Note: I wish to apologize profusely and bake you all Cookies of Apology, but the general consensus probably would rather I finish this thing than spending time baking confections. The reasons of my extended absence are thus: a lead in the play, AP courses, college applications, auditions, a bad cold (as we speak, I still can barely talk), and a severe bout of writer's block. But I've got my game back and here you go.
Thank You's: Tata (I'd like to say Don't worry, it'll all turn out bright and shiny but that's not my style. Just—hang in a little longer; I may surprise you.), jazzy, Exploded Pen (Tears are good. Tears are the goal.), Queen of Fairyland (I love a good hug), RoaringMice (Thank you! It always makes me happy when you review.), liz, luna, and General Kunama (Yes—cry, my little puppets, cry! I mean, uh, thanks!).
Warning: Cursing, ahoy.
Seven: Meanwhile, Back In Hell
It's something I have to do
I won't let you fall apart
I was there, too
I won't let you fall apart
Before everything else
I won't let you fall apart
I was like you
I won't let you fall apart
—Nine Inch Nails, "The Fragile"
"To all Starfleet personnel," says Devon Chandler over the general frequency. Malcolm startles at the sound of Chandler's crazy-ass Irish accent and he jerks out of my arms, eyes wet and wild. I reach out to him, half an ear on the words that come out of Chandler's mouth: "We are presently opening the doors to the bridge."
"No, no, no, no." Malcolm is whispering the litany over Chandler, becoming even more distressed and burying his stained face in his hands.
"What is it?" I ask, grasping his shoulders. He's still shaking badly, whispering 'no' over and over.
"Don't go in, don't go in, don't," Malcolm says.
Over the general frequency, I can hear the doors open. There are gasps of complete horror and disgust. Chandler exclaims, "Oh, shit!" before slipping into a stream of Gaelic that is most definitely not fit for mixed company gatherings.
"Fuck," curses Hargitay, one of Chandler's team and one of the foulest mouthed MACOs in existence. I mean, Hargitay could curse out Major Hayes, who, before his death, had made it a point to learn as many curses in as many languages as humanly possible. (He claimed that Zkurvysyne was his favorite.) "God, there's mother fuckin' bodies everywhere! Holy shit, it's like a fuckin' battle ground."
"No," Malcolm says, his voice pitched high.
"Captain Tucker," says Chandler. "Commanders Schlosser and Webster—what are we to do?"
"How many bodies?" asks Fritz over the line.
"Thirty, maybe more," relays Chandler, his voice thick.
"Is Captain Reed anywhere in that mess?" David sounds highly distressed over the possibility.
"No," I say. "He's with me."
"How is he?" several people question.
I look at Malcolm, face pale, tear-stained, and grimy with blood and soot. His wild eyes stare out at me, terrified.
"We need to get him back to the ship," I say.
"He's alive?" breathes Fritz.
"Yeah." Though he really doesn't look it. There's blood all over him and his face, like I've said, is smeared and dirty and, dammit, I've seen corpses that look better than him right now. I grasp one of his shaking hands and repeat my earlier words to my Away Team: "We need to get back to the ship, ASAP."
"Sir," speaks up Major Camilla Greene, "what about everyone else?
I look into Malcolm's eyes. "He said they're all dead."
"Sir?" It's David, shocked and appalled and utterly in disbelief.
"'S what he said, David," I tell him.
"Okay," says Fritz, taking the situation over. "Then, to all teams, get your asses to the landing bay and get on one of the pods. Do it fast but silently. Do not make contact with the enemy under any circumstances."
"And if you do happen to run into any of them," says David, over his shock now. "Kill them fucking dead."
A chorus of 'yes, sir's is raised and the general frequency goes dead.
"C'mon, Mal," I say after a moment, rising up from the floor. I take his arm up with me, but he doesn't get up. "Mal? C'mon, buddy, we need ta get back to the landin' bay."
Malcolm shakes his head slowly. There's something terrified in his actions and, yes, I know his entire crew was just obliterated (probably before his eyes, 'cause it would just be his luck, you know what I'm sayin'?) but he should still get the fact that we need to get the hell out of, well, hell.
I try for a few more minutes to get him up, as the concerned best friend, before I change my tactic to something I know he will respond to.
"Malcolm Ailpein Reed!" I snap, doing my best impression of my father after I had blown something up. "Get up this instant, young man!"
While his body visibly becomes rigid, he doesn't respond.
