The Unbearable Lightness Of Being - Tumblr Posts

3 years ago

“She fell asleep at this side, clutching his hand. She held his hand all night.”

— Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being (trans. Michael Henry Heim)


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1 year ago

I just wanted to say I’ve kept up with your fic rather religiously and it’s one of my absolute favorites to the point where I refused to read the final chapter until I re-read the whole thing. What a beautiful story you created. You have a gift.

Hii, marisatomay, I’d like to start off by apologising for how long it took me to get around to answering your ask 🙈❤️ (was trying to figure out what I wanted to say, and how I wanted to say it, sorry X’D), and thanking you for all your love and support!! 👐🏼🌻 This fic’s the first thing I’ve written written since my 12th grade grammar exam (I think I wrote a 500-word picture-composition on a black-and-white photo of two kids playing in the rain, if I’m not mistaken 😂), and many drafts later, it’s still riddled with little-big mistakes (am planning on doing a final round of edits to flesh out/improve some of the things I wanna work on in the earlier chapters, before I bid farewell to these characters for good 🤞🏼). Which is why, I’m so grateful and pleased that you’d consider my work to be one of your favourites :’) Really, you’re too kind, thank you so much!! ❤️🫂

Now, I must confess, that I do have some residual guilt with regards to the story 🙈 I wrote omegaverse ‘cause I wanted to explore the socio-cultural implications of this made-up biology (a teeny-tiny difference in a chromosome somewhere in an individual’s genotype, that results in a difference in their phenotype), that ends up determining a person’s place in society (a reflection of our world, only much darker, with explicitly discriminative policies/laws still in place in the 21st century)? I set out to tell a story about two people who grow up wanting more or less the same things (to serve their country, and honour their fathers’ legacies — whatever that means to them, individually), who were then offered vastly different opportunities by their world. And while Tom and Pete started their journey with us on a very unequal footing, I’d promised myself that they’d end it, as equals. I worked to that end with the constitutional amendment, and universal suffrage, and the honest conversation they had about the state of their marriage. But somewhere along the way, I realised that their past really does cast long shadows, that I can’t resolve all of their issues, tie everything up in a neat little bow at the end. And it occurred to me, that I had to be okay with that.

There’s a book called Sapiens, in which the author talks about how (I’m paraphrasing here) everything that isn’t a scientifically-proven fact, is a myth. How the sharing of collective myths (capitalism, money, nation, God), has helped shape the foundations of human civilisation. And that’s something something that really stuck with me, ‘cause if that’s true, then maybe we owe it to ourselves, to the world, to tell the right stories, to believe in the right myths? I’m not saying that every story should have a moral or a message (‘cause that’s just not true; people write to have fun, and what can be more justified than making yourself feel good with a creative outlet that also gives other people joy?) I guess, I’m just saying that I would’ve liked to tell a story with a better, more definitive message? My Tom and Pete are far from perfect people, and their relationship is flawed, as well (in some ways, all of their problems are present from the very beginning). The optimism they have for their future, doesn’t match up to their reality. Fate leads them down different roads, and although their intentions are pure, they do end up hurting the people they love. They’re not soulmates. They’re not ‘made for each other’. There’s a chance that they’d have had happier ‘easier’ lives with different partners. That they wouldn’t have made the same choices had their circumstances been different. But, they’re both inherently good people who keep trying to work on their relationship, to find common ground. To choose love and hope. To be better for each other. And I guess, therein lies their (and my own) saving grace… :’) ❤️


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1 year ago

I feel so bad for both of them during those doomed months of their early marriage (they’re very young and very naïve and well-intentioned and in way over their heads), but this is one of the few scenes where I feel particularly bad for Tom 🙈💔 It’s easy to forget that he’s just twenty-one, that he’s scared as well. That he knows he’s messed up but he’s trying to take responsibility for his actions, trying to abide by what he thinks (what he’s probably been told) is ‘proper’. Trying to do right by his love, however misguided his attempts at that might be…

sometimes it's basically crying your little heart out and dodging a well intentioned kiss, moving away from the comfort so that they see it— I don't want you. and then missing your father with an intense longing more profound than ever before the entire next day


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1 year ago

“Oh, but you see, Kazansky,” the boy looks down at him and smiles. Engulfed by the honey-gold haze of a sharp summer sun, the sweetest, most reckless thing he’s ever seen. “I am dangerous!”

