Staying Straight

WARNING: THIS CHAPTER CONTAINS MENTIONS OF SUICIDE.


27: Confessional

Steele knew he was in the chapel, because he knew he kept those doors shut tight, and yet they'd somehow been left ajar. He just hadn't had an opportunity to do anything about it. Now that Gage had managed to calm Haku down from one of his feather-blowing tantrums, and now sat cuddled in Gage's hands, he thought he might have a chance. "Don't fall asleep," he instructed firmly, as Gage seated himself on Steele's bed and Steele piled pillows up around him. Gage rolled his eyes, but set his elbows on his legs with Haku secured between his hands.

"I told you, I'm feelin' a lot better. If I start getting drowsy, I'll be sure to put him away."

"You'd best." With that, Steele left Gage to comfort Haku, and strode into the sanctuary. The room was dark, lit only by the gleam of passing headlights and the flickering streetlights over the fence, and a chilly draft gusted under all the old windows. Steele could still visualize the shattered window, the image of Christ feeding the multitudes to the right of the altar. He knew it always felt coldest there, the shadow of his memories giving him a chill, but at the next flash of light through it, a different shadow shuddered in the pew. Steele strode up the aisle and took his seat beside a shivering Harley. His teeth chattered, he rubbed his arms and elbows, he pressed his knees together tight, and his eyes darted here and there on the ground. He didn't acknowledge that Steele was there. Steele glowered, unnoticed, and finally spoke.

"Your bird misses you. He's been flitting around his cage, beating his wings on the bars until he sheds feathers, and squawking incessantly. You're lucky Gage has a way with animals."

This got a reaction. "I'm so sorry. Terribly sorry. Where are my manners?" Each word fell flat as paper and the sentiment just as thin. "I'll apologize to him. I will. Forgive me." Harley clapped his jaw shut tight again, and Steele scowled and turned his shoulders to face him. Harley looked blue and pale, but the skin of his hands was stark white. His shirt was wrinkled and misbuttoned, his collar rumpled, he twitched under the harsh scrutiny. He spoke, suddenly: "Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned." Steele raised an eyebrow, but Harley continued in a rush, "It has been seven weeks since my last confession. It seems I am incorrigible."

Steele raised an eyebrow in disbelief, but turned away from Harley and folded his hands on his lap. "Fine. Confess. Is this something with your roommate?"

"I... forced him." Harley shuddered. "He'll deny it, but I coerced him into performing sexual acts with me."

Steele kept himself from starting, but cleared his throat and unclasped and clasped his hands. "Sexual acts."

"You don't sound surprised."

"He told me that you two had been..." Intimate was wrong. Together was worse. "He said something along those lines happened. He didn't say it was forced."

"The dear man." Harley smiled wryly. "He lied for me. He won't admit it to himself. I know what I've done." He lifted his shaking hands to scrub them down his eyes. "I've strung him along. I knew the moment I saw him again what I was getting into, and a moment later that he certainly didn't. He couldn't." Harley sniffled suddenly, his inhale stuttered, his voice tangled with anguish. "I wish I had died. If only you had been telling him the truth when you told him I had... Oh, Joel, did it hurt?"

Joel, wonderful Joel, he was permitted entrance to the infirmary after the morning klaxon, and usually made it there within all of five minutes. He'd throw back the curtain, his dazzling red hair combed behind his ears, his broad smile lighting his face and the whole world, and already going for gloves to clean his wounds. He, still nameless, rested behind the curtain, long awake and waiting for his friend to arrive with his breakfast tray. He struggled to understand his emotions under the muting effects of the medicine and the residue of his remaining trauma, only enough to know that he struggled because of it, and yet, something shone through when he came face to face with the man who'd saved his life.

When the curtain was flung open once again, twenty minutes too early, he still put on a pleasant smile, the most he could offer Joel, and opened his mouth to greet him. Instead, he was met by a face he'd known from before. Father Steele stared dispassionately at him from the end of his bed, and his mouth fell open. He recovered, roughly, "Good morning."

