Author's Note: I have no rights over the characters of General Hospital
"Love is a hidden fire, A pleasant sore, A delicious poison, A delectable pain, An agreeable torment, A sweet and throbbing wound, A gentle death." Fernando de Pujas
Counting
Spinelli wedged himself securely into the farthest corner of the overstuffed couch and reaching over to the coffee table picked up the television remote, clicking on the new flat screen that Jason had installed last week. Spinelli had pleaded for this very concession, this upgrade in technology almost since the first day he had moved into the penthouse. Yet, now it gave him no pleasure, no satisfaction at all. No, it was simply an instrument, a means to an end. Its purpose was singular, to do what Spinelli required of all the audio and visual devices in his world these days-provide him with distraction so that he neither had to think nor sleep.
He couldn't quite remember when his suspicions had begun, a while ago he thought. Initially, he had dismissed them, shrugged his shoulders and assigned them to the category of his brain wherein so many of his thoughts and ideas of late languished. It was a neural no man's land of 'you're overreacting', 'you're imagining it' or, the entirely plausible capper, 'it's the grief speaking…'
There had been plenty of that, more than any one person should have to tolerate through a long and adventuresome existence. Still, here was Damian Spinelli, the perennial wimp, the boy who always wanted something exciting to happen and it never did. Yet, he had now watched more people in his life die in the last several months than he had previously ever even been acquainted with during the entire duration of his first eighteen years of life.
He had long since surpassed Maxie's masochistically held record of death. "What was it?" He thought to himself wearily rubbing his brow, an incipient headache hovering as it frequently did nowadays. "Let's see-it started with BJ, then there were her parents. No, wait," he chided himself, "They still breathe somewhere on this God forsaken planet. The Jackal must be sure to restrict himself to those who have actually met their demise, not merely vanished…" He sat for a moment, lost in a reflective silence that was more a case of being dazed and miserable, exhausted from sleepless nights that were attested to by his sunken and red rimmed eyes, rather than any actual philosophical musings or analysis of categorizing the people that Maxie had lost over the course of her tragically foreshortened life. "So, then," he continued as the TV hummed softly in the background, providing some small comfort to the huddled figure on the couch. "First was BJ-she who gifted her loving, endearing heart to my Maximista. Then there was Jesse-the valiant police officer who lost his life in the performance of his duty." He had to briefly stop before he was composed enough to continue with the next name on his grisly list. "Alas and alack, so tragic was the untimely ending of the life force which radiated most purely from sweet, fair, and faithful Georgie."
Again Spinelli paused in his count, as he considered anew the loss of Georgie Jones, what she had meant to Maxie but also what she was to him and more importantly what she might have meant to him had she but lived. He mused to himself, "Were Georgie to have survived then Maximista and I might never have…" That was something he hated about his beloved science fiction, the idea of changing the linear nature of time, of having alternate lines of existence to contend with, to ponder. It was better to be like Stone Cold and not dwell on such things. To simply play the hand one was dealt and to move forward, never wasting time on regrets or what if scenarios. "So," it was a wistful sigh, his counting was going slowly, something the Spinelli of yore could have done in his sleep was being compromised by the very lack of such a commodity. "Georgie, she belongs in both our columns to be fair-mine and Maximista's. Lastly, there was Cooper Barrett, the clean cut cadet."
What was the final count then? He added them up; it would seem four or perhaps three and half if winsome Georgie were to be split between the Jackal and fair Maximista. Then of course his list started with Georgie, he knew it now but not then. Back when he had discovered Georgie's mute and crumpled body in the park, Spinelli had assumed, as had everyone, that she was a victim of the Text Message killer. They believed it was Diego Alcazar in his mad, driven, twisted plot to avenge his father's murder who had prematurely ended her tender and gracious existence. Now Spinelli thought-no, he absolutely knew-differently. Diego hadn't been the responsible party. Instead, it had been someone entirely separate-someone unsought, unthought and unexpected.
