Highway Chile Chapter 26: I Did My Best, It Wasn't Much, a phineas and ferb fanfic

Finally you say! Yes I suck at updating lately but I've been having an eventful, sex, drug and alcohol filled summer which has been quite enjoyable so far. Of course every night I'm home I sit here typing laboriously because I'm addicted to writing this story. I've started a tragedy and I need to finish it. Thank you to my faithful reviewers, I love and adore you so much for doing what you do. Without such pitch perfect motivation I'd be at a loss for words. Continue please.

~~Mick~~!

Disclaimer: Phineas and Ferb: Not mine. Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen: Not mine. Deal.

Now I've heard there was a secret chord

That David played, and it pleased the Lord

But you don't really care for music, do you?

It goes like this

The fourth, the fifth

The minor fall, the major lift

The baffled king composing Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Your faith was strong but you needed proof

You saw her bathing on the roof

Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you

She tied you

To a kitchen chair

She broke your throne, and she cut your hair

And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Baby I have been here before

I know this room, I've walked this floor

I used to live alone before I knew you.

I've seen your flag on the marble arch

This is love not some kind of a victory march

It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah

There was a time you let me know

What's really going on below

But now you never show it to me, do you?

And remember when I moved in you

The holy dove was moving too

And every breath we drew was Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah

September 2009

Life had become monotony. I pressed the headphones tighter and tighter against the sides of my pounding head but nothing would block out the consistent drone of Ferb's new song. It was different. He played Baljeet's slightly out of tune Fender acoustic and sang through a scratchy headset rather than a microphone. I swigged down a shot of rum and sent him and his undeserving lover a melodramatic glower. "Can you play another fucking song Ferb?"

"I'm calling out to you my friend, this is a message of love to you…" The dulled irises didn't even lift at my snide comment, instead Ferb continued strumming milky chords and singing softly. 'My Friend' was an amorous ballad, plain and simple. Except with Ferb as the front man the lyrics shed their generic cloak and came out as agony ridden poetry. An agony ridden sonoroe for her. Isabella sat in front of the bargain-bin plastic chair Ferb was perched upon with her head of delectable midnight waves and one peachy cheek rested against his knees.

"Ferb" I snapped "Play something else; it's been a fucking quarter hour." My pleas went unanswered of course. If only he knew I didn't want him to stop the musical progress because I disliked the song. It was because I wished he'd be playing it for me and every strum plucked apart another heartstring. "Ughh" I began to rock back and forth slowly. "Fuck!"

Isabella's face cocked in my direction "If you don't like it Phinny" she chided in conceding manner "Then get out of here."

I eyeballed Ferb's baggie of precious china white heroin lying on the table by the door; a vicious thought came to my mind. "You know what? I think I will fucking go." On my way out I swiped the drug; it wore an innocent child's guise.

TTTT

Far more orgasmic than any psychedelic, with much more euphoria than any amphetamine. That was heroin. I'd gone back to Buford's apartment and laid on the bathroom floor, the tiles were like gently swishing water. My entire being was languorous and numb and Ferb was much too beautiful to ever be mine. "I'm calling out to you, you cunt" I scoffed to myself aloud; the words poured out in dismembered clumps. "Cos' this is a message of hate to you. My friend" That was what those sugary lyrics needed; some raw and putrid rage, a feeling other than fabricated puppy love. I could've shot myself for fancying such a thing; who was I of all people to judge being helplessly, pathetically in love? Who was I to think anger beat out beauty?

More heroin. Though at that point I could barely function I managed to get another nub of Lady Ivory heated up and smoothly pulled into Ferb's syringe. It flowed through my heavily pulsing indigo veins with such terrible glory. A contrast; a Ferb, imperfectly perfect. "Ughh" I groaned at my own stupidly romantic thoughts. In the blink of a blurry eye hours had passed. Why was nobody home? My body felt as if it were winding down…almost a suffocating sensation. My breathing turned thick, I clawed at my trachea. Suddenly it was impossible to fathom why Ferb adored the White Lady. But I suppose she was the best looking girl on the block.

