(Chapter 36—Hazy Shade of Winter Part 2)
By the next morning, they were two states over and Browning hadn't stopped longer than an hour at a time. He had to be using amphetamines to stay alert this long. He crossed Iowa and headed into Nebraska, clearly headed for Wyoming. An excitement started to build that he might be leading them straight to the jackpot. Still east of Cheyenne, he headed north along back country roads that forced Brakedown to increase the distance between them to avoid notice.
Slowing down saved him getting caught by an energon detector, Corona saw it before they set it off. But that was where they lost Browning.
They doubled back and regrouped at somebody's presently-unused hunting cabin. They got out, Corona transformed and got the humans' things out of her subspace for them. Everyone changed into hiking boots, and put on bullet-proof vests and cold weather gear.
Simmons paced as he conferred with Mearing and Elita. Elita's advice was that Masque and Mirror would practically have to walk right up to an energon detector to set it off. It was possible to put up detectors sensitive enough to catch Pretenders indoors, where their faint energon signature was concentrated, but not outside. The two large bots would have to wait outside the detectors, but the twins should be fine.
The sisters were wearing warm coats just like their human companions, cold was just as disabling to bots as to humans. They had to pack extra rations because as relatively small as they were they would have to burn a lot of extra energon to keep the cold from putting them in stasis lock. Anything that insulated them would increase their efficiency.
The terrain was a high desert plateau. This area bordered on a wildlife preserve containing several reservoirs, but here, private land bordered the road on both sides. It wasn't sand dunes as far as the eye could see. There were plants like sagebrush every so often. The cabin backed up against a low hill. In the corner between the cabin and the rock face, Corona and Brakedown settled down to wait.
Abrams and Masque took point, then Simmons and Florez. Mirror and Mac brought up the rear. The three ground-pounder veterans slipped easily back into patrol mentality, keeping the chatter to a minimum and paying attention to their surroundings. Mac was former Navy, he had spent a lot more time swabbing decks than going hiking in the great outdoors. His police experience was more useful to him at the moment. Masque and Mirror were concentrating more on senses that their teammates didn't have.
Mirror said, "Control just transmitted the latest satellite data." They gathered around while she projected a hologram of the photos. She flashed a small dot at their location, and another at the cabin.
Simmons said, "OK, show me where the borders of that game preserve are." She did. "They're not in there, too much chance of a park ranger seeing something he wasn't supposed to."
"Same thing's true of popular hunting areas," Abrams said. "They wouldn't want to be doing anything illegal where a lot of people tramp around with guns, dogs and cell phones."
Mirror blanked out the park, then after some research, a couple of other areas. The result was a wide corridor along the highway. It was still a lot area to search. She placed another mark near the road. "I wonder if they placed the energon detectors in a circle around whatever they're hiding?"
Abrams said, "Maybe not a perfect circle, but if we find more and overlap their effective radius, we should start seeing a pattern."
Simmons said, "We should start seeing a truck, or something big enough to hide one. There's nothing here bigger than a cottonwood tree, for crying out loud, where did they go with it?"
Mirror examined the image again. "It isn't here. There are a few ranches with a big enough barn to hide a semi. That's almost where he'd have to go."
"OK, let's make for the closest one first." He asked Mearing to monitor the ranches for any sign of Browning's truck, and also to look for anywhere else that he could have hidden it.
Simmons stood. A sharp pain flared up his leg, the screws holding the bone together conducted cold. That was another reason to like Diego Garcia. He checked his brace and tightened a strap that was working its way loose. They were only a couple miles from the first ranch, if they cut across country.
They had time to check three ranches before they ran out of daylight. There was a discussion then about whether to push on or stop and rest. Finally they decided to split the difference and rest a few hours, then move out and check out the next place or two very early in the morning, when most people would be in bed.
It was a cold, clear night. Some brush that sort of served as a windbreak was all the shelter they could find, and they didn't dare have a campfire. They did have a self-warming thermos to make coffee.
None of them were country folks. An hour after everyone but Mirror, who was on watch, had bedded down for the night, something started howling. Nobody knew if it was wolves or coyotes or a pack of stray dogs, but they were loud. Abrams cursed, having just about got to sleep in spite of being half frozen.
Simmons muttered, "Home, home on the fraggin' range!"
Mearing laughed over his headset.
