Chapter 3
What's Past is Past
Except he wasn't safe, they found out. Dale's poor body couldn't hold up against the torture he'd been through.
He became very ill, very quickly. He never really regained consciousness, except for fleeting moments of recognition.
Sometimes he would flail around and cry out for help, calling each of them by name. Chip felt his heart being ripped out when Dale asked him to help, asking where he was, over and over.
Then, Dale got worse, his breathing too difficult a task for him. He started to fade, they were losing him.
The doctor had told them to prepare.
So here Chip sat, being observed by himself, remembering against his will. He could never forget.
The twilight made Dale's face gaunt, but his friend's eyes suddenly opened in a rare moment of lucidity.
"Chip?" he rasped.
"Yeah, yeah Dale, I'm here." Chip forced himself to keep his voice steady.
"You, you made it. Are you-" An awful, grating cough racked Dale's body and Chip frantically tried to get him to take a sip of water but Dale shook his head. "Are, are you guys okay? F-Fat Cat, he, he said he'd do, the same, same thing to, all, you. I was worried."
Chip's eyes filled with hot tears. This simple speech exhausted Dale and he fell back, thankfully still conscious.
"We're, we're fine. It's you we're worried about, knucklehead." Chip said the last fondly and a faint smile crossed Dale's face.
"Sh-Should've read, more Ka-Blamo man, I, I got pretty, bored in, in that p-place, tried, tried to rem, remember, stories, not, not worrying." Dale drifted off, his eyes closing.
"I'm sorry." Chip said softly, squeezing his friend's paw. To his surprise, Dale gently squeezed back.
"H-Hey, shure-shuck, you, you did okay. S'not your fault, Chip. It, It's not." Tears streaked down Chip's face, he couldn't hold them back any longer.
"What, what's this, about, then?" But Dale's eyes were over-bright, too. He suddenly arched his back, gasping for breath, his face contorted with pain.
"Hurts." He whispered, after he settled back down onto the pillow. Chip closed his eyes, shaking his head.
"Y'know, you, you're g-getting too, serious, Chip," Dale rasped, giving his friend a half-smile. Chip couldn't smile back. He always regretted that, later.
After a few moments in the semi-darkness, listening to Dale's fight to breath, his friend spoke again.
"I'm gonna, m-miss you, y'know, Chip? You're, you're my, brother, best, my b-best friend, and-" Dale gasped and coughed, his hands clutching at the bed sheets as he writhed in pain.
Chip didn't know how he was going to stand much more of this. How could he watch his best friend die right before his eyes without being able to help him? But if Dale could keep fighting and keep hanging on through everything, well, so could he.
"Best friend, yeah, you're mine too, Dale. Always was, always will be." Chip's voice cracked in pain. "You, you are, well, a brother to me. I love you, you know that right?" Sobs were hitching in Chip's chest, he couldn't bear this but, then, Dale gently squeezed his paw again.
"I know, it's, it's the s-same, same for me." Dale's breathing seem to ease. He sank down into the pillow.
Less than an hour later, he was gone.
Chip watched himself all night, watched himself fall apart when it was clear Dale was gone.
What a sorry, ill-timed goodbye that conversation seemed, it didn't begin to encompass everything Chip wanted to say. He hadn't been ready.
Watching himself lose all control and forcing himself to relive the moment when it took both Monty and Gadget to pry his paw away from Dale's was his retribution against himself. He'd had no regard for anything or anyone, his poise shattered completely.
He'd screamed and sobbed, then, it was like he'd frozen inside. Months went by and he let everything go, he hadn't even given condolences to Foxglove, lost in his own grief. He merely watched as she sobbed raggedly, the little bat's heart broken in pieces, when Gadget told her.
They buried him and everything blurred after that. Those months, years, after. Monty tried everything to rouse him, which resulted in their horrific fight and Monty and Zipper leaving.
