And an asteroid smashed into the earth and they all died.
FIN
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Well, I had to give the day its due ; )
And on with the latest happenings in PV...
####
The sight could still make her shake her head and smile: one of the few things that could these days. It wasn't exactly that she was surprised. Despite their obvious differences, both men had this core of good, old-fashioned decency.
It wasn't the fact that she had played the awkward semi-but-not-really relationship limbo with each of them that made her hesitate in wishing them a good evening. Normally, the gesture would be met with a light joke and a bit of mild flirting.
It was the fact that the atmosphere surrounding them had noticeably shifted. But, seeing as how she was getting to be accustomed to brewing storms, she braved the elements anyway.
"How's it going today, gentlemen?"
Jack tapped the table and smiled. His fellow diner, on the other hand, was content with a grunt. "Well," the former finally offered, "after looking at nothing but this grizzled old face and my daughter's date for the past half-hour, I can say the change of scenery is nice."
Krystal surveyed the now-empty table, only recently vacated by one of the world's sweetest pairs. "Jack, they're -"
"If you say adorable, I'm docking your tip. And yes, I know how he's good and smart and just the world's bestest-ever young gentleman. But that still doesn't mean I have to like the fact that he's being all gentlemanly and sweet and smart in the vicinity of my little girl." Jack paused for a breath while Caleb's napkin housed a rather spirited cough.
"I was going to say that they're gone now." It took every effort to hide her own smile as well.
"Oh." After appearing properly shamed for all of a hot second, Jack folded his hands and took the last hatchet to Krystal's threatening smile. "Krystal, I did want to let you know again that if you need any assistance with Adam's case, I'm here. And I'm sure the same goes for Caleb, too." Another grunt sufficed for agreement at the other end of the table. "Family law may not be our area of expertise, but we can –"
"I appreciate it, Jack. Thank you. But we have it handled."
What was another lie? Suddenly, the next table looked as if it could use a thorough cleaning.
"Don't worry. Chandler will be handled soon enough." Caleb had been busy pushing around his food this whole time, but she really shouldn't have been surprised at the soft, yet authoritative interruption. The man had that way about him.
Before she could ask for elaboration she probably didn't want, a new customer strolled in: the proverbial stranger in a strange land with his three-piece suit amidst a sea of blue jeans and tees.
"Speak of the devil," Krystal muttered, while simultaneously seating her two current customers with one stern but appreciative look. "I'll take care of this."
#
The supply room was cramped, uncomfortable, and smelled of cheap beer and detergent. It was actually the perfect setting.
"What do you want, Adam?"
"I just thought I would give you the chance to bow out gracefully now." The fact that he could still give her that know-it-all grin - as if her were in the boardroom, or another room – made her head pound and her blood boil. Or maybe it was just the fumes. He leaned in closer, leaving her no breathing room. "Things aren't going so well, hmm?"
"I can break any stallion down." Make the most of what you're given. With no place to go but forward, that is exactly what she did, until that five hundred dollar aftershave practically stung her nostrils. "I should think you would remember that better than anyone."
His head rested precariously against a large sack of flour. Just one tip of the hand….the image brought a genuine smile.
"Why don't you just go away?" Part petulant child: that part, she got. But his eyes were also - some might say Stuart-like – she knew that rarely seen side well, and it was all Adam.
He needed an answer. And so did she.
"Why do you need me to go away so much?"
And there it was. The cold steel, the knife. The blockade. But not quite. Not –
"Because you and your family have done nothing but destroy us piece by piece since the moment you slithered into town."
She wanted to reach up and slap, throttle, pound the unsaid away.
"I destroyed you?" She couldn't - couldn't give it that incredulity. It was strangled by something more raw, more real. "My family's gone!"
"So is mine, lady!"
And there it was, laying on the ground. Not bleeding. Not bruised. Just….there.
The diverging dreams - the same where it mattered. The hope, the wish that for their kids, for them things would be different. They would be better.
A shared, shattered dream. At one time, they would have picked up the jagged pieces together. Braved the cuts.
Now, they each had their respective broken fairy tale in hand, ready to cut some more.
"He's all I have left of them. You can't….you won't take that away."
Ditto.
"Watch me."
Yours, mine. Never ours.
Eye to eye, face to face.
No escape, no more hiding.
She reached out, brushed his cheek (a thumb hovering over one parted lip), grasped the slender object directly behind him…and swung.
The subsequent shouting, smashing, and sounds of general hell-raising soon drew a crowd at the doorway, led by Jack and Caleb.
Krystal eyed the broom handle and the 'great and powerful' man cowering beside it.
She turned to Caleb. "Can you call 911? This man just destroyed my…" Last bit of sanity. Hope. Life. "Property."
