Disclaimer: I own nothing of Psych except seasons 1-8 on DVD. This is just for my own enjoyment and the potential enjoyment of other Psych-Os like me, and no monetary gain was expected or received.

Rating: T+

Spoilers: Few, though most strongly from episode "High Noon-ish." May contain spoilers for "Objects in the Rear View Mirror May Appear Closer Than They Are."

A/N: I had planned to do a chapter of "Objects" next, and I did get started, but, little as I wanted to kill Kenny, the aftermath is something I've been looking forward to since long before the sister-induced writer's block. As I'm writing this, I don't know when I'll be able to get it to you: I'm currently not allowed to drive, so I have to wait and catch a ride, or walk the three miles from my house to the library, which you can guess I'm not too keen to do, though I do it happily enough when the weather is cool. I've been having seizures. Tests have shown thus far that it is probably not epilepsy and apparently not anything physically wrong with my brain. So they're thinking they are pseudo seizures. In other words, yet one more mental health issue to deal with, on top of Bipolar Affective Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, an Anxiety disorder, and Autistic Spectrum Disorder (what they used to call Asperger's). Yippie Skippie. The neurologist told me to start psychotherapy, which I had resisted, but when a neurologist tells you to do something, you tend to do it. Couldn't tell you if I've gotten anything out of it yet, but we'll see. I always thought of psychotherapy as something for those with deep, dark secrets to release, and I'm fairly certain I don't have any, but there's got to be more to it than that, right? I've had a few sessions, and I think there is a point to it, at least, and my therapist says she thinks maybe just possibly we can get to a point where we can get my psychiatrist to at least lessen those medications she keeps increasing on me. I currently take more medication than my mother, and she's schizophrenic. (I take more, but mom's medicine, by and large, is stronger, because I may have more mental conditions, but I'm not schizophrenic. Yet.) I like my therapist well enough, but I wish she'd stop nagging me about my FEELINGS, though I guess that is her job. Sorry for laying this shit on you, but I don't talk to people, and this kind of stuff kind of wants out once in awhile - plus, I realized I kinda played a teaser in that last chapter's A/N. Anyway, enjoy - I had fun with this one, yes indeed, even though it's short and dark. Next one will be fun, too, even though it's a bit of a rehash in storytelling. I didn't want to split them up, and the length of this one suggests maybe I shouldn't have, but it felt like the right place to cut it.

Falling

The boy didn't know why, when the knock came at the door early the next morning as he was fixing his siblings breakfast, he immediately felt a cold chill. No one knocked on their door in the early morning.

He sent Lincoln to answer it, with an admonition to check and see who was standing out there first and be careful on opening it even if it was someone they knew. Even so, he put down the plates of eggs and bacon and moved to the living room doorway to watch.

Lincoln opened the door. "Hey, Mr. Marshall. What'cha need?"

"Hello, Lincoln," Mr. Marshall said, and the boy couldn't help but think he sounded tired. He looked…horrible. Grey and haggard, with dark circles under his eyes, deep lines along his mouth he couldn't remember having seen before, and a definite slump to his shoulders that gave him a defeated air. "Could I speak to Carlton?"

Carlton? Nobody called him Carlton, ever. What was going on?

He stepped forward. "I'm here, Sir. What's wrong?"

"Hello, Carlton. Could I…speak with you, a moment, please? Outside?"

The boy patted Lincoln on the back. "Go to the kitchen, Link - get your breakfast. I'll be right in."

He followed Mr. Marshall outside and closed the door. The older man turned and looked at him, and damned if there weren't tears in his eyes. The boy's own eyes widened and he knew, without question, something terrible had happened, and if something terrible had happened to the Marshalls and it involved him?

Then it had happened to Kenny.

He put a hand to his mouth. "Oh God. What happened? Is he all right?"

Mr. Marshall shook his head. "Carlton, Kenny's…Kenny's…dead. There was a car accident, late last night. The police said he was speeding, but even if he hadn't been, there might still have been nothing he could've done to prevent it. The other guy…seems to have fallen asleep behind the wheel, or something. He was wearing a medic alert bracelet that said he was diabetic, so maybe he was in sugar shock, or something like that. He crossed into Kenny's lane."

The boy closed his eyes and slowly sank down onto the top step. It couldn't be true…it was a nightmare. Had to be. In a minute he'd wake up, shaking, relieved that it was over.

Mr. Marshall went on. "His mother and I, we haven't really been able to think. It hasn't sunk in yet, and frankly I'm kind of wondering if it ever will. I'm sure you're going to be in the same kind of place for awhile. But we do know one thing: Kenny would've wanted you to be one of his pall bearers. Do you think you can do it?"

The boy looked up, and for the first time in God knew how long, tears began to stream unrestrained from his eyes. He nodded. Mr. Marshall nodded back.

"Good. We'll set everything up, so don't worry. Don't know quite yet when it'll be, but it won't be long. Couple a' days from now. You gonna be able to dress up a little?"

"Yeah. I got a suit," the boy said, his voice low. His lower lip trembled. The tears kept rolling slowly down his cheeks, unrestrained but not, at the moment, particularly strong. He was, more or less, in a daze, not yet "with" reality enough to really feel the pain of loss and the grief that came with it. And then, Mr. Marshall spoke again.

"You know, I'm…glad Kenny had you, all these years. You were good for him. Kept him steady, showed him what it means to be responsible. He could've gone far on what you taught him, and I know you will."

