In the end, Grandpa and I found ourselves on a bench.

  I leaned against it, the cold metal biting through my hoodie, through my shirt, straight into my spine. The discomfort felt right somehow. Grounding. Real. Something to focus on that wasn't the burning in my lungs or the lead weight of my limbs or the way my heart was still hammering from a walk that shouldn't have been that hard.

  It was early. Probably almost but not quite 6 AM, and it showed with how the city of Montreal seemed to wake up before my eyes. A woman jogged past in expensive athletic wear, her breath coming out in steady white puffs, her ponytail swinging with mechanical precision. An old man walked a small dog that looked like a mobile dust mop, the creature stopping every three feet to investigate smells invisible to human noses. Someone in a suit rushed by, briefcase in hand, already on their phone, already stressed about whatever corporate emergency couldn't wait for sunrise.

  The world kept turning. People kept moving. Life kept happening, indifferent to the fact that I felt like I'd just run a marathon when all I'd done was walk a few blocks with my grandfather.

  Snow was falling from above. Not heavily, just a light dusting, flakes drifting down lazy and unbothered, catching the orange glow of street lights that were still on, fighting their losing battle against the growing dawn. Each flake was perfect, individual, beautiful in that way that things are beautiful when you know they'll melt and disappear and never be exactly the same again.

  I found it beautiful, this moment where the world seemed stuck between quiet and not quiet. Serene, I would even say. That liminal space between night and day, between sleep and waking, between one thing ending and another beginning. The city held its breath.

  I took a deep breath, trying to fill my lungs properly, trying to get oxygen to all the parts of me that were screaming for it. My chest expanded, contracted. In, out. Basic biological function that felt harder than it should. I was still trying to recuperate from the walk, still trying to convince my body that we were okay, that we could do this, that we weren't dying even though it felt like maybe we were.

  "You do this every day?" I said, turning to look at Grandpa. He was sitting perfectly still beside me, his posture straight despite the early hour, despite the cold, despite being eighty-three years old. "How? You're like as old as the dinosaurs or something. You should be the one huffing, not me. Or at least, you should be showing signs that you're winded or something."

  It came out more accusatory than I meant it to. Like he'd personally offended me by being in better shape than his teenage grandson. Which, fair, he kind of had.

  Grandpa was quiet for a moment, his gaze fixed on something in the middle distance. When he spoke, his voice was thoughtful, measured, the way it got when he was trying to explain something important without making it sound like a lecture.

  "It is never easy at the beginning, like most things," he said. "But little by little, as long as you keep trying, it slowly but surely becomes bearable. And after, comfortable."

  I snorted, couldn't help it. The laugh came out sharp and bitter. "In other words, you just said that it was a skill issue. Get good, scrub."

  A ghost of a smile crossed his face. "If the shoe fits, who am I to say otherwise?"

  "You're ruthless with me this morning, Papi," I said, trying to inject some levity into my voice, trying to make it sound like a joke even though everything felt heavy and wrong and like I was one wrong word away from shattering. "Who put vinegar in your tea?"

  The smile faded from his face. He took a deep breath, the sound of it loud in the quiet morning, and sighed it out slow. When he spoke again, his voice had changed. Gone soft in a way that made my stomach clench, made warning bells start ringing in the back of my head.

  "Petit prince," he said, and the endearment sounded painful coming out of his mouth. "Can I ask you something?"

  I noticed the shift in demeanor immediately. The way his shoulders had tensed. The way he wouldn't quite look at me. The way the air between us had suddenly become charged with something I couldn't name but definitely didn't like. But I said nothing other than, "Of course, Papi."

  He was quiet for a long moment. Too long. Long enough that I started to get scared, really scared, the kind of scared that starts in your stomach and spreads outward like ice water in your veins. A car drove by, its headlights cutting through the gray morning. The street light above us flickered, dimmed, steadied again.

  "Where do you see yourself in the future?" Grandpa asked finally, and his voice was so careful, so deliberately gentle that it made me want to scream. "In five, ten years, if we're lucky. When your grandmother and I are gone?"

  The words hit me like a physical blow. Gone. When, not if. When they were gone. When I was alone.

  "Papi, I don't like that question," I said, and my voice came out too fast, too high, panic already creeping in at the edges. "You and Mami aren't sick, are you? Because if it's the case, maybe if we begin a possible treatment for whatever you may have, or take measures or something, I don't know, we'll be able to deal with it easy peasy. Money isn't a problem, so I'm sure that if something is wrong, we can do something."

  The words were tumbling out now, tripping over each other in their rush to get out. My hands were moving, gesturing wildly, my whole body leaning forward like I could physically push away whatever he was trying to tell me.

