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When people talk about the stages of grief, they tend to treat it as though it's a linear process – denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. A strict, forward moving track you're meant to slide forward on in a smooth and orderly process; no going back, no stalling.
In reality, this obviously isn't true. One irrefutable truth about people is that your lives are messy as all hell, your grief wouldn't be any different. But you still try to put every bit of yourselves into boxes. It's easier to understand that way, you figured. Easier to cope with the fact that you won't ever fully understand anything, really.
Figuring out the mysteries of the universe had always been Johnathon’s thing. Over a decade's worth of education tacked on with years spent slaving over machines and chemicals and circuit boards, all in the pursuit of stretching the laws of time and space past their limits. His dedication was admirable, if a bit concerning. His work was nearly obsessive, but learning the ins and outs of interdimensional travel was no easy task, after all.
His work often spilled over into your conversations. Not that you minded, his rants were usually very entertaining, even if you knew next to nothing about what he was talking about. It was fun to watch him get so fired up, gesturing wildly as he tried to force his jumbled thoughts into coherent words. You only ever had a vague understanding of the topics he raved about, and you never thought you minded much, but lately there's one aspect of it you just wish you could get a grasp on. You never understood how the universe, in all its mystery, could be so cruel. You don’t think John would be able to give you an answer.
It had been seven months since the “incident,” which is what you’d both taken to calling it, since “horrible life altering explosion” seemed a bit too harsh. Plus it was a mouthful. Seven months since his life's work was blown up in his face, seven months since he’d been fired from his job, seven months since his family all but disowned him. It had only been five months since he came back to you.
You’d spent those months going through your own stages of grief, and to give credit to the linear stages, you did immediately nose dive into denial.
He couldn't be dead, he must've gotten out.
That was the only comprehensible thought you had. You were blowing up his phone, texting and calling and screaming at the taxi driver to please drive faster, please ignore all the police and ambulances and just get you to Johnathon.
When you did get there, you were greeted with a giant pile of rubble. The broken remains of the building that you’d watched John pour his life into, the building that had stolen his life away even before anything went wrong. But now things were wrong, and he was nowhere to be found. When you didn't spot him among the crowd, your next thought was to claw through the rubble and pull him out yourself. You would've gladly dug through the entire building until your hands were bloody and raw, you would've let them fall off if it meant you could find him, if you could pull him from that wreckage and see him safe.
The authorities at the scene had a different idea though. They dragged you away from the crumbled building before you could even figure out where you wanted to start digging. You felt hot rage bubbling in your gut as they pulled you back, and you gladly took the chance to scream at them, not that you could really put into words how angry you were. Angry that they were stopping you, angry that they hadn't already found John, angry that something like this would even happen, that it could happen, that there was no safety protocol, no easy escape routes, nothing that would save the lives of the people who made the company what it was. Nothing that would save Johnathon.
When you got home spent the next two months a gut wrenching blend between unbridled depression and boiling rage. How could they take him? How could the world still be spinning after he died? You knew that nothing would ever come of it either. That organization was notoriously shady. Any potentially damaging bit of information would be swept under the rug and forgotten about. Plans to rebuild were already being set in motion before Johnathon even got so much as a missing poster, and the anger you felt when you heard would've been enough to knock it all back down again.
When he came back, it wasn't willingly. In fact, it was completely accidental, a coincidence that had you asked John, he would've told you himself of its statistical improbability. You had dragged yourself out of bed on a random Tuesday, figuring that rotting away in your apartment maybe wasn't the best way to go about processing your grief. You recalled the times you’d scolded John for locking himself up inside, working on projects that you reminded him time and time again were not more important than his health. You thought if he could see you now he might be scolding you too.
You’d find out that scolding you was probably the last thing on his mind.
Your decided destination to receive some much needed vitamin D was a park a few blocks away. It was never a place you frequented, but at one point you had made grand plans with John to have a picnic date out here once he finished his big project. Those plans never came to fruition, of course, but as much as it hurt to think about, you thought it would be a nice place to try and handle your emotions. It almost felt like you could be with him, in some way.
