#i deadass cant remember if i proofread this but um

[shipmvns]

Closure From The Great Streetlight God

its the one year anniversary of this fic. dont call me sentimental. the universe wants maya dead

Pairing: Riley/Maya Words: 2,332 Summary:  Perhaps there's a lesson to be learned from us all about horror stories and miracles in between the monotonous drone of everything else, which is really just to say that if there's some great terrible cliche moral to be learned from being alive and dying, too, then really, it can wait until the end. 

PART ONE  PART TWO  PART THREE  PART FOUR  PART FIVE  PART SIX  PART SEVEN  PART EIGHT PART NINE  PART TEN PART ELEVEN

ALTERNATIVELY, READ IT ON AO3/LEAVE A COMMENT

But then he stops you before you can even start, earthy dirt choking you up in the back of your throat, standing in the street outside your apartment in a prom dress that’s a little torn and a little wet and definitely ruined forever, now, and he’s holding your shaking shoulders, and you don’t know if he’s listening to you.

“But that didn’t happen, right?” He prompts you, voice soft, slight nod. You swallow hard. He might be patronizing you. Probably not, though. You think he’s mostly probably just trying to be nice, because come on, it’s Farkle, and he’s known her almost as long as you have, and he cares almost as much as you do, and he’s probably a lot more practical than you are, anyways.

You nod, choked sob and all, and his grip relaxes on your shoulder.

“I know it scared you, but she’s fine, all right? Right? She started going, but they got her back. So it’s okay. And you’re remembering it all wrong, Riles. It’s not like she’s actually been in a coma that long, it’s only been a couple weeks,” he says, breathing slow and even, like he’s trying to teach you how to do it yourself. He sounds awfully sincere.

You breathe, ragged and slow. Your explanations of things may be all out of order, but you’re too caught up on the what-ifs to care, because it may have only been just a little before prom, but what if it was longer? What if it ends up longer? You can’t get it out of your head, and that makes it hard to care about what you are and aren’t imagining in your great retelling of the end of your life.

“It’s not okay,” You express, dragging your knuckle across your cheeks like a child, hiccupping slightly as you try to catch your breath. You must be quite the sight right now, the two of you. “It’s not. Because she’s still in a coma, and she crashed, and they got her back but they might not have, and she could have died, and I wouldn’t have been there, because I would have been kissing some greasy upperclassmen in the corridor while eight Juniors got drunk in the girls room, instead of being there for her!” Your voice cracks against your will, and you shove some hair that’s fallen loose out of your face.

“Riley. Hey. I know you love Maya, but life doesn’t stop just because she can’t be with you every step of the way. She could have died, but she didn’t, and you can’t tear yourself up about what might have happened,” he promises you, but it doesn’t really deliver you much comfort.

“I was supposed to protect her,” you sputter mournfully. “I promised her I would save her and it’s my fault,” you lower yourself to the cement, rapping your arms around yourself. He meets you there on his knees.

He’s more forceful this time, wills you to meet his eyes. “No, it’s not.” He pauses, looks upward, as if asking the big streetlight in the sky for guidance when dealing with a sobbing fifteen-year-old girl, then comes back down after a beat, heavy sigh and all, dark eyes meeting your own. “It was Maya’s.”

You pause, taken aback, wondering if you should punch him or cry, but a weary grin is making its way onto his face. “She stole her mom’s car because she was too jealous to let you explain a misunderstanding. She- she doesn’t even know how to drive, Riley. And, really, doesn’t that sound exactly like something Maya would do?” He shrugs, helpless to the bare truth in his statement, and he begins to laugh.

You take a minute, but then offer a watery chuckle in return, but soon his laughs as echoing, tinny and sharp in the empty night, and before you know it, both of you are laughing on the ground, rain pooling around you, prom dress and all.

Eventually, Monday comes, and you do your best to avoid that upperclassman that you cried after kissing, but it’s not hard. School is coming to a screeching close, and you and Farkle study for finals every other day. On your off days, you visit Maya. Farkle comes, too, if he can. On the days Farkle comes, you talk to him. On the days he doesn’t, you talk to Maya.

While you should be throwing yourself into studying about algebraic equations and the Watergate scandal, you instead throw yourself into studying about the Glasgow Coma Scale and Apallic Syndrome.

You learn about pupils in coma patients, and how the way that they react to light can predict the prognosis for the patient, so you tell Farkle you want to go alone, and bring your father’s miniature flashlight from his keychain.

When you make it there, you wait until there aren’t any nurses in the halls, and then you lift her left eyelid open. You flinch, if only for a moment; it’s the first time you’ve seen her eyes in weeks. You shake your head, as if that will physically save you from the jarring notion in your chest, then take the flashlight and hold it up to her eyes.

You take a painful breath; her eyes dilate. You might start crying from relief, but the blaring of her machines jolts you backwards, and you scurry out unnoticed as doctors pile in, chaotic symphony against the sound of her tachycardic heart.

After a while, you’ve started drawing lines with your uncut nails in the arm of the hospital chair, and the only thing that manages to stop you is the sight of a familiar doctor standing over you. He told you, once, when you thought that the world would end, that his name was Henry.

He looks at you expectantly, and when you say nothing, he starts for you, instead. “She… isn’t dead,” and he sounds almost helpless, looking down at you, eyebrows knitted together. “She should be,” he tells you, after a long breath. “She… by all means, medically… should be dead. And, uh, I’ve been going over it in my head, for a while, now thinking of all of the reasons… any reason, why this kid wouldn’t be dead. At all, but especially her, and especially by now. I mean, she really should be dead,” he strings together words like he doesn’t know what he’s trying to say, what he’s trying to convey to you.

“Why are you telling me this?” You look up at him, voice hoarse. Does he think he’s making you feel better?

