Smallfandom Big Bang, Say something, Part 4
Title: Say something
Summary: Roman Wilde, ice skater, has died, on the ice he loved so much.This is the after.
Depression
A mental condition characterized by feelings of severe despondency
and dejection, typically also with feelings of inadequacy and
guilt, often accompanied by lack of energy and disturbance of appetite
and sleep
~
“I’m going nuts because I have no idea how to go on living without you.”
~
Every single time Florian thinks he could not possibly feel worse, something proves him wrong.
Like when his father suddenly arrives. He’d finally managed to get past the initial shock and convinced himself he could actually do it, and then suddenly his old man is here. He’s glad his father came alone though, because there is absolutely no way he would be able to deal with his mother right now. His mother never came to Essen while his brother lived; perhaps that’s why she did not come after he died. His father manages to accomplish making him both feel better and worse, but at least in the end - no matter how long it took - he managed to get the other man to listen to him. After the funeral, after that horrible moment passed, he thinks, again, I can do this, one day at the time, just breathe Florian, just breathe. The moment he thinks that, however, Axel Scwhartz calls him to inform him that Roman’s locker needs to be emptied. He didn’t even remember Roman had one until Axel reminded him. To his credit, the other man does offer to have someone else clean it out, but even worse than cleaning it out is having someone else do it. In some strange way - despite how things were going - he thought that cleaning out his brother’s stuff might make him feel better. That if he just got rid of the last things that tied Roman to this world and put them away into boxes, he might be able to breathe again. It doesn’t work that way though. Honestly, despite his wishes, deep inside he’d knwown it wouldn’t.
Because it doesn’t matter how much stuff he boxes up: Roman is still everywhere. His voice is still on the answering machine - until Deniz breaks the thing. Honestly, if he had to listen to it one more time, he might have done it himself. He stays out of Roman’s room - the idea of being in the same place that had once belonged to Roman, where his stuff was still everywhere, was horrifying. Deniz has no choice of course, it’s his room too, and Florian has no idea how the other man can do it, but he does. Some of Roman’s favourite food is still in their fridge - things they’d bought before he died and didn’t have the heart to throw away now. He’s glad, in a way, that there is proof that his brother was here. But he also wants it all to go away. He wants to stop hurting this much, he wants to stop expecting his brother to come back. And he wants to be able to get through to Deniz, because he can’t deal with all of it on his own. (That takes a while, but he does eventually manage it by threatening to do something he would never do: throw away Roman’s stuff.)
That’s the way his life is now: seeking random things that will make him feel better, finding them, and then being bombarded by something that makes him feel worse again. Perhaps that’s simply how things will be from now on. Perhaps his life will be going great, and one day he’ll turn around, see something completely random, and just think Roman.
~
Deniz can’t seem to breathe at all. It’s strange, he knows, and he knows that it’s all in his head, he knows. Because of course he is breathing. If he truly, honestly, could not breathe than he would have already ended up in the hospital or dead. There is a part of him - the part that misses Roman so much he can barely think about it - that thinks dying might not be that bad because then at least he’d be with him. But he has friends and family that love him and need him in some way, and he can’t just leave them behind, not now (not anytime soon.) Especially not Florian; he has already lost enough. But that doesn’t change the fact that he feels like he can’t breathe. It hurts far too much, like his lunges are on fire, like they’ve forgotten how to work properly. It’s the grief, he knows that, it’s overwhelming and horrible and he can’t deal with it. But he doesn’t have a choice. He has trouble focusing as well. Trouble focusing on this world because it no longer has the love of his life in it.
But it gets better over time, it does. One day, he wakes up and finds that it’s easier to focus, that breathing doesn’t hurt quite that much anymore. And then, even later, he realizes he hasn’t had trouble breathing in a while. It doesn't go away, it doesn’t, it can’t, but life goes on and he gets better. But sometimes - even years, and years later - he’ll wake up in the middle of the night unable to breathe. Sometimes he’ll be able to breathe but, it will all hurt, and he’ll turn to search for Roman, but of course he won’t be there. He’ll never be there again.
He’ll get used to it, he thinks sometimes, but of course he won’t, not really. But then why would he want to get used to this feeling?
~
For as long as he can remember, most fan letters have always come to the centre. Axel has never been sure if that was because the athletes themselves did not want to give out their addresses or if the Steinkamps decided that this was how things were going to be. Still though, it’s different when the stack of letters is just for an ice skater or hockey player they love as opposed to condolences because he died. (He wonders briefly why people do that.) And truthfully, he has no idea what to do with them, nor does anyone else for that matter. It’s not like they planned for situations like these. Should they keep them? Keep them, not mention them to anyone, and send some form of generic response in return? Should they even respond? Do people expect that? Or should they just go ahead and tell Deniz and Florian and allow them to decide what to do? Should they do that to them? Is that something they would want? Axel doesn’t know, he really, really doesn’t.
He knows this: he wouldn’t want to know. He wouldn’t want to be bombarded with letters from complete strangers. If this had happened to him, he would want people to get rid of them, respond to them if they thought that was important, but leave him out of it. But that’s him. He knows neither Florian nor Deniz enough to know what they would want. He supposes some people could find some kind of comfort in these letters.
In the end they decide to tell them. It’s far better to tell them and be told what to do, then to keep silent only to discover that it’s something they would have wanted to know.
He doesn’t envy Simone that conversation though.
