Title: From Having Died
Author: moonchild2584 (Allison) e-mail: moonchild2584@yahoo.com
Disclaimer: Not mine. No money.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: And I may return if dissatisfied with what I learn from having died. --Robert Frost
Little Warnings: Bobby and Claire are sitting in a tree. There's love. There's marriage. There's a baby in the baby carriage. The relationship is not the focus of the story but I'm not experienced enough in this particular area of the fan fiction world to know how offensive the idea is generally deemed, so I thought I'd mention it. Also, there's some potential hokiness and a smidge of sappiness with a pinch of melodrama for good measure.
BIG WARNINGS: Character death (it happened in the past relative to the story, though), implied euthanasia (assisted suicide). The manner in which this took place is not talked about in any detail. It's more just the general idea that that's what happened and also some of the reasons behind why it was done. Don't worry--I'm not trying to start a debate or lecture anybody on my views. It was just the way the story wanted to be written.
Author's Notes: The title and summary of the story come from a Robert Frost poem called "Away!" The lyrics at the beginning and end of the story are from "All Things Must Pass" by George Harrison (*sniff*). The actual idea for the story was inspired by something I saw on Unsolved Mysteries the other night in a fit of boredom (stop laughing). It was one of those "Unexplained" segments about a woman who named her baby son after her dead grandfather and afterwards the dead grandfather began to visit her in these frequent and vivid dreams, telling her things she had no way of knowing about before. The idea has been modified somewhat for the sake of the story.
Spoilers: There's some references to Brother's Keeper and The New Stuff. Possibly Enemy of my Enemy too, but I'm not entirely sure, stupid as that probably sounds. You see, I have a general idea about what the episode was about but I've never seen it because the network I watch the Invisible Man on decided to show a baseball game that day instead (d'oh!).
Enjoy!
"Sunrise doesn't last all morning
A cloudburst doesn't last all day
Seems my love has up and left you with no warning
It's not always going to be this gray
All things must pass
All things must pass away..."
It was happening again. The scene was playing out like it had thousands of times before, terrible and familiar. There Darien sat on the counteragent chair in the lab, explaning his decision to a friend he knew could not understand in a tone that was more appropriate for someone reporting the weather outside. Claire stood in the background with arms crossed, a parody of the professional stance she tried to keep in order to give the illusion of detachment from her patient but Bobby Hobbes wasn't fooled. There was a fine line between a doctor's detachment and a friend's numbed horror at being dealt an emotional blow such as this.
"It's the only way," Darien concluded, his eyes turning the determined statement into a desperate question. Like so many times before, Bobby knew that this was the moment. If he told his partner that he was wrong, that there were other ways, he knew that for this one moment at least, Darien would believe him. Unfounded though such a reassurance would be, Darien would believe him and everything would change.
But history was written in stone and even dreams couldn't lie. He opened his mouth now to deliver such reassurance but all that came out was a choking sob and the tears started to fall because he knew that Darien was right. There was no other way.
Beside him Darien sighed in resignation and pulled his weeping friend to him. He expected the comforting nonsense that the dream usually contained at this point but instead was favored with a slight deviation from the norm as Darien whispered softly in his ear,
"The baby's crying."
At first he was marginally offended, thinking with his sleep-addled mind that Darien was referring to him as a baby for crying over the imminent death of his best friend. He was about to deliver some wiseass retort when the voice came again, closer now than it had ever been before,
"Wake up, Bobby. Your baby needs you."
It was more surprise at the suddenly real-seeming presence of the familiar voice than the urgency of his baby son's wails from the nearby nursery that startled him back into the waking world. He sat up straight and at attention, listening for that much-missed voice once more but knowing it could only have faded with the dream, as it always did. All he heard was the sounds of his son's cries and the creak of the bed spring as Claire was roused.
"Bloody hell," she mumbled. It was the third time that night, though Bobby had no way of knowing that. He had been too deeply caught in his dreams to register any of the other incidents.
But he was awake now and as Claire prepared to roll out of bed to calm their son, he held out a hand to stop her.
"I'll go," he said, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. "You get some sleep."
She murmured gratefully and settled back down. Bobby knew she wouldn't truly sleep until she was sure the baby was all right so he moved fast, hastily retrieving a bottle from the kitchen and warming it as quickly as possible while his son cried desperately on, more forcefully as the seconds passed and neither of his parents showed up.