The large mouse could have been incredibly hurtful in that argument, but he hadn't, he avoided the topic of Dale mostly, simply letting Chip's hateful barbs dig into him. All he'd said was that he missed Dale too, but Chip had to keep living regardless.
Chip vented his spleen on Monty for saying that, he hadn't wanted to hear it. Then, his friends were gone. Even Gadget, who'd stuck by him, becoming a ghost of herself with his disregard, finally confronted him.
Her pain-filled face was one of the few things that penetrated Chip's fog of self-pity. Yet, they both knew it was too late, the time for anything was over, without Dale.
Chip felt like starting anything now with Gadget was a hollow gesture, or worse, a betrayal of his friend. She left and he let her go. Just like Monty and Zipper. Just like Dale.
"Chip?" With a start, Chip returned to reality. He was standing in the cooling, night air, in front of a simple plaque attached to an oak tree.
It bore Dale's name, two dates and an inscription Chip had nothing to do with choosing.
'His Vibrant Spirit Lives On, though We Face Years Without Him.'
It was beautiful, probably Gadget's and Foxglove's collaboration. Later, when he could finally bear to come here, he'd approved of the message. Simple and accurate.
Dale would have scoffed at a long, sappy memorial, anyway. Wasn't his style.
Hot tears flooded Chip's eyes. He didn't turn around to greet the voice, even when soft footsteps stopped directly beside him.
Gadget, her long, blonde hair, now streaked with some gray, was pulled up haphazardly. Simple shirt and loose pants made up her outfit. Her face, more careworn and lined than in yesteryear, but with the same endearing, characteristic smudges. She was still breathtaking, Chip realized, as she stood beside him, not saying anything.
A few tears slid down her lovely face and she put a small bouquet of vivid red and yellow flowers, some concoction of her own made to be carried easily by a mouse, underneath the plaque. Next to them, she placed an acorn wrapped with a red ribbon. Red was Dale's favorite color. Suited him, vibrant and warm.
Chip watched her, suddenly realizing how stiff he was, standing here in the damp cold. He really was getting on in years.
He then noticed the acorn Gadget put down, seeing it more clearly. Inexplicably, he felt a jolt of white-hot rage.
"What's that?" He sneered, grinding his teeth. Gadget froze, well used to that tone.
She'd experienced Chip's volatile emotions for a long time after Dale wasn't there to mediate them.
"A gift." She said softly, gently touching Dale's plaque.
"Why?" Chip barked. "You think he's going to pop out of there and eat it? You, you're just wasting, well, your time, wasting your stupid…"
"Stop!" Gadget stood up, tears in her blue eyes. "Chip, haven't we moved past all of this? How long has it been?"
"You tell me." Chip said grumpily. She ignored her pangs of unease and plowed ahead. "Why do you keep doing this to yourself? Being angry won't bring him back."
That was the wrong thing to say. Chip's temper flared up out of the ashes of pain and regret inside of him.
"Oh, thanks Gadget for that eye-opening observation. You really are a genius, aren't you? I mean, here I've been laboring under all of these false delusions for so long, thanks for letting me into the loop." He stopped, suddenly ashamed.
He shouldn't be doing this, not here in front of Dale's grave. It was disrespectful to his friend and Chip couldn't abide that.
"Are you finished?" Gadget said quietly. Chip didn't react.
"Just who are you angry at, Chip? I've wondered for a long time, is it me?"
Chip shook his head, after a moment. "Yourself? Or is it Dale?" She whispered that last name, afraid of another explosion. But all of the fight had gone out of Chip.
Angry at Dale? Hadn't he already wasted so much time being angry at his best friend when Dale was alive? After his friend was gone, he'd hated himself for every quarrel, every unkind word, and no matter how small or inconsequential.
But, was he angry at Dale for getting sick? For what had happened to him? Or just for leaving that day, instead of staying in the treehouse where it was safe, setting all of these events into motion.
Was he furious at Dale for dying, for leaving him to try and go on without him?
Gadget saw the emotions play over Chip's features, those features she knew very well and had forgiven so much of. How could she not?