"Good God, you've been here all along." Steele threw the curtain shut, and he, dumbfounded, imagined it was only that because one couldn't slam a curtain.

He sat behind the closed curtain, entirely by himself with no human interaction except for a very cautious nurse leaving his medicine and a bowl of oatmeal, before hurrying away. He heard Steele hissing at the doctors and the prison wardens, demanding to know how nobody had contacted his attorney, contacted him, how the mix-up had happened in the first place. He only faintly understood how he'd gotten to where he was in the first place from bits of their conversation: clerical error that had him shipped from holding to the jail rather than the state hospital, or possibly sabotage, but with no proof for anything. He learned his fate through the vinyl: he was being shipped to the mental hospital to continue recuperation, post haste.

Then, he saw the curtain shake, and heard Father Steele: "What are you doing?"

"I was gonna check on him." There was Joel. He felt his heart crumple a little. "I've been changing his bandages and keeping him company. What are you doing?"

He shivered when he heard Father Steele's reply: "Delivering Last Rites. We're preparing to move the body now."

He had to be dead. He had to be dead to everyone. It was almost just as well that he'd been so grievously injured, because there was going to be a death certificate for the man he used to be. He had expected one when he'd been attacked as it stood, or when he did finally get to the asylum and got a few moments of alone time with bedsheets or a trash bag, he just never expected he might be able to look it up. He hadn't thought he might make some sort of friend between his first death and the one he'd bring on himself. He could see Jo's shadow trembling against the light. What was left of his heart started to dissolve at the very thought.

Then, to his horror, he was forced sit, silent as the grave he was meant to be in, as Jo broke down, distraught and enraged, and had to be forced out. His chest clenched when Jo screamed. Steele pushed his way behind the curtain a moment later, demanding, "You knew him?"

He remained still, his hand twisted in the buttons of his hospital gown, as if he could hold the crumbling pieces together. "I think I may have been in love with him." He closed his eyes in a wince. "I suppose... that's a sin, isn't it?"

"Are you still trying to guilt trip me over that? It was a necessary evil." Steele sneered but hung his head, because he'd felt the pain in Harley then and knew that it still ached, as if his old wound still festered under the scar. "We had no idea with whom he was associated."

"I don't blame you. You didn't know he'd come back. You didn't know he was my only hope."

The ride to the asylum was silent, and he spent every second looking for some way he could end it before they reached their destination. He wondered if he could wrap his neck in the seat belt strap and pull until it wrung him out, or if he really could bite his tongue off. Like in the movies, Joel would have joked. Thinking of the poor, dear man, how he'd cried out at hearing of his "death," made him wince in his seat, but the orderlies driving paid him no attention. It echoed in his mind, but it was at least echoing over worse memories.

And there were better ones, too. There were fresh memories of card games, of long conversations, of books shared shoulder-to-shoulder, with his head next to Joel's. He had actually looked forward to going to the general population for that movie night, even if he always found movies far too loud and could never enjoy all the quick motion with his poor eyesight (which had only gotten worse). He couldn't even see the crack in his glasses anymore, or the thin line of epoxy where Jo had carefully glued the broken shard back in, so he probably wouldn't be able to follow a car chase, and Jo didn't seem the type to enjoy a slow drama. But he wanted to find out.

He wanted to sit with Jo and read again, even if he could tell that Jo got fidgety when action was slow or that he interrupted when he didn't understand. He wanted to talk with Jo again, enjoy his common sense and straightforward view, his charming, pleasant simplicity. He wanted to share meals, quiet moments, rest, silence, everything.

Wanting all of these things made him want less to kill himself, and he wanted so much. He knew the shape of his soul, and just how greedy it was, but God, was it good to know he still had a soul to want such things. It also remained true that even if this person, the man sitting in his skin, had died, Jo was alive. There was hope. It might have been a faint, distant, delusional hope, but it was there, and he grasped it tight.

He decided, simply: "I want to see Joel again. I will not kill myself as long as that a chance for that to occur remains."