~
His whole life has change and yet, at the same time, nothing has changed at all. Because Roman, his Roman, hadn’t been a part of Marc’s life for years. Because their lives had parted that day he left Essen, that day Roman picked Deniz. Their lives had parted and regardless of what he may have wanted, they never met again. They talked sporadically over the years, and once they ran into each other - they saw each other for about a minute - at some event. But their lives were entirely apart from each other. So his world might feel different, but it isn’t because Roman had never been here with him. He’s go this feeling that there should be some kind of proof that his life has changed, but life doesn’t really work that way.
Well, except for the sporadic, random conversations he now has with Deniz. It’s weird though. He’s not exactly sure when it started - not that long after he showed up with that DVD though, maybe a couple of weeks - or even why they’re doing it, but they are. One day Deniz just called him, and he could have hung up, but he found that he was unable to do so. And apparently Deniz was just as drawn to talking to him without really understanding why. Marc thinks it might be because they both loved Roman so much, because he was Roman first love and Deniz was his last love. Because they can both feel how much it hurts, and they understand how much the other man is hurting. Or perhaps, he thinks, it’s because he is the only one who wasn’t there when Roman died, who couldn’t see Deniz right now, and so the other man found it easier to talk to him. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t particularly care either. He feels better, and he suspects that Deniz does too, and that’s all that matters.
~
She should be helping Deniz right now, she knows. But almost dying kind of changes your whole life, and it takes a while before you get better. (On TV, she thinks randomly, everyone always get better so quickly. She wishes real life were like that.) Still Deniz needs her; he’s her best friend and she can’t be there for him, and that hurts. Instead, everything is the other way around: he’s the one helping her, he’s the one always be her side. It’s not fair. He’s trying so hard to convince everyone that he’s doing better, that he doesn’t need their help. But she knows him, she knows that he’s not even close to alright. Sometimes Vanessa thinks that other people know this too, but they’ve decided it’s easier to just go along with what Deniz is pretending. And that’s just not right; he needs someone by his side.
That being said, focussing on helping her, on anything else, does seem to be helping him on some level. So at least she’s accomplishing something. At least, when he’s with her, he’s not alone, but she wishes she could do better.
But she can’t.
Maybe, she thinks, maybe next year, everything will be better.
It has to be better than this year it just has to be.
~
When Florian was a small child, he used to dream that one day, his big brother would just come back home. He was too young, at the time, to truly understand why he never did. Even when he was older, it was hard to understand. At least until he went to live with him and saw the way his father threated him; then, suddenly, he understood. But that knowledge doesn’t change the fact that when he was small, he would wait for Roman to come back. That he would just expect him to walk through the door, especially on his birthday, only to be crushed when he never did. (That hurt, it really did. He never told Roman that, there was no need to make him feel bad.) Roman never forgot his birthday, he always got some awesome present, but it was still not the same. And now here he is, older and somewhat wiser - or at least Florian likes to think he is - and yet again, he has been left behind by his big brother. Roman did not leave him on purpose, he knows that, but like he said, knowledge doesn’t change the feeling.
But Roman thought about him until the very end this time. Instead of just leaving him behind as he had before - though admittedly he left him behind with their parents, who Roman had known would take care of him. This time, Roman chose to protect him by giving him his half of the apartment - and when did he and Deniz even get those papers in order? As far as he knew, the apartment had just been in Deniz’s name. Florian had been afraid he would someday find himself standing in front of his parent’s house because he had nowhere else to go, but now that would never happen. It wouldn’t have happened before, he knows that. Deniz would never have kicked him out. It still feels good to have some protection from that though, especially since it’s something his brother wanted him to have.
~
This was not how things were supposed to go. Not that Jennifer had ever been any good at predicting the future. She’d always been far too focused on what she wanted to happen that it made predicting what would happen almost impossible. But even if she had been good at it, who could possibly have predicted that Roman would die? There is no special goodbye for her, Roman didn’t think about her in the end. No need to say farewell to someone who is no longer there, after all. Except she was there, he just didn’t know that, and now he never would. (Or maybe he knew because she wasn’t wherever he was now.)
But even if he had known she was alive, she’s not sure he would have made her a goodbye. Their great friendship died many years ago. And it was all her fault. She knows that, she’s always known that. She was the one who had pushed Roman further and further away, until he could no longer stand the kind of person she was. He held on far longer than most people would have - because he was Roman, and Roman had never been able to give up on anyone. On the other hand, Roman had loved her, and he had stopped hating her for what happened many years ago. The anger had faded away long before she supposedly died, but their friendship never got back on track.
But even back then she had known that they could go back to being friends. Not the kind of friends they had been before - that was completely gone - but a new kind, a different kind. But since she had been the one who destroyed their friendship it was up to her to fix it. All she had to do was find the right words to express how sorry she was, how much she missed him, and how much she loved him. If she had just been able to find the right words, than all would have been well. But she was Jennifer Steinkamp and she had never, ever been good with words, especially not the ones that mattered.
The right words had escaped her and she’d ‘died’ thinking: well, that’s that. She knew she would never see him again, and therefore the words didn’t matter anymore. She made her choice, and she was going to live with it. She even went out of her way never to read any news about Essen. If Vanessa hadn’t gotten ill, she would have never returned; if Vanessa hadn’t gotten ill, she wouldn’t have known about Roman. She would have spent the rest of her life imagining that Roman was still there, just out of reach. But of course he wasn’t, not anymore.
