower in between your fingers, staring at it with such vigor that you suspected you were going to contuse the already contused floret.
"I love you too," his voice completed the emotional exchange.
"Do you want to see a video?" you asked in a sweet voice.
Levi looked flummoxed for a moment but spoke after a infinitesimal trice of contemplation, "Sure."
Stuffing the daisy into the drawer, you got up from the overly creaky chair. The video was a special one, perhaps it was an addition of all the inconsequential things which you missed; when there were no routines, no cabinets full of medicines, no modicum of silence to swallow your being and certainly no restricted sentences between you two.
It took you no time to find the video tape, given it was stationed right in front of the plastic turquoise vase full of lilies. Levi liked lilies, he had told you that when you were venturing through a comely flower shop, Jean's flower shop, 'Right through your heart' the entrance had said. Picking the video tape you shoved it into the player.
The video started off with Levi shouting at you to shut the hell up and that he was making a video and he didn't want you to ruin it by barking like a bloodhound. The younger (Name) scoffed and started rummaging through the closet, looking for her wedding ring. Rolling his eyes, Levi pointed at your carelessness which did nothing but provoke the beast inside your mind. How normal it was for the two of you to go berserk at each other. Your husband introduced you to the video camera as a 'Conniving fox,'but after receiving a shove from you, he muttered to the lens 'and a charming wife too,' a sentence which you slyly smiled at.
You remembered, it was the time when you were setting off to enjoy your honeymoon with him. The most delightful time of your life and his too, he claimed. The next scene showed Levi driving his car with you in the passenger seat, holding the video camera. You were shouting how much you loved Levi while he was trying to multitask: driving the car, calming you down and muttering, 'Crazy shit is going to get me killed.'
Third scene featured Levi taking a long drag out of his camel cigarettes, enlightening you on how the first inhale is always the sweetest and there was nothing more sweeter than that in the entire fucking universe. The scenery was breathtaking even to your present self who had watched the tape hundreds of times. Purple was painted across the evening sky's canvas with the stars already adorning it in the most enticing way possible. Orange bled out from the edges of the fluffy clouds while dissolving itself in the remnants of an afternoon blue made it absolutely bewitching. The only thing ruining the mood was your loud laughter when Levi spoke, 'I fucking hate purple.'
"I swore too much," Levi sighed at the video, pressing his palm against your shoulders to give it a quiet shake. "How come I never watched this?"
'You have, Levi. You have watched it hundreds of times,' you thought. "I found it this morning only." You took his arm and wrapped it around your shoulders. There was no difference between the video Levi and present Levi except a few patches of silver streaked hair and several wrinkles around the corner of his mouth and eyes. "Are you hungry? We can watch the rest later. There is this café around the corner we can visit."
"Of course," he squeezed your shoulders. The video always brought out a sense of security within himself. Whenever he watched it, he would be reminded that it was okay to touch you, pat you and speak affectionately with you. But during normal times, he would be so anxious to do anything. He had doubts whether he was allowed to hold feelings towards you or not. He would always think, how did this relationship work?
-
The walk towards 'Coffee today and everyday' took ten minutes. The walk was accompanied by you pointing at youths kissing in public and children playing in mud. "No..." Levi's face was contorted with horror painfully tipping his mouth downwards. You stifled a laugh by palming your mouth; Levi hated mud with an extreme passion.
A twink of bells announced your arrival into the café. For a brief period you and Levi were swept by a shower of glances in your direction. "Please sit here!" a cheerful voice took your hand and pointed at a seat by the glass window.
"Such a wreak, that guy," a blonde woman behind the counter whispered, "I hear he has...what was that? Ah, Alzheimer's. How is his wife still with him? That guy was such a cynic when he was young. God knows what he is now. Absolute wreck, I tell you, Amanda." The girl named Amanda just nodded, her head low while she replied with a reprimand which you couldn't hear.
'Absolute wreaks need company,' you contemplated as you took your seat. She was right though, it was a wreak, not Levi, not you, but the disease in general. It seemed like a monster with thick tentacles whose sole purpose was to suck out memories, leaving behind twisted demeanours and tendrils of smoke swirling round nothingness whilst mutilated souls wandered about with their irreparability worn like badges on their bleeding chests.
Thoughts spiraling downwards into earthly reason, you finally concluded, "I'm going to order a cup of black coffee, no cream."
"Same," he told the waitress.
"Alright you two!"
"She is a chip, isn't she?" you asked him, grinning widely.
"Yes, she is." Levi's argent eyes wandered aimlessly until it landed upon a stack of napkins just in front of him.
"What about...that guy? He looks like a jerk. Look how he is holding his girlfriend?" You frowned as you gazed at the couple. "She looks so uncomfortable. Poor girl." The aforementioned girl squirmed in her red leather chair with a laptop firmly stationed on her thighs. Her blonde hair were twisted in a bun but the jerk guy was constantly insisting on opening the tie and letting her hair fall for him. His conceit and vanity made the blonde clench her jaw, knit her brows and lean a palm against her forehead to support her frazzled self. "Just no," you muttered as you tore your gaze away from them.
"Hmm." Levi was fiddling with the napkin.
"You aren't listening, are you?" you huffed as you took a sip of your coffee which aimed to burn your tongue to ashes.
The radio was booming with Coldplay. The upbeat sound was tapping against the glass, sliding under the door and dancing on the floor with a teenage dynamism. Your feet were swinging along the tempo, flip flops dangling from your painted toes. "Ah this is amazing," you chirped.
He did not say anything. He absolutely hated this café; it had too many sounds and too many people crammed in a small place which seemed like constellation of band posters and antique vases full of roses. They didn't mix well, to be truthful. Levi tinkered and fidgeted with the Japanese napkin until it looked like a round mass. You sighed, "What you got there?"
"You ask too many questions." He put the napkin ball on the red laminated table and crossed his legs. "That's a grave."
"What?" you didn't catch the word exactly. A grave? It didn't look like one.
"I call it the 'Patience grave'. Interesting, no? This place is making me really...restless," he sighed and took another glance around the enthusiastic bunch of humans rounded in a corner. "I've lost my patience. And I've made a grave for it. Stupid, I know." Levi tossed a white rose in front of the tombstone like napkin ball. In all his beautiful and broken glory he concluded, "There. Done."
You felt a lump in your throat. There was a choked sound around you. Almost seemed like a sob ribboned with emotions as if it were to present itself as a gift. After a juncture of time, you realized you supressing an urge to cry. Right then, you found a new creak in your bones which allowed you to grasp Levi's hands gently. He didn't bolt. He didn't say anything. All he did was give you a concerned look as if you had received a shock- stupefying, painful and asperous.
You were lacking words, unable to fill in the empty space with your silent nod. A painstaking experience in your life; so intense that you couldn't even distinguish if it was joy or sadness. Which sensation to pick? It was all blurry and disoriented.
Yet, you managed to whisper with your head low and eyes wet, "That's a wonderful idea."
-
"Memories, even your most precious ones, fade surprisingly quickly. But I don't go along with that. The memories I value most, I don't ever see them fading."
-Kazuo Ishiguro.
