Chapter Twenty Five - Fear and Pomegranates

It had all come back to him so easily.

Every possible move seemed to animate itself inside his head and he found himself able to predict what Dee was going to do before Dee himself could even tear his eyes away from Jo to look at the state of the board. Jo had eventually got the kitchen staff to compromise and cut her pomegranate into quarters for her, the knife never once being in the unstable maniac's possession seemed to reassure them somewhat, and she had settled on the floor at their feet.

Ron watched Dee frown and try to work out his next move. Ron had a counter move for the three most obvious ones he thought Dee would be considering right now, he also had a counter attack planned for the move he would've made had he been in Dee's position, and he stared at the concentration showing on his face and smiled. Dee caught the look and huffed.

"What? I'm taking my time, we're not all prodigies like you y'know?"

Dee only took a couple more seconds before very rashly exposing his bishop. Ron had that down as the move he was going to make if flustered. Wow he was really good at this, not just the game but the reading of his opponent's thoughts and strategies as well; he made his move and sat back in his chair. He knew that Dee would be taking another five or six minutes to consider his next dramatic mistake. He glanced down at Jo and watched her set about the pomegranate, Ron thought it looked more trouble than it was worth, she had quite a set up going on in front of her.

She was sitting with her legs wide open and a dish with the quarters of the pomegranate between them, alongside another dish for the peel and the pith when she had removed it, and then she had a bowl for collecting the bright pink seeds as she picked them out. It looked very messy. Her hands were sticky and she seemed to be suffering from an itchy nose that she couldn't scratch without spreading the mess to her face. Ron chuckled at her obvious discomfort.

"You could pass me a tissue or something rather than just laughing at me y'know?" she grumbled, "I'm doing this for your benefit, not my own enjoyment."

Ron grabbed a box of tissues and handed one to Jo who tried to wipe the pink juice from her fingers but it had already got quite tacky and all that happened was the tissue clung to her fingers and tore in her hands.

"Shit!" she cursed as more of the shredded tissue came away and stuck to her hands.

Dee huffed and muttered,

"Excuse me love, I'm trying to concentrate here..."

"If you're thinking of going to square E four I wouldn't if I was you, look where my knight is positioned." Ron smiled without even taking a second glance at the board Dee was now re examining.

"What? How did you know...? Oh crap!" he said before rubbing his hand over his face and trying to find another move that Ron wouldn't be expecting.

Jo was amused at this and, now, also her own state.

"Right so now I can't do anything, I can't go on peeling without getting tissue in the pomegranate and I can't wipe the juice off because it's partially dried into the most powerful natural glue known to man and I still have an itchy nose!"

She laughed at her own situation as she tried to pick miniscule specks of tissue from her now fluffy hands and Ron finally took pity on her and extended a finger to relieve her frustration.

"Oh thank you." she sighed as he began to scratch the tip of her nose gently.

"I'll thank you to stop pleasuring my girlfriend and get your head back in the game." Dee said, quite relieved at his turn being over for the time being.

Ron glanced up and moved his queen faster than Dee could blink and turned his attention back to Jo and her exotic fruit version of being tarred and feathered.

"Wait, you moved? Just like that? You didn't even take in my new strategy." Dee scowled.

"What strategy is that Dee?" Ron teased.

A smile broke across Dee's face,

"The strategy I'm trying to fool you into thinking I've got."

He turned his attention back to the board, as if his own pieces were turning against him, while Jo struggled to her feet without laying her sticky palms on the floor.

"It's no good," she sighed, "I'm going to have to wash my hands and then have another go."

"So you're going to wash your hands, come back, and dive back in to the sticky mess you're created?" Ron summarised as she left.

"Of course, its pomegranate logic." she grinned.

Ron turned back to Dee, who was almost straining with the effort to outwit him,

"I tell you what mate, this had better be the most divine fruit I've ever tasted after all this fuss."

"Well it's very..." Dee cast a glance down at the oddly shaped seeds in the bowl.

"...pink?"

Dee snorted,

"Well there's that. They look a bit plastic though don't they, as if they're pebbles or crystals, not really like something you'd eat?"