And now that he’s no longer here, now that she’s here on her knees in front of Roman’s grave, now all the right words are just there. They keep repeating in her mind as if they’re somehow still going to help her. They might have always been there, those words, she might have simply been unable to hear them. Or maybe she ignored them because she couldn’t see herself saying them out loud. She still can’t. They feel like ashes in her mouth. They’re burning her throat, they’re killing her, because what does it matter that she knows them now? Back then she didn’t find them, and now it is too late.
After sitting there for hours - or maybe just minutes, she doesn’t know (but it feels like hours) - the words start tumbling from her lips. They disappear in the wind, lost forever, because there is nobody around to hear them anymore. At least nobody that would care about them, nobody that would understand. They’re real and the truth, but Roman is dead and the dead cannot hear. Their importance has faded away entirely. Maybe they never were important, maybe Roman was never waiting for her to find the right words. Maybe he just waited for her to say something.
She hopes he knew that she loved him even at her worst moments.
She hopes he knows, somehow, that she still does.
~
Life goes on; Deniz can’t stop living and, in all honesty, he is not sure he wants to either. He wants to go back - to any time, as long as Roman is there - but he doesn’t want time to stop now. Because that would mean that he would forever be trapped in this world of extreme pain, and who would want that? So he just keeps going: he visits Vanessa, works at the bar and the centre, helps Florian whenever he needs it, and pretends he’s actually doing completely fine. He still feels like he can’t breathe, he still cries all the time, he still can’t sleep, but at least he’s moving forward. It’s all he can do, it’s all anyone can hope for. He owes it to Roman to continue living when he could not. And it gets better, he can feel it. Little by little, his life gets back on track. It will never be alright or great again - because he’s lost so much - but it can get better.
He truly believes that.
And then one day, he opens his father’s bar without crying and he thinks: yes, yes, I’m going to be fine. He believes that. At least until the box addressed to Roman arrives and he remembers he remembers that Roman had won something in an auction, and he’d been so happy about it. But the thing, whatever it is, arrives too late and Roman would never, ever get to hold it. He would never get to see it in person. And that thought is in some strange way far worse than anything Deniz has thought before this moment.
Because Roman had wanted this thing so much, so much, and he had never received it.
~
“It’s something Roman ordered weeks ago.”
Ingo has always thought that when it truly mattered, he would know what to say and what to do to help one of his friends. Well, that was something else he was wrong about. It’s strange, really to think that there are people out there in the world - complete strangers mostly - that are unaware that Roman is no longer there. Who still expect him to pay for something, who send him stuff he bought weeks ago. Deniz runs out of Seven and Ingo knows, he knows the other man is going to get rid of the box. Hell, it’s what he would do. He would be unable to look at whatever was in it. But at the same time, Ingo is aware of the fact that if Deniz throws it away, he will regret it forever. Because this had been important to Hasse and that made it important to all of them as well.
For the record, he imagined a dozen things that could be in that box. He thought of everything from clothes to cd’s to anything else. He expected something grand, something special. Especially since this was the last thing that Roman ever bought. What he and Deniz found inside, instead, was an ugly statue of a pink bunny. He literally has no words for that. It’s honestly the ugliest thing he’s ever laid eyes on, and why would Roman even buy this? Why was he so happy he’d won this thing?
“It’s a pink bunny….and it’s….really pretty….”
“It’s the ugliest thing I have ever seen in the world.”
And thank God, thank God, Deniz said that because in all honesty, Ingo doesn’t think he would have ever been able to say it out loud. Even if he can’t honestly say he would have ever been able to convincingly pretend that he likes the damn thing. Because there is no way anyone can.
“Oh thank God, “he answers, “Thank God you said that. What the hell was he doing? Was he high when he ordered this?”
This thing was so not Roman that it actually makes him laugh. Why would Roman spend money on this thing? Ingo is perfectly aware that the other man sometimes bough odd things - hell, he himself has bought some weird things over the years as well. Maybe Roman hadn’t cared about what it was, maybe he just wanted to get something completely random and this was the first thing his eyes landed on. Or maybe he had just wanted to get his hands on a pink bunny, regardless of how ugly it was.
“If Roman is looking down at us….”
“Then he’s laughing himself silly because he knows you’ll never be able to throw this away out of reverence for him…”
And then, suddenly, they’re both laughing. And Ingo feels better, lighter, afterwards. Like some huge weight has somehow been lifted from him. Deniz looks like he feels better as well. He can actually conjure up the image: Roman and Mike, together again, looking at them and laughing themselves silly because of that stupid pink bunny. And is so clear and great, and he thinks that might be the best way to remember them. After they’re done laughing, they end up talking about Roman and by the end of it Ingo truly believes they are going to be fine.
He’s starting to think that might have been what Roman was aiming for.
~
Really what is he supposed to do with it? What did Roman want him, or expect him, to do with a statue of an ugly, pink rabbit? Surely, he expected something, but for the life of him, Deniz can’t figure out what. Still though, when Florian sees it for the first time, and it dawns on him that Roman actually spends money on it, he bursts out laughing. It’s contagious too, and before they know it, they’re all laughing at the absolute absurdity of it. It’s the first time he’s heard Florian laugh in weeks, and for that alone, he’s grateful that Roman bought this thing. It still doesn’t help him figure out what to do with it though. He can’t throw it away because Roman wanted it, but he can’t just put it somewhere other people will see because ,well, it’s ugly. In the end he leaves it in a corner of his room, out of sight and yet not.