His therapist in the hospital suggested he find an outlet for his emotions, but he was already so numb to his knowledge of his actions that he didn't think he had emotions to release. Everything he felt were things he knew he should feel or had to feel, but they came to him like reaching down through ice water. Happiness, sadness, confusion, they were all just practiced reactions, imitations of life. He only ever imitated the smiles he'd given a certain woman, and later a certain man, knowing they paled in comparison to the genuine article but passed for those who didn't know. He should have felt guilty about his crimes, perhaps, or at least sorrowful that his uncontrollable wrath had caused such destruction. He didn't. He had slowly learned that he had two emotions he could acknowledge: the sensation of loss that lingered, and a desire to see Joel again. Those helped him choke through the quiet, dull hours of independent study, using the former as a stick and the latter as a carrot. Near the end of his stay, his therapist gave him paper and a lead pencil, something with a dull tip in case he was particularly uncreative in his suicidal ideations, and he sat down to release those emotions.

He ended up writing a poem about Joel's hair. Then, he wrote one about his hands, his long fingers and his uniquely misshapen knuckles. He wrote about long walks in the sun that had never occurred, about hearing his voice at morning, noon, and night, and all of it was trite nonsense, but it was something, it was an emotion, and it was something to hold onto. He wasn't releasing emotions he couldn't feel, but he was learning to feel things again, and even if it was all idealization, it was something to color the blank spaces left in the padded white room his mind had become.

It was the day before his release that he began to consider all the implications of staying straight. That was what Jo had called it. Jo hadn't known what he wanted, only that he had to do that to move forward. He, too, didn't know what he wanted, only that he wanted Jo. More than that. He needed Jo. He knew he'd only replaced one unhealthy obsession with another, but it was something to want, to need, and that was what he needed to stay alive.

"I never told anyone that I still thought of him. It would have done me no favors." Harley shivered. "I wanted, I needed, I wanted so much. It was a new form of insanity in and of itself, but one I could control. I know I'm still a madman." Steele nodded, because he knew. He'd known from the day Harley had returned from the asylum.

Gage had run into his office, babbling at top speed, "Didjasee'im? Didjasee'im? He'sback, he'sback, he'sback!" Steele whacked him one with the newspaper and made him slow it down: "Greg's back, but he's not Greg! He says his name is Harley, and he wanted to see you!"

Steele had stormed right to his feet to find 'Harley,' the same thin, gangly man he'd last seen when he was shut into a white van bound for the state hospital, waiting outside the door to his office. He promptly sent Gage to the corner store with a five dollar bill, an instruction to get himself a Hershey bar, and a demand for a fresh pack of Marlboros, and locked 'Harley' in his office.

"Sit." He pointed to the empty chair on one side of his desk, which 'Harley' obediently took. He folded his hands on his knee, prim as you please, and waited as Steele scrutinized him. He was exactly as he'd ever been, shoulders still narrow, paler than before, with a small new scar under his eye and a slight shake to his every motion and tight gesture. Steele had no idea what to say to him, but came up with something: "Harley. Really? You could pick any name but you went with Harley?" He scoffed. "What happened to 'Heath?'"

"I thought it unsuitable. I prefer Harley." He shrugged his shoulders, but set them back. "I'm prepared to rejoin society. I met with my parole officer today, and he's already gotten me several somewhat promising job interviews. I'll take the first opportunity I am offered. Would it be too much trouble to allow me to stay here until I c-"

"Shut up. Like I'd say no." Steele rolled his eyes.

"Thank you." Harley's genuine gratitude shone in the face of his petulant generosity. There was a moment of silence, until Harley lifted a hand and crossed himself. "If I may... Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been three years since my last confession. I have committed the sins of murder, wrath, and lust."

"Lust?" Steele sounded unimpressed, but not surprised, either. "Are you still thinking about that man?" There was silence, and that was answer enough. "That's a pipe dream, and you know it. If you fall down that hole, it'll only hurt when you hit bottom. Don't do that to yourself."

