Wish You Were Here | Flashback: Stevie & Lynn
TW: DEATH
It’s been a year.
Those were the only four words Lynn had been able to write. She stared down at the journal in her hands, her pen hovering over the nearly blank page. Its tip shook slightly, quivering in time with her fingers, and after a few more minutes of looking down at the page she decided it was pointless to try to write and closed the journal. No amount of words on some stupid piece of paper would be able to make her feel better. The only thing that could possibly alleviate this pain, this aching in her bones, was Michael himself, but he was gone and she would never see him again. That singular thought unlocked the chest full of memories she kept hidden in her brain, dragging the pain back to the surface to be relived. She’d fought so hard to keep those memories concealed, to bury them deep within her chest and lock them away so that they could never escape in front of anyone, but there was no stopping them today. They crawled to the forefront of her conscious mind one by one.
The first memory was of the day he returned to the states. Lynn had run up to him and nearly tackled him, and although he was clearly happy to be reunited with his loving sister, she could tell there was a hidden agony writhing beneath the surface of his skin. It wasn’t long after that that she had to go back to Columbia to finish up her last semester of college, but she tried her best to keep in touch with him in case he needed her.
February, 2015: the second memory. She woke to a phone call in the middle of the night, sitting up and hitting the little green button as soon as she saw the caller ID. Michael was on the other end of the line, and she could feel how empty he was simply by the way he spoke. His usual livelihood had been replaced by an eerie desolation. It gave her chills and had her more worried than ever -- but she couldn’t do anything but call him as often as possible, since she had midterms coming up soon and she needed to stay on campus to study.
The third memory that resurfaced was the worst memory. Her family had summoned her home for the weekend without telling her why. It was March; she had just wrapped up midterms and, although she was exhausted and wanted time to relax in her dorm, her parents told her she had to return for a few days -- not optional. When her father picked her up from the train station, she could immediately tell that something was wrong. It wasn’t until they got back home and Lynn noticed Michael’s absence that she realized what it must have been. A wave of denial passed over her even before the words left her parents’ lips, and she would never forget how they appeared that day: they sat on the couch together, blinking back tears, holding onto each other as if forgetting that they were leaving their only remaining child sitting there with no loved one of her own to hold onto.
The last memory was of the funeral, but this one couldn’t even finish presenting itself to her before she put a stop to it. She stumbled down the stairs of the flat, vision blurring with tears and lungs aching for fresh air. The memories were suffocating her, burying her alive under layer after layer of despair. Lynn ran through the Eagle, ignoring the nosy stares of customers and concerned glances from fellow employees as she burst through the front doors. It was only when she was outside breathing in the chilly air that she allowed herself to really let the floodgates open. With each tear that fell and each sob that ripped through her chest, she felt her knees grow weaker. Eventually she collapsed against the side of the Eagle, letting herself slide down the length of the structure until she was sitting with her knees hugged against her chest, her head buried in her arms as she fell apart for the first time since moving to Harpoole Bay.