And there’s something about that smile, guilelessly fluttering across his flushed face like a hummingbird taking flight, that digs into Tom’s chest like the gentlest of knives. Cleaves its way between his ribs.

Fills his heart with light.

It’s strange, how quickly it all happens. How startlingly unremarkable it really is. How Tom takes a deep breath, lets the faint wisps of warm vanilla sugar trickle down his too-dry throat, closes his eyes, and just knows: he might’ve entered this quaint house in the middle of nowhere with a firm plan in mind to destroy any chances his father had of securing a betrothal (even if that meant stooping low-enough to make a thirteen-year-old cry) but hurting Pete Mitchell in any shape or form, wouldn’t sit right with his conscience.

Knows that there’s no reason why Mrs Mitchell should be so intent on finding her son a match at such short notice, especially when he’s so young. (Especially when she doesn’t seem like one of those parents that unfortunately, aren’t all that uncommon in the Navy: who think their omega children have little value beyond the connections they can help forge via bonding and marriage.)

Recognizes dire straits when they’re staring him in the face: the thinly-veiled distress in Mrs Mitchell’s dull green eyes; the worn dress shirt that’s almost two sizes too big for Pete — that he was probably supposed to grow into several months ago, but never did; the stale scent of grief and pain that clings to even the most carefully-polished surface of their home.

Finds himself thinking that maybe, it isn’t all that strange. Maybe, he could spend the rest of his life with this boy. Finding out what makes him smile. What makes him laugh. What is his favorite dream to dream.

In the end, it all comes down to this: Sometimes, you meet a person and it feels like you’ve known them your entire life. A quiet sense of belonging settles in your bones, and you realize you’d do anything to keep them happy and secure.


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1 year ago

“I lost my father to a war, Tom,” he whispers, heat pressing down on his shoulders, burning the inside of his ribs, slamming into the pit of his roiling stomach. “I know flying’s dangerous. Better than most people, I’d think.”

And he sees it then. The purple sun rising across the horizon. Its faint light glancing across the slope of Dad’s brow, catching in his close-cropped hair, bouncing off his wide grin. Sees Dad’s face every time he got a perfect score on a test. Won a prize at the science fair. Outran every single one of his classmates.

Sees the warmth of pride, of happiness that lit up his eyes. Made them shine. Made Pete think that he could shine, too.

“Why do you want to be a naval aviator?”

Despite himself, he reaches out a tentative hand and touches Tom’s cool cheek. Brushes his fingertips down the slope of his strong jaw, wishing he could banish the stress from his expression.

Tom’s hands still, then crumple into tight fists as his eyes harden into pools of ice.

“I want to serve my country. Be a part of something bigger than myself. Honor my family—” Tom says, and that’s it, isn’t it? It’s that simple.

“Then why is it that I can’t do the same for my country? For my family?” he interrupts, knowing that Tom has to see reason now. That it’s all so very simple when you put your mind to it. “Don’t you see, Tom? If my father was here today. If he was alive… he would’ve been so proud of me.”

Pete hastily wipes the wetness rolling down his cheeks. Tastes the saltwater on his lips.

If he was here today. If Dad was alive. I wouldn’t even be here.

There’s stars dancing in front of his eyes, and he can make out each individual pin-prick of light. A dazzling, blistering white. Like Magnesium burning in the air with a brilliant, luminous flame.

Tom’s silent for several seconds, his eyes dark, almost black in the dim light of their bedroom. “I think if your father was here today, he wouldn’t want his only child to fly in active combat. To risk getting shot down, or captured, or killed.”

The rings on his left hand feel a lot heavier than they did an hour ago, like they weigh a thousand tons each. Like they’re rusted metal chains shackling him to the cold, lifeless ground.

“You keep talking as though we’re actually at war,” Pete says. You’ve no idea what Dad would’ve wanted for me, Pete thinks. You didn’t know him. You don’t even know me. Not really. “The Cold War’s practically over.”

