Disclaimer: Not mine, never were, never will be.
A/N: Thanks so much for the reviews on chapter 1, they really made me feel good. Here's more for you to enjoy – well, I hope. It would be cool if you could let me know if you liked it.
Pilot
Parcheesi
(A scene inserted after the Joan/ Kevin play fight scene)
After dinner Joan went to the living room to watch some TV. When she'd just sat down on the couch her mother entered the room.
"Hey," Helen said.
"Hey, Mom!" Joan replied, not looking at her, instead focused on the soap that was airing on TV.
Helen said down on the armrest of the couch and leaned her head against the backrest, looking at Joan expectantly. After a little while Joan noticed that her mother was trying to get her attention and asked, "What?"
"Did you and Kevin have fun?"
Joan looked at her skeptically. "Yeah. And yes, he talked to me. I'm fine, Mom, really." She hesitated, then asked, "What do you want?" Kevin did talk to me, I'm not crazy... what more is there to be said?
"I want Kevin to get a driver's license," Helen said slowly. "And he's not exactly enthusiastic about it."
"Who'd guess?" Joan said sarcastically. "He was injured in a car accident." What is she thinking? She should know why he doesn't want to get in a car again.
"But he wasn't driving," Helen insisted. "And he's been in cars a lot since then, just not as a driver."
"So you think his rejection isn't based on his bad experiences with cars?" Joan grimaced but thought that her mother could be right. Maybe this really wasn't about the accident as such.
Helen explained, "I think he's comfortable with hiding here, not going out, not having a life. But this can't continue forever." Well, it could, she thought to herself, but then I'll go mad. And I won't ask Kevin to talk to me about it. Even though that would really be strange.
Joan did agree with her mother but thought about what Kevin had told her earlier. He wanted to do things his way and in his speed. "No," she nodded to tell her mother that she thought she was right, "it can't. But shouldn't it be his decision when it ends?"
"Maybe," Helen agreed halfheartedly. "But I can't stand waiting any longer." Sighing she admitted, "I've been at the Department of Motor Vehicles today and got him some brochures."
"Oh no, you didn't!?" Joan said, knowing it was true. Kevin was surely thrilled by that act.
"But... if I don't do it, nothing will happen." Helen said frustrated.
"So now what?" Before she'd finished her question, Joan knew the answer and sighed. "You want me to talk to him." Please not. Don't make me talk to him about this. He's going to kill me.
Helen nodded. "You two were both smiling when you came out of the study, so I guess your talk before dinner was fine." A smile crossed her lips when she thought about their kids' happy faces.
Joan rolled her eyes. "Is this your 'make-Kevin-and-Joan-talk-day'? We had fun, but not so much because of the talking." She grimaced and smiled, wondering if she should tell her mother, then decided to do it and continued, "We had a tickle fight. He teased me, I emptied my glass of water in his face and he started tickling me. Now happy? Not too much serious talking."
A tickle fight? Her mother smiled widely. "You did?" She couldn't remember the last time they'd done something like that, it seemed like a lifetime ago. Another life in another city. But it seemed a good sign, a sign of Kevin opening up a little.
Joan nodded and shrugged. "Yeah."
"That's great."
Joan grinned. "That's a first. You always wanted us to stop fighting."
Helen nodded, remembering wounds and little injuries caused by fights between their kids. Usually nothing serious had happened, but Joan was right, she'd always wanted them to stop fighting and do some less aggressive things together. "Things change." She simply said, knowing that today she was happy that they were doing something together.
"More than we want them to." Joan nodded, knowing that her mother had never been excited about any changes in their lives, especially not those for the worse.
Helen hesitated a little but started to ask something. "So... isn't that a chance for you to... well..."
"... make him get his license?" Joan finished, knowing that her mother really wanted to help and knowing that she was right. Her chance of persuading Kevin was surely much higher than her own. "I can try, okay? But I'm not the one to push him hard. I will ask him, but not more."
"Thanks," Helen smiled. "He's in his room."
"Now?"
"Please?" her mother pouted.
Joan rolled her eyes but nodded and stood up. "Okay."
Sighing she walked up the stairs and headed towards Kevin's room. His door was open and she saw him lying on his bed, reading a book. She realized that she hadn't been in Kevin's room for a while and hadn't seen him out of his wheelchair for quite some time either. If she just blinded out the trapeze above his bed and the wheelchair standing next to it, this looked pretty much like a scene that could have happened two years earlier too. Only that Kevin would most likely not have been reading but being out, meeting some girl or playing baseball. She shrugged off the thought and because he still hadn't noticed her presence, she knocked at the doorframe.
"Hey," she said when he looked up.
"Hey," he answered, surprised to see his sister in his room.
Joan slowly walked closer to him, her gaze stopping at the handicapped driving brochure on the desk. She took it and skimmed through it. "So Mom wants you to get your license, hum?" she asked, not really knowing how to start this talk.
Kevin grimaced. "She's thrilled by the idea to see me in a car again."
Joan grinned, trying to find something positive for him to remember, "Well, it would be cool if you could give me a ride again, every once in a while. Do you remember how we used to sneak out after dinner and get a burger?"
Kevin smiled, remembering how they had sometimes boycotted their mother's food and got something else instead. "Mom's stew is not eatable, what were we supposed to do?" he asked back.