Sastified with the temperature of the formula, Bobby practically ran to the nursery, tripping over a coffee table in the process. He let a few expletives escape before he entered the room where his son screamed on, nearly dropping the bottle he was holding when his eyes finally registered the scene he found there.
"Took you long enough," the figure crouching by the crib said, straightening as Bobby stood, frozen. "What?" he said, noticing Bobby's stunned expression in the light of the moon. "You were expecting the Easter bunny?"
At this point, Bobby probably would have had an easier time of it if it really were the Easter bunny standing there in the middle of the room. But this he wasn't ready for.
"Claire's gonna come in here if you don't do something, you know," Darien said. Darien Fawkes. His very dead friend. "We both know you've been in the dog house quite enough lately, so if I were you..." He gestured toward the rapidly cooling bottle. "Would it help if I stood over here for a minute?" He moved away from the crib and over to the nearby rocking chair.
Without a word Bobby moved over to where his son lay and picked him up, cradling him as the baby sucked eagerly on the bottle.
"I tried to calm him down but I guess I only freaked him out more," Darien said apologetically.
He moved forward a few steps. Bobby took the same number of steps backward.
"You're dead," he finally managed.
"I hadn't noticed," Darien replied with his usual sarcasm. In another time Bobby would have been annoyed but at the moment it sounded like the sweetest music he had ever heard. "I was kind of there, you know?"
"And now you're here," Bobby said. "How is that, partner?"
"What? I'm not allowed to come visit my namesake?" Darien said, coming closer once more. This time Bobby didn't back away, instead allowing Darien to come close enough to peer into the blankets and smile. After a moment of soft cooing, he met Bobby's eyes once more. "So whose idea was it to name the first born after me? What kind of blackmail had to be pulled to get that one on the birth certificate?"
Bobby shrugged helplessly. There had been surprisingly little argument over the name of their child once they found out it was going to be a boy. It was more like an unspoken agreement, an exchange they didn't need to have. The doctor had simply asked and they answered simultaneously...
"Darien Robert Hobbes," Darien said wonderingly, reaching out a finger which the baby eagerly clasped in his own tiny hands. Bobby couldn't suppress the gasp of surprise that escaped him at this, but Darien seemed unconcerned. "Musta been Claire's idea. You always did think Darien was a dorky name."
"Do...Do you want to hold him?" Bobby asked.
"I couldn't if I wanted to," Darien said, not bothering to explain why this was. "Anyway, I'm flattered. That you named him after me, I mean. As long as you don't forget to tell him where the name came from when he starts to wonder why he's always getting beat up at school for it. If it's not...you know, classified."
"I'd tell him even if it were," Bobby said. "As long as you don't mind me leaving out the part where that particular person decided to die and I didn't lift a finger to stop him. How I let him down."
"I was wondering when the conversation was going to get around to that," Darien said, but he wasn't accusing. In fact, he was smiling a smile of such deep contentment that Bobby had to look away in the face of his own sorrow and guilt. "I don't regret it, Bobby."
"I do," Bobby said, moving over to the rocking chair. Darien followed, hands in the pockets of a pair of jeans Bobby couldn't recall ever seeing him in before.
"You shouldn't," Darien said once Bobby and the baby were settled. "It was the right thing to do and the right time to do it."
"No," Bobby said, shaking his head. "We should have waited longer. Claire could have found something. We could have looked harder. It didn't have to end like that."
"You're right," Darien said. "We could have let it go on long enough that you would have had to kill me anyway and in a much less humane way than what we did. Your last memories of me could have been of some raving lunatic trying to perform brain surgery on himself and ready to kill anyone who got in his way. Sounds like a whole lot better option to me." His tone was gentle despite the harsh images his words drew in Bobby's mind. "There was no making lemonade out of those rotten lemons, Bobby. We did it the right way. And I don't regret it at all. I don't want you to either."