“I guess we should write Brezhnev, then. Wonder how long it’ll take them to tear down the Iron Curtain now that you’ve declared the War’s over.” Tom deadpans, his voice flatter than Pete’s ever heard it. Unwavering gaze flickering down to his belly before settling on his tear-stained face. “You know this isn’t just about the Cold War, Pete. As long as we’ve had history, there has been combat. We aren’t going to enter an era of world peace just because our military has started commissioning omegas.”

“You’re being a hypocrite. You do realize that, don’t you?” Nausea burns the pit of his stomach. Punishing and hot. His chest aches like someone’s taken a sledgehammer to it, ragged breaths rapidly burning his insides. “You stand there and talk about the dangers and unpredictability of war when you’re fully prepared to serve in one, if and when duty calls. I’m supposed to live with the knowledge of not knowing when you might be sent off to combat. Deal with it as a part and parcel of my life. But God forbid, I ask you to do the same for me—”

“I shouldn't have to be the one to tell you that alphas and omegas would be taking on a very different set of risks going into active combat duty,” Tom bites out. His expression’s a mask but Pete can see the carefully-restrained fear in his eyes. An emotion so out of place on Tom’s face, it almost stuns him speechless. “Say you get shot down over enemy lines one day. Say you don’t go out in a blaze of glory as you might imagine… What then, Pete? Do you know what the prisoners of war lived through at Hanoi? Do you have any idea how bad it got for them? Imagine how much worse it could get for an omega…”

“What are you saying?”

Pain sparks through the base of his skull, making him drop his head down and press his clammy fingers to his brow. It feels as though he’s slowly being ground into dust. These days, it always feels that way.

How much worse could it get?

“Please, don’t make me spell it out for you,” Tom whispers, somehow instinctively knowing that Pete doesn’t understand. That he hasn’t thought about getting shot down. About getting captured. Getting killed.

“Everyone’s gotta die someday, right?” His throat hurts from the effort it takes not to cry. He closes his eyes. Thinks about his life. The seemingly endless hours spent at home alone. Doing laundry. Washing dishes. Dusting shelves. Throwing up until he’s sobbing from the relentless pain in his head. Thinks about the second line on his test. Bright pink and impossible to ignore.

About how maybe, there are worse things than death. Than being eighteen and feeling like your life’s over already. Than not being where you want to be.

Even if it doesn’t feel that way.

“I could die five months from now. Or in five years. Or fifty. That’s not upto me, Tom. Some things are just… out of our control. But what I can do is make my life matter. Make it worth something. I want to learn. I want to grow…”

I want all of the same things you do.

“And I want all of those things for you. I want you to study. I don’t care about how much it costs us, as long as you get to learn. I want to do things your way. When we got married, I promised myself we’d do everything your way—” Tom pauses for a moment. Weighs what he’s about to say next. Seems like he doesn’t want to say it but soldiers on anyway, jaw set in a tense line. “But you need to stop chasing ghosts, Pete.”

Something cold and heavy swoops up from Pete’s belly. Settles on his chest. Presses hard against his ribs.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The heavy feeling worsens. Squeezes his lungs. Sharp and unkind. Almost like he’s cracked a rib.

“I think you do.” Tom’s mouth twitches, and he looks away. Runs a hand across his tired face, looking much older than his twenty-one years. His Annapolis ring glints a caustic blue in the dim light. A potent reminder of all the things in the world that just aren’t meant for Pete. “You don’t need to join the Navy to make your life matter. You don’t need to seek validation in what you think your father would’ve wanted for you—”

“Fuck you.” His stomach wrenches and he presses his hands over his abdomen, struggling not to vomit. It takes him a moment to realize that he’s angry. To recognize the raw, painful thing lurking under his sternum. To give it a name. Tom takes a step towards him, concern flickering across his face, bleeding into his ice-cold eyes. And Pete leans away. Lets the tepid air rush in between them. “Fuck you, Tom.”

Because that’s his father. That’s his life. His dreams Tom’s talking about so callously. Dismissing like Pete’s just a lost little child who doesn’t know right from wrong. Doesn’t know what he wants. Who doesn’t know himself.

