Page 49 of Grim

SeekandYeShallFind

I don’t know how long I’ve been lying here.

Time feels like a thread that’s unraveled completely, tangled around my limbs, caught in my throat, dragging behind me like a frayed scarf.

The walls have stopped creaking. The house—this strange, sentient thing that once groaned and shifted and sighed with me—has fallen silent.

Even the wind outside, which used to whistle through the shutters and rattle the old glass, seems to have vanished.

It’s like everything knows. Like the house itself is holding its breath, waiting.

Or mourning.

I try to move, but my limbs protest. Every muscle aches. My lungs feel too shallow for this body. There’s sharp pressure behind my sternum, like grief and gravity fused into one unbearable force.

Kane is gone. Another vital piece of me stolen, another sliver of my traitorously weak heart torn asunder.

The worst kind of separation because the distance remembers. The other soul still exists, but not for me. Not anymore. He’s somewhere in the OtherWorld, and I’m here, entombed inside my own body.

My story’s end has been foretold by the cruel twins, Fate and Time, while Kane and I have been cleaved from each other, just as he separated souls from bodies with his blade at that bus accident .

He promised me he would be here now.

Yet I am alone.

Not completely alone, but without him, which I am now realizing is worse than being alone. Because it holds the ache not of a mere emptiness, but a chasm that was once, momentarily, full. And that is when the void is truly felt.

I breathe as best I can. Each exhale a countdown, every heartbeat a drummer’s march, one step closer to its coda. I can feel the inevitability of it all.

I try to sit up. My bones feel like they’ve been carved from ice and left to melt inside my skin. It takes more energy than it should, but I do it anyway. Because I haven’t given up yet.

But before I lose myself to all my maudlin musings, I am comforted by the sight of a friend.

Seek.

He’s curled beneath the window, knees tucked to his chest, his too-big coat wrapped around him like armor. He looks smaller than usual tonight. He’s staring out at nothing.

And for a long moment, I think maybe he doesn’t know I’m awake.

But then he speaks softly without looking up. “I had a sister once.”

His voice sounds more mature than I have ever heard it.

“She was a couple years older than me. She wasn’t my real sister, not by blood, but she pretended.

For me. When I first arrived at the orphanage, I could barely speak, from fear and on account of my being so young and all.

I did not have many words, certainly none good enough to describe my feelings.

” He shifts, pulling the coat tighter around himself.

“But Sophia didn’t need my words. She hardly even gave me any of her own.

She just poured out kindness. I could feel it coming off her and wrapping around me like a blanket. ”

His fingers twitch against the fabric of his coat.

“I must have been standing there like a mouse in a shoebox, eyes as big as saucers. Sophia came right up to me and offered me her hand. I took it and squeezed, tight as could be. ‘Come on. Let me show you where you’re going to sleep.’ She spoke so warmly to me. Always made me feel safe.

“The first morning I woke in that cold bed, my eyes opened, and there was this little stuffed bear sitting on the corner of the bed, staring back at me. I squeezed him so tight and kept him with me every day I was there.

“Sophia had given it to me. I know she did, though she never admitted it. That wasn’t her way. She didn’t need credit, only comfort. She’s the only person I can remember in my life who made me feel safe and seen. Until you, Miss Rue.”

Seek finally pulls his eyes away from the window and looks at me. I smile back at him, meeting his gaze.

“What happened to the bear?” I swallow, the ache in my chest suddenly magnified.

“I left it at the orphanage when I made my escape. Figured another scared little boy might find comfort in it too.”

“And what happened to Sophia?”

“Same thing that happens to all of us in the end, I imagine. Hope it was peaceful for her anyway.”

I try to speak, but nothing comes. He keeps going, like he has to say it now or he never will.

“She’s the only person I can remember who made me feel safe. Who made me feel like I mattered.” He hesitates. “Until you.”

The simplicity of his declaration makes the impact of his statement hit even harder.

He tucks his chin to his chest, cheeks burning red even though he doesn’t have real blood anymore. “I know I’m not always easy. I talk too much. I steal stuff. I’m a bit much sometimes. But you made me feel like I wasn’t just a stupid little ghost. You listened to me. You saw me.”

I bite the inside of my cheek. “Seek …”

He cuts me off before I can finish, “Is it really gonna happen?”

I pause.

He still won’t look at me.

“What do you mean?” I ask gently, though I already know.

“You,” he whispers, “leavin’? ”

I close my eyes. It hurts to lie. It hurts worse to tell the truth. “Yes.”

