For Those Below | Mumford & Sons Fan Fiction

{A/N} So basically this is something very different from normal fan fiction. I felt inspired by the song "For Those Below" and ran with it.

"For Those Below"

I stare at the now cold tea sitting in front of me. There is a numbing sludge coursing through my veins and I can’t bring myself to move. Everything is still other than the flocks of visitors that occasionally move past me. None of them pay attention to the crazy man sitting at the table off to the side.

 

“Winston?” I hear a voice that partially takes me back to earth. I slowly tilt my head upwards to see Marcus Mumford standing over me, a sorry look contorting his face. “How is she?”

 

“Hard to say. She’s been sleeping a lot lately,” I say. It’s been weeks since I’ve gotten a glimpse of the rest of the band. But now, even the presence of my closest friend cannot fill the the never-ending hole my life has become. When the soul that you live for is losing her life, how do you go on living?

 

Marcus reaches out and puts his hand on my shoulder as a futile attempt to comfort me. “We’re here for you. Me, Ben, and Ted. No one should ever have to go through something like this,” he pauses, shaking his head and taking a deep breath, and continues, “ So if you nee-”

 

The doctor appears at the end of the hospital cafeteria and I stand immediately, making Marcus cut off mid sentence. She walks over and gives me a weak smile which only makes me want to throw up. Everything aches so much.

 

“Sophie would like to see you,” Dr. Stone says. Just hearing her name crushes the shards of my heart into sand. The sand falls and slips through cracks in the floor, tumbling faster and faster to the gates of hell.

 

I follow Dr. Stone through the empty halls, past empty walls, but the calls are ever present. The voices in the walls yell to me. They scream my name over and over again. Lost souls draw their long nails across the doors, beckoning me to help them escape these hospital corridors. Don’t they know I can’t help? Don’t they know I am already one of them?

 

I open a door and find the room I have slept in a chair in for the past week.

 

Sterile. The wallpaper is faded and streaked from frequent cleaning. The floors are white and squeak under my trainers. The irony of this room almost makes me laugh. How can a room be so put-together when inhabited by something so broken?

 

“Daddy?” whispers a tiny voice. That one little word spoken from my little girl nearly brings tears to my eyes.

 

I walk over to the side of her bed quickly and take her tiny hands in mine.

 

“Hey, Sophie. I’m here.” I bend down and lightly kiss her forehead. Her soft skin is fire on my lips.

Sophie gives me a dazed look, taking a little while to process my face. I see her eyes light up and her mouth slightly turns up at the corners.

 

Damn whatever mighty power that decided slowly killing a little six year old girl would be okay. My little six year old girl. Everything she is, I am. Everything she breaths, I breath. I have built my life on my love for my little Sophie. When she stops breathing, I will stop breathing also.

 

How can someone love someone so much just the way they are but want them to change, also?

 

“Daddy, stay.” The words kiss my ears. Sophie’s voice is a short lived symphony, her music

almost curing my rotting soul...

 

It’s funny how epiphanies work. One instant, certain thoughts and notions will be flowing through your mind, and suddenly the flow of ideas is intercepted and these bits of information bounce off this object intercepting the thought flow and take on a completely new path.

 

In that instant I find myself the leader of this flock of shattered souls. I’m just as broken as Sophie but I can’t imagine the pain she must be feeling. She needs me and I’m just a selfish bastard who can’t realize his daughter needs him because he’s too busy focusing on his own misery.

 

I am all she has left. Everyone has given up on my Sophie, but I have not.

 

She gives me hope.

 

My chest feels like it’s full of tar, and yet I sing. I sing softly to my baby, letting her know I am there, never wavering, as her eyes drift shut for the last time.