There was a long, heavy pause as Bobby considered this, thinking back to those final days. It turned out that the cure for quicksilver madness Arnaud had given them wasn't so much the permanent solution they had all been hoping for as the prelude to an even worse problem involving Darien's psyche. Instead of the raving red-eyed animal he became in the throes of quicksilver madness, an unpredictable series of delusions and hallucinations began to show up, forcing Darien to live much of his life in a dark fantasy world where he was constantly being persecuted by those he trusted in only the most bizarre ways imaginable. The real Darien Fawkes was nowhere to be found most of the time and the few moments he was were filled with deep depression or uncontrollable rage at the trick they had all thought Arnaud had pulled on them. They worked around the clock to capture Arnaud once more in order to force the solution to this from him by any means necessary. It was only when they succeeded in doing this that the final blow was delivered because it turned out that it wasn't a trick. Arnaud had not anticipated this new madness and therefore had no cure for it. He even went so far as to say that this new development had been caused by a flaw in the gland that Kevin Fawkes had not foreseen. That the alterations Arnaud had made in order to make quicksilver madness had somehow blocked the effects of this flaw and that, by curing it, there was nothing there anymore to prevent it from coming to the foreground and taking over. They had believed him because of the perplexity with which he delivered this news. There was nothing he could do. So Darien had made his decision and now kept his brother company in the plot right next door.
Or so Bobby had thought.
"Besides," Darien went on after a few moments, "if I hadn't died there are a lot of good things that probably never would have happened."
"Like what?" Bobby asked skeptically.
"Like you and Claire getting married," Darien said. "Congratulations by the way."
It was true, Bobby had to admit. Their mutual grief over Darien had brought them together in a way that wasn't possible before. The rest had taken care of itself.
"And if you hadn't married, then little Darien here would never have been born." The baby made a soft noise almost of agreement. "The...end of the I- man project would never have happened which means that the Agency would never have been shut down and we all know how that paved the way for better careers for you, Claire and Eberts. Not to mention a happy retirement for ol' Charlie Borden."
Bobby sighed and opened his mouth to protest. True, there were all the good things. But what about the heartache and guilt? What about the nightmares? What about that emptiness?
"The list goes on," Darien interrupted before Bobby could get the denial out. "You know it does so don't make me pull a reverse It's a Wonderful Life on you to prove it."
Bobby shook his head. The tears freely flowed.
"The only bad thing as far as I can see is this guilt you all insist on carrying around," he went on. "It's not doing any of you any good. And I don't want little Darien's inevitable inquiries to result in this melodramatic excavation of painful memories. I don't want him to think of me as that guy who died. I want him to think of me as that lazy, selfish snot-nosed punk kid who turned out to not be so lazy or selfish after all."
Bobby started, remembering his words to Darien's brother Kevin even as they were being thrown back at him with that old know-it-all smirk.
"I want him to know how you guys all saved me in more ways than I can count on my fingers and toes," Darien said. "Including the time when you let the moment pass where you could have changed my mind when I told you my decision. You saved me then, too. You saved a lot of people then." Another pause, this one shorter. "Do you understand?"
"I understand," Bobby said.
"Well, then I guess my work here is done," Darien said, standing now and stretching.
"Don't go," Bobby said instinctively.
"Oh don't worry, I'll be around," Darien said. "It's just that all this paranormal, back from the dead stuff takes a lot out of a guy, you know?"
"No, I don't think I do," Bobby said, smiling a little. "I've never been dead before."
"Bobby, who're you kidding? You've been dead for the past two years," Darien said. "And you were dead a couple of times before that too if all you told me about yourself has any truth in it. Now it's time to live. Your son needs that from you. Claire needs that from you."
Bobby considered this and knew it to be true. The day Darien had died, something inside Bobby had gone with him. That part of him couldn't be revived or buried but it didn't need to take over the place either. At least he had been given this moment, if nothing else.
"That reminds me," Darien said. "I'd really like it it if maybe you could kind of pass on to Claire some of the stuff I said, okay? You guys don't talk about it much but she feels guilty too and I don't want her to. She did the best she knew how to do and that was enough."
"I don't think she'll believe me," Bobby said.
"Sure she will," Darien replied. "Just ask her about the purple underwear thing. She'll know it was me."
"Purple underwear? Do I want to know?"
"Probably not, but I'm sure she'll tell you anyway," Darien said. He leaned over the baby now, who was falling asleep as the two men talked. "He's so beautiful," Darien murmured then looked up at Bobby and smirked. "Are you sure he's yours?"
Bobby laughed and it felt good.
"Well, the mailman is pushing eighty, so I think I'm pretty safe," Bobby said.
"What about the cashier at the supermarket?" Darien said, feigning worry.
