#here's the deathfic rewrite. i'll post it to ffn and ao3 eventually

[goldendiie]

as the sun sets fillmore dies, and sarge copes.

. . . .

1979

Fillmore is dying. Sarge knows that much. It’s been a month (or maybe two, or three) since he’d been admitted to some hospital in Albuquerque, and five days since they’d stopped letting Sarge into the room. Not Family, the Nurse had said, an apologetic, red lipstick smile plastered on her face. Bullshit, Sarge had replied. Still, she didn’t let him in.

He goes to the hospital every day, only to sit in the waiting room and stare at the same point in the wall, anxiously waiting for any news. He thinks, maybe Fillmore will just get up and walk out, completely healed by some miracle that Sarge would never be able to describe. Any second now. Any second…. No. No, that’s childish. He gets up, and makes for the door.

As he faces the bustle of the outside world, a part of him wants someone (a nurse? A doctor?) to run up behind him and tell him to stay. He’s been asking for you, they’d say, you can see him now. He pushes open the door, and walks into the dying sunlight. Nobody calls after him, nobody is completely healed.

He returns the next day, like he always does. The secretary remembers his name.

Sarge watches the people who come through the waiting room. They’re here to see sick grandparents, newborn children. Lovers, parents, friends. He begins to fall into space, lost in the cycle of existence that he had come to know. Fillmore is dying. Fillmore could be dead, for all he knows. Maybe they’re removing him from his hospital room now, making it all neat and proper for the next dead man to pass through its door--

“You’re here for Fillmore, right?”

He snaps out of it, and looks up. He’s met with the same careful, sad, red lipstick smile that he’d seen a few days prior. Sarge must look awfully pale, or awfully shocked, because the Nurse quickly says: “You can see him now, if you like.” He hardly feels the ground beneath his feet as he follows her deep into the bowels of the hospital.

“He’s been begging to see you, you know.” the Nurse says cordially, resting a manicured hand on the doorknob of room four-nine-eight. For whatever reason, she pauses before letting him in the room. It’s dark, save for the light coming in from the hallway, and that of the quickly setting sun outside. The only sound inside the room is the unceasing beep, beep, beep of the electrocardiograph monitor.

“You have a visitor.” The Nurse says quietly, turning on the lights.

Sarge watches in vague, distraught horror as Fillmore sat up and turned his sallow, sunken face to look at him. He certainly looked dead, with empty, glossed-over eyes and too-thin appendages. Yet, a wide, familiar grin split across Fillmore’s face as he spoke in a struggling voice: “Hey, man. It’s been a while.”

Sarge deflated in some strange form of relief as he drifted forward to catch Fillmore’s outstretched hand. It felt foreign in his own. Too frail, too cold.

“I’ll leave you two to it.” The Nurse says, exiting quickly.

Fillmore falls back on his pillows as the door clicks shut behind her. “Dunno why she wouldn’t let me see you.” He says, “You know, I’d like to see my lover before--”

“She’s just following rules.” Sarge replies, almost curtly.

“They’re stupid rules.” Fillmore huffs.

The revolutionary spirit Fillmore had gained during the tail end of the sixties never left him, even on his deathbed. Sarge chuckles weakly. “You haven’t changed a bit.”

“Why would I change?”

Sarge shrugs as he pulls a chair up next to the bed. He opts to change the subject instead of answering the question: “You look like hell.”

“I feel like it, too.” Fillmore replies. “They don’t let me smoke ‘round here, man….”

“That would probably just make it worse.”

“I’m dyin’ here, dude, they could at least let me have a smoke before I off myself.”

It seemed that Fillmore had grown comfortable with his inevitable demise. Ready to meet the unknown, or ready to find true peace. Whichever. Sarge grows quiet with this thought, now staring down at their clasped hands.

Fillmore clears his throat, somewhat startling him. “I, uh, wanted to ask you something, man.” He says. “Like my last wish, or something.”

“What’s that?”

“Lemme preface with the fact that I know you, Sarge.” Fillmore says, “You’re stubborn, you’re damned sentimental, and--”

“Fillmore.” Sarge interrupts. “Get to the point.”

“Move on.” His voice is clear, strong. “Live your life.”

“You can't ask me to--”

“It's all part of life, man. It's gonna happen eventually.”

And that was that. Sarge knows that it’s no use to argue with him; after all, he’s right. In time, he would move on whether he liked it or not. He sighs. “Yeah. Alright.”

Fillmore grins and opens his mouth to say something more, but is overtaken by a coughing fit. Sarge dropped his hand and shot to his feet, ready to find help if need be. “Fillmore, are you--”

“I’m fine.” Fillmore’s hands clutch his chest as he gasped. His voice had become raspy, hollow.“Sit back down, wouldja?”

