Chapter Text
Shane stumbled out of the small, wood-sided farmhouse just after two in the afternoon, squinting into the sunlight. He held up a hand to his forehead to shield his eyes, which were still heavy and swollen from sleep.
“Hey.” A female voice greeted him warmly, and she bounded up to him. The watering can in her left hand jostled as she moved. Reaching the top of the steps, she reached forward to place a kiss on his lower cheek, where a smattering of stubble covered his skin. “Finally awake, huh?”
Shane just nodded in response. She stepped back, observing him. He was still in his pajamas, a plain gray t-shirt and red flannel pants. His face, he knew, looked exhausted, and he was certain he had dark circles under his eyes.
“Bad day?” she asked, tilting her head. The long, brown braid down her back moved slightly as she did so.
“Yeah,” he mumbled and stared down at his hands. They were shaking. Again. He cleared his throat and willed himself to look up at her. “Do you need any help with the chickens today, Rose?”
She laughed. It was a small sound, but enough to make Shane’s lips quirk upwards—just a little bit. “Of course,” she said. “They’ve been waiting for you.”
“Okay,” he said. “Give me a minute.”
He turned and walked back inside the farmhouse, rubbing his jaw and feeling the rough forming of a beard. As he pulled on athletic shorts and his ratty Joja hoodie, he told himself he was going to shave it. Then again, he told himself a lot of things. Get yourself together, you piece of shit was a common one. Today was no exception.
When he reemerged from the house, Rose had busied herself with watering the crops; this year, she’d planted strawberries and cauliflower. Spring had finally arrived, bringing with it the promise of new life as beautiful flowers and plants bloomed in the valley. They made Shane’s nose itch, and he reached a hand up to rub it.
As Rose puttered around the farm, Shane watched her with a soft look on his face. Since the end of winter, he’d entered into a tentative new relationship with the farmer, someone who had been a stranger just a year ago. She moved to the valley the previous spring, this quiet and unassuming girl, and had completely stolen his heart in every cliche sense of the phrase.
She looked up and smiled at him, the corners of her blue eyes crinkling. He gave her an awkward wave, which made her grin even wider, and Shane wondered how he’d gotten so lucky.
He also wondered how long it would be before he screwed everything up.
Entering the chicken coop, Shane found himself mobbed by the seven chickens and lone duck that resided on Rose’s farm. He bent down and scratched each one of the animals on the head before getting up to see if they needed to be fed. They didn’t. Rose had already taken care of it. Of course she had, she lied to spare his feelings. Shane frowned, self-loathing washing over him as he realized he’d woken up too late.
Recently, he’d been staying up late and sleeping in even later, finding it difficult to rouse himself in the morning. Some days, he spent hours staring up in his room in Marnie’s ranch at that stark white ceiling, wanting nothing more than to disappear for a while. The cracks in the ceiling made paths that he followed over and over again.
On the weekends, he went to see Rose and tried his hardest to be outside when the sun came up, just as she was. Sometimes, he even slipped out of bed before her and watered some of the crops or visited the animals. On that particular Sunday, though, he had spent the night prior tossing and turning next to her before getting up to pace through the kitchen of the farmhouse. Rose would be mad at him for interrupting her sleep. He was sure of it.
She came into the kitchen, rubbing her eyelids. She wasn’t mad.
“Shane?” she said, voice soft, calming. “Are you alright?”
“Yes,” he said, too quickly. “Totally fine.”
Rose walked towards him, slipping her hands in his. The pressure of her palms slowly eased the trembling. “Come back to bed.”
Shane shook his head. “I can’t sleep. Don’t want to wake you.”
She said nothing. She was like that, never wanting to fill silences with unneeded words. Instead, she pulled him in for a kiss, long and deep. When he pulled away, she sighed, then looked up at him from under her eyelashes.
“Fine,” he said, rubbing his thumb over her shoulder. There was a scar on her bare skin, a slash from when she’d been exploring in the mines over the winter. He’d taken her to the hospital the night it happened, and the bruises took several weeks to heal. But the scar remained. “I’ll come back to bed.”
