Author's Notes: First of all, I think not many of you knew that I had posted this before. It was written in a completely different style and just wasn't good. So! As promised, here is the new version - very much improved in my opinion. This story has been made possible, and I've been hopelessly enabled, by the ever wonderful [and is also an amazing writer and the author of FDO, as I'm sure you all know] - Miluielwen. Seriously, she helped me with the OC's career background, research on Grant's injury, beta'd the first chapter, squeed endlessly over plot details with me. Yes - she's pretty much the best beta ever.
SO. Huge thanks to Miluielwen. Without her this wouldn't be written.
Without further ado, I present When the War Stole Him Away.
Disclaimer - I don't own Chuck Grant. Character based off the series.
Chapter One
.
.
It's one of those still moments.
And it's too stagnant, too empty. I find myself straining my ears to listen for the ebb and flow of open, breath-taking lungs. Even the thin trail of a bleary whisper would quell thisall too familiar feeling. But there's nothing, not even the wind tapping on the side of the house to liven the deadness of the inside, and the entire world feels as if it's slipped into a tightly woven coma; one I can't simply reach into and find the restless squirming soul caught inside.
An old fear creeps back into my system, one I had thought longforgotten, permanently buried deep where it could never be found again. I cross the room, my own breath catching on a knot of nerves in my chest. I shouldn't have to think of such things. He's alive, nothing has changed since I last peered in and watched the rise and fall of his chest in the dark.
But experience knows all too well the transience of change, the danger of letting it pass without a glance, and suddenly the old rust stains on a once clean blue uniform and the smell of death is around me again. It doesn't happen all the time. I should be grateful. I should be relieved that time doesn't see fit to burden me with what was still toonear to the hurting heart to bear.
And then there are the nights where I won't be able to wonder, where he has wandered into those dreams that steal his voice to break the quiet of the night. They sound the same against different walls, the cries that speak names of men I've never known, and yet I've seen them - their faces red with pushing fever blood, eyes wild and glass-like with the bright light of heaven closing in on them. Soldiers are all the same. Filled up uniforms with guns slung over slumped shoulders. They are smoke and belligerence and misplaced bravery. I had trained myself to think of them as nothing else, not as brothers or husbands or fathers or sons. They are not loved; they are soldiers. There's a difference between a human being and a machine of war.
He's no different from the rest of them. The ones that I don't remember, their faces all running together into a mad vagueness that has forgotten their human looks and vices and regrets. His uniform hides in his closet. No different. Just a stripped war machine. Nothing has changed.
My face falls into my hands. An old weariness rests on me like wings made out of stone. Over my head, somewhere in the painted distance of the house, the pendulum of a clock swings one last time before the telling click resounds.
One..
Two…
Three….
Four.
I close myself off from the weariness, stubbing the burning desire to embrace it, and the clear and mournful ringing of midnight's arrival sobers me.
I rediscover myself at the threshold of his room. I'm standing, knees shaking still, and the old memories recede like defeated waters. My fingers grapple for the molding that frames the doorway. Deeply, slowly, I breathe, and the spinning of the room climbs down from its relentless panicked whirling. A laugh bubbles in my throat. Head shaking from side to side, hand tightening into a fist, it's anger that pulls in like the next tide. So much for strength. So much for bravery.
Steadily, I make my way back to the long-backed chair sitting by the untouched fireplace. The canvas of the paper remains blank, charcoal pieces scattered in disarrayed angles that seem wreathed in black dust. There's nothing on the page. It remains uninspired, untried, and there is no venture beautiful enough in my head deserving of the waiting white void stretched before me.
Everything is always red. Everything is always torn human skin and the black stitches holding the trembling, painful flesh together. Or the pale marble of a face caught in death. Where have the serene lakes with lily-speckled surfaces gone? The little girls with homemade dresses and mothers with the eyes of angels? Where have they gone? They have been replaced with the hopelessness of dead soldiers and walking jigsaw puzzles of confusion and suffering.
