More Than This

by Patrick Ness

It isn’t enough, grows less each time, and he feels a terrible yearning in his chest as he aches, fruitlessly, for more.

Is that what hell is? Trapped forever, alone, in your worst memory? It makes a kind of sense.

The familiar yearning to get away rose in Seth’s chest like a physical pressure, so strong he thought he might be able to see it if he looked.

when everything had seemed possible, when everything good felt like it was just within reach for once, when if he could just hang in there, it really would finally all come together–

it’s possible to die before you die.

They’d been in bed for hours, talking, then very much not talking, then talking some more.

And that made it feel like the most private thing that could ever happen, like a whole secret universe all on its own. A universe that Seth, as he did every time, wished he never had to leave.

You don’t have to fix it. I’m just telling you, okay? That’s all. I’m just saying it.”

imagine there’s this thing that always sits there in the room with you. And everyone knows it’s there and no one will ever say a single goddamn word about it until it becomes like an extra person living in your house that you have to make room for. And if you bring it up, they pretend they don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Just Gudmund’s arms around him, holding him there, holding him tightly and not letting him go. Holding him like it was the only place that could ever have existed.

He leans forward into himself and rocks slowly back and forth, trying to bear how bad it feels. The ache of it. The ache of missing Gudmund is so great he can barely stand it. Of missing how safe being with him felt, how easy it was, how funny and relaxed. Of missing the physical stuff, of course, but more than that, the intimacy, the closeness. Of missing just being held like that, cared for. Maybe loved.

Keep moving, he tells himself again. Don’t stop. Don’t stop to think.

Seth realized with a shock how rare it was for his father to look him straight in the eye. It was like having a statue suddenly ask you for directions.

When they were together like that, they had been their own private universe, bounded just by themselves, a population of two. They were the world, and the world was them. And no one deserved to know,

“Self-contained”, Gudmund had described him, but what that really meant was that it felt like he’d had a private burden to shoulder for as long as he could remember,

It was suddenly as if, for the briefest of moments, the burden had been lifted, like there was no gravity at all, like he had finally set down the heavy load he’d been carrying–

he feels like he’s at the bottom of a well, with sunshine and life and escape all miles away, no one to hear him, even if he could call for help. He’s felt like this before.

A book, he thinks at one point, rubbing his eyes, tired from so much focused reading. It’s a world all on its own, too.

A world made of words, Seth thinks, where you live for a while.

A kind of ecstatic trance overtakes him, his mind on nothing but his actions, which are manic, focused, seemingly unstoppable now that he’s set them in motion. He cleans off the bookcase shelves, the slats in the doors to the cubbyhole, the chairs around the dining-room table. He accidentally breaks a bulb in the overhead light as he tries to rid them of cobwebs, but he just wraps the glass in a blanket and adds it to the pile.

“I can’t be anyone’s everything. Not even yours. I’m going out of my mind with all this. I can’t stand the fact that I have to go away. I want to kill someone! But I can take it if I know you’re out there, surviving, getting through it. This won’t be forever. There’s a future. There really is. We’ll find a way, Seth. Seth?”

He wasn’t in that future. He was only in this unimaginable present. And he didn’t see how he’d ever get from here to there.

he felt almost faint with relief. Relief because at last, at last, at last. At last, there didn’t have to be any more, didn’t have to be any more burden, any more weight to carry.

“All the advice now, but there is nothing when Tomasz is lighting the grass on fire and saving all our lives. Oh, thank you, Tomasz, thank you so much for your clever idea which lets us get away. Ow!”

“I need a smoke,” Regine says. “No!” Tomasz says. “You will die! Your lungs will be as dark as your skin! Your brain will grow out of your eyes in tumours!”

You said this was hell.” Tomasz shrugs. “It is. But hell you make for yourself is still hell, maybe.”

“People see stories everywhere,” Regine says. “That’s what my father used to say. We take random events and we put them together in a pattern so we can comfort ourselves with a story, no matter how much it obviously isn’t true.” She glances back at Seth. “We have to lie to ourselves to live. Otherwise, we’d go crazy.”

“Those pictures,” she said. “They’re not… They’re not sex, you know? And sex, I could understand, I guess, but…” “But what?” She looked him in the eye. “But they were love, Seth.”

screaming, crying, throwing up.

“There’s always beauty,” Seth murmurs. “If you know where to look.”

But wherever I am, whatever this world is, I’ve just got to be sure I’m me and that’s what’s real.”

“Know yourself and go in swinging. If it hurts when you hit it, it might be real, too.”

“because grammatical rightness is exactly what we are talking about at the present moment.”

“He probably just wants to wank again in the last moment of privacy you’ll ever give him.”

“There’s always beauty,” said Gudmund. “If you know where to look.”

“You turn away from that crappy little beach,” Gudmund said, “away from all the rocks and the waves that won’t let you swim and there’s no place to picnic with your nice sandwiches and the wind will blow your whole tedious little family away if you don’t keep them tethered to you. But then you look out into the ocean. And, well, there it is.”

“Beauty,” Seth said, not looking at the sunset, but at Gudmund’s profile lit by that same sun.

screaming.

“And there is the thank-you,” Tomasz says with a surprising burst of frustration. “At very long last.”

“And still you make fun,” Tomasz complains, “after I am saving your life. Again. So tell me, please, your intricate knowledge of Polish references. Yes, that would be most amusing. Long, long talk now about how much you know about Polish language and the words Polish people use to describe how they feel in picturesque language.”

“And yet here I am,” Tomasz says. “I am sorry that I know more about guns than you, but I do.”

“You do not understand!” Tomasz yells. “I am lonely, too! You think you are older and you are wiser and you feel things more deeply. You are not! I feel these things, too! If I lose you or you, then I am alone again, and I will not have this! I will not.”

Owen Richard Wearing. Taken from this world, aged 4. His Voice was Musick and his Words a Song

🥲🥲🥲

“The place in Scotland?” “No, that’s Leith,” his father said, his words slurred. He nodded at the woman from the Council. “You mean Lethe.” He pronounced it Lee-thee.

“This is who you are, do you see?” Tomasz continues. “You are not a boy who hands his brother over to a murderer instead of yourself. You are a man who will save his friends. You are a man who does not even hesitate to save his friends.”

🥺🥺 hes so wise

“I know you are trying to be brave for me, but we might. That is a risk when you are fighting with death. You do not always win.”

“How funny that you continue to believe I am in need of your permission.”

That was Gudmund’s biggest fault. That he couldn’t be anyone’s everything. But that he’d try anyway.

“But the Good Man was not who Seth thought he was.”

Gudmund loved me back.” He brushes his cheek again. “It was everywhere, in everything he said and did, every memory I’ve had of him since I’ve been here.”

Now that I know there’s more? I want to have more. If there really is more to life, I want to live all of it. And why shouldn’t all of us? Don’t we deserve that?”

(Maybe that’s what this has all been–) (Maybe he never stopped drowning–)