It takes a while, he’s not sure how long, but eventually he remembers a conversation he, Roman, and Florian had a few weeks before Roman died. And suddenly Deniz thinks Roman might have bought the pink rabbit not because he liked it but because of that conversation. (Maybe he didn’t, he will never know, but he likes to think that that is what happened. Because that means he understood.)
It was that day Florian found out Roman was dying, and pretending that all was well, they sat down to have dinner.
“
So,” Florian asks as he ducks to get his soda out of the fridge, “do you have to wear some costume?”
Both Roman and Deniz look at him as if he’s somehow grown a second head. What does that even have to do with anything? “I mean, in hockey the mascot wears some kind of costume…” He never finishes his sentence. Instead both he and Deniz burst out laughing. And for a moment, just a moment, it feels like it’s just another random night. Like that horrible thing isn’t hanging above them. “If you are both imagining me wearing a pink bunny costume you can stop right now….”
He remembers sitting there, conjuring up an image of Roman wearing a ridiculous pink, bunny costume as he skated across the ice. He suspects Florian was doing the same thing. He forgot about that moment. It didn’t matter later on, it wasn’t even that important at the time. Just the three of them being a family. But he remembers now: Roman had won that action the next day, and now he had a statue of a pink bunny in his room. A statue that made him and
Florian laugh just as hard as they had that night when they imagined Roman wearing that costume.
He likes to think that was what Roman wanted.
~
And suddenly, it’s Christmas. He knew it was coming because Christmas always comes, but Florian paid so little attention that he was actually taken by surprise when it was suddenly there. They bought no tree to put in the apartment, they never turned on the radio, and Florian couldn’t actually make himself buy gifts. He considers staying here with Deniz, but the idea of being here at Christmas when Roman isn’t is unbearable. So in the end, he decides to go to his parents - they probably need their remaining son by their side now - and leaves Deniz alone. He feels somewhat guilty, but on the other hand Deniz has family in Essen, he no longer does, not really. He’d considered inviting Deniz to come, but Deniz never went while Roman was alive, and doing it now just seemed too little, too late.
And yet, despite being dead, Roman still manages to surprise him. And now he understand the things he did not understand before: Roman had known he wouldn’t make it to Christmas. He’d known he wouldn’t see the new year, he might have even known in those last few days that he wouldn’t see the next month. And he’d prepared for it. The funeral preparations, the DVD’s, the letters and now the Christmas presents. Florian is not sure what to do with them though, it’s painful opening a gift from someone that is no longer there, but at the same time it’s also really, really nice to know that he’s not completely gone, not yet. In the end he decides to take the gifts with him when he goes to visit his parents. He’ll decide whether or not he’s going to open it when the time comes. He’s got this strange feeling though that no matter what he chooses, he’ll end up believing the other choice was the right one.
~
He doesn’t go out to buy a Christmas tree, and he doesn’t take out Roman’s decorations for the apartment. He doesn’t have the strength to do anything remotely festive. He leaves the radio off because every song is about Christmas right now, and it reminds him so much of better times. Roman had loved this holiday so much, and now he could no longer celebrate it, and Deniz has to do it all on his own. And he just can’t. Not this year at least, maybe next year, maybe when more time has passed he’ll be able to celebrate again. He convinced himself that if Florian stayed, he would do his best to make sure he had a great Christmas, but since Florian decided he wanted to go home he didn’t have to. And now he’s alone.
The gift Roman bought him - the one he wasn’t expecting - is lying on the table. He’s not sure whether he’s ever going to open it. A part of him wants to keep it like this forever, the other part wants to know what it is. He doesn’t know what to do. He does know this though: he’s going to sit here, ignore the world and pretend that Christmas is not happening. He ignores Ingo and Vanessa’s invitations - he thinks about lying, but what would that accomplish - and he tells his father he’d rather be alone.
But on the night itself, he finds that being alone is far worse. Because the place is far too quiet and far too big and yet, at the same time so, so small. He can’t breathe and he’s so alone and he just doesn’t want to be anymore. So in the end, he finds himself standing in front of the flat share, unsure of what to say to explain that he has shown up anyway. He needn’t have bothered to think about it though. Ingo never asks him for explanations, just lets him in and tells him to sit down. It doesn’t feel like a celebration, though. They can all feel Roman’s ghost in the room, sucking all the celebration out of it. But they still try, mostly because Alexander is a child and he doesn’t understand. It’s not until they get out gifts that Deniz remembers that he forgot to buy any gifts, but then he hadn’t exactly planned to be here tonight either. As the night passes, both his father and Vanessa suddenly join them. They might have come here for him or not. Perhaps they are feeling the same thing he is and they just need to be with someone who somewhat understands.
At least he can breathe here, he thinks. At least he’s no longer alone.
But in all honesty, he still feels like he is.
~
The clock strikes twelve, the champagne flows, and a New Year begins. Deniz doesn’t want a new year to start because it will be the first one without Roman, but at the same time he wants the last year to be over. But then, for all he knows a New Year might be the best thing for everyone involved. A new beginning, even if it’s without Roman, a new start, a new chance.
The clock strikes twelve, he toasts Roman up in heaven, and for a moment he can actually feel him by his side. Maybe he even is, maybe he is always there.
