Thank you Ms Chanandler Bong Forever, PCGirl, BroadwayDiva, anhonestmoose and Exintaris for reviewing the last chapter (I thought I'd name and shame you!). In my opinion, this chapter is definitely (well, probably) more cheerful – towards the end, at least. So, read, review, and enjoy!

IV

The knack of moving, he had long since realised, was to stay still. To attach yourself to something firmly secured to the ground – and to remain motionless. That was the hard part – to hold yourself down while a hurricane of her memories raged around you. Yes – she was the destructive gale which tried to knock him to the ground every time she blew through this void – the void he was bolted down to.

He spent very little time standing up.

There had been a funeral. Two empty caskets – one large and one small – lowered dutifully by two young men who had suddenly started to look so much older. They had not wanted to be there.

Neither had Chandler. It was all a façade – and their glass faces of tears and masks of grievance were trite and cheap. She, he knew, was six feet higher than any of them cared to claim.

Closure, they called it. Closure – he needed closure – and then they would pat him and smother him with their insufferably suffocating sympathy. But he could have never have closure – could never close - he was held permanently open by the winds that beat and blew their anger against the door whenever he tried to shut it. The creaking of the hinges would give him away every time – oh, he was growing old.

Alone or together, time passes - an unforgiving constant that will never pause regardless of loss. And sometimes the raging tunnels of wind relented – and, between bouts, there was time enough to sleep and, perhaps, to live. But sometimes the attacks were inexorable and he was powerless – dust and sand blown across an empty plane – that's all humans were, after all – particles of dirt pushed unwillingly together like inflexible rock by some sculptor whose handiwork was flawed.

But humans could think. And thinking was the danger – thinking caused it all. So, sometimes, when he could, he did not think.

It was the most peaceful he ever felt.

-

-

"I went to a church once, you know," Chandler told Marcus, taking a reluctant sip of water. Water. It was all he was allowed now. For your own good, they would repeat. For your own good – it's for your own good.

He did not know why they continued to believe that there was any good left within him. He was bad, all bad – in their fruit bowl still life, it took just one rotten apple to destroy the rest.

Apples cannot feel guilt – metaphorical or otherwise, they are still just fruit. But Chandler knew guilt – he knew it as well as the contours carved into his own palms. And that was the master sculptor's main blemish. He should have just gone with apples, Chandler mused. Apples were safe. Apples could not suffer this aching regret.

"You know, that's not too unusual, Dad. Quite a lot of people go every week – I don't think you're special…"

"There was this guy there," he continued, ignoring the interruption. "This guy, standing at the front, telling us all that we should have faith that everything's going to get better."

"Yeah. That would be the vicar… that's kind of his job…"

"But how the hell can he tell me that things are going to get better, Marc? Things don't get better! When have things ever got better?"

"You may have a point there," Marcus conceded. Don't argue, he warned himself. Don't argue – don't disagree – don't lose him again.

"Faith isn't going to bring her back." Chandler's voice had dropped to a whisper. "What is, Marcus? What's going to bring her home to me?"

Marcus shrugged lightly. He knew that, if he didn't make a joke out of the situation, then the small nuggets of happiness he had discovered over the last few months would be permanently buried underwater. And so he joked. He joked like it didn't matter. Like it didn't mean anything to him, even though, some days, it was the only thing that did.

"Yeah, no… Religion's not going to do that… you might have a shot with magic, though." He paused. "You'd probably need a pretty big top hat to fit her in, though…"

"Aren't you too old for magic?"

"Aren't you?" Marcus countered.

"Yeah." The answer was resigned. "Yeah. Maybe I am."

-

-

Charles Jonathan Bing was ten years old. His hair was sandy brown, his eyes were cornflower blue – and he had not spoken a single word for seven years. His first conscious memories were of the ways that words could rip lives to shreds. To Charlie, words meant danger. Words meant death.

And, so, he did not speak.

His brother and sister had sent him to see a nice lady once – he remembered the way her hair hung in ringlets and the red of her lipstick stark against her face in a pleasant hue of raspberry. He liked her, yes – but he did not trust her. He would not speak to her. And so they had given up – and, after ten years, so had he.

He liked to draw. Drawings were not like words – they had no defined meaning that you could look up in a dictionary. They were open to interpretation. People could find their own meanings in a picture – and then it was nobody's fault but their own.

He would sit for hours crouched over a scrap of paper with thick black pencils and coloring crayons and he would talk through images. Art was one of his only methods of communication.

"What the hell is that?" Chandler leaned over to observe the crayon picture that his youngest son was drawing. He wasn't thinking about drugs. He wasn't thinking about cigarettes or alcohol or closing his eyes and never letting them drift open again. He wasn't.

He wasn't – he wasn't – he wasn't – except that he was and, like a growing stain – of blood, he thought, grimly – it was spreading over his mind and coloring everything there a different shade of red. It wouldn't be the same again – not with detergents and washing powder or soap or machines. It was ruined. He was ruined.

Concentrate, he warned himself warily. Concentrate or they would know - know that this chance really was the last.

