"He's not yours."
Geese stood in the centre of his tower and spread his arms, all of Southtown laid out around him.
"I'm in his blood, and blood cannot be denied. Not yours...and not mine."
"Shut up!"
Terry ran at him, careless, throwing everything into one wild punch. He was caught and flung away, landing painfully on the hard floor. Geese loomed over him, face caught in that unchanging smile.
"I could take him back at any time, fool. Who do you think the police would put him with, the well-respected pillar of the community or the murderous vagrant? Scum should know its place."
"I said shut up!"
Terry lashed out as he scrambled to his feet, desperate for any sort of advantage. The tower swirled around him, statues and torches blurring together, but through it all he only saw his target. He rushed at Geese again, they traded blows, they separated, they ran back to each other. Around and around, circling each other as they circled the tower, a wheel that kept turning.
Until they faced each other one last time. The smooth wooden floor stretched between them, short as breath, long as eternity, and both of them knew. This was the moment that would decide everything.
"I don't care! I'm gonna take care of him! And I'll make sure he never ends up like you!"
Terry reached out and gathered up everything - the pain, the rage, the desperate, helpless need to break free - everything he had and more and slammed it into the ground, pushing beyond his limits to unleash a furious blast of energy, an explosion that raced toward Geese and he just kept feeding it, more and more, the world blurring into light -
And then he was balanced on the edge of the tower, holding to Geese's wrist with all he had. There was no ground. They hung on the edge of an abyss.
Geese's fixed smile was a skull's, terrible and knowing.
"Shouldn't you be more afraid he'll end up like you?"
He laughed all the way down.
Terry's heart hammered in failure as his hand grasped around nothing, and he opened his eyes.
He'd half sat up before he realised when and where he was. It was a warm night, peaceful, with crickets chirping around them. Right, them. Rock was still curled up right next to him, exactly where he'd been when Terry had dozed off. One arm was twisted up under him like a pillow, and he was drooling all over it. It was cute.
A bit of Terry's heart unclenched at the sight. Geese was gone. Rock was still here. Everything was...fine.
He settled back with a sigh, resting his head on his hands. The stars glittered above him, more than you'd ever see in Southtown. Pretty. Distant. Cold.
He should, he knew, pick Rock up and get going. He hadn't /promised/, as such, that he'd make sure the kid always slept with a roof over his head - Terry knew better than to make promises he couldn't keep - but he'd nodded along when Andy and Mary had given him the Very Serious Lecture about His Responsibilities As A Father like he didn't already know. And, well...Terry had spent enough time sleeping outdoors that he didn't want to put Rock through it too. Rock would have a better life than Terry had gotten. That was, in a sense, the deal.
He wasn't all that tired. He could make it to the next town, easy, even without someone being nice enough to pick up a hitchhiker. He could do it.
Terry lay there, staring at the stars.
Geese's forever fixed smile hovered somewhere behind his eyes.
"He's not yours."
"Piss off, you're dead," he whispered. No point in waking up Rock.
Geese's laughter floated on the breeze.
He knew it wouldn't work. He knew he was going to spend every night for the rest of his life on Geese Tower. He'd known that as soon as Geese had let go. That was price of vengeance: having to live with the consequences.
When he was a kid, he'd laughed at Master Tung's warning. He'd been sure, so damn sure, that nothing was worse than what he'd felt watching his father die at Geese's hands. Ten years had hardened that resolve into an unbreakable determination, one that let him overcome every obstacle in his way. And when he'd headed back to the Pao Pao Cafe that night, he'd felt free. Happy. Finally ready to start living his life.
And then...he'd started living his life. And part of that life was seeing Geese's face when he'd fallen off the tower the first time, that look of sheer, disbelieving terror. Part of it was looking at kids playing in the street and remembering what he'd been like at that age. Part of it was realising the orphan he'd picked up was an orphan because of him.
The price of vengeance...
Rock snuffled in his sleep and rolled over. "Terry?" he mumbled.
"Yeah? What's up?"
Rock didn't answer for a bit, just wiggled and squirmed until he was all tucked up under Terry's vest and watching the stars. He stared at them so long Terry wondered if he'd forgotten the question.
One of his arms shot up and pointed to a fuzzy blob of stars. "Which constellation's that?"
"Um..." Terry squinted at the black line of Rock's arm and the scattered lights above them. Damnit, he'd never been good at this. People talked about navigating by the stars but as far as Terry Bogard was concerned that was what highway signs and roadmaps were for. "Well...Uncle Andy might know better, but, uh, if that's the Big Dipper over there and Orion's thatta way...then, uh...I dunno," he picked a constellation at random, "Aries?" Had to be in the sky somewhere, that's where the daily horoscope came from.
