Double Blind
by vega
Rate: PG
Category: Angst-fest. A tag to The Miracle of Everwood.
Summary: "This doesn't hurt." The aftermath for Bright and Ephram.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything except my own Ephram.
Note: Yay, I wrote a Bright-centered piece!
His arm hurts.
The air he takes in is cold, teeth-clinching cold, and momentarily he can't breathe. His chest heaves. His legs are slightly shaky. Colin has already disappeared -- seconds, minutes, hours ago. Yet Ephram can still feel Colin's grip hotly imprinted on his arm.
He can't analyze what he feels. It's not anger. Not even shock. A sense of loss flows through the still night air, and he's left alone in this frozen, empty stage.
No, not alone. This tableau belongs to someone else, too. Maybe more to him than to Ephram. Yet Ephram can't find any words to say to Bright. Bright, who might have lost more.
Amazingly enough, it's actually Bright who breaks the scene first. He straightens up slowly as if testing his each joint after a very long time of disuse, stares at the ground for a moment, then stares at the abandoned brown takeout bag a few steps away as if it holds the answer to all the mysteries in the world.
The color of his fresh cuts and bruises match with his bright red jacket.
Bright says nothing as he picks up the bag and hands it to Ephram. Ephram, in turn, takes it without a word.
There might be a question to be asked.
They don't ask.
Colin is dead.
The conclusion is surprisingly easy to make. It's the reality of it that is a little harder to take, not while he was on the walk back home, and not now, when he stands at the porch of his own home and considers his face reflecting back on the window glass. It's already looking quite colorful.
He's a damn fool.
He considers lying. Almost does. When his sister asks him what happened, he says, "Nothing."
But it isn't nothing anymore.
Bright watches Amy drown in her brand of denial and wonders if this is how he looked to Ephram Brown, a dumbo, blind to the end. Bright watches Amy almost shatter at the bare mention of Colin and thinks, she will get hurt, too.
His own bruises don't hurt, but the thought of Colin going off at Amy does. Maybe Colin already has and they don't know it. Maybe Amy has been lying, too. For Colin.
Of course she has.
This cannot go on.
So he tells her, "Colin."
Not that it makes any difference.
This doesn't hurt.
When he comes home, Ephram is immediately informed that Delia has lied to Dad and planned to stay overnight at some museum. The Delia parenting committee (that boasts two members in total) decides to have a talk with her, each member separately. Ephram refuses to play the bad cop this time. Somebody's got to play the bad cop, Dad tells him in his best protesting voice, but playing the bad cop usually takes some serious reality checks, and Ephram thinks he's played enough of that role for today.His dad, as always, picks the most inconvenient time to prove that he is no longer the oblivious father. After frowning at the pizza box that bears scars like a casualty of WWII, Dad regards him carefully. "What's wrong with your arm?"
"Nothing."
Ephram meets Andy Brown's discerning eyes with his own. He hopes like hell his dad could understand. Would understand.
A long second later, his dad nods, his eyes still on him. Without a word, he takes out a Ziploc, fills it with ice cubes, and hands it to Ephram.
"Tell me if you need anything else," Dad tells him, lingers for a moment, and when it's evident that Ephram isn't going to volunteer anything more, goes to talk to the journalist guy who's poking at the frames in the living room.
Ephram stares until the ice pack dissolves into a puddle of water.
"What happened to you?"
Dad's glaring at him, and Bright considers the answer Amy gave him to use. His sister obviously forgot the time when he got into a fight with a couple of kids (who, of course, received a quite serious retaliation by Colin and Bright days later) and tried lying his way out to their Dad with a lame lie such as, "Fell off the stairs, Dad." Or, when he was nine and lied he was in a fight with Colin instead of telling the truth that he slipped on a banana peel, really.
"I fell," Bright answers. He, contradicting his namesake, doesn't consider himself bright enough to come up with anything new right now.
Dr. Abbott all but says out loud 'You did not'. From the stern line of his jaw and the sudden loss of humor in his eyes, Bright can tell that Dad knows. Unfortunately, his dad is a doctor who has treated all of his children's various little injuries from here and there, which means that he's at least capable of telling differences from punch bruises and fall bruises.
Dad sits him down and patches him up. The cuts sting, but they don't hurt -- he's had worse. The banana peel alone inflicted the kind of injury that had Amy cry her eyes out for days. Little Amy, such a nuisance, such a bother. But then she cried her heart out because her brother was hurt.
His little sister will get hurt. Colin will hurt her. It's written already, bright as day. Yet she will not see it.
He thinks about how blind he has been, happy and oblivious even with the odd knots in his chest.
If people want to be blind, they find all the possible ways to stay blind. He can't do a damn thing to change that. A first hand experience.
This doesn't hurt.
The Mummy films are to be immediately crossed off from the movie night list, Ephram mentally notes. Delia tells him in explicit details just how the mummy almost attempted to attack her and confesses how scared she was. He makes her promise never to go off her own adventure without telling him and asks her if she wants him to read her anything before going to sleep. "The Secret Garden?" he suggests.
"No," she shakes her head wistfully.
"But you like this book."
"I do, but I don't want to like it too much. I might like the story much better than here. And it's not good. I'll make Dad and you worry, and I don't want to do that."
He thinks that of all the people he knows, Delia probably has the better understanding about life. He tucks her under her favorite blanket.