  "We can go to the States if we need to, or Europe, wherever has the best doctors, the best treatment, the best whatever. And if it's experimental, that's fine, we can get into trials, we can pay for access, whatever it takes. Or if it's not that serious yet, we can do preventative stuff, change your diet, get you exercising more, though you already walk every day so that's good, but maybe we can add other things, and—"

  "Artemis."

  "—get you checked more regularly, like every month instead of every year, and we can install those, those medical alert things, you know, the ones where you press a button if you fall, and we can make sure someone is always around to—"

  "Artemis."

  "—check on you, and Mami too, we should get her checked as well, when was the last time she saw Dr. Beaumont? We should schedule that, I can call tomorrow, or today, actually, as soon as his office opens, and—"

  "Artemis!"

  I stopped. My mouth snapped shut. My grandfather had raised his voice, not shouting but firm, cutting through my spiraling panic with the precision of a knife.

  "What!" I snapped back, and immediately regretted it. The word came out harsh, angry, laced with fear that I didn't know how to process. Shame flooded through me hot and immediate.

  "I'm sorry, Papi," I said quickly, my voice small. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to—"

  "You're a clever and kind and empathetic boy, Artemis," he interrupted gently, and the sadness in his voice made my chest hurt. "Maybe you don't see it, but I see it. Your Mami sees it."

  He paused, and I could see him gathering his thoughts, choosing his words carefully. The street light above us flickered again, casting strange shadows across his face.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  "We're old," he continued. "We were able to become old, to live when so many of our friends and family members fell to the grasp of death and time. We were lucky enough to have a grandchild like you, to be able to raise you."

  His voice caught slightly on the last word. He cleared his throat.

  "I wish the circumstances had been different, had been better. But watching you grow up from a child to the one before me, it was and is a blessing. Something that gave your grandmother and I a reason to fight, to go on."

  A man walked past us, talking loudly on his phone in rapid-fire French I was too distracted to fully parse. Something about a meeting, a deadline, someone named Michel who'd screwed something up. The light above us dimmed again, flickered more insistently this time, like it was considering giving up entirely.

  "But no matter how much we want it," Grandpa said, his voice steady despite the weight of the words, "we won't always be there for you. We're old, Artemis, and the old die sooner or later."

  I wanted to interrupt, to protest, to tell him to stop talking like this, but something kept my mouth shut. Maybe the look on his face. Maybe the understanding that he needed to say this, even if I didn't want to hear it.

  "I was told once," he continued, "that it's not a good thing for grandparents to be too involved when it comes to raising their grandchildren. Because this is unmistakably condemning them to face grief sooner than they may be ready for."

  The sky was lighter now, properly dawn, the darkness bleeding away to reveal the gray-blue of early morning. Buildings on the horizon were becoming clearer, their shapes solidifying out of the gloom. More people were appearing on the streets. The city was waking up for real, shaking off sleep, getting ready for another day.

  And here we were, sitting on a bench in the cold, talking about death.

  Grandpa turned his gaze toward the buildings on the horizon, his profile sharp against the growing light. "Your Mami and I are scared, Artemis."

  I blinked. Scared? My grandparents, scared? The two most fearless people I knew?

  "We're not scared because you're not clever," he said quickly, as if reading my thoughts. "You are. We're not scared because you can't make it. We know without a doubt that you can do things more incredible than everything we ever did."

  He turned back to look at me, and the expression on his face made my breath catch.

  "We're scared that maybe you wouldn't want to."

  The words hung in the air between us, heavy and damning.

  "Scared that I wouldn't want to?" I repeated softly, not quite understanding, not wanting to understand.

  "Yes," Grandpa said, just as soft. "You know a lot of people. You're popular. You know how to be charismatic, friendly. But you may know them, but they don't know you. Because you don't want to. Didn't want to."

  Each word was a scalpel, cutting with surgical precision.

  "It's like there's a barrier you put between your heart and the rest of the world. A bubble you didn't wish to be breached. A bubble of only your grandmother, you, and I."

  He wasn't wrong. I knew he wasn't wrong. But hearing it said out loud, hearing it named, made it real in a way that was almost unbearable.

  "I know that it probably would have been different had your parents been different too," he continued, his voice thick with something that might have been grief or rage or both. "Kinder. Had they not hurt you like they did."

  He shook his head, the motion sharp and bitter.

  "God, I never thought your father—the boy your grandma and I raised—would be like that as a father. It feels as if you're living because of us. Living just for the sake of it. And it scares me, what would happen when we're not there anymore. Do you get what I mean?"

  I couldn't breathe properly. Each inhale felt shallow, insufficient. But I managed to force out, "I get it. I do so."

  And then, because apparently I was determined to make this morning as devastating as possible, because apparently we were doing this now, because the words were clawing their way up my throat and I couldn't keep them down anymore, I said:

  "Once, I tried to kill myself."

  The silence that followed was absolute. Total. The kind of silence that swallows sound and spits out nothing.