"She's a woman," Bobby said.
"Oh. All right then," Darien said and leaned down, kissing the baby lightly on the forehead. He rose once more and stuck his hands in his pockets. "So I guess this is it. Again."
"Aren't you gonna offer up one of your favorite little quotes to give meaning to the moment?"
"What? This moment doesn't already have meaning?" Darien said, pretending to be offended. "You want a bouquet of flowers? A Hallmark card? A box of chocolates? I'm dead for Chrissakes. Gimme a break."
Bobby laughed again and this time the baby began to fuss a little at the noise. Darien laughed too, running a hand through his hair.
"Bobby, if there's one thing I've learned from being dead it's this," Darien said, "a witty saying proves nothing."
Bobby nodded, pretending to absorb the wisdom of this observation before saying, "Voltaire, right?"
"Been doing some reading while I'm gone?" Darien said.
"Well, someone had to get possession of that dictionary of quotations you were keeping around," Bobby said. "I wasn't about to let them throw it away."
Darien laughed again, this time a little more subdued. He came back over to where Bobby was sitting and leaned over him the same way he had done the baby. "It's not always going to be this gray," he said, kissing Bobby lightly on the forehead. A light, friendly kiss of gratefulness mixed with sorrow. Bobby closed his eyes against the rush of tears that suddenly threatened to overflow once more.
When he opened them, he was laying back in his bed and it was morning. The sun streamed in through the window and he could hear the sounds of Claire bustling around in the kitchen while the morning news played in the background. He rose and wandered out there, leaning against the doorway as he took in the sight of his new family and felt a clench of true appreciation grab his heart. He was a lucky man.
"Hey Claire?" he asked as she rustled around in the refrigerator for something.
"Yes?" she said, straightening up to face him.
"Do you know anything about...," he hesitated, feeling silly. Whatever had happened last night sure didn't feel like a dream but now he wasn't so sure in the face of bringing up such a silly subject, "purple underwear?"
The startled look on her face told him everything he needed to know.
"Now darkness only stays the night-time
In the morning it will fade away
Daylight is good at arriving at the right time
It's not always going to be this gray."
George Harrision, "All Things Must Pass"
Author: moonchild2584 (Allison) e-mail: moonchild2584@yahoo.com
Disclaimer: Not mine. No money.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: And I may return if dissatisfied with what I learn from having died. --Robert Frost
Little Warnings: Bobby and Claire are sitting in a tree. There's love. There's marriage. There's a baby in the baby carriage. The relationship is not the focus of the story but I'm not experienced enough in this particular area of the fan fiction world to know how offensive the idea is generally deemed, so I thought I'd mention it. Also, there's some potential hokiness and a smidge of sappiness with a pinch of melodrama for good measure.
BIG WARNINGS: Character death (it happened in the past relative to the story, though), implied euthanasia (assisted suicide). The manner in which this took place is not talked about in any detail. It's more just the general idea that that's what happened and also some of the reasons behind why it was done. Don't worry--I'm not trying to start a debate or lecture anybody on my views. It was just the way the story wanted to be written.
Author's Notes: The title and summary of the story come from a Robert Frost poem called "Away!" The lyrics at the beginning and end of the story are from "All Things Must Pass" by George Harrison (*sniff*). The actual idea for the story was inspired by something I saw on Unsolved Mysteries the other night in a fit of boredom (stop laughing). It was one of those "Unexplained" segments about a woman who named her baby son after her dead grandfather and afterwards the dead grandfather began to visit her in these frequent and vivid dreams, telling her things she had no way of knowing about before. The idea has been modified somewhat for the sake of the story.
Spoilers: There's some references to Brother's Keeper and The New Stuff. Possibly Enemy of my Enemy too, but I'm not entirely sure, stupid as that probably sounds. You see, I have a general idea about what the episode was about but I've never seen it because the network I watch the Invisible Man on decided to show a baseball game that day instead (d'oh!).
Enjoy!
"Sunrise doesn't last all morning
A cloudburst doesn't last all day
Seems my love has up and left you with no warning
It's not always going to be this gray
All things must pass
All things must pass away..."