"It looks like…" He squinted, trying to stop his vision from doubling. "It looks like a caterpillar and some very excited beetles having wild sex in… what appears to be… Prague?"

Marcus rolled his eyes warily. "It's a dog, Dad. Just a dog. Charlie wants a dog for Christmas."

"Oh. What about that whip then?"

"That's its tail. He's ten, Dad. I don't think he's into that kind of thing…"

"Oh. Oh. Oh, thank God… I'd thought I was going to have to buy my ten year old son some kind of insect pornography for Christmas…"

Marcus looked up. "Does that even exist?"

"Oh, the things you still have to learn, Marcus!" Marcus frowned uncertainly at him. "Yeah… no. It doesn't exist. Should, though…"

Marcus gave a short laugh and Chandler snapped his head up with a start to look at him. He had forgotten that his son knew how to laugh. The sound was desperately beautiful – and he longed to hear it again – longed to lie down listening to laughter filling to room until he was cushioned by it, and he could sleep.

"You never laugh any more," he observed quietly, running a hand through his lank and thinning hair. "None of you do. You don't play any more either… kids are meant to play. You're meant to laugh and play and enjoy yourselves and – what do you do instead?"

"We sit inside and freeze 'cause they cut the heating off and look at that cardboard box over there that would be a television if we'd paid the bills and we worry about where we're going to find you lying next time – about if we're going to find you next time." Marcus spat the words with an unintentionally vehement force. He was not angry. He was too tired to be angry.

Chandler glanced up at him. And – for the first time – not only did he look, but he saw. "I screwed this up big time, didn't I?"

"That's one way of putting it, yeah," Marcus replied dryly. "I can think of some better ways but you'll probably prefer your one."

"What do I do?" he mumbled, voice rasping.

"You can start by making us dinner," suggested Marcus, his voice afloat with fake joviality.

Sam nodded and Charlie smiled his approval.

It was nice to be approved.

-

-

For the first few months after her disappearance, the visits from relatives had been frequent. People find it hard to cry alone, so they spread out their pain amongst others – and then everyone cries. Humankind is a selfish race. But they had dwindled to a gradual halt over time. Everything must. As the tears dried up and the memories faded, there was no need to find comfort in friends – and, so, no need to visit.

The man who sat opposite them in the living room did not want to be there. He did not want to be the one to spend time in this house – to spread news to these people. He shared a few pints of blood with the children, but the man… the man had stopped being anything to do with him a long time ago. And blood alone was not enough to tie him down.

No, he didn't want to be there at all.

Ross cleared his throat awkwardly, his gaze averted. He did not want to look at his relatives. If he couldn't see them, then he would not have to feel guilty. Only he did see – even when his eyes were closed, he saw what they had become – and the guilt at any one point was enough to push him, sprawling, to the ground. He had to tell them.

"She- she's back," he mumbled. "They – they found her."

Chandler's head jerked suddenly upwards. Marcus realised, with a start, that this was the most alive he had ever seen his father. "What? She? Who's she?"

For him, there was only one she – the one who dominated his thoughts and reduced him to tears each night in some kind of twisted ritual – a perverted prayer to a nonexistent God to bring a dead woman home alive. Like the plot of some farfetched and supernatural fiction. It wouldn't come true – it couldn't come true. Impossibilities cannot change. They remain forever impossible until the pain of acceptance becomes too hard to endure, and respite is finally granted. Yeah – he'd been waiting for that a long time.

"Monica, Chandler. Monica… They found Monica."

No.

The words reverberated around his thoughtless skull incessantly, each a shrill note in an opera he longed to conduct.

He blinked. The mist cleared. The spinning of his compass began to slow until, somehow, he could sense a direction. Some kind of a bearing. He had been lost for so long, but now he had direction, and the thought was so unnatural – so utterly terrifying – that he could not bear it.

The thought that had kept him clutching onto the renegade threads of sanity for seven years was the same reality that was forcing him to let go. It was horrifying. There was only one escape.

"I need a drink," he mumbled. Any excuse to get out of this room where the air, heavy with nicotine, pressed itself into his body and smothered him. Alcohol could help. Alcohol could always help to bring back the blurred horizon that was his only protection.

He stumbled into the kitchen on tired legs not used to such sudden movement, his shaking hands grasping uncertainly in the grime of the cabinet.

Ross watched him silently from the living room, edging forward slightly and leaning towards the three children in a conspiratorial pose, trying to avoid, as far as possible, sitting on the yellow-stained furniture. His house was always clean – he could not associate with this dirt – or the people who lived in it. "Is he always like this?" he whispered.

Sam gave a bitter laugh. "No. There are good days, and then there are bad days. It all depends."

"Please, God, tell me this is one of the bad days," Ross reciprocated.

Marcus eyed his father, who had given up trying to find a glass, and was drinking whiskey straight from the bottle. Dry, gasping gulps as if the drink were oxygen and his lungs were empty and heaving.

"No," he replied. "No – this is one of the best days we've had in a long time…"