"Still, to prove it, that is beyond my skill or even more truthfully my wont." He exhaled, and leaning back against the comforting softness of the couch, closed his eyes for a moment's respite from the mad, buzzing thoughts whizzing endlessly around his distraught brain. He devoutly wished he could magically return to the benign times of his life when ignorance was his protector and being lovelorn and clumsy his most pressing problems.
He didn't know precisely when his suspicions were raised. He was deep in mourning for Maxie, and nothing else mattered. She suffered an unexpected heart attack, dying suddenly one day in Manhattan while attending a fashion gala with Kate Howard. The paramedics arrived speedily, but it was to no avail. His Maximista, the light that shone in his heart and soul, she who was his completion, his raison d'etre was dead.
Jason returned to the penthouse, his tread heavy, his shoulders bowed. Lulu called him, she demanded urgently that Jason get to Spinelli before he heard about it over the internet, that unending cache of knowledge and information into which his cyber companion had a virtual window perpetually propped open. One look at the boy sitting on the couch told him he was too late, that Spinelli already knew. He had been sitting in total darkness, a bottle of vodka perched unopened on the coffee table.
"Spinelli," Jason had no idea what sequence of words could possibly follow his opening gambit. There was no concept of anything he could say or do helping his young roommate get through this, to survive the loss of his heart.
He sat down next to him, close enough so that their thighs were touching. Raising an arm he placed it around the shoulders of the young hacker. "I'm so sorry…" God, he didn't have much use for words at the best of times but on occasions such as this their total inadequacy frustrated him to the point of anger.
Spinelli looked up at his mentor, his role model, his best friend, the man who had so many unarticulated roles in his life and asked the unanswerable, "Why?" His eyes were blurred with unshed tears, his face so pale it seemed he wouldn't bleed if cut.
Jason shrugged uneasily, he couldn't give a satisfactory response, at their deepest level they each knew it but it was also incumbent upon him to try. After all, that was his job, to fix things no matter how irreparable, no matter how immutable. "I guess…it was something to do with her medication…it was the wrong type or dosage or something…" He was uncomfortable talking about it, medicine wasn't his forte.
Spinelli was looking at him in astonishment, disbelief etched his countenance. "Does the Jackal clearly understand what Stone Cold is saying? That this wasn't a result of nature asserting itself, of Maximista's overtaxed heart giving up an unequal struggle but rather caused by error or even malicious intent on the part of human agency?" His voice gradually grew from a whisper to an agitated shout throughout the duration of his speech. Now the tears were falling freely from his eyes and he was trembling in his combined anger and despair.
Jason wanted nothing more than to turn back time, to stop this all before it had begun but he couldn't. All he was capable of doing was being here now for Spinelli and making sure that he caused himself no physical harm in his fomenting grief. He only wished he could also find a way to blunt the emotional trauma, to assuage his angst ridden torment.
"I promise you," he told him with quiet grimness, each word a vow unto itself, "I will find whoever is responsible for this and they will pay." It was said with absolute certitude but it fell on deaf ears for Spinelli could not process promises of vengeance when all he wanted was a restoration of love.
Jason watched him pace the length of the living room, walking until he collapsed into a bereft heap on the floor. He carried him upstairs where he stayed with him, keeping vigil through that first endless night and all the ones since.
Spinelli shook himself free from the unhappy reverie, it had been months, six or seven, he couldn't be quite sure, time no longer held much meaning for him. It merged into endless hours and days that were nevermore to be brightened by the cheery, light bearing, life affirming presence of his one true love. His heart had been buried with her. The desiccated organ that was left in his chest only served to circulate blood through his stubborn body which it seemed was selfishly disinclined to forfeit living as an appropriately grand romantic gesture in remembrance of the inestimable Maxie Jones.
"That's not the point of this." He remonstrated with himself as he struggled to shake off the fugue that had descended on him that bleak night and had only lifted in the past several weeks to be replaced by the just as undesirable and much sharper biting companionship of unrelenting fear. "So, Maximista," he said her name as firmly, as naturally as he could but it cost him to do so. "Then…Lulu, oh, poor, sweet, charming Lulu…"
The original blonde one had been of great succor to the Jackal in his time of need. Only she and Jason had been tolerated by Spinelli. They took turns staying with him, each one communicating with the other by unspoken looks and gestures that they thought he hadn't noticed. He felt a bitter humor at the idea that people, even people who professed to love him, could mistake mourning for inattention or even worse, stupidity.
