Chapter Text
Hope not ever to see Heaven.
I have come to lead you to the other shore;
into eternal darkness; into fire and into ice.
- Dante Alighieri, Inferno, Canto III
Hell is not fire, hell is not ice.
Hell is helplessness.
Hell is watching the stars burn out of his eyes, watching him implode with translucent fingers and a name he whispers in the darkness, waiting for an answer that can never come.
Death changes you; a line is crossed, where there is no thread of beginning or end, a fixed state of in-between that takes the whispers of what survives the shadows and twists.
He died violent and angry, teeth gnashing and fists bleeding, bloodthirsty thoughts like bullets that hammered around in his brain until the last dying neuron fizzled out. The feeling of his jugular tearing, copper behind his canines, and dog fur matting to the blood on his fist was a resounding echo in the pathetic score of his life. Was he ever alive, or was he a controlled explosion trapped behind skin? Was he shrapnel or bone? Boy or bomb?
When he untethered, cut like a cord, the shadows pulsed in time to the heartbeat he lost. There were others there, faceless and formless shadows who lost and lost and never seemed to stop losing. His hair was loose, and he didn’t know why that felt wrong, like something else was stolen from him.
Someone was going to be upset that he lost it, and someone else was going to be upset that he never let them wear it. He couldn’t remember why that was important. He couldn’t remember who he was.
In the end, your name is the first thing you lose.
“Did you have to fight him?”
His knuckles were always split now, an ugly red like a bloodstain left to dry, almost browning around the edges yet still fresh to the touch. It didn’t hurt. It didn’t feel like much anymore. The skin was fraying, and if he scratched enough, he could almost see hints of bone. His fingernails were permanently dyed red, and Finn was going to be upset.
“Did you have to fight him?”
Finn. Finney. Finn was going to be upset. He should check on him. When the bleeding stops, of course, and make sure that no one is giving him a hard time. He didn’t like blood, didn’t like violence, didn't even raise his voice above a mumble if he could help it. Maybe it reminded him of his dad, maybe his mom, but it upset Finn, and so it upset him.
“Did you have to fight him?”
Your name was the first thing you lost, yet somehow, he never seemed to forget about Finn.
Robin didn’t think he would ever forget about him.
Time passed, he thinks. It was hard to see the moon from the barred window, but he looked anyway because Finney was always looking at the moon. He was going to go to school one day to learn about rockets and stars. Robin didn’t really understand the complicated names, didn’t understand wanting to willingly subject yourself to even more complicated math and years of school. But he was his best friend, his only friend, and nothing made Finn happier than shooting up those bottle rockets.
It took months of convincing and years of maintenance for Finney to finally start believing that Robin would be the last to make fun of him. He may not entirely understand his passion for learning, but Finn always had a way of explaining things that drew you in.
Having a nerd for your best friend was a lot of work sometimes, but Robin figured that Finn probably thought something similar every time he taped up his bloody knuckles. He did it anyway, even when Robin would inevitably be too rough and bleed through the gauze, or end up tearing through the bandages when he inevitably had to make another point by the end of the day. Finney would crinkle his nose, squint in the way he did when he was silently judging someone, but he still wrapped Robin’s bleeding knuckles like he was worth something more than blood and dirt.
Maybe —
Maybe Finn wouldn’t mind if he came to him like this.
He’d scare him a little with all the blood he never managed to stanch, undoubtedly, but maybe he wouldn’t even notice at first. Even if Robin couldn’t count the days, he knew that this was the longest time they’ve been separated since the summer he spent in Mexico. If it weren’t for the class schedules, they’d be practically attached to the hip.
Robin remembered coming home from that summer to Finney waiting on the sidewalk, fidgeting his fingers as if afraid to step too close. Dirty blond hair bleached by the sunlight, the lightest smatterings of freckles that always peeked through in summer, hands red and irritated with his own overthinking, gringo through and through. He remembered, and remembered that all he wanted to do in that moment was to squeeze him as tight as his mother had only moments before. He remembered reaching out, remembered the way Finney had looked at him with those gentle brown eyes, remembered thinking that maybe Finn felt the same way.
He was a coward in the end, faltering until he squeezed his arm, smiled, and said, “Hey Finn, what’s happening?”
Robin swore that if he saw Finney again, he wouldn’t be a coward.
He wouldn’t let another moment pass.
Robin had always been a good liar.
Death changes you, so why couldn’t it have made him braver?
The hazy in-between, dizzied with memories, sharpened with frightening clarity the moment he saw a head of dirty blond curls limply hanging from his arms.
In the days that passed, all he had to think about was how much he wanted to go home, how much he wanted to kiss his mother goodbye, and hug his best friend. Belatedly, he wondered if he had manifested this, if his selfish desires had somehow translated to the monster above the basement and inspired him. He wanted nothing more than to see Finn again, but it wasn’t supposed to be like this.
Finney was good, and smart, and gentle, and he hated violence above all else. He never fought back on principle because he knew that he could take a punch and stand back up without shedding a tear. Finney was a quiet kind of fighter, resilient, someone you could always trust to keep moving on and on. But the basement wasn’t anything like middle school bullies. Robin didn’t think he could stand the idea of witnessing firsthand the moment when Finn couldn’t stand back up.
It was pure longing that made the phone ring the first time, a longing so unconscious that it rattled the phone in its case. He watched Finn pick up the phone, and it was pure cowardice that stole his voice and ended the call with a click.
One of the formless shadows was watching, sharpening around the edges with every moment that Finn was in the room.
When the phone rang again, it wasn’t Robin, and this time someone spoke back. He tried not to let the jealousy seep into anger, tried to swallow the black bile and rusty nails in his throat. His fingertips weren’t quite so red anymore, dyed with the wisps of shadows that swallowed the moonless night.
“Bruce? Bruce Yamada?”