I forgot to account for the fact that Malcolm doesn't like his father very much and the fact that he was probably a stubborn little wretch when he was younger. What the hell am I talking about? He still is a stubborn little wretch.
"Reed, this is your superior officer," I say. "Yew will get up or I will come down and get yew, dammit!"
"I can't," he whispers. I blink.
"Yew can't?"
Malcolm shakes his head. I look at the hand I hold and then at his face.
"Why?"
"I," he says. "I…I…"
"Malcolm?" I ask, beginning to get really frightened by what's going on here.
"I…I…I can't—I can't move—move my legs."
I blink again.
Oh.
And then the information hits me and I'm down on the ground, kneeling before him and clutching at his hands. There's a moment when I don't say anything, where he doesn't say anything, and it feels like the entire world has stopped around us, like somehow everything has stopped spinning and we've thrown ourselves off our axes and into our respective suns.
I search for words to say but there are none and so we stare at one another in shock, frozen in time.
"Sir?" comes Fritz's voice suddenly. He sounds uncertain.
"Yeah?" I ask, my voice hoarse.
"Do you and the Boss need help?" he asks.
"I—I've got it, Fritz," I tell him.
"We'll meet you then," says David, "at the pad." He, too, sounds uncertain and kind of in disbelief. "Bramage and Marlene out."
I'm left staring at Malcolm. What am I supposed to do? I've never been in a situation like this. And, really, who has? Is there some support group out there for people who, in an attempt to reconnect with their best friend, went out after them and found them broken and bleeding and not able to feel there legs? Maybe I should start one.
"Okay," I say, snapping back into reality. "Okay. We just gotta think about this rational like."
Malcolm gives me a look and I swear his back to his old self.
"Were yew shot in the back?" I ask. He nods. I think for a moment—must bandage wound. So I unzip by uniform and take off the top of my blues, ripping it up into long strips. I lay the strips aside and wrap my arms around Malcolm.
"Lean forward," I order. He does so mechanically and I look down at the gory mess of his back.
I can see bone. I can see bone. I can see bone.
I close my eyes and start to wrap it up. He flinches against me but doesn't make a sound. I don't know if he's even feeling the pain anymore, what with the shock I'm sure he's in.
"Okay," I say for a third time as we sit there, just kind of holding each other.
After a moment, I pull away, reluctantly, feeling as though I'm leaving something important behind in the motion. Silently, I move to his side, placing his arm over my shoulders and wrapping one of my own around the upper part of his torso, gently navigating the wound. Together, I make us stand and take Malcolm's entire weight, before lopping my other arm beneath his legs and lifting him up.
I carry him slowly, stepping carefully and not even caring that I can't reach my weapon. He's what's important. He's safety is what matters. Maybe that's why I'm carrying him like I once carried Lizzie, when she was a girl.
We don't say anything as we move through the hall ways. I'm having the Dream again, somewhere in the back of my mind. We lay on ice like always except this time I look over and the ice is turning red around him and it's on my hands too. There's a dull ache inside me, growing sharper and shaper with every step I take and every inch of imaginary ice that turns red.
"Stop," says Malcolm harshly. I freeze. He whispers, "Listen."
I do. And I hear it, gun shots. I tighten my grip on him, hear footsteps now, coming towards us. I slink against a wall, trying to hide us, as Fritz and David round the corner. They're speaking, angrily and tightly.
"Turned his damn communicator off—!"
"Has he taken leave of his senses—!"
"Always expected he'd go nuts—"
"Fritz—"
"Oh, like you—"
"Yeah—"
"How were we supposed to tell him—?"
"I know!"
I clear my throat and they freeze, spinning around with weapons raised. They see who I am and speak at the same time.
"Are you out of your goddamn—?"
"Is something wrong with you mentally, we could have shot—?"
Their words die off when they see what I'm carrying.
"Oh," says Fritz softly. David nods.
"We need to get back," I say urgently, pushing off the wall. They nod rapidly and I fear for their necks. Fritz moves to take point, David to guard our six. They don't offer to take Malcolm from me; maybe they know I wouldn't be able to let him go.
David fills me in as we go, Fritz breaking in for witty commentary and attempting to bring some levity into the situation.
"We were all getting back to the shuttle pod when we were ambushed."
"Sneaky bastards."
"The MACOs—"
"Also sneaky."
"—and the rest of the Away Team are holding down the fort—but I don't think we can hold it for long."
"Speak for yourself, I'm a walking arsenal."
