Work Text:
I couldn't pronounce your name the first time we met, Yah-kove, Yah-khov, Yay-Khov- the K felt too clunky and large on my tongue, it felt misplaced given all the other vowel sounding letters present in your name.
You showed no amusement, only a profound weariness. Extending the file to me, a gesture of severance, and told me to return home.
Home was back to Valentine, back to the temporary roof and the roughneck men whose faces blended into each other. Home was a spoon full of white substance that you consumed to let it consume you.
Some days I'd sit with Valentine, and watch the flickering images on the screen. He wasn't who I'd thought he'd be, a coward cloaked in the shadows of his own power, content to orchestrate violence from a safe distance, his hands perpetually clean. But what of us? We were the refuse, the human detritus whose faces became synonymous with degradation. We were the instruments of his dirty work, the architects of his ill-gotten gains. A man made of dishonor's worst fear is having his name tainted.
I wanted his power, but what he cultivated from his people was not respect, not even horror. It was a chilling reverence, a blind homage that would have been bestowed upon any figurehead, any puppet in Valentine's stead. They were outcasts who walked in whatever circle you drew them, ambitionless to overthrow, unyielding to change.
Maybe I endorsed him because I felt small, and he was the first person I had to look up to. Crawling towards him, gored, ugly mess, but towards you? I fell. The axis from my world tilting beneath my feet as I crashed into you. When I reached a hand to Valentine, he winced at the blood stain left. But I never reached for Yakov, you held on to me yourself, and I know you regret the way your hands dug into my sides protectively from then on.
You missed your old life, after I had dragged you into mine.
The subtleties eluded me, the nuances of voicing your opinion, the fluid dialects of human interaction, the silent language of expressions, the burden of being misconstrued. When the mask fell, and when it rose again—these remained riddles, and still, the questions linger.
I was a force of unvarnished truth. And I suppose it was bound to bring you discomfort, trickster as you were. I knew you, down to the minutest detail, the foot you'd place first, the words you'd speak. Your words, intended or not, were a constant, gnawing presence, a permanent, inescapable fixture within the labyrinth of my memory
You weren't a saint, and you weren't my parent, but you were a figure I held in high regard. I believed in your eternal presence, and in my own ability to leave, that you would return to your normal life. I sought distance, yet you were the relentless specter of my longing, always drawing me back to the precipice. Hours later, gasping for air, or within the stolen shell of a car, but you were there.
I was your burden to drag.
Then, maybe it was the unthinking laughter that escaped me as the creature fled beneath my foot, my moment of detached observation, or the vast, empty silence of my ignorance towards your beloved music, or my inability to resonate with the drums. Maybe you were speaking to a shadow, a person without substance.
But should a radio find its way to me, I would look for your favorite songs, and I would linger near the drums, through hollow vessels seeking the phantom vibrations of your touch, and god forbid I were to crush another rat under my heel, this time I would wince.
So forgive me, even if I may not always know what I've done wrong, if I was the part of you you wanted to forget, but you became the part of me I wanted to remember forever.
May your days, wherever they unfold, be bathed in a relentless, blinding sun, may the weight that drags down your gaze lift, and the lines that speak of sorrow transform into the gentle creases of a life well-lived. May you search eternally for your second drumstick, and may those you have cheated find you, and give you the pain you deserve. But above all, may your joy, however hollow, be complete in my absence.