He hates him, Bruce, for being able to pull together words, for saying Finn’s name like he knew him, for being able to give him hope no matter how brief.
With every word, the shadows recede from ‘Bruce’ into something more tangible, more human. A pale, bloody face, cut from his forehead down to his neck over his right eye. Lacerations decorated his chest, his arms, and even split his lip. He’s staring at Finney as if he’s the last lifeline, mercy in the cesspool of darkness that even now nips at their heels.
The other shadows watch, sunflowers turning to the sun — outstretched hands swaying not unlike fragile petals in a windless void. The basement was cold, colored in hues of gray that sapped what little was left, knee-deep in bleeding misery.
The man, the monster, The Grabber, stood at the crux of it all. Swallowing every color in the world to satisfy the yawning mouth of teeth frothing and snapping in his chest. He hides behind a mask, pretending it shields him from accusing eyes, unaware of how they watch him, how all they can think about is tearing him apart where he stands. He saps every saturation and sharply carved edge into a haze of unbearable, overwhelming, devastating nothing.
For so long, the void was all-consuming, stretching in every direction and leaving nothing but the certainty that this was all there would ever be — bleak, grave-colored, oblivion.
After so long, he could almost believe it, until, as it always seemed to be, Finney.
If The Grabber was a gaping maw of crusted viscera and snapping teeth, Finney was a universe of shooting stars and constellations that pulsed like a heartbeat. There was a warm glow around him, the shape of his soul moving in solar flares that chased the cold away in a quiet promise of tomorrow.
The porch light flicks twice, and the wandering children are on the front steps.
It makes the ugly creatures curl in his chest. He wasn’t used to the weight of possessiveness, not like this. Robin had never been a stranger to sacrifice, had made peace with the fact that his mother needed to work nights, that his father couldn’t come home. Always strong and never known, not in the way the secret part of him wanted.
Those first few years after uprooting their lives from Mexico were difficult. Money was tight, children were cruel, and his parents needed him to be strong, so he was. Young enough to want, old enough to withdraw, so they never worried.
He was strong when his father enlisted, he was strong when his father put a heavy hand on his shoulder and told him he was the man of the house until he came back, and he was strong when he didn’t come back.
Being strong meant being tough, self-sacrificial, untouchable — machismo.
Even when he was lonely, especially when he was lonely.
Then, there was Finney.
Soft-spoken Finney with the saddest eyes Robin had ever seen.
He knew of him before that day, of course, the day they met. It was impossible not to know in such a small town that thrived on chisme. Everyone knew that Hope Blake had killed herself, everyone knew that Terrance Blake had found her hanging body, and everyone knew that Finney Blake had walked in on his father holding her stiff legs and sobbing.
Robin, who had lost his father not too long ago, empathized with the kid. He was a standout in their grade, obviously smart enough to jump ahead if anyone cared to look close enough. Diligent in the way the kids who wanted to get the hell out of town before it swallowed them whole were, but not stupid enough to remind the teacher that they were supposed to turn in homework. Kindness and a lack of condescension were a hell of a lot better than half of what the school had to offer, so it wasn’t a reach to think that the universe might cut this kid a break.
But there was something else that everyone knew.
Hope Blake had been losing her mind since the day she opened her eyes.
All it took was one slip of the tongue, one time, for Gwen to whisper about her dreams in the wrong place, for the community to swallow back their crocodile tears and spit out venom. When she and Finney came to school with matching bruises on their faces, instead of concern and care, there was only vitriol.
The Blake children were under fire: little Gwendolyn Blake, who sacrilegiously believed her dreams to be prophetic, and scrawny Finney Blake, who used to whisper to the empty air before it was beaten out of him.
Gwen was the main target at first. She was never afraid of the whispers and loved her mother fiercely. For a pack of vultures, a knobby-kneed girl with braided pigtails was the perfect target.
Until she knocked someone’s tooth out for calling her “nutty like her mother.”
Compared to his spitfire of a sister, Finn, who never fought back and shied away from schoolyard fights, might as well have been wearing a sign that screamed, “VICTIM!” The fact that his sister, who was maybe half a head smaller than he and wore bows in her hair, often came to his defense never helped much. He seemed to be a walking permanent bruise, going home black and blue and coming back to school with new colors marring his unhealthy pallor.
Even before he knew him, Robin secretly thought that scrawny kid had every reason to snap, to cry, to make the world bleed. There had to have been opportunities, moments where their backs were turned for even just a second. If he had decided to skip school entirely, run far away where the whispers wouldn’t follow, his father never hit him, and the bullies couldn’t chase him, no one would lift an eyebrow. Anything to escape the insanity of routine that would surely break him.
Yet, breaking seemed to be the one thing Finney Blake refused to do.
In those early days, Robin never witnessed the fights the boy was dragged into. More often than not, he was privy only to the aftermath of watching him shuffle into class with a bleeding nose and bruising ribs. Never faltering despite the prying eyes and whispered giggles of bystanders who only screamed the fight on. His brown eyes stayed permanently down, never challenging yet never straying either. Even with blood on his lip, he sat at that rickety, lead-stained desk and was still the first to finish whatever hellish assignment the teachers decided to torture them with.
Robin Arellano was 9-years-old the first time he spoke to Finney Blake. It was a muggy August afternoon in 4th-grade math, only a month into the year. Math had always been difficult for him, and multiplying divisions seemed to escalate confusion into a bubbling frustration that snapped the lead in his pencil for the third time. It wasn’t a pop quiz or a test, a practice round so impressively unimportant that half the class had broken into groups of mindless chatter while their teacher read through what looked like a trashy romance novel. It was trivial but so endlessly frustrating that no matter how hard he tried to listen, to practice, even to study, it always amounted to a half-blank page colored in red.
