Chapter Text
Ways back to somewhere feel quicker than the journeys you'd taken to leave it in the first place. For Gerard, at least, that tends to be the case. The trip is always brief the second time - and the other way - round. Sometimes even up to the point that he doesn’t register its ending.
Seeing the same things you’d seen not too long ago makes you look at them like they matter less. Or, perhaps it makes you stop paying attention to them at all. The more time passes, the greater is the attention you pay to the circumstances. At some point, if the gap has grown large enough, it can make it feel like you've arrived to an entirely new place. Somewhere you don’t truly recognize anymore. But - with an eerie air of nostalgia coating the experience.
Gerard thinks life might be based on departure and return. And it's all because of that same nostalgia - not even an emotion, rather a mood, or a setting. Simply the way things are, and always have been. You could describe it as the bassline and the bloodstream of all things safe and familiar, thumping somewhere in the background. Out of reach, barely noticeable until it’s taken out of the picture. Then its absence is all you can pay attention to. Its purple hyphae entwine so much more of life than anyone can tell.
The back seat of the car has gotten more uncomfortable with each hour passed. The fabric, coarse and almost damp, has given Gerard a slight itch on the lower part of his back that a scratch can’t fix. He can see half of his face in the rear view mirror. The moisture in the air makes the hair around it form curls almost to the bottom of his neck. Stark black on pale. It's looked this way for years - and the last time Redwood had seen him it was brown and almost shaved. It's been way too long since he'd seen home - and just a bit less since it stopped being important if that kind of thing even exists.
Ironically, Redwood never seemed as far away as it does now. The unavoidable boredom, and the monotonous whirring of the engine had already begun to drill holes through his ear canal three gas stations and five cigarettes ago.
Investigating the vastness of... virtually nothing, through the window, he doesn't feel like anything. There is no excitement, or anxiety, or longing for what he’d long ago left behind, and what he’s now coming back to. The minutes are stretched. Almost into some kind of tension. Just not quite enough to provoke any sense of real discomfort.
It might've been the nap that's made him so melodramatic. Today’s nightmare wasn't one of his usual ones. It's the scenery that didn't fully click. Normally, it’s corridors and voices, and so much running, and blood – blood on sheets, clothes, his hands, and most importantly, his teeth. He doesn’t remember the last time- or if he ever- dreamed of moonlight, forests, hills, swimming in creeks… or rather, drowning in them.
Looking out is his only source of entertainment. The old trees, lichen-clad and a grayish, melancholic type brown, seem less imposing than they were when he’d left them. This is, of course, a mistake in his own perception- he tends to forget he’s spent half his life somewhere else. It doesn’t seem that long ago that he’d played hide and seek in a forest just like this one, only a bit further northwest. They always seemed to have their own language, the trees, but he’ll never really be sure if it’s something he’s picked up on or something he made up by himself. It’s a very inarticulate type of speech, rough around the edges, and it comes in syllables only, rather than words- as if words were too complex, and long, and meaningless to describe the things they’d seen. He could be hearing it right now as well, but he can’t be sure, the noise from the car drowns everything else out. The road, on the other hand, stays silent in its bleakness, cold and piss-dumped with oil stains. It’s funny in a sad way, as an analogy- the expectancy to stay quiet after being run over so many times is kind of absurd in its misery.
There’s an aura of uncertainty he’s slowly creeping into that he’s familiar with. Uncertainty- it might be the word that describes the core of his being the most, even, despite how sad it might sound. He sympathizes with the unease of his surroundings in an absurd, obscene way, as if his insides were a direct reflection of what he’s seeing with his eyes, or the other way around, even. A familiar limbo of unfamiliarity, a person - he, Gerard - crocheted out of the fabric of this odd sensation from outside, or this reality - completely made up from the fabric of his own self. Creepy. The closer the old Chevy gets to the place it’s headed, the foggier the air, the thicker the trees, the weirder it gets… there is something about it that provokes a diabolical pleasure somewhere deeper than he finds comprehensive.