"I'm just gonna think about Dad and how he came to rescue me in the museum instead of Mary and Dickon and the Garden," she tells him just before she drifts into sleep.
He goes back to his room. He chews on the cold pizza and glances at The Ghost In the Shell. Eventually, he puts the ten copies in the lowest drawer and begins a long session of pretending to ignore them.
In the dark, he thinks about New York, piano, Cowboy Bebop, and Dad's pancakes. An imaginary dull pain in the arm reminds him of the metal of the hood pressing against his chest and his arm, twisted. It takes even more positive images to send the pain away, like images of Mom on Christmas, Delia's birthdays, Amy's smiles, kisses.
It's no use. He can't sleep. Instead, he devours every bit of his favorite manga.
He can forget.
Colin is allowed to play basketball. Bright doesn't pick him. He ignores the awkward silence in the gym, ignores the curious looks he earns from everywhere. Mostly he ignores Colin, whose false bravado doesn't cover his noticeable flinch at seeing Bright's battered face.
"You really aren't going to talk to him?"
Palpable disappointment in Amy's voice sends him a few feet down to the guilt trip, but it has been expected, and he's mostly immune to her hurt look. Shouldn't be that hard. He's ignored her for most of his life, his little bratty sister. No reason for it to change.
He doesn't answer her. He walks away.
Sometimes he watches Colin and Amy sitting on the porch outside. He reads the article, thinks about ripping it down to shreds in frustration.
The cuts are healing nicely, he's told. Everything's okay now, he's told.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
"What happened?"
He stares at her for a moment. "Do you really want to know the answer?"
He's been watching her hands, her hands only, for the entire conversation that consists of silence more than words. Her hands are trembling slightly. It's almost as if her hands are tied, trapped, and she can't get out of it.
He understands all too well.
"Ephram, I-" Amy stops, her hands unsteady around the math text, "You don't have to tell anyone."
He can't be angry at her. Yet, it's somehow her fault, all of it. If his worry for Colin was greater than whatever he has for Amy, then they wouldn't be having this conversation. He'd tell Dad, the Harts, the teachers, every blind person in this town who doesn't want to be told, damn the consequence.
Yet, yet, this is his fault, for telling her to stand by Colin.
"He used Bright's face as a punching bag and you don't even care," he says, not as an accusation, just stating a matter of fact.
She is silent, her long hair cascading around her face, hiding her expression that he can read only too well.
"You and Colin, you two really are a pair," he tells her, turning away.
"We two really are a pair," she says, at his back, her trembling voice enough to break his heart.
Because, her 'we' might just have included him.
Things go on, as if nothing has happened. His arm doesn't hurt any more. The metallic taste in his mouth is longer gone. If he concentrates hard enough, this might not even have happened.
When he comes home, he throws away all ten copies of The Ghost in the Shell.
Every morning, the reflections on the mirror tells him that indeed the cuts are healing nicely.
Colin lingers, in school corridors, cafeteria, gym, locker room. Lingers, hopeful and with enough guilt to suffocate Bright. The guilt he sees in Amy's eyes become less and less as the scars begin to disappear.
So, this is how it is. He's resigned to it, because he can't make a choice for them. He misses both of them like hell, but it doesn't hurt.
It doesn't hurt.
Not even when, in one of their ordinary, pass-the-jam breakfast, his sister breaks down in unexpected tears.
"I'm sorry, Bright. I'm so, sorry. I can't..."
Mom is puzzled. Dad is concerned, because he knows.
Bright watches her awkwardly, unable to leave, unable to do anything to ease...anything.
It doesn't hurt, dammit.
The piano keys, white and black, smooth and slick. There's nothing simpler, nothing more beautiful. The only sanctuary he can find.
Though, this, too, might not be safe. In the middle of Chopin, Fantaisie-Impromptu in sharp minor op. 66, his finger slips. After several attempts that yield no better results, he slams down the lid a little too violently.
His arm hurts.
"Uh, you okay, man?"
Standing at the music room doorway is Bright, looking mighty uncomfortable at just being near him.
After surprise is properly registered, Ephram notes that Bright's face still contains slight traces of bruises and cuts. "I think I should be the one asking that question."
Bright is glancing at his arm. Right, Ephram thinks wearily. Of course he is thought to be such a wimp that being pushed around a little roughly would be enough damage to end his pre-career as a pianist.
"I'm perfectly fine," Ephram tells him briskly, standing up. "You?"
The answer doesn't come right away. When it does after a period of silence, it's a slight, unconvincing, "Fine."
Ephram watches Bright carefully. "Then why are you here?"
"I don't know."
The silence descends again. They stare at each other.
No answers come.
Bright meets Colin halfway in the corridor and blocks his way. Colin, first surprised, beams as he realizes that Bright is actually standing in front of him. Acknowledging him.
Bright doesn't waste a second before punching him right in the face.
Colin collapses on the third punch, all received in shock. Practically everyone in the corridor is frozen, watching.
"Go to the hosptal. Tell them you're sick. I'll kill you if that doesn't happen. You're dead like this anyway."
When he walks away, Bright doesn't turn around to watch Amy as she rushes to Colin. He doesn't watch as everyone else rushes over to Colin, who is fallen.
The only person in this chaos who stands still is Ephram, looking right at Bright.
Bright stares at his hand. It's numb.
"Does it hurt?" Ephram asks.
Bright stares at the ice pack that's to be used on his fist. It melts into a puddle of water.
Yes. Yes, it does.
THE END