There were startled stares when he slammed his pencil down hard enough to echo around the room, already establishing his reputation around school as a fighter, before one by one they all turned back to their conversations. The teacher didn’t even glance up once, truly a stellar example of the finest in education.
It had taken a few blinks for the red to recede, to notice the sharpened pencil, decorated by plastic-wrapped stars, offered by a steady, small hand.
Finney was as unassuming then as he was now, all dirty blond curls and shifting eye contact that always seemed to drift from the beaten desk to over someone’s shoulder and back again, as if not quite sure where he was allowed to look, if at all.
Robin had stared at him, perhaps a beat too long – he might have unconsciously been trying to intimidate something out of him. Maybe prove that even if he was useless at math, it didn’t mean he wasn’t a person to fear, to respect. Even cowards and dumbasses seemed to need the reminder every now and again.
The boy blinked back, soft curls half covering his right eye, puffy and red with the beginnings of a bruise, looking over Robin’s shoulder and back to the pencil again, “I can help you, if you want.”
A beat passed, one-sided tension and a suspicious stare, waiting for the punchline that even then he knew wouldn’t come, “It would be a waste of time,” Robin said, slowly and carefully, “I’m probably beyond help at this point.”
Finney’s eyes flickered to the ticking clock, down to the pencil still offered between them, and finally to the boy carefully assessing him. There was almost something like determination in the set of his shoulders. It was strange seeing such confidence in something so ultimately insignificant.
“It doesn’t hurt to try,” His voice was quiet and unshakeable in the way he was beginning to associate as entirely Finney, “We can start, even if we don’t finish.”
“What’s the point?” Robin challenged, more than aware that his mother would pinch his ear red and call him terco for his attitude if she could hear him.
“For next time. We’ll get it right eventually.”
For as soft-spoken and placid as Robin had always perceived the other boy, the conviction in his tone was jarring. The ensuing patience was more so when even his mother was known to break off into frustrated tangents. Teachers dreaded having him in their class, and classmates momentarily forgot their fear when it was his turn to read out loud. Robin was too slow and never seemed to learn what they intended the first, second, or even third time. English and Spanish interchanged, numbers ran together, and no one ever seemed to understand that he actually was trying. He was sure that he had been graded the bare minimum to avoid the frustration of having to repeat the class.
For the rest of the period, he waited for the moment when Finney would sigh, maybe even get brave enough to roll his eyes, or slip back to his original desk silently. Yet, Finn never seemed to take offense when the first explanations didn’t quite land, or when Robin accidentally snapped the lead in his pencil, again.
He simply sharpened the pencil and began again.
By the end of class, despite only finishing half of the sheet, Robin felt he'd learned more in that handful of minutes than he had in the past month, maybe more.
“Hey, thanks. Really. You explained it better than any teacher I’ve ever had,” The sincerity in his own voice surprised him, the stony monotone melting into something more earnest that felt more vulnerable than he’d like to admit.
Finney ducked his head and shook it simultaneously, as if physically warding away the compliment before it could settle on his newly hunched shoulders, confidence seemingly evaporating into thin air.
The classroom was quickly empty, and within moments, it was just the two of them. Dust motes drifted in the sunlight, faint chatter pressed through the thin glass, the room tinting a vibrant orange with the remaining vestiges of the afternoon light.
Robin considered him for a moment before nodding to himself, “Thank you, seriously, I wouldn’t have gotten as far as I did without you.”
“You’re smarter than you think,” Finney told him, “If you ever need help, I don’t mind, I like math.”
It was probably one of the nerdiest things he had ever heard someone willingly say. He said it so casually earnest as if it was something someone like Robin could relate to and not what anyone else would have counted as a character flaw.
For the first time, a hint of an admittedly rare smile cracked through his tough exterior, “My name is Robin Arellano, by the way.”
Brown eyes crinkled, colored like honey under the afternoon sun, “I know. Robin, like the bird. My name is Finney Blake.”
“I know,” He echoed, smile widening a little, half-drawn just to be annoying, “Finn, like the end of a movie.”
Finney looked almost amused at that, exhaling a little laugh through his nose as he slung his backpack over his slight shoulders, “It was nice talking to you today.”
He was halfway through the door before Robin made up his mind, squaring his frame, “Finn, if anyone bothers you, let me know. I’ll take care of it.”
The boy looked back at him, the slightest quirk of his lip gentling his deer-like face, “See you tomorrow, Robin.”
He didn’t realize it until he was home, pulling the already graded worksheet out and digging through his bag, that he still had the pencil. Plastic-wrapped stars and a sharpened point, eraser a little more worn than when the day started. Robin should have put it in his bag, tracked down the other boy, and shoved it into his hands. It would have been the perfect excuse to talk to him again, something he had been thinking about since he had slipped out of the classroom.
Instead, he tucked the pencil into his nightstand, rattling next to his father’s dog tags, family pictures, and the rosary his mother gave him.
The next morning, Robin couldn’t help but wonder how he had never noticed him in the crowd before. He didn’t have an excuse to go up to him, something for the watching eyes to see and disregard. It felt entirely too easy to bump their shoulders and walk to class together, as if the universe had simply been waiting for the puzzle pieces to click in place. For once, Finney didn’t show up to class with blood on his face, and for once, Robin found himself looking forward to school. It was the first time he’d felt seen, truly seen, and it was almost startling how much he wanted to cling to that.
It didn’t help that Finney was just as alone as he was, even more so sometimes. Two names, Robin and Gwen, encapsulated his world entirely. His sister would always be his priority, loving in the way that only siblings who had to raise each other could understand. But Robin and Finney were something different.
It would have been easy to say that neither of them had realized it then, how much they would grow to mean to each other, but that wouldn’t be entirely honest. Because if he was truthful, Robin knew the moment their eyes met that they were going to be something special. They were a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing, red suns and blue moons and all that poetic crap. The stories that made it onto the big pictures and colored their childhood nostalgia a rosy pink.