TTTT

I woke up to IV tubes tugging my insides and the mechanical whir of a trillion different medical machines. "Wha-?" Baljeet was slumped over a chair next to my bed; his golden skin seemed pallid. Only one other person occupied the room; the white and blue painted walls typical of hospitals worldwide. "What?"

"Jesus Christ" Ferb could barely look at me; he kept his face buried tightly in his corpse hands. "Jesus Christ Phin" His voice almost sounded agitated and he refused to say anything more. Instead he got onto the too-level bed with me and pressed his nose into my clammy shoulder it was like sleeping beside an animated skeleton draped in bruised silk.

TTTT

I found out later that I'd taken a nearly lethal dose of heroin and it was simply by chance that Ferb had stumbled upon my convulsing body as he was about to go for his usual evening shoot up in the washroom. I wasn't sure whether to thank him for saving me or whether I'd prefer death over hearing him sing 'My Friend' to Isabella ever again.

Either way as I lay wasting away on that damned cot in the Drug Ward I received news worse than the knowledge I'd OD'd. "Ferb's gone."

"What." I propped my weathered elbows up on a downy pillow "What?" Of course Baljeet would say such a horrible thing with all the coolness he could muster.

"Him and Isabella up and left." The Indian shrugged nonchalantly "He's been saying a lot about buying a place up in Scandinavia, maybe he finally got one."

"How do you not know where they went!" I snarled, Jeet's hazels' darkened in the fashion of car headlights. "I don't get why Ferb wouldn't tell me he was going…"

"BECAUSE HE DOESN'T FUCKING CARE ABOUT YOU?" His strip of wildfire scared me "I've been sitting by your goddamn hospital bed every night since you were admitted and what do you do to thank me? Ask where Ferb is. Some boyfriend you are."

"You're jealous."

"Jealous of what Phineas? The love affair you and Ferb have going on in your head? No, I don't envy that I pity it. Sometimes I wonder what I see in you" Baljeet could be an asshole, though as I narrate this story now I tell you he had more reason than I ever believed. "I'm going home." With Jeet's departure I was left horribly alone with my mind. I took in every fraction of my hospital room; the sickly blue tile walls and piecey beige floor. The fact that Ferb would run away to where—Europe? Canada?—while I recovered hit me like a metric ton of concrete. I popped an Oxycontin pill Buford snuck in for me that morning. Count on Ferb to leave when I required his presence direly. Inevitably though, the component that saddened me most was not that with each passing day I needed him more but that Ferb didn't need me at all.

Mid-September 2009

No trace, no sound. Ferb Fletcher and his woman—the Pamela to his Jim—had disappeared off the face of the earth. Buford and Baljeet merely cared because it put off the recording of our second album drastically. Meanwhile Mason and Mr. Paul Sedgwick were hard working on a solution to The Highlighters missing vocalist/lead guitarist/dominating creative force issue. The answer came to Jeet first. "Phineas."

"Huh?" I mumbled incomprehensibly. Despite being discharged from the hospital only a few days prior I'd shot up heroin again that afternoon, this instance using the correct amount of drug.

"He did it once before, why can't he do it again? Why don't we make Phin our front man?" A wicked grin captured Baljeet's lush red lips; he was a coyote on the prowl.

Mason's beady coco eyes sized me up "I'd say yeah cept' he looks about as bad as Ferb did before he off'd."

What better way to seek revenge than to steal his show? "No, wait" I stammered, a sorry attempt to get my shit together "I can do it" My voice leapt and wobbled "I can do it." Steady. "D-did he take his guitar with him?"

"It's the one thing he did take" Buford grumbled "But Jeet, you've got another Gibson right?" The Indian nodded to a honey colored Flying V resting against the wall. I was delicately handed the instrument by Mason who commenced in plugging all odds and ends in.

"Stun us Phinny" Baljeet roared softly "Break our hearts like Ferb did."