It was happening again. The scene was playing out like it had thousands of times before, terrible and familiar. There Darien sat on the counteragent chair in the lab, explaning his decision to a friend he knew could not understand in a tone that was more appropriate for someone reporting the weather outside. Claire stood in the background with arms crossed, a parody of the professional stance she tried to keep in order to give the illusion of detachment from her patient but Bobby Hobbes wasn't fooled. There was a fine line between a doctor's detachment and a friend's numbed horror at being dealt an emotional blow such as this.
"It's the only way," Darien concluded, his eyes turning the determined statement into a desperate question. Like so many times before, Bobby knew that this was the moment. If he told his partner that he was wrong, that there were other ways, he knew that for this one moment at least, Darien would believe him. Unfounded though such a reassurance would be, Darien would believe him and everything would change.
But history was written in stone and even dreams couldn't lie. He opened his mouth now to deliver such reassurance but all that came out was a choking sob and the tears started to fall because he knew that Darien was right. There was no other way.
Beside him Darien sighed in resignation and pulled his weeping friend to him. He expected the comforting nonsense that the dream usually contained at this point but instead was favored with a slight deviation from the norm as Darien whispered softly in his ear,
"The baby's crying."
At first he was marginally offended, thinking with his sleep-addled mind that Darien was referring to him as a baby for crying over the imminent death of his best friend. He was about to deliver some wiseass retort when the voice came again, closer now than it had ever been before,
"Wake up, Bobby. Your baby needs you."
It was more surprise at the suddenly real-seeming presence of the familiar voice than the urgency of his baby son's wails from the nearby nursery that startled him back into the waking world. He sat up straight and at attention, listening for that much-missed voice once more but knowing it could only have faded with the dream, as it always did. All he heard was the sounds of his son's cries and the creak of the bed spring as Claire was roused.
"Bloody hell," she mumbled. It was the third time that night, though Bobby had no way of knowing that. He had been too deeply caught in his dreams to register any of the other incidents.
But he was awake now and as Claire prepared to roll out of bed to calm their son, he held out a hand to stop her.
"I'll go," he said, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. "You get some sleep."
She murmured gratefully and settled back down. Bobby knew she wouldn't truly sleep until she was sure the baby was all right so he moved fast, hastily retrieving a bottle from the kitchen and warming it as quickly as possible while his son cried desperately on, more forcefully as the seconds passed and neither of his parents showed up.
Sastified with the temperature of the formula, Bobby practically ran to the nursery, tripping over a coffee table in the process. He let a few expletives escape before he entered the room where his son screamed on, nearly dropping the bottle he was holding when his eyes finally registered the scene he found there.
"Took you long enough," the figure crouching by the crib said, straightening as Bobby stood, frozen. "What?" he said, noticing Bobby's stunned expression in the light of the moon. "You were expecting the Easter bunny?"
At this point, Bobby probably would have had an easier time of it if it really were the Easter bunny standing there in the middle of the room. But this he wasn't ready for.
"Claire's gonna come in here if you don't do something, you know," Darien said. Darien Fawkes. His very dead friend. "We both know you've been in the dog house quite enough lately, so if I were you..." He gestured toward the rapidly cooling bottle. "Would it help if I stood over here for a minute?" He moved away from the crib and over to the nearby rocking chair.
Without a word Bobby moved over to where his son lay and picked him up, cradling him as the baby sucked eagerly on the bottle.
"I tried to calm him down but I guess I only freaked him out more," Darien said apologetically.
He moved forward a few steps. Bobby took the same number of steps backward.
"You're dead," he finally managed.
"I hadn't noticed," Darien replied with his usual sarcasm. In another time Bobby would have been annoyed but at the moment it sounded like the sweetest music he had ever heard. "I was kind of there, you know?"
"And now you're here," Bobby said. "How is that, partner?"
"What? I'm not allowed to come visit my namesake?" Darien said, coming closer once more. This time Bobby didn't back away, instead allowing Darien to come close enough to peer into the blankets and smile. After a moment of soft cooing, he met Bobby's eyes once more. "So whose idea was it to name the first born after me? What kind of blackmail had to be pulled to get that one on the birth certificate?"
Bobby shrugged helplessly. There had been surprisingly little argument over the name of their child once they found out it was going to be a boy. It was more like an unspoken agreement, an exchange they didn't need to have. The doctor had simply asked and they answered simultaneously...