He liked to think that, even then, Finney knew it too.
Robin always knew that Finney was special and had equally always begrudged others for not realizing it. He had never considered what it might feel like to see the transition firsthand, to watch shadowy hands reach for the constellations written in his soul as if they were there all along. As if they understood how it felt to know Finney Blake and be known in turn.
Possessiveness was an ugly, snapping, and snarling thing, chasing the others away like a rabid animal. He festered every time they stepped too close. Everything was static and open wounds. The room trembled in its foundation when the glass bottle shattered, sharp edges striking and overwhelming until they exhausted themselves out of the spiral. Even then, he never left his side, not once, hovering and glaring at the bloody faces that watched on.
The phone rang, again and again, a new boy searching for something less than salvation and more than remembrance. Finney gave them back their names and unknowingly provided respite from the cold and the dark of this strange in-between. The smallest of the shadows, the one that hid in the dark the longest, had taken to silently following him around the room when Robin was feeling less volatile. Practically nipping at his heels, pale fingers passing through the back of his shirt in a fruitless grasp. He seemed to greedily bask in the light, absorbing as much as he could before, inevitably, he was chased away again.
Robin wondered if Finney would have been more afraid if he knew how often the dead surrounded him, watching his every move, clinging to every word. Unblinking fish eyes and unmoving chests, mouthing along to every whispered word — even the angriest of them, the most stubbornly intangible, watched from the recesses of the corners.
The phone continued to ring, the escape plans failed one by one, and slowly the solar flares began to lose their glow.
Finney had never cried, not once. It didn’t matter how many hits he had taken, dislocated fingers, or open wounds. There was a hum of defiance in him, never cracking in front of anyone. Even Robin, maybe especially Robin, had never seen him cry.
He admired it. The set of Finn’s shoulders, the steel in his spine, but part of him had always wished Finney would trust him enough to let the armor slip. Sometimes all he could focus on was the space between them. The sharp lines that refused to blur. If not for the watching eyes, the whispered judgments, would Finney have let himself be known?
It felt like a sick joke to finally watch the lines bleed when Robin was too late to grasp them.
For the first time, Finney was breaking, and Robin couldn’t do a thing.
The saddest eyes he had ever seen were bleeding tears like open wounds. For once, he wasn’t pulling himself up before anyone had a chance to offer a hand, wiping the blood from his nose like it was just an inconvenience. The constellations were crackling, the light bulb was flickering. And no matter what he did, no matter how much he wanted or wished or prayed, Finney was still crying, and Robin was still dead.
The phone rang, and this time he didn’t run away.
“Hey, Finn.”
“Robin?”
And for the last time, it felt like it was just them.
Finney went through hell and emerged on the other side, alive in some ways, irreversibly changed in others. His heart never stopped beating in that basement, but Robin was sure that the moment he snapped the cord of the phone, the moment he snapped that monster’s neck, something died anyway.
The pitch black matter of The Grabber’s soul was the one locked in the dark now, lost and voiceless just like the rest of them. Except he wouldn’t have Finney to return his name, he would simply starve and rot. It was spite that kept Robin there until the last of them finally left, Griffin, who stared at the crumbled body of the man who beat him to death and laughed and laughed. When his voice crackled out, dead eyes flickered to him before, quick as a mouse, he was darting into sunlight and gone.
He thought in those first few days that he would fade, that maybe God would finally call him and he’d find out if the heaven that his mother prayed to really did exist.
When he saw his mother again for the first time, he suddenly remembered that he had a brother and wondered how he could have ever forgotten. His grandmother was there, Tío Julio, and Ernesto, too. People that he loved, his family, his everything, people he forgot. His mother was clutching her phone and weeping, the rosary held tightly in her hands, indenting the calloused skin. Robin reached out to loosen her grip, to ask her to hold him for just a moment, and was startled when his hand simply left a trail of cold air.
‘That’s right,’ he thought to himself, ‘She’s crying because of me, she’s crying because I died.’
Days passed, maybe weeks, God did not call.
Robin followed his mother the way he had refused to do as a child, lost in a way that he had only ever felt when he was young and distracted, and she walked too fast in the mercado. He remembered feeling as though he’d never see her again, chubby face ruddy with tears. The relief he felt when he heard her call his name, running through the vendors until she found him again.
“No vayas a donde no pueda encontrarte, tontito.”
He stayed, and she found him. In the end, it didn’t change anything at all. Robin was still waiting in the mercado, waiting for her to turn around.
Ernesto had taken to standing outside of his room, the door always closed. They hadn’t been very close growing up. Compared to Finney and Gwen, they must have seemed like strangers.
Robin tried his best to be a good brother, but they had always been so different. Ernesto was gentle, a bit of a scaredy-cat, and unafraid of seeking reassurance. He was too young to remember when their father was deployed, what it was like to leave their home, or how difficult it was in those early years. He latched on to Tío Julio as a father figure, and maybe Robin resented him for that longer than he’d like to admit.
He walked the kid to school and intimidated anyone who gave him crap, but he was also an annoying little brother on the best of days. Sometimes he reminded him of Finney, with much less of a spine. Which is probably why every time Finn was over, Ernesto was sneaking around the corners trying to win his attention. There was always a distance between them, probably a distance Robin had enforced, and he finds himself regretting it now.
There was a lot to regret at the end of his short life.
Finney was different since he left the basement, not altogether present, and always looking over his shoulder. There were always eyes watching him, children and adults alike scrutinizing every move, every breath, every twitch as if he was the problem, as if he was one second away from snapping and not a boy trying to survive.
