Part 9

A lifetime of fishing trips with Grandpa Roman and Great-Grandpa Shawn hadn't prepared Will for months at sea with the Merchant Marine. He'd been surprised and embarrassed to get sea sick two days into his first voyage. He hadn't let the nausea interrupt his work, though, and he had almost immediately established himself as skilled, dedicated, trustworthy, and industrious. These were all things he didn't care to be considered any longer. But they were the path of least resistance.

The others seemed to know instinctively to back away from Will. Whenever anyone approached him- whether to challenge or befriend- Will grabbed onto the thought that he'd nearly murdered a man at the age of 16. He remembered the gun in his hands, the sound of the shot, the smell of blood, and the body on the floor. The memory must have shown plainly on his face, because whoever it was always walked away and didn't come back.

Will did his duty and demonstrated that he wasn't a pushover, and that was enough to be left the hell alone. He was hardly unique in his desire to avoid much interaction. Many of the Mariners were running from something.

Jeff was the closest thing Will had to a friend. (Obviously, someone who would shoot to kill as a teenager and let his father take the fall for the crime wasn't capable of real friendship.) Jeff was a bit harder to avoid than most because Will had to step on Jeff's bunk, right near Jeff's head, to climb into his own bed. Even a hardened criminal didn't do things like that without a by-your-leave to the other guy.

Will knew for a fact that Jeff was, to the day, two years older than he was. Most of the time, the two years felt like twenty. Jeff was established and knowledgeable and always seemed to have been there and seen that. That might have been why, once in a while, Will actually answered when Jeff asked him a personal question.

Not that he answered completely.

Jeff had been telling a story about how his mother's next-to-last boyfriend had bought him a hooker for his fourteenth birthday. "I loved that woman!" Jeff exclaimed, to raucous amusement from the others. "Would have followed her around like a puppy dog, except I couldn't drive so I couldn't get over to her place." More laughter followed. Will didn't join in. Prostitution, frankly, made him think of his Grandma Kate, and how she had delayed his parents' marriage for years, and how maybe if she had never done that...

"What about you, Will? First girl you loved?"

What passed for a polite silence waited for Will's answer.

So Will mentioned that the girl's name had been Mia, and she'd been very beautiful, and always interested in people other than herself, and weirdly straightforward. He said she'd left him to go to an exclusive dance academy.

Nothing about Grace, even though so many years after the fact Grace and Mia were practically inseparable in his mind. Nothing about Sydney. Nothing about how once Will and his parents had been closer than close, united against the world, but then Sami had decided to lie about Grace and Sydney and Rafe and keep Will out of the loop. Sami had discarded her first child for a new special trinity.

Or so Will had thought.

Really, their family had shattered when Lucas had taken the fall for Will. If Will had been man enough to handle the consequences of his own actions- if Will hadn't done whatever he'd done to make Lucas think he was too fragile to know the truth- if Will had been in prison where he belonged- Sami and Lucas would never have given up on each other.

Will was an adult, and it still bothered him that his parents weren't together. Maybe Lucas had been right. Maybe Will really was stunted, weak, helpless, hopeless, easily misled, stupid, a burden to be cosseted and lied to...

Maybe Will was doomed to destroy everything he touched.

Ever since he had overcome his brainwashing (what kind of person allowed himself to be brainwashed?), Will had done his best to stay away from everyone. There would be no more interfering and no more dragging other people down with him.

Of course, he slipped on occasion. Just before shipping out this last time, he had emailed each of the twins with a suggestion of an appropriate summer camp. Then he had emailed Sydney and told her to do whatever she could to keep the twins and their parents from realizing that they were off to the same camp. He couldn't help but wonder how that had worked out.

"Sounds like this Mia girl was too good for you," offered one of the Mariners.

"She was," Will agreed. Who wasn't too good for him? (It was beyond irrelevant that if Will was going to go around worrying about romance, he was more attracted to Jeff than he was to any woman. Male, female; that wasn't the point. The point was that Will had made a mess of his life. So he didn't share. It wasn't as if the story about Mia was technically untrue.)

