[Onni is exhausted, his head is aching, he's barely slept in days, he doesn't feel capable of this. Of withstanding the onslaught of emotion, of being alone again, losing the last member of his family. He'd tried so hard to keep things together after they'd all come here, he'd tried to keep Lalli safe, tried to make him understand how much Onni loves him, tried to take care of him while the fever ate him alive, had fought to keep him safe.
None of it matters.
For a moment, he just feels like giving up. There doesn't seem to be any reason to go on, not like this. He can't stand to lose the one person left who remembers Saimaa and Harvest Festivals and Tuuri's braids and how his mother's bread tasted when it was freshly baked and where the best blueberry patches were and how grandma's sauna smelled in the springtime and a million other things that tie Onni to the only place he was ever happy.
Reynir is talking still, saying that Onni has been starved for kindness so that a little of it feels like a lot, is insisting that it's easy for Reynir to care about him, to like being around him. Wishing that he could help Onni try to forgive himself. He can't. Onni can't forgive himself, and there's nothing Reynir can do to help with that. So Onni cries, in big shuddering sobs that he doesn't have the energy to hold back. He cries for what feels like forever, his face still pressed against Reynir's shoulder, and he's felt weaker but he's never felt more alone.
Onni has always been able to push through his grief and pain and fear because he had Tuuri and Lalli to take care of, because he needed to be strong for them, to be a safe place they could retreat to when they were afraid and sad and hurting. Now that he doesn't have either of them, he feels completely unmoored, and what does he have to fight for now? All he has is his exhaustion and his grief and his acutely, intensely painful aloneness. So he cries for a while, at the enormity of everything awful in his life and his complete helplessness to fix it and his culpability in chasing away every person he'd loved.
When he doesn't have any tears left, he just leans against Reynir, taking big shuddering breaths and speaks in a hoarse voice.]
no subject
None of it matters.
For a moment, he just feels like giving up. There doesn't seem to be any reason to go on, not like this. He can't stand to lose the one person left who remembers Saimaa and Harvest Festivals and Tuuri's braids and how his mother's bread tasted when it was freshly baked and where the best blueberry patches were and how grandma's sauna smelled in the springtime and a million other things that tie Onni to the only place he was ever happy.
Reynir is talking still, saying that Onni has been starved for kindness so that a little of it feels like a lot, is insisting that it's easy for Reynir to care about him, to like being around him. Wishing that he could help Onni try to forgive himself. He can't. Onni can't forgive himself, and there's nothing Reynir can do to help with that. So Onni cries, in big shuddering sobs that he doesn't have the energy to hold back. He cries for what feels like forever, his face still pressed against Reynir's shoulder, and he's felt weaker but he's never felt more alone.
Onni has always been able to push through his grief and pain and fear because he had Tuuri and Lalli to take care of, because he needed to be strong for them, to be a safe place they could retreat to when they were afraid and sad and hurting. Now that he doesn't have either of them, he feels completely unmoored, and what does he have to fight for now? All he has is his exhaustion and his grief and his acutely, intensely painful aloneness. So he cries for a while, at the enormity of everything awful in his life and his complete helplessness to fix it and his culpability in chasing away every person he'd loved.
When he doesn't have any tears left, he just leans against Reynir, taking big shuddering breaths and speaks in a hoarse voice.]
I can't be alone. I can't live like that.