Robin followed him during the day, trying to pretend like the ugly possessiveness didn’t twist in his chest every time the girl he sat next to in science glanced his way. He accidentally shattered their beaker when their hands brushed against each other. Finney pricked his fingers on the glass and watched the blood bead. For a moment, the shadows retreated and left nothing but sobering horror that he could be so far gone as to hurt his best friend. Horror that something on Finney’s face seemed to revel in the pain. He promised to stay away, during science at least, his school attendance had never been better.
At night, he’d check in on his mother, his grieving family fraying at the edges. It was hard to see them so sad, quiet in ways that his home had never been. It was even harder sometimes to watch them pick up the pieces and move on. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed before his room was put into boxes. His mother had a boyfriend he’d never intimidate, his brother was slowly growing taller than him, and the pencil with plastic-wrapped stars was placed in a pile labeled "TRASH."
Ernesto kept their father’s dog tags, his mother reclaimed her rosary, and his favorite bandana was placed in the Blake family’s mailbox, with a note that said, ‘Thank you for being his friend.’
Finney didn’t cry when he read the note or held the bandana with gentle hands. He didn’t move for a very long time, and his eyes seemed to relive a thousand wars, but not once did he cry. His thumb traced the material, and Robin wondered not for the first time what it might have been like to hold his hand.
“Robin?”
He still has the saddest eyes he’s ever seen, like a baby deer in the headlights surrounding him at all sides. The waver of his voice around his name is even worse, always tentatively hopeful and utterly broken all at once.
Robin hated himself for being a reason for the emptiness in his eyes, the hurt in his voice, hated the vile part of him that was almost glad that Finney couldn’t seem to forget him.
The basement had undoubtedly reawakened something in Finney, a resounding beacon that permeated through the fog of the in-between. The color of his soul had dimmed, the warmth drained bit by bit, and yet it was still brighter than every star in the sky, even on the worst of days.
Spirits flocked to him, enchanted by the light. They were greedy, twisted by living in the dark for so long, and every moment was one where they tried to consume him entirely.
When the phones began to ring again, when the television static distorted the screen, when the radios clicked between channels in a frenzy, it was never Robin holding the dial. And yet, Finney always picked up, always called out, waiting with bated breath as if there was nothing that mattered more than hearing him again.
The darkest parts that lived and thrived in the dark delighted in it, clung to the reciprocation. It was the same parts that shattered beakers and tried to scare the world away, if only to give them just another moment. Robin never called, because if he did, he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to let go.
But Finney didn’t know that Robin never left, not for longer than a handful of hours. Day by day, his eyes were losing their shine, and he couldn’t remember the last time he caught a glimpse of Finney’s smile. He tried to ignore it, tried not to give in. It was easy to fall into rhythm, to bare his teeth and tear into the greedy shadows that tried to swallow him whole. The spirits bled in gray hues, their empty eyes the only shineless blots of light in a mass of oblivion. Their gaping maws searching, searching, searching for an escape from bleak misery.
For cold, meaningless beings, the Blake siblings might as well have been a dinner bell.
During the day, Finney was a universe calling lost souls home. As he slept, his solar flares dimmed to stardust, and Gwen began to shine. Where he was night, she was the day. As he was the cosmos, she was the earth — flora, fauna, and the overarching sky. If he was a beacon in the early hours, she was the lighthouse that watched over the dark sea. Her soul unfurled into butterfly wings and the roots of a branching tree, searching for every untold story.
He wonders if he would have been one of the faceless creatures preying on them if not for Finn, if he would have forgotten to bask in the warmth of his soul and tried to devour him entirely the moment he was dragged into the basement.
It was easy to tell how long certain spirits had been wandering in the dark. The oldest seemed to forget that they were ever human, reduced to nothing but a shapeless mass that was too far gone to even make a sound. It was both frightening and awe-inspiring to understand the extent of what Finney had done for him, for the boys in the basement.
The same boys who returned like clockwork, slowly desensitized from his snarl, from the pulse of energy that vibrated like a rattlesnake in warning.
Griffin was the first to come, wide and unblinking eyes staring at Finney while he slept. Not even glancing at Robin, even when he loomed threateningly.
“He visited my grave,” The boy said wistfully, “He still remembers my name.”
By morning, he was gone, at least that’s what Robin thought until he saw him watching from sharp corners and stretching shadows. He tensed every time Griffin reached towards Finn, teeth bared and skin like static, but he never tried to steal the stardust. His hand was forever grasping at belt loops and the tail of his long-sleeve shirts, passing through harmlessly and leaving the boy with a look of an odd sort of longing.
One day, the mousy boy catches Robin staring at him, almost baffled, and smiles with too many teeth, “He’s my friend too now,” he whispers, and a drop of blood dribbles down the jagged tears in his neck, “I’m not alone anymore.”
Bruce comes next and seems to understand on some level that he’s unwanted there. He’s earnest and he’s wistful and he asks Robin carefully if the bottlerocket he saw that day was really Finney’s.
It’s a dirty trick, and it works, because even if he feels feral and possessive, he hasn’t talked to anyone in what feels like years. It feels good to talk about Finn, to feel like he's still a part of his life and privy to his thoughts, hopes, and dreams. And so he talks about how Finn was going to study the stars and save up to buy a real telescope one day, and how he was smart enough to get into any college he wanted to attend. Bruce listens, asks questions, follows Finney to practice, and pretends to hit the balls when he serves them.
“I would have liked to have practiced with him,” He’s smiling as he says it, even as the cut over his eye tears open, “I bet we would’ve been great.”
Billy, Paperboy, is more unpredictable. Sometimes Robin sees him wandering the streets like a newly lost spirit, face fuzzing around the edges like an out-of-focus picture. He walks his paper route and seems to forget the world as he does, fading and fading until he sees Finney, and the picture comes into focus. He switches between avoidance and dedication at the drop of a hat, blinking in and out of existence but always seeming to come back. For some reason, he has more energy than most of them, static crawling in the air every time his mood flips. Finn doesn’t seem to know who it is, but he knows that something is there, watching him.
