The Fall

by Tal Bauer

I loved him once without knowing why. I love him now knowing everything. I’ll love him always, even when time steals him away again.

Victory is my damnation. I fought for a year to rebuild this life, and I have only succeeded in reconstructing the path to the grave.

Time is as patient as a spider and keeps all its threads intact. The loop completes itself differently, but completes nonetheless, and when fate threads its needle, it stitches through my chest.

This is where I was always headed, to dark waters at midnight, to waves reaching for me, to my horizon swimming away from the light. This water has been waiting for me my whole life: beneath the ice, on the far side of every beach, inside the salt-threaded light in Blair’s blue eyes, and at the bottom of this long, dark drop.

I have always known that I would end here. Dark water calls to dark water, the ocean inside me rising to meet its larger self. It’s like coming home, like closing a circle, an ending that chews its tail and calls itself a beginning.

Dr. Khatri moves to the monitor. “We’ve found a small lesion here, on your right temporal lobe.” His finger traces a bright spot on the scan. “This condition,” he continues, “is called temporal lobe epilepsy.”

Was everything… misfiring synapses? Did a piece of damaged tissue lead me to Blair? Did these seizures build a world so real I almost died for it?

“In hindsight, this explains a lot, Torey.” Dr. Lin’s voice is so gentle. “We should have had you in for scans months ago.”

i'm honestly so confused why they didn't bc i thought you always got scans when getting a concussion

He isn’t choosing me over the playoffs; the playoffs no longer exist. The world has collapsed to the size of this bed and this moment. Every counterargument I had, every plea for him to go, disintegrates. Pushing him away now would be the cruelest act of all. For him, staying isn’t a sacrifice.

“I used to think strength meant never showing cracks,” Blair says after a while. “Never letting anyone see what was happening inside.” He turns his head toward me, water lapping gently at his jaw. “Now I know that’s not true. You make me brave enough to be vulnerable.”

Where is the beginning? Is it with a brother’s wish? A hand reaching through time, gathering together what only he could know, how our two souls were made to be together?

I think of all the water that’s carried us: dark waters and golden shores and breakers that tore through our lives, and the rain that sometimes wakes us, soft as whispers from another world. I think about time slips and second chances, about love that transcends logic, about brothers who still love each other from the beyond, and about the terrible grace of losing everything and the fierce joy of working to build it back.

You came back to me twice. Once from a future that couldn’t hold us, once from the edge of leaving me behind. We have faced the worst together and we survived. You are the bravest person I’ve ever known.