"We should get Boss out first," David says. "And then start filing out the rest."
"I'm buying," I say.
David suddenly moves up beside Fritz, who has stopped. I sense that we are about to enter the fire fight. Wordless, they turn into the fight. I follow in to, conscious of the fact that they are protecting me.
Frits levels his gun then and shots ring out, as shots are wont to do.
Lieutenant Joshua Carter appears out of thin air to take Malcolm—who, by now, has passed out—from me and bring him into the shuttle pod, without questioning what exactly is wrong with him: he just acts. Carter, I recall, has been one of Malcolm's from the start on Enterprise (he was an Ensign then) and I suddenly wonder if all of the armory and security officers Malcolm trained have some sort of weird, ESP sense or power or something that allows them to appear at will.
My Armory Sense is tingling. Captain Reed is in danger! Stealth Officer Teleportation and InvisibilityPowers—ACTIVATE!
I let Carter take him, knowing it's for the best, but still feeling like that important thing is being left behind.
I don't have much time to dwell, however, as a blast comes skatingover my head. I duck quickly, reaching to my hip for my gun and pulling it up. I start shooting at pretty much anything that moves, barely even taking in the fact that the aliens were shooting at look pretty damn human, except for the fact that their skin is this creepy, translucent red, and, ugh, is that a brain I see?
I'm still shooting when I hear David call out, "Shit!"
Still firing, I crouch down and look over at him. He's grimacing and shaking his hand—his mechanical hand—like it's been shocked.
"What happened?" calls Fritz, not even looking away. "Are you okay?"
"Shot my gun out of my hands with one of their energy weapons," he says back. "Shocked the hell out of my right hand."
"Well, it would," quips the other armory officer.
"Yes, damn these electrical bits anyway," replies David.
I shake my head. How can they joke at a time like this? I guess it's because they've had years of being in these kinds of situations and someone's gotta bring the funny, huh?
"Do yew need a gun?" I ask him, standing up again and firing at the aliens. Ew, that is a brain.
"I think I got it," says David.
Fritz freezes—okay, so the man's still shooting but the rest of him is frozen; it's actually pretty disconcerting is you think about it—and looks over at him. He says, very quickly, "David Thaddeus Webster, don't you dare do what I think you're about to do—"
He's cut off when David apparently dares to do what ever Fritz thought he was about to do because Fritz goes completely quiet and David jumps up, moving out into where his gun is lying. He does this crazy ass, Jackie Chan full body spin-flippy thing through the air, dodging energy blasts,picking up his gun mid-spin-flippy thing and landing perfectly on one knee, the other leg stretched out to the side, completely balanced and shooting like he didn't execute one of the most fascinating things I have seen happen that wasn't in a movie. Ever.
I get that he was in the circus, I really do.
He gets clipped in the head suddenly and goes down. I run over to him and fire at the alien who shot him, while dragging his dazed body away. I put him behind a crate, call for a MACO to get him out of here, and head back into the fight. I start shooting again, with a kind of wild abandon and mindlessness that I haven't experienced in a while.
These bastards opened fire on one of our ships. I shoot. These bastards destroyed her. Shoot. These bastards killed over one hundred Starfleet personnel. Shoot. These bastards hurt Malcolm. Shoot. He can't feel his legs. Shoot. These bastards.
"Captain!"
I turn around at Fritz's shout, mouth open and poised to ask just what he wanted because I was kind of in the middle of something, in time to see two things: One, an alien coming up to me bent on my eminent doom; and two, said alien's head detaching itself from its shoulders and black blood pouring everywhere, into my face and into my—
It's in my mouth! Dropping my gun in shock, I claw frantically at my blood filled mouth and try to spit it out. Oh, God, I'm going to die from creepy alien blood poisoning!
I spit again and look up to see Fritz standing there, highlighted by the shooting going on behind him and holding his pulse rifle by the end it was never meant to be held by and that end is currently covered in the black creepy alien blood that is, of course, no doubt going to cause my death. He's grinning that violent, blood thirsty grin of his again.
"Their necks are brittle as all get out," he comments.
Wiping my tongue on the back of my hand on last time, I frown at him: "How d'ya know that?"
The temperature in Fritz's normally warm brown eyes drops considerably. He growls, "They're the aliens that captured David and the Boss."
"Huh." I pause, thinking it through. "How many yew think yew can get in one swing?"
"Quite a few." He smiles at me again and hands me a rifle.