He returned to bed and slept until the afternoon, comforted by her presence next to him.
However, it didn’t help his mood much the next day. Shane could feel his thoughts growing darker as he scattered more feed for the chickens, desperate to do something that didn’t make him feel so useless.
She came up behind him a short while later, placing a hand on his back. He jumped.
“It’s just me,” she said. “I’m…” She looked down at the ground and nudged a stray piece of straw with her foot.
“What is it?” Shane said.
“Worried,” she said, kicking harder at the ground.
“Worried?” Shane felt his chest tighten. This was it. He was ruining everything. The only thing beautiful and magical and special about his life was about to be ground to dust because he was a stupid—
She placed a hand on his arm. He relaxed. “Yes, about you. You…don’t sleep. I can tell.”
“Yeah,” he said with a sigh. “I’ve been having trouble with that lately.”
Rose frowned. “I wish I could help. Somehow.”
“You do,” Shane said as he brushed a piece of her hair behind her ear. “More than you know.”
He returned home to Marnie’s ranch in the evening, just as the sun dipped below the horizon, blazing the skies of the valley in various oranges and pinks. To Shane, it was the nicest time of day. Often, he’d sit on the docks and watch the sunset, but he never told anyone about it, preferring to save that moment for himself.
His goddaughter, Jas, greeted him the moment he walked through the door, bursting out of her room to give him a hug. He scooped her up and twirled her around before setting her down.
“Hey, kid,” he said. “Miss me?”
She nodded, grin spreading across her face. “Look what I drew,” she said.
Jas shoved a drawing on yellow construction paper towards Shane. He picked it up and examined it. In the center stood three figures: Shane was on the left, holding Jas’s hand, and to his right was a girl with a braid in her hair. Rose. She was holding his other hand. Jas labeled the picture at the top, ‘Uncle Shane and Miss Rose.’ Underneath the trio, she’d written, ‘My new Mom and Dad.’
As he’d been staring at the drawing, mouth open, Jas had seated herself at the kitchen table and began scribbling on another piece of paper. The purple crayon in her hands traced big, swirling lines.
“I’m glad you got better, Uncle Shane,” she said idly. “Now you can marry Miss Rose and live happily ever after.”
Got better. Shane supposed that’s what he had done. It didn’t feel much like it, though. Not when he still felt like a useless sack of chicken feed and hated his job and thought he didn’t deserve Rose or Jas or Marnie or anyone in his life, really.
The creak of a door opening filled the room, and Marnie walked out from her room. She was wearing her evening robe and her fuzzy pink slippers, the ones with the word ‘Sassy’ printed on them in fake rhinestones. Although the slippers had once been bright pink and pristine, they were now matted after heavy use.
“Hi, Shane,” she greeted and shuffled to the counter. She placed a kettle on the stove and turned up the heat. It was time for her evening cup of tea. “How’s Rose?”
“Good,” Shane said. Even after some time, he still didn’t feel comfortable talking a lot about her. He disliked revealing anything about his personal life in general, and to him, she was something precious. He thought, somewhat irrationally, that he would break whatever they had if he gushed too much.
Marnie smirked, used to Shane’s reticence. “How nice. Tell her I said hello.” The kettle began to emit steam, and she pulled it off the stove. As she dipped her tea bag into a mug now filled with hot water, she looked at her nephew with a thoughtful expression.
“What?” said Shane. Marnie continued to stare, but didn’t say anything until Jas announced she was tired and left the room. She paused for a few moments and waited to hear the click of Jas’s door being closed.
“Are you doing okay?” Her eyebrows furrowed, lips pursed. Marnie’s classic expression of concern. She raised the mug to her lips and took a sip, studying him.
Shane slammed his hand against the table, causing Marnie to jump and press a hand to her heart. “Dammit, why does everyone keep asking me that? I’m fine.”