His sister shrugged. "We eat it now, we could have done before. Even though I admit that she knows a lot of other stuff better than how to do stew. Wouldn't it be cool if we could do that again?"
Kevin grinned, pretty sure that this forced conversation hadn't been Joan's idea and planning on teasing her nonetheless. "Well, yeah. So why don't you get your driver's license and we can take Dad's car which, I have to add, I wouldn't be able to drive anyway."
Joan raised her hands in a gesture of defense. "When did we start talking about me?"
Finally putting the book on the nightstand Kevin looked at her skeptically and asked straight out, "Mom sent you, didn't she?"
Joan rolled her eyes, feeling caught red-handed. "Yeah, she did. She really wants you to get your license."
"I know." Kevin stated as a matter of fact, wondering where this was leading. He would have to talk to his mother about sending Joan when this was over.
"So ..?" Joan asked.
"So what?"
Joan raised her hands again, this time to emphasize her question. She really wanted to know what he was going to do and if there was a chance to persuade him to do what their mother considered good for him. "What are you going to do? Are you going to get it?"
"Maybe."
"Am I supposed to tell that to Mom?" Great, Kev, she'll be really happy about a maybe. She wondered why he wouldn't try any harder but didn't ask any more questions.
Kevin shrugged, wanting to escape the conversation. "She'll figure it out."
"But don't you think she's right?" Joan asked, feeling the desperate need to get Kevin out of his lethargy and back into life. "If you could drive you could get a job."
"As if it'd be that easy to find a job." Kevin stated this in a really frustrated voice, still trying to escape his sister's questions but not knowing how to. He knew that she, like their mother, wanted him to do what she considered best for him. The question was if it was really the best for him. What was so bad about what he was doing right now?
"Nobody said it would be easy but it's not that hard," Joan insisted. "I bet you could find something. You're clever enough, handsome enough..."
"Paralyzed enough," he continued her listing and created a frustrated look on her face. "I already told Mom that I'm not the brains of the family and I mean that."He sighed, not knowing what to do with her, now, that she had come here, what he really enjoyed, but not wanting to talk about this topic. He then decided to say it out straight. "Joan, will you please stop that? You're welcome to come here and talk or whatever, but not this kind of thing, okay?"
Joan looked at him and wondered if she should leave, leave him alone again like he'd requested so many times in the last months, then decided against it. "Okay, then whatever."
"Whatever?"
"You said talk or whatever. Since I don't know what to tell you and since talking about Mom's topic is no alternative anymore, I'll go for whatever." She waited for his response, not knowing if she'd crossed a border she shouldn't have crossed. Maybe he didn't want her here. And what should 'whatever' be?
Kevin seemed to realize her tension and grinned. "When you were little, you'd always make me play with your dolls when you had the choice."
Joan grinned too. "Well, you always let me lose when we played something else. Not only sports, you also made me lose Parcheesi. So dolls was the way to go."
"You want revenge?" Kevin asked, still grinning, now that he had a plan.
"In Parcheesi?"
Kevin nodded. "It's on the shelf back there. You could get it."
"Sure."
Joan smiled and went to the shelf to get the game. When she turned around again, she saw Kevin adjusting his position on the bed to make place for them to play and had to swallow. Having seen how he pulled his legs closer to the side of the bed and put a pillow behind his back, Joan was reminded of the time when Kevin had come home from hospital and had needed so much help. Their mother had been so busy with it that Joan had offered to learn a little too to make things easier for all of them. Back then she'd often been with Kevin, hardly talking though, just helping him through his everyday routine. Now, that he had regained a lot of his independence, she hadn't been close enough to him to watch him handle things without his wheelchair. It had really been a long time since she'd been to his room and had seen him without it.
Kevin had noticed her looking at him, lost in thoughts, but really wasn't in the mood to have another heavy discussion with her. "Are we gonna play or what?"
Joan nodded, opened the box and started to unfold the board and put it on the place on the bed he'd vacated. Kevin took the men and placed them on the board until there was another knock at the doorframe.
"Hey, I just wanted to..." Luke started but didn't finish. "Parcheesi?"
Kevin nodded, smiling at his brother's excitement about a children's game. "Wanna join in?"
"Sure," Luke nodded and stepped closer, taking a seat on the bed, Indian style, next to the board and Kevin's legs.
Joan picked the figures in another color from the box and placed them on the board too, then took Kevin's wheelchair to sit down in it.
Luke asked, "Who starts?" oblivious to the strange look on Kevin's face.
Kevin's thoughts wandered to his sister in his wheelchair and how strange it looked. Then he realized that to her and his family he'd have to look as strange every time they say him, only that they'd gotten used to it after so many months.
"The first one with a five," Joan said and handed him the dice. "Youngest to start trying."
The three of them started to play and were soon engrossed in their game, not noticing their parents who'd stopped on the floor and looked smilingly at their children.
"It's not a job," Will said to his wife, but she only shrugged.
"It's good to see them like that again."
"It is."
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A/N: Okay, I had a cultural problem here. The game I thought of is called "Mensch ärgere dich nicht" here and the translation I found for that is "Ludo". Looking for "Ludo" on Google turned out that it isn't really popular, so I went with "Parcheesi" which seems to be much more well known. I hope it really is. If not, please let me know. Maybe you have another idea for a game, so I'll go and fix it. M.