“It’s okay,” Finney often says, unaware that more than one pair of eyes tracks him, and his voice is always sad, “You can be angry, what happened to you wasn’t fair.”
Sometimes Paperboy is angry, and every lightbulb will shatter in the house. Other times, he withdraws and looks very small, the air humming with static.
Finney never seems to flinch, something absent even if the lines that crinkle his eyes are still an echo of something profoundly kind, “You can sit with me, if you like.”
Paperboy does, always under the scrutiny of Robin’s watchful eyes, usually followed by Griffin, who sits underneath them on the floor as if they were simply having a movie night. The boys seemed to always be around nowadays, maybe afraid of the same things he was every time he went home, relieved in a sick way that Finn at least seemed stagnant.
Finney’s father was usually watching with white-knuckles and yellow-tinted eyes, sobriety sagging the skin of his worn and drawn face. Tense around his traumatized child and looking to the shadows as if waiting to see the same ghostly hands.
“You and your sister,” His father says one night, the evidence of his relapse in the slur of his voice and in the wavering eye contact, “You scare the shit out of me.”
The bottle in his hand shatters, and Robin doesn’t feel guilty for it, not one bit. There was an emptiness in Finn’s eyes, an almost doll-like stiffness to his posture. It feels like he was disappearing a little more every day, untethered just like the rest of them.
Vance doesn’t appear until the first time Finney gets into a fight. An oversized idiot had slammed him against the lockers, pinned him in place with hot breath and an ugly sneer. It’s satisfying at first to watch the anger drain with every heavy hit. By the end of it, he stands like a marionette waiting for the strings to be cut. Vance watches in the sea of eager faces with a focus he’d only seen in his pinball games, and leaves as soon as it’s over without saying a word. It keeps happening as the fights become more frequent, a little less of Finney resurfacing with every hit, until eventually he starts staying longer. Vance is stronger than Paperboy, and machines tend to become explosive around him. It’s almost concerning how Finney doesn’t seem to notice when the television is on the blitz for the millionth time in a day. He doesn’t speak to the others for a long time, fuzzes around the edges, and vibrates the air when anyone looks at him for too long.
“That dumbshit is wasting his life,” He says one day without meeting any of their eyes, “He fights like he wants to die.”
Sometimes the kids who shove Finney against the lockers or try to provoke him spontaneously get nosebleeds, hear something high-pitched and ringing. Robin couldn’t say it was Vance, not when there was a growing collection of spectators in the never-ending tragedy of Finney Blake’s life.
It makes the rumors worse.
Whispers of Gwen being a witch, of Finney haunted by angry spirits.
Finney quits baseball, and Bruce stops smiling for days. He leaves quarters next to the out-of-order pinball machine and visits their graves sporadically at odd hours. Never saying anything, head ducked and practically hiding. If he ever passes by The Grabber’s house, he spits at the cracked steps, and Vance huffs a sardonic laugh. His knuckles split open, and he stops talking to the girl in science class. His solar flares are bleached white. He still has the saddest eyes Robin has ever seen.
He starts smoking weed, his already limited appetite decreases, he goes days without talking if Gwen doesn’t nudge him, his grades never fall into failing, but he no longer performs like a kid with dreams. He still answers the phone, he still waits for the possibility of the sound of Robin’s voice before muttering apologies. Sometimes Robin wonders if it would be so bad to drag him far, far away, and the thought and the intensity and the want gets stronger every day.
His best friend is dying, a supernova before his very eyes, and he can’t do a thing.
Gwen begins to sleepwalk, right into hell’s den, and suddenly it’s like the nightmare never ends. Robin can chase the greedy spirits away, but he isn’t privy to the monsters that hide in his best friend’s mind. He stands guard in the night and tries not to feel useless at the hollowness in Finney’s eyes.
There’s a visceral reaction to Gwen’s dreams. He can hear Finn’s heart stutter in his chest every time she tries to talk about it. The absence on his face grows deeper, the subconscious flicker of his eyes towards their father agitated and trained.
Even so, even still, he follows her to the camp in her dreams, Camp Alpine.
It’s strange to see his younger brother older than he’d ever be. There’s almost a sense of melancholy before he opens his mouth, and it’s a stark reminder that he was, as always, his annoying younger brother.
Finney never looks at Ernesto directly, avoiding even the slightest glance with an expression that seems to be in a constant state of pain.
“He looks like you,” Finney had told him once, “Just younger and more innocent.”
He doesn’t know why it irritates him so much to hear Finney being nice to his brother. Because that’s all it was, his best friend being nice. It didn’t matter how often the Tia’s pinched their cheeks and called them twins, or how often his mother mixed up their names. Robin didn’t want Finney to think of Ernesto when he looked at him.
“We don’t look that much alike,” Robin had argued, trying not to let the indignation irritate his tone and knew he was probably failing, “And if you think he’s innocent -“
Finney had laughed at him, small and soft, and the sound, rare as it was, stole his voice from his throat.
“I’m just saying that it’s hard to tell him no when all I see is you.”
He remembered his face burning, avoiding eye contact and huffing performatively, secretly pleased despite himself. Finn always had a way with words, of making him feel more important than he was.
He could tell that it hurt Ernesto to have his older brother’s best friend, whom he used to beg for help in math and follow around with wide, eager eyes, avoid him so entirely. Robin couldn’t blame Finney either. If Gwen were the last reminder he had of Finn, he’d probably avoid her, too.
The attempted flirting was also so entirely atrocious that he lost any and all respect for his brother in less than a second. From the looks on the other boys' faces, the feeling was entirely mutual and the slightest bit of judgmental.