Maybe, hopefully, he always will be. Deniz likes that though.
Summary: Roman Wilde, ice skater, has died, on the ice he loved so much.This is the after.
Depression
A mental condition characterized by feelings of severe despondency
and dejection, typically also with feelings of inadequacy and
guilt, often accompanied by lack of energy and disturbance of appetite
and sleep
~
“I’m going nuts because I have no idea how to go on living without you.”
~
Every single time Florian thinks he could not possibly feel worse, something proves him wrong.
Like when his father suddenly arrives. He’d finally managed to get past the initial shock and convinced himself he could actually do it, and then suddenly his old man is here. He’s glad his father came alone though, because there is absolutely no way he would be able to deal with his mother right now. His mother never came to Essen while his brother lived; perhaps that’s why she did not come after he died. His father manages to accomplish making him both feel better and worse, but at least in the end - no matter how long it took - he managed to get the other man to listen to him. After the funeral, after that horrible moment passed, he thinks, again, I can do this, one day at the time, just breathe Florian, just breathe. The moment he thinks that, however, Axel Scwhartz calls him to inform him that Roman’s locker needs to be emptied. He didn’t even remember Roman had one until Axel reminded him. To his credit, the other man does offer to have someone else clean it out, but even worse than cleaning it out is having someone else do it. In some strange way - despite how things were going - he thought that cleaning out his brother’s stuff might make him feel better. That if he just got rid of the last things that tied Roman to this world and put them away into boxes, he might be able to breathe again. It doesn’t work that way though. Honestly, despite his wishes, deep inside he’d knwown it wouldn’t.
Because it doesn’t matter how much stuff he boxes up: Roman is still everywhere. His voice is still on the answering machine - until Deniz breaks the thing. Honestly, if he had to listen to it one more time, he might have done it himself. He stays out of Roman’s room - the idea of being in the same place that had once belonged to Roman, where his stuff was still everywhere, was horrifying. Deniz has no choice of course, it’s his room too, and Florian has no idea how the other man can do it, but he does. Some of Roman’s favourite food is still in their fridge - things they’d bought before he died and didn’t have the heart to throw away now. He’s glad, in a way, that there is proof that his brother was here. But he also wants it all to go away. He wants to stop hurting this much, he wants to stop expecting his brother to come back. And he wants to be able to get through to Deniz, because he can’t deal with all of it on his own. (That takes a while, but he does eventually manage it by threatening to do something he would never do: throw away Roman’s stuff.)
That’s the way his life is now: seeking random things that will make him feel better, finding them, and then being bombarded by something that makes him feel worse again. Perhaps that’s simply how things will be from now on. Perhaps his life will be going great, and one day he’ll turn around, see something completely random, and just think Roman.
~
Deniz can’t seem to breathe at all. It’s strange, he knows, and he knows that it’s all in his head, he knows. Because of course he is breathing. If he truly, honestly, could not breathe than he would have already ended up in the hospital or dead. There is a part of him - the part that misses Roman so much he can barely think about it - that thinks dying might not be that bad because then at least he’d be with him. But he has friends and family that love him and need him in some way, and he can’t just leave them behind, not now (not anytime soon.) Especially not Florian; he has already lost enough. But that doesn’t change the fact that he feels like he can’t breathe. It hurts far too much, like his lunges are on fire, like they’ve forgotten how to work properly. It’s the grief, he knows that, it’s overwhelming and horrible and he can’t deal with it. But he doesn’t have a choice. He has trouble focusing as well. Trouble focusing on this world because it no longer has the love of his life in it.
But it gets better over time, it does. One day, he wakes up and finds that it’s easier to focus, that breathing doesn’t hurt quite that much anymore. And then, even later, he realizes he hasn’t had trouble breathing in a while. It doesn't go away, it doesn’t, it can’t, but life goes on and he gets better. But sometimes - even years, and years later - he’ll wake up in the middle of the night unable to breathe. Sometimes he’ll be able to breathe but, it will all hurt, and he’ll turn to search for Roman, but of course he won’t be there. He’ll never be there again.
He’ll get used to it, he thinks sometimes, but of course he won’t, not really. But then why would he want to get used to this feeling?
~
For as long as he can remember, most fan letters have always come to the centre. Axel has never been sure if that was because the athletes themselves did not want to give out their addresses or if the Steinkamps decided that this was how things were going to be. Still though, it’s different when the stack of letters is just for an ice skater or hockey player they love as opposed to condolences because he died. (He wonders briefly why people do that.) And truthfully, he has no idea what to do with them, nor does anyone else for that matter. It’s not like they planned for situations like these. Should they keep them? Keep them, not mention them to anyone, and send some form of generic response in return? Should they even respond? Do people expect that? Or should they just go ahead and tell Deniz and Florian and allow them to decide what to do? Should they do that to them? Is that something they would want? Axel doesn’t know, he really, really doesn’t.
He knows this: he wouldn’t want to know. He wouldn’t want to be bombarded with letters from complete strangers. If this had happened to him, he would want people to get rid of them, respond to them if they thought that was important, but leave him out of it. But that’s him. He knows neither Florian nor Deniz enough to know what they would want. He supposes some people could find some kind of comfort in these letters.
In the end they decide to tell them. It’s far better to tell them and be told what to do, then to keep silent only to discover that it’s something they would have wanted to know.
He doesn’t envy Simone that conversation though.