  "It was not the last time," I continued, my voice oddly detached, like I was talking about someone else, some other person who'd done these things. "And not the first time."

  I heard Grandpa release a sound that seemed like a mix of a gasp and a sob, something raw and wounded and broken. But I didn't turn to look at him. Couldn't. Because if I did, if I saw the devastation probably etched on the face of my grandfather that I was the cause of, I didn't think I would be strong enough to continue speaking.

  So I kept my eyes forward, watching the snow fall, watching the city wake up, watching anything that wasn't him.

  "It was a mix of bad factors and happenstances that ended up exploding in my face at the same time," I said. "I had been beaten in the past by my mom, but I can tell you, my father and her looking at me like this, for once agreeing and not fighting on something, and that was—of all things—to say that I was a waste of space. A shame. Something worth nothing."

  My voice cracked slightly on the last word. I pushed through it.

  "This hurt more than any beating I may have received in the past. And I was tired. So fucking tired. So I waited, waited until they were gone, and went into the medical cabinet we had. I didn't read the names of the different meds I took. I just took a lot of different ones and hoped to die."

  The words came out mechanical now, rehearsed, like I'd told this story before even though I never had. Not out loud. Not to anyone.

  "I didn't die because they weren't working fast enough. Apparently, I'm more resistant than most when it comes to stuff like that. So this is how Mom found me. Laying on the ground, foaming at the mouth. And while she called for an ambulance, and a part of her probably had been really worried, I could still hear—almost as if in a dream—her voice being too close and too far away at the same time."

  A woman walked by with a stroller, the baby inside bundled up so thoroughly that only its face was visible, pink and peaceful in sleep. The mundane normality of it felt obscene next to what I was saying.

  "Saying things like it was because I wanted attention. Blaming me. Calling me a coward. Telling me, 'How could you dare when your father and I made so many sacrifices for you?' When we all know that they were investments they had hoped to cash in on later."

  I swallowed hard, my throat tight.

  "And there was only one thought I had while all of this was happening. None of this would be real, would be possible, would be happening if my grandparents were there."

  Finally, finally, I turned to look at him. His eyes were wet, green and devastated, looking at me like I'd reached into his chest and torn something vital out. And maybe I had. Maybe that's what this was. But he needed to know. He'd asked the question. He deserved the answer, even if it destroyed us both.

  "None of this would have happened if Papi and Mami were there," I said, holding his gaze even though it hurt. "Nothing in the whole world could ever hurt me, I had thought. And you want to know something?"

  I smiled, and it felt wrong on my face, bitter and broken.

  "You proved me right. You proved yourselves the superheroes I thought you were. You came and everything became better. You were patient and kind and understanding. I didn't have to fear crying before the two of you. I could tell you everything. You didn't talk down or try to hurt me when there was something wrong, but tried to make me understand so that I would be better."

  My voice was shaking now, but I kept going.

  "I know it's childish and not a good and healthy thing and that it's probably something that would give a therapist a run for his money. But I don't really see myself living without the two of you. Because if the two of you were gone, if there were any chances of things becoming once again what they were, of me having to be in the presence of my father and/or my mother, I think I would prefer to rejoin you wherever you would be in the afterlife instead, if there is one."

  Grandpa made another sound, wounded and raw. But I wasn't done. I'd started this confession and I was going to finish it.

  "It's like having everything and losing that everything. You said that I'm strong, but being strong is so hard, Papi. I don't want to need to be strong. I'm not the kind of person who can, like Atlas, bear on my shoulders what feels like the weight of the world."

  My voice broke completely on the last sentence. Tears were running down my face now, hot against my cold cheeks, and I didn't bother wiping them away.

  "I'm sorry, Grandpa, but this is who I am."

  The silence that followed was different from before. Not empty, but full. Heavy with everything that had been said, with everything that couldn't be unsaid, with truths that had been living in the dark and were now exposed to the cold morning light.

  Grandpa reached over and pulled me against him, and I went, collapsing into his shoulder like a puppet with its strings cut. His arms wrapped around me, tight and fierce and desperate, like he could hold me together through sheer force of will. He was shaking, or I was shaking, or we both were. I couldn't tell anymore.

  We stayed like that for a long time. Long enough for my tears to soak into his expensive wool coat. Long enough for more people to walk past, giving us curious glances that we both ignored. Long enough for the street light above us to finally give up and wink out completely, surrendered to the dawn.

  When we finally pulled apart, both our faces were wet. But that was nothing, really. Just melting snowflakes from the heavens. Just the cold morning air making our eyes water. Just two people sitting on a bench, watching the city wake up.

  Just that.

  Nothing more.

  The snow continued to fall, each flake perfect and temporary and doomed.

  And Montreal kept waking up, indifferent to the grief of two people on a bench, indifferent to confessions and fears.

  The world kept turning.

  The world always kept turning.

  Whether you were ready or not.