Dee turned back to the board and Ron watched his face for a moment before speaking again.

"So how are you doing with all this shared memory loss stuff?" he asked.

Dee sighed and met Ron's eyes,

"I really don't know what to think about it so I'm trying not to. What about you? How are you dealing with the knowledge that your...well the scars, I had something to do with them?"

Ron blinked and shook his head to try and clear it,

"What? I hadn't even...that's what you've been thinking?"

Dee couldn't look at him at all now,

"Oh come on Ron, it's got to be my fault somehow hasn't it?"

Ron sat back in his chair and folded his arms, he was quite annoyed,

"How did you work that one out?"

Dee made a clumsy move with his knight that neither of them really paid attention to and he finally made eye contact with Ron again.

"Well isn't it obvious?"

Ron was getting very aggressive now; this wasn't like Dee at all,

"Nope."

Dee rolled his eyes,

"Blimey Ron we were both in the same place when we lost our memories. We were both there when you got cut. There was a room full of angry weirdoes who all seemed to want me hurt pretty badly and apparently you don't exist and my family are all dead. We were involved in something dodgy and you got hurt because of it, or you hurt yourself, and either way I was there so why didn't I stop it?"

Ron felt his aggression give way to concern for his friend now,

"Dee look..."

"No Ron, you'll hear this and then maybe you'll realise that I might not be somebody you used to like back when you knew me, you were nearly fatally wounded and I wasn't. You either cut yourself or got cut by somebody who was after me and I didn't try to stop it. Why wouldn't I have tried to help you if we were friends Ron? Why?"

"We don't know what went on," Ron said firmly, "you're beating yourself up over fiction. You're following what little facts we know to a stupid conclusion."

"What we do know is you nearly died and I didn't. While you were nearly dying what was I doing?"

Ron let out a deep sigh, he and Jo had agreed to let these self loathing spirals into despair just go without dwelling on them, the last thing they needed now was for Dee to go down that road with them, he was supposed to be the sane one. He hadn't known what to say and hadn't said anything for some time. The pause was killing him but there was nothing either of them could come up with to break the tension.

"Or maybe I did it." Dee said in a small voice as he lowered his head.

"Dee no..." Ron began to protest.

"What if that's why all those blokes in the pub were so angry with me? They were all going to get revenge for you."

Ron was almost livid now,

"If they were so bloody protective of me where the hell were they when I was in that alleyway huh? If they were supposed to be my loyal supporters where the hell are they now Dee? Get a grip man; I can't believe you thought I'd think that about you."

Dee shook his head and smiled a bitter smile,

"You don't even know me."

"You're my best fucking friend!" Ron yelled, knocking the chess board off the table and scattering the pieces.

The two of them stared at each other in a tense stand off before Dee dropped to his knees and began gathering the fallen pieces from the floor. Ron bent down to do the same.

"If that was who I was..." Dee said in a whisper, "...it isn't who I am now."

"I know." Ron said, in the same low voice.

"You're my best friend too y'know?"

"I know that too." Ron dropped a handful of pieces onto the table.

Dee cupped the last of the pieces in his hands and they both sat back at the table, the pieces tipped into their little box.

"Can we not tell Jo about this please? She's...well she worries enough doesn't she?"

"Tell her about what? I beat you at chess that's all."

Dee smiled at Ron just as Jo came back into the day room.

"Right, I'm clean and fresh and about to get all dirty and sticky again." she smiled.

"That's life isn't it?" Ron said with a smile that he shared with Dee.

She sat back on the floor and picked up the last quarter of the pomegranate,

"Wouldn't it be a dull world if nobody ever got messy or dirty or ever made a mistake? We'd be clean and perfect but my God we'd be bored wouldn't we?"

Dee pulled her up from the floor and into a big hug which took her completely by surprise.

"What's this in aid of?" she asked, trying not to get the piece of pomegranate she was holding on his shirt.

"I'm shit at chess." he said with contentment.