~
His whole life has change and yet, at the same time, nothing has changed at all. Because Roman, his Roman, hadn’t been a part of Marc’s life for years. Because their lives had parted that day he left Essen, that day Roman picked Deniz. Their lives had parted and regardless of what he may have wanted, they never met again. They talked sporadically over the years, and once they ran into each other - they saw each other for about a minute - at some event. But their lives were entirely apart from each other. So his world might feel different, but it isn’t because Roman had never been here with him. He’s go this feeling that there should be some kind of proof that his life has changed, but life doesn’t really work that way.
Well, except for the sporadic, random conversations he now has with Deniz. It’s weird though. He’s not exactly sure when it started - not that long after he showed up with that DVD though, maybe a couple of weeks - or even why they’re doing it, but they are. One day Deniz just called him, and he could have hung up, but he found that he was unable to do so. And apparently Deniz was just as drawn to talking to him without really understanding why. Marc thinks it might be because they both loved Roman so much, because he was Roman first love and Deniz was his last love. Because they can both feel how much it hurts, and they understand how much the other man is hurting. Or perhaps, he thinks, it’s because he is the only one who wasn’t there when Roman died, who couldn’t see Deniz right now, and so the other man found it easier to talk to him. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t particularly care either. He feels better, and he suspects that Deniz does too, and that’s all that matters.
~
She should be helping Deniz right now, she knows. But almost dying kind of changes your whole life, and it takes a while before you get better. (On TV, she thinks randomly, everyone always get better so quickly. She wishes real life were like that.) Still Deniz needs her; he’s her best friend and she can’t be there for him, and that hurts. Instead, everything is the other way around: he’s the one helping her, he’s the one always be her side. It’s not fair. He’s trying so hard to convince everyone that he’s doing better, that he doesn’t need their help. But she knows him, she knows that he’s not even close to alright. Sometimes Vanessa thinks that other people know this too, but they’ve decided it’s easier to just go along with what Deniz is pretending. And that’s just not right; he needs someone by his side.
That being said, focussing on helping her, on anything else, does seem to be helping him on some level. So at least she’s accomplishing something. At least, when he’s with her, he’s not alone, but she wishes she could do better.
But she can’t.
Maybe, she thinks, maybe next year, everything will be better.
It has to be better than this year it just has to be.
~
When Florian was a small child, he used to dream that one day, his big brother would just come back home. He was too young, at the time, to truly understand why he never did. Even when he was older, it was hard to understand. At least until he went to live with him and saw the way his father threated him; then, suddenly, he understood. But that knowledge doesn’t change the fact that when he was small, he would wait for Roman to come back. That he would just expect him to walk through the door, especially on his birthday, only to be crushed when he never did. (That hurt, it really did. He never told Roman that, there was no need to make him feel bad.) Roman never forgot his birthday, he always got some awesome present, but it was still not the same. And now here he is, older and somewhat wiser - or at least Florian likes to think he is - and yet again, he has been left behind by his big brother. Roman did not leave him on purpose, he knows that, but like he said, knowledge doesn’t change the feeling.
But Roman thought about him until the very end this time. Instead of just leaving him behind as he had before - though admittedly he left him behind with their parents, who Roman had known would take care of him. This time, Roman chose to protect him by giving him his half of the apartment - and when did he and Deniz even get those papers in order? As far as he knew, the apartment had just been in Deniz’s name. Florian had been afraid he would someday find himself standing in front of his parent’s house because he had nowhere else to go, but now that would never happen. It wouldn’t have happened before, he knows that. Deniz would never have kicked him out. It still feels good to have some protection from that though, especially since it’s something his brother wanted him to have.
~
This was not how things were supposed to go. Not that Jennifer had ever been any good at predicting the future. She’d always been far too focused on what she wanted to happen that it made predicting what would happen almost impossible. But even if she had been good at it, who could possibly have predicted that Roman would die? There is no special goodbye for her, Roman didn’t think about her in the end. No need to say farewell to someone who is no longer there, after all. Except she was there, he just didn’t know that, and now he never would. (Or maybe he knew because she wasn’t wherever he was now.)
But even if he had known she was alive, she’s not sure he would have made her a goodbye. Their great friendship died many years ago. And it was all her fault. She knows that, she’s always known that. She was the one who had pushed Roman further and further away, until he could no longer stand the kind of person she was. He held on far longer than most people would have - because he was Roman, and Roman had never been able to give up on anyone. On the other hand, Roman had loved her, and he had stopped hating her for what happened many years ago. The anger had faded away long before she supposedly died, but their friendship never got back on track.
But even back then she had known that they could go back to being friends. Not the kind of friends they had been before - that was completely gone - but a new kind, a different kind. But since she had been the one who destroyed their friendship it was up to her to fix it. All she had to do was find the right words to express how sorry she was, how much she missed him, and how much she loved him. If she had just been able to find the right words, than all would have been well. But she was Jennifer Steinkamp and she had never, ever been good with words, especially not the ones that mattered.
The right words had escaped her and she’d ‘died’ thinking: well, that’s that. She knew she would never see him again, and therefore the words didn’t matter anymore. She made her choice, and she was going to live with it. She even went out of her way never to read any news about Essen. If Vanessa hadn’t gotten ill, she would have never returned; if Vanessa hadn’t gotten ill, she wouldn’t have known about Roman. She would have spent the rest of her life imagining that Roman was still there, just out of reach. But of course he wasn’t, not anymore.
