Danny stared quietly as he looked out over the vast empty coastline. Years of searching had finally brought him here, to a gray skied ocean front that held neither a home nor a familiar face. He shuffled along the sand quietly as a violent wind pulled his hair away to reveal the gray toned scared face. Watching as the waves gently crashed into the sand Danny collapsed to the ground.
He ran his hands through the sand picking it up and then letting it slip grain by grain away. Quietly he reflected over his life, his search, his loss. He'd traveled all the way to the East coast only to be met with the biggest dead-end, the ocean. After all this he had nothing to show for it, not even a hint of a clue. It was the official end of his search and he'd accomplished nothing. If anything everything had slipped farther away from him. He'd given up a lot of important things in his life to arrive at this point and came to nothing at all.
The waves came and broke with their silent slosh, gentle and rhythmic as ever. The young man sitting on the cold sand in the late fall was shaking but not from the weather. His nerves were breaking apart at the seams until he was almost certain that he would completely fall apart. A sob caught in his chest but was trapped somewhere in an opening chasm.
Danny knew this feeling, he'd set himself up for disappointment.
Reminding himself to breathe was becoming more and more critical as the reality of the situation came to him. The cracked and discolored hands reached into his pocket to retrieve the only thing he'd taken with him. A simple worn photograph that had aided him through each painstaking day. The one he'd pull out when broken and bleeding from a fight, the one he'd hold onto when everything was out of control. Weakly he traced the figures and the brown blood stains over the fading resolution of the image.
"Hey there friend." Danny turned to see an old weathered man standing behind him. His skin was a pale white and creased with the folds of time. He had a denture grin and grayed eyes, on the tip of his head he harbored a flesh colored island surrounded by seas of white tufts. Taking it upon himself, the elderly man sat beside the boy to gaze out at the sea with a smile.
Nervously Danny made circles in the sand with his finger. It wasn't that he hadn't been accustomed to meeting new people it was that he wasn't sure he could talk. His voice felt buried under a torrent of undecipherable pain. He was waiting for the floodgates to break open and release all the horrible and wonderful things inside him. Everything would flow out until he was empty and unable to be filled again.
"Why the long face? Having a tough old day?" The gray man asked while playing with the ends of his hand-carved cane. Danny looked at it instead of the man, studying the way the wood twisted and curved imperfectly. It could hardly be used as a good balance for someone needing the support and yet it too looked as well worn as the man.
"Yeah, maybe I've had better days." Danny responded surprising himself. Maybe he did have a voice after all but the waters were still rising, he could feel the pressure in his chest.
The old man nodded pensively glancing back out toward the sea. A wind picked up and howled passed them; the man brought his jacket closer time himself. Danny didn't feel the cold, he didn't feel anything. "The Northern winds will change again; a cold front's coming in." He said twisting his cane. "You can feel it in the atmosphere."
The raven haired boy sitting at the sea's edge disregarded the statement, he was hoping for a little support not a weather report. He shook his head realizing it was foolish to assume a complete stranger could remedy the inevitable breakdown. Danny knocked his knees together, his nerves on edge, but his mind still muddled in the process of comprehension.
He wondered if he should just go home, it wouldn't take very long or cost very much, he'd be back in Amity in a day or two. Though the idea of returning weighted on him with the notion they were expecting results. How could he face them when he left with such conviction? He glanced down at the photograph and felt a million apologies well up inside him and ebb away almost as quick as they came.
"Kid your age shouldn't be so hopeless." The man finally proclaimed after much silence passing between them. "You've got some real troubles, don't you?"
Danny nodded slowly and blinked frequently. "I-I lost someone..."
"Where did they go?"
Danny shrugged weakly and made eye-contact with the stranger. "I don't...I don't know."
The waves progressed backwards in a slow fashion. They pulled the more coveted seashells away to hide beneath the foam until they were unreachable. Somewhere in the vast world there was something very special hiding. Maybe he hadn't lost anything but had simply been abandoned. Even good fortune had the mind to leave him so why should a person be any less apt to do the same.
"She's very beautiful." The graying man noted giving a side-way glance to the photograph in Danny's hand. "May I?" He gesticulated subtly and Danny handed him the picture submissively. He almost wanted to tell the old man to keep it because he wasn't sure he could hold onto it any longer.
The man turned the pictured around in his hands looking at the people in every angle, he then checked the back for a date. It wasn't a very old photo but it was obviously beloved as it was so worn. "She is not lost, she went home." The man finally stated giving the prized item back to the brooding boy.