"My pleasure." Caleb disappeared into the gaping mass, a grave smirk dancing at the corners of his lips.
She looked back down to a face full of hatred, full of…
Something she could not, would not, think about.
Not if she wanted to keep that last shred intact.
Mutual destruction, delivered the way only they could.
####
It was the tattered postcard he'd kept in his pocket when nothing else in his life would or could keep. The two figures, one just a hair taller: shadows silhouetted against a cotton candy sky. The tiny red barn straight from the farm of Old MacDonald was the best backdrop.
The smaller shadow's hand was extended, touching a small, feathered mass.
He could never see the faces then. Even on that day he had tried the most, when the picture had been balanced on a broken arm. But now, as he moved closer, the darkness melted away, revealing familiar shapes and eyes that danced in his dreams. His wife. His little girl.
His together-forever.
Tad cleared his throat and stepped into the waning light. "Hey, I got your message. You decide to let the old man join in on this girls'-time?"
Kathy's hand dropped from the animal she'd been petting. Her other hand visibly strengthened the tight hold it now held on her mother.
He looked to Dixie, waiting for a cue. She, however, appeared to be doing the same, only with their daughter.
A part of him hadn't wanted to let the two go off on their own….hadn't wanted to let go. The bigger part of him knew that a large, defined line existed between wanting and needing. When Dixie had texted him, revealing their location and asking him to join them, he'd been relieved, almost as if this place would wash every trouble away and allow them to leave, reborn.
Baptism by poultry.
It was only when he reached down to pet said poultry and received a literal hen-peck for the effort that he fully realized maybe the trial had just begun. His two companions shared a slight chuckle at his misfortune, and for a glorious instant, it was rightside-up again.
Then came the shared look.
Kathy turned to him and spoke her first words since he'd arrived.
"Dad, can we talk?"
And it all shifted again.
Tad searched Dixie's eyes, and for once, he couldn't find what he was looking for.
When she nodded and stepped away, he searched for a smile instead. "Sure thing, kiddo."
Kathy took his hand and led him to the small pond. Father-daughter time, one on one.
Normally, and especially lately, he would give his left arm for this time. But watching his daughter intently study the ripples in the blackening water, he wondered how much she'd have to give. She tossed a pebble onto the surface, and it scored a direct hit, fragmenting her topsy-turvy reflection.
"When my first mom and dad left….when they died, I didn't really understand why they had to go away." It was still a confused little girl's musing, but the voice of someone much older. "When Aunt Julia died, I was sad, but I didn't wonder anymore." Too old, and it broke his heart. "And when you found me, when you told me what had happened to my mom, I knew the reason why people kept leaving." She stopped, and he couldn't be sure he ever wanted her to start again. "It was me."
"Honey, no –"
"Dad, please, I just…I just need to - You remember when I gave Krystal a hard time? "
He could only give a rueful smile. That particular period was a little hard to forget.
Kathy tossed another pebble. This time, it sent a jagged line between their watery counterparts. "It wasn't really about her. It was – I just felt like I was lost all the time. Like I didn't really belong here, or anywhere. Since I can remember, I kinda felt that way. Krystal, I thought she was trying to take away the one thing – the one person – who did make me feel like I belong." The pause, and the baby blue eyes now regarding him, pierced his heart a litte more. In the worst way.
"You."
In the best way.
He dipped a shoe in the water, sending a ripple that joined with his daugther's. They watched it travel into the darkness, a tiny sliver of light.
"When I was not much younger than you, I came to live with your Grandpa Joe and Grandma Ruth. Before then, I only had a passing idea of what a family was….what belonging to one was like. Your grandparents didn't change that by adopting me or by giving me their name. They changed it by doing one simple thing: loving me, no questions asked." A chill snaked its way up his arm and into the tips of his fingers. He warmed the chill with the closest – and most reliable and enduring – source: his daughter's hand. "You'll always have a place, a reason, and a home, Katie. Always. You'll always be my little girl."
"No, I won't." She tried to pull her hand away, but this time, he wouldn't give up.
Mad scientists or family curses or death itself be damned, he wouldn't ever let her go again.
He wanted to capture the small, tiny drop of water that fell into the pond, but he wasn't fast enough.
"Do you want to know why the other kids hate me, why..." Her hand was cold, clammy, and trembling. It was his turn to be the warmth. The source. "It's because of this."
Steadier fingers brushed closely cropped hair.
"And this…" Those fingers lingered on the nape of her neck before moving swiftly to sweep over baggy jeans, blue sneakers, and a black hoodie. Her hand hovered over her chest, and the tremors were back. Only when she settled her palm on the center of her chest idd the tremors stop.