They had been terrified he was suicidal and so, for weeks, for nearly a month, he had not been allowed more than brief moments alone, particularly when he was in the bathroom that innocent seeming locale which was the potential site of so many methods of death. He ought to know he had contemplated each and every one of them. Jason would be in the actual room with him when it was his 'shift', his face unreadable, his arms folded as he leaned against the door with his worried blue eyes darting every which way while he evaluated what was in reach, what Spinelli might access to cause himself harm.
Lulu, in her turn, would stand outside the door, feigning impatience, knocking every few moments saying, "Spinelli, hurry up," or "Are you finished yet," not stopping until she would receive an affirmation of his status of still being amongst the living.
After several weeks, the strictness of their watchfulness had eased but Lulu still came by almost daily. They would talk of Maxie, sharing stories and perspectives of her. They mourned her together and Jason would often walk into the penthouse to find them cuddled up on the couch. Spinelli's arms wrapped around her as she lay against him, her head on his chest and her tears staining his shirt as his own fell unchecked down his cheeks. Jason would silently retreat upstairs loathe to disturb them, to interfere with what he hoped was a healing process for both of them.
Then came the day, two months ago, when Jason was once more in his bedroom, sitting on his bed, looking at him with an indefinable expression on his face, clearly reluctant to speak. "Spinelli," he began and he knew without being told that his ravaged heart would once again be rent asunder.
Lulu had been leaving from Crimson. She had been working a late shift trying to get the magazine out by the requisite deadline. She was tired but in high spirits because she was going to meet Johnny for a late night date. They had reconnected in the months since Maxie's death, both realized how much they missed each other, how unfair and mercurial life could be. So, Johnny sought out Lulu, declared his feelings for her and she agreed to try again. Lulu came to Spinelli, eager to share her new found joy but shy about upsetting him, about disrupting the fragile peace he had begun to make with the gigantic crater Maxie's death had formed in his soul, the devastating pain resulting from her unrelenting absence in his life.
Spinelli had been delighted for her, told her that her happiness could be his by proxy. "The Jackal only hopes that the Dark Prince will be true to you this time and shall he not be, he will answer to me…." He had contemplated throwing Jason's much more awesome ire into the threat but some unknown force made him hold back. He contented himself by embracing Lulu, his face sad and lined as he closed his eyes and momentarily imagined another blonde and beloved head nestled against his shoulder.
Spinelli sat stunned, listening to Jason as he attempted to recite the facts without emotion, "Elevator crashed…car fell to the bottom…died instantly…" All Spinelli could see as Jason spoke was Lulu's beloved face, hope and gladness written on it as she confided in him.
So, there he stood, dressed in a suit at another memorial gathering for someone he had loved with a great breadth of feeling though not the nearly the depth of what he had felt for Maxie. After all, Lulu had been the original blonde one. While Spinelli languished unnoticed and mute, dimly registered voices wafted about him.
"Yes, I hear the Spencers are suing the Metro Court…"
"Well, I don't think they'll be found liable, the cables and car just had their annual inspection the week before."
"Probably the Metro Court will pay off the Spencers with the money they get from suing the inspection company." It was a dry, cynical voice and he wasn't surprised to see it belonged to Edward Quartermaine.
Trust that eclectic clan to show up to pay their observances to someone that they had embraced as their own. They loved tempestuous and feisty Lulu Spencer as much as they despised her vagabond father. She too came to learn what kind and loyal hearts beat under the crusty, quarrelsome exteriors of the family elders and to return their affection. Still, try as they might to do right, to be grave and seemly and show their grief they seemed incapable of appropriate behavior for any longer than ten minute increments of time. Spinelli would have smiled at Edward's typically canny and perceptive, yet somewhat misplaced, outburst, if the muscles enabling him to do so had not taken early retirement and headed in some unknown southerly direction leaving him void of any expression except a mournful fatigue.