Sarge did as he was asked. “Sorry, I thought--”

“Don’t apologize.” Fillmore interrupts. “It happens sometimes.”

It shouldn’t happen, Sarge thinks, This shouldn’t be happening to you.

The silence that now consumes the room is pregnant. There’s whispers of ideas of what Sarge could say, but he finds he wouldn’t be able to verbalize them even if he tried.

It’s several minutes until their silence is broken.

“How’re the folks back home?” Fillmore asks. “Any customers?”

“None.” Sarge replies. “And they’re doing fine. Flo and Ramone said they were gonna stop by tomorrow.”

“That’ll be nice.”

It’s difficult to decide whether small talk is a vice or a virtue. In the moment which it matters most, they’re unable to talk about anything meaningful. Yet, conversation is better than the bitter silence, filled only by the monitor on Fillmore’s heart.

Sarge finds Fillmore’s hand again. He squeezes it in some attempt to ease the anxiety he must be feeling. Outside, the sun had begun to set in a fantastic wash of red and orange and periwinkle-blue. The hour had grown late.

“You should get some rest.” Sarge said.

“Yeah.” Fillmore returned, “Sounds like a good idea.”

“I’m gonna stay with you.” He said, “In case I leave and they don’t let me back in tomorrow.”

Fillmore laughed. “See you in the morning, then.”

It’s so normal, natural, that it feels somewhat like a promise. Morning will come, and Fillmore will still be here, waking up with the rising sun. It isn’t long before the sunlight falls off of his face, and he is asleep.

Fillmore looks almost peaceful, if not for the wires and IVs pumping life into him. He didn’t belong here, in this sterile, white environment. He belonged at home, in Radiator Springs, playing that obnoxious music and arguing about the moon landing.

The Nurse ushers in once more, long after the sunset was replaced with a sky dotted with stars. “Visiting hours are over.” She said, lingering near the doorway for a moment too long.

“Can I stay with him?” Sarge asks. He turns his stinging-tired gaze onto her, Fillmore’s hand still clasped between both of his own.

There’s a terribly long pause, before she melancholically utters: “Of course.”

He returns his gaze to Fillmore, who hadn’t stirred. His head is turned towards the ceiling, and he snores quietly. He could tell that he was in pain; every so often his breathing would turn to quiet, strangled gurgling. It never lasted long, though. Fillmore was right. It happens sometimes.

“You’ve fought hard.” Sarge whispers, and Fillmore’s fingers tighten. “But you can’t give up. You need to keep--” his voice deteriorates with each word. “You need to keep going.”

His words fall on deaf ears. Fillmore’s face remains turned towards the ceiling. Sarge sighs and rests his head on the edge of the bed. He closes his eyes, and the night consumes him.

It's not half a moment later, and Sarge is raising his head. He wonders if he’s imagining the flatline. It fades in and out of his hearing as Fillmore’s grip on his hand loosens. His fingers are thin, he notices. As are his wrists, and arms, and torso. He’s too thin. His eyes travel upwards to Fillmore’s (thin, sallow, lifeless) face. His mouth is slightly open, and his empty, glossed-over eyes stare, unseeing, at the ceiling. There’s color yet in his cheeks.

Sarge lets go of his hand, and it falls limply to the side of the bed. The walls are closing in on him, and the flatline only grows in volume as he reaches for the body in a haze. His hands grip the sheets, and then the thin hospital gown. He tries to speak-- some mixture of a question and a plea-- but the only sound that escapes him is a strangled moan.

He’s painfully aware of the Nurse prying him away from the body. She guides him into the hallway, leading him by the arm, as a doctor rushes in to pronounce the death.

“He’s not in pain anymore,” the Nurse hushed, “He’s in a better place.”

Sarge broke away from her and not-quite-ran for the exit, dashing into the lobby and then into the parking lot. Its early morning, almost the time that he play his Reiville, almost the time it would be met with that god-awful rendition of the national anthem--

He slams the door of his jeep and covers his head with his hands, his entire body shaking with silent wails.

. . . .

Fillmore is buried on a wonderfully, painfully sunny day in July. Sarge watches numbly as the plain, matte-black casket is lowered below the desert floor. He hated black, he thought as it’s slowly covered up with dirt. Only then did he share in the opinion; it was void of all life and feeling, not at all suitable for someone who had been as vibrant and intrinsic as the sunset over Willy’s Butte.

Yet, the sun had surrendered itself all too quickly, and Fillmore died young. Born 24 April, 1948; Died 29 June, 1979. He was only thirty-one. Far too young for someone like him, Sarge muses. He’d had a whole life ahead of him, brewing those horrible teas and playing that god-awful music--

“Are you gonna be alright?”

Sarge had lingered too long. He hadn’t noticed that the crowd had dispersed, leaving only him to watch the grave. Ramone is standing behind and to the left of him. His voice is concerned, condolatary.

