Greatest

21: and every line begins with death again

Hello.
I really don't know how to do this. Um. This is Bradley, I suppose he was calling me. But you can call me Dasher. That is my call sign, so it's closest you'll get to knowing my name. He wanted to omit it for a reason so I'm going to honor that.
He.
Cyrus.
My Cryrus and by the writing of this our Cyrus. This most certainly isn't my story to tell. But he's not here to tell it to us anymore. And he did say earlier that he didn't want it to just end. So I'll do my best to finish it up as best I can. Without him.
Because, on the 25th of December, at 7:58pm, we lost Cyrus.
But first, before I get to what happened, let me tell you about Cyrus. My Cyrus. Because I know he describes me—all the time in here, it's honestly ridiculous my hair is terrible by the way it's not curly or straight and it gets tangled easily and I never brush it and apparently he's been staring at it for the past four months writing about it every other paragraph in this diary he's been keeping, because he was afraid to die and didn't want to be alone and all he had were these words. And I want to scream to him he wasn't alone I'm right here I've been right here.
But he can't hear me anymore.
So, let me tell you about our Cyrus. He was nearly as tall as me. He's made of strung steel, skin laced with a mosaic of scars. His eyes are like spun wool they're soft and endlessly layered with light and darks of gold and brown. His hair was always shaved short for the doctor's tests but it was inky black. He moved like a panther, soft, ready to pounce at any moment. In the water he was a seal, sleek, deadly, and unimaginably calm. Like suddenly all the pretense just dropped away and for a moment he could unleash what he was.
I always knew when he was lying. His voice was calm, cool, practiced, clever, always an intelligent answer and a polite word. But then it would drop away, slowly, I would wait for the lies to wither and his voice to soften, and gently, slowly, he would stumble over the truth as though it was foreign on his lips.
His scars were so numerous I can't describe them. This was a man you knew had been beaten beyond repair, and forged into something he was not meant to be. And that he himself was afraid.
Cyrus, I wish I could tell you how much I wanted to kiss you that night on the lake. But I couldn't. So many people had hurt you, taken you, cut you, and used you so many different ways. I couldn't even begin to imagine becoming one of them. I thought—I felt, I had to wait for you to come to me. You had been hit and hurt so, so many times, I could not be another person touching you, taking some part of you, without consent. It had to be you.
But that's no excuse. It is mine. But it doesn't do any good now when you're there and I'm here.
In the early hours of Christmas morning I got a call from your phone. I didn't imagine anything was wrong. I thought you'd gotten away from your family. Something, like that anyway. Well, I suppose you did. But not willingly. It's okay, I know you didn't want to go.
"Is it you?" Micheal, short, brief, his voice so cold and practiced like yours, but just trembling on the edge of panic. I didn't know it was him then, I just guessed it was a brother of yours.
"What?" I was half asleep.
"Cyrus," his voice was shaking.
"We're in school together—?" I had no idea why he was calling.
"Shut up! I know—is it fucking you because if it is—-you need to be here. Then, I think he'd want you here."
"What is going on? Is Cyrus okay?"
"No. Come to Washington as soon as possible. I'll send a car." Then he hung up.
And of course I flew to you. I was never, not going to come. My mother said it was some trick. Then we just turned on the news. Don't worry they put up a suitably horrifying photo of you. No, I'm kidding. You were beautiful. You're always beautiful. It was from a fencing tournament, you're actually smiling, there's sweat on your face. You look like a statue, immortal, pure, and forever young in your tragic grace.
I found out through bits and pieces what had happened. Micheal met me at the airport. Your blood was still all down his shirt. His face was stone. You'll be amused to know I nearly hit him.
"What happened?" I shook his shoulders. There was so much blood.
"He refused to come out with our father. I warned him," his voice quivered.
"What are you talking about?"
"I didn't know. I figured our father was just going to make an example of him but—-," he squeezed his eyes shut then, tears leaking down his cheeks. "He cut him open. Cyrus he—he was already sick, he's in a coma now, I thought—if it was your voice—if you were what he wanted maybe—-,"
You bled out that morning. He cut you, from your navel all the way up to your sternum. And Micheal picked you up and carried you to an ambulance. You died in his arms, effectively. He says you spoke his name, and mine. But I'm in your phone as Dasher, that's why it took Micheal a couple of hours to realize it was me you were asking for.