"Alright," I say, mirroring the way he holds it. "Let's go be guillotines."
Together, we turn into the fight and start swinging away with our guns like a couple of angst ridden teenagers with baseball bats going after their mom's china. (Something, contrary to popular belief, I have never done. The only thing of my mama's I ever destroyed was that table during dinner and I did not mean that. But that's not saying I have never once contemplated smashing Mama's china with a baseball bat.)
"Good emotional release," growls Fritz, smashing the neck of an alien on the last word. He spins it around the right way briefly, fires twice, spins it back, and swings again at a ducking alien. He misses—as the alien was ducking, of course—but Fritz comes back up with a bottom-to-floor swing that, quite frankly, is rather impressive, taking the alien's head of by his chin.
I mentally score him on the levels of technical execution and artistic interpretation while I make a few swings of my own.
He takes off another head of an alien with an absolutely delightful upwards kick. Boy's going for the gold, isn't he?
"Sirs," shouts Camilla Greene. I look over after giving another swing, switching back to firing mode—I don't even care about the blood any more. (Except for the stuff that was in my mouth that I am must likely going to die from; are there pills for that?) Greene's holding down the fort by the bay doors, ruthlessly taking out anything that comes towards them. "Everyone else is on board or back on the ship!"
Midway through her sentence is when both Fritz and I realize that we are, in fact, alone amongst the carnage.
"Son of a bitch," Greene curses, shooting one of the alien's point blank in its highly visible brain. She calls out, "Last ferry back!"
Fritz and I swing madly as we make are way towards her, but before I know what's happening, I'm down, with a feeling of confusion in my head. Suddenly, though, I'm up again and being dragged away. I vaguely see Fritz in front of me, firing.
Dazed, I really come back to in the shuttle pod. It's filled Greene, Fritz, myself, and one of Greene's MACOs, Harvey Romano, in the shuttle, with Travis Mayweather piloting. We're midway to our ship, swerving a little as we're shot at.
"You okay, sir?" asks Greene. "You took some blunt shrapnel to the head."
"Just dazed," I say, looking around at them. Greene's hair is out of her normal braid, wild and crazy, looking like the mad Italian woman her men accuse her of being, but otherwise fine; Fritz is covered in alien blood and sporting a split lip; and Romano is holding his left arm awkwardly—his shoulder must be dislocated. I feel my own head for a wound; there's just a lump there. Ironically, it's in the same place I got hit when Malcolm and me's shuttle went down all those years ago.
Travis speaks up cautiously from the front: "I piloted Captain Reed in, sir."
I stand up shakily. "How was he?"
"The medics looked concerned, sir, when they were taking him away," Travis replies, pulling no punches. He's known me long enough to know to avoid sugarcoating things for me. He continues, "He was unconscious the entire time." He pauses. "He looked like shit, if you'll pardon."
"Yeah," I say. "He did."
We finish the ride in tense silence, hitting the cargo bay hard. I'm the first out, brushing passed medics, Fritz hard behind me. After navigating the halls and the lift, we storm into the bridge. Our replacements jump up from their seats, allowing us to retake them. Fritz announces to me before I even get into position, "The enemy has engaged us."
"Give the ring back," I snap. "Shields up, highest possible."
"Aye," replies Fritz, slapping buttons on his console. I feel the buzz of protection going up around us, more so then before. "Weapons, Captain?"
I stare out of the view screen and I remember how I found Malcolm, on the ground, shaking, terrified. I remember his crew. I remember: "I can't move my legs." I turn to Fritz, my eyes frozen and my voice steely. "Blow them outta the goddamn sky."
With a cold grin, Fritz says coolly, "Delighted to, sir."
He shoots out violently with the weapons, one hand slamming down on the console and the other absently gripping his neck. Payback, I think. They hurt him a long time ago; and they hurt Malcolm and David then too. Now they've gone back after Malcolm. I lean back in my chair, watching through the view screen as volley after volley hits against the alien ship and our own Avenger. We have to get them all. Avenger can't be rescued. Payback.
"Incoming," announces Schoolnik. "Brace for impact."
We brace.
Fritz fires.
Hoshi asks, "No one?"
He fires again.
"No one," I reply.
Again.
"Oh," she says.
Again.
Noah puts his hand on his wife's shoulder as she bows her head.
Again.
"Brace for impact," repeats Schoolnik.