"Darien Robert Hobbes," Darien said wonderingly, reaching out a finger which the baby eagerly clasped in his own tiny hands. Bobby couldn't suppress the gasp of surprise that escaped him at this, but Darien seemed unconcerned. "Musta been Claire's idea. You always did think Darien was a dorky name."
"Do...Do you want to hold him?" Bobby asked.
"I couldn't if I wanted to," Darien said, not bothering to explain why this was. "Anyway, I'm flattered. That you named him after me, I mean. As long as you don't forget to tell him where the name came from when he starts to wonder why he's always getting beat up at school for it. If it's not...you know, classified."
"I'd tell him even if it were," Bobby said. "As long as you don't mind me leaving out the part where that particular person decided to die and I didn't lift a finger to stop him. How I let him down."
"I was wondering when the conversation was going to get around to that," Darien said, but he wasn't accusing. In fact, he was smiling a smile of such deep contentment that Bobby had to look away in the face of his own sorrow and guilt. "I don't regret it, Bobby."
"I do," Bobby said, moving over to the rocking chair. Darien followed, hands in the pockets of a pair of jeans Bobby couldn't recall ever seeing him in before.
"You shouldn't," Darien said once Bobby and the baby were settled. "It was the right thing to do and the right time to do it."
"No," Bobby said, shaking his head. "We should have waited longer. Claire could have found something. We could have looked harder. It didn't have to end like that."
"You're right," Darien said. "We could have let it go on long enough that you would have had to kill me anyway and in a much less humane way than what we did. Your last memories of me could have been of some raving lunatic trying to perform brain surgery on himself and ready to kill anyone who got in his way. Sounds like a whole lot better option to me." His tone was gentle despite the harsh images his words drew in Bobby's mind. "There was no making lemonade out of those rotten lemons, Bobby. We did it the right way. And I don't regret it at all. I don't want you to either."
There was a long, heavy pause as Bobby considered this, thinking back to those final days. It turned out that the cure for quicksilver madness Arnaud had given them wasn't so much the permanent solution they had all been hoping for as the prelude to an even worse problem involving Darien's psyche. Instead of the raving red-eyed animal he became in the throes of quicksilver madness, an unpredictable series of delusions and hallucinations began to show up, forcing Darien to live much of his life in a dark fantasy world where he was constantly being persecuted by those he trusted in only the most bizarre ways imaginable. The real Darien Fawkes was nowhere to be found most of the time and the few moments he was were filled with deep depression or uncontrollable rage at the trick they had all thought Arnaud had pulled on them. They worked around the clock to capture Arnaud once more in order to force the solution to this from him by any means necessary. It was only when they succeeded in doing this that the final blow was delivered because it turned out that it wasn't a trick. Arnaud had not anticipated this new madness and therefore had no cure for it. He even went so far as to say that this new development had been caused by a flaw in the gland that Kevin Fawkes had not foreseen. That the alterations Arnaud had made in order to make quicksilver madness had somehow blocked the effects of this flaw and that, by curing it, there was nothing there anymore to prevent it from coming to the foreground and taking over. They had believed him because of the perplexity with which he delivered this news. There was nothing he could do. So Darien had made his decision and now kept his brother company in the plot right next door.
Or so Bobby had thought.
"Besides," Darien went on after a few moments, "if I hadn't died there are a lot of good things that probably never would have happened."
"Like what?" Bobby asked skeptically.
"Like you and Claire getting married," Darien said. "Congratulations by the way."
It was true, Bobby had to admit. Their mutual grief over Darien had brought them together in a way that wasn't possible before. The rest had taken care of itself.
"And if you hadn't married, then little Darien here would never have been born." The baby made a soft noise almost of agreement. "The...end of the I- man project would never have happened which means that the Agency would never have been shut down and we all know how that paved the way for better careers for you, Claire and Eberts. Not to mention a happy retirement for ol' Charlie Borden."
Bobby sighed and opened his mouth to protest. True, there were all the good things. But what about the heartache and guilt? What about the nightmares? What about that emptiness?
"The list goes on," Darien interrupted before Bobby could get the denial out. "You know it does so don't make me pull a reverse It's a Wonderful Life on you to prove it."
Bobby shook his head. The tears freely flowed.
"The only bad thing as far as I can see is this guilt you all insist on carrying around," he went on. "It's not doing any of you any good. And I don't want little Darien's inevitable inquiries to result in this melodramatic excavation of painful memories. I don't want him to think of me as that guy who died. I want him to think of me as that lazy, selfish snot-nosed punk kid who turned out to not be so lazy or selfish after all."
