Winnie the Pooh, Christopher Robin + Pooh, #159: Mellifluous, Kat Lee

[katleept.livejournal.com]

Title: Rivers of Honey
Author: Kat Lee
Fandom: Winnie the Pooh
Character/Pairing: adult!Christopher Robin, Pooh Bear
Rating: PG/K+
Challenge/Prompt: smallfandomflsh #159: Mellifluous
Warning(s): Character Death
Word Count: 1,380
Summary:
Disclaimer: All characters within belong to Milne, not the author, and are used without permission.



They lay back on the cool, green grass, the silence seeming almost to hum between them. The river bubbles by their feet, and Christopher tries to focus on the sound. He really does. Silence between them didn't used to bother him, but that was before. Before he found out he's sick. Before he found out he's dying. Before his life turned into a shambles and he found himself turning back to his childhood friends for help.

Pooh Bear reaches out and touches his paw to his hand. Christopher glances at him sideways. The bear isn't really there, but yet, he can see him, plain as day, plain as the grass beneath his back, as the cool water by his feet, as the sky above his head. He can see him. He can feel him, and his touch is the only comforting one these days.

"Christopher Robin," the bear asks, "what are you thinking?"

But Christopher turns away. He doesn't want to think. He's tired of thinking. He's tired of everything but this, laying here side by side with the one friend who will not judge him, who can not judge him not because he is a bear of such very little brain but because he does not exist anywhere but, Christopher Robin knows, in his own mind.

"Not much, Pooh Bear," he finally says, and they both know he's lying again. Still, Pooh curls beside him, squirming in until he's settled firmly between Christopher's arched arm and his thin side. "I try not think," the man turned boy again admits.

"Then don't," the bear says simply. "I find it very easy not to think, really. Rabbit says it isn't good for me to think too much."

Christopher has to chuckle at that. The old, crass bunny was always causing his most cherished friends fits of trouble. He wonders where he is, and where the others are. He hasn't seen any of them in so long, just Pooh. He holds the bear a little more tightly, but if he minds, he doesn't say so.

"Look at the sky," the bear says instead. "I like to look at the sky. It's always so big and blue, and the fluffy, white clouds look like all kinds of things. It makes me think anything is possible."

Christopher's throat tightens. He used to tell Pooh Bear that. He used to tell himself that. He'd actually believed that, with enough imagination and hard work, anything was possible. But that, again, was before. Before he found out he's sick. Before he's found out he's dying.

"See that one?" Pooh Bear continues to speak as though not sensing Christopher's mood in the slightest. He used to always know what was wrong with his friend and how to cheer him, but no one can cheer Christopher now. His thoughts are always a circle. He's never happy any more. He's always too busy thinking about death and dying, about what awaits him, about what will come to happen any day now.

He doesn't know when it will happen. The doctors gave him a month, but that was two weeks ago. It could happen any time now. It could have happened any time then. It could happen on a bright, sunny day such as this when most of the world around them doesn't seem to have a care at all. It should happen on a cold, blustery day, a dark day without the sun shining to make it seem as though there is hope. It should, but it probably won't. His life has always been ironic like that.

Pooh is squeezing his hand again while, with his other hand, he gestures at the big sky sprawling out for as far as their eyes can see high above their heads. Christopher realizes he's been talking all this time. "That one looks like Tigger with the smaller one being Roo. And there's Piglet. That looks like a pot of honey!"

Christopher actually chuckles. It's a weak chuckle, but laughter all that same, the first laugh that he's emitted in how long he can't even remember. "Everything looks like a pot of honey to you, Pooh, when you're hungry."

Pooh giggles. Christopher Robin tickles his tummy, and the bear laughs even more, rolling on the ground in his best friend's arms. It's been a long time since Christopher last had something to eat, a longer time even since he's really wanted something to nosh. He can't even recall when he last tasted honey, and its sweet flavor has almost faded from his mind.

They stop wriggling, and Pooh comes to rest again in the crook of Christopher's arm. The boy's sides are aching, his lungs gasping for air, but neither of them speak of the pain. Instead, Pooh looks again up at the sky so blue and bright that its brilliance almost hurts Christopher's tired, dull eyes. "What do you see?" the bear asks, and Christopher hesitates a moment before speaking.

"See that patch of clouds there? There's so little sky in between them that it's like the river, winding in and out."

"You don't see anything else?" Pooh asks quietly. "Anything more?" Even the bear seems to be struggling for words.

"I don't know." Christopher shrugs. "I guess . . . Maybe . . . That one could be a tree, and that one, maybe, a butterfly?"

"They can be anything you want them to be, Christopher Robin." Pooh speaks with earnest, but Christopher knows who first fed him that lie. He's the one who used to tell them all that anything was possible with the right amount of imagination to see their goal and hard work and determination to make it happen. He squeezes his eyes tightly shut against the tears welling within them. He's the one, too, he knows, who is going to have to tell them goodbye.

A long moment stretches between them. Tigger bounces slowly from the woods. He bounds up to them and sits behind Christopher Robin's head, not saying anything, but just watching the sky and the clouds passing them by. Kanga is next, carrying Roo in her pouch. The little kangaroo promptly hops out and bounds to join Tigger. Rabbit and Piglet follow. Piglet reaches a paw out for Pooh but then thinks better of it and retracts his grasp, not wanting to bother Christopher Robin although he's such a small thing to bother anybody.

Owl swoops in. Gopher digs up to the surface. Even the Heffalump comes. They all sit around the best friends and quietly watch Pooh with Christopher Robin and the darkening sky. "You know, Pooh Bear," Christopher speaks quietly, "some people think Heaven is in the sky."

"I dunno about that, but then, I'm a bear of very little brain."

Christopher smiles sadly. "You have more brain than you give yourself credit for, Pooh," he says, hugging him. He looks back to the sky. "I think," he says slowly, "the people in Heaven can look down and see us. I think my parents are watching us."

"You do?"

"Yes. But I wonder . . . "

"What do you wonder, Christopher Robin?" Pooh Bear asks gently, and all their friends lean forward to hear their oldest friend's answer.

"I wonder if there are rivers in Heaven."

"Oh, yes, I think there is," Pooh speaks quickly, "and I think they're mellifluous."

Christopher blinks, barely catching the little bear's big word. "Where'd you learn that, Pooh?"

"What? About the rivers?"

"No. That . . . That word." Their world seems to be swirling around Christopher, but he's fighting, fighting to hold on, his fingers pressed tightly in Pooh's little, cotton body . . .

"Oh. It means sweetly or smoothly flowing, like with honey. I may not know much, Christopher Robin, but if it's about honey, I know it."

"I know you do," Christopher back, and he tries to smile. Really, he does.

"The streets in Heaven are made of gold, so why can't the rivers be made with honey?"

"No reason," Christopher answers. "No reason at all." But his voice is drifting off, and his eyes are slowly closing. "I'll tell you one day, Pooh, one day . . . if . . . if they are . . . made with honey . . . " His last breath trembles out of his body, and the animals cry.

The End