Jester (Man x Man) ✔

43) w h i s p e r s

"Eli, what's wrong?" Benjamin asked apprehensively, cupping Eli's whitened face. Eli let his trembling hands fall to his sides, still clutching the paper. 

"I-I.." Eli couldn't finish the sentence, it was like the words got tangled up in his throat and all he could hear was the throbbing of his heart. So, instead of trying to say it, he handed Benjamin the paper. Benjamin read it, a deep frown on his face. 

"You don't have to go." Benjamin clenched his jaw, trying to keep his anger from flaring up. "How dare he ask you that? I don't think you should go."

"Honestly, I don't think I could go even if I wanted to." Eli admitted and buried his face on Benjamin's shoulder, melting in his embrace. 

He didn't want to go. He didn't want to make a visit to the prison, and he wasn't ready to look into those cold ice blue eyes again. The truth was that everything had started to truly go wrong only after he met Logan, not when he left his home.

The drugs, drinking, being drugged, losing Zack, all of it. Surely it wasn't all on Logan, and he was the reason Eli was even alive in the first place. Yet there were things he couldn't forgive him for, not now and probably never.

••••

"He wants to talk to me, but I don't think I want to hear his voice ever again." Eli walked in the deserted garden.

He could still smell the sweetness of the apples mixed with the scent of the flowers, all so familiar to him. It had been more to his home than his real home had ever been, even if he only lived there for a short time. 

"I don't think I can." Eli wondered, his fingertips grazing the flowers when he walked past them. He stopped, picking up an apple from the old tree. "I wonder what it was like to love him. You loved him so madly and it was all so perfect once, wasn't it?" 

Eli thought about the scared, sickly boy Logan had saved from the streets. He thought about the boy who was still so full of wonder, waiting for his life to begin. He thought about Logan, who stood by his side all the way from that street to the basement of FAB. He thought about Zack, who was the nicest person he had ever met. He thought about the dirt under his fingernails and his endless love for flowers. 

"Do you think it was all lies?" Eli whispered, bringing the apple to his lips but not taking a bite. He pushed away thoughts of the clothes that didn't smell of alcohol and the freshly planted yellow Chrysanthemums in the garden a day after Zack went missing. 

Whatever had happened to Logan back then, had changed him for good. Logan was no murderer, that much Eli knew for sure, but everything else was just speculation. Whatever he did or was done to him shattered him into pieces. And broken people, who weren't born evil but were forced to turn that way by pain, were the most dangerous of all. 

"I want to think that you're still out there somewhere, happy and tending the most beautiful garden anyone has ever seen." Eli smiled at the thought. 

"I want — no, I need — to believe he wasn't lying about that night." Eli laid down on the flower bed, inhaling the scent of Chrysanthemums. "I still want to believe he isn't a monster. That he wasn't lying when he said that he cares about me. I don't know why it feels so important, but I guess I just want to believe there's still good in people." 

"And I want to believe we will be okay in the end." Eli breathed, closing his eyes. He wanted to be okay for Benjamin. For Prisca and her kids. For Steven, Dam-Bi, Shirley, Brandon and Ash. Most of all he wanted to be okay for himself. 

Eli felt like all his life he had been breathing, but never alive. He had lived waiting for the days to pass, waiting for a day when he could be brought to life. A day when he could finally start living. He had stood on the edge of a building, looking down at the city of thousand streetlights. His heart had stopped once, but it was beating again.

He was still alive. 

Being alive meant to feel pain, just as it meant to feel joy. It meant to get lost, just as much it meant to be found. It was days that were nothing but gray, but it was also days full of light; sunshine so bright it could blind you. It was heartbreaks, but it was falling head over heels all over again. It was nightmares and waking up in the embrace of a loved one.

It was all that and so much more. And even if Eli was still hurting and even if he would always carry some of that pain with him, he was glad to be alive.

Eli sat up, feeling bad for the downtrodden flowers, and picked up a folded paper he carried in his phone case. He opened it tardily, trailing his fingertips over Benjamin's neat handwriting.

Benjamin had grinned self-consciously, when he had given it to Eli — "Read it when you're feeling down." — and made Eli promise he wouldn't laugh at his words. Instead of laughing, Eli had felt his eyes tearing up and by now he had read the words so many times he could have quoted them with his eyes closed:

It might not feel like it right now, but it truly does get better. Even when you can't see light at the end of the tunnel and it feels like all hope is gone. Even after the darkest night the sun will rise again.

There will be a day when it doesn't hurt quite as much. There will be a day when you realize how much you would have missed, if you had checked out early. There will be a day when you're happy you didn't do it. I can't promise you'll live happily ever after, but I know you won't feel like this forever. So fight, take it one day at a time if you need to. Breathe in, breathe out, but just keep breathing.

If you ever feel like no one would care if you were gone: you're my everything. And if you ever feel like you're all alone: I love you. And if you feel like you need to hear it again, I'll never get tired of telling you this: I love you. With every breath I love you. You're freaking amazing. Yes, you are.