#ᴀɴᴅʀᴇᴀs ― ❝𝐏𝐎𝐕

[theobaileypp-archived]

POV ☀ summer

The past few weeks had been nothing short of idyllic. Like a late bird, Theo had flown south, to sand and beach and tall palm trees, to Salvador, Brazil, where his parents were fortunate enough to keep a refuge, away from the cold and the dreadful snow. And if the warm breeze and shinning sun hadn’t been enough to lift his spirits, then his company would be. Vivienne. Beautiful, sweet, complicated, his. Viv. She'd taken his hand, his tickets, and flown south right next to him, and it was as if he couldn't quite believe it, them. Theo Andreas hardly ever had any luck― he thought he'd had enough of it when Jasmine and Richard Bailey found him and made him theirs to love and care for. That was enough luck for a lifetime. And yet, yet...

The sun was bright during the day, the colors vivid, the sand warm and the sea water perfect. He knew the sounds of the city like his own heartbeat, in the ever-present drumming music and the capoeira dances he loved to watch and the language, the soft-spoken Portuguese with that particular, regional cadence he could hear for hours. At night, he'd taken her to meet his friends of a lifetime in the streets unknown to tourists where the trouble of walking through the cobblestone was always worth it. Salvador vibrated like nowhere else, as did they.

One night, covered in sweat, lying naked next to one another as the cool breeze entered the large windows of Bailey house, Theo had looked at her face, sculpted by the gods, worthy of a thousand poems in a thousand languages, and touched her cheek. Now, he sort of wishes he hadn't. But he did. And he told her the thing that had threatened to choke him up for a while.

Eu te amo.

And surprisingly enough, her lips had curved into a smile and she'd said it.

I love you.

They loved each other all night long, until the sun shone directly into his eyes in the morning, only for him to find out she wasn't there anymore.

Vivienne had left. She loved him, and she left. And the joyful, comforting distant drums stopped beating to the sound of a berimbau and the vivid colors of the city were washed out with bleach and the sun disappeared behind the clouds like it didn't know it was summer in the tropics.

So Theo flew back home.

#tw sad theo again #ᴀɴᴅʀᴇᴀs ― ❝𝐏𝐎𝐕 #ғɪʟᴇᴅ ᴜɴᴅᴇʀ ― ❝𝐕𝐈𝐕𝐈𝐄𝐍𝐍𝐄

[theobaileypp-archived]

pov. motherland. μάνα

Theo doesn’t believe in God. And yet, here he is, waiting in church for an act of faith. This particular church isn’t grand or impressive like the ones he’s seen across the world before—churches carved in pure gold, churches tall enough to make your neck hurt, but the ceiling is painted in blue, constellations in bright gold, and he can’t stop looking up, nervously rubbing his fingers together. He often wonders if he would have been different had he grown up under normal circumstances—if the orphanage he’d grown up in didn’t believe so much in penitence, if the Baileys hadn’t been so syncretic and secular. 

He’d never looked for any sort of faith, even though the poetry of it never went unnoticed for him. In the devotion of the faithful, the prayer of those in pain. He was, after all, a man of words and those said with such honesty fascinated him.

Now, he’s in the third row, on the hard wooden bench, and waits. Waits, staring at the starry ceiling, until slow, deliberate steps echoes through the church and a veiled sister, a nun, sits next to him. Theo can’t find the words in him, “You called for me.” She says, in Greek, sounding heartbreakingly unimpressed. He’s dreamed of this moment many times in the past, a moment he thought had been stolen from him, and so he didn’t know how to proceed. He nodded, not able to look in her eyes—eyes he’s dreamed of his entire life. “Do you know who I am?” She makes a sound with the back of her throat. She knows. He hadn’t been looking for her, he had never looked for her.

He’d been arranging his documentation, his resident visa, when bureaucracy drove him back to his motherland, to the island he was born in, the pastoral community so ill equipped to deal with dangerously premature babies that he’d only spent a few hours of life there before being taken to Athens. He’d never actually returned to his birthplace, even if he visited Greece fairly often. Now, the ferry took him to the island through the clear blue water, to a stunning place secret to tourists, where fishermen yell around in angry, dialect-heavy Greek. It doesn’t feel like home, and the fact that it’s on top of a rocky mountain doesn’t make it very easy on him—another reason why he likes Athens better, because accessibility there is at least an afterthought whereas here it’s not a concept at all. The climb, the endless stairs, are hard on him, and he makes the decision to spend the night, just so he’ll manage to rest. Theo didn’t know then what he knows now.

Theo didn’t know a lot of things.

He didn’t know, for example, that he never knew his mother’s name not because no one knew it, because she’d died in childbirth, but because that’s what you do when you hand a child over for adoption.

hand him over for adoption.

he also didn’t know that as an adult, he could ask for the information to be disclosed. 

Theo wants to ask her why, but the words don’t come out. Why? He knew why. Because you could fit in the palm of my hand. Because I didn’t think you would make it --- they said that if you did... He wouldn’t talk or walk or think. He knew the drill. His knuckles were white. He wanted to tell her that none of it should have mattered, because it didn’t matter to his parents, his odd, loving true parents, Richard and Jasmine Bailey. He wanted to ask her if she regretted it now that he was six feet tall and not attached to any machines, now that he spoke twelve languages and had all academia glory one could dream of. Instead, without him even asking, “I was young and alone”, she says. 

“Me too.” Theo answers.

They don’t say anything else. He can’t say anything else. Theo wishes he could stand up fast and simply leave, show her how wrong she’d been, how he could have been worth it, but it doesn’t have quite the same impact when your limitations are as visible, when it takes so long for him to even manage past her in the asile and his graphite crutches resonates against the centuries-old stone floor as his tired, cramping legs carry him out of the church. He doesn’t make it very far. He sits on the stone bench under an old, twisted olive tree and buries his face in his hands as his chest clenches even tighter and his heart races and he finds it difficult to breathe, until he hears someone coaching him through it in his mother tongue, with a calm, steady voice.

She brushes his back. “You know where to find me, son.” It feels unclear whether she means son in the biblical or biological sense, and he supposes it doesn’t matter. Before she leaves, he looks at her. Theo has been right his entire life. They do have the same eyes.

#yes this is a daredevil arc i dont care #tw sad theo #tw orphan #tw anxiety attack #tw religion #tw nun #tw premature birth #ᴀɴᴅʀᴇᴀs ― ❝𝐏𝐎𝐕