𝐃𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧

Chapter 92 | Eulogy

TW: mentions of substance abuse and suicide. I would recommend playing the music above <3

                        Four years later: June 17th.

MIRIAM

It had been four years since anyone saw Samael.

He knew Theo since they were little, and were practically inseparable since.

We all felt the cold sting of guilt in the months after it happened, but for Samael that sting would have had to have been a blade.

I longed to call him, to reach out, to talk, but none of us ever did.

He didn't just lose a friend. He lost a part of himself, the happiest part of all.

It was wrong to compare our relationships to Theo, but neither of us could help it.

That first year after his death, we all went grappled with the worst torment we'd ever come to know.

Reid no longer drunk for fun - he depended on it to make it through the day. His childhood was full of rainbows and sunshine was now only replaced by guilt and darkness.

And Renny and Oliver fought - a lot.
They blamed themselves for how they were blinded within the corners of their relationship, and stopped living with each other for a while.

Levai deferred his university admission until the following year. During the day, he would go about life as if nothing was wrong but then at night, he wouldn't sleep. He'd bawl into my lap until the sun rose.

And Sandrine had had two failed attempts during that first year. If Theo couldn't be happy, what chance did the rest of us have? She'd cry out.

And eventually, the guilt and faceless expressions we all held led us all to counselling offices.

Speaking about him was painful. Too fucking painful.

It was difficult to see how much of an anchor he truly was in our relationship.

We wanted to reminisce, but we had no outlet to do it.

"Let's make one." Levai said to us all one evening.

Every flashback, every glimpse at a wonderful memory that we all shared, every location had been tainted by the loss of him.

So we untainted it.

And we didn't do it for us, we did it for him. Because we all knew, Theo would never have allowed our smiles to be permanently damaged, especially by his hand.

His death had to mean something, it had to fill us with some semblance of peace, in honour of the man who always smiled.

After a year we decided on how to heal.

Every six months, we cultivated a plan to go to one of the locations that haunted one of us, taking alternate turns to discuss our memories of him. We'd dedicate the entire day there, no matter our jobs, our universities, our lives, just to listen to the person unwind their happy memories, their dark memories, whatever they felt to the rest of us.

It was too difficult to have us all do it at once so it was the best solution we could come up with.

Otherwise, we'd end up breaking even more.

We found that it was therapeutic, in a way that therapy hadn't helped. It unburdened us of all the turmoil and torment that his death caused us.

We drew straws to decide the order.