Work Text:
Hershel is finally alone. And he means finally because the last two weeks had been a revolving door of being looked after by one person or another.
The first week after his release was spent with his parents in their house. Pa left him well alone when it was clear he just wanted to rest, but Ma fussed over him constantly. He feared that if he so much as breathed the wrong way, she’d have a heart attack. Hershel couldn’t blame her, considering he’d just come out of a coma and there was the possibility of his health going south once more. Ma was bound to worry about his newfound difficulty with living. She worried about the tremor to his hand and his difficulty with manipulating his body. She worried for his impaired balance and his headaches and his listlessness.
And then, when he was let back to his apartment, Clark and Brenda came to stay with him and help him return to living like he was before. Hershel couldn’t help but feel it was unnecessary, especially when they were also taking care of their son.
Luke was a sweetheart as always, but there were times he babbled Claire’s name, asking where she was.
Settling was difficult. Everything felt the same, and yet there was a great yawning emptiness that stole the light from life. There didn’t seem to be much of a point in doing anything without her. Most of the time, he only found himself eating or sleeping or attempting to dress himself properly for the day was due to the fact that it would concern his friends more if he didn’t. And they’d surely inform his parents.
Hershel does so detest the concern. The people in his life have far more important things to be bothered with. His parents have other things to do with their lives. They’d postponed a vacation to take care of him. His friends are still mourning Claire, and they have a son to worry about.
That, and it’s all the more embarrassing to fumble about living. It’s mortifying to forget that he physically cannot do some basic tasks.
Hershel only wore sweaters in the time he stayed with his parents. They were easiest to get on and off, and he only wore ones that didn’t have an irritating texture.
He thought he’d be ready, after settling back at home, to return to his usual attire.
That was, until Clark came in to check on him because he’d gone to change fifteen minutes prior and hadn’t returned. Hershel had been still halfway through trying to button his shirt, red-faced and almost teary with frustration and pain. Somewhere along the lines he’d strained his shoulder and it twinged with every move of his arm.
It wasn’t patronizing by any means, but the brunet felt rather childish as his friend sat him down and finished buttoning the shirt for him. He needed additional help getting the same shirt off that night, and has since sworn off anything with smaller buttons.
That’s ignoring that he found the fabric grating and that the collar of the shirt felt rather like a hand against his windpipe.
All to say that Hershel found it humiliating to be perceived in the state he was in.
Brenda had been working on cleaning up the apartment day to day. Bagging Claire’s things, sorting out mail and papers and taking a broom and dust pan to the guest room turned study.
Hershel hadn’t been inside since. The door remained closed and mentally cordoned. It was a reminder to him, though of what he couldn’t verbalize. It was all that he had lost. What was taken from him. It was a reminder of what would happen if he continued on that path.
As much as he wanted to protest about the things being taken and rearranged without his permission, the words would get stuck in his throat. All of his objections simply sounded silly. He doesn’t need to keep Claire’s makeup. He doesn’t need her shoes by the door. Hershel doesn’t need her glasses on the bedside table or her clothes in the closet. He doesn’t require her work documents that she’d taken home and forgotten to return. There’s no reason for her perfume to remain in the bathroom.
What use is keeping them? What use does he have for keeping their apartment as a time capsule?
So he bit his tongue and pretended that little pieces of himself yearned to follow the bags as they left the apartment. So he rearranged the bookshelf and the kitchen cabinets and made puzzles and talked with Clark.
And yet, finally, after a whirlwind of two weeks being coddled and cooped up and checked on, Hershel was alone.
It was silent as a tomb now, and he couldn’t find it in himself to break the silence or even turn on a light as the room darkened. Even his thoughts, which had been impossibly loud until this point, had fled.
The silence was suffocating. Endless. It wasn’t as if he were waiting on anyone anymore. It wasn’t as if she were simply working late.
And yet Hershel twists in the armchair to watch the door. As if any moment the lock would click and the ginger would hurry in with an apology for getting caught up in work. As if when he laid in bed he could turn his head and watch the moonlight kiss her cheek.
As if she were coming back to him.
Hershel breathes in. Breathes out. Focuses on the tick of the grandfather clock that Clark had moved to the hall after Luke tried to get his hands in the clockwork.
He should make himself dinner and go to bed. There was no one to enforce it anymore, no one to worry.
But there were certainly ingredients to use in the refrigerator, and the anticipated guilt of letting the food go to waste is enough motivation to get Hershel up and moving. The Tritons were kind enough to stock his fridge with their own money, and the least he can do is eat it.
His back protests at the motion, and Hershel would much rather just sit back down, or shuffle his way to the bedroom and try to get some sleep. But his stomach, despite his lack of appetite, betrays him by grumbling.
Hershel might as well.