“I didn’t teach him that, stop looking at me!” He hissed when Paperboy side-eyed him for the fifth time. That was Tío Julio’s influence, through and through, and most definitely a joke that his younger brother took entirely seriously,
“I really hope you’re better at flirting,” Griffin responded, and Bruce nodded so earnestly that a new wave of irritation flickered the lights and sending them scattering when his form grew in size.
Seeing The Grabber again was like being drowned in a lake of freezing water. He was unlike any wandering soul they had seen over the years, hiding in a state beyond the in-between. When he was near, the world became colder, darker, and frigid. Time moved in molasses as every shadow stretched into clawing misery.
The night he cornered Finn in the phone booth was the first time he had appeared physically. Flickering between realities, present one moment and the next like a spotty old film, clicking through cards.
Vance had been the first to react, an explosion of energy that collapsed his physical form in a passionate reaction of blood-curdling anger. The bleeding, whispering threads rushed forward like fine-point needles cutting through the night. He was only a few feet away when his formless entity seemed to freeze.
The wisps began to disintegrate, corrupted by the shadows that stretched with greedy fingers. When Paperboy and Bruce moved to help him, the corruption seemed to swallow them within seconds. The formless shadows that escaped the basement, returning for a split second, nameless, hopeless, creatures of misfortune.
The shadows slipped only when The Grabber was gone. Finney was no longer the beacon of a universe he had been a few years ago. Time had washed the color from his soul, and yet what little warmth remained seemed enough to chase the shadows away. Though he didn’t know what had occurred, his soul seemed dimmer, tainted after Vance, Bruce, and Paperboy returned.
The experience confirmed one thing, once again, they would be of no help to Finney.
It was frustrating. It was a hell that seemed especially catered to Robin, to be forced to watch his best friend suffer again and again, forever fighting battles that never seemed to end.
And despite the pallor of his face, the purple bruises underneath his eyes, and the ever-so slight trembling of his hands, he was still kind.
Robin watched the new, young boys congregate towards the light of his soul, clinging like the lost children they were to the gentle patience of his voice.
Even if he had a hard time accepting the turmoil that came with Gwen’s dreams, Finn was innately, at his core, a good and kind person.
One of the hardest parts of following Finney in the past few years was watching the distance between him and Gwen stretch like a chasm. There was almost a displacement in their relationship when it became clear that Finn could defend himself. Even though she was younger, Gwen had always taken on the role of a fierce defender, reactive and boisterous to his calm and peace-seeking nature.
After the basement, it was as if they were both turned on their head. Suddenly, Finney was fighting as if the moment he stopped, the world would end. Gwen was pursuing forgiveness and trying to give their father a chance. They loved each other still, anyone could tell that, but the distance yawned between them with no direction on how to move forward. For all that Gwen was passionate, she also tended to push too far and fast, forcing assumptions for the express purpose of trying to make others react. And where Finn had always been independent, he tended to completely shut down and push the people who cared about him away, not realizing how much he was hurting them every time he did.
Years of miscommunication and distance had made them volatile and just a bit cruel.
When Finney began to cry, for the first time since he escaped the basement, it felt like a mockery. For a moment, the boy he knew was right before his eyes. Crying for help, crying for someone to see him. He didn’t know that Robin had never left his side, he didn’t know that the boys from the basement had been following him for almost as long as he had, he didn’t know that he had never been alone, not once.
Robin wished he could have been the one to wipe the tears from his eyes.
It was painful to watch his walls rebuild, vulnerability locked, latch and key, the absence resettling on his face like an old friend.
If Robin were there, he wouldn’t have let that happen. He would have held him through the tears, and he would have listened to every frightening and angry thought he’d ever experienced. He would have held his hand, and he would have chased every nightmare away.
But Robin wasn’t there.
And neither was Finney, not entirely.
At the end of it all, Robin was bitter, bitter at the trajectory and outcome of their lives. Everything that could have been different and simply wasn’t. If he had lived, he was sure that they could have found a way to be happy, even through all this shit.
At the end of it all, his best friend was dying, and Robin couldn't do a thing.
The Grabber was choking Finney, his lips were turning blue, and his soul was dimming so rapidly that all the light in the world seemed to be going with him. It wasn’t fair, any of it, but especially this. To force him through hell and not allow him a happy end, to prolong his death by miserable years. Why? Just to torture him? If it was always going to end this way, Robin would have never ended the call.
Robin felt like he was wading through tar, trying to reach him, the feeble grasp of his mind hanging by delicate stands that slipped through his fingers like sand. Every dragging, sloping step was encumbered by the grasping hands of shadows that sank into his flesh. The world was no longer physical. He was in a state of free-falling, a place where gravity did not exist, a black hole that swallowed every half-formed thought before it could begin.
‘Who am I?’ He wondered, ‘Did I ever exist?’
Oblivion begged him to disperse, to rest in the quiet and the dark where he could no longer hurt. There was a peace to be found there, separate from the regret that might have haunted him in the time before. He leaned into the quiet embrace for a moment, only a moment of absolution.
The sound of a small, choking gasp shattered the illusion — and then every light, every color, every reason for the world to turn went dark, the death of the sun and every star in the godforsaken sky.
Supernova.
Robin remembered, and he screamed.
The color came back all at once, blinding and pure in intensity, washing the colorless snow with splitting reflections not unlike a kaleidoscope. The solar flares burned through shadows and tar alike, consuming the seemingly impenetrable darkness that had seemed so vast moments ago.
Finney was slamming his head against the ice, every violent crack a cathartic, resounding bell that summoned the children from the frozen lake and basement alike. There was no mercy for the monster with snapping teeth in his chest. Repentance awaited him, and no other was as eager as they to see it through.
The children in the lake dragged The Grabber down, down, down. And yet, even still, even now, he fought against them, clutching his mask and shrieking. There was a promise in those eyes, in those cold, dead eyes, to come back.