Sarge turns his back to the gravesite. “I’ll be fine.” He said evenly, brushing the hand away and walking past him.

“You were close to him, man,” Ramone said, following closely behind him. “I’m just worried that you’re gonna--”

“I’m fine.” Sarge insisted.

And that was that. Ramone left him alone, and he continued towards his home in peace. It wasn’t the quiet, content peace that he’d grown accustomed to. No, now it’s empty, void. Silence is better than conversation.

Sarge doesn’t look at Fillmore’s dome (nor the “for sale” sign in front of it) as he passes. He looks straight ahead, chin up and shoulders squared. He lets himself inside his shop, and the door quietly clicks shut behind him. He continued towards the back of the shop and through another door, into his living area. It’s nothing special-- a small kitchen, a sitting area, and a bedroom behind a door off to the side. He stands in the center of it all, aimlessly staring into space.

He needs to clean out Fillmore’s dome. Clean out all of the junk that he’d accumulated over the years, determine what he’d keep and what he’d sell. Speaking of selling, he’d need to get rid of the bus, too, now that there was no one to drive it… Sarge decides promptly to stop thinking about it. He re-enters his shop, flicks on the lights, and stalks up and down the rows of military surplus. Backpacks, boots, butterfly knives. His medals--currently pinned to his lapel-- are usually in a display case front and center. He keeps them in prime condition, like everything else from his time in Vietnam--

He hears gunfire. The surplus shop is gone, replaced by a jungle under a cloudless night sky. He’s cowering behind a tree, holding his rifle to his chest. The NVA or Viet-Cong or whatever they were had gotten their hands on an anti-vehicle gun. Five, maybe ten men were dead just past the perimeter line. Phuoc Tuy, that’s right, he’s in Phuoc Tuy--

Just like that, it’s over. He’s back in Radiator Springs, swaying back and forth like he’s about to fall over. Sarge supposes a car had backfired, or something had fallen over in another room. It’s just stress, that’s all, he thinks. That’s all it took. Stress, and a loud noise.

He occupies himself and his mind by displacing and replacing items on the shelves. Vaguely, he realizes how silly he must look: he’s cleaning his shop in full dress uniform, shoes polished, medals pinned to his suit. He really should go change, but he doesn’t. He continues to tidy the shop, over and over again until he can’t bring himself to do it anymore.

He collapses on his couch, and falls asleep almost instantly. He dreams of gunfire and Fillmore’s sallow, sunken face.

The next day is just like any other: Sarge wakes in the early hours of the morning, head pressed uncomfortably into the arm of the couch, staring through the slats in the blinds as the new day rises. As he forces himself to get up, he notices the new creases in his suit. He’d have to iron it sooner or later.

Sarge’s routine is slow and grueling-- or, rather, it had become slow and greuling. He leaves his suit in a heap on the floor, showers with cold water, and dresses once again. A passing glance in the mirror tells him how god-awful he looks: his features are tired and gaunt, complete with heavy bags under his eyes and a thin frown etched into his face.

He looks somewhere between dying and dead; a little like Fillmore before he’d passed. Vaguely, he imagines himself in Fillmore’s place, frail and weak while nurses and doctors prodded at him with needles and tubes. Surely, he would put up a fight, yet it would be all for naught. Inevitably, he would die. The image fades back into that of Fillmore, coughing himself into a sleep from which he would never wake. He hadn’t gone peacefully, Sarge realizes. His eyes were open upon his death.

The thought had shocked him into a stupor. He stands, like a fool, staring at his own wide-eyed reflection in the mirror. He shakes his head, as if to rattle his realization away, and continues on with his day.

. . . .

It’s early October before Sarge had grown numb enough to finally clean out Fillmore’s dome. No one ever bought the lot-- it was practically useless, since traffic on the road had long since ceased-- but cleaning it out still seemed to be a worthwhile idea. Fillmore would have wanted his stuff to be given away, anyways.

The once-colorful interior of the dome was covered in a thick layer of dust. It had been months since anyone had inhabited it, making the haphazard placement of personal items seem like an exhibit out of a museum: the kitchen still has pots in the sink, the bedsheets are still disheveled, and the needle of a record player is still in the grooves of an LP. There’s no good place to start in all of the mess. After all, how is one supposed to go about sorting through someone’s life? There must be an established method, a routine he could follow….

He opts to start with the records. That’s easy, right? They’re neatly packed into crates beneath a wooden stand, on top of which sat a poorly-aged Achiphon. There’s an old ten-inch single under the needle, and Sarge somehow recognizes it, despite how long it had been since he’d seen it. How many times had Fillmore played it for him? Ten? Twenty?

