Saying Goodbye
starter for @mpcamazotz | Camazotz & Rowoon tw: sad af w/ mention of cancer and death
Rowoon could feel time stand still, as he stops in the doorway of the hospital room. Dressed from the meeting he’d left half finished, suit, tie and shined shoes. Briefcase in one hand, the other clutching the plastic wrapping of cheap, convenience store flowers, chosen out of a last minute rush, not means or intent to give less.
For a moment that seems to stretch he merely stands, gazing in at the lifeless, grey body of the woman he once knew to have so much life. No machines beeped or whirred, she lays, unplugged, arms laying atop the blanket as if she were merely sleeping, but it was an unnatural sleep. “Eomma-” his croaky voice murmurs out, as if just to make sure, to possibly rouse her from her sleep, but she doesn’t move.
Slowly his eyes take all of her in. The usually happy features on her face were set like stone and sallow, gaunt and her wrists so bony. Under the hospital gown he can see the bones of her shoulder’s and chest, like the weight had shed from her. How long had it been since he’d last seen her? Months? .... before Christmas, and he knows at least one summer had rolled by between then. There had been phone calls, brief and rushed on his side but she had never once said she was ill. The cancer that was eating her up from the inside, she struggled alone and he was too busy.
The plastic of the flower wrapping rustles as Rowoon steps into his mother’s hospital room, soon followed by the clattering of his briefcase as he drops it, followed by another pathetic murmur of “eomma”. Now he was begging. She needs to open her eyes and prove all of this just a bad dream. Still nothing. Slowly his eyes widen as he realises, she had gone, and all those final years he had with her, wasted.
Dropping the flowers the demigod swiftly moves to the bed, falling to his knees by it’s side as desperate arms grab at the body of his mother. Scooping her up as sobs wrack broad shoulders. Pressing closer his aching soul begs for familiar arms to wrap around him in the comforting way they always would when he was a child. Again he calls for her, only this time it’s more like a roar of pain and desperation. It is then that a tiny voice inside of his mind speaks up, he’s not going to let this happen. He could get her soul back, he knows who and what he is. He will go there and bring her back. Xibalba. He didn’t know how, he had neve done it before, but through his connection to his father he had to be able to do something.
Drawing back, tears streaking down handsome features, he gazes back at his mother’s resting features, slowly smoothing a hand across her hair, his eyes close and he seeks her out.