By the next evening they had checked out every single building that was big enough to hold a semi truck, and come up with squat. They found another energon detector. Corona carefully flew around to find the rest of them and mapped a rough circle.
Florez had blisters, it had been a long time since she had walked a beat and the support she wore in her shoe to keep her knee aligned rubbed. She peeled off her sock and sprayed instant bandage over the torn blister, then sat there in the freezing cold with her boot and sock off waiting for it to set up. "So where the fuckin' hell are these skells!"
Abrams said, "Let's see the map again. Mirror, can you overlay the satellite photos and highlight anything that's different?"
"Yes, just a second. This graphics stuff is a memory hog," the Pretender complained.
Abrams laughed. "Be glad you can do it in the field. Pam, my intel tech, has computers and stuff in the van."
"Yes, do you know where Pam is? In the van, where it's warm, not freezing her aft off out in the great outdoors!"
"You can say that again," Mac groused.
Mirror said, "Wait a minute, I might have something here." She enlarged an area near the center of the area enclosed by the energon detectors. Not too far from the road, the changing angle of the sunlight revealed a square in the desert that was big enough for the truck.
Mac asked, "Is that a building of some kind?"
"No, I don't think so," Simmons replied, with his greater knowledge of analyzing aerial photographs. "There's not enough relief for that. It's almost flush to the ground."
Masque said, "It could be something cloaked. Sometimes a cloaked building will show a footprint something like that if there isn't a hologram over it to make it blend in."
"I hope no one's reverse-engineered cloaking technology."
The Pretender replied, "The 'Cons had absolutely no concern for the remains of their dead. All it would have taken was for one of their scouts to have been recovered by some government or a corporation."
"We've accounted for all of Soundwave's crowd that we knew about, but we didn't know about you two for a while."
"It wouldn't surprise me to find out that he had other operatives known only to himself and Megatron," Masque said.
"Who could still be out there somewhere," Florez said.
"It's possible. A scout trapped behind enemy lines will go to ground, blend in as seamlessly as possible, and wait it out, like Masque and I were doing. With all the energon detectors around these days it wouldn't be easy, but it is possible."
Masque said, "I got overconfident and careless. I used some code that someone in the know recognized as Cybertronian, and they traced it back to us. That was an amateurish mistake that an experienced scout wouldn't have made."
They started hiking, snacking on energy bars as they walked. When they got within a mile of the anomaly, Masque and Mirror went ahead to recon.
There were more energon detectors here. They found a concrete square almost flush with the ground. There was a narrow rim around it like a curb.
::It looks like a helipad, only bigger.::
::I think it's a lift.::
The semi's tire tracks were clearly visible out onto the lift. Then Masque spotted something else. A Cybertronian footprint.
Mirror immediately compressed the file containing her memory of everything they had seen, then encrypted the compressed file, and transmitted it straight back to Ops in a short burst. If they got caught, at least they had reported that much.
Masque walked slowly around the edge of the lift, looking for the electromagnetic fields that would give away buried cables. That led her to a control panel for the lift hidden under a bush.
::What now? It isn't like we can sneak in this way!:: Mirror said.
::Go back and get the humans. I'll keep watch here,:: Masque replied.
::Be careful. And don't get any ideas about sneaking in there by yourself if the lift opens.::
::...::
::I mean it!::
::Oh, all right. Just go.::
Mirror moved slowly and carefully until she was well away from the lift, then hurried back to the others. She met them partway there, since Elita had already commed them with what the sisters had discovered.
They met about 200 yards from the lift, hiding in a patch of brush. There was some discussion about how to get in there without being spotted. Granted the sisters could turn invisible, but nobody could miss that huge lift opening.
It was Brakedown who came up with the best idea, to start a series of false alarm glitches that opened the lift. After putting up with that several times, they probably would let down their guard and make it possible for at least the sisters to sneak in. Possibly from the inside they would find a way to let the rest of the team in. Masque went over to the controls and checked them out. There was a radio receiver. She tapped in and hacked the system with ridiculous ease, it was just a human network with no scout-level defenses on it. She wrote some code to randomly open the lift, and carefully hid it in their system where it wasn't likely to be found. Then she hightailed it back before the fireworks started.
The first time the lift opened, three bots and twenty humans in black BDUs came out. They were all wearing heavy body armor and carrying the same rifles modified for the heavy explosive rounds that NEST used. They checked all around, found nothing, then went back in, swearing at having to come out in the cold for nothing.
