Work Text:
This remorseless black separation
I bear equally with you.
Why cry? Rather, give me your hand,
Promise to visit me in dream.
You and I — are like two mountains.
You and I — not meeting in this world.
If only sometimes, at midnight,
You’d send me a greeting through the stars.
Anna Akhmatova
(translated by A.S. Kline)
“Captain,” he said, wheezing into his scarf. “I’m sorry I’m late.”
A sharp gust of wind blew down the lonely hill overlooking Pleasure Town. The sky was clear, the leaves a brilliant vermillion, shriveling up and dropping one by one as the summer waned. A group of schoolchildren played adventure in the valley, cutting trails though the tallgrass with little sticks. The winding footpath up the hill seemed to stretch longer with every year that passed. Today in particular made for a difficult journey, as Shachi had come alone. His hands spasmed with phantom pains, and his knees ached. He leaned on his cane, coughing wetly into his handkerchief. He didn’t bother to look at the dark, glistening spot on the square of fabric.
Kneeling by the headstone, Shachi removed his hat and uncapped the bottle. He caught his reflection in the curved glass – his aging face, grey and weary and gently drooping, the sunken sockets and protruding cheekbones and fine wrinkles bunched around his mouth, the skin so fragile and paper-thin, speckled with liver spots, a nest of silvery blue veins pushing out prominently from beneath.
He watered the graves with amber drops of whiskey.
“Bepo is gone, Captain. He went last night.”
The words still sounded ludicrous even as he said them aloud, the idea that Bepo, the youngest of their core circle, could be gone forever. But the illness had been indiscriminate – a misfolded protein in the brain, latent yet insidious. The degeneration had been swift and punishing, robbing him of speech and movement and, perhaps worst of all, memory by the end stages. The shock and anguish was still fresh, though Shachi couldn’t deny the deeplaid resignation in his heart, either. Perhaps a subconscious part of him had started mourning Bepo long ago.
Yet there were moments of lucidity near the end. A common occurrence, according to the young village doctor and the kind, patient nurse who’d helped Shachi tend to Bepo in the final days. Shachi clung to these moments now, desperate to retain every last fragment of his old friend. The way Bepo’s face would light up in recognition whenever the nurse played a familiar record (vintage Uta albums yielded the most success, unsurprisingly; Shachi imagined Captain would scoff at that if he were alive to witness it), the sparkle that would return to his eyes when Shachi showed him old photos of their childhood taken on one of Wolff’s overdesigned cameras. The way he would squeeze Shachi’s hand when Shachi would speak to him, almost as if in a silent attempt to convey reassurance.
“I stayed with him until the end. He… he asked for you, Captain.” Shachi’s voice came out a hoarse, warbled rasp. He coughed again. “It was crazy. For a moment, he sounded like his old self again… like he was back on the Tang. Said something about spotting land. Wish I could’ve seen what he was seeing… Must have been a real pretty sight, yeah?”
Shachi sank down by the grave, ignoring the ache and creak of his limbs. His body was weak and pathetic now, irradiated with constant pain. He looked out over the plot. Tomorrow Bepo would be set to rest here, alongside Wolff and Penguin and Captain. The ceremony would be private, a quiet, modest affair. Shachi had already made the necessary arrangements with the townspeople. The greengrocer and his wife had said they would attend, as had the lighthouse keeper, the kind nurse and the apothecary’s daughters, the baker and his quarreling children, the retired Marine who would invite them to play poker at the salon on the weekends, and even the shy greenhorn fisherman who’d always sold his first catch to Bepo.
The rest of the crew were scattered throughout the North Blue. Perhaps the inscription of Heart Pirate on their gravestones had eroded over the years, their time together rendered an obscurity, a mere footnote in history. Jean Bart had been the first to go. The time he’d spent under the Celestial Dragons, though thankfully cut short, had crippled him with a litany of health issues later in life. Captain had seen him off. He’d visited every deathbed afterwards, until his own deteriorating health prevented him from making such long voyages.
Then it was his turn to go.
Shachi swallowed raggedly. Grief tore at his soul. The void in his heart smarted, an open wound. Gone. They were all gone, gone, never to return. He was the last Heart Pirate. Once he was gone, all the precious memories they’d shared would be lost forever, swallowed up by the tides of time. Death dealt no favors to mortals, no matter how beloved. All would return to dust one way or the other. Shachi had been foolish to think the years gone by could prepare him for this. The pain was visceral and all-encompassing, burrowing deep in his chest – the pain of loss, of remembering, of being left behind.
“You once said you would outlive all of us."
Captain was silent.
"You said you’d be there to see us off.”
A low, wretched sob broke forth. He tried to curb it. Tried to picture Captain's face. It had been over a decade since he'd seen him last.
“Tell me you're here... Captain… Bepo, Penguin. All of you…! Will you be waiting for me?”
He curled up and bowed his head, wetting the soil with bitter tears.