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solosection) wrote2021-12-05 11:04 pm
solosection) wrote2021-12-05 11:04 pm
F I C : somewhere in northern italy .
Elio wakes up alone. Which is to say, he wakes up surrounded by forest animals, a deer sleeping soundly next to him, birds in his hair, a couple of hedgehogs and a fox curled up by his feet. And, of course, Amenadiel sitting with his back to the next available tree, reading a book and waiting, obviously, for Elio to stir. Well, he's stirred and although he feels better than he has for years in Hell now, Lucifer is nowhere in sight. Elio doesn't blame him his uncouth exit from the scene, they've said goodbye before and besides, he didn't promise, did he? He didn't promise him anything he couldn't keep.
The Devil never lies.
"Awake," Amenadiel halfway asks and halfway concludes. Elio sits up, the covers pooling around his lap and his naked chest touched ever so gently by faint rays of sun. Spring. Morning.
Sending him a look that says, basically, can't you tell, Elio finally gives his surroundings a non-discreet sweep, the birds taking off with strands of his hair caught between their claws, the deer jumping to its feet and running for the edge of the clearing where it waits, looks back towards Elio. He should question it, but for some reason, he doesn't. He's experienced stranger things, you could say. Amanediel follows the little animals with his eyes as they scramble away. "Lucifer," Elio says the name with all care in the world, "he's gone back, right?"
"Yes," Amanediel says and that's it. That's all he says, he doesn't send his regards or pass on any messages. Just that, yes.
So, all Elio feels is a tiredness more deep-seated than any he's felt before.
*
The forest that Lucifer landed them in isn't far from Bordighera and Amanediel flies him the rest of the way to his mother's summer house, installs him in the upstairs bedroom that he once, thousands of years ago, shared with Lucifer when they were here. Sluggishly, Elio starts changing the bed linen, though the process is so slow that Amanediel halts him halfway through and takes over, putting fresh sheets on with an unmistakable efficiency that says, you're the Queen of Hell, but I'm faster. Elio just steps back and lets him, swaying a bit on his feet. Easy to say, really, for someone who can manipulate time.
"Amanediel," he finally speaks while the angel is fluffing his pillow and finishing up. "Why couldn't I stay in Hell, do you know?"
"Lie down," Amanediel tells him, shifting the duvet off to the side. Without comment, Elio does as he's told, though not before dropping the pajamas he'd put on upon arrival, so as not to run around in the nude. Amanediel pretends not to get uncomfortable and fails enough that Elio smiles a little, crawling under the blankets. The morning light in the room is gentle and yet sharp, he can't remember the last time he was here as early as, what, March? April? It must have been a decade at the least.
The angel, meanwhile, sits down on the chair in the corner, watches him curiously. A long moment passes in silence, then Amanediel tells him about his research with Ella back in LA. About the obvious ties to the Persephone myth that Elio's journey to Hell has had, so obvious that Elio himself has considered them, how they think his purpose is similar. To rule in Hell one "half" of the year, return to the world in the other. That the two halves are dependent on each other, interconnected, so he can't stay with Lucifer without getting recharged on Earth in between - and that the seasons can't flourish as they should on Earth without him going back for winter.
This is just the first time, Elio thinks to himself and turns his head away, pondering the whole story for a moment, blinking up at the ceiling, old, worn, same ceiling he was looking at lying next to Lucifer. It's cyclic.
A weight lifts off his chest. He suddenly breathes more freely.
"Does Lucifer know," he asks, then.
"I'll tell him once I leave," Amanediel assures him. Here, he means, you.
"Please stay a little while longer," Elio begs, the words feeling more foreign in his mouth than when he begs anything of Lucifer, like they don't belong there, like all his vulnerabilities feel exactly like that, vulnerable, around anyone else. The world is still the world and Lucifer is still Lucifer, separate somehow.
"I'll keep an eye on you for a few days," Amanediel promises, then leans back with his arms crossed over his chest, big and strong exactly like his brother who isn't here.
Elio falls asleep like that.
*
After two days, Elio is mostly back to normal, only a little more easily tired out, just a little more easily out of breath and he sees Amanediel off without telling him to bring his regards to Lucifer. He wants to do that himself, he'll pray to him tonight, Lucifer will hear.