Rock seemed satisfied with the answer. "When we get to town," he said, still watching the sky, "let's go to the library and get aaaaaaaall the books about stars."
"All of them? That's a lot."
"All of them! Then we can read them and know everything there is to know." He snuggled down deeper into Terry's vest.
Terry felt a fond smile tug at his lips. "I remember when Andy thought like you. It was right after dad took us camping up at Barbaroi Falls for the first time. He realised how many stars there were and went a little nuts trying to learn more." Terry, personally, had been overwhelmed looking at them and spent the entire time trying hide it so he could keep looking cool in front of Andy.
It had been a night a lot like this one, really, warm and quiet, but with the rushing of the falls in the background instead of crickets. Jeff had treated camping as Something Dads Did - looking back on it, Terry doubted his father had been outside city limits in decades - but he'd gotten into the swing of things. They'd lit a fire and roasted marshmallows, then sat there looking at the stars for hours before going to bed. Then in the morning they'd gotten up before dawn and hiked over to the falls proper just as the sun was coming over the horizon - the dawn reflected on the water was one of Terry's most beautiful memories, even now.
"He's not yours."
Terry jerked against the sudden chill down his spine and took a slow look over to see if Rock had noticed. The kid was still staring at the sky, entranced.
"Do you know, Terry," he said, "that when you're dead you go to the sky and become a star? To watch over people on Earth?"
"You got that out of a movie."
"Well - well that doesn't mean it's not true!" Piece said, Rock pointed at the sky again. "That one."
Terry moved closer to try and figure out what Rock was pointing at this time. "That one?"
"I bet that's my mom, because it's friendly." Rock kept going, unaware of the way Terry stiffened beside him. This kid... "And that one's your dad," he said, pointing at another nearby star. "Because it's strong. Do you think they know each other?"
"Sure," Terry said around the lump in his throat, "I bet they get along great."
Rock nodded solemnly. "And Geese isn't up there," he said with conviction. "Because bad guys don't go to heaven."
/Yeah, they stay right down here with the rest of us bastards,/ Terry thought. He could hear Geese's laughter again, carried on the breeze.
Was it...okay, for him and Rock to be like this? Sure, Rock didn't like Geese, but...but he was still running around with his father's - Terry forced himself to think the word - his father's murderer. Terry was doing his best, and Rock seemed happy, but...
"Shouldn't you be more afraid he'll end up like you?"
Rock had cuddled up and was resting his head on Terry's shoulder, his breath stirring Terry's shirt. He was still looking at the stars, but his eyes were drooping closed. Pretty soon he'd be out again.
Was this okay? Someday, would Rock realise what he was doing and decide to take revenge for the father who had abandoned him? If blood couldn't be denied...
Terry wouldn't be able to say he didn't deserve it. He hadn't been able to say it to Billy, and he wouldn't be able to say it to Rock. He'd made his choices, and now he had to live with that.
It wasn't as if he'd been able to ignore Geese's special invitation, after all. He'd come in, guns blazing, and gone to the tower ready to settle everything for good. And then...
He didn't know why he'd raced to grab Geese's hand. He hadn't thought about it. One second he was dizzy in the aftermath of his own power, the next he was hanging over the edge.
He didn't know why Geese had let go, either. He had glimpses, a strange sense of understanding after so many battles...sometimes, when the ghost's gaze got particularly heavy, he could almost get it. Terry had been thinking about it every day and while he wasn't some expert human analyst like Mary, he thought he could map out the edges. An intoxicating cocktail of pride and bitterness, cruelty and independence...
But nothing would make his heart understand hating someone so much you'd die just to spite them.
Walking up to Geese Tower the first time, filled with righteous anger...he'd been prepared to die. He'd accepted that with a grim fatalism he could never quite recapture afterwards. But those had been fanciful notions of sacrificing his life to personally escort Geese to hell, not...whatever had crawled into Geese's head. There was something living behind the eyes that haunted him even now, something terrible Terry didn't even want to understand.
That was what he wanted to keep away from Rock. Geese and him, both of them trapped in that miserable nightmare with no way out but death. What was even the point?
The problem was, you could warn people as much as you wanted - Master Tung had sure tried with Terry - and they just wouldn't listen.
Rock was completely asleep and drooling on Terry's shoulder. Terry pulled him close and sighed. The kid was pretty happy - or at least it seemed to so to Terry and Rock wasn't old enough to lie about that yet - but it felt unstable. Geese walked behind their every step and Terry couldn't forget that. Not ever. Maybe Rock could, but... "The hell am I supposed to do?" he muttered.
Above him, the stars Rock had pointed out twinkled silently.