Summary: Some walls come down. Some don't. Written for the Thursday 100+ "Walls" challenge.
Author's Notes: I want to wish a happy birthday to Recs Judicata, even if that is a little self-promoting. :)
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Bobby remembers the Berlin Wall. He was stationed in West Berlin when he first confronted its massive bulk, and he remembers that all he could think when he saw it was that the city was a prison yard. He admired the inhabitants of West Berlin, going about their daily lives as if they didn't live penned in the shadow of a hundred miles of concrete.
He transferred back to West Germany as soon as he could.
He remembers watching that Wall shatter under civilian hands. The night it came down, he was the only one in the room who saw the irony. He wondered if the German language could come up with one word for "the night of broken concrete."
If they could, maybe it would be the magic word, the ultimate open sesame. He knows how to break down walls with words, and he does it all the time, plowing through mental and physical barriers without a second thought. For all his physical bulk and the gun he carries, words are his strongest weapon.
But weapons fail. No amount of talking is going to bring down the Great Wall of China, and nothing he can say will bring down this one.
Her eyes don't really see him anymore. When she talks at all, she talks to other versions of himself, of his father and his brother. She answers the questions of spiders and tries to cut unseen parasites from her skin if they give her the tools to do so.
As much as he misses her voice, it's better when she's quiet, when she stares up at the ceiling (what does she see there, he wonders) and he can pretend she hears him, that his words come through. Those visits are easier. On the days when she feels like talking, when her anger and her fear come bubbling to the surface and she spews invective at an invisible world, he wishes he were back in Berlin. That wall, at least, wasn't his.