All control leaves me. In one sweeping motion my arms remember their strength. I don't remember what happened, only that the room turned red and then the blunted clatter of charcoal and the sharp tearing sensation of paper cuts. I blink away the temporary madness, red dissipating, and see the destruction. Torn canvas paper lying in crumpled shreds at my feet. Charcoal everywhere. Blood seeping from tiny slashes all over my fingers. I'm shaking. My head is ringing and throbbing all at once. Stop. Stop. Stop!
Take cover. Refuge. Find refuge.
Breathlessly, my feet lead me, my body following, my head uncertain of what to do or where to go. But all I can think of is the fear of waking him. I don't want to wake him – the only peace he knows is in sleep. Waking is a hurricane – torrents of loss, the ferocity of helplessness, and the cyclone rage only worsens it all. He doesn't know what to do, how to speak, what to think. I must help him. But how can I help a man who has forgotten himself? All my experience is with men who were dead before I knew their names.
I find myself back where I started – standing before the entrance to his quarters, gaping sightlessly inside. As I look, the panic is crushed down when I see nothing moving, still just the tranquil breathing.
My nerves ache for the numbness of alcohol, but I reach for a cup and fill it with water instead. The coolness is a comfort, splashing down the jutting ribs as if down a waterfall. Deep breaths. Closed eyes. Head back and remembering that it is all over.
In the company of shadows, I listen for him. He doesn't make a sound.
October, 1945
San Francisco, California
The coffee is on and from the smell that's pervaded the apartment, it's more than likely burnt. It isn't so much the taste I care about but the functionality. If it will guide my staggering wakefulness through this interview then it's also more than likely that I won't give a shit about the flavor. Functionality is always important. If there's anything I've learned in life, that I've stolen from experience, it's the importance of priority.
A rare morning has dawned. With it the sun, her frail beaming and burning light perched behind the melting white of cotton sky. Mostly it has rained in the last few weeks, and the cold is coming soon, so the world is making room for the new sharpness of the frozen months to come. I've never been one for paying much attention to signs; superstition is not a trait inherited by my family, not by choice or by tradition. Still, the warmth is calming, and the unbridled light makes the apartment feel as though if it has a heartbeat, as though it is alive.
The kitchen is the most animated of all the rooms as it contains most of the windows. It's a small, dusty excuse for taken up space (with the seams on the windows sticking during the summer months and an inability tokeep them closed all the way during the winter), but it's all I have. At the moment it's buried under mountains of clutter. Half-finished charcoal sketches, letters from home that I don't dare read, and then there's the strewn black and white of newspapers stained red with bold forceful circles and blatant symbols of rejection. This is the result of an endless night spent hunting for work.
All of the most vital information pertaining to myself that can be transliterated onto paper has been gathered into a worn manila folder. I have been careful not to lose it in the madness of the paper quagmire which has overrun my living space. The coffee burns some more. The light stains my back with its heat and wheedles its way into my skin. Outside, time wanders on without me, and yet I can't seem to move.
For the last ten minutes, I've been sitting in the rumpled old sitting chair that I have been fortunate enough to inherit with the flat. It's an ugly thing; terrifyingly ugly, in fact, to those picky enough with the ever-evolving fashions to recognize the hideousness of striped brown paired with the shock of orange. But it's a secure and enveloping little place to rest after a long day.
I've not moved from the cushions. In fact I haven't moved at all, at least not that I can remember. No blinking, no methodical clearing of the mouth or throat, just a contentment to sit and be still for once. And for as long as I've sat here, I've been staring at a patch of sunlight spilling over the cheap rutted floors.
Then, a change stirs the flat. The air explodes with new and foreign sound – the shrieking warning of an alarm clock, one I'd wound up the night before. It forces me back into the waking world. I bring myself slowly back into it, stubbornness parading me in as if in silent rebellion.
I should have been just waking up. And yet, when I should have been rolling out of bed, eyes sagging with tempting heavy sleep, I'm staring down at the floor. With a reflective sigh, my palms flatten against my knees, the rest of my body straightening to follow. The kitchen smells of burnt coffee beans and the pleasant burn of fresh scorched sky. I look out at the horizon, bogged with the mists as they roll out to sea, and pour half a cup of coffee. I've had too much already. Hopefully the mistake doesn't catch up with me.