"Jason," it was Carly speaking somewhere behind him, her voice thick and exhausted, full of unshed tears. "Did you see her, Lulu? The other night when you came to the Metro Court, did you see her?" Her tone held a hopeful pleading note that he might have some last memory of his encounter with Lulu, some scrap of words or action that she could file away and hold safe within the recesses of her mind. Carly Jax loved her vivacious blonde cousin who reminded her so much of herself and it seemed impossible that she would never again come running to share some crisis which had turned her young life topsy-turvy.
Spinelli turned around to look at the twosome, startled by Carly's question. "Did Stone Cold indeed see Fair Lulu the night of her untimely death? Why then would he have neglected to transmit such pertinent information to his grasshopper?" Jason must have known that he, Carly, and everyone would have wanted to know the details of the meeting between Lulu and the last person to see her alive before the tragic fatal accident that precipitately ended her vibrant existence.
Jason squirmed uneasily under the combined grief stricken looks that Spinelli and Carly were directing toward him. He stuttered uncertainly, not quite sure what he could say, or even ought to say, to help assuage the terrible hurt felt by these two people who were both so important to him. "I…I, no, that is, I didn't…" He seemed to realize that he wasn't making much sense so he began again. "I intended to see Lulu, that's why I went to the Metro Court…"
"Why would Stone Cold go in search of the original blonde one?" Spinelli asked obviously puzzled as he vocalized the same question that was also evident in Carly's eyes.
"Yes, Jason, why would you?" Carly was confused. "It's not like you were particular friends with Lulu and you don't just look people up to chat with them, not about inconsequential things anyway."
"I just…well, I wanted to thank her. She had been great with helping Spinelli after…" Jason looked awkwardly at his roommate, not wanting to bring up the topic of Maxie's death which had so mortally wounded his friend. It didn't matter if he said it or not, he realized with a jolt of misery. It was clear that her absence was perpetually incised in the shadows surrounding his eyes, the slump of his shoulders and in the harsh lines bracketing his nose and mouth. 'When had they formed?' He thought with poignant wonder, his heart aching that Spinelli had to endure more grief, more loss without even being close to recovery from the first devastating blow. "I didn't see her, she wasn't in the office." Jason finished his statement abruptly not wanting to torture either Spinelli or Carly anymore than he already had.
"Oh," they breathed out their unified disappointment. It would appear that whatever Lulu's last thoughts were on her final night on Earth, it was a secret never to be deciphered.
When he and Jason returned to the penthouse, both enveloped within a somber pall of silence, they found Sam waiting for them outside the door. Sam had been missing from both their lives ever since Maxie's death. She too had been mourning the passing of the impetuous, outspoken blonde who was one of the few female friends Sam McCall possessed. She couldn't bear to see or be around Spinelli in his awful all consuming austerity of grief which threatened to deride her own deeply felt sorrow. So, she left the spiritual and emotional caretaking of her young partner in the compassionate and capable hands of Jason and Lulu while she threw herself into work, shouldering the responsibilities of the caseload incurred by both herself and the absent Jackal.
"Sam, what are you doing here?" Jason's voice was weary but edged with an underlying edge of irritation. He knew what an almost insurmountable task faced him as the next days and weeks unfolded and Spinelli grappled yet again with the loss of someone close to him. He feared for his roommate's fragile grip on sanity, on life itself. He simply didn't possess the reserves to deal with another person's needs or concerns brought from the distant exterior world into their muffled, cocooned, and tentative subsistence where death appeared to dwell as their constant companion.
"Hey," she said by way of greeting, her voice soft and husky as she looked at the bent head of Spinelli with concern. He seemed unaware of her presence. "I just came by to see if you needed any help, if there was anything I could do…" She traded a quick uneasy glance with Jason, worried about Spinelli's lack of reaction as well as Jason's grim expression that failed to mask how stressed and fatigued he felt. "Spinelli," she stepped forward and placed a gentle hand on her partner's shoulder causing him to look up at her, his eyes dark patient holes of pure misery. "I am so sorry about Lulu…is there anything at all you need, anyway I could help you get through this?" He just stared at her dumbly, too emotionally drained to even muster up the energy of a reply which politeness and manners would usually dictate that he at least attempt.