Ron and Jo began to giggle at this. Dee released her and watched her bewildered face as she set about dropping the last of the seeds into the bowl.

"Right, take a few and see what you think of the world's most complicated fruit to eat." she held up the bowl to the two of them.

They each took some of the seeds between their fingers, they felt surprisingly firm Ron thought, he had expected them to be squishy. He dropped them into his open mouth and chewed. Dee was doing the same. Their faces must've been a picture as Jo was beginning to giggle a breathy whisper as she watched them try to work out if they liked this experience or not.

"It's like watching a baby trying to lick a lollypop through the wrapper and wondering why it can't taste anything." she smiled.

"No it does taste of something," Ron frowned, "I'm just not exactly sure what."

Dee was picking at his teeth,

"I think the word you're looking for is wood."

Jo slapped him on the arm,

"They do not taste of wood."

"That hard seed bit in the middle of the soft pink juicy bit is like wood. It's like biting into a grape and finding it full of sawdust. You know it should be sweet and you can kind of taste that it is but you can't appreciate it because you've got a mouth full of splinters!"

He'd hit the nail on the head there, Ron thought,

"It is a bit...odd Jo."

She looked at them as if they were missing the point,

"That's why you only eat them once a year. One: because they're such a bloody pain to peel and two: because they're not as great as you remember them. I guarantee you both though, this time next year you'll go out and buy one and go through all this crap again just to remind yourself what it was like."

Ron sighed and shook his head, all the while reaching into the bowl for another handful of the fleshy pink seeds,

"Y'know the scary thing is I believe her."

Dee grinned,

"The even scarier thing is I believe everything she tells me."

They laughed and nibbled the seeds, Ron packed away the mini chess set and Dee was about to haul Jo up from the floor when she let out a squeal and he dropped her back down with the shock of her sudden girlish outburst.

"What's the matter?" he said as he looked around himself for some grisly spectre or other.

She scrambled up to her feet and then onto Ron's vacant chair, pointing at the floor,

"There's a bloody spider crawling right toward me and you just dropped me down in its path!" she hissed.

Dee looked relieved and then laughed at his girlfriend who was scowling at him from her vantage point on the chair,

"Dropped you in its path? It's not a locomotive!"

Dee shook his head and moved over to the spider as it made its way across the carpet and lifted his foot.

"Don't stamp on it!" Ron said incredulously, "What's it ever done to you?"

"Well it got me into trouble with my girlfriend for one thing." Dee shrugged.

Ron tutted and crouched down. He gathered the spider up in his hands and stood up again, turning to face them which seemed to freak Jo out even more than she already was.

"Don't throw it at me!" she screamed, ducking behind Dee.

Ron let out a body shaking laugh at this,

"Why would I throw it at you?"

"Why would you pick it up?" she growled as she peered over Dee's shoulder.

He looked into his cupped hands at the spider,

"It's more afraid of you y'know?"

"How d'you know," Dee said, breaking into laughter himself now, "is it standing on a chair screaming?"

She slapped him on the back,

"It's not funny! I have a thing about creepy crawlies, it's one of my childhood traumas, don't mock my psychological problems."

She wasn't angry with either of them but she wasn't exactly joking either. Ron decided to put both her and the spider out of their misery and her carried the spider over to the window and set it on the ledge outside.

"Now close the window so it can't come back in!" Jo called over to him.

He rolled his eyes and closed the window, muttering to himself,

"What harm can a little thing like that do, really?"

She was getting down from the chair but she had heard him,

"Spiders beetles and moths are a bit of an issue with me. Moths are the worst though; I'm really bad when one of them is in a room."

Dee sputtered on his disbelief,

"Wait, that wasn't you being really bad just then?"

She was smiling now,

"It took me by surprise, it was an ambush."

Ron laughed as he picked up the chess set and led them out of the day room,

"Lucky we don't remember any childhood trauma's isn't it Dee?"

"Yeah," Dee smirked, "although I would love to see you perched on top of a chair screaming."

Ron looked over his shoulder and gave Dee a wicked grin,

"I do that every morning when Rayner comes into the room for our session!"

ooo