“Yeah, fuck me.” Tom sucks in a breath. His next exhale a little bit sharper. A lot less steady. He stares down at Pete’s bloodless fingers still clutching the flat of his belly, before looking up and meeting his eyes. Wistful and angry and resigned. “But that’s how we got ourselves into this situation. Didn’t we, Pete?”


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10 months ago

The swing doesn’t creak under his weight. It’s different from the little tyre Dad had strung up for him in the backyard when he was a kid. But in the ways that matter, it’s exactly the same.

Securing his grip on the chains, Pete takes a few steps back. And then, he lets go. Swings ahead, kicking the air. The white of his shoelaces almost glowing in the dark.

The height of the swing increases with every pump of his legs, a glorious breeze blowing against his damp brow. The rise in his body’s centre of mass making itself know in bubbly feeling floating in his belly.

It’s almost like one little swing is enough to turn-off something as big as gravity.

And maybe, gravity only exists as a manifestation of the loneliness of all the molecules and atoms and protons and neutrons and electrons that make up the Earth.

Of the loneliness experienced by all the living breathing people with burdens and disappointments and broken dreams that inhabit the planet.

“Pete… slow down. Please.”

The voice reaches out to him, but he can’t really hear it. Smooth syllables rounded out by the faint buzzing in his ears. ‘Cause somewhere in Pete’s head, all the sound has gone out.

And what is life? What does it even mean to be alive?

He closes his eyes against the cool wind buffeting his face, raises his legs as he reaches the topmost part of the arc of his swing. Takes in a breath that makes a gasping sound at the back of his throat.

Is it this?

The act of breathing in and breathing out.

Is inspiring oxygen and expiring carbon dioxide, pumping enough blood from his heart to his arteries and eventually, all of his visceral organs, enough to classify Pete as alive?

Maybe, it is.

If so, maybe he’s only as alive as an insentient tree, or a patch of symbiotic lichen growing on the bark of a tree. Or a non-flagellated bacteria that cannot move freely through its own immediate environment and lives out its brief, insignificant existence stuck in the same ultra-microscopic space that Nature deemed it appropriate to cage him in.

After all, what is he?

A universe of atoms. An atom in the universe.

There’s fresh wetness burning behind his eyelids, clumping his lashes, and Pete makes a valiant attempt to fight the stupid, overwhelming, all-encompassing need to cry, till he ends up crying a little, anyway. Staring up at a flock of stars scattered across the night sky. At the light that’s been traveling for hundreds and thousands of years to reach his tired eyes.

“Push me higher, Daddy, I want to fly!” he would implore. And his father’d always obliged. Instructing him to hold on tight, as the sky rushed up to welcome him with open arms.

The metal chains of the swing dig into his palms, but Pete doesn’t notice the discomfort, tightly closing his hands around the only thing tethering him to the ground.

Pumping his legs for the last time, Pete wonders whether he and his father are looking up at the same night sky, whether Dad sees the frozen lights twinkling against a backdrop of crushed, black velvet, and thinks about just how small he is in the grand scheme of things.

And in that sublime moment that seems to stretch on infinitely, Pete is flying.

After a while, he does slow down, spots Tom who’s now standing next to his swing, off to the side. His shoes skid against the sand as he comes to an abrupt stop. Little spots dancing in front of his eyes. Growing bigger and bigger. Taking on shapes and colors: starry-blues, fuchsia-pinks, firetruck-reds. Till his vision starts crumpling ‘round the edges.

Till strong hands grip his waist and his arm, deftly lower him into the swing, hold him securely till the colors fade away. Bleed into the night.

“I’ve got you,” Tom murmurs, warm hand moving up to cradle Pete’s tear-stained cheek. To caress his quivering chin with a calloused thumb.

This way they’re at eye level, and Pete can see his face clearly. Can smell his scent. Like a rain shower in the summertime after the grass has been cut.

“I really don’t know what this is, but I feel so scared, Tom… I feel so alone...”

Moonlight glances off Tom’s wedding ring, and Pete brushes his pinky against the cool metal. A minuscule movement that stills Tom’s hand. Turns it boneless in Pete’s grip.

