I think this is the longest and most poetic of the three parts! Honestly, the amount of poetry I ended up writing for this chapter that I was like… I can't keep all this in! I might post it as a separate piece, but it took away from the point of this trilogy (in my opinion).
"There is a difference between living and surviving. If you do what you need, you're surviving. If you do what you want, you're living." – Unknown.
"How did you do it, Dad? How did you last so long?"
"Surviving was easy. How did I last? Thinking of all of you. I knew you'd find a way. I never gave up hope."
Summary: He could survive; could he last?
Word Count: 1692
* Part II – Lasting *
The days were no more than hours passing him by, going over his head and ticking onwards at speed, or not so… sometimes he was sure he must have missed years, and at other it felt like only minutes. It was hard to know which was to be believed.
He wanted to believe.
But the days were no more than hours passing him by and the minutes no more than stars he could no longer see.
He often thought he saw something, on the horizon. Something which made his heart race with hope and his chest pound with prospects of going home, of living life as it was made to be lived.
But it was never any more than an asteroid or a flickering star, dying with no hope of recovery.
This was his world now, this desolate, vacant orbit.
It was beautiful, of course, but the beauty was still hard to see with despair sitting thick and heavy like a rain cloud waiting to pour, waiting to take all the hope and years he had left.
He'd managed to survive.
That still wasn't a problem.
The problem was what he missed.
His home, his beautiful, wonderful island.
His poor Mother and his best friends.
His boys.
His boys who were far too young to be without him, especially little Alan. His boys who weren't ready to be left alone, like chicks who had yet to learn to fly.
It wasn't just the things he missed that dragged him down either. It was the prospects. He could keep up hope that he would see home and his boys again, yet the prospect of that happening, the chances… even if he did survive long enough- he wouldn't want his boys to come all this way to find him, and find a ghost living in a shell of the man they knew.
That was not possible.
The days were no more than hours passing him by like the Earth orbited the sun, or the comets raced passed the stars.
He had to keep going, he had to believe that one day he would go home. His boys would come and get him to bring him home-
-he hoped.
It was a hallucination, a dream, a figment of imagination. Part of him knew that, but it never helped to make it feel any less real.
It didn't make Scott and Alan's bright blue eyes any less reflective of his own.
It didn't make Virgil and Gordon's cheeky smiles any less like that of their Mother's own.
It didn't make John any less like a shining star, with his red hair and green eyes so like his Mother's.
It didn't make any of them less like his saviours.
His saviours and his sons, who received seeing him alive as well as much as he did seeing them.
Smiles and laughter and tears. A reunion that he'd seen many times over, each with variants a new, but a path always the same.
Sometimes who moved first was different; sometimes the first word to be spoken was different, but the movements were always the same.
Overjoyed, his boys would flood towards him, smiles on faces and arms opened wide. And he would open his own arms to receive them, his smile just as bright. He'd waited for this moment, he'd survived and lived on for this very moment.
And just when his boys reached his arms at-
-last…
No, they never quite did.
Which shouldn't shock him,
For in his right mind, he knew they weren't there,
But he couldn't pass his days without throwing them a thought or care.
And it shouldn't shock him,
For he knew he couldn't hold them like he wished,
But none of that mattered, for they were his sons, his boys, his world.
But even with all that wishful thinking and daydreaming, he couldn't bring them here. He didn't hold that power. He could magic up the images of everything he needed in his mind, he could make them almost feel tangible, make them sound as if they were only a whisper's worth of distance from him… but it never changed the fact that they weren't.
Nothing changed that.
Not even…
When you knew how to survive like he did, there didn't seem to be many problems presenting themselves. And yet, he faced the biggest challenge every day.
It wasn't surviving that was a gruesome and gruelling task; wasn't the challenge of surviving taking on the form of the cold, shadowy demon, that nipped at his skin and gnawed on his bones. No, the challenge, after all that, was lasting.