"And this, mostly this."
No pauses, no breaths. No turning back.
"I want to be a boy, Dad."
Ring.
Ring.
Ring.
Far away, too far, but he grabbed the bells anyway. He grasped them for dear life.
"Hello."
Formal, polite. Appropriate.
His friend made no such formalities. "Tad, it's Jesse. I thought you should hear this before the news crews pick it up. JR tried to escape. He's been caught, and there is…other trouble. If you and Dixie could come down to the station, I'll fill you in on everything. I realy need to go now."
The click cut off a response he didn't have.
He hung up the phone, numb, disoriented.
She... Kathy had turned away.
Hating himself with every movement, he did the same.
Signaling for Dixie, he said flatly. "We have to go."
Our children need us.
####
"You've got a visitor."
They were words JR had become accustomed to not hearing. And given the current situation, words he wasn't expecting to hear again for a good long while, if ever. So, when the guard delivered this news without so much as a raised eyebrow, he figured one of three options.
The first….he could only hope it wasn't the first, because he didn't want to ever look at her again and do that. It had bled him dry the last time.
The second: he was about to play the newest round of public defender bingo.
The third option might've been the best. The genesis of his current predicament. Maybe she had arranged another rendezvous, and maybe she'd actually finish the job this time.
When his visitor did enter, it was the same dark hair and the same blazing eyes he'd been expecting. But something…
Something about this woman was different. It always had been.
Those eyes should've born the same hatred entombed in his former captor's. Somehow, they didn't.
If he could lose himself in a boozy haze just one more time, he might've even seen a different emotion: concern.
"Why are you here?"
Jinx.
One collective question with, he suspected, about a thousand different answers.
Give or take the one that mattered.
Cara's hands had wrapped around the steel bars, so his….they had to find a new refuge.
Ladies first.
"Haven't you heard? I made my grand escape attempt. Didn't work out so well, though." His hands found that refuge, or something resembling it, under his chair. "But hey, what's another ten or twenty?"
"It's getting thrown into the general population…or worse."
He shrugged, training the smirk. He'd spent years perfecting it. "Maybe the cancer'll take care of me first."
And there it was again, that flash of something in her eyes that shouldn't exist...shouldn't matter. "That's partly what I'm doing here. Your results are back."
He forced it. He would damn well keep it in place. "Well, don't keep me in suspense, doctor. How long do I have?"
"Oh, I would say another fifty or sixty years." He must've...he must've conceded, because her grip on the bars - and that look - eased. No, softened. "Aside from an uptick in your blood pressure, you're perfectly healthy."
The sharp intake of breath was not planned, but it was an affirmation.
Of life.
And oh, how it sliced.
"Healthy? Every day I want to drown at the bottom of a bottle. I'm….I'm only sober because I have to be. Maybe being aware, maybe living and breathing every second is my real punishment,"
"Lose the damn martyr act, JR." The ferocity was something he'd expected from the beginning; something he didn't expect now. "You have a second chance to make it - make this matter. You owe it to my brother, to all of them, and you're not going to piss it away. I'll make sure of that."
The whitened knuckles likely matched his own face right about now.
She toyed with the bars. "I know you didn't break out. What happened?" Her eyes were a direct hit. "How did you get here?"
The rote response - Just by being me - died on his lips.
Bianca and he hadn't mapped out the plan for his reentry into the system. In fact, after his challenge went unmet, they hadn't uttered a word. She had dropped the gun. He had picked it back up, given it to her again. Not another challenge. Just a…choice.
There were no apologies or pleas. They both knew that the time for those had long since passed.
When she left, he had picked up the phone and dialed three numbers.
To end it.
He should've remembered that some things weren't meant to end. Not really.
"Why does it matter?"
Why do you care?
And some questions were never meant to be answered.
Before she could open her mouth, his entourage arrived.
"We are ready for your transfer, Mr. Chandler."
Back to a bigger, bolder set of bars. Back to potentially face a brand spanking new set of charges, with one major, mysterious addition.
Funny thing was, he didn't want a phone call right now or a quick peek of the trees before they aided him into the van. All he wanted, all he ever wanted really, was an answer.
The truth.
The oncoming commotion in the corridor put a halt to all wants, wishes, and pipe dreams.
"I'll have your badges for this…..I'll -"
A moment.
One snapshot.
Frozen in time was one familiar image...his first glimpse in over a year.
Maybe his last.
JR held his father's gaze.
A thousand words, no words, and every last paradoxical emotion in one tenuous connection.
And with one shove and one blink, the connection was broken. Gone.
Like it had never existed at all.
Just a ghost in the night. Fleeting, but always haunting.