All he had to do was pick up the pieces. He saw it all the time. His father would hit his mother all the time at night-but when he picked up the pieces in the morning, everything ended up fine.

Only, he stopped picking up the pieces. Then Mom would start screaming and Pop would scream back, all because Pop had forgotten to pick up the pieces.

So when he came back, he expected to be there to pick up the pieces of Pop, to love him and pick up his pieces-not for Pop to pick up the pieces of him. It threw him off, surprised him.

But, slowly, he understood. All he needed to do was break Pop again, break him on his own. Not only would Pop see that Tommy wasn't the broken one, he would love Tommy again, they would be happy, and Tommy would pick up all the pieces that Pop would shatter into. Everything would perfect.

All Tommy had to do was pick up the pieces.

That one day, when Tommy finally broke him, when Pop finally went back to the bottle, he hadn't expected it to hurt so much. It should have only felt all the more sweeter when he picked up the pieces of his broken father-but it only hurt, ached at his heart, burned in the back of his throat and the corners of his eyes, blurring his vision.

He held Pop close, crying with him, why didn't Ahab stop the ship, couldn't he see that everyone was dying? Everyone was breaking, and no one was left to pick up the pieces, and he still kept going, still kept trying to reach that white whale, even though he was tearing himself to shreds just by going on.

He picked up the pieces of Pop and cried for the first time since Mom died.

Tommy entered the ring with almost vengeance. He had broken Pop and pieced him back together. All that was left was Brendan. All he had to do was break Brendan, make him see how stupid he was about that family of his-break him and make him see how wrong he was. The invincable, untouchable, undefeatable Pop had been broken-Brendan was the easy part. Brendan had grown soft-teaching kids! Breaking Brendan was going to be less than easy-a joke.

Only, now, right now, it was Brendan breaking him-he could feel himself shattering, feel himself splintering under the pressure of Brendan's confidence, his grim determination. Even as he was punching him with everything he had, he could feel himself splintering.

So when Brendan started slamming back at him, Tommy could feel parts of him breaking away. 'Is this what it feels like?' he wondered. 'Being broken? It hurts…hurts so much. I don't understand-!'

"I love you," Brendan whispered in his ear. "I'm sorry, Tommy, I love you. I love you!"

He didn't know what he was doing. But one moment Brendan was pinning him to the ground, and the next, Brendan was piecing him together again, and they were walking out, holding onto each other, loving each other once more.

And Tommy finally understood.

AN: I actually wrote this when the movie first came out, but at the time I didn't think I would do anything with it. I was cleaning out my computer and stumbled on this, and decided that I really do like it, and so I put it up.

I hope you enjoyed reading-if you did, why not drop a review?

Or, if you hated it, go ahead and tell me why.

Thanks~