Redwood used to be part of a large industrial district back in the sixties. There were enough factory jobs to feed ten, even twenty thousand people, and enough life in the town center to make it a pleasant place to raise a family. The schools were decent, the streets were clean, the children were polite… most of the time. It seemed to be its own little world, covered in soil, woods, chimney dust and mist- what it lacked in hope, it made up with an illusory spirit of community. This would become particularly obvious in 1981 when the last factory closed down. The population had already almost halved, and there was not much anyone could do. “Don’t worry about it, Gerard, not a bone in your body will miss this place,” were his mother’s words as she was loading the last of their things into the trunk of ratty old car, the same one he’s currently driving in. The day was just as murky, and just as extreme in its ordinariness as the present one.
If his emotions were a landscape, the quiet, subtle hysteria he has brewing somewhere faint inside him, now just a hint more palpably, would be a field of obnoxiously orange flowers. Obnoxious, he thinks, because they’re almost fluorescent, somewhat plastic, and unreal, and yet if you came closer, they’d still smell like any other meadow you’d been on. He doesn’t know if it has something to do with things past and unprocessed, or things yet to come.
Either way, the time for rumination has reached its end. The car has stopped, neatly, in a driveway.
He lets the soles of his shoes touch the ground, only slightly hesitant. Outside, it smells like… irrational dread. His step is met by a patch of withering grass and soft, dark soil. The wind is warm, and it feels like an unwelcome hug… it’s really you, and you’re back is what it’s saying. Gerard instinctively wraps his jacket tighter around himself.
The house sheltering him away from the sunset is cream-colored, with a brown, ridiculously hipped roof that makes it feel like it belongs somewhere in the mountains rather than a shitty little town in the middle of nowhere. The windows are big, with wooden sills, the front door unnaturally small just as he remembers it. His father, a large man, could barely fit through, and he can almost hear the muttered swear words coming from the arch as he walked through it, always one bruise heavier than earlier that day.
All in all, it looks like … a home; a strange, slightly nauseating home, but perhaps it being that way meshes right with the person he is.
His mother's hair matches the color of the burnt umber that is the hallway. It’s strange how she’s started looking fresher, younger as soon as they'd passed the 'Welcome to Redwood' road sign. He can’t exactly ignore the rotten feeling inside him simply because of that, but he admits, it’s easier when he knows at least one of them is content with this.
"Gerard," she calls, "you're spacing out again."
Gerard blinks a few times, his eyes focusing on her face. "Sorry."
Her eyebrow turns up, dark and defined. She grabs the box out of Gerard’s hands and puts it onto the ground, placing her hand on his shoulder. He almost made a move to stop her from taking the box, but he knows he’d get a hard time for treating her like ‘a patient’.
“It’s fine,” she says, her face turning softer, the creases of her forehead shallowing. Still, she can’t hide the slight shortness of breath. "This is all very … strange. I know. But you know I’m grateful you’ve decided to help me with this. Even if it’s only for a couple of months."
He doesn’t feel like he’s supposed to fake a smile, but he does anyway. “I know.” He knows his face doesn’t show any coherent emotion. They’re both aware she’s doing this to please the doctors, and not because she craves mother-son bonding time. “I needed a change anyway.”
She nods and moves forward towards the door to unlock it. This conversation is, funnily enough, one of their longer ones in a while. Even though they never really spoke much, especially not about anything relevant, it still feels like a black hole of silence ensued in their relationship once he’d moved away for college. It’s as if she had nothing to say to him, and he didn’t care much to share parts of his life with her. Neither of them took it with much emotion, after all, after everything that happened it was outstanding that they even kept in contact at all. He doesn’t mind any of this, particularly, because it suits him that she doesn’t pretend to understand. He cannot understand her, either, really, or keeping quiet has always just been easier for the both of them.
He follows her inside with the box he’s meant to carry. The door squeaks loudly as he closes it behind himself. The hallway is narrow, dimly lit, with dark hardwood flooring. He follows his mother towards the living room, ignoring the musty scent of spaces no one’s been in for ages. There’s something urging him to gaze over his shoulder as he walks upstairs. He doesn’t.
