Sorry for the long delay! One of my New Year goals was to complete my fanfics, so that's what I've been doing. Thanks so much to everyone who has been reading and reviewing.


The coffee out of the hospital cafeteria was shit. Tasted like something scraped off the road. Tim put the paper cup down and lit a smoke, leaned back against the wall and watched his mother.

He didn't know what exactly he'd expected, but somehow this wasn't it. His mother was awake when they came in, her bed propped up. A tube pushed oxygen into her nose. She complained of being thirsty and asked them to turn the lights on.

"The light is on, mom," Angela said, frowning.

Tim could hear the labored rhythm of her breathing across the room. Angela sat beside her, holding her hand, murmuring things Tim couldn't make out.

When they were growing up Angela fought with their mother more in a week than he and Curly put together did all year, but in the time he'd been gone they seemed to have come to an understanding. Or maybe they just got tired of fighting.

"Tim," Angela said, looking over at him. "She wants you."

He took another drag on the cigarette before flicking it out of the window. He'd picked up Angela and driven to the hospital in the dark dawn. He'd watched out the window as the sun rose and the shadows receded over the city. He wasn't sure how long they'd been here, but it felt like forever.

When Curly died time had moved too fast. It ran out on them before he even made it to the hospital.

He came around to stand on the other side of the bed.

"Yeah?"

He stood there while her gaze moved over him as it had when he first arrived back.

"I wish ..." she said, and stopped to take a gasping breath.

"Don't try and talk, mom," Angela said.

Their mother moved her hand, waving away her words. Even in her illness she didn't seem weak. Tim had thought a lot of things about his mother when he was growing up, but he had never thought she was weak.

She looked back to Tim.

"I blamed you," she said. "For Curly."

Her fingers tightened against the sheet, clawing toward him. He realized she wanted to touch him and drew back. He didn't mean to, but something in her grasping repelled him.

He remembered mornings she lay on the couch, arm pressed over her eyes, calling to him to bring her water, bring her asprin. Shut those kids up.

"It wasn't your fault," she said, her sunken eyes staring into him.

He remembered the feel of his brothers arm against his as he passed him the bag of dope. The cold logic of his violence as he beat the boy from the River Kings.

She wasn't innocent but neither was he.

"It was my fault and no point pretending otherwise," he said.

His mother shook her head a little.

"No," she said.

"You forgotten who I was then?" he asked.

"Tim, come on," Angela hissed.

He tried to swallow down the anger. He wasn't going to do this, argue with a dead woman.

"I remember," his mother said. "Every day."

He took a slow breath, feeling like the past was only yesterday. Still seeing his brothers bright eyes as he gazed back at him, hearing his laugh, feeling him by his side.

"I led him to that day," he said.

His mother smiled.

"He would have walked through fire for you."

She reached for him again, and this time he stayed still, let her press her hand into his.

"You always looked after him," she said. "That's what I remember."

Curly had loved Jay for the short month he'd had with him. He would let the baby curl a tiny fist around his finger, rock him when he cried. He had paid him more attention than Tim ever did back then.

"You act like he's your kid," Tim had said to him one day as he waited for Curly to put the baby down and get out the door after him, inexplicable resentment simmering in him at his brother, his son, at things he didn't even understand.

"He's a Shepard boy ain't he?" Curly said, putting Jay down in his crib. "He's part of me too."

Part of him. It was what Tim remembered again and again in those early months, missing his brother, holding onto his son.

"Tim, in there," his mother said now, her voice a whisper.

He turned to look where she was indicating. Beside her bed was only the hospital cabinet and the oxygen pump.

"What you want?" he asked her.

If she wanted him to yank the oxygen and end it faster she was shit out of luck. He wasn't going to jail for her.

"The draw," she said. Each word was an effort. But compared to Curly this was clean at least.

He pulled open the top drawer of the cabinet and looked at the jumble of tissues and tubes of cream, unopened snack bars, lipsticks.

"Take it," she said.

He glanced over at Angela and she shrugged her lack of knowledge.

He shoved aside a few things, wondering what she meant. He knew when he saw it, a black and white photo.

He and Curly on the steps outside their mom's home. They were side by side, not touching, arms resting on their knees.

Tim's young self stared unsmiling back at him, and Curly beside him smirked into the camera. But above the smile his brothers eyes were solemn, his gaze sorrowful. Or maybe it was only in the knowing what was to come for him it seemed that way.