The third time, they left one of the bots and a fire team of humans up top, and a guy with a tool box knelt beside the bush to check the control pad. After a while he got up, shrugged, and went back down.
The fifth time the lift operated on its own, a guy who must have been a team leader or a lieutenant or whatever they had, came up and stomped around and yelled at the mechanic for a little while. Then he went back in where it was warm, leaving the angry mechanic to work on the control pad again.
Then Mirror poked Masque in the arm and told her over their sibling bond, ::There's something weird about that bot. Watch it walk around for a while.::
Masque turned her attention to it, then after a while she realized Mirror was right. He didn't move exactly right for a bot of that type—more like a bot trying to walk like a human. Not...clumsy exactly, but just strange.
As the minutes passed, she became more and more certain there was something really weird about that bot. He stood guard at a sort of attention, a position that she knew most bots would have found uncomfortable. In fact, if they had to stay in one place for a long time, especially in the cold, they usually transformed to a wheeled alt if they had one. And that one did, some kind of a blue SUV if she wasn't mistaken.
::I think it's a drone,:: she replied. ::It doesn't act like a sparked bot.::
::It doesn't act like a drone, either,:: her sister replied. ::I think it's somebot's remote!::
Masque did a double-take. ::How big of a bot would it take to have a remote that size!::
::There are three of them!:: Mirror reminded her.
::We have to get in there to find out what's going on.::
::I think we should wait a little longer. Let them get good and cold.::
::Frag it, I'm getting good and cold. And tired and low on energon.::
::You'll really be complaining if they catch us.::
They waited a little while longer, through a couple of more activations. That time a guy in an expensive coat came out to see what the hell was going on. He turned around, looking suspiciously out over the desert. It was Emery Bodine.
Masque and Mirror decided that was the time to go, when everyone's attention was on Bodine. The lift took them down into a huge bot-sized hallway. Bodine strode away towards a metal stairway leading to a second story door half-way up the wall. The place was huge. They saw a lot of human guards, but no bots wandering around, which made sense if they were just remotes.
They made doubly sure their energon masking devices were operational, since in these relatively confined spaces their signatures might be detected otherwise. They explored the place, dodging guards.
One heavily secured door opened to let a uniformed man out. Actually he looked more like a boy who had been given a military haircut and stuffed into a uniform. He wore thick glasses and had red marks on his forehead, as though he had just removed something that fit tightly. Behind him they could see rows of computer stations, there was a man at one of them and a short, dark-haired woman at another. What they were doing was a mystery, since instead of monitors each station had 3D headsets. But they looked for all the world to the two Pretenders like very high end gaming rigs, similar to the ones they themselves owned.
They found barracks for the soldiers, and further on down a hallway blocked off by a set of double doors and a couple of no-nonsense guards. Beyond that was one big bot-sized door. They waited there for a while, until a couple of guys in coveralls, one of them pushing a maintenance cart full of some very large tools, entered the door.
Both of them nearly rebooted. In there were not just the other two bots they had seen before, but spaces for twenty of them. One of the spaces, apparently belonging to the one on guard up top, was missing. Working around them were more people in coveralls and more of what they could only describe as nerds.
Suddenly it all made perfect sense. ::They're not remotes. At least they aren't a bot's remotes. Those kids are remote-controlling them!::
After more exploration, they found a big bay that was being used as a parking lot, the truck was there as well as several cars and pickup trucks, and one BMW.
The easiest way to get back out turned out to be just to wait for the lift to cycle again. Once they got out, Masque hacked the controls again to remove the program that she had installed. They would think the last thing they tried had fixed the malfunction.
Masque and Mirror reported what they had found. Masque asked Elita, ::What do you want us to do now, Prime?::
::Get out of there. We need to let them settle down before we act further.::
::Yes, Prime.::
They went back to Corona and Brakedown. By then they were all dead tired and hungry, intent on nothing more than supper and rest. Nobody even complained about MRE's, and Corona didn't say anything about them eating in her cabin, when it was so cold outside. They all knew not to leave anything lying around by now, anyway. She and Brakedown kept watch, since they hadn't been doing anything.