Even after losing her father, she wondered at the grief Chip felt when Dale was gone. She wondered how she'd been able to cope, living on her own before joining the Rangers, and Chip hadn't.
Those two friends' lives were so tightly wound up in each other, and had been for, well, since the beginning, when both were barely old enough to understand friendship. A lifetime was shared between them, friendship deeper than she or Monty really understood, she pitied Chip, she even envied him, sometimes, for having that kind of connection with someone. Most were never so lucky.
What a price there was to be paid for it, though, when things when badly, when one of two was gone. There was such a rift, then, pulling them apart and it was wrong. Horribly wrong, she still felt, and terribly unjust. She was humbled by Chip's pain and loss, even though it didn't ease her own.
"He lied to me."
"What?" Gadget gasped, shocked out of her silence.
"You heard me."
There was no more malice in his voice, just sadness. He looked old and tired, putting a paw on Dale's plaque.
"His last words, he lied."
"Chip, no, please?" All of Gadget's own painful memories came back, she couldn't go through this again but she couldn't leave him like this. Yet, it was so improbable that Chip could have said, or felt, what he'd just said.
"He, he said," Chip's voice broke, "he said it would be all right. It's gonna be all right, Chip." Chip did an eerily accurate impression of Dale and Gadget trembled.
"Chip, he…"
"He lied." Chip buried his face in his paws, a few sobs racking his body. "And it wasn't, it wasn't all right. I, I don't think it will be again, ever."
Chip's naked vulnerability shook Gadget to the core. She'd only seen it once before, and that was a nightmarish scene she never wanted to return to, the morning after Dale passed on.
All of his pain, fear and worry was usually hidden under a brave façade, or anger of some kind. Nothing like this.
"Dale wouldn't lie to you, Chip." Gadget said fiercely, "Not about that, and if he still believed it, after, after everything he'd been through." She had to stop there, that hurt too badly. It still defied belief, that anyone would actually want to torment light-hearted, goofy, sweet Dale. For all of his faults, and he had many, he never deserved what happened to him.
"I'm so sorry, Gadget." Chip said, one paw returning to Dale's plaque. "I know, it's, it's too late, but I never really got to, say it to him, either."
A spasm of misery crossed Chip's face.
"He knew, he knew you so well. And I know, too." She still loved him, after all, and she let herself remember that when she embraced him, breathing in that familiar, heart-rending scent.
She'd had some nice dreams, once, and she knew Chip had as well, but they all involved Dale being there. At their wedding, as Chip's best man, toasting some silly thing with Chip ready to bonk him.
As their child's godfather, babysitting, corrupting the kid with years of junk food, comic books, staying up with them, forcing them to watch those awful horror movies he'd loved. She'd wanted to be there when his own life with Foxglove grew, developed, knowing his life would be intertwined with Chip's, always.
What a waste.
Chip felt as she did, but more so, such an integral part of his life ripped away too suddenly.
"Gadget?" Chip said softly, after a moment in her embrace.
"Yes?"
"Um, how are you? I mean, we haven't, talked, for awhile, er, for a long while actually." Chip flushed, a good sign in Gadget's opinion.
"You look really good, you know. Years have been kind and all that." The years hadn't been so kind to him, carrying the burden he had, but he was still handsome and she felt that, something, she always had, looking at him.
"Thank you." She said simply, before grabbing his paw and squeezing it. "Come on, Chip, it's time to say goodbye. I promised to visit Foxglove tonight, you can come with me if you like, I think she'd like to see you. She, she needs comfort too, sometimes, its very hard on her, harder than we realized, I'm sorry to say."
Chip didn't answer, blind panic flared up in his eyes. He couldn't let Dale go, not again, even if it was time. But then, she was there and that understanding he admired in her was there, too.
"He was telling the truth, what he said about, about things being all right. You can trust him."
"I know." Chip nodded, his eyes bright. "I always did."
"C'mon." He followed Gadget as she walked away. He didn't look back.