Title: Wheels and Wings
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I don't own anything.
Distribution: Please ask first.
Summary: Walking isn't the only thing Kevin has stopped doing.
Notes: I want to preface this by saying that I have only caught one episode, but I really find the premise of the show intriguing. This fic has no time frame, it's just a character sketch of Kevin. The style is a little abstract and scattered.
______________
He sits on a throne of wheels. Unable to preside over the kingdom of life that lays before him.
All he wants is to roll smoothly from surface to surface, walking instead of stumbling on unsteady hope.
Across gravel and slick pavement and grass that sinks under his weight, he falters. His hands slip on dewy spokes and he curses as he lurches again.
A hard hand comes down on his useless legs and he winces not from pain but from lack of feeling.
Once he felt. He had hopes and loves and pains and fears. They are all gone, washed away like the blood from his battered body as he was pulled from the
wreck. Now all he has left are the fears. Even the pain can't comfort him now. He won't walk again, that's what he's been told.
Time and the accident have changed him. He is so bitter. So unable to grasp the good.
His life, now, is nothing because he won't let himself live. The marrow has been sucked from his bones and he is without spirit.
He sees the way his Mother and Father look at him like he's broken. Like he's a rag doll mauled beyond repair and missing a limb and he lets them think he
doesn't notice. The same way he lets Luke still look up to him even though the kid towers over his chair. But Joan is different. She doesn't come to him. She
doesn't make him be what he once was, but she makes him want to be that person again.
And he can't understand how she pushes him so hard without saying a word.
Sometimes he dreams his legs are not useless. That he's on a field and he's running. Running and running and never going anywhere and he can't understand
what it means, but he knows it doesn't make him happy. He's trying to escape maybe. Escape what, he doesn't know. But he wakes and his fingers grope for
the chrome of his chair in the dark and the chill of the metal bites into his skin.
There is always a warm hand, though, to replace the cold, shushing him when he doesn't know he's screamed. And it is her voice that lulls him back to sleep.
When he looks at her in daylight, there is a shine to her, almost like she's glowing. A little hallow on a crown of straight tresses. And he's not sure why
looking at her fills him with peace, but it does. And it makes him push himself harder and want to be who he once was.
The doctors have told him he'll never walk again. Joan tells him he will.
He pushes himself so hard because he wants to believe her and prove everyone wrong.
He finds dry cement, rolls onto it with ease. Steady ground meets rubber wheels and his hands dry with dirt as he pushes himself forward.
It's as if he's gliding. And if he closes his eyes, he can imagine he's flying. Soaring, free of memories and nightmares and scars.
He pushes harder, sending the wheelchair sliding over perfect paved street and the wheels become his legs, feeling everything he can't feel, internalizing every
bump and chip and pebble that burrows inside the rubber.
He doesn't want to land. Doesn't want to stop the momentum that propels him forward, but it has to stop so he can move on. It has to stop.
He arches forward. Spins. Let's the chair tip and he's falling. Crashing back to the ground so the air is knocked from his lungs and a laugh bubbles from his throat.
His arms burn and his pulse is unsteady and he can feel the sweat rolling down his neck and temples and for once, since the accident, he feels alive.
_____
end.