Gazing through the part in the hole-infested curtains, I lean over the sink, drinking all of the blackened dose down.
I'll need all of it to stay awake.
The bus had been overcrowded this morning. A towering thing with legs like climbing vines had plopped down next to me, rearranging his tirelessly long limbs into a more comfortable position while passengers clamored for seats, some being forced to stand in the end. We had been the lucky ones. Still, I didn't feel at all fortunate to be stuck next to the very kind of person I'd been trying to avoid for the last few weeks since I'd been home.
No sooner had the bus began to roll forward, engine thrumming hard beneath the seats, and he was shovinga cigarette between the part in his chapped lips and digging a lighter out of his pocket. Just by the look of him I could tell what he was. He looked me over as if he recognized me; we'd never met. Perhaps it was the familiarity that drew him in. He'd seen many of me before in blue dresses with the hands of the dead streaked across them.
"How you doin'?" He'd asked. I received his presence without ceremony, and it was rather blank the way I looked him over in fact. We appraised one another, eyes drinking in the sight of another skeleton patched over with skin, and then returned to ourselves.
He sucked cheerfully on his cigarette.
I'd watched the city go by in a blur.
There's nothing remarkable about the place. In fact there isn't a single distinguishing feature that would help me to pick it out of the long string of houses that stretch out on each side. Tall, gangly structure. Outlined in white-frame windows and pale blue shutters. The porch might've been blindingly stark white at one time, but after years of heavy boots and all kinds of weather climbing along the new glaze; it's now a muddled sort of white-gray.
Maybe the color. Now that I look at it, the shade's a sort of wrinkled old blue. Kind of like the eyes of an old man who's seen too much in his life for his brain to keep track of, so it sticks to his eyes and everyone can see it, everything he's done. The color of eyes shaded in with too much memory. An ancient blue that carries the wisdom of the ages in its weathered buttresses and panels.
The porch is a little rickety as I traipse the small flight of steps. It creaks forebodingly beneath my weight, a warning that sooner or later it's going to cave in if it goes too much longer without repairs. There's a hammock swaying with the light intangible breeze a little off to the side, tied up to the support beams of the house. A squat empty flower pot sits huddled into itself and blotched with crusted dirt on the opposite side.
My knuckles rap against the door. Nothing stirs within at the suddenness of the sound and so I stand quietly, waiting, no longer interested in the surroundings. Behind me, my fingers wrap around each other, a pensiveness threading through them as it tries to find a way back to my brain. I keep it far out of reach of thought; I don't want to be thinking of anything right now. The manila folder and its contents are all I wish to concern myself with. No stubborn fears that won't let go. No past regrets to spread like sickening roots and bloom in my stomach. No distractions. I am not afraid and I will not let myself be willingly led into the trap of irrational fear.
Something moves inside. Footfalls. I shuffle backwards a little as to give the person room and all the while my focus never leaves the door. My entire body clenches as the sheaths of the locks slide out in the form of a slick and oily slither. A crack forms in the door frame. It widens to reveal a figure standing behind the shield of the blue-trimmed door.
I find myself in the presence of an older woman, not mature enough in age for senility and yet the blossom of her youth has all but withered from the hollows of her cheeks. She watches me with unsettlingly blue eyes, the kind that are unassumingly haunting, and their color is like a ghost trapped in the shade of sky. And yet they are strangled somehow, as if she skillfully conquers all encroaching emotions and hides them away from me. I can't blame her. There are things human beings feel that are not meant to be shared.
"Yes?" She asks softly.
I try to re-gather myself and my lost and drifting senses. "'Morning, ma'am… I'm Jane Reed. I'm answering your ad in the paper. Says you were looking for an in-home care provider."
"Oh," she says airily, and I feel as if I'm talking to her over a wide and unseen chasm.
"I telephoned this morning. Talked to a Mr. Grant. Unless you already got somebody -"
She interrupts me with, "No, no. Come in. I've just…" Her posture shifts, tautening visibly. "Yes, well. Come in. It was my husband you talked to. I was not made aware."
