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Gen Prompt Bingo Round 21
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Published:
2022-02-01
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1,342
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1/1
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Disconnect

Summary:

She knows who it is. At this hour, she always knows who it is.

Notes:

This one was written for Gen Prompt Bingo, for the prompt "Things That Go Bump in the Night." I went for a somewhat metaphorical interpretation of that. Because I feel for Dora. I really, really feel for Dora.

Warnings for allusions to addiction, threats of suicide, and harassing phone calls.

Work Text:

It's 2 AM, and the phone is ringing.

She knows who it is. At this hour, she always knows who it is.

But she still has to answer. It could be a real emergency this time. Her mother, perhaps. Or Pyotor's. His father has been ill so long that it's almost surprising they haven't had a middle-of-the-night hurry-and-come-now phone call about him yet.

So she picks up, and she tells herself that's the only reason why, even though in her heart she knows she'd answer anyway. Because what if this is the time he genuinely does need to hear her voice as much as he thinks he does? What if he might listen to a phone ringing and ringing and ringing with no answer and take it as a sign that there will never again be an answer for him, not of any kind? What if he finally does the thing he threatens her with, the thing he frightens himself with, the thing he tells her, over and over, he is only able to stop himself from doing by reminding himself that, somewhere, she still exists?

She could tell herself forever after that it wasn't her fault. She would even believe it, truly she would. And still the guilt would never go away.

She answers as quietly as she can to avoid disturbing Pyotr, although, mercifully, he's a deep and heavy sleeper. There's no sense in both of them losing rest, after all. In the morning, if she needs him to, he will hold her. Tell her he's sorry she has to deal with such a thing. Tell her he loves her for being kind, even to a man who doesn't deserve it.

Is she kind? She doesn't feel kind. She feels so little at all, now, when it comes to Harry. Only tiredness. Only pity.

More tiredness, perhaps, than pity. She wouldn't have thought it possible, but the repetition is almost becoming boring. Every time he calls, he thinks he's saying something new. That this time he's found the right way to apologize, the right words to touch her heart, some magic spell to make her change her mind. But it's always only more of the same, over and over. Not that it matters. Even if there was a right thing to say, it's far too late to say it now. If she's honest, it may have always been too late. Maybe what they had was never really anything but wishful thinking to begin with.

"Dora," he says, again. "Dora, I've changed, I'm changing, I'm going to change. I'll be whatever you need. Just tell me what you need me to be."

"I need you to be someone who can live without me," she tells him, but he doesn't seem to hear. He never does.

Dora's mother used to tell her ghost stories when she was a child. About the hollow remnants of the dead coming back to haunt the living. Souls doomed to live out the moment of their destruction again and again and again, unable to move on, never understanding why.

She loved those stories once. She no longer does. They're not fun when they're happening to you.

"Please, Harry," she says. "Please. Just... get some sleep. Please take care of yourself. Please don't call me again."

"But you're the only thing I have," he says. And she can't say the true and obvious thing in reply. It would be too cruel. She never wanted to be cruel to him. She only ever wanted to be herself.

"Goodbye," she tells him instead, and hangs up, and waits for it to ring again.

She knows it will. In a few minutes, or tomorrow, or next week, or a month from now. The damn thing is haunted, and there are no words to exorcise it.

It's just going to keep ringing, an ominous bump in the night, forever.

**

And then one day, it doesn't. Nothing disturbs her sleep, not for a day, or a month, or a year. Sometimes she wakes in the dark and picks up the phone, listening for the dial tone, just to be sure it's still there. And then she sleeps, and in the morning she doesn't think about him at all.

But in the silence, in the small hours, she feels so relieved. And so guilty for her relief. It is possible that he's finally moved on. Gotten better. Gotten sober. Maybe even found someone else. But it's so much more likely that he's gone. A gunshot in the line of duty, or by his own hand. An overdose. Or drowning, or disappearance. He used to say he felt an urge to walk out into the sea, or the Pale.

She feels sad when she thinks about it. Truly, she does. But it's a distant kind of sadness. As if she'd already finished mourning Harry Du Bois a long, long time ago.

If he is gone, she hopes at least that he's finally at rest. Maybe his soul has fled to the Pale, where it will live forever with his memories of his illusions of her. She wouldn't even begrudge that. Just as long as he stays there.

**

And then, ten years later, in Revachol, she sees the ghost.

She wasn't certain she'd ever come back here, that there were any memories here she'd ever want to bring to mind again. But her mother has become far too frail to travel the Pale now; there may never be another chance to touch her hand. And Pyotr thinks the girls should see their mother's homeland at least once. And she did want to visit the Insulindian Fair, opened just last year to celebrate the fifth anniversary of Revacholian Independence and making headlines even in Graad. So here she is.

She's in the line for the newly constructed pleasure wheel, her daughters chatting happily beside her about all the things they've seen today, and suddenly, quietly... there he is. Queued up in front of her, standing in the place where the line curves left to avoid the ice cream kiosk. He is older, of course. Grayer. Cleaner, too, than when she last saw him. But it's him, indisputably. Him, alive.

Somewhere in her mind, she can hear the sound of a phone ringing. In the summer air, she feels a chill down her spine. Ghosts. Ghosts.

But he's smiling, she realizes. He's smiling and his eyes are clear. He looks better. He looks good. And his hand is resting on the arm of...

Well, she isn't surprised, not really. Not by that particular detail. One of the last, worst fights they ever had, she'd told him that she sometimes thought he wished she was a man. She hadn't even meant it to be an insult, not the way he assumed. She'd merely thought that it was the truth.

They look happy. Of course, so had the two of them, once.

They haven't seen her. They're too wrapped up in each other, in the sight of the majestically spinning wheel.

She almost steps forward. Oh, god, so, this is what it's like. The sudden urge to hear a once-familiar voice again. A longing for one last conversation. For one last chance to ask... What? "Are you okay?," perhaps. Not that he ever asked her that. Not once, in all those calls.

She restrains herself. She makes no sign, to them or to her children, that she has seen anything remarkable. Instead she watches as they board the wheel, as they soar slowly upward towards the sky, hand-in-hand.

Good luck, she thinks to the stranger sitting there beside the ghost. Good luck. I mean it. I hope he makes you happy. I hope he gives you what you need, that he sees you for who you are. I hope the memory of today is always sweet for you, and never sad because you know, looking back, how it will end. I hope you never find yourself with a haunted telephone.

And I really, really hope he never calls me again.