“Well- I’ve been going over it in my mind. So have all of the other surgeons, even. And, uh, they all chock it up to something like a miracle? That’s.. what we call it, in science, in medicine, when something doesn’t make sense. When a tumor disappears. When a girl who should be dead is doing surprisingly all right. They’re all calling it a miracle,” he peers down on you, but he sounds incomplete, like he needs to go further, trudge along with whatever else he has to say.

“A miracle,” you repeat, knitting your hands together, not breaking his gaze.

“That’s what they’re saying about it,” he nods, shifting uncomfortably. “But… I don’t think it is,” he looks at you sideways. “I think.. I think that it’s you. I mean, I’m the one who’s been on her case, since the first car accident, to this one. And she shouldn’t be alive, and, uh, she doesn’t… Doesn’t really strike me as a super lucky kid. All things considered,” he tells you.

You stay silent.

“So I… It’s not exactly scientific, or a diagnosis, but I think that it might be you. I think… she’s struggling like hell to not be dead, even if she should be. And I think it might be you.”

He looks from side to side. You wouldn’t know how to respond if words could meet your lips, anyways. So instead, you just nod, and hope that he gets it, and then you wander home, the picture of Maya’s eyes still bright in your mind.

Everyone is worried about you, and you wish it would stopping, because obviously, the comatose girl is the more pressing issue, here. Still, you can’t fight the nagging feeling that you can’t live without her, and you can’t ward off the fear that grows in your chest each time you go to see her. It’s easier with Farkle, but he’s not there, today, and so she’s your only company, and it scares you, seeing Maya be so, so quiet.

Still, though, everything Henry said to you lingers in your head, and you find yourself rambling over her bed, begging her to stay alive.

“Maya, you can’t do this. You can’t be like this. You’re Maya Hart, nothing that a car can kill. It tried once, remember? Remember? But you didn’t die, not then, and not again, when your brain started bleeding. So you’re not just going to- to die, here, in a stupid hospital, because you thought it would be a good idea to drive! You can’t drive!” You sputter, gripping at her sheets, looking at her, broken and bruised, completely still in front of you.

“You shouldn’t have run off in the first place,” you reprimand her unmoving body, “that was stupid! Why did you have to run off, why do you always do that, Maya? Why can’t you ever listen to me, why do you always have to go off and try to destroy yourself?!” You struggle, and you find yourself crying once again, sucking in ragged breaths, halfway past hyperventilating.

“You can’t die here, Maya! You have to wake up, because I can’t do this without you!”

Maya, in turn, says nothing.

You don’t stop visiting her, because you aren’t petty enough to hold a grudge over someone in a coma for giving you the silent treatment. You wish Farkle was here, but he isn’t, and you’re curled up in the chair next to her with a science book, trying to define what a plume is, when there’s a blip on her heart monitor.

Your own heart stops, because afterall, didn’t you always want to be like Maya? And your eyes first go to the monitor, then to her, and your breath hitches entirely when you see that her eyes are flitting open.

You say nothing, do nothing, are nothing at all as she blinks, and her eyes slowly focus in on her surroundings, unfocused and confused. After a very long, very silent beat, in which you are nothing more than a shell of a person, she dramatically whips her head back and croons, as if part of a soap opera: “Oh, Riley, how long have I been out?”

You start crying, and don’t really think that you’ll ever stop.

Eventually, your friendly neighborhood doctor comes back in, and explains to you that the coma had mainly been cause by a swelling in her brain, and her organs needing to heal back to a more functional state. The worry for survival had mainly been infection, or her body giving out and not furthering its healing, causing death or a permanent vegetative state. Now that she’s awake and verbally functioning, with little to no memory loss, her prognosis is good.

“How much school did I miss?” Maya inquires as you toss your textbook towards your bookbag, moving towards her for yet another embrace as the doctor leaves the room.

“Two weeks,” you tell her. “You missed prom. You almost died on prom night, actually. Then the doctor told me that you should be dead,” you give a tearful laugh.

“I almost died on prom night. Cool,” She nods, but she’s playing clumsily with her hands, and you can tell that something is bothering her, because she won’t quite meet your eyes, and it’s starting to hurt.

She looks up suddenly. “Hey, um, Riles?” She gazes at you from her hospital bed. You look at her with open eyes. She could say just about anything right now, and you would take it with a smile. “I don’t think we should... be around each other, anymore,” she rushes out, quiet, as if she’s trying to relay the meaning without actually saying it.

“What?!” She could say just about anything, except, of course, for that.

“Well.. listen, all of this bad shit keeps happening to me, all of the time, and I don’t want you to have to see me get hurt, or die, even, or worse, get dragged into it, get hurt yourself. I just want you to be safe, and the world obviously has some kind of vendetta against me, so…” she tries.

You will have none of it. “Maya. Listen to me. Look me in the eyes. Okay? That is no way to think. That isn’t any way to live your life. Have you had a bad stroke of luck lately? Sure, fine, but that ends here and now. Because you won’t let it. Because the reality is, there is no great being in the sky trying to kill you, even if it seems like it. The universe does not want you, specifically, dead, above all other things. So you can’t act like it does, and succumb to some kind of idea that you’re destined for anything, let alone death. Maya, from here on out, you are going to create your own destiny. No more shitty fate, no more ‘bad-things-for-Maya,’ no more Final Fantasy, no more ‘the universe wants Maya dead.’ Give it up, throw it away. You woke up from a coma, I’ve had enough of this, and you have, too, so it’s over, now, Maya,” you say meaningfully, and she looks almost guilty.

She shifts uncomfortably.

“….Is my mom’s car okay?”

“O-Of course it’s not, Maya. Of course it’s not!”

And the two of you laugh and cry until you can’t feel anything but each other.  

Friday. 10:23 pm.