“But you’re not alone, Pete. You don’t have to be scared, ‘cause I’m going to take care of you. You have me. You’ll always have me,” Tom whispers. And it feels as though he’s reciting a prayer, breathed into existence against the unsteady beat of Pete’s heart.

He runs his thumb along Tom’s knuckles, over the warmth seeping through his sun-kissed skin. Over the faint scars sloping over the smooth ridge.

Remembers how Tom got those scars. The bubblegum pink balloons that littered the varnished gym floor at prom. The fraying ends of the ribbon tying the corsage to his wrist. It’s rose petals picked away by his anxious fingers. The short-lived relief of getting away from the heat and the people and the noise. From all of the eyes on him, and all of the whispers. Of Annapolis admissions and impending engagements and the possibility of getting bonded before marriage. Of the fact that the Academy forbade Midshipmen from getting married. But didn’t stop them from bonding their omegas.

He remembers the sharp smell of unfamiliar alpha stinging his nose. The cold burn of calloused fingers on his neck. The yelp of distress punching it’s way out of his chest. The white-hot shock that flooded his insides when a senior he hardly recognized leaned in to deliberately scent him and remark: Kazansky’s got himself a sweet one, all right. But you don’t seem to like him very much, do you? Say, if you’re looking for someone better—

Remembers only being able to string together three weak words, nascent tears choking his voice: Let me go.

Remembers the blur of motion at the edges of his vision. Strangled sounds of a brief scuffle. Raw knuckles clenched into tight fists. A spot of blood staining the pressed-clean collar of Tom’s dress shirt. Quicksilver glinting in his steady blue eyes.

Unapologetic even in the face of detention and the threat of suspension.

The same eyes that are looking at him now: open and vulnerable and all the more steadier for it.

“Please, let me be there for you. Let me be good to you. Let me take care of you. Let me…”

Tom shuffles closer, touches the hem of his tee-shirt with shaky fingers. Smooths it down where it had ridden up, exposing a sliver of his pale abdomen.

“Okay,” he whispers.

Because Tom isn’t a liar. He would never lie. Not to Pete. Not to anyone.

Because Tom would never not be good to him.

Because Tom’s hands never shake, but they’re shaking now. As Pete cradles them in his own, brings them down to his still flat belly. Feels the press of them against his covered skin. The space between his breaths shortening, till he lets a little breath go.

Till he closes the distance between them, his mouth hot on Tom’s, the whole of him held between Tom’s shaky palms.

Because Tom feels like home.

Tom’s eyes widen, his next inhale coming in a little shorter, a little sharper. And Tom tugs him a little closer, curls his calloused fingers round the slope of his jaw, kisses Pete deeper. Something desperate in the hard press of his lips on Pete’s. Something heartbreakingly tender about it.

And Pete doesn’t know what to do with it. With the way his chest’s heaving like it’s being crushed under the weight of his ribs. With the way his lungs are bursting, ballooning up and taking his breath away.

And it feels so simple. So easy. Even though it really isn’t. The honesty of it. Of wanting to hold. Of wanting to be held. Of wanting to love and be loved.

But he leans into it. Fingers weaving softly in Tom’s thick hair, thumbs tracing the curve of his cheekbones.

Because, Tom is home.


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9 months ago

Pensacola’s far more crowded than the little Pete’s seen of Lemoore. Definitely more crowded than his own hometown in Texas. And somehow, it feels like a real city, a blare of noise overwhelming him at every turn.

Even the streets seem different. Much wider than he’s used to. Smoothly paved, crisscrossing everywhere. Pete watches the cars bolting past: a Corvette Stingray, an Aston Martin Vantage, a Chevy Camaro. Their windows gleaming golden under the bright winter sun.

Buildings with glass windows reach towards the tall blue skies, laced only by a few wispy clouds hovering in the distance.

He doesn’t know where he’s going. There’s too many streets, too many cars, too many sounds: the music twisting out of radios, the voices talking intently at one another, all blurring together into one.

There’s too many people. Men in sharp suits carrying leather briefcases. Women wearing dark sunglasses and rustling skirts.

All important-looking people, who walk past him quickly. As if on urgent business.