Lasting
When everything he really wanted to see was so far away and untouchable, for the first time.
He refused to give up hope though.
If he could survive, he would make sure to last.
He didn't know how long he might be here, he didn't know what might come, but he would weather the storm. He'd braved the hurricanes and tornados of Earth, and he would fight the meteor showers and debris storms up here with just as much bite and bark.
Every night he would dream and every day he would remember.
He'd dream of the Island and his family and he'd remember every detail of the land and their faces. He could picture them waking or sleeping, each and every one of them with crystal-clear levels of clarity.
Blue eyes, brown eyes and green.
Red hair, and blonde hair, brunette, grey and black.
There was an endless mix of colours swirling through his mind, which formed paintings of their own to the soft tunes of keys, mixing Sonata's into Odes, and back again. Noises which he valued more now than he had before, little things and big things, which made a cacophony that would do an orchestra proud.
Laughter, and tears and pearls of happy smiles.
Adventures, and stories, and songs to be sung.
Every night, he would dream and every day, he would remember.
After all, there was so much waiting for him… If only he could get back there, find a way.
It angered him, that he knew how to survive, but had no viable way home. That was all he needed: a way home. But he didn't have one of those. So he was left with no choice but to remain here to the day came that was his-
-last…
No, he'd thought of many ways,
Many days had come that he thought his last,
For with every job he did, each demanded he dare,
But he'd made it through again and again, because home had been waiting there.
And never did that day come,
For he was still here standing tall and breathing,
But none of that mattered, for alone he dwelt, the best world the one called 'dreaming'.
So that never got him home, it never found him a way off this wretched rock, but it kept him alive.
Yes, he would have survived, probably until the day for him to finally die did rear its long-awaiting head. He would have survived, but likely as nothing more than a pale ghost, a shadow of the man Jeff Tracy had truly been. He knew everything there was to know about surviving, and there was one thing which he knew ensured it best.
It wasn't in his and Lee's book, but it damn right should have been. Back then, he hadn't really known quite how important it was, he hadn't had the same circumstances with which to test it;
He'd been with a friend, not all alone.
He'd been closer to Earth and he'd had a viable way home.
He'd had a wife and a mother, not a family all grown.
He'd been closer to Earth and somewhere people had known.
Up here was cold, isolated, remote,
Far from the blue, green and white hues of home.
With nothing but remnants of what had been his life,
And nothing to heal the bitter, stabbing strife.
Earth was far, far away and here he lived alone,
In a world which, well, was never going to be a home.
He could survive, there was no question of that,
But surviving was not living,
It was ticking over, remaining,
And life was about far more than merely lasting...
It wasn't in his and Lee's book.
He'd re-write that at some point when he got back. That book was written a long time ago, after all.
It wasn't a case of if, because he knew he could survive. Whatever the cost he would hold on, even if he couldn't thrive. He had something to live for and that would be his drive; his hope and light on which he would rise.
He could survive, long enough, he could buy them all time.
It was a simple case of dreaming, of letting his mind wander free, or thinking about the things he'd lost, and the things that could one day be.
Jeff knew better than most the cost that survival could take, but he also knew he'd pay it willingly to live long enough to see that day.
People would ask, of course they would, 'Jeff, how did you survive?'. And he knew the answer would never be that which they would expect or likewise accept.
Yet he would always know it was the truth. He lived his every day, hour, minute, thinking of the things on Earth, from the smallest to the biggest.
He thought of every sunrise over the tallest mountain peaks; of every star the eye could see; of children's story books and apple pie, and the family to whom he never got to say 'goodbye'.
And, I love you.
He had five boys waiting for him down there, and a home, and a life.
If he knew how to survive, then he could keep going.
There was so much waiting for him… So he would last, by thoughts, by dreams, and the hope in his heart.
Yes… He would last long enough to say the words he never got to say.
He'd survived, so far.
He'd find a way to last.
So he could find a way.