we depend (I depend) on you • jayvik

Jayce - Year Thirty-Four

I began writing your life's story after the cold months nearly took you from me for the last time.

The last time . 

I say that because it is what it is. I say it despite how it sours my insides and corrodes my most precious nuclei, because I know for certain in my consciousness, that this time was the last time you would ever survive death.

The dry air of the season's turn inflamed your lungs, and not even the breathing machine could ease the strain or stop the damage it did to your body. You coughed and coughed and coughed until your lips were wet with blood and the vessels in your nose bursted from the pressure. You didn't eat, didn't sleep for days at a time, and no steroid or machine or medication could ease the agonizing pain you experienced. Your heart slowed to a rhythm that sent a kind of fear through me I've never known. It gripped all of us until we, too, were holding our breath. Every time I reached for you, I braced myself for stillness – for silence, and skin already cooled. But you never stopped fighting. Your heart kept beating.

It continued to beat, but there was no relief.

No quiet prayers or thanks to gods above.

You lived , but it was the last time. The next time the infection crawls back in to suffocate your alveoli, I know it will be the last.

I began writing your story one morning as the sun rose steadily in the east. Steb was at work. Lyra was at school. The mid-morning light was golden and strong, peeking through the gaps in the blinds and reaching through the slivers between the curtains. It painted parts of you in shades of yellow and bronze, and I thought you looked so beautiful laying there beneath the constant weight of the blankets and the sheets.

Viktor, you are small and delicate. You look frail, I cannot deny it, but there is an odd kind of beauty to it. Even now, I cannot ignore how I yearn to hold your body against mine.

Even now, with the hum of the machine beside your bed – the steady whirr and pull of oxygen flowing through the tube, down your throat, into your lungs, only to be drawn back out with that familiar, mechanical click – I'm taken back to that sterile hospital room. The one where we spent months together after pneumonia nearly took you from me.

It wasn't that long ago, you know. But somehow, it already feels like a lifetime has passed. We have been through so much together.

Back then, the beeping of the monitors as they counted each beat of your heart became a strange kind of comfort. I learned to live with it for the months that we survived there, and even appreciate it.

The beeping meant you were still here. Still fighting. But the sound of the breathing machine? That's entirely different. I loathe it. That sound doesn't soothe me. It never has. No, that mechanical thing only fills me with dread.

I think about it constantly, Viktor.

If that monitor in the hospital were to have ever lost power, you would've continued on living. If this one here stops, it would only be a moment until the world stopped its spinning and the skies turned dark.

Viktor – what happens when we die?

Is it peaceful?

Is it kind?

In my head, your story begins with the second I first came alive. Not when I executed my first code, or when I first opened my eyes to see – but when you allowed me to truly come alive . To be. It began when you invited me to experience the world for the first time alongside you, to be your companion. And what a glorious day that was.

In truth, I know your story began long before any of this – before the lab and the academy, before our first home and your marriage. Before you became a father... It begins thirty years before I ever came to be, to be exact. I know it from quiet conversations, from the way you avoid certain words, and from the silences that fall heavier than any truth you've spoken aloud. Your story begins with a happy young boy, born with a body that struggled before it even had a chance, and a mother who loved you more than she ever loved herself. It had just been the two of you, and I know that you think of her every day.