And all of a sudden Pete finds himself wishing that he was wearing something better than the sweatshirt and trousers he’d taken to borrowing from Tom’s wardrobe, once his own clothes stopped fitting him. That he was a couple of inches taller. That he had shinier hair and prettier teeth.

He finds himself wishing that he didn’t feel like a stranger in his own body, most of the time.

“You don’t know, Pete,” his mother had once told him, turning her tired gaze to the window. Her small pale hand tapping the space above her heart. “What it feels like. In here. You just don’t know.”

At the time, he’d wished he could know. What it felt like. What was in her heart. Wished he could erase the sadness lining her delicate face. Bleeding into her pretty eyes.

But maybe, Pete’d been better off not knowing, after all.

He blinks up at the sky, at the blanket of blue tingeing his sight. Thinks about pretty things. About how they don’t last in this world.

A stray cat with big green eyes slinks by. Pauses. Looks up at Pete expectantly. He leans over the swell of his abdomen to pet the soft spot between her ears. Feels the smile tingling at the corner of his mouth when she runs her prickly tongue over his fingertips. Nuzzles her little pink nose into the curve of his palm.

“Hey… you hungry? Let’s see if we can find you some food.”

The feeling inside of him doesn’t linger.

It floats away. Becomes smaller and smaller and then disappears, as the syrupy-sweet warmth of the afternoon settles back into his limbs.

The cat slips away from under his heat-stained palms. Tail swishing in the air as she darts down the sidewalk.

And Pete finds himself stumbling after her, socked feet slipping on the smooth soles of his worn-down shoes.

Warmth tightens in his chest as he runs down the paved concrete. Heat clinging to the afternoon air like crystallized salt. Washing everything with it’s golden touch.

It’s easy like this. To imagine that if he lifted his legs just a little higher, his whole body would float amongst the clouds.

Pete passes a group of little girls skipping rope. An old man with a newspaper tucked under his arm, who smiles at him when he races past. A boy about his age with a pile of heavy books in his hands, probably on his way home from the library.

He sees streets lined with shops selling flowers and pastries and suits and toys. Smells salt and smoke and the bewildering scents of the dozens of people around him.

Sweet notes of someone’s joy mingling in with the sharp bursts of someone else’s nervousness. Excitement and anticipation and worry and relief, all overwhelming him, all at once.

He turns an abrupt corner, his ears buzzing, pulse fluttering in his mouth, eyes darting from one unfamiliar end of the block to the other, when he sees a little kid crouched down on the crosswalk.

It’s an empty road and the few pedestrians who are rushing by, either don’t notice or don’t care to see the boy.

“H-hey,” Pete calls out, voice hoarse, color high in his cheeks. Each breath coming in heavier than the last as he looks up at the crosswalk signal. Sees the neon green numbers blinking down at him. Indicating he has plenty of time to get to the child. To bring him back to the sidewalk. “Are you alright?”

His feet feel swollen inside his sneakers. Protesting every step he takes down the pristine white lines marking the hot concrete, like thick stripes of mint candy.

There’s a sharp stitch in his side from all the running he wasn’t supposed to do. His doctor’s disapproving face growing bigger and bigger in front of his eyes, as the thick humid air makes a wheezing sound at the back of his throat.

Pete presses a shaky palm to the curve of his belly. Feels a furtive kick against his heat-stained fingers, the smallest outline of a foot.

Remembers the softness melting in Tom’s steady blue gaze. The careful press of calloused fingers against the stretched pink of his skin. The barely-contained wonder. The tender press of a mouth against the ever-growing swell of his abdomen. Against the curve of his lips.

I love you.

The wind rises, blows the shorter uneven bits of his hair outta his blurry eyes.

There’s a voice in his head. A voice that sounds remarkably like Tom’s. Telling him to stop. To turn around. To call for help.

The whites in his vision dance in a frenzy.

But he’s almost there. The boy is right there. Pete’s tired but he can’t stop now.

Big brown eyes blink up at him slowly. He can’t be older than five, maybe six. Pete wonders where his parents are.

Are you all alone?

The child doesn’t respond. Pete touches his lips — closed — doesn’t know whether he’s spoken aloud.

He notices the thick glasses lying in a crunched heap on the ground. The dark red blood plastered on skinned knees.