"Thanks, Sam," Jason spoke brusquely as he shouldered past her, intent on opening the door and getting Spinelli inside and onto the sofa before he collapsed. "I…we appreciate the offer but things are covered here. You can help by just doing what you already are, by keeping McCall and Jackal running smoothly." He had gotten the door open, shepherding Spinelli inside, it was clear he wasn't going to invite Sam in.
She gave a resigned sigh, she knew how impossible it was to argue with Jason when he became intractable. Turning to leave, she cast a final offer over her shoulder, "Okay, I'll let you guys get some rest but give me a call if you change your mind. I'm always available for my partner…" She smiled gently at Spinelli whose lips quirked up in a mimicking parody of the action. It was the last view she had of him as Jason resolutely closed the door, once more sealing the two of them within the quiet confines of the penthouse.
A few days later, Spinelli managed to convince Jason to go for a motorcycle ride to clear his head and get some fresh air by promising that he would be fine on his own for a while. Once Jason was safely away from the penthouse he called Sam. He didn't know why he felt awkward, uncomfortable even at the thought of calling her, or anyone really, while Jason was in residence but he simply did. He thought it would be enough to hear someone else's voice, to experience a temporary reprieve from the dismal thoughts circling endlessly through his mind and the oppressive silence of Jason's constant presence.
Spinelli didn't know how it was that they ended up together on the couch in the penthouse living room, his abandoned laptop once more seated on his knees as he ferreted through the records of one of Sam's clients whom she suspected of not being on the level with her. He had missed this side of his life which had once been so integral to it that a few hours absence from his cyber companion had induced symptoms similar to withdrawal. For the first time in months he was engrossed in something else besides morbid introspection and it felt wonderful.
They were busy chatting and speculating, going over Spinelli's findings which seemed to support Sam's suspicions of false representation when the penthouse door opened and Jason entered. They didn't notice him. He stood there for a few moments, his keys clasped tightly in his hand, vertical frown lines etched between his eyes. "Hey," he finally said, fighting to keep his voice neutral, "What are you doing here, Sam?"
She looked up startled, surprised to see him, Spinelli had intimated that Jason would be gone for hours yet. Sam felt Spinelli's muscles tense as he grew rigid and watchful beside her. Without quite knowing why, she instinctively lied, somehow feeling that she needed to protect Spinelli who was still in an emotionally precarious situation and unable to deal with Jason's displeasure. "I just dropped by to ask Spinelli to do a computer search for me. I've gotten better but there's no one to match the Jackal's skills." It came out easily, convincingly and she could sense Spinelli relax as he let out an almost inaudible exhalation of pent up air.
Jason's eyes narrowed as he voiced his displeasure, "Spinelli shouldn't be bothered with business right now, he isn't up to it. I thought we had agreed…"
He was interrupted by Spinelli's eager voice, for the first time in months he sounded like his old self, "Au contraire, Stone Cold," he protested eagerly, his eyes shining, "The Jackal is revitalized, Fair Samantha was right, putting my mind and my cyber talents to work solving this riddle has invigorated me. I didn't realize how much I had missed being involved in casework." He looked up at Jason and gulped as he saw the censorious look his mentor was giving the two of them. "And would like the opportunity to be involved in further such exercises…" He trailed off, his voice subdued and beseeching.
Sam was shocked in the change in Spinelli's attitude and demeanor ever since he had become aware of Jason's presence. "That's a great idea, Spinelli!" She spoke with a cheerful enthusiasm as she tried to retrieve the expression of lively interest he had been wearing while they worked in tandem. As Sam spoke she steadfastly ignored Jason's adamantine glare. "Truthfully, I could use your expertise and I have missed working with you as well." She smiled brightly at Spinelli who responded with a small, painful grin all the while looking with trepidation through his shaggy bangs at Jason standing grim and disapproving by the door.
"Stone Cold?" He said tentatively, the question clearly evident in his tone while Sam wondered at his need to ask permission and the likelihood of Jason granting it.