And this made Harley's face fall. "God help me, I can't stop."

"You discouraged me. The entire time. I should have listened. What a fool I was." He shuddered at each pause, swallowing air like he'd been held underwater.

Harley assisted in the kitchen, he dutifully attended Sunday mass, and he made confession once a week, and always the same thing:

"I have committed the sin of lust. I am almost certain that I am in love with another man."

"For Christ's sake," Steele growled through the screen. "Get over it. He was someone you knew three years ago, during a period when you needed help. It's not like you're the first moron to fall in love with his nurse."

"It's not just a matter of him nursing me back to health. I needed him, but in a way, I think he needed me, too." Harley wrung his hands on his lap, looking at the intertwine of his fingers and not quite seeing blood anymore. Not when he thought about Joel. "He was... he was so upset when I was gone."

"You don't know anything about him."

"I so dearly want to." Harley bowed his head. "If I knew where he was, if I could just speak to him again, I could find out if this really is love, if we're as compatible as we seemed. If I am capable of such things."

Steele ground his teeth, and Harley waited. Finally, he responded, under his breath, "He's likely heterosexual."

"It's something I would accept." It would have been disappointing, but there was a high likelihood of it, wasn't there? "But I want to at least find out." He shuffled his feet. "I want to find out... if I can. If I've done enough penance to be allowed another chance."

Steele didn't know how to answer that. Harley could tell, because this wasn't the usual stony silence he got out of him when he asked a stupid question. Perhaps this was a new breed of stupid question, or maybe he genuinely didn't know what to say. It took him a moment, and Harley heard him searching for his cigarettes and lighter in his pockets. "Look, take things one step at a time. Don't get ahead of yourself."

"Oh, I don't think that's possible. After all, I may never see him again." Harley hung his head and summoned the image of him in his mind, his ruggedly handsome face, his distinctive cheekbones and the scars that decorated his jawline, his brow and those warm, deep eyes. He held those memories tight, because he thought those were all he'd ever have.

Steele clenched his hands on his lap, his face drawn tight. "I... It was not my intention to harm you. I had intended on letting the two of you meet, perhaps when you were more ready."

"I don't think you would have ever thought I was ready." Harley had gone cold, his voice dry and bitter. "But I was. I was just waiting for him, and then he stumbled out of the rain into my life, and I..." He paused, a helpless smile reaching his mouth. "I don't even know what I was thinking. I tried, just as you said, not to get in too deep, too quickly." Steele noticed Harley squeezing his clenched fists. "But when a man saves your life for the second time, then opens his home and life to you without hesitation, one realizes that kindness like that isn't out of pity, but from a soul that desires that kindness in return. And I found that I had so much to give."

"You saw an empty hearth and loaded it with all the fuel you could burn." Steele's lip curled, and his shoulders tensed. "You thought you could burn a fire high and bright enough to return the favor for the light he poured into your life, but you only ended up getting burned, over and over."

Harley rushed into Father Steele's office, cell phone to his ear, but as he pushed through, he hit the mute and dropped his phone onto Father Steele's desk. Father Steele pretended not to notice until he heard the voice coming from the speaker:

"... I'm gonna die. Jesus Christ, I'm gonna die!" Steele rose to a stand as if putting any space between him and the phone would make Jo breaking into hysterics on the other end any less real. Harley shook his head, his eyes wide and darting.

"He's tied up in the basement with an explosive strapped to his chest. I have to kill him, or Ysidro will detonate it." Harley's voice was flat, his expression crushed as if someone had stepped on his face. Steele was too stunned to do much more but run his gaze over Harley, as Jo continued to panic. Gage poked his head in, as Harley unmuted his phone and picked it up, then hesitated at the receiver.

"... Shit, I wanna live!"

Harley cringed, but put on a weak smile and brought mollification to his timbre with it. "I'm sorry."

Jo kept rambling as Harley muted him again, and he turned to Steele, shivering from head to toe. "We have to do something. We have to help him. I can't let him die, I can't lose someone else, not him, not him-"

"Get a hold of yourself." He seized Harley's collar, as if to do it for him. It didn't calm Harley, because Jo was still griping through the phone.