The woman opens the door for me to enter, allowing me to slide in before closing the rest of the world off behind me. Everything is then consumed by an all-encompassing quiet. It is as if an unseen entity has come in and swallowed up the house into an entirely different universe, one that knows no sound and operates on the silence of the overseeing stars. I tip my head back, trying to take everything in at once, and the first thought which occurs to me after coming in is that it is a quaint little structure. It seems like a place where gentleness would come to reside, infuse with the walls, and make the bones of the wood and the paint instruments of its peace.
The smell of coffee hovers in the air, not burnt like the stuff I'd left at home in my kitchen. In the nearby distance, a clock chimes - a grandfather clock from the deep rolling sound of it. All around me the walls rise up dressed in a subtle damask rose wallpaper. The rest of the furniture and decorating aspires to imitate the faint elegance of the partitions that enclose it. Soft gray couches and solid-hued sitting chairs and a short mahogany coffee table equipped with coasters and steaming coffee mugs. There are two. I assume the husband has gone off for a moment and will return.
"Would you like some coffee, Miss Reed? I've only just made it."
"Jane's fine, ma'am," I reply, quitting my appraisal and locking eyes with her. "No coffee for me, thank you."
The way she's looking at me is unpleasant. I am a stranger, she is reminding me, and I am not yet welcome in her home – if I will ever be. There is an eerie hardness to her eyes, as if they are unused to the texture of malice that they know they must display. She is protecting something or someone – probably the very reason I've come here to be interviewed. Obviously this advertisement was not printed with her approval in mind.
Footsteps resonate off creaking floorboards. Quickly they file in, one foot after the other, and a shadow throws across the hall leading into the living room off to the left. "Someone at the door - "
A man halts at the threshold of the living room, gripped by surprise and held firmly in place by it. He glances between us, undoubtedly sensing the tension that ties itself the room like too-tight laces on a corset. Perhaps, in a younger, less experienced woman, it might have been foreboding, cruel even on her constricting insides as they knot up and tangle with nerves. I stand as still as possible, fending off all fears, and etch only composure into my expression. No trace of emotion there to be found.
"Ah, you must be Jane Reed," he says, sweeping forward to take my hand. There is sadness in his face, but it is hidden as well (though not half as well hidden as his wife). "I'm afraid I hadn't the chance to warn Mrs. Grant yet about you coming. You want some coffee?"
Mrs. Grant replies in her smooth, far-off voice, "I've already offered, dear."
"And?"
"She said no."
"Then let's start, shall we? Have a seat, Jane. Over there's just fine. You didn't happen to bring recommendations, resumes, the like?"
As I sink down into the heavenly soft cushions of the sea-foam gray couch, I reach for the bag hanging over my shoulder. "I did, sir. Right here. Let me dig them out for you."
Mrs. Grant whispers inaudibly to her husband from the sitting chair adjacent to his. "Dear, some cream and sugar for you?"
"No, not today. Black's fine."
She fades into a determined muteness, one that I had often seen in medics just come in from the front line back in Italy, and it is a relief for her to rise from her chair and drift off into unknown corridors.
"I am sorry about all that, Miss Reed," he sighs a little, staring after the spectral form of his wife as she retreats into the embracing shadows. "I'm afraid she has not taken everything so well as the doctors should like. They say there are phases. We must be patient. In any case it is foolish to dwell on the things we cannot change. You're here for an interview and that is what you shall have. Give me everything. I'll look your documents over while we talk."
Already I have the papers prepared, all fashioned into a fastidious order that is promptly thrown into a forced chaos the moment he takes them into his hands. He sifts through the papers, taking time to look them over with the sharpest of scrutiny. Often, a vague hum escapes him, and yet it's soundlessness that weighs the most heavily on the room. Hands folded neatly in the folds of my skirt, I wait, and I endeavor for a seamless patience that he would never be able to see through.
"Yes, very well," he continues to hum, flipping through the folder. "Yes, you definitely have the qualifications. A registered nurse and first lieutenant in Italy during the war. My, my. Why are you not already working at a hospital?"
I reply with as much candor as I can muster, "I don't want to pursue a career in nursing anymore, sir."