Jason's face softened slightly as he looked at the young man sitting next to Sam. "We'll see," he said roughly, his harshness transformed into an affection that was difficult to dispute. "For now though," he added, once again staring directly at Sam, his eyes flint-like, "I think you should go, Sam."
It was a command not a suggestion and Sam started to bridle at the arrogance of Jason Morgan thinking he could tell her what to do, when she belatedly remembered that Spinelli was the one that mattered. She didn't want him to be placed in an awkward position if there was a power struggle between her and Jason. Anyway, she knew she'd lose if Spinelli was forced to choose between her and his mentor.
Smiling artificially, she nodded her head in agreement, "Yeah, I have some errands to run."
She stood up and started walking towards the door. When she passed Jason she was disconcerted by the almost palpable waves of enmity emanating from him. For a brief moment she wondered if it was safe to leave Spinelli with Jason in the mood he was in but she recognized that his anger was directed solely at her. 'Besides, Jason would never hurt Spinelli…' Her thoughts were making her extremely uncomfortable and all she wanted to do was to escape the claustrophobic atmosphere of the penthouse and breathe fresh air.
Turning once more she gave a small wave to Spinelli, who raised a listless hand in turn. His drooping body posture and closed in facial expression once again reminding her of what he had endured of late. "See you soon, partner," she said lightly. Jason had the door open and impatiently steered her through the opening. Before she could speak, whether to politely bid him farewell or berate him-she couldn't say-the door was slammed in her face and she stood there excluded, open-mouthed and fuming.
The door to the penthouse edged open, it was late, past midnight and Jason, a beaten, disheveled, weary Jason, stood on the threshold. He had been quiet as only he knew how to be. There hadn't been a sound from the insertion of the key in the lock to the turning of the knob to the final slow pushing open of the door itself in order to prevent any telltale squeaks. Yet, for all his subtle stealth, his surreptious attempt to enter his home unnoticed was irrelevant.
Spinelli was on the sofa, his body draped supinely across its length, one leg splayed over the back while the other dragged haphazardly along the floor. His eyes were covered by his left arm flung carelessly across the upper part of his face and the television remote was held loosely in his right hand. The television was on but muted and the only light in the room came from the moving play of color from the shifting shapes displayed on the screen. The flickering light made the silent unmoving form on the couch appear unreal, insubstantial. For a brief moment Jason's heart was in his throat as he thought with superstitious terror that he was seeing merely the corporeal form of his roommate and that his damaged spirit had finally fled this earthly plane.
Then the recumbent figure stirred, emitting a low confused moan and Jason's brief moment of fear was replaced by a rush of relief as he realized that Spinelli was only sleeping, was caught in the grip of one the frequent nightmares plaguing him these past months. When Jason was home, which was most nights now, Spinelli retired to his room where he always had his i-pod or his own television-or most often both-playing until he fell into a restless doze neither quite fully asleep nor fully awake. Later Jason would come in and switch off the electronic sleep aids and sit next to him on his bed running a gentle hand caressingly through his thick, tangled hair until under his soothing touch the boy succumbed to a truly healing, dreamless sleep. Oftentimes Jason would stay the night, sleeping lightly next to him, then awakening before dawn and stealing back to his own room before Spinelli would wake up and feel embarrassed at being such a burden on his mentor.
Yet, on the rare occasions that Jason would be out of a night anymore, Spinelli couldn't stand the solitude, the pressing in of the walls of the regrettably pink room as unhappy memories swirled around him and echoing voices susurrated through the still, dead air pulling at the fragile threads of his tenuous reason. He could only stay in the penthouse if he were downstairs, close to the door and the illusion of freedom it offered. He knew intellectually that he could leave, that he wasn't truly a captive but he hesitated to be gone were Jason to return. He didn't know if it was because he was afraid of him or for him but either one was an effective enough force to keep him tethered to the overstuffed sofa staring blankly at a television screen that more and more was becoming his only exposure to the external world.