She was watching and he held it toward her so she could see.

She smiled slightly, dry lips cracking. Looking at the photo of two gone boys, one dead and one grown.

"I wish things had been different," she said. Her breathing was getting harder.

"Same," Tim said.

But you couldn't make the past any different from what it was. He watched her rush toward death. He wondered how it would be to die with regrets, when there was no more time.

"We love you mom, it's ok," Angela said, her eyes on Tim.

He looked down at the photo in his hand. It was worn around the edges, held many times. He flipped it between his fingers.

A date was written in faded ink up the top. 18 July 1968. Curly would have been sixteen. He wondered why the photo was taken that day. His mother wasn't one for happy snaps.

It seemed to late to ask her about that, or anything else. Her eyes were closed, her breaths so shallow Angela kept leaning over her to hear them.

It was early afternoon when she took a breath and then not another. Angela leaned forward, Tim felt his own breath catch in anticipation. It was quieter than he'd expected, somehow quicker. She was there and then she was not.

XXX

When he walked out of the hospital again it felt like he'd been in there days. It was still bright out, the sun high in the sky.

"Got a smoke?" Angela asked.

He lit two and passed one to her.

"Shit," she sighed. "It's almost a relief, you know? Like it's over for her."

Tim felt the same. Relieved it was over, glad there had been some kind of peace in the end.

"She give you the photo of you and Curly?"

Tim nodded.

"You remember that was my wedding day?"

"Shit, we sure didn't dress up."

He never would have guessed he and Curly in the photo were going anywhere but Buck's or the street corner in their t shirts and jeans and slicked back hair.

"Wasn't exactly a special occasion."

She had big sunglasses pulled down over her eyes. He couldn't guess what she was thinking as she stood in front of him on the hospital steps.

"Wedding's never was in our house," he said.

He'd only married Maria because she was pregnant.

He was old enough to remember his mother marrying his stepfather too, he'd sat up the front and glared at them both, furious at having to sit through their boring wedding on a warm summer day. Didn't know then the relationship between him and his stepfather was already as good as it was going to get.

"Least the choice was yours," Angela said to him. "A girl don't have that. Not then anyway."

Tim had never thought his sister had a choice either. When she told him she was pregnant his first thought was she would now be stuck with Chris for the rest of her life.

"I wish I'd never told you to marry him," he said to her. "Figured Chris would get his shit together once he had someone to look out for."

He really had. So sure back then Chris would do right by his sister just because Tim told him so.

Angela pushed her sunglasses back up on her head. Her eyes were dry and clear.

"Hope you don't blame yourself for that one too," she said. "I remember you trying to keep me away from him at first."

There hadn't even been any damn baby. Tim had never asked his sister how she had thought she was pregnant when she wasn't, and it made no difference now.

"You ever think about leaving him?"

He meant in the beginning, when there was still time.

"I love him. Not that it's ever done me any good."

"He ain't even fucking here, Angel."

She gave a short laugh. "A man in prison isn't the worst thing. My kids know exactly where their daddy is. He ain't beating them, he ain't drinking up all the rent money. Can't say the same for us growing up, can you?"

He didn't answer. It wasn't much, but it wasn't the worst thing. Not if you were like her and didn't expect a thing at all.

"You got the worst of it when we were kids, too," Angela said. "You always stepped in front of me and Curly."

"Figured I was more of a match for him than either of you," Tim said.

Angela was shaking her head a little.

"She thought having a man around might keep you and Curly in line, that's what she told me."

"That right? I always just figured she needed the paycheck."

"There was that. Once I was on my own with my kids, I understood a little better. I mean, I'm married, but it's all on me."

Tim dragged at his cigarette. He understood some when he was a kid and less after he was a parent.

Remembering it pissed him off. All of it, her and her complicity, reporting his misdeeds to her husband. His stepfather coming down the hallway and whatever he'd grabbed to hand thudding against the wall as he hit it in a warning.

Curly would huddle in the corner of his bed but Tim would stand in the middle of the room with his fists clenched and wait to meet him. He knew one day he'd be able to hit hard enough to make it count.

He flicked the cigarette away and headed down the steps to the car park. No good being mad at dead people. The dead felt no regret, no anger. They missed nothing. That was for the living.