Though I knew I could never possibly tear the world apart like he'd done or be the voice of a generation I set myself up before the mic. "Sink or Swim?" My suggestion was met with mutters of agreement "Alright, can I start the recording with a quote recited before I start to play?" Mason confirmed that yes I could, he gestured that my words were being taped. Ferb told me the quote years before, a snippet the epic Charles Baudelaire said; "Music fathoms the sky." And then it began. Once more I became The Highlighters front man. Maybe not so alien, fragile, vicious. But a band leader all the same, somebody to look at and scoff 'He's no role model for our kids.' Somebody who mattered. That was all I ever wanted.

Late September 2009

Sending you this letter reveals my state of occupation but I've decided that that doesn't matter in comparison to what needs to be said. Phineas, this morning I picked up a California Sun newspaper (I get one delivered here every weekday) and the name of my band was on the front page. Beneath usual terms I'd be pleasant with that, only the headline read 'The Highlighters; Continuing to Record 2nd Album with Phineas Flynn on Lead'. I know you hate me Phinny, but stealing the spotlight? Stealing my fans? My glory? Tearing from me all that I've created?

I bought a summer house in Bergen Norway, that's where Isabella and I currently reside. We are happy and she is radiant. All good must come to a sudden end though. We're leaving for America in two weeks time, and when I get back Phineas you are dead to me. What else have you taken? Have you read every journal, every prose? Have you raped me of every inch of my intimate works? If so than I am shamed. I bleed myself out on those dreary sheets of paper and if you've even peered at them then my quintessence is no longer a mystery and I no longer possess any reason to live. Phin, for years you've been the single thing I could count on…the one person in the universe I held a concrete bond with mentally. It's gone now, by doing this you are nothing. Isabella is better to me than you could dream. It will be odd Phineas; without you I mean to say. Except I've been without you for eons; I'm not sure where or when but sometime along the line you lost yourself. You're angry and overly sensitive to practically everything, half the time I'm so numb and paralyzed by how scared I am of life that I want to nail myself into a wooden box. But I force myself to live, despite how I feel emotion too hard and too fast—you need to do the same, you need to get yourself back. I've pondered long and treacherously and I figure that being front man for The Highlighters is your way of becoming Phineas Flynn again. To be once more you're going to lose me. Though I find the prospect nauseating there is no bargaining. We're both far too gone to fix anything. Goodbye.

He hadn't the courtesy to sign the envelope. It was devastatingly clear; I felt like maybe, for a second, I could be the only person left in the entire world. The music inside turned into a dull throb; overridden by the sharp crackle of a few dead tree leaves as the wind raked through them. Cool wind kissed my forehead and I couldn't stop myself from throwing up profusely off Buford's balcony. Ferb considered me less than human, less than invertebrate even. I'd gotten my revenge; the second album was released under the title 'The Highlighters; Sink or Swim' and I sang for the majority of the songs. Had it been worth it? Not in the slightest, not a fraction. Being front man hadn't helped me find myself; Ferb didn't realize that I merely did what I did out of insect jealousy. I drifted deeper and deeper into heroin, into the cerebral swirls of self deprecation. What Ferb would never comprehend was my need for him. A need that meant to be Phineas Flynn again there had to be Ferb Fletcher again. He'd deny it to his death, but Ferb fell apart and never retrieved the shards.

Maybe there's a God above

And all I ever learned from love

Was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you

It's not a cry you can hear at night

It's not somebody who's seen the light

it's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah

You say I took the name in vain

I don't even know the name

But if I did, well really, what's it to you?

There's a blaze of light

In every word

It doesn't matter which you heard

The holy or the broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah

I did my best, it wasn't much

I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch

I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you

And even though

It all went wrong

I'll stand before the Lord of Song

With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Yeah but it's not a complaint that you hear tonight,

It's not the laughter of someone who claims to have seen the light

No it's a cold and it's a very lonely Hallelujah.

Hallelujah, Hallelujah

"The true genius shudders at incompleteness - and usually prefers silence to saying something which is not everything it should be." — Edgar Allan Poe