The first person he contacts, though, once Amanediel is out the door, flapping away and gone in seconds, is his mother, calling her from the old landline. A part of him dreads the conversation, with how he had gone missing right before his father's funeral six months ago, he's checked the calendar, it reads 1st of April now, and thus he fears the inevitable awkwardness, the apologies, the anger. Yet, when he says, it's me, Mama, and hears how she recognizes his voice, the dread melts away, the way she breathes out long and slow making him relax. Seen.
"My boy," she replies. "Are you okay?"
"I'm in the summer house," he tells her.
"Good, good, but are you okay?" She insists.
Elio hesitates. "I'm still a little sick," he admits.
"I'll come," she says, simple as that, and they hang up a few minutes later, his mother driving from Milan the same day.
*
In the evening, having moved back into his old room and lying in the narrower bed alone, Elio prays to Lucifer for the first time, folding his hands and blinking up at the ceiling, although honestly it's the wrong direction, isn't it? My mother has come. I'm doing better, Lucifer. I'm doing better. It's going to be all right.
No answer, of course, but neither had Elio expected one immediately. The following days, he looks for clues, however - anything, a glass of whiskey left in an unusual place, what does he know, an empty tube of lube, a new apricot tree, tiny among its gigantic siblings, but nothing's out of place.
Nothing except him, it seems. Elio looks for a whole week, but when it doesn't manifest, Lucifer's attentions, he isn't more stubborn than that and he doesn't want to presume. He doesn't want to expect anything from Lucifer that the other man can't give, won't.
So although he keeps praying at regular intervals, he doesn't wait for a response. Lucifer was the one who taught him, after all, that he's better than that.
*
His mother stays with him for the whole month of April. By the end of it, he's regained his strength and feels himself warm up in the increasingly scorching Italian sun, reflecting in the surface of the sea, the slowly growing, slowly ripening peaches and apricots on the branches of the orchard trees their own kinds of suns. Of course the heat here is no match for Hell, but this is where Elio's supposed to be currently, Hell must wait. The King of Hell must. With the help of Anchise, Mafalda and Manfredi have begun working on the gardens, although his mother isn't going to stay here for the summer, traveling to the US with her new husband instead. Elio's promised to stay, to take care of the place, fill it with life, his mother implores.
He smiles, knowing she wouldn't understand how apt a request it is, from him.
*
Once his mother leaves for her over-the-summer stay in Florida, Elio's mostly alone in the house, aside from Mafalda glaring at him while simultaneously insisting on making him dinner, lunch, breakfast. She hasn't forgiven him for disappearing like he had six months earlier and really, he thinks, neither should she, but it sours their otherwise tender relationship a little bit and Elio does what he can to be patient with her, understanding, inviting.
In return, she does the same. It's just the glares.
And in the end, it's her idea, too, that he teaches the piano to the abundant of young people spending their summer in Bordighera with their immensely rich parents. When he says "young people", of course what he means is "young girls", because it's still a sexist world and women are expected to be artistic, entertaining while their brothers are either sporty or scientists in the making. Elio knows how that goes. He was never really either or.
But he remembers beach volley with the others, the summer Oliver was here. He remembers swimming and biking and beach volley all the other years, when Oliver was nowhere near.
Mid-May, he spreads the word that he's taking in pupils. By the 19th, he has five girls signed up, two of them intermediate, three of them beginners. They come to the summer house and practice on his father's old grand in the living room. Elio enjoys his return to teaching.
*
His father's old books are still neatly arranged in the huge bookshelves in his study, remaining untouched, like a shrine to him. Elio finds a couple on Greek mythology and starts reading up on Persephone himself, finding the abduction myth in a variety of versions that all come down to the same thing: when Persephone is on Earth, it flourishes, grows, blooms, but when she goes with Hades to the Underworld, Demeter lets it all fade away, the way the seasons work. Inserting his own name into the story feels weird and somehow sacrosanct, but it's pretty much the same story. Lucifer taking him to Hell, the Earth deflowering, fall, winter, Elio's body finding a way for him to go back to Earth, because he would never go on his own. This isn't Demeter's doing, in their world. It's God's.
That's the gift.
Elio closes the last book in the stack and leans his head back against the headrest of the armchair his father used to sit in. Like he's all that remains of his father now and he's only here half the time. It's just that he knows exactly where his father is, right, all the time. He knows who has him.
Melodramatically, he thinks his father's the lucky one and his father's dead.