I'm so sorry I missed you. I wanted to say goodbye.
I got to the hospital same time your mother did. She didn't even ask why I was there. Then people came and told her to go, same with Micheal and Peter. Your father's orders.
So, I got to sit by your bedside all day. This book was with your things, Peter brought them, thinking you might be okay.
I spent one last day with you. I held your hand, and tried to find every one of your favorite songs on my phone. As if you'd rise and dance again, smooth, fluid, impossible controlled, forever a thing that never needed protection and knew no sense of fear.
I should be mad at you, you know. You jerk. Brain cancer. Dying. I can't find it me to be though. I know you were scared. And right now I'm just mad. I'm mad as hell. As little time as we had. We did have more. We were supposed to have more time.
I hold your hand and pray. I never knew religion till I first heard you lie. Then I knew you could worship every word. I love listening to you lie, almost as much as I love listening to you sink into the person you were searching for.
The nurses come and go. Your cancer doctors too, to explain why you had opium in your blood. They say you were always cheerful, that you were brave for the diagnosis, that you were determined to make the best of the time you had. I just don't see why it had to be cut short.
Your agents were there too. Try as I might, I can't quite figure out the code names you used in here to match up with who I knew. Maybe I will with time. The older man, I think you called him Shane, he comes and sits with me. He tells me that he'll miss you. I don't know if you'd have wanted his tears but I believe you had them. Then two younger men, they are guarding you to the last, their faces stone as they stood watch one more time over your bed.
We stay with you till sunset. It's late, Christmas day. We thank the nurses. I keep staring at the monitors, and the charts, praying for some miracle. We get none.
At 7:58 pm, they pull the plug, and we let you go from us.
Your family has you cremated, after the autopsy. The cancer, they said, would have taken you within six months, they say that like it will make us feel better. I think your mother was shocked. She didn't know, but she also didn't stay. I did. I waited while they cut you open, waited till the funeral home came to collect you and burn you. They gave me your clothes. I threw that damn activity tracker in the fucking ocean, and I fell asleep that night in your favorite black sweater. That stupid one you wore to the dance, that I kissed you in, the one you put on whenever you were sick and you wanted to curl up and let yourself have peace. They wouldn't burn you in it they said, so they gave it to me and took you away again.
No expensive burial. I ask to go, but Micheal blocks my number. Then I get a text from an unknown number, I assume one of the agents, telling me where they buried you.
In a little plot, over looking the water, your gravestone has your name and nothing else. No dates. No epithet.
I sit there with you sometimes, even if you aren't there. I read this book alone, imaging I hear your voice. And I get up the courage to find a way to finish the story you started, that we should have ended together.
It came to my attention from reading this that you'd never read the Hobbit. On nicer days I read it to you, lying on the grass of your grave, my back on the cold ground where you lie beneath me, reading you a fairy tale. I meant to do that. I meant to do a lot of things with you now, that we all must do in a world that didn't have you in it.
Some days there are fresh flowers. I don't know who else comes to you. Perhaps Micheal, or one of your loyal shadows. I bring you music, stories, and I talk to you, more than I should perhaps.
I hate that there is nothing of your legacy but your name. I want another epithet. But it's not until I get through this that I know what. You were my Searcher. But I'd like to think that you were found. But that's not for me to say, in the end. It's for you.
It takes me some time, vandalizing a gravestone isn't easy. You'd laugh at me I'm sure. But finally I put you to rest, perhaps, under a bit better of a legacy. Of course and this book. I'll see it published someday. In my grief I can't see how it matters, except that it has to. What am I supposed to do without you here? Except find a way to talk to you, and have someone else hear you.
So I write these final words, a poor footnote on your spectacular life.
And on your gravestone, a quiet plot overlooking water in a small forgotten cemetery, is written just your name.
Then, below that, in poor lettering, the graffiti of a grief stricken lover, is scrawled one word:

Greatest

The End