It took four hours for the Xan II to arrive with Red Team. Prime had made a point of asking for President Seaborn's permission with witnesses from both parties in the room when he made the video call, giving the reason that he felt responsible that their technology had fallen into the wrong hands and wanted to make sure that no Americans were harmed by it. Of course everyone in the room knew he wanted to see for himself what was going on, but there was no need to bring that into it, especially if he was willing to put himself on the front line taking out those drones. Seaborn had immediately given them permission, asking Prime to coordinate with Special Agent Abrams on site just as Simmons was doing.
It went without saying that Optimus would copy everything he found out to Seaborn directly, there would be no issues with any of Bodine's potential sympathizers possibly spinning things and keeping Seaborn from getting all the information he needed. It saved him sending Donna out there and risking her cover.
By then, there were several carloads of FBI agents there too. They decided that the humans and the Pretenders would go in first and get into position, before the other bots dropped and lit them up. The area around the secret base was isolated enough that they preferred to keep the fighting located there.
Simmons' leg was bothering him badly enough that everyone could see him limping. Prime told him and Masque to set up field ops aboard Corona, he could do the most good from there. He didn't argue after Abrams and the rest of their team promised to keep a personal eye out for Browning.
They were doing that, feeding data back to Mearing in Ops. Red Team, with Brakedown seconded to them, were having little trouble from a bunch of drones. When they knew they were fighting drones, there was no reason for them to hold back, and vorns of combat experience from the three veterans made it a textbook exercise.
It was complicated by the human agents, but the FBI fire teams were keeping most of them busy. One of them, however, took a shot at Corona.
The explosive shell went right through her light seeker's armor as if it wasn't there. One piece of shrapnel hit something important. Suddenly blind, she rocked with the sudden pain, and tried to keep straight and level. "I can't see!"
Simmons took her control yoke and asked calmly, "Can you switch to radar or something?"
"No, it all goes to my visual processor and I think that's what got hit."
"OK, you need to pull up a little. I can guide you if you'll let me have the stick."
She let him because she didn't want to crash, but it was terrifying. Simmons leveled them off and reassured her, "I do know what I'm doing. It's been a while since I've flown, but I'm certified on this type of jet. As long as you leave me the controls, I can land us in one piece just like your alt form was a real Lear jet, OK?"
"OK."
"You aren't, though. You can hover, right? We don't have to worry about stalling if your airspeed drops?"
"No, I can hover. Brakedown is in the middle of a bunch of them!"
Simmons said, "We'll be there in a second. Let Masque fire your guns."
Corona offered the Pretender a hardline port. She linked directly into Corona's guns, getting a direct feed from their visual sensors and completely bypassing the damaged visual processor.
Simmons was definitely not a combat pilot, and as he flew towards the battle he wished he was. But there were no enemy aircraft–"all" they had to do was avoid getting hit by anything else fired from the ground.
Corona let out a terrified screech as she felt her bonded's peril through their sparkbond. Brakedown was on the ground, with one of the enemy drones standing over him with a spear. Masque opened fire as they came in. The deactivated drone fell across Brakedown, he threw it off him and Simmons saw him get to his feet. He caught up with Red Team, joined up with Skids and Mudflap.
"He looks OK, Corona."
"All right. I want you to keep us around the outside of the main fighting, so Masque can snipe at stragglers. For Primus' sake, watch out for anyone else aiming at us." She was trying hard to keep calm, both for her sake and Brakedown's, but flying blind with a human pilot while people were potentially shooting at them wasn't easy.
Simmons reassured her, "I definitely am doing that, but Prime and the Big Twins are right in the middle of it."
"They haven't got any attention to spare for us, then."
This was the first time Masque had ever seen the front-liners in action, and for a moment all she could do was stare with her mouth open. Then Simmons reached over and poked her. "You're supposed to be shooting, not sightseeing."
Masque jumped, then got back to work. Simmons was quickly learning the seekers' trick of hovering in place to get a shot off, then moving fast before someone could take advantage of a stationary target, but she had to be paying close attention when he called targets so she could fire while they were stopped.
He banked sharply, a move that would have crashed a real Lear jet, but Corona trusted him to attempt the maneuver. She felt something just miss her. "What was that?"
"Some kind of rocket. Charlotte, I got a bunch of those guys here with fuckin' rocket launchers. Permission to take the shot!"
"Suppression fire only. The FBI is on your coordinates."