*
Lucifer. You probably know, after all, you were probably there when this was a thing, but I'm going to tell you anyway, because I just discovered it today and I only have the sound of my own voice right now. Persephone was called "dreaded", because she ruled the Underworld, but to soften her position and ease people's relationship with her, she was nicknamed a whole array of sweet euphemisms. Can't they do that with me as well? I want to be equal parts dreaded and loved. I want to be both the Maiden and the Venerable One. I want to be both here and with you. You're waiting for me, aren't you? Please say yes. Please say something. Just leave a whiskey glass in the gardens somewhere, I'll find it. I'll find you. I'll see you, soon. Please. I love you.
*
Her name is Hélène Dubois, her family is out of Nice and they bought a summer house in the area a couple of years ago. She's been coming here ever since. She loves it, she says, the weather, the water, the community of summer residents. She isn't particularly interested in the piano, although she plays at an acceptable level for someone who's taken lessons for ten years. It just doesn't speak to her, he can sense that and he doesn't begrudge her. Instead he finds ways to make it fun, playing. Transcribes some of her favorite pop songs. She likes playing those, makes more of an effort.
"I don't like the old, dusty composers," she tells him one afternoon as they're finishing up. "They're all men."
Elio had noticed that it was all Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande with her.
"I'm a man," he says, not as an excuse, but as an amused observation.
Hélène purses her lips and looks at him sideways for a long moment. It speaks of a lot, that look, how she likes when he leans in over her to correct her hands, how he suspects she sometimes messes up on purpose to invite touch. Elio isn't blind to these things, he was almost eighteen once, too, wasn't he? He knows how it feels.
How it can be. How it can end.
"You're different," she just says as way of reply, getting to her feet and shaking out the wrinkles in her light summer dress. It cuts way above her knees. He's not made of stone, he's noticed. That's just all there is to it, her showing off, him noticing. "It's like you're more than a man, M. Perlman."
Bold, he thinks. And then, it's true, too.
He shakes his head, "I am what I am," and walks her to the door. Her bicycle is waiting outside and she gets on it with all the carefreeness of a soon-to-be eighteen year old girl in love for the first time and not yet fully aware that it'll end in tragedy. The wind blows up her skirts, giving him a glimpse of thong and buttocks and he smiles, a small, tired smile.
She waves at him by the gates and he waves back. She'll be here until August, who knows how long after that he's staying.
*
As spring turns to summer and he gets out more, biking through the landscape, visiting his old spots, Elio can't help but notice how nature responds to his presence differently now. At Monet's Berm, the mice gather in circles around his feet, forcing him to carefully monitor his step so he doesn't step on anyone. When he bikes along the graveled roads, dogs run in the roadside, keeping up with him even as he kicks the bike into gear and ups the tempo. Cats seek him out at home, wanting to be petted and scratched, him who never liked cats overly much and never was cared for by them either.
One evening as he walks down to Anchise's bench by the waterfront, he ends up with a live fish in his lap, flapping desperately and wriggling between his hands as he grabs onto it in surprise. They look at each other for a long moment, Elio and the fish, the way its mouth opens and closes and he lifts it to his face, mirroring it slowly. Mouth, opening and closing.
It lasts a few seconds, then he comes to his senses and throws it back into the sea, remembering the fish Anchise brought in that summer for fish soup. It would feel wrong eating this fish, though. It wanted something from him.
He doesn't know what, but then again, there's a lot of things Elio doesn't currently know. Thinking about Lucifer, he returns to the house, sits by the pool with a bottle of red until it's so dark outside that he can't make out the water anymore.
With yet another unanswered prayer, he goes to bed. A fish reminded me today that I'm going to outlive it, I'm going to outlive generations, Lucifer.
*
As September draws nearer and it's almost been a year, in a human timeframe, Elio visits his father's grave at the Jewish cemetery in Rome. It's a long train ride, but he likes the shift, away from Bordighera, towards more urban surroundings, nature overtaken by concrete and stone. He watches the landscape change gradually from the train's windows.
Standing in front of his father's tombstone somewhere near the middle of the cemetery, heart of the city, Elio feels a strange peace descend over him. His father isn't in the ground, after all, his father's in Hell and Hell is waiting for Elio still, like the name on the headstone links him directly to the flames and the loops and the life far below.
