Chapter Text
“When you need me, I’ll be there.”
Tyler Galpin and Galene Dacre were all but six years of age when tragedy first struck. Francoise Galpin, neé Night, had died—the reason unknown, or simply too complex for the children to comprehend. They both only understood that Tyler no longer had a mother. At the time, they were too young to understand funerals, far too young to understand death, much too young to understand grief, but old enough to feel the emotions caused by all three. Two pairs of eyes, vacated tears leaving them bloodshot, met in a moment of sincerity as they uttered this promise to one another in Tyler’s room, away from the swirl of people draped in black downstairs.
Since then, the promise they made remained unbroken.
At age seven, Galene broke her wrist, having flown off a see-saw when Tyler’s teasing went too far. She remembered his distress like it was yesterday—his incessant apologies, his worry and panic pathetically masked by his sheepish jokes, his fear upon seeing the fury in Galene’s mother, and his relief when he saw her again, waving her cast-caged wrist the moment she saw him at school. He was the first to sign her cast, though it was more chicken scratch than an actual signature.
At age nine, she had been recognized for her voice and was promptly recruited into the school choir. She could vividly recall how damp her skirt was, having suffered the constant wiping of her crying palms. But all her nerves dissipated when the music began, and her little melodies swept through the entire campus like a tide. The grin on Tyler’s face was unmistakably impossible to wipe off. He was the one who clapped the loudest that day.
At age 12, prompted by the plethora of mean comments a middle-schooler could be capable of, Galene burned multiple strands of her hair in a desperate—and obviously futile—attempt to iron it straight. In a panic, she called on Tyler for help, who, after assessing the situation, had to stifle a laugh until he could no longer hold back. Galene was near tears, but seeing Tyler nearly doubled over in laughter cracked a grin on her face. He was the one who accompanied her to the hair salon to get it fixed.
As children, the world had felt minuscule, easily contained in their joint hands. But now, everything felt too grandiose—too much to take in, too much to bear at times.
Almost mirroring the day they had made their promise, Tyler was there, unfailingly, when an unexpected tragedy wiped the glee off of Galene’s face indefinitely—or at least it seemed so at the time. It was raining at Caspian Dacre’s funeral, and Tyler held the umbrella over her, shielding the girl who was so indifferent to the world and who scarcely cared about being drenched by the pelts of rain. An accident. Gone too soon. The man had been unable to return from his business trip with the violin he had promised his thirteen-year-old daughter. Amidst it all, her mother kept up a stoic façade, and Galene almost yelled at her to show emotions for once, if it weren’t for the comforting hand Tyler laid on her back. Older now, and with a relatively broader understanding of the concept, Tyler was there for her through her grief, as she had been there for him all those years ago.
Memories are a funny thing once you recount them. Intangible as they are, they should not have the power to incite a whirlwind of potent emotions—yet, they do, and they do so all too often to a mind that never rests. Galene's mind, for one, had been chasing its own tail all afternoon—unaware that soon, it would have far greater phantoms to outrun.