In the silence that followed, Marnie placed the mug down and pushed it back, the sound of the ceramic scraping on the counter echoing through the room. “I just want to make sure you’re healthy,” she said quietly.
“I am.”
“You have to tell me what’s going on, okay?” Marnie’s tone got more insistent, harsher.
Shane ran his hands along his face, then fixed Marnie with a hard stare. “I don’t have to tell you anything.”
“Shane,” she said. “This doesn’t just affect you. You almost…you almost died, and if Jas loses you—”
“I know.” Shane cut her off and stood up. The door to his room slammed shut behind him.
As he flopped down onto his bed, face up, Shane stared up at the ceiling. It had begun to storm outside, and he could hear the claps of thunder rattling the walls. He listened to their booms and to the rain tapping on the roof until the early hours of the morning.
The waiting room at the counselor’s office was cramped and stuffy, just a small hallway jutting out from a couple of doors at its end. A gray carpet covered the floor, and Shane traced his foot around one of the stains on its surface as he waited.
The door on the left opened and out popped a petite woman with glasses. “Shane?”
Shane got up and walked into the room. His counselor closed the door behind him with a click.
“So, what do you want to work on this week, Shane?” Her voice had a whispery quality about it, but it was strong at the same time.
Shane stifled an annoyed groan. He hated when his counselor asked that. Wasn’t it her job to decide what needed fixing about him? He wasn’t any good at this shit; he hated every part of himself.
He shrugged. “Dunno.”
“Well.” The counselor looked him straight in the eyes, and he darted his gaze away, focusing instead on the beads that hung on strings off the lampshade. The lamp next to the counselor’s chair was one of the only sources of light in the dim room. “How have you been feeling lately? How’s your depression?”
How’s your depression? Well, that was a complicated fucking question, wasn’t it?
After a few moments of Shane not responding, the counselor decided to try rephrasing her question. “Let me ask you this. Have you noticed any differences since coming home from the hospital? It’s been quite some time now.”
Shane closed his eyes. A rain drenched body laying, limbs twisted, next to a cliff. Cans of beer scattered in the grass. Vomit in a pool next to his head. He could only remember the night he tried to commit suicide in short bursts and flashes, but he distinctly recalled the smooth, white sheets of the hospital bed as he woke up the next morning and was hurtled back into his reality.
“Yeah,” he said. “I feel…better. I think.”
He knew this was, to some extent, true. He felt good when he was with Rose, helping her on the farm, surrounded by fresh air and lush greenery. He enjoyed the days when he got to play with Jas and laugh with her as they skipped rope or pretended to have a tea party. These were the things that he tried to get better for.
The counselor nodded. “That’s good. Better is good.”
“It is, but…I feel bad a lot too.” Shane uncrossed his arms and started to tap his fingers on the armrest of his seat. “Like, I still want to disappear sometimes. And I spend a lot of time feeling numb and not doing anything except think about how worthless I am.”
“That’s normal.”
Shane frowned. “It is?”
“Mmhmm,” she said. “Recovery is not a straight line. It’s often more of a…zigzag pattern. Or you’ll go backwards sometimes. It’s all part of the process.”
“Oh.” Shane stared down at his hands, which had moved into his lap. He was suddenly shaky all over. “But what do you do if you feel like you’re going backwards a lot?”
The counselor thought for a moment, observing Shane as he shifted and fidgeted in an attempt to quell his anxiousness. “Well,” she said. “There’s always time to turn around and start going forward again.”
Start going forward again. That’s what Shane wanted to do. It’s what he needed to do, for Jas, for Marnie. For Rose.
As he stepped out of the entrance to the counselor’s office and into the bustle of Zuzu City, he noticed that the rain that had poured down since the morning had come to a stop while he was at his appointment. The air smelled earthy and wet, yet fresh and cool at the same time. The sun poked through what clouds had begun to part.
Shane decided that, for once in his life, he would take the good omen he was given and clutch onto it for as long as he could.