Sarge replaces the needle at the start of the LP, and switches the record player on. It pops with the dust and grime it had gathered over the past few months, before finally crackling to life. There’s drums as a guitar settles down into a melody, and a great diminuendo is met with Jimi Hendrix’s vocals. “Waterfall, nothing can harm me at all…” The music settles into every corner of the dome. Sarge had hated this song back in the day, but now it somehow relaxes him. Fillmore wouldn’t have let him hear the end of it, if he were still around. “My worries seem so very small, with my waterfall….”

He takes in the dome in one sweeping glance, now realizing that he doesn't fully want to disrupt it. It’s as though he’s erasing Fillmore’s last remaining presence off of the earth, truly killing him once and for all.

That’s entirely irrational, though. He flicks through the rest of the vinyls (Hendrix, The Kinks, Donovan, Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane), and sets them to the side. He thinks he might sell them. Someone else could get better use out of them.

Sarge moves along, looking for something else to look through. He turns next to the boxes of clothes that are pushed underneath the bed. Most of his shirts are garishly tie-dyed, and most of his pants have holes in them. Surprisingly, Sarge even finds a few of his own items of clothing, evidently left here throughout the years. He moves the boxes next to the crates of vinyls, designating it as things he would get rid of.

He moves on to a bookshelf at the foot of the bed. It’s packed with old, torn-up volumes. There’s old college textbooks, fantasy, science fiction, and…. The dome is suddenly quiet as Sarge pulls an unmarked book from the shelf. He’d been working so quickly, so efficiently, that he hadn’t realized the song had ended. He opens the book, only to find that it wasn’t a book, but a photo album. Sarge flicks through it absentmindedly. Photos of people, places he didn't recognize. Perhaps they were some old college buddies, or some fellow hippies he'd run into in his travels--

Sarge stops, mid-page turn. There’s a polaroid stuffed between the pages like a bookmark. With one steady hand, he removes it from the book and stares at it. He doesn’t remember letting Fillmore take a photo of them together, yet in his hand he held evidence that proved otherwise. The photo is at such an awkward angle that it was obvious Fillmore himself was the one holding the camera. Half of his face was visible: half of a crooked grin, half of a newly-grown beard, half of a nose, one eye. Sarge wasn’t looking at the camera when the photo was taken, instead looking out over some unseen distance. His head rested on the edge of Fillmore’s shoulder, like their closeness was the most natural thing in the world. On the white border of the photograph, scrawled in round, looping handwriting, was a date: August, 1967.

That had only been a few months after they’d met. He remembers that they-- the hippies and the press and whatnot-- had called it “The Summer of Love,” and he never really understood why. Such a strange name, when there was a war in Vietnam and protests in the streets… Sarge’s nostalgia was fleeting, and quickly left him feeling empty. In a fit of sentimental longing, he finds himself wishing to live it all again. To find himself in Radiator Springs again, to meet Fillmore again, to fall violently, fitfully in love again. They had wasted their time together, ignorant of the fact that it would be cut short.

Sarge realizes that he had been staring off into space. He stands, dusts himself off, and pockets the photograph. He sets the photo album aside, and stacks the rest of the books next to the pile of items to be sold. He puts the needle at the start of the LP again, and loses himself as he continues to work.

Waterfall, nothing can harm me at all…

. . . .

Sarge finally decides to visit the grave in November. It’s colder than it had been all week, and the temperature was dropping by the hour; he’d grown so used to the heat that anything lower than sixty degrees felt like winter. With his hands balled in his pockets, he sets off into the desert. He reaches the gravestone as the sun is beginning to set. He stares at it for a moment, coming to grips that he was standing above the body of his closest confidante.

Sarge isn’t sure why, but he begins to speak. “Hello, Fillmore. It’s been a while.”

Half of him expects a reply-- a “hey, man,” or something like that-- but the only sound is the wind, and the distant echo of interstate traffic.

“It’s quieter, without you.” He continues, “No one around to argue with.”

Dead, incomplete silence.

“I miss you.” Sarge blurts out, “I really do. And the time we had together was….” He trailed off, not exactly sure how to say it. “Well, it was just great.”

If Fillmore was listening, he would be grinning from ear to ear. Sarge knows that much.

He kneels down, and scrapes the dirt from the lettering. Born 24 April, 1948; Died 29 June, 1979. Only thirty-one years old. A life as vibrant and intrinsic and fleeting as the sunset over Willy’s Butte. Sarge stands again, and wipes the dirt from his pants. He watches the grave for a moment, now aware of a tremendous weight that had been lifted from his shoulders.

“Goodbye, Fillmore.”

As he leaves, the sky is a wonderful wash of red and orange and periwinkle-blue.

#here's the deathfic rewrite. i'll post it to ffn and ao3 eventually #cars fandom #sargemore #fillmore #sarge #writing tag