And now that he’s no longer here, now that she’s here on her knees in front of Roman’s grave, now all the right words are just there. They keep repeating in her mind as if they’re somehow still going to help her. They might have always been there, those words, she might have simply been unable to hear them. Or maybe she ignored them because she couldn’t see herself saying them out loud. She still can’t. They feel like ashes in her mouth. They’re burning her throat, they’re killing her, because what does it matter that she knows them now? Back then she didn’t find them, and now it is too late.
After sitting there for hours - or maybe just minutes, she doesn’t know (but it feels like hours) - the words start tumbling from her lips. They disappear in the wind, lost forever, because there is nobody around to hear them anymore. At least nobody that would care about them, nobody that would understand. They’re real and the truth, but Roman is dead and the dead cannot hear. Their importance has faded away entirely. Maybe they never were important, maybe Roman was never waiting for her to find the right words. Maybe he just waited for her to say something.
She hopes he knew that she loved him even at her worst moments.
She hopes he knows, somehow, that she still does.
~
Life goes on; Deniz can’t stop living and, in all honesty, he is not sure he wants to either. He wants to go back - to any time, as long as Roman is there - but he doesn’t want time to stop now. Because that would mean that he would forever be trapped in this world of extreme pain, and who would want that? So he just keeps going: he visits Vanessa, works at the bar and the centre, helps Florian whenever he needs it, and pretends he’s actually doing completely fine. He still feels like he can’t breathe, he still cries all the time, he still can’t sleep, but at least he’s moving forward. It’s all he can do, it’s all anyone can hope for. He owes it to Roman to continue living when he could not. And it gets better, he can feel it. Little by little, his life gets back on track. It will never be alright or great again - because he’s lost so much - but it can get better.
He truly believes that.
And then one day, he opens his father’s bar without crying and he thinks: yes, yes, I’m going to be fine. He believes that. At least until the box addressed to Roman arrives and he remembers he remembers that Roman had won something in an auction, and he’d been so happy about it. But the thing, whatever it is, arrives too late and Roman would never, ever get to hold it. He would never get to see it in person. And that thought is in some strange way far worse than anything Deniz has thought before this moment.
Because Roman had wanted this thing so much, so much, and he had never received it.
~
“It’s something Roman ordered weeks ago.”
Ingo has always thought that when it truly mattered, he would know what to say and what to do to help one of his friends. Well, that was something else he was wrong about. It’s strange, really to think that there are people out there in the world - complete strangers mostly - that are unaware that Roman is no longer there. Who still expect him to pay for something, who send him stuff he bought weeks ago. Deniz runs out of Seven and Ingo knows, he knows the other man is going to get rid of the box. Hell, it’s what he would do. He would be unable to look at whatever was in it. But at the same time, Ingo is aware of the fact that if Deniz throws it away, he will regret it forever. Because this had been important to Hasse and that made it important to all of them as well.
For the record, he imagined a dozen things that could be in that box. He thought of everything from clothes to cd’s to anything else. He expected something grand, something special. Especially since this was the last thing that Roman ever bought. What he and Deniz found inside, instead, was an ugly statue of a pink bunny. He literally has no words for that. It’s honestly the ugliest thing he’s ever laid eyes on, and why would Roman even buy this? Why was he so happy he’d won this thing?
“It’s a pink bunny….and it’s….really pretty….”
“It’s the ugliest thing I have ever seen in the world.”
And thank God, thank God, Deniz said that because in all honesty, Ingo doesn’t think he would have ever been able to say it out loud. Even if he can’t honestly say he would have ever been able to convincingly pretend that he likes the damn thing. Because there is no way anyone can.
“Oh thank God, “he answers, “Thank God you said that. What the hell was he doing? Was he high when he ordered this?”
This thing was so not Roman that it actually makes him laugh. Why would Roman spend money on this thing? Ingo is perfectly aware that the other man sometimes bough odd things - hell, he himself has bought some weird things over the years as well. Maybe Roman hadn’t cared about what it was, maybe he just wanted to get something completely random and this was the first thing his eyes landed on. Or maybe he had just wanted to get his hands on a pink bunny, regardless of how ugly it was.
“If Roman is looking down at us….”
“Then he’s laughing himself silly because he knows you’ll never be able to throw this away out of reverence for him…”
And then, suddenly, they’re both laughing. And Ingo feels better, lighter, afterwards. Like some huge weight has somehow been lifted from him. Deniz looks like he feels better as well. He can actually conjure up the image: Roman and Mike, together again, looking at them and laughing themselves silly because of that stupid pink bunny. And is so clear and great, and he thinks that might be the best way to remember them. After they’re done laughing, they end up talking about Roman and by the end of it Ingo truly believes they are going to be fine.
He’s starting to think that might have been what Roman was aiming for.
~
Really what is he supposed to do with it? What did Roman want him, or expect him, to do with a statue of an ugly, pink rabbit? Surely, he expected something, but for the life of him, Deniz can’t figure out what. Still though, when Florian sees it for the first time, and it dawns on him that Roman actually spends money on it, he bursts out laughing. It’s contagious too, and before they know it, they’re all laughing at the absolute absurdity of it. It’s the first time he’s heard Florian laugh in weeks, and for that alone, he’s grateful that Roman bought this thing. It still doesn’t help him figure out what to do with it though. He can’t throw it away because Roman wanted it, but he can’t just put it somewhere other people will see because ,well, it’s ugly. In the end he leaves it in a corner of his room, out of sight and yet not.