The boy didn't hear that last part. He stopped hearing Mr. Marshall's words after "You were good for him." He kept repeating it over and over in his head. You were good for him. You were good for him.

If I was good for him…he'd still be alive.

Now it began to sink in. His shoulders shook. His chest heaved. His breath hitched in and out as the sobbing at last started in earnest.

"I'm…I'm soh…sorry."

At first, Mr. Marshall took this as a condolence, but after just a brief moment of observing the boy's shattered countenance and the way he couldn't face him any longer, he recognized it for an apology.

"Carlton…why are you…what are you sorry for?" Mr. Marshall asked, bewildered enough to cut through his own grief for a moment.

"He wanted me to go with him, last night," the boy sobbed out. "I said I couldn't go, but there wasn't really anything much holding me back. If I'd've gone…I could've done something. Kenny would be alive."

Mr. Marshall put his hands on the boy's shoulders. "Carlton. Listen. All you would have done, if you'd been in the car with Kenny last night, is die, too. That's the facts. And while I really, really wish Kenny wasn't in that car, I'm glad you weren't, kid. Really glad you weren't."

"It's my fault," the boy said, shaking his head, not hearing the man's words. "It's my fault."

Mr. Marshall sat down on the stoop next to him and put an arm around his shoulders while he cried, and rocked him back and forth gently, trying to comfort him, but he didn't speak any more. He didn't know what more to say. A few days later, Carlton stood with the Marshalls, some of Kenny's male cousins and a couple of his other friends, wearing his dark church suit, and helped carry the coffin from the hearse to the graveside. Julie came to the service, wearing a lovely black dress and black dress gloves, and after the mourners started heading back to their cars she came to the boy and put her arms around him and her head on his shoulder.

"I'm so sorry, CJ. I know what he meant to you."

He held onto her, cried silently into her hair, and said nothing. He had nothing to say.

Weeks passed. He didn't see much of Julie after the funeral, not because she wasn't there. She even turned up on his doorstep, looking for him, one day, but the boy had retreated not just physically but mentally and emotionally as well, and she might well have not existed, no matter how hard she tried to reach him. He was just as distant with everyone else, and the people that loved him noticed and worried. Even Geena, though she told herself that she was only concerned that his lack of attention to the family meant she had to pay more attention to it. The truth was he was her big brother, and she knew how much she owed him, and she loved him, no matter how aggravating she found him.

His teachers were worried about him, too. From a star pupil he declined rapidly, failing to turn in homework or turning in papers that seemed to have been done poorly on purpose. Any attempt to talk to him was met with a dull gaze and utter silence. Always silence.

He was in such a state of shock that he didn't even know where he got the first bag of marijuana. And did someone show him how to roll it up into a cigarette? He couldn't remember. Not through a haze of grief and guilt and marijuana smoke.

He started skipping school when he could get away with it, walking deep into the city to hang around arcades he didn't patronize. He stopped badgering his mother into taking him to get his hair cut, and his hair grew out rather quickly, so it wasn't long before he looked…really rather scruffy. Coupled with the fact that he'd never shaved his face and his whiskers really were starting to grow in fairly well, all things considered. It was still little more than peach fuzz, but it was dark peach fuzz, and it showed up well. The Marshalls gave him some of Kenny's T-Shirts, clothes far and away more casual than anything the boy typically wore, and he began to wear these shirts exclusively. He didn't know whether that was to keep Kenny close or because they fit the image he was beginning to present.

One of the shirts he favored in particular had ripped-off sleeves. It pictured a red dragon with wings outstretched over flames and the words "Bat out of Hell" and the name "Meat Loaf." Kenny had worn it often. Whatever his ultimate motivations for wearing it, the boy felt a bit closer to his friend when the slightly ratty t-shirt was on him. It certainly made him look disreputable, with the increasingly shaggy hair and the peach fuzz, but he no longer cared about that.

Hank tried to talk to him many times, in person, on the phone, even through the mail. The boy didn't even seem to notice these attempts. He certainly made no effort to reciprocate. He didn't forget that he loved Hank, longed for him even, wished he could lay all his grief at the cowboy's feet and stand free and clear, but somehow he…just…couldn't. Even to Hank, whom he trusted more than anyone else in the world, he just couldn't…express…his grief.

Every morning he walked his siblings to school, and more often than not he stayed for the day, disinterestedly slogging through what needed to be done in order to make it to final bell. But sometimes he'd take off his white uniform shirt, stuff it in his locker, and sneak out. The Meat Loaf t-shirt looked rather strange over black dress slacks, but he didn't care. One day in particular he stuffed his shirt in his locker, hid a pre-rolled joint in his pants pocket, and slipped out the door to an arcade he knew some miles away, where he could stand and smoke and wonder what people got out of shooting little colored dots on a TV screen.

He had gotten good at avoiding police cars, but the vehicle that pulled up in front of him this day was not marked. Neither was the bulldog of a man who stepped out of it. Nevertheless, the boy instantly recognized him as a police officer. He didn't even have to see the gun or the shield badge clipped to his belt - the black uniform of Santa Barbara's Finest would have looked overdone, like a theater costume framing the buzz cut and the walrus moustache, the slightly paunchy belly. Caught like a deer in headlights, the boy stood with the jaws of fate clamped tight around him and waited for the death knell to ring.

"Would you mind telling me what you're doing there, Son?"