the glass on the table in the forgotten little hideaway in the mines doesn't belong there
it's from the bar, which means vander brought it there, sometime in the days after... in the days after
he brought it so he could sit there and drink and try to put to paper the sorrow and grief and guilt he felt, and fail miserably
(silco would have known the right words, always the wordsmith of the two)
(silco wouldn't have needed the right words, never had the violence in his veins quite like vander)
but he left the glass, once he was done, rather than take it back home
because he'd be back
of course he'd be back
he'd make the trek again (and again, and again), in the early morning hours inbetween the bar closing, and the kids waking up, wouldn't he?
and he'd sit there and drink and read the wholly insufficient words he'd written out, but still not know how to make "i'm sorry" contain all that he needs it to, right?
(would he stare, do you think, at their jackets? silco's enveloped in his own; an echo of a memory of a time before the hurt)
(held, the way he ached to hold)
but, more than anything, he'd be waiting (wishing, hoping, praying) for familiar footsteps coming down the mineshaft
of course he'd be waiting
waiting for what's left of his family to walk through the door, so that he could spend the rest of his life trying to mend the waterlogged ruin he'd made, when he held half of his heart in his hands and forced it into the river
how long, do you think, did he wait? months? no, probably years, right?
years, until one day he stopped on the threshold on his way out of the bar at nearly five in the morning, and just... didn't
or... did he never stop? did he keep going, whenever he could spare the time, clinging still to the hope that maybe he could still undo some fraction of the damage he'd done, that - even if silco would never call vander his family again - he could give vi and powder their uncle back?
was that why, when he was scarcely more than an animal - a hound - he still managed to return to that place?
still hoping, somewhere deep in his soul, deeper than thought or reason, that this time
this time
it would be different?
(a ghost, waiting hopelessly for a dead man)
