SATELLITE HEART [A BARLEY LIGHTFOOT x READER STORY]

Barley's journal entries 1-3

In the darkness of his hospital room, Barley sat up in his bed. He hated the plushness of it. He hated how weird it felt. It was not at all like home.

But you were, and he was grateful that you were sleeping next to him in this bed that was far too small. You didn't complain about how little space there really was. You just slept straight, snoring quietly against half of the pillow he shared with you. You were turned with your back facing him.

He really wanted to wake you up, but you'd slept just as much as he had since he was diagnosed last week. Maybe you'd slept even less than him. He wondered how many times you were awake, watching over him while he dreamed of far better times.

He looked around. If he knew you weren't so tired, he'd wake you up and rant to you about every heavy thought on his mind. But you needed this break from life and, admittedly, from him, too. So he picked up his phone to use as a light and pulled out the journal from his backpack that was on the floor beside him.

It used to be full of tips and tricks he'd learned from campaigns, but now it was something else. He wouldn't consider them journal entries, because the last four times he tried to write coherent pieces of his thoughts, the pages were marked up with ink and he couldn't even tell what he was writing because he was just so angry.

But now, with you breathing by his side, he felt just a little more capable of trying again. For real this time.

September 28, 2020

How unfair is this? It's just our luck that this would happen to us. We have something so good and we have parents that don't want us to be together and like a literal fantasy novel we make it work anyway, only for this knight to get super sick with a family curse and die super young. Okay, that sounds lame when I write it like that. But in my head, I can see our story play out and she's the princess and I'm the knight, and it looks pretty good. I guess it'd be a better movie than a book.

But I can't really make movies from this bed. And writing is probably a little bit easier, so...

I don't really know where to go with this right now. I just feel really awake and really, really aware of what is happening to me. And I think about how this is going to hurt Ian and my mom, and then I think about how this is going to hurt her, and somehow that's a whole new kind of pain that I'm not really prepared for.

I don't know what to do. She really shouldn't be here with me still. But I can't send her away now because she's said it before and I know she's right. I'm the only family she really has now. And I guess that's my fault, because before she knew me she got along with her parents really well. But ever since she's met me, things are different. And I'm just scared of what she's going to do without me. For some reason, I know she thinks (I mean I do too) that we're soulmates or whatever, and I just really don't want to hurt her. She asked me not to hurt her. But what if either way, I'm gonna hurt her?

October 5th, 2020

More treatment today. I'm so scared. It makes me so sick and I don't want her to see. If she picks this up and reads this and knows I'm just pretending to be happy and okay right now... I'm sorry.

October 8th, 2020

She just went to sleep an hour ago. I couldn't really sleep 'cause I just needed to write. Do you know what happened today? Of course not, you're a journal. Look. Listen to this. My girlfriend is freaking amazing.

I was kind of falling asleep and she wasn't yet. I kept noticing she was reading something all day, but she always kept it tilted out of my way so I couldn't see. Usually I'm like, fine. My girlfriend can read whatever she wants and I don't want to get all weird about asking what she's doing. But I was bored (this is a hospital and I'm currently dying, so what else is there to talk about?) and I asked her what she was reading. She asked me not to be mad. I was so confused as to why I would be mad at her... and then when she told me what she was reading, I was really like. HOW COULD I BE MAD?

Ian had found one of Dad's journals and given it to her to read. It's apparently full of journal entries that he wrote from the moment he got sick to the very end. She tried to reassure me that she wasn't trying to keep it from me as if I would somehow think that she was. There was no freaking way I could think that.

I asked her to read me some and she said she would in the morning. I want to read some right now, but I have to wait. I want to hear her read it to me. And not just because reading makes my eyes hurt now and I get really dizzy and sick super easy. I mean, I don't want to vomit all over Dad's Legends of Beating the Horrible Illness. He was probably like a superhero when he was fighting this.

But when I asked and she said she would read it to me in the morning, she said something to me and I just want to write it down so I can keep it forever. She said: "I feel like I can get to know your dad when I'm reading his writing. He's so much like you, Barley."

Jeez. I love her.