"He ain't got the right! Fuck! Shit!"

Steele slapped the phone screen. "Morbid prick." He muted it again, rolling his eyes, then glowered back at Harley. "You're really in deep, aren't you?" Harley's chest expanded and contracted, his neck and shoulders tense, and he shuddered like a house on stilts in a windstorm. "You stupid idiot, you're completely sucked in, I fucking told you-"

Harley suddenly grabbed the phone, smiled sweetly into it, and turned the receiver on. "Just keep talking, Joel." He muted it again, and his smile broke away in an instant, crashing back down into Father Steele's grip. "Father, please." He turned the phone back on again, and spoke gently, kindly, "You said something about your hand, Joel. Did he injure you anywhere else?" He turned it off again, and forced iron in his tone: "There's a camera trained on him, that Ysidro monster is just waiting to watch me end him. What do I do?"

Jo was still talking, but Steele was listening to everything Harley wasn't saying. He gave him a shake, then released him. "You do what you always do. You take the problem apart, look at all of its ugly little pieces, fix it if you can, salvage it if you can't. You're supposed to be the smart one! What makes this different?"

"I know you're not unintelligent, Father," Harley replied, iron chilling to ice. He swallowed it, and came back, chilled and faint, "We have to do something, or I'll lose him."

"Then," Gage interrupted, his brow furrowed and his lips set, because he'd been listening in and understanding much more, much faster than most boys his age might. "We should do something." He slowly grinned. "I can smash the camera, while you guys do something about the bomb."

"Yes. Good. Let's go." With that, Harley spun around for the door, urgency in his pace, determination he never willed up for himself apparent under his panic.

"You let yourself get hurt. You made yourself hurt. Every time he got hurt, it was another bite out of you, and you knew it." Steele sneered, and Harley seemed to shrink. "You would have let him step on you if you thought it'd make him like you."

"But I didn't have to, don't you see? He was so gentle, Father. He has such a soft, kind way under that tough exterior." Harley was rocking now, and slowly drew his knees into his chest. Steele just scoffed.

"You wanted to see that in him. You've seen his true colors, Harley. Stop deluding yourself."

"Have you seen his true colors?" There was a clarity in that, and Steele realized Harley was looking straight at him. "He's good and kind. You don't want to trust anyone, but I don't have that invulnerability. As small as this heart is, it wants so much." He shivered. "To tie him up and bind him to me. To have and hold, and keep him safe and mine forever." Steele recoiled with disgust, as Harley shook his head. "I can see how wonderful he is. That he's worth all that, worth the risk."

"You were looking for it and saw it. Whether or not it was there-"

"I'm only half-blind, Father." Harley hugged his knees tight. "I know he's not perfect. I was so angry to learn he'd committed again. But- he was upset, and desperate, and I know I didn't help him, not even a little. I did something terrible to him, and I couldn't even bring myself to talk to him." He cringed and shook his head. "I deserved to lose him."

"Harley-"

"He's a good man. He didn't even blame me. But I know I sinned against him, against God, against myself, and I deserve every punishment foisted upon me." He released his knees, only to look at his palms. "So many sins, all over my hands."

It took every ounce of self-control Steele had to keep him from smacking Harley's arms down. "And you confessed every single time."

Steele came to expect Harley waiting outside of the confessional box once a week or so, his gaze wandering around the room but failing to look as if he weren't loitering outside of a corner store, just waiting for it to open. Steele would deliberately pass him by at least once, before acquiescing and entering his side of the booth. Harley was practiced in the minutiae of confession, but he hardly seemed interested in the actual confession:

"I was wrathful. I smelled a woman on my roommate when he returned from the bar and nearly lost my temper."

Steele withheld a groan. Harley losing his temper could be utterly disastrous, but, since he was fully medicated, it probably only meant a snap of passive-aggressive warfare that Jo was unlikely to even notice. "That in and of itself isn't a sin. Stop reading Dante."