As you wandered through the park, absently looking around and wondering if that pizza place around the corner was still open, a giant black hole suddenly blocked your vision. You practically leapt back, gawking at the sudden obstruction in frightened confusion. For a moment you considered the fact that staying locked away in your apartment all that time may have had a greater effect on your mental health than you previously thought, though you really didn't have time to dwell on that. A figure came tumbling out of the giant hole, crashing down on top of you and knocking you both to the ground.
“Oh- god, I’m so sorry!” It apologized frantically, scrambling over itself to get off of you. “These things aren’t what I'd call easy to control, I’m still…”
You had both stopped, staring, frozen in shock. You weren't sure what stuck out more; the figure’s stark white skin, its lack of anything distinguishably human aside from its general shape (which honestly speaking still looked noticeably off), the black holes that adorned its otherwise blank and glaringly naked body (well, not quite naked, naked would imply that there was something there to cover, which there decidedly was not), their swirling and irregular shape that looked like drops of ink on a piece of paper, or the fact that it sounded like Johnathon.
You uttered his name in disbelief, staring at the large black void that now replaced his face. The void seemed to shrink in on itself upon hearing you speak, forming what you could only assume was an equally dumbfounded expression as he said your name in return.
“Oh, no no-” he practically shrieked, scrambling back from you. If you’d been paying attention you would've been hurt, but your mind was too occupied with the fact that he was alive. “No! You weren't supposed to see me like this-”
You all but tackled him to the ground in your embrace, clutching him like a vice and sobbing against him. You felt him go rigid in your grip, but you didn’t care. You wouldn't let him go for the rest of your life if you could help it, you didn’t care what he thought about it. You eventually felt him relax. He wrapped his arms around you, and you took a mental note of how big he seemed (John had always been big, but this was big ; the hug practically enveloped you whole). You chose not to dwell on it, instead tightening your grip.
He spoke up softly, his voice trembling. “I missed you too.”
What you remembered of the next few days wasn't much more than a blur of tears and hugs. He gave you broken scraps of an explanation between his attempts to console your near ceaseless crying. You had wanted to scream at him, demand him to tell you where he had been and how he could just let you think he was dead for so long, but that urge was drowned out whenever you’d hear him speak or feel his hand on your face. He was alive and he was here now, so what did it matter?
What you did manage to gather between your sniffling was that John had spent the last few months scrounging around the rubble of that building, gathering whatever he could and taking it back to his apartment (you felt a little stupid for not checking there yourself, but to be fair you never thought he’d be camping out there pretending to be dead, plus he never gave you a key). He told you that beforehand, he had tried to go to his family for some kind of support, but they threw him aside before he could even properly explain himself, and his father told him not to speak to them again. You never really liked his dad, but this sort of took the cake. Since then, he had been making attempts to get himself back to normal, refusing to even consider seeing you before he could accomplish that. Unfortunately, or fortunately, one such experiment was the reason he’d come tumbling on top of you.
That seemed to be the thing he was almost excited to talk about- excited the way a doctor might be excited to talk about a medical anomaly, but excited nonetheless. To be fair, the whole thing was pretty interesting, the sight of dark matter and all that jazz that you didn’t understand happening actively on a live body, occurring in a way that he could control to his whim (if he tried hard enough). It was practically the exact concept he’d been tinkering around with before it went and exploded on him. You probably would've been able to appreciate it a lot more if it was contained and not taking over your boyfriend's life. Well, it was already doing that before the Incident but now it was definitely worse.
The process of returning to your old routines was easier said than done. Naturally; you didn't expect any of this to be easy, especially not in a situation as unique as his. The stages of grief most often happen as a jumbled mess of emotions, full of backtracking and cycles. You could only imagine that this process can get even messier when you're mourning yourself.
You watched John shift around the stages in a jerky and uneven pattern.