"My dream girl would have a flat head, so I could put my beer on it, and no teeth," said another.

They went back to laughing.

Will went back to forgetting about everyone he had ever known. Except EJ. He would always remember how he had tried to kill a man, and how, in so doing, he had killed himself.

Soon there was no time for stupid conversations about lost loves.

First there was the storm and all the extra work that came with it.

Then there was the rescue mission; a reefer ship had been disabled by the rough seas. For two days, no one rested. None of them minded. It was a matter of life and death, every human being united against the sea.

And then there was the chain of explosions. At first it had looked like the reefer alone would be destroyed, but the two ships were closer together than they should have been, especially in the midst of a storm that tossed them back and forth.

Will and Jeff and Matthew were together on the bridge when the first blast shook the ship. Will happened to have his arm wrapped snugly around a support; he tightened his grip and hung on. In a fraction of a second, he realized that that was not enough. Jeff and Matthew couldn't reach the support. The ship swung drunkenly downwards. Jeff and Matthew were airborne.

Will grabbed Jeff by the back of his neck and hurled him back onto the the ship.

Matthew fell sixty feet and slammed face first into the concrete-hard water. In the pouring rain mixed with smoke, Jeff and Will immediately lost sight of him.

Jeff let lose a string of obscenities that was impressive even for a sailor. Somewhere in there, Will heard "you saved my life" but there was no time to deal with that now. They had to see if Matthew still had a life to save. They had to keep the ship in one piece.

That turned out to be a losing battle.

Communication was almost impossible over the combined roar of wind, rain, waves, and fire; they sensed, rather than heard, the order to abandon ship.

Will and three others were disentangling a lifeboat when the sinking reefer rolled toward them a final time. There was a loud crack and a sharp pain in Will's leg.

He didn't know that he was in the water until he choked on a mouthful of salt. He didn't feel cold or wet. He only felt the hot, vibrating stillness of his leg.

He started to swim away from the wreck of a ship. The lifeboats couldn't be too far away, and everyone would be looking for those who had been knocked overboard.

After one stroke, he knew that his leg was of less than no use. He tried to pull himself forward with just his arms; a swell tossed him backwards twice as far.

That was it, then.

He didn't really mind. It wasn't much of a loss, after all, the kid who shot people and didn't remember it, the kid who couldn't be trusted with the truth, the kid who no longer had a place in the world.

He flipped onto his back and let the rain pound his face. Hypothermia wouldn't be so bad. It would be better than the night he'd realized for sure that he'd been the one to shoot EJ, and that his parents had blithely lied to him about it.

"Will!" It sounded like Lucas' voice.

"Dad?" he mumbled against the rain. "Dad, I'm so sorry." The shame was overwhelming, and he closed his eyes.

"Don't close your damn eyes, Will! Don't you dare!" The voice was in his ear now, along with unpleasantly hot breath. It wasn't Lucas.

"It's me, Will."

That didn't help. Will knew he'd met a lot of people, but he couldn't remember any of them.

A hand slapped at Will's face. He couldn't remember what he'd done to deserve it. Probably something stupid.

"You do not get to do this after you saved me, OK? Understand?"

Will didn't, but he opened his eyes to see what the commotion was about.

"Good. You and me, we just have to make it around the side. There's another freighter already here. They stayed far enough back. They'll pull us up."

And somehow Will was dragged along the side of the convulsing ship toward the open sea. He couldn't make out the outline of the third ship until they were beside it and someone was tugging a harness around him.

"No wonder he's in shock. His leg's a mess."

All of Will was a mess. That was nothing new. The sailor's revelation struck him as so ludicrous that he began to laugh. He laughed until the harness touched his ruined leg. Then he passed out.

When he opened his eyes, his parents were sitting on either side of his hospital bed. Their joined hands lay atop his chest.

TBC