Only this time, we're not shot. On the view screen, there is a fiery blaze of red as the alien ship blows up, the waves from the explosion flying towards us, wrapping itself around our shield, and rocking us in its arms. I look at my men and women on the Bridge as the red lights up the room, basking their faces in its glow.
"Fuck you," Fritz whispers at the screen after a long while as the smoke and fire dissipates. His eyes are shut.
-
David's already in sickbay when we arrive. He's got a cold compress to the wound on his head and looks a lot more collected than when I last saw him. He seems relieved when Fritz and I sit down, not saying anything. We understand without having the words said: Malcolm's in surgery; David had been waiting for us to come back; he didn't want to be cleaned up alone, not without knowing how we were. He didn't want to be the only one—
The room seems impossibly big and vast, I think. And the three of us, sitting, waiting, with our backs to one wide wall, seem very, very small, and utterly childlike. It may be the screaming silent white noise.
David's voice, small and soft in this big room but also like a man screaming from the mountain tops, suddenly speaks out: "I had a dream about a potato last night."
"Oh, God," Fritz whispers beside me, in his gravel-like voice. He bends over in his chair, head in hand.
"It was green," continues David on my other side, oblivious to the distress of his best friend. He's looking at the ceiling. Fritz suddenly sits up.
"I'm gonna kill him," he declares. He tries to move over me to get to David. I lift an arm, restraining him.
"No," I say. "I'll get this one myself."
David, meanwhile, has been babbling—unfortunately, he had an English minor when he was attending Harvard and eventually got a Master's in it, so he's been babbling quite coherently. "And I was under this lake, in the water, and there was this large squid with me. And, low and behold, there was the potato, just sitting there in the middle of my dream. So I, pleasantly—"
I grab his knee tightly and turn to look at him. David looks back, at both me and Fritz, who is leaning around me to stare.
After a moment, we all start laughing.
There's nothing else.
By the time the laughter dies down, we've slipped from our chairs to the floor and are leaning against one another, our heads bowed in silent contemplation.
"Captain? Commanders?"
Together, we all look up at the medic before us. She's a tall woman—at least as tall as Fritz, who's six foot three in his boots—with cocoa skin and almond colored eyes. She smiles prettily at us, bright white teeth exposed. As three confidently heterosexual males, I am reasonably certain that we are all thinking the same thing: African Goddess.
David suddenly stands, grinning cockily at us, before looking at said Medic African Goddess—who could probably crush him like a bug if she wanted to.
"I'm wounded worst," he states, removing the cloth from his cut and presenting the blood to her.
"I see," she says; "Come back with me. Someone will be by to see to you, sirs," she adds over her shoulder, leading David away.
David grins over his shoulder and swaggers after her.
"Does he really think she would be interested?" I ask Fritz as we both stare contemplatively after them.
"It'd be funny as hell, wouldn't it?" says Fritz, not really answering the question.
I nod, considering the fact that Medic African Goddess is as tall as Fritz and David is smaller than Malcolm.
Shortly thereafter, two medics come in and cart Fritz and me off.
-
David is still not out by the time both Fritz and I are done; so, he and I sit down in the seats that we vacated and wait—which is something we've been getting pretty damned good at, as a collective. I mean, I was good at it before, but now I'm an expert. Icould give classes.
Fritz clears his throat. I look at him and he shifts uncomfortably.
"What do we do?" he asks. "How do we cope with the knowledge that an entire ship has been lost? How do we cope with the knowledge that this—all of this—has been our fault?" He pauses, exhales, and asks plaintively, "Where do we go from here?"
"Home," I tell him. "Home, where we never let this happen again."
Fritz nods and looks at the floor through the spaces between his clasped fingers.
-
Returned from his expedition with Medic African Goddess (whose name we have learned is Nia and who happens to have a date with David the Tuesday after we get back to Earth), David sits in his chair, humming lightly under his breath; Fritz is still staring at the floor; and I'm biting the inside of my mouth absently.
Phlox enters, in clean scrubs. David stops humming, Fritz looks up finally, and I consider the meaning of 'clean scrubs' after a surgery.
"Captain Tucker," he says, looking at me. "Captain Reed is stable."
"He's okay?" asks David, drawing the doctor's attention.
"He's stable," repeats Phlox. He looks back at me. "Normally, I wouldn't let you in, but he asked to see you."
I nod, standing silently and moving bravely towards the door Phlox exited.