“Hey, sweetheart,” Pete tries again, kneeling down as deftly as his body will allow, breathing around the heat crumbling his larynx. Like it’s coming apart and sticking together all at once. “Why don’t we get off this road? And then, you can take me to your parents.”

“I’m B-Bernie, and I w-want my dad.”

The boy is scared. It’s thick in his scent, in the quiver in his chin, in the wetness pooling in his eyes. And it’s an awful feeling. Seeing a child so little, so scared. But it distracts Pete from the heat, the unsteady beat of his heart, the prickly discomfort creeping up his arms and legs.

If he can focus on Bernie’s fear, maybe he can drown out his own.

“Hey Bernie, I’m Pete. And I also want to find your father. Why don’t we go look for him together, huh?”

Bernie sniffles as he holds out his arms. Presses closer, the tip of his damp nose tickling Pete’s ear as he hiccups, “You’re s-scared… I can smell it. Please don’t be scared. After we find my dad, he’ll help us find your dad too.”

A wet laugh punches its way out of his aching chest as he hoists the boy up on his hip. Gently wipes the trails of dust and tears off his round cheeks. “Sure, kid. We’ll do that. Now let’s get off this road, okay?”

Bernie tugs on the sleeves of his shirt, hands stronger than they look. Burrows his wet face into the curve of his neck. Whispers a quiet thank you.

The signal tells him he has another forty-five seconds to get off the crosswalk.

Deck the halls blares out from the open window of a toy store.

The baby inside of him kicks hard, sending little shocks of pain down his spine.

And in the end, it’s far too late by the time he sees the speeding car peeling down the street.

His voice is silent, nowhere in his throat as his whole body curls around the boy in his arms. Around the little life in his belly.

Heaven and earth tumble, he grasps for the wind, and the streets fall away.

And then, there’s the sky — the fluffy white clouds like rabbits dancing across its spotless blue expanse.

He imagines reaching for them, swirling them around a stick, catching sunlight in each pristine wisp. Making tiny little rainbows all of his own.

Pete raises his hand to reach for the light, it feels sticky and warm.

Deafening wails threaten to pierce his eardrums.

Bernie.

There’s a sharp blinding pain in his chest, as though there’s a knife scraping the inside of his esophagus with every wheeze of air struggling to make its way to his lungs, but he can’t focus on that right now because: Where is Bernie?

Distantly, Pete realizes that the screams are coming from above him. That there’s little hands pressed against his chest, a torso huddled against his belly. That the hot tears rolling down his cheeks aren’t his own.

Are you hurt? Please, don’t be hurt. Don’t cry. Please.

The world seems only half real through the inky blackness seeping into his vision. Like a reflection of a reflection. Like something out of a story told long ago. Nearly-forgotten. Moulded by time into something else entirely.

At a glance, Bernie looks mercifully unharmed: moving all of his limbs, his scent untainted by the bitter notes of pain.

Dirt smears his forehead in a wide arc. Pete reaches out a hand to wipe his face, belatedly sees the bright crimson smeared across his own palm.

It dawns on him ever so slowly. As though the whole world has frozen around him. As though time’s come to a complete standstill. Like one of those films on tape that you can pause with the press of your finger.

Bernie’s screaming at the sight of blood. Pete’s blood. That’s soaking right through his clothes. That’s pooling around him.

And all of a sudden, he feels cold. Very cold.

Panicked voices surround him. Suffocating in their proximity. Someone tries to lift Bernie off of him, but the boy refuses to let go, holding onto his neck with a strength that can only be fueled by adrenaline.

There’s a cacophony of sirens in the distance, but Pete can’t move, he can barely breathe.

It’s like being choked by a noose steadily tightening around his neck. He wants to comfort Bernie, to ask for help — Tom, he needs Tom — he can’t stay here — the baby —

He places a weak hand on the swell of his belly, hoping for a kick, a movement, a flutter, anything.

His baby is frighteningly still as the last vestiges of consciousness leave his body, and there’s nothing between the sky and the ground but endless black.


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2 years ago

Daniel Day-Lewis as Tomas in The Unbearable Lightness of Being 


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