Revenant

Promises Not Kept

Nelson Grover arrived at Lou’s front door one morning with the force of the storm that had been pounding at the walls all night. If I had been living—his mere appearance would have caused my breath to hitch in my throat. Instead I found myself looking on intently as my bedraggled murderer met the fair-haired boy at the door.

It took me only a moment to realize Nelson Grover looked as though he was the one I had been haunting. The windswept rain had soaked him to the bone, clothes sticking to his slimmer figure like a wet suit. I could see slight traces of his ribcage through the sopping grey shirt; jeans sagging not only from the burden of the water they held but an indisputable loss of weight. The dark circles under his eyes ventured into unfamiliar territory—Nelson regularly slept well past the normal time for most people; if there was one thing he valued, it was the time he spent alone with his bed. The blonde hairs atop his head hung low against his neck, unshaven face coated in fair stubble. Nelson’s appearance brought to light the realization that my death had affected those outside of Lou’s house.

“She said she was coming over. She never bails. No matter what she says to me, she never bails,” Nelson said. His words caused Lou to tense, knuckles turning white as he held onto the door.

“I was supposed to see you that night, wasn’t I?” I asked, stepping up to stand beside Lou. There was no reply; but of course it was the truth. I had intended to meet the boy for tea at a local café despite the typically off-putting attitude I presented to him.

“What do you want?” Lou finally managed. For once I didn’t look at him, didn’t acknowledge his presence. For once, Louis Petrelli was not in my line of sight.

“She’s coming back, isn’t she?”

My dark-haired killer offered no reply; and with a slam of the door the barrier of wood stood between Nelson and I; it seemed fragile in comparison to the boundaries between life and death that separated us on an entirely different level. So I did what I hadn’t since my demise; I stepped through that flimsy blockade and left Louis Petrelli alone.

Murder was a strange thing; it made me forget there was a world outside of Lou, a world where I had a family, a world where my fruitless efforts to keep my distance from one charming Nelson Grover had failed miserably.

And he hadn’t even known how deep my feelings had run.

His old car wasn’t in the driveway, or anywhere to be seen. So after a few minutes of remaining on Lou’s front steps he retreated, and I followed in his wake through what seemed to me to be phantom rain.

“I had no intention of bailing on you,” I stated. “But then again I had no intentions of letting you get close, either. I’ve failed at both of those, wouldn’t you agree? And then I failed at outliving you; that one seemed like a guarantee, didn’t it?”

I remembered frustration as I followed behind, watching the boy fumble through the woods. I remembered the first day I had met him, when he had tried unsuccessfully to recruit me to the school’s skydiving club. I had declined, only to have him give me dimpled smile and state, “Life is too short to live without taking risks.”

I hadn’t thought much of it as I walked away with an eye roll. But it quickly became apparent as the weeks went by that encountering Nelson was inevitable. He was in two of my six classes; smart and articulate, always popping up in the desk next to me even when seconds before someone else had been there. That was Nelson; charming and kind to a point where someone would give up their desk if he just asked politely and gave them that magnetic smile. Eventually he cracked me, and I made my way to the drop zone—never to jump, just to observe and hang out with him—weekend after weekend.

It was a surreal sight to watch the parachutes blossom into the sky, floating almost like letters waving their way down to Earth. So I came, and I watched with a silent fascination every weekend he was there. I listened to him speak about the experience almost as though he were in another world, eyes set on the bright sky. He loved it more than I could understand; and in turn I slowly but surely fell for the boy whose white parachute resembled a letter gliding gently to the ground.

I kept my eyes on him more an more on those trips, and his landings were some of the most graceful there; a hop and a skip or a few quick steps always balanced him out as his feet touched down on the soft grass—unlike some of the others who fell face first almost exclusively on landing. But then one day, he stumbled and fell, tripping unsteadily on the ground. I laughed a bit for a moment; Mr. Perfect-Landing made his first misstep in front of me. But then, as the parachute deflated on top of him, he didn’t move and a burning realization that something wasn’t quite right washed over me.

It was at the hospital I learned the truth; Nelson Grover had a heart condition that could put him in his grave at any time. The last thing he needed to be doing was falling out of planes, but he did it anyways against all doctor recommendations. I fought the new wave of pain and fury with a stone mask and a quiet demeanor as I sat by his hospital bed, hand in his. After hours of silence I finally found my voice.

“Why?”

“Falling has always been my greatest fear; and I figured if I could master that, then I’ve got nothing left to be scared of, not even death.”

“Before, when you fell out of that sky I knew you were going to come back to me,” I had said quietly, eyes settled on his large hand clasping my own. “Now I’m not so sure.”

He squeezed gently, and I looked up to meet his tired smile and bright eyes. “For you, I will always come back.”

I pulled myself out of my thoughts, watching as Nelson stopped at the edge of a familiar drop. It hadn’t even occurred to me where we were walking, but it was nowhere near his house. We had trudged through the woods, finding ourselves on the edge of the embankment Lou had tossed my body from. It was almost as though he knew—he knew what had happened to me and he knew where I had been. He knew; I just wasn’t sure what, or why.

“I thought,” he said, pausing momentarily. “I thought you were coming back to me, like I always did for you.”

I willed myself a voice then, a voice not like the demented whispers I left Lou with, a voice that wanted to be heard and acknowledge. Because I wanted this; I wanted him to know I was there. It was the first true human feeling I had since my death. “I don’t think there’s a way back from this, do you?”

He looked back. He needed to see me; I needed him to.

“It looks like you’ve managed it.”

I let out a short scoff, wanting nothing more than to cry. But the dead don’t have tears. The dead don’t have much of anything, really. “I can’t ever really come back to you, you know that right? I’m a shadow of my humanity and nothing more.”

“So you are dead, then,” he stated, looking back over the edge. “Maybe, just maybe, if you can’t come back to me, I can come back to you.”

It hit me then that he didn’t know what had happened to me after all; he had come here of his own devices.

“It wasn’t a choice for me,” I snapped.

“I’ve been dying since the day I was born, Greer. Do you think I’ve got a choice, either? It’s going to take me one way or the other; I think I would prefer to do it on my own terms. Now I’ve really got nothing left to fear; not falling, not losing you, definitely not death.”

And Nelson Grover stepped over the edge. The rain continued to fall as a silent scream filled the air, my thoughts rapidly switching from no, no, no to you’re coming back to me, you’re coming back, like a letter in the sky you always come back, you’re coming back to me.

I waited in the quiet of the woods, staying rooted in place, hoping with the most desperate of hopes that maybe just maybe he would come back, pop his head over the ledge and give me his fantastic smile.

But Nelson Grover did not come back, and I realized that before he had always been falling towards me, this time he had fallen away.

We weren't made to fall away, but we did. It took not only him, but also any trace of humanity I had managed to hide away with it. I was cold; I was dead; and I was alone. I knew one thing for certain:

It was time for Louis Petrelli to die.
♠ ♠ ♠
Letters From the Sky- Civil Twilight