It takes a while, he’s not sure how long, but eventually he remembers a conversation he, Roman, and Florian had a few weeks before Roman died. And suddenly Deniz thinks Roman might have bought the pink rabbit not because he liked it but because of that conversation. (Maybe he didn’t, he will never know, but he likes to think that that is what happened. Because that means he understood.)
It was that day Florian found out Roman was dying, and pretending that all was well, they sat down to have dinner.
“
So,” Florian asks as he ducks to get his soda out of the fridge, “do you have to wear some costume?”
Both Roman and Deniz look at him as if he’s somehow grown a second head. What does that even have to do with anything? “I mean, in hockey the mascot wears some kind of costume…” He never finishes his sentence. Instead both he and Deniz burst out laughing. And for a moment, just a moment, it feels like it’s just another random night. Like that horrible thing isn’t hanging above them. “If you are both imagining me wearing a pink bunny costume you can stop right now….”
He remembers sitting there, conjuring up an image of Roman wearing a ridiculous pink, bunny costume as he skated across the ice. He suspects Florian was doing the same thing. He forgot about that moment. It didn’t matter later on, it wasn’t even that important at the time. Just the three of them being a family. But he remembers now: Roman had won that action the next day, and now he had a statue of a pink bunny in his room. A statue that made him and
Florian laugh just as hard as they had that night when they imagined Roman wearing that costume.
He likes to think that was what Roman wanted.
~
And suddenly, it’s Christmas. He knew it was coming because Christmas always comes, but Florian paid so little attention that he was actually taken by surprise when it was suddenly there. They bought no tree to put in the apartment, they never turned on the radio, and Florian couldn’t actually make himself buy gifts. He considers staying here with Deniz, but the idea of being here at Christmas when Roman isn’t is unbearable. So in the end, he decides to go to his parents - they probably need their remaining son by their side now - and leaves Deniz alone. He feels somewhat guilty, but on the other hand Deniz has family in Essen, he no longer does, not really. He’d considered inviting Deniz to come, but Deniz never went while Roman was alive, and doing it now just seemed too little, too late.
And yet, despite being dead, Roman still manages to surprise him. And now he understand the things he did not understand before: Roman had known he wouldn’t make it to Christmas. He’d known he wouldn’t see the new year, he might have even known in those last few days that he wouldn’t see the next month. And he’d prepared for it. The funeral preparations, the DVD’s, the letters and now the Christmas presents. Florian is not sure what to do with them though, it’s painful opening a gift from someone that is no longer there, but at the same time it’s also really, really nice to know that he’s not completely gone, not yet. In the end he decides to take the gifts with him when he goes to visit his parents. He’ll decide whether or not he’s going to open it when the time comes. He’s got this strange feeling though that no matter what he chooses, he’ll end up believing the other choice was the right one.
~
He doesn’t go out to buy a Christmas tree, and he doesn’t take out Roman’s decorations for the apartment. He doesn’t have the strength to do anything remotely festive. He leaves the radio off because every song is about Christmas right now, and it reminds him so much of better times. Roman had loved this holiday so much, and now he could no longer celebrate it, and Deniz has to do it all on his own. And he just can’t. Not this year at least, maybe next year, maybe when more time has passed he’ll be able to celebrate again. He convinced himself that if Florian stayed, he would do his best to make sure he had a great Christmas, but since Florian decided he wanted to go home he didn’t have to. And now he’s alone.
The gift Roman bought him - the one he wasn’t expecting - is lying on the table. He’s not sure whether he’s ever going to open it. A part of him wants to keep it like this forever, the other part wants to know what it is. He doesn’t know what to do. He does know this though: he’s going to sit here, ignore the world and pretend that Christmas is not happening. He ignores Ingo and Vanessa’s invitations - he thinks about lying, but what would that accomplish - and he tells his father he’d rather be alone.
But on the night itself, he finds that being alone is far worse. Because the place is far too quiet and far too big and yet, at the same time so, so small. He can’t breathe and he’s so alone and he just doesn’t want to be anymore. So in the end, he finds himself standing in front of the flat share, unsure of what to say to explain that he has shown up anyway. He needn’t have bothered to think about it though. Ingo never asks him for explanations, just lets him in and tells him to sit down. It doesn’t feel like a celebration, though. They can all feel Roman’s ghost in the room, sucking all the celebration out of it. But they still try, mostly because Alexander is a child and he doesn’t understand. It’s not until they get out gifts that Deniz remembers that he forgot to buy any gifts, but then he hadn’t exactly planned to be here tonight either. As the night passes, both his father and Vanessa suddenly join them. They might have come here for him or not. Perhaps they are feeling the same thing he is and they just need to be with someone who somewhat understands.
At least he can breathe here, he thinks. At least he’s no longer alone.
But in all honesty, he still feels like he is.
~
The clock strikes twelve, the champagne flows, and a New Year begins. Deniz doesn’t want a new year to start because it will be the first one without Roman, but at the same time he wants the last year to be over. But then, for all he knows a New Year might be the best thing for everyone involved. A new beginning, even if it’s without Roman, a new start, a new chance.
The clock strikes twelve, he toasts Roman up in heaven, and for a moment he can actually feel him by his side. Maybe he even is, maybe he is always there.
Maybe, hopefully, he always will be. Deniz likes that though.