Maybe he should apologize for not being there at his funeral, but he's worked so closely together with his father in his Hell loop that it would seem somehow redundant. Elio was there, on the other side. Always on the other side.
Balling his hands into fists, he washes off the headstone gently before leaving, heading straight for the station and his train back. He'll be teaching Hélène tomorrow. A Taylor Swift song this time.
After that, who knows. Elio isn't waiting, he's just here until he isn't, anymore.
The Devil never lies.
"Awake," Amenadiel halfway asks and halfway concludes. Elio sits up, the covers pooling around his lap and his naked chest touched ever so gently by faint rays of sun. Spring. Morning.
Sending him a look that says, basically, can't you tell, Elio finally gives his surroundings a non-discreet sweep, the birds taking off with strands of his hair caught between their claws, the deer jumping to its feet and running for the edge of the clearing where it waits, looks back towards Elio. He should question it, but for some reason, he doesn't. He's experienced stranger things, you could say. Amanediel follows the little animals with his eyes as they scramble away. "Lucifer," Elio says the name with all care in the world, "he's gone back, right?"
"Yes," Amanediel says and that's it. That's all he says, he doesn't send his regards or pass on any messages. Just that, yes.
So, all Elio feels is a tiredness more deep-seated than any he's felt before.
The forest that Lucifer landed them in isn't far from Bordighera and Amanediel flies him the rest of the way to his mother's summer house, installs him in the upstairs bedroom that he once, thousands of years ago, shared with Lucifer when they were here. Sluggishly, Elio starts changing the bed linen, though the process is so slow that Amanediel halts him halfway through and takes over, putting fresh sheets on with an unmistakable efficiency that says, you're the Queen of Hell, but I'm faster. Elio just steps back and lets him, swaying a bit on his feet. Easy to say, really, for someone who can manipulate time.
"Amanediel," he finally speaks while the angel is fluffing his pillow and finishing up. "Why couldn't I stay in Hell, do you know?"
"Lie down," Amanediel tells him, shifting the duvet off to the side. Without comment, Elio does as he's told, though not before dropping the pajamas he'd put on upon arrival, so as not to run around in the nude. Amanediel pretends not to get uncomfortable and fails enough that Elio smiles a little, crawling under the blankets. The morning light in the room is gentle and yet sharp, he can't remember the last time he was here as early as, what, March? April? It must have been a decade at the least.
The angel, meanwhile, sits down on the chair in the corner, watches him curiously. A long moment passes in silence, then Amanediel tells him about his research with Ella back in LA. About the obvious ties to the Persephone myth that Elio's journey to Hell has had, so obvious that Elio himself has considered them, how they think his purpose is similar. To rule in Hell one "half" of the year, return to the world in the other. That the two halves are dependent on each other, interconnected, so he can't stay with Lucifer without getting recharged on Earth in between - and that the seasons can't flourish as they should on Earth without him going back for winter.
This is just the first time, Elio thinks to himself and turns his head away, pondering the whole story for a moment, blinking up at the ceiling, old, worn, same ceiling he was looking at lying next to Lucifer. It's cyclic.
A weight lifts off his chest. He suddenly breathes more freely.
"Does Lucifer know," he asks, then.
"I'll tell him once I leave," Amanediel assures him. Here, he means, you.
"Please stay a little while longer," Elio begs, the words feeling more foreign in his mouth than when he begs anything of Lucifer, like they don't belong there, like all his vulnerabilities feel exactly like that, vulnerable, around anyone else. The world is still the world and Lucifer is still Lucifer, separate somehow.
"I'll keep an eye on you for a few days," Amanediel promises, then leans back with his arms crossed over his chest, big and strong exactly like his brother who isn't here.
Elio falls asleep like that.
After two days, Elio is mostly back to normal, only a little more easily tired out, just a little more easily out of breath and he sees Amanediel off without telling him to bring his regards to Lucifer. He wants to do that himself, he'll pray to him tonight, Lucifer will hear.
The first person he contacts, though, once Amanediel is out the door, flapping away and gone in seconds, is his mother, calling her from the old landline. A part of him dreads the conversation, with how he had gone missing right before his father's funeral six months ago, he's checked the calendar, it reads 1st of April now, and thus he fears the inevitable awkwardness, the apologies, the anger. Yet, when he says, it's me, Mama, and hears how she recognizes his voice, the dread melts away, the way she breathes out long and slow making him relax. Seen.