At this statement, the openness of his expression wilts into a sad empathy. It is a common one that civilians wear, a mask if you will, which breaches the edges of his features and softens them, allows them to be more suitable for conveying the awkwardness of estranged comfort.
"Understandable," he decides, closing the folder. "I will not hound you with unnecessary questions."
"This is your interview, sir, I would think you'd be allowed to ask whatever you want."
He smiles a little, but the ruefulness of it is catching and the rest of his demeanor falls into the trap. "It would seem so. Well, have you experience with head wounds, Miss Reed?"
"I have."
"And what sort of experience? Describe to me the typical effects of a head injury."
"Most of the time the men don't make it through, but if they do, they aren't the same. They are often amnesiac, paralyzed, affected in speech and in gait, and recovery is slow and painful. In all honesty I have mostly dealt with cleaning the shrapnel and the bullets out – it's more often than not that the patient doesn't survive."
For a long moment, he simply evaluates me. "You are wondering what kind of patient you are to look after, aren't you?"
"Honestly, sir, yes. But I assume you'd tell me in your own time."
"Well, I suppose now is the time. My son came home from the war to us in bad shape – took a bullet to the head. They told us it was a miracle he lived but…frankly, my wife and I were concerned for his quality of life. He's come a long way, healed a lot the first two months, but there's more to this than physical recovery. There's a lot of turmoil he has to deal with. He lashes out, gets disoriented, suffers from depression. The last girl we hired couldn't take it. She was a registered nurse, just like you, but she didn't have the guts to make my boy mind. He's not a bad man; he's a confused man, lost and angry for what fate's dealt him. Charlie's been through a lot, you know. But my point is, Miss Reed – you've coped with the worst of everything. I think you could handle this."
"I'm confident that I can. I've dealt with far worse than a wounded war veteran."
"Oh, but Charlie's not just that," he replies, and there is a shine of pride glinting in and out of his voice. He rises from his chair, pockets his hands and ambles over to the window half-hidden with neatly billowing drapes. "He's a good man. He just needs someone to help him, someone who knows what they are doing. My wife and I have to work during the day and even when we're here…we don't know what to do. Doctors said it'd be good for him to have someone looking after him on a more permanent basis. Someone who can be here all the time to help him if need be. Can you do that?"
"You give me this job, Mr. Grant – I can do anything you ask of me and more."
"That's the spirit," he says, a wide grin splitting his face in two – the eyes a reflection of hidden sorrow and the chin a jack-o-lantern's smile. He extends his hand. "You got the job. One last test and you can pack your things and move in tonight."
"Whatever it is, I'm ready."
His brow lifts curiously, melancholy amusement peppering the creases at the corner of his eyes. "Oh, we'll see about that. Come with me."
He then turns away from the glowing brightness of the window, returning to the dull gray room, and guides me into the unknown, unseen places of the house. The living room disappears behind us, the foyer but a glanced upon memory and hardly remembered, and the walkway disappears at the base of a plain tapered staircase. Mr. Grant takes hold of the banister, sliding his palm against the smooth unyielding surface, and takes each step one by one. I trail wordlessly after him.
He doesn't tell me where we're going, but I already have a clear picture in my head of his idea, his test. I'm being taken to his son; the last test will be given by him. If I can deal with him appropriately then I can have the job. It shouldn't be too hard and as I stop behind my interviewer the recollections of the past flood the front of my head. The fingers of my brain try to pick through the sloshing deep waters, remember the important things, but mostly the past has been damaged by forgetfulness. Already, after so few months, I've forgotten. All that's left is images that are too quickly shoved out of sight and out of mind and dangerous flashing glimpses of blood and open screaming mouths and arms dripping up to the elbow in viscera. The sound of a door opening, creaking on old hinges, removes me from the chaos of the old days. Gently I'm replaced back into my own body just in time for the room to open up before me.
