Tyed - Chapter 56: Chapter 56

It's not like all the nervousness fades away. It never works like that. It's that Tyler can ignore his fears a little better than most people. He can take a deep breath and express confidence he doesn't feel, and he can say, "hey, Kali."
He's a little surprised when she hugs him. It's a slow, timid hug, much like the rare hugs she gave when they were younger; like someone who didn't want to be touched, but wanted to feel at the same time. Like she is.
Her words are whispered, so quiet against his shirt. "I missed you."
He gently, cautiously, reaches up a hand to pat her hair; she flinches at first touch, and he immediately moves his hand away. "I missed you too."
She takes a step back, bouncing on the balls of her feet a little, and smiles at Nancy, still wobbly. "Hi, Nancy."
Nancy grins, and goes to offer a hug, but turns it into a wave. "Hi, Kali. You doing okay?"
She nods lightly. "You, uh- you sent that picture," she says, quieter than Tyler remembers her, although perhaps it's due to the fact that this lobby is busy and people move loudly and the only things that moved quick and loud in Darkfilly Copse were the wind in the trees and fists. "And I thought it was, uh, thought it was you." She turns towards Tyler then, a twinkle in her eyes, just a bit.
She's got the boring black pants of someone who's got to work in an office, looking too big on her; a white button shirt with the same look, and black flats. She doesn't look comfortable at all. She barely looks like she went through puberty, for her tiny size and slim frame; has she even been eating? Tyler needs to make sure she has been. He needs to make sure she's okay.
"I couldn't believe it," Tyler admits. "We looked for you. Searched for you everywhere. But we had no way of finding you, and with social media and everything- it never occurred to me that you'd spell your name differently. If it had, maybe we'd have found you sooner."
Kali shakes her head. "I did think for a few years that I just didn't know how to spell it before. And I got used to how it's spelled now. I know my name technically isn't, like, Carly, but... I'm used to it, I guess. And it kinda hides who I am." She shrugs. "I'm sorry, if I knew you were still looking for me..."
Tyler's heart hurts. "You weren't looking for me?"
Kali looks down at the floor. "I did. I was. I- I did find you."
Tyler holds his ground even though the ground feels like it's turning underneath him. "Why didn't you say anything?" He can't temper his reaction. "Why didn't you reach out? I missed you so much."
And he's not sure when she started crying, but immediately he feels awful because he knows he caused it. "I'm sorry," she whispers, "but I- I thought- I thought you had found me and didn't care. I thought- it was so easy to find you, that I thought it was the same, and I thought- I thought-"
"That it would just be too hard," Tyler finishes for her, "and that I wouldn't want to talk to you."
Kali nods.
Tyler sighs. "I get it. Can you believe I worried the same thing, from the moment Nancy mentioned your name until literally now? I promise, Kali, I wanted to find you. To make sure you were okay. I just- I just couldn't."
"I'm so sorry," she repeats, her voice shaking, "I'm so sorry. I thought- it sounds stupid now, it's stupid, I know. But I thought you could find me, and you- you seemed so happy. And I wasn't. I'd just make you sad."
If only she knew just how sad he was- just how anyone other than her was making him sad. "I mean, things were a little bit better, for a while. But we were all broken in that place. I wasn't so much happier. I just got good at posting the right things on social media, I guess? Which I haven't really done as much since... y'know."
She tilts her head slightly. "No?"
He waits for it to click, waits for her to know. "You- you know. Anyway, uh..."
Maybe it's the quiet panic in his voice that makes Kali think it's important; maybe it's the way Nancy looks at him, knowing he can't worm his way out of this, no matter how much he wants to move forward without saying it. Maybe if he wills it enough she'll remember what she definitely already found out but repressed, or forgot, or simply didn't understand that he was referencing. Maybe if he looks at her with enough pain in his eyes it'll click.
"I'm sorry," she says, a tiny break in her voice, those same words for the hundredth time. "What- what is it? What do I not know?"
Nancy gestures towards the door. "Maybe we should go for a walk."
And the fresh air doesn't cure it. It's helpful, it makes it a little bit easier to breathe, but Tyler's throat is still locked up, memories still clog the drain and keep the words from coming through. The day of the funeral he tried to find her so bad; did she know, then, where he was? Could she have found him that night?
He doesn't blame her, not really. But Jesus Christ  is it hard to say it when she could well have known.
"Did you never check?" He finds himself saying, regretting the words as they leave his mouth. "God, sorry- but surely it was out there. Surely you could've known."
Nancy defends her. "You never posted about it," she says. "And his profile was private, remember?"
"Yeah, but when you google his name it's like the second thing that shows up," Tyler mutters. "Did you never google his name?"
The moment Tyler looks at her, he regrets getting angry. All she has to show him is pain and regret.