"My boy," she replies. "Are you okay?"
"I'm in the summer house," he tells her.
"Good, good, but are you okay?" She insists.
Elio hesitates. "I'm still a little sick," he admits.
"I'll come," she says, simple as that, and they hang up a few minutes later, his mother driving from Milan the same day.
In the evening, having moved back into his old room and lying in the narrower bed alone, Elio prays to Lucifer for the first time, folding his hands and blinking up at the ceiling, although honestly it's the wrong direction, isn't it? My mother has come. I'm doing better, Lucifer. I'm doing better. It's going to be all right.
No answer, of course, but neither had Elio expected one immediately. The following days, he looks for clues, however - anything, a glass of whiskey left in an unusual place, what does he know, an empty tube of lube, a new apricot tree, tiny among its gigantic siblings, but nothing's out of place.
Nothing except him, it seems. Elio looks for a whole week, but when it doesn't manifest, Lucifer's attentions, he isn't more stubborn than that and he doesn't want to presume. He doesn't want to expect anything from Lucifer that the other man can't give, won't.
So although he keeps praying at regular intervals, he doesn't wait for a response. Lucifer was the one who taught him, after all, that he's better than that.
His mother stays with him for the whole month of April. By the end of it, he's regained his strength and feels himself warm up in the increasingly scorching Italian sun, reflecting in the surface of the sea, the slowly growing, slowly ripening peaches and apricots on the branches of the orchard trees their own kinds of suns. Of course the heat here is no match for Hell, but this is where Elio's supposed to be currently, Hell must wait. The King of Hell must. With the help of Anchise, Mafalda and Manfredi have begun working on the gardens, although his mother isn't going to stay here for the summer, traveling to the US with her new husband instead. Elio's promised to stay, to take care of the place, fill it with life, his mother implores.
He smiles, knowing she wouldn't understand how apt a request it is, from him.
Once his mother leaves for her over-the-summer stay in Florida, Elio's mostly alone in the house, aside from Mafalda glaring at him while simultaneously insisting on making him dinner, lunch, breakfast. She hasn't forgiven him for disappearing like he had six months earlier and really, he thinks, neither should she, but it sours their otherwise tender relationship a little bit and Elio does what he can to be patient with her, understanding, inviting.
In return, she does the same. It's just the glares.
And in the end, it's her idea, too, that he teaches the piano to the abundant of young people spending their summer in Bordighera with their immensely rich parents. When he says "young people", of course what he means is "young girls", because it's still a sexist world and women are expected to be artistic, entertaining while their brothers are either sporty or scientists in the making. Elio knows how that goes. He was never really either or.
But he remembers beach volley with the others, the summer Oliver was here. He remembers swimming and biking and beach volley all the other years, when Oliver was nowhere near.
Mid-May, he spreads the word that he's taking in pupils. By the 19th, he has five girls signed up, two of them intermediate, three of them beginners. They come to the summer house and practice on his father's old grand in the living room. Elio enjoys his return to teaching.
His father's old books are still neatly arranged in the huge bookshelves in his study, remaining untouched, like a shrine to him. Elio finds a couple on Greek mythology and starts reading up on Persephone himself, finding the abduction myth in a variety of versions that all come down to the same thing: when Persephone is on Earth, it flourishes, grows, blooms, but when she goes with Hades to the Underworld, Demeter lets it all fade away, the way the seasons work. Inserting his own name into the story feels weird and somehow sacrosanct, but it's pretty much the same story. Lucifer taking him to Hell, the Earth deflowering, fall, winter, Elio's body finding a way for him to go back to Earth, because he would never go on his own. This isn't Demeter's doing, in their world. It's God's.
That's the gift.
Elio closes the last book in the stack and leans his head back against the headrest of the armchair his father used to sit in. Like he's all that remains of his father now and he's only here half the time. It's just that he knows exactly where his father is, right, all the time. He knows who has him.
Melodramatically, he thinks his father's the lucky one and his father's dead.
Lucifer. You probably know, after all, you were probably there when this was a thing, but I'm going to tell you anyway, because I just discovered it today and I only have the sound of my own voice right now. Persephone was called "dreaded", because she ruled the Underworld, but to soften her position and ease people's relationship with her, she was nicknamed a whole array of sweet euphemisms. Can't they do that with me as well? I want to be equal parts dreaded and loved. I want to be both the Maiden and the Venerable One. I want to be both here and with you. You're waiting for me, aren't you? Please say yes. Please say something. Just leave a whiskey glass in the gardens somewhere, I'll find it. I'll find you. I'll see you, soon. Please. I love you.