Seek nods once, like he’s known all along but needed to hear me say it.

“Thought so.” He stands, brushing invisible dust off his coat with complete earnestness.

He mimes the action as though it’s the most important thing in the world to do at that moment.

And maybe to him, it is. Perhaps pretending to be clean keeps him from falling apart.

“I want a story,” he says quietly. “One last one.”

I blink, caught off guard by the seriousness of his request. “Seek …”

“Please.” He turns to me then. His eyes are bright, but not with mischief this time. There’s something else there. Something sharp. Fragile. “Your voice comforts me, Rue. Like how I felt, holding Sophia’s hand.”

The words hit me like a brick to the sternum and cause me to quietly break all at once. “I-I don’t have it in me to make one up,” I admit. “Not tonight.”

“That’s all right,” he says. “Just read me one that’s already been written.”

My throat burns, but I nod.

I drag myself to my bookshelf, fingers trembling as they skim the worn spines. My eyes land on a weathered copy of The Velveteen Rabbit . I pull it free, the pages soft from love, the cover barely clinging to its hinges.

I sit on the floor. Seek nestles beside me, head resting on my shoulder, like he belongs there.

He fits.

I begin to read. My voice shakes, but I keep going. The words from the pages fill the room, keeping us company. And for a little while, it’s enough.

I clear my throat, though it doesn’t help much. I make it through the part where the Rabbit asks what it means to be real. I pause, voice cracking on the line about how it doesn’t happen all at once. That it takes a long time. That sometimes, it hurts.

Seek doesn’t speak. He just leans against me and listens.

I read aloud as the Rabbit is left behind, forgotten by the Boy he loved. As he becomes something real, though at great cost.

When I close the book, I realize I’m crying. There’s a trail of warmth down my jaw, and my shoulders shake from the effort of holding the rest of it in.

Then I feel something cool on the back of my hand.

Seek is crying too.

“I don’t want to forget you,” he says, voice small and shaking. “I don’t want you to forget me either.”

“I never could,” I say, and I mean it. “You’re inked into my story now.”

“I don’t think I want to be here anymore,” he says. “Don’t feel like I need to be.”

I nod, even as my throat tightens.

“Knowing you, feeling like I belong, not to somewhere, but to someone—I haven’t felt that since Sophia. I forgot what it felt like. You made me remember, Rue. Made me feel real. Like that bunny did for a time. And you set me free.”

He tries to smile, but it breaks into a million tiny pieces before it fully forms. I lose it then. All at once. I fold in on myself and sob. No holding it in. No being strong. Because I can’t do this.

“You’ll always be real to me, Seek,” I say between sobs. “Funny and brave and kind. So real.”

He lets out a shaky laugh, the smallest puff of sound. “You’re gonna make me cry again.”

“Can I tell you something?” I ask him.

“Anything,” he answers immediately.

“I’m scared.”

“I know. Me too.”

He leans back just enough to look at me, and I swear I see his whole life in that one glance. All the missed birthdays and cold nights. And somehow, impossibly, the hope that something comes next.

“It’s okay to miss someone,” he says. “That ache means you remember ’em. And that’s a good kind of hurt.”

“I like that, Seek,” I tell him plainly. “Then I hope I hurt you.”

“And I hope I hurt you.” His smile glows faintly. “But, you know, the good kind.”

He doesn’t say he’s ready.

He doesn’t have to .

It’s in the way his shoulders ease. In the way his hand slips out of mine so gently I barely feel it.

I press a kiss to his temple. “You’re not a lost soul, Seek. You’re found. And your home will always be with me.”

His answer is barely a breath. “Maybe I’ll read a story to you someday.”

I nod, unable to speak.

And then he’s gone.

No flash. No dramatic wind.

Just gone.

The room doesn’t feel lighter.

It feels lonelier.

I curl into the spot where his body used to be, and I sob. Hard.

For Seek. For Kane. For myself.

And for all that good hurt, which still hurts all the same.

I do not hear Asher enter.

The silence left in Seek’s wake suffocates. It clings to the wallpaper and pools in the floorboards. It consumes and distracts.

I sit against the wall, my back pressed to the peeling paint, my knees drawn up like a shield from all that exists outside myself.

The book lies in my lap, the spine worn, the corners soft, its weight unbearably light for something that feels like it holds the last real thing I have left.

My hands won’t let go. My fingers press so tight against the cover I worry the binding will give.