"I'm sorry," she says, "but... Kevin? Is that who you mean? Or Trey."
Tyler nods curtly at the first. "Kevin." His name tastes like it was once sweet, but has gone off in his mouth.
"I had... assumed you were still together," she says, raising her hand to her cheek, and it's shaking; realisation is setting in and her shaking gets worse, becoming a vibration, and he thinks it clicks, but she looks to him to confirm. To tell her that she's assumed wrong and everything is fine, actually, and no, he's just at home, and everything can be okay, the four of them really did escape after all.
"Do you..." Nancy voices the question that Tyler dismisses with a small shake of his head. He can say it. He can tell her. He swears.
"Um, Trey is fine." Start with the good news. "He's good, actually. It's, um. Kevin."
Kali waits for good news that isn't coming.
"We escaped, but he never- he never got it out of him." Tyler doesn't feel a thing except the lump in his throat and the prick of tears in his eyes. "He, uh. Killed himself."
Getting those words out breaks a flood. "I tried to convince him not to. I tried to tell him I loved him, that it would get better, that- that we'd find reasons to live. But his whole life, he wanted to escape the pain, but the pain just followed him and the only way to escape it was death and I couldn't convince him that I could love him enough to make that pain worth it. If I..."
"Hey." Nancy breaks through that haze, a hand on his shoulder, "you are not at fault in any way for what happened."
What happened. So sanitized, such a sweet and clean way to talk about his death. To talk about his twisted corpse and the fact that Darkfilly Copse drained the life of someone who gave Tyler his life.
Kali doesn't say anything. In fact, she starts hyperventilating, and Nancy helps Tyler pull her to the side of the road for a nice, clean panic attack. Well, no panic attacks are clean, but she doesn't vomit in the middle of the road or get stuck and unable to move in the flow of traffic.
He holds her, her head to his chest, fingers moving gently at her skull, massaging through her hair, and it's meant to calm her, but in that moment what it does is make her feel real, remind him that she's here. For real, for better or worse, she is here, physical and material in front of him; she has weight and height, shape and form, there is skin here still, a mind underneath. A heart in her chest that is resoundly beating despite it all.
They made it out. Not unscarred, and not with everyone. But they made it out.
—-
Tyler's hiding under unfamiliar covers. Not completely unfamiliar- it's a colour, a smell, a place he recognises. They're just not his and he's probably not supposed to be hiding in them. They're not the sheets he usually hides in.
"Hey." Hands shake him from the outside of the covers. "Move over."
Tyler shuffles slightly, squeezing his eyes shut as the covers lift and light gets into his little sanctuary. Arms come around him and he wonders what he ever did to deserve a hug. "Hey," Nancy says, all soft, "you haven't even tried to kick my ass at Street Fighter yet. You know that's unfair, right? I need you fighting at your absolute best so when I finally win it means something."
Tyler wishes he could smile or muster up the energy for any kind of response at all. "Sorry."
Nancy sighs. "I think I'll live. You want me to stay right here, or just be close by?" When Tyler doesn't respond, she amends, "do I move, yes or no?"
Tyler thinks about it for a long moment and shakes his head.
"Alright. Not moving." Nancy pulls herself closer, wrapping an arm around Tyler's torso, making herself tangible and visible and close. "Not going anywhere."
It's not even a thought; it's an emptiness. There's nothing on Tyler's mind. There isn't, there can't be.
He was in love and now it's gone, and it leaves him to wonder what love is and why it ruins us so.
He closes his eyes, shutting out even the darkness, and hopes she has an answer for this. "What the hell," Tyler mutters, "is the point of love?"
"What's not the point of love?" Nancy responds almost too easily. "What do we do that isn't for love? It's all love one way or another."
Tyler shakes his head. "All the love I have is gone," he says, hoarse, "he took it."
"You're feeling this vast hole inside of you, and I'm not denying those feelings. It's beyond overwhelming," Nancy says, to Tyler's silence, "but it's not big enough to swallow all your love. Nothing is."
When he's quiet, hoping for her to continue, she does. "What I mean when I say it's all love- is that the selfish stuff wants love of a kind, either to be loved or to love something inhuman. The greedy love money, you know? The torturer loves suffering. But most of the stuff we do, the good and the neutral, it's because we love each other. You're in my house, hiding under my covers, because I love you, and because you love me. And because you love so much and so strongly that you can't carry the weight of that love lost."
Tyler's not sure when he started crying; but he curls up, comes in close to Nancy, feels her warmth. Wishes Kevin was here too.
"You're right," he either says, or thinks, or chokes. Her grip on him is tight, a reminder he's alive, a reminder that he's not- not as alone as he was. Alone, but not completely.
Never completely. Not anymore.