Masque confirmed, "I see them coming." She fired several shots near the people with the rocket launchers, keeping them busy until the FBI could get there to take them prisoner.
By then the fighting up top had ended. Simmons took Corona to the Xan II. He and Masque got out, leaving her to Mikaela's care. They hurried to join the people massing to go into the base. Simmons had enough adrenaline going that he didn't really feel his leg, and it looked like he was going to get his chance to go after Browning himself.
*-T-F-Rising*
Mirror got the lift operational. Prime and the Big Twins went down first and secured the corridor, before the rest of the bots and a flood of Feds from various agencies came down.
Bodine and a few others were barricaded inside their ops center, but they were armed and dangerous trapped rats. Rather that rush them, they set up heavy barricades of their own in case they decided to come out firing explosive rounds, and settled in to wait them out.
Brakedown cut the door to the drone pilots' room off it's hinges when there was no answer to the FBI's demands to open up.
All the pilots were collapsed in their seats or the floor nearby, some still twitching, others pale and still. Brakedown shouted, "Medic! We need the human medics over here!" He got out of the way so the humans could rush through the small door.
"What the frag happened to them?"
A medic said, "The lucky ones are dead. The rest of them are gorked."
"What does that mean?"
"Lights are on, but nobody's home. Brain damaged."
Mirror squeezed past them to examine one of the stations. She picked up the 3D headset that was lying there. "Oh, sweet holy Well. Masque!"
Her sister came over and took the device. "What is this?" Masque touched a pad on the device and rubbed some gel she found there between her fingers. "It's some kind of conductive medium."
"You mean they were–"
"I think they were actually linked to the drones. But they don't have any kind of feedback limiters on these rigs, like one of us running a drone would. When the drones got offlined, the shock did this to them. It burnt them out, essentially. How could they set this up and not know they needed to protect themselves from that kind of feedback?"
"They were just figuring it out as they went along. Maybe they didn't really care what happened to the kids. They could recruit some other geeky kid easier than they could build another drone," Abrams said. With one last glance at the medics working on the still-living pilots, he strode back to the barricade with Masque and Mirror in his wake.
He said, "Prime, sir, there's something you need to know about."
Optimus led the way back around the corner. "What have you found, Special Agent?"
Bodine explained about the young pilots. Some of them were being taken out as they spoke. Optimus scanned one of them, and was sickened by the neurological damage he found. That young girl had just enough mental function left to spend the rest of her life in an institution. He copied the scan to Ratchet, hoping against hope that the healers see something that he didn't, after all he was a decent field medic as all the veteran combatants had necessarily become but he was no expert on human biology. Ratchet didn't sound any more hopeful than he was, though.
"If we had known..."
"It wouldn't have changed needing to stop them, sir." Abrams replied. "Everyone would have tried to minimize casualties if we'd known, but who could possibly know taking down a drone up there could do this kind of harm to somebody in a bunker down here? And Bodine wasn't in any hurry to tell us. Leave the blame for this where it belongs."
Optimus nodded, but knowing that and watching the line of stretchers being carried out were two separate things. Bodine had a lot to answer for.
Mirror hacked into the cameras in there. Bodine and four others, including Browning, were in the room. She routed the feed to a laptop in the FBI control center as well as continuing to monitor it herself. When she saw them destroying the computers, she quickly downloaded all the remaining data from them to some external hard drives in other parts of the base. She was too wary of getting a virus to hardline to them herself.
Everyone waited to see what Bodine would do once he thought he had destroyed all the computer evidence. He crossed the room and shoved aside a bank of servers. Behind it was a small hole. Bodine and the others quickly crawled inside and started climbing. The last one in, Browning, pulled the server rack back into place. If they hadn't been patched into the cameras, they never would have known about the escape route. As it was, they notified the people up top to keep an eye out. They ran inside and Prime ordered from the hall, "Somebody kill those lights."
An FBI agent found a switch. Once the room lights were out, Simmons and the others followed the fugitives up the tunnel, once again closing it behind them so the FBI agents in the room could turn the lights back on.
It went a long way, and they came out into the crawl space under a cabin—the very hunting cabin where they had taken shelter! Thinking they had gotten away clean, Bodine and his accomplices had entered the cabin through a trap door and were in the process of getting guns, fake IDs and money out of a closet. They were ditching their own weapons and wallets.
