Work Text:
The pawn. The weakest piece in a game of chess, as well as the most numerous, making it the most disposable .
The pawn is the first to move in most games. He is also often the first captured, kicked off of the board.
Good thing there’s more than one.
—
Jason waited at the bus stop for his father, kicking his feet mindlessly underneath him. His backpack used to burn at his shoulders, his textbooks weighing him down, but he had grown used to it by now.
The wind blew at his hair, the sound of leaves being like white noise of some sort, quieting down his thoughts.
Eventually, “Jace,” the sound of his father’s voice broke his train of thought, not that it was coherent in the first place.
He stood up, grabbed his father’s hand, and they began their walk.
Whenever Jason had to walk with his father, he felt so much
smaller
, less than. He wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was how small his hand was in comparison to his father, maybe it was how obvious it was that his father had been through
so much more
. Whatever it was, Jason wasn’t able to get used to it like other things.
The feeling still burned like putting on a backpack.
—
Home.
A house, really. Home was more of a feeling. A feeling Jason didn’t really remember much of anymore.
The feeling was warm. “Home is where the heart is” posters used to annoy him, but he couldn’t find it in him to
be
annoyed anymore. Maybe it was true in some annoyingly cliche way?
Jason wasn’t one to sit and think about things like that though. He preferred to busy himself, that was a lot easier.
It helped him understand his dad a little bit, just because sometimes he could tell his father would do the same. He could see the feeling in his father’s eyes sometimes, the little flickers of noise - of his own thoughts. Jason wasn’t sure whether to feel bad about his father or not.
—
Shabbos, the sabbath, the day of Jason’s bar mitzvah. Used to, when he lived with mom and dad in the same house, mom would take him to synagogue on the sabbath. Dad didn’t take him though, and Jason wasn’t quite sure papa, Whizzer, knew much about the sabbath at all.
But here he was, at his bar mitzvah. It wasn’t the most traditional thing, and Jason was glad . He didn’t know enough- wasn’t Jewish enough for a proper bar mitzvah.
And Whizzer being there was enough, even if seeing him like this made Jason’s stomach churn.
—
Jason sat at Whizzer’s grave, his red jacket pulled tightly around him. The wind blew his hair around, but Jason couldn’t bring himself to care.
He had cried more in the last two days than the whole of his life, and it made him feel sick . He wanted to puke. He had actually– cried so hard he threw up. Twice.
It didn’t help.
Nothing did.
—
Jason stepped into the graveyard, his feet already knew the path.
Whizzer Brown .
Jason smiled weakly, pulled his father’s jacket around him tighter, and set some flowers just in front of the stone.
It’d been years, Jason knew.
He still missed his dad, very much so, but he had found his way, and that was all that mattered.
“It’s what he would’ve wanted,” as his mom would say.