Danny's breath ceased for a moment and his blue eyes brightened. "You know her? When did she leave? Tell me everything I've spent so long..."
The man shook his head while raising his hand to silence the boy's unbridled thoughts. He gave Danny a weak sort of smile one that made the boy recoil. People never smiled like that unless they didn't actually have good news. Again his mind wheeled back to the realization his search was at an end, but this was different.
"She didn't want you to see, she didn't think that you could handle it. She came here and now the sea holds her. She told me you'd understand but she hoped you'd never come for her." He explained slowly and vaguely yet an understanding began washing over Danny.
Slow erosion began dismantling every major organ in his system before taking to his muscles and bones until all that was left was a shell. His insides effectively melted away until he felt his feet draining them all out into the sand to make their way to the ocean. His skin was bleached white and stretched over an unstable frame that resembled who he used to be.
Breathing became too hard, he began choking on the air and grasping for breathe. Sobs rattled inside his chest bouncing off the frameworks and reverberating in the empty abyss. "It was terminal Danny; she didn't want you to watch. No one should ever have to watch such a thing..."
Danny's shaking hands wrapped around his sides trying to hold up what little structure he had left. The words were dismantling him and he finally understood everything. Why before she left her skin had grown so white and the dark circles under her eyes weren't just smudged make-up. The way her smile was frail and her body always shaking in warm environments. Reasoning told him that she'd only pushed him away to protect him, so he wouldn't have to watch her waste away.
"When she went she was very peaceful. She thought of you often and spoke of you always. I have some old notebooks of hers that I think were intended for your eyes if you ever came back for her. She wasn't scared."
Danny's tear filled eyes looked to the man. "I wanted to be there...why-why couldn't I be there?" He was almost shouting the words. His voice was getting hoarse from the way the way they tore their way up his throat. "Didn't she love me? I lo-loved her. I could've protected her, I should've been there fighting with her."
The man patted the boy's back gently. "Danny my boy, there are some things even the best heroes can't fight. She didn't want a fight she wanted to gently float through it until it finally swept her away." Nothing was getting to him any more as his head became heavy with tears that he kept fending off.
"I didn't get to say..." His trembling whisper suddenly became an uncontrollable volatile explosion. "I didn't say goodbye, I didn't say goodbye!" He screamed collapsing into himself. "No, no, no, no! I-I d-didn't!"
Years of searching never prepared him for this. This was not the outcome he expected; in fact he'd been waiting to face her. So she could tell him that she left town because she'd hated him, that she didn't love him. That he could've handled but so it was that she'd left because she had loved him. And yet there was a level of betrayal in her decision, he would've gladly swallowed down watching her degeneration if it meant he could've been there at her side. It would've meant more to him.
"She didn't want to spare her dignity; she didn't want to haunt you with the images. Understand her reasons were sensible; it wasn't easy for her to be without you. But it was her decision, isn't that enough explanation for you?"
The raven haired young man was silently crying, tears kept falling but no sound came. He sat with his arms wrapped tightly like vices around his legs and his forehead against his knees. The gray man placed a note in the boy's lap before quietly getting up. "You should be so lucky that you didn't have to see, it erases all your best memories of her. Be satisfied that her last act was keeping your mind clear of something so rotting and painful."
Danny never once looked up to the man and never asked his name. The knowledge of his identity was floating somewhere in the back of his poisoned mind. He just didn't have the capacity to care or even thank the stranger for handing him closure. After a little time Danny was empty. He couldn't stop shaking even when the tears had stopped.
He could still see her beautiful healthy face regarding him with admiration. He could still hear her joyful laughter filling him up. And you could still taste her on his lips though it'd been a little over two years since he'd touched her.
In his mind he could see himself keeping her fragile body warm on the nights when she lost her body heat. He could imagine himself carrying her out to the ocean each day to watch the sunrise when she finally became too weak to do it herself. In his mind he saw himself caring for her and holding onto her up to her very last breath. And yet none of that ever came to be, she made sure of that.
Danny finally was able to hold himself upright and in doing so took notice of the small folded note. It was still neatly folded in her special fashion and it took him a few minutes to go about carefully unwrapping it, so as not to damage the folds she made. As he opened each fold he went imagining the explanation she must've written for him inside. The closer he came to transforming the triangle into a piece of paper the more complex the explanation became.
There written in neat cursive purple inked letters was a simply message.
You will be alright.
Happy late Angst Day.