Nobody noticed the six of them getting out of the crawl space into the yard and taking up positions just outside. The six men walked out of the cabin right into the waiting arms of the law.
Simmons walked up to Browning. "Joe Gilmar was my partner for a long time, Browning. Why don't you try to escape? You're going to jail for the rest of your life. New York hasn't got the death penalty this year, so you'll get old behind bars. All you have to do is get past one old guy in a leg brace."
Browning's dark eyes regarded Simmons for a long moment. He thought about it. Then he just held out his wrists for the handcuffs. Life in jail was at least life. Taking up Simmons' challenge was a quick ticket to the morgue.
Mac said, "First smart move you've made, Browning. You're under arrest for the murder of Joseph Gilmar. You have the right to remain silent. If you waive this right, anything you say can and will..."
Simmons walked away. He touched his headset to call home. "Relay back to Prime, please, Ops. We have them all in custody without incident."
"Are you all right, Seymour?"
"I will be, Charlotte, I will be. Status on Corona?"
"Mikaela can't tell in the field. They won't know until she's back here for more tests."
"She went beyond the call, letting me continue to fly her for the remainder of the incident so that she could stay in the fight as long as we were needed. I'm not even a combat pilot. I just know how to get from point A to point B."
Elita said, "After what happened to four of our soldiers last year, that's a risk that more of us would be willing to take."
"Yeah, but I'm not the one I'd expect to be trusted so much."
Elita said, "I am more concerned with who you are now than with who you were fifteen years ago, my friend. I don't know what it takes to earn your own forgiveness, but you have surely earned ours."
"Thank you, Prime. Don't know if you know what that means to me, but I appreciate it."
Mearing reported, "Prisoner transportation is on its way."
*-T-F-Rising*
A few days later, Mearing joined Simmons in New Jersey for Joe's funeral. The few remaining members of Sector Seven who weren't wanted by the law joined Joe's family in Joe's parish church. Afterwards they all got together at Joe's favorite watering hole, a place called Flanagan's Pub. Simmons hugged Dr. Carol Brewster, who was now working at Area 51 in close cooperation with the Med/Sci team on Diego Garcia. Father Mark had come over on leave from his mission work to preach an old friend's funeral. There were a couple of other former agents there, Tony Brewster had retired to become a small town sheriff and Mitch Johnson was working with protective services in Los Angelas, helping abused kids.
Simmons said to Father Mark, "Looks like we're all trying in our own way to earn absolution. Do you think any of us ever will?"
"Speaking only for myself, I don't believe we have to earn it. We wouldn't be able to if we did. That's why we call it the grace of God. You know, from what I've read, the Cybertronians believe pretty much the same thing about Primus' forgiveness. It's there if you genuinely ask for it."
Simmons thought about the sparklings he'd offlined, without even knowing they were living beings. He knew it was their forgiveness he'd have to ask someday. Maybe by then he'd have earned the right to ask for it, and maybe that was all the absolution anyone had the right to expect—to be enough of a mensch to be able to look the people they'd wronged in the face and apologize.
Mearing came over to the bar for another drink, and stayed by her husband's side until they got a cab to their hotel.
On the way, Brakedown called. "Ratchet let Corona out of stasis lock a little while ago. She can see."
"Oh, thank God."
"We're going home for a while, as soon as he clears her to fly."
"Yeah, we're going home ourselves in the morning."
"She wanted me to thank you again. I'd like to add my own thanks to that. You looked out for her when I couldn't. Saved both our lives."
"Just one teammate helping out the others," Simmons replied. "Just seems to be what we do."
"Yeah. I hear Browning pled guilty."
"Yeah, he'll spend the rest of his life in the pen, but if he cooperates, it could be in a better prison."
"What about Bodine and the rest of them?"
"Bodine's up on treason charges. He might get the death penalty. He should, for those teenage hackers he recruited, but he might be able to cut some kind of a deal to get the death penalty off the table. Don't know yet who else he could give evidence against. Tell Corona I said take care of herself."
"I'll do that."
They ended the call. Simmons pocketed his phone, then leaned back against the cab seat and pulled Mearing close against the cold winter night. With Bodine's operation shut down, they were in a better position to face the real challenge of Unicron. For tonight, though, he wasn't going to worry about that. For tonight, he was just going to remember the good times with his old friend.
(A.N.: Chapter Title from Hazy Shade of Winter, by the Bangles)