Bobby started, remembering his words to Darien's brother Kevin even as they were being thrown back at him with that old know-it-all smirk.
"I want him to know how you guys all saved me in more ways than I can count on my fingers and toes," Darien said. "Including the time when you let the moment pass where you could have changed my mind when I told you my decision. You saved me then, too. You saved a lot of people then." Another pause, this one shorter. "Do you understand?"
"I understand," Bobby said.
"Well, then I guess my work here is done," Darien said, standing now and stretching.
"Don't go," Bobby said instinctively.
"Oh don't worry, I'll be around," Darien said. "It's just that all this paranormal, back from the dead stuff takes a lot out of a guy, you know?"
"No, I don't think I do," Bobby said, smiling a little. "I've never been dead before."
"Bobby, who're you kidding? You've been dead for the past two years," Darien said. "And you were dead a couple of times before that too if all you told me about yourself has any truth in it. Now it's time to live. Your son needs that from you. Claire needs that from you."
Bobby considered this and knew it to be true. The day Darien had died, something inside Bobby had gone with him. That part of him couldn't be revived or buried but it didn't need to take over the place either. At least he had been given this moment, if nothing else.
"That reminds me," Darien said. "I'd really like it it if maybe you could kind of pass on to Claire some of the stuff I said, okay? You guys don't talk about it much but she feels guilty too and I don't want her to. She did the best she knew how to do and that was enough."
"I don't think she'll believe me," Bobby said.
"Sure she will," Darien replied. "Just ask her about the purple underwear thing. She'll know it was me."
"Purple underwear? Do I want to know?"
"Probably not, but I'm sure she'll tell you anyway," Darien said. He leaned over the baby now, who was falling asleep as the two men talked. "He's so beautiful," Darien murmured then looked up at Bobby and smirked. "Are you sure he's yours?"
Bobby laughed and it felt good.
"Well, the mailman is pushing eighty, so I think I'm pretty safe," Bobby said.
"What about the cashier at the supermarket?" Darien said, feigning worry.
"She's a woman," Bobby said.
"Oh. All right then," Darien said and leaned down, kissing the baby lightly on the forehead. He rose once more and stuck his hands in his pockets. "So I guess this is it. Again."
"Aren't you gonna offer up one of your favorite little quotes to give meaning to the moment?"
"What? This moment doesn't already have meaning?" Darien said, pretending to be offended. "You want a bouquet of flowers? A Hallmark card? A box of chocolates? I'm dead for Chrissakes. Gimme a break."
Bobby laughed again and this time the baby began to fuss a little at the noise. Darien laughed too, running a hand through his hair.
"Bobby, if there's one thing I've learned from being dead it's this," Darien said, "a witty saying proves nothing."
Bobby nodded, pretending to absorb the wisdom of this observation before saying, "Voltaire, right?"
"Been doing some reading while I'm gone?" Darien said.
"Well, someone had to get possession of that dictionary of quotations you were keeping around," Bobby said. "I wasn't about to let them throw it away."
Darien laughed again, this time a little more subdued. He came back over to where Bobby was sitting and leaned over him the same way he had done the baby. "It's not always going to be this gray," he said, kissing Bobby lightly on the forehead. A light, friendly kiss of gratefulness mixed with sorrow. Bobby closed his eyes against the rush of tears that suddenly threatened to overflow once more.
When he opened them, he was laying back in his bed and it was morning. The sun streamed in through the window and he could hear the sounds of Claire bustling around in the kitchen while the morning news played in the background. He rose and wandered out there, leaning against the doorway as he took in the sight of his new family and felt a clench of true appreciation grab his heart. He was a lucky man.
"Hey Claire?" he asked as she rustled around in the refrigerator for something.
"Yes?" she said, straightening up to face him.
"Do you know anything about...," he hesitated, feeling silly. Whatever had happened last night sure didn't feel like a dream but now he wasn't so sure in the face of bringing up such a silly subject, "purple underwear?"
The startled look on her face told him everything he needed to know.
"Now darkness only stays the night-time
In the morning it will fade away
Daylight is good at arriving at the right time
It's not always going to be this gray."
George Harrision, "All Things Must Pass"