Bargaining, desperately trying to get himself back to normal, never to any avail, which would lead quickly into…
Depression, stretches of time where he seemed like little more than a husk of himself, laying around the house hopelessly. Though he would try his best to keep the worst of his mental state from you, you could always tell purely from the energy around the apartment when he was in this state of mind. You couldn't begin to imagine what he was going through, so you didn't try to pretend you understood, instead just staying beside him, assuring him as you held his face that you loved him, forever and always. This would usually help push him into…
Acceptance, times where he seemed almost fine with his new self, almost positive. He practiced using the portals that littered his body and would often even say how useful they could be. “Watch this, you’ll love this,” and he’d grab you a snack out of the kitchen while he was sitting on the couch, always seeming very proud of himself when you took the treat with near childish glee. Though these periods were nice, they never lasted forever and he would go back to…
Depression, again. No matter how nice he made his new body out to be, no matter how fascinating he found it, no matter the pros he tried to give himself, he couldn’t put off how much he hated it. He couldn't deny the fact that most people would forever see him as a freak. He’d never speak to his family again, never see the few friends he had, and worst of all he’d never work again. The years- over a decade of work and dedication and passion, blood, sweat, and tears he poured into this work that he cared so much about, only to have it blow up in his face and ruin everything like it had swallowed him whole (literally). Neither of you really appreciated the irony of the whole situation.
As you waded through this onslaught of emotions with him, you never managed to understand his lack of anger. To be fair, there was anger, but it wasn't his . Well maybe it was his, but you were the one feeling it. You had never known John to be an angry person. You'd seen him stressed, seen him tired- exhausted even, seen him frustrated and overworked and grouchy, but even with those feelings, he'd sooner turn to tears than he would to real anger. It's one of the things you love the most about him, honestly, but that didn't mean you understood it any better.
You expressed as much one sleepy evening, both of you curled up on the couch watching some old movie that had come on. Neither of you were actually paying attention, John was too caught up in another one of his multiversal travel rants, explaining the new tests he was trying out in order to get control of his portals. You were caught up trying to understand how anyone could be so positive in a situation like this. Surely if it were you, you would have let the world know your rage, yet here he was happily talking about how much more convenient grocery shopping was now that he could do it from the bed.
You waited for a pause in his rant before you mumbled, “You're so sweet..” absently with your eyes barely open as you laid against him. .
“Sweet? For what, talking about my portals?” He laughed, then paused. “Well, I mean, I guess I am kinda sweet for explaining this stuff to you, that would usually cost a pretty penny. At least, for me it did, that school charged me like 20k a semester, which- jeez, I'm kinda glad everyone thinks I'm dead, I don't have to keep paying those debts back.”
“That's why you're sweet.”
”Because I'm… committing insurance fraud?”
“Because,” you sat up to look at him properly. “You even thought about something like that. Seriously, anyone else in your shoes.. I dunno, I feel like the last thing on their mind would be anything good that came out of your accident.”
“Oh.” He stopped to think. “Well, you're right, I guess but, I don't know, I might as well think of all the good things. Otherwise all I'd think about would be the bad things and I probably don't have to tell you how that’s turned out for me.”
“Yeah but.. Still,” you sighed, almost frustrated. John was always far more optimistic than people would give him credit for, but this was almost too much. “You deserve to be angry- you should be so angry!”
He looked down at you in surprise (he didn't really have a face anymore, but he was expressive as ever), confused at your sudden outburst. “Well, y’know, I.. I'm not really much for being angry.” He said after a moment, seemingly unsure how to respond. “Besides, you don't, like.. Want me to be angry? Do you?”
‘No! Of course I don't, it's just-'' you struggled for words for a moment before you plopped back down against him, sighing deeply. Of course you didn't want him to be angry. You knew how terrible it felt to be stewing in anger, you wouldn’t wish that on him, especially not on top of his already crushing grief. But still, after everything he’d gone through, you felt he deserved to be far more angry than seemingly not at all. Yet here he was, still sweet and goofy as ever while you found a way to complain for him. You felt like a child, damn him and his mature mindset. “It's not fair…”
He laughed at that. “Yeah, you’re telling me.” He stroked your hair absently. “I mean, you’re right, for sure, but anger is…” he made a vague gesture. “I dunno, a lot, I feel like. It's a heavy emotion, and I mean, that accident already added some weight on me.” he chuckled, waving towards himself. “Why add any extra?”
You pouted, but smiled softly at him. John was a goober, for sure, and that's why you loved him. He always managed to make everything better, even when you were both stuck in a dark spot. He had no clue how grateful you were every day for that. “Yeah. I guess you’re right.”