Just Rigby. (troubador) wrote in light_of_may, @ 2010-05-09 00:23:00 |
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Entry tags: | #flashback, #solo |
A pale winter city, a numbness for sound
Who: Garrett Rigby and his mother, Allison (NPC)
Where: A hospital in Seattle, Washington
When: February 2001; Rigby is 19
What: He wouldn't leave her side until the end.
Rigby hated hospitals. Hated the smell, hated the white walls, and mostly, he hated how much everyone thought about death. Sometimes a nurse or a doctor would come in with a positive vibe about them, but that hadn’t happened in a while. Not when everyone knew his mother wasn’t going to make it; they just weren’t saying it out loud.
Allison was half-sleeping, hooked up to more machines and monitors than Rigby had ever seen in his entire life. She wasn’t dreaming; he knew, because sometimes he could pick up on some of those thoughts as well. He’d imagined a better life for her than this, dying in a hospital bed god only knew how many miles away from home, away from Georgia, letting the brain tumor take her life.
Was this what it felt like when they fled Savannah together, all those years before? The fear and the panic he remembered, though he started drifting in and out of consciousness towards the end. The only thought that stuck with him from that long car ride, as he lay bleeding from the knife wound in his side, inflicted by his father of all people, was from his mother’s: I’m not gonna let you die.
If only Rigby could do the same for her now. Allison deserved better than what she’d been given, she always had. He’d learned that much from his parents’ mistakes.
Her eyes fluttered open and she managed to smile for him. It was a weak one; he didn’t need the telepathy to know her strength was fading. It wouldn’t be long now. “Garrett,” she said, “you gonna get some sleep at some point? You’re lookin’ dead on your feet.”
She was the only person who still called him by his first name. He’d decided that her maiden name was a better match for the man he’d become than Garrett could ever be. “Wanted to be awake when you got up,” he said, which was the truth. He didn’t want to waste any of the time he still had with his mother. “I’ll sleep later, I promise.”
“You’d best be promisin’ to take care of yourself, young man. I’m not gonna be around much longer to do it for you.” There wasn’t a trace of regret in Allison’s thoughts, just wistfulness. She’d already accepted her fate, and that part was hard for Rigby to wrap his head around. No one should welcome death with open arms. Not when she wasn’t that old – hell, Allison just turned 40 a few months before. “I’m expectin’ great things from you,” she continued, “and you can’t do that walkin’ around here like a zombie.”
“Don’t worry ‘bout me, Mama.” Rigby reached out for her hand, holding it in both of his. “I’ll be fine.” I hope. He left the last part unspoken. That was the one good thing about his telepathy, it only went one way. He could know everything about a person and it was rare anyone even thought to ask him what his first name was.
“Raised you right. You’ve become a fine young man, Garrett Michael.” Allison’s eyes drifted closed again and she took a few deep breaths. Rigby would have done anything, absolutely anything in that moment to take away some of her pain for her, wishing again that it was him with the tumor instead of her. “Promise me somethin’.”
“Anythin’.” She was the only person who ever believed in him, kept him from feeling like a total freak. She didn’t always understand what he could do, that the voices were always there and they weren’t going away anytime soon, but she loved him. And, in the end, that was all a child really needed, in Rigby’s mind. So what if he didn’t have the stereotypical childhood, so what if they’d spent most of the last eight years living out of the back of a truck? Allison took care of him, and he wouldn’t trade that life for anything.
Her story just wasn’t supposed to end like this. No Hollywood ending here, no fade to black, no superhero to swoop in and save the day. Rigby had never much believed in that sort of thing and he still didn’t. There was just the reality of the fact that, sometimes, bad things happened to good people.
“You live your life. You don’t look back, you don’t have any regrets, and you do what makes you happy.” In spite of her physical state, there was a strength in Allison Rigby’s voice. He could feel it in the center of his chest, knowing that she believed every word she said – even when Rigby himself didn’t. “You and that guitar, Garrett, you’re gonna make somethin’ out of yourself.”
“Mama.” The word came out as a whisper, and Rigby shook his head. “Don’t talk like you’re already-” Like you’re already dead. He couldn’t bring himself to say it.
She reached up with her free hand, running it over his hair. It had always been a bit longer than was socially acceptable, just brushing over his ears, a consequence of forgetting to get a haircut, and not having the money for it anyway. “I’m not tellin’ you to go and do somethin’ crazy. Just be yourself. I know it’s there in you, somewhere. The soul of a troubadour.”
Rigby raised his eyes to meet hers. “I don’t even know where to go from here.”
“And you think I did?” Allison had a point, and Rigby was more aware of that than she probably realized, being that he’d been able to read her thoughts for as long as he could remember. They’d run from Savannah on nothing but a tank of gas and her only thought had been to get as far away from Will Walker as they possibly could. Mission accomplished now, so it seemed. “You’ll figure it out. You ain’t a boy anymore.”
In the moment, that fact didn’t matter so much. Allison was still his mother, and he was still her little boy. That was why he leaned over, so he was half-sitting on the bed, and he could rest his head against her shoulder one more time. Her thoughts were a constant stream in his head, never something he was afraid of. Though he’d spent his entire life looking for silence in his head, and only truly finding it whenever he played his guitar, he didn’t know how he would handle being completely alone.
Allison leaned in and pressed a kiss to the top of his head, and he could feel her body straining with the effort it took. “I love you, Garrett. I always tried to do what’s best for you.”
He closed his eyes, ignoring the other stray thoughts that threatened to crowd his brain, from the doctors and nurses and other patients near their room. “Love you too, Mama. And I ain’t never gonna forget that.”