Orphanage AU: Lams

Chapter 42: Un, deux, trois...

Seriously, even if you're a Wattpad friend of mine, please don't feel obligated to read the story if you don't like it. I won't be offended or anything. I know it's bad.

But! If you like it, read it! Just saying if you don't, I won't be hurt or whatever. Seriously don't feel bad.

Anyway.

---Alex's POV---

My mother, in bed, sick as hell, the stench of the sickness pervading in the air thick and stifling. Her shaking arms around me as I cough, telling me I love you Alexander, I love you, I love you.

I shush her. I know, save your strength and stay alive...

We'll be okay, whispers to me, We will, I promise. She's getting weaker. My panic rises within me as her voice grows shallow. Hey, she breaths. Calm down. Shhh... I feel her heartbeat against my back.

I want her to shut up. I want her to save her breath so she can stay strong. I'll do whatever it takes to make her happy so she can stop telling me what to do. So she'll go back to breathing for herself. So when she tells me to count in French, to calm me down, I do.

Un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq, six, sept, huit, neuf she repeats a beat behind me.

Her breath is catching. Deep down I know she'll never make it. Mom, I'm so sorry for forgetting what you taught me.

She smiles wanely back. My son. She moves her pale hand. She wants me to go again.

Reluctantly, I do. I watch her face. I listen as she counts with me, a beat after me, until- Un deux, trois...

Her breath fades. She's holding me close, but I no longer feel the heartbeat against my back. And then her arms are slipping.

She's gone.

Shaken and heartbroken, my eyes popped open. Rather than quick breathing, I realized I was lying in a tight curl even though I was a lie-on-your-back sleeper, and tears were leaking out of my eyes. Turning off the alarm- it was 4:30 and I wasn't going back to sleep- I slipped into the bathroom to wash my face.

Soon, I was sitting at my computer, typing furiously. I was clearly too occupied with my extensive paper to think about my mother, or anything in my past. I knew from experience that overworking was a wonderful way to make sure I kept my mind in the present.

I hadn't been working much lately, so I had a considerably large amount to catch up on. And yet, even though I hadn't done much, something had managed to keep my mind and presence more in the now than I had been in a very long while.

I also hadn't felt that cold in a while... Why was I so happy?

Shaking these thoughts off like water after a storm- or, no, not a storm, goddammit, like... something else, I guess, I lost myself in my work.

Except that a few minutes later, I realized I hadn't gotten coffee yet; where the world was my mind?

Before the dream about my mother's passing, which I was loath to dwell upon, I had had another unsavory dream- the hurricane. When I made my way to the coffee shop in the dimly lit morning, I noticed a certain cleanness to the air, a purity and freshness that I quickly associated with considerably recent rainfall.

The ground was damp, as though it had been slicked with rain and wasn't quite yet dry. Perhaps that was the cause of my dream, I mused as I opened the closed, dark shop with a spare key I always had, save the few times I'd forgotten it.