His old room is just as dusty, just as spacious, and just as dark as he’d left it. The only difference is the massive bed his mother had delivered there before their arrival. The violet sheets smell like lavender and sage, they’re thick and soft, perfectly suited for the many stormy nights he knows will come. The desk in the corner is also fairly big, made out of dense dark wood, with only a small dim-light lamp sitting on top of it. It’s casting a golden hue around the room, gently dispersed, shadows stretching dark and wide over the walls. There’s a picture of him and his little brother, fresh out of the womb, on the nightstand, which has already been dusted off. He looks at it for only a few seconds before he puts his alarm clock beside it and moves on to the bookcase.
The paint on the walls looks old, but he likes how it scabs and flakes. He’d be taking away a part of this room’s soul if he were to redo it. Just like the wardrobe, barely, but proudly standing with how gigantic it is- with large, copper knobs attached to it at the front. Everything within the room looks like it doesn’t belong together, but exactly because of this it somehow does, as it creates the feeling of imperfection, humanness, faultiness- Gerard doesn’t like to play pretend too much, and it makes him feel at ease that his room doesn’t, either.
It rains that night, incredibly soft, and when he plays a Joy Division tape, light and quiet, it all feels like a shitty old movie.
Sometimes, if you think a lot, you end up in a place where you aren’t sure if you’re thinking at all. He is tired? Not tired enough - the body’s aching for sleep, the mind is on a brain-high, eating away at memories at unperceivable velocities, thoughts surfing over high waves he can’t bother to overcome so he lets them come crashing down without any real conclusions. There’s energy there, but he doesn’t think it’s the type of energy you can spend. He knows he still hasn’t finished reading the book he’s been carrying around, nor the coal sketch he’s started two weeks ago- but he knows that if he touches any of that he’ll end up pulling an all-nighter.
His joints hurt because he’s spent too much time still today, his neck sore from the weird position he slept in back when they were on the road and all he wants is to sleep all his pain and frustration off.
He has no idea how he manages, but when the clock strikes one and he’s still not blacking out, he stumbles down the stairs and into the living room. His mother is passed out on the couch, unfinished cup of tea and a cigarette, forgotten about, burnt down to the filter in the ashtray on the coffee table.
“Gerard?” he hears as he’s about to go looking for her bag. “What are you still doing up?”
He sighs. “Can’t sleep. Came to look for some Ambien.”
She groans, blowing her hair out of her eyes and switching her position on the couch. “It’s in the side pocket of my bag,” she says, muffled. “Those pills are horrendous. Just turn off the TV, will you?”
He takes one pill out swiftly and puts it inside his hoodie pocket as he’s switching the TV off. He throws her a half-hearted ‘good night’ and climbs back upstairs.
He leans against the cold windowsill in his room and grabs his smokes from the desk, retrieving the last one before throwing the pack into the bin beside his bed. He taps his right, and then his left back pocket, draws the lighter between two fingers towards the cigarette and puffs the smoke into the wet air in front of him, deeply inhaling.
As the cherry runs south, he stares into the deep green of the night. It’s a bit how ungraceful how the piss-yellow of the street lighting kisses the cracked asphalt of the sidewalk. The street itself seems clean, almost too clean, and he can swear that it feels as if nobody’s ever dared to stomp on a chewing gum around this place. The trees around the house look violet, the darkest type- while almost red at daytime, under the cloud coated sunlight, and it’s pretty… slightly unnerving, but pretty.
In a split second, his cigarette is down to the filter, and he’s almost burned himself. Muttering a swear word, he stubs it out against the outer part of the sill, flicking the butt somewhere indefinite. He can feel a gust of wind flowing through the air as he’s about to shut the blinds and he shoots another look at the street, for no apparent reason.
Those large, glossy black stains on the road are a rather imposing thing, he thinks, and it’s strange how only minutes ago he was convinced the entire street was painfully clean.
He shrugs it off and blames it on his head, swallowing the pill from his pocket dry. He strips off his jeans and shirt, turns the table lamp off, and his head falls heavy on the fabric of the pillowcase. If anything, at least he can hope that his life in this place won’t be as horrifying as the nightmares Ambien gives him every damn time. He should probably start taking melatonin instead, he decides, already half-way into artificial sleep.