"I was deceitful, because I got revenge by using extra oil on his portion of steak last night."

Steele rolled his eyes. "And why-"

"I thought if he got chubby, maybe he wouldn't chase women as much."

Steele smacked his hand against the side of the booth, rattling the partition. "Stop that! Ten Our Fathers, and give the idiot a salad!"

Harley actually giggled. "Yes, yes, of course," but dissolved into a sigh. He didn't say the closing prayer. Steele waited, then growled under his breath, which prompted Harley to go on. "Father? My feelings haven't changed. I still... feel this way about him. I get so jealous, that he gives himself away so easily but hasn't looked at me."

"You said you wouldn't care if he were heterosexual, that you'd be happy to call him a friend."

This gave Harley pause, as he contemplated. "I may have lied." Steele grunted, but Harley smothered a soft laugh. "But I haven't assumed him to be heterosexual. He just might not have realized that he's not, not yet."

"Don't go trying to convince him. I'm not going to give you false hope."

"I don't have false hope. It's nice to have any hope at all." Harley pressed his hands between his knees. "I just... I just wonder... if there is a God, and he is just, and he answers our prayers, perhaps I'll deserve him. If I repent all my sins, repent every sin, repent for everything, I'll have my prayers answered."

"That's just not how love works." Steele was helpless to put it any other way. He'd loved, but he'd never been in love, but he knew it didn't come from God. "You can't bribe God to give you your way."

"No? I suppose I'm not sure what else I can do, then..." Harley trailed off, but sighed and whispered a finishing prayer, crossed himself, and departed, and Steele braced himself for more of the same next week...

Harley nodded a few times, eyes wide, seeming more lucid than he had in days. "I thought confession would help. I don't even think God listens or cares. He's killed more people than I ever will." He shuddered at the words. "But I... I thought if I opened my head and heart, if I repented enough, I would deserve him. I was terribly wrong, and I'm so terribly sorry. I only succeeded in wounding him, because I thought I was on the verge of victory. I took something precious from him. I can't be forgiven."

"Why not? He's not a God. He's an overgrown teenager who..." Steele struggled, the words colliding and breaking at the tip of his tongue. "If you just talk to him-"

"I'm not worth talking to. I tried. He wouldn't admit I had sinned, so I can't be forgiven. I'll have to be punished differently." Harley hung his head, his face obscured in the shadow of the pews. "Promise me something. It's cruel, but I must ask. When I... when I'm gone..." Steele's eyes widened, but Harley lifted his head to meet his gaze. Harley's expression was shuttered, but Steele could see right through that he was terrified. "Please make sure I'm dealt with. Put me away and throw away the key. Four safe, stable, padded walls."

"Harley, stop." Steele lifted himself and stood in front of him, as Harley closed in and held his knees tight again like he was ducking and covering from an explosion. "You know you're doing this to yourself."

"I must." He shivered against the draft. "The wave is coming. I can feel it in my veins, in my scars. It'll happen soon, and send everything crashing around us, and Harley is useless to help." He turned his hands over and looked at his palms, focused as if seeing what was still there, something that he knew had always been there. "But... I just don't know what I'll do when I see them coming. I hope it's what needs to happen." His face split in a maddened grin, one that didn't reach his eyes or the rest of him, and Steele hated when he meant his creepy smiles. He shivered for a moment, his body warring with his mind. History and legacy told him to backhand the idiot and shake sense into him, because even if that never worked it sure as hell made him feel better, but this, this was bigger than him. He crouched over Harley and seized his shoulders.

"Listen to me," he intoned, as if he were standing on the pulpit and not in the coldest pew in the room, the words resonating off of everything but Harley. "You know better than this. I have no desire to put you back in a cell, no more than you really want to be back in a cell. You are still lucid enough to know you need to take your medicine. Do it."

Harley stared back, impassively, motionless. "Oh, I don't think that's possible." His face fell again. "I may never see him again if I do."