Mr. Grant stays behind. He permits me to walk inside, clearing the doorframe, before closing off all escape in my wake. I'm given only an instant to take in the sight before me – the back of a full head of golden brown hair, the light streaming in through the windowpanes catching the gleaming strands just right. It is almost as if he is wearing a halo, the way it glows, and the ridiculousness of such a fairytale notion almost causes me to laugh aloud. And yet, the contrast between the ethereal radiance set upon him by the fiery light is darkened slightly by the sight of the lounging figure sitting back in a wheelchair. He wears civilian clothes as if to shelve away all thoughts of the war and yet I can see him for what he is – a fighting man struck down with only a squeezed trigger and a mushroomed piece of metal to blame.
He turns and I am taken aback, again, by the eyes I thought I'd only just seen. There are differences in these, however, that remind me of the folly of such a belief. These are set in the face of a young man who has only just left the harsh and ungainly realm of boyhood. But it is not only the angled downward slope of jaw line and the masculinity of the gaunt, hollowed out features that confirms the dissimilarity in the eyes – but the look of them. The wisdom of the ages that they shelter in an otherwise ageless face. It is a different pair entirely. There could be no mistaking them, on second glance, with that of the version of his mother's.
His face turns into a deep, confused frown. "Who're you?" His voice is indistinct, much like that of a newly turned drunkard who can't yet handle his liquor; it is an inflection of speech he can't help.
I make no movement forward, but match the intensity of his gaze from where I stand a few feet away. "I'm Jane. Jane Reed."
"W-w-why," he struggles to speak, blinking absently at confusion, and then he remembers as if from an old and weathered dream. "You here."
"To help you."
He turns away and, in a hurried, nearly unintelligible slur says, "No."
"Actually, yes," I counter, walking over to him where he sits, stubbornly, at the window. There is unmistakable anger carved into the jutting out curves and sloping lines of his face. His jaw is set, but his eyes are blank, as if he doesn't quite know what he's angry for. I move in front of the window, blocking his view.
He attempts to push me away with his right arm, keeping his left firmly placed in his lap. "Move," he says.
"Charles, listen to me."
"M-move," he insists, pushing harder. I seize both hands, even the one he guards so staunchly against him, and he cries out in a merging of rage and fear.
"I said listen. You will listen. Do you hear me? Are you listening?"
His eyes are burning. I can feel the heat of them scorching me to the core; I have never seen such heavenly blue on fire like that. And I know I will see it again, many times over, until the fury is bridled and sent away.
"You will never be the man you were, do you understand? He is gone. You have to start over. There is no going back."
He's mumbling over and over again now, trying to drown me out, and they are no longer words but endless strings of nothings dredged up from a broken and bewildered mind.
"No, you have to hear this. You have to listen to me, Charles," I tell him and squeeze his arms harder. He looks up at me, terror like a clear and terrible storm rising up into his eyes. "Do you want to be able to talk to your family again? Take walks on the shoreline? Dress yourself and not have some woman helping you to the bathroom because you can't get there on your own?"
At first, the expression is blank, his eyes folding in on themselves as they prepare to shut me off. Then a cognizance returns to them. He understands.
"Then you gotta listen to me. You gotta do everything I say."
He looks away, casting his gaze to the ground. The long eyelashes obscure most of the color. Behind me, the door opens again and I glance over my shoulder to see Mr. Grant gesturing me to leave. I look over at Charles again. There is a soft and knowing sadness in his face, hidden beneath the lashes. Gently I release his arms and he pulls them away from me as quickly as he can. I can tell already that he favors his left; he nestles it into his stomach, as close to his body as possible.
"I want you to say something for me. Can you do that? Nod if you can."
He nods slowly.
"Say Jane," I instruct him.
The muscles around his mouth are working furiously, his throat even harder. Finally he looks up at me, meeting my unrelenting gaze, and says as clearly as he can, "Jane."
I offer him a small reassuring smile in return.
Once outside in the hall, with the entrance shut and the patient left alone in his room, Mr. Grant turns to me, hands still buried deep in their pockets. "What was that, Miss Reed?"
"An intervention, sir," I reply.
His lips stiffen as he considers my answer and for a long moment he breathes through his nose, nostrils flaring. He's deciding, mulling over everything he had seen and heard, though it had been such a fleeting moment that there is not much to deliberate. Despite this, his mouth relaxes, releasing the severity of deep thought, and he says, "We'll make arrangements for you to move in immediately. You start tomorrow."