Her name is Hélène Dubois, her family is out of Nice and they bought a summer house in the area a couple of years ago. She's been coming here ever since. She loves it, she says, the weather, the water, the community of summer residents. She isn't particularly interested in the piano, although she plays at an acceptable level for someone who's taken lessons for ten years. It just doesn't speak to her, he can sense that and he doesn't begrudge her. Instead he finds ways to make it fun, playing. Transcribes some of her favorite pop songs. She likes playing those, makes more of an effort.
"I don't like the old, dusty composers," she tells him one afternoon as they're finishing up. "They're all men."
Elio had noticed that it was all Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande with her.
"I'm a man," he says, not as an excuse, but as an amused observation.
Hélène purses her lips and looks at him sideways for a long moment. It speaks of a lot, that look, how she likes when he leans in over her to correct her hands, how he suspects she sometimes messes up on purpose to invite touch. Elio isn't blind to these things, he was almost eighteen once, too, wasn't he? He knows how it feels.
How it can be. How it can end.
"You're different," she just says as way of reply, getting to her feet and shaking out the wrinkles in her light summer dress. It cuts way above her knees. He's not made of stone, he's noticed. That's just all there is to it, her showing off, him noticing. "It's like you're more than a man, M. Perlman."
Bold, he thinks. And then, it's true, too.
He shakes his head, "I am what I am," and walks her to the door. Her bicycle is waiting outside and she gets on it with all the carefreeness of a soon-to-be eighteen year old girl in love for the first time and not yet fully aware that it'll end in tragedy. The wind blows up her skirts, giving him a glimpse of thong and buttocks and he smiles, a small, tired smile.
She waves at him by the gates and he waves back. She'll be here until August, who knows how long after that he's staying.
As spring turns to summer and he gets out more, biking through the landscape, visiting his old spots, Elio can't help but notice how nature responds to his presence differently now. At Monet's Berm, the mice gather in circles around his feet, forcing him to carefully monitor his step so he doesn't step on anyone. When he bikes along the graveled roads, dogs run in the roadside, keeping up with him even as he kicks the bike into gear and ups the tempo. Cats seek him out at home, wanting to be petted and scratched, him who never liked cats overly much and never was cared for by them either.
One evening as he walks down to Anchise's bench by the waterfront, he ends up with a live fish in his lap, flapping desperately and wriggling between his hands as he grabs onto it in surprise. They look at each other for a long moment, Elio and the fish, the way its mouth opens and closes and he lifts it to his face, mirroring it slowly. Mouth, opening and closing.
It lasts a few seconds, then he comes to his senses and throws it back into the sea, remembering the fish Anchise brought in that summer for fish soup. It would feel wrong eating this fish, though. It wanted something from him.
He doesn't know what, but then again, there's a lot of things Elio doesn't currently know. Thinking about Lucifer, he returns to the house, sits by the pool with a bottle of red until it's so dark outside that he can't make out the water anymore.
With yet another unanswered prayer, he goes to bed. A fish reminded me today that I'm going to outlive it, I'm going to outlive generations, Lucifer.
As September draws nearer and it's almost been a year, in a human timeframe, Elio visits his father's grave at the Jewish cemetery in Rome. It's a long train ride, but he likes the shift, away from Bordighera, towards more urban surroundings, nature overtaken by concrete and stone. He watches the landscape change gradually from the train's windows.
Standing in front of his father's tombstone somewhere near the middle of the cemetery, heart of the city, Elio feels a strange peace descend over him. His father isn't in the ground, after all, his father's in Hell and Hell is waiting for Elio still, like the name on the headstone links him directly to the flames and the loops and the life far below.
Maybe he should apologize for not being there at his funeral, but he's worked so closely together with his father in his Hell loop that it would seem somehow redundant. Elio was there, on the other side. Always on the other side.
Balling his hands into fists, he washes off the headstone gently before leaving, heading straight for the station and his train back. He'll be teaching Hélène tomorrow. A Taylor Swift song this time.
After that, who knows. Elio isn't waiting, he's just here until he isn't, anymore.