Steele felt something set in his gut, harder than stone, heavier than concrete. He realized Harley was fidgeting with something, and snatched his cell phone out of his hands. He saw messages from Jo, unread, on the front screen. Harley actually laughed airily, dryly, as Father Steele flipped it open. "He's there, you know. In the corners of my eyes. I'll see him coming towards me, but he vanishes. I imagine he's calling me, or sending me messages. I know he's not there. I wonder how long it will take me to forget that."

Steele growled, and marched out to the center pew and swiped over Jo's name. The phone rang, until Steele heard the echo of Jo's voice through the receiver, reading off an answering machine message advising him to Go West. Steele waited, gathered his thoughts like wind, then released it in bluster:

"Listen, you moron, I don't know what happened between you and Harley, but it can't sit like this." He paused, as if waiting for a retort, so he wouldn't have to go on, but it didn't come, and he grimaced and dug deep. "I heard what you did for Shalimar, and I know you're not stupid enough to actually commit again. He thinks he's lost you. Tell me I'm wrong. Show him he's wrong. Make this right." He hung up and flung Harley's phone back at him, and swept out, even as Harley whispered a closing prayer and crossed himself. Steele gritted his teeth and kept himself from turning around again, because this was a demon no amount of prayer could fight.

The madness was there, invisible but present, as sure as the wave gathered outside. It crept under his skin and through his veins, insidious and deep, spreading chaotically and burgeoning through. The kind demeanor, the mask he wore was cracking from the inside, all of the terrible things buried in Harley were beginning to peer through the gaps in it, and if something wasn't done, it would split beyond repair.

And yet, on the surface, Steele could still hear him.

"I am sorry for these and all of my sins." He kept shivering, clasping his hands together and wringing them over and over. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry... "


Jo tore through the streets, as fast as his legs could carry him, blindly dodging through the storm. His head was spinning, fragments of fractured memory all colliding and echoing back through him, everything he'd bottled up and held back breaking out, all coming back to the coda:

I'm already dead. I'm gonna die.

He knew, he'd always known, just how small he was, how big he had to talk just to put a smile on. He was nothing more than an ant in a windstorm, tiny, minuscule, invisible at any distance. He wouldn't even be missed.

He rambled through streets and down sidewalks, his splashing footsteps echoing behind him. He wasn't running blind, no, he knew the streets of this city better than he knew himself anymore, and he stumbled to a halt at the edge of Hamilton, and stared as the cars roared by, groaning metal and snarling rubber in every breath. He knew that the cars never slowed down, traffic at all hours, wouldn't stop for anything, and that was just what he wanted. Jo heaved for air, painfully aware of the frantic cadence of his own heart, and shivered as he faced the blur.

"I can't stay straight. It ain't in me no more." He swallowed. "I can't do nothing, and I can't fix this." An image of Harley flashed through his mind, but he shook it off. "Couldn't help you, can't do shit for nobody else." He forced a weak smile. "Ain't nothing but dirt. It ain't like nobody wants me anyway." He was hearing voices, and knew he was losing his mind, everyone he knew, all building in him like chaos. He would swear he was hearing music thrashing from somewhere, and Harley's voice, but it was too much.

He stepped down into the road and faced the headlights. He could hear the truck's horn blaring, but closed his eyes and opened his arms.

But then, Christ, just then, something seized his wrist and yanked, and Jo stumbled back up the curb and into something solid. He felt the rain draining through his hair stop, and opened his eyes to see Mercy.

Mercy, with a black eye, holding an umbrella over both of their heads and keeping a vice grip on his arm. Se smiled broadly, but spoke soft and gentle in a voice meant just for him: "Jojo, baby, s' been ages." Se wrapped hir elbow around his. "How 'bout you come with me 'n' get outta this rain? I don't feel like drinking alone, and you look like you could use one too."

Jo's brain had gone silent when se'd pulled him back, and it didn't start up again. He didn't have any response for this but, "Yeah, sure, okay."

With that, Mercy dragged Jo back from the ledge.