The unbearable truth was that it would never be over. Not truly, not ever completely. The Grabber would haunt Finney for the rest of his life, hiding around every sharp corner and in the recesses of his mind. Maybe time would stretch behind every appearance, enough that Finney might have a moment to breathe and even find a way to relax, but he would always come back.
And Robin was so tired of watching his universe fall apart.
He met Finney’s gaze, certain, just for a moment, that he could see him. The almost delicate shape of his name on Finney’s lips filled him with a warmth brighter than any solar flare could ever dare to imagine.
“I wish I had been brave enough to hold your hand,” The confession felt almost torn from Robin’s chest, like something long buried uncovered by torrential storms, laughter wavering under the weight of all the moments they would never have.
The way Finney’s expression crumbled, physically pained as if a jagged knife were twisting in his chest, could almost convince him to run back, to try one last time, to pretend like they weren’t separated by the finality of death.
And so he ran, he flew like a bird, not to Finn, but to the frozen lake where the hijo de puta that had stolen their possibilities was clawing for another chance.
The water was cold, and hearing Finney scream, the title card ending of their tragic closing scene, the last time he’d ever hear his voice, was colder. The frigidity threatened to consume him, to swallow him whole, and so he latched onto the putrid flesh and pulled the thief with him.
He could see Griffin, Paperboy, Bruce, Vance, and the other children dragging him deeper and deeper into the cold and the dark.
Robin had always been a good liar.
Even to himself.
The truth was that he had been lying since the beginning, since the moment awareness came back.
Robin had died feeling many things: angry, lost, in pain.
But his last thoughts weren’t bloodthirsty bullets, fire in his veins, an explosion hiding behind human skin.
Robin died thinking about everything he would never have, would never do. Everything that he hadn’t been brave enough to grasp, everything that seemed so important before a mere excuse to justify a life that, before, seemed to have so much more time.
He wanted to tell his mother that he missed her, even when she was around. He wanted to know Ernesto, to teach him how to flirt properly. He wanted Tío Julio to keep teaching him boxing, to tell him that he loved him for stepping in. He wanted to follow Finney to the stars, to a place where they didn’t have to worry who was watching. Robin wanted to live, he wanted to live.
Boy or bomb? The truth was that he was always just a boy, a boy who died too young.
Hell is not fire, hell is not ice.
Hell is helplessness.
And Robin was tired of being helpless.
He closes his eyes, the frozen lake swallows them whole, and for a moment, just a moment, the sun flares behind his eyes.
The sky is an orange hue, casting a melancholy glow over every surface.
It’s a muggy August afternoon, a month into the school year, and Finn is there, curly dirty blond hair and a blue jean jacket embroidered with stars.
The lead-stained desks are empty, an eerie silence hanging heavy in the still air, a space for just the two of them.
Maybe he should have been scared, but how could he be? Finn was right there.
His eyes are still the saddest Robin has ever seen, even as young as he is, the youngest he’s been in years. The weight of the world never seems to slip from those slight shoulders, a weight he refused to share until it was too late.
“What would you do if you could go back?” Finn asks him, startling despite the way his voice never raises, gentle in a way that he almost forgot.
“I wouldn’t be taken, not again,” Robin says immediately, “I would save you.”
“I didn’t die,” Finney reminds him, though it isn’t Finney, not wholly, Robin thinks. Fragmented, an echo, but he couldn’t find it in himself to care. It didn’t matter if it was a phantom, a shadow, a mimic. It was still Finn.
“Maybe not, but you weren’t living either,” He says, and the echo smiles sardonically, the slightest quirk that didn’t crinkle his eyes, not even a little bit.
“I don’t think I can be saved,” Finney tells him, “At least, not in the way you’re hoping. No matter what happens, I’m probably beyond help.”
Robin shakes his head, the bandana in his hair feels like a reunion, “It doesn’t hurt to try, that’s what you told me that day, isn’t it?”
“It doesn’t hurt to try,” Finn echoes, “We can start, even if we don’t finish.”
“That’s right,” He agrees, a certainty that feels displaced, as if his body knows something his mind was still struggling to grapple with, “I’ll start as many times as it takes. Again and again, even if I fail or fuck up.”
“What’s the point?” The boy is smiling softer than before. He knows the answer, knows what Robin is going to say, but he asks anyway. Robin needs to say it, needs to hear it to believe.
“For next time. We’ll get it right eventually.”
The bell rings, and Finney is slipping out the door. There is comfort in the curve of his smile, “See you tomorrow, Robin.”
When Robin opens his eyes, the sun is rising, the popcorn patterned ceiling colored in soft shades of twilight blue.
His alarm is buzzing at his bedside, red numbers glaring as the wind chills from the cracked open window.
The room where he grew up was untouched, plastic-wrapped stars, rosaries, and dog tags.
Slowly, he pushes himself out of his bunched-up covers, a sheen of sweat dampening his forehead. His hands, solid and physical and warm, tremble as he picks up a crumbled piece of paper from the floor.
Acme Delco Elementary School Class Schedule:
1975 - 1976
“What would you do if you could go back?”
The paper flutters to the carpet, the window groaning as it is thrown open, bare feet hitting the dew-dropped grass.
“What would you do if you could go back?”
He ran, faster than he ever thought he could, chest bursting with breath and heat behind his eyes.
“What would you do if you could go back?”
His heart was beating in his throat, hands shaking violently as he rapped at the window. Gwen’s loud complaints sending waves of overwhelming hope down his spine.
“What would you do if you could go back?”
The window pushes open.
“What would you do if you could go back?”
“Robin?”
“What would you do if you could go back?”
He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t blink, he couldn’t stop himself from half-climbing, half-falling through the window and tackling Finney, sending them both to the floor, held together by nothing but stardust and fragile hope.
“What would you do if you could go back?”
Everything.