"Spinelli," Jason gently shook the shoulder of his dreaming roommate, trying to not arouse him too abruptly. "C'mon wake up, I'm back now, you're safe. It's just a nightmare…" The young hacker's eyes were open but unseeing, their brilliant green washed out by the dampening effects of the artificial light coming from the television screen.
Suddenly his brain caught up with his change in awareness and he sat up with a frenzied cry of "Stone Cold!" He grabbed Jason frantic for contact with another living being, to feel warm flesh as he tried to dispel the demons haunting his dreams. "You're here!" He was nearly crying as he pulled at the older man who succumbed to the urgent tugging and upon sitting down on the sofa found his arms full of an agitated Spinelli clinging to him with a bruising force borne of panic.
"Ssh, ssh," he whispered, as he ran his hand around his back in pacifying circles like one did with a crying baby. "It was just a dream, nothing more. Nothing is going to hurt you, I won't let it."
Slowly Spinelli settled down, relaxing his hold on Jason, his breathing becoming regular under the repetitive whispering combined with the calming rubbing of his back. He let out a sigh and tucked his head against his mentor's chest, feeling safe and secure as he always did in Jason's presence. "Sorry," he mumbled drowsily, not wanting to move from the warmth and security of his haven but knowing that Jason would pull back soon, that it must be costing him to put up with the unaccustomed and unwelcome physical contact.
Jason's chin was resting on the top of his head and he seemed in no hurry to let Spinelli go. "What was the dream about? Do you remember why it frightened you?"
The rumble of his voice vibrated through Spinelli's entire body as he wrinkled his nose in reluctance not wanting to return to the jagged dark despair Jason had just rescued him from. "You…" and now the tears were falling freely as the sharp ache of unimaginable, unendurable loss was revisited, "It was about you, Stone Cold. There was shooting, gunfire and you fell not to arise again. The Jackal saw it, you were dead…" The shaking began again as all of Jason's magic efforts at appeasement evaporated in an instant.
"Spinelli!" This time Jason's voice was sharp and he leaned away from the embrace, tilting the boy's chin up forcing his tear stained gaze to meet his own. "Look at me! I'm right here-alive and well-not dead. I'm fine." He tried to smile, to underline his words but a shadow flitted across his eyes and his lips couldn't quite manage to curl up in reassurance.
Spinelli's senses were on hyper-alert and he pulled out of Jason's grip, suspicion clouding his eyes as he searched his mentor's face. Jason actually made an abortive move as though to pull him back into the hug but his native stoicism reasserted itself and he sat there patiently undergoing his roommate's doubting scrutiny.
"That is patently proven…you are indeed unharmed." Spinelli shook his head trying to dislodge the tenaciously clinging tendrils of the nightmare. "Yet," he was speaking slowly, trying to put his finger on what Jason wasn't saying, what he wasn't telling him. "There is something else, another mishap that Stone Cold is attempting to shield his grasshopper from but it is a hopeless endeavor for he shall know of it. You must tell me Stone Cold," he urged him, his eyes large and full of foreboding.
Jason sighed miserably and ran the side of his hand across his brow rubbing at it in a displacement behavior as he tried to avoid answering Spinelli, to save him from further pain. Still, he knew it was fruitless, if he didn't tell him he would hear it from another source. "Yeah," he agreed, "Something else did happen. There was a gunfight and I wasn't harmed but someone else was…" He narrowed his eyes as he looked at Spinelli, wondering at his precognition. "How you would be dreaming about it though, that's just weird."
Spinelli ignored his final commentary, intent only on what Jason had said about someone else being hurt. "Who?" He pleaded with his friend to tell him. He dreaded hearing the answer but anything, no matter how bad, was better than this awful suspense as he contemplated who among his dwindling circle of loved ones could have been injured or…no, he couldn't even envisage a more permanent outcome.
Jason bent his head, he couldn't bear to watch Spinelli's face one more time as he told him something so cold and clinically irrevocable but he had no choice. "Sam." He said the name in a low voice, it was pulled out of him in all its brutal rawness. He still hadn't absorbed it, processed the fact that she was no more and now he had to impart the information to Spinelli that one more person whom he had valued, loved and depended upon was ripped away from him-honestly, this time-from both of them.
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