It's a private room and Malcolm's lying on the biobed, in clean white sheets, hooked up to a bunch of machines, looking at the opposite wall, and I'm having flashbacks to when I saw him before. So much is the same; so much is different. I sit down in the chair that's pulled up next to his bed.
"Hey," I say, trying to draw his attention.
"Trip?" Malcolm asks, turning his face towards me. His eyes are foggy, unclear from all the pain meds he is on. Quite frankly, I'm stunned that he recognizes me. But, hey—Malcolm Reed, Medical Marvel. No drug is too big; even the heavy duty stuff.
Mmm; Vicodin.
"Yeah," I say. "It's me."
"I thought I had dreamt all this," he breathes; "dreamt all this death, dreamt you and your return… I wish I had."
His eyes fill, like clouds about to burst. Is it too much to ask, I wonder, that maybe—just fucking maybe—he could forget a little bit of what happened? That he wouldn't remember seeing his crew slaughtered before his eyes? That we could tell him when he's healed? Is that too much to ask, Goddammit!
A tear drops from his eye, curling down his cheek, and I watch its salty descent. We blink at the same time and Malcolm turns his head away from me again.
"Don't yew dare," I growl at the back of his head. "Don't yew even dare, Reed."
He doesn't move and I keep talking.
"I walked away from you once when yew did this," I say. "I walked away and didn't see you for years an' maybe if I hadn't walked away, maybe none of this would've happened. Maybe we'd be all right. Maybe they wouldn't be dead, and maybe David and Fritz wouldn't be broken. Maybe Jon wouldn't look like he does. Maybe your sister wouldn't have been hurt. Maybe we would have been on a ship together, or maybe we would have retired and gone to leave in some backwater little town when I would fix cars and you would blow crap up and we would meet some girls and get married on the same day. And I'd still be your best friend."
I'm breathing heavily now, full of pain and anger and remorse and guilt. I reach out and touch his shoulder; and he doesn't flinch away.
"But maybe's don't mean shit," I snap. "They don't mean a goddamn thing 'cause maybe's don't count. What we have is the here and now and it occurs to me that I never apologized and I'm sorry. I'm sorry I left, I'm so fucking sorry, but this time's going to be different. I'm not leaving this time. I'm staying and I'm helping. I'm not leaving."
There's a long pause. Malcolm doesn't roll over and I don't let go, but—
"I missed you."
-
After a while, Malcolm falls asleep and Phlox asks me to leave.
"He needs all the rest he can get," he says. "He's in for a long road."
"How bad is he?" I ask. "I mean, you operated on his back, right?"
"I repaired what damage I could," Phlox tells me. I give him an odd smile.
"That doesn't sound real inspirin', Doc."
"It is not." He rubs a hand across his face, holding the bridge of his nose for a long time. "There was too much nerve and spinal damage, Trip. If he ever wants to walk again, he's going to need to return to Earth and go through many more surgeries and extensive physical therapy."
I look at him. "It's that bad?"
"Yes," he says, "It is."
"But there's a someday, right?" I say. I mean, this is Malcolm Reed were talking about. He could get hit in the head with a brick and he'd bounce back like it was a Nerf ball.
"Like I said," repeats Phlox, "Many more surgeries and extensive physical therapy, and he should be able to walk again. Should. There's no guarantee."
"So, we go back to Earth."
He nods: "Yes. It would also be wise is someone were to live with him." Phlox gives me a pointed look. "At least for a short time."
"I can do that," I say. "But will he?"
That gets me a chuckle.
I shuffle my feet briefly. "Who do yew recommend for PT?"
Phlox gives me a pensive look. "Well, I would be willing—"
"Really?" I ask.
"Yes," he says. I smile, a real one, and turn to go back out into the waiting room—when I realize that Fritz and David are waiting out there for me.
-
They sit there silently after I tell them. I feel like I've been stealing canes from cripples and blind people, and then went out to kick some puppies.
"I wanted them to be all right—I wanted him to be all right," says David suddenly, staring down at his hands. He blinks and looks up at us. His face is twisted in a grimace—a grimace of incomprehension and pain. He lashes out with his words: "It is not fair. There are enough broken people in the world. Why can't he be whole?"
"As the philosopher Jagger said," intones Fritz, trying desperately for glib, "you can't always get what you want."
"But if you try sometimes," I add in quietly, "you just might find, you get what you need."
We didn't get them all back. And the one we did get back, we didn't get him back whole. But we got him back.
"Aw baby," we say together, "you get what you need."
-
Two more chapters after this, kids. YAY.