Disclaimer: Totally own it in my head.

Note: This is the second half of what was chapter 18 up until 3.05.11.

—viennacantabile

fell the angels

twenty : the other side of silence

.

I leaned over to cover him with the blanket he had been promising to give away to charity for years, and I kissed his forehead, as if by doing so I could protect him from the invisible threads that kept him away from me, from that tiny apartment, and from my memories, as if I believed that with that kiss I could deceive time and convince it to pass us by, to return some other day, some other life.

—Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

.

But it's possible, you know, to love a shadow,
we ourselves being shadows.

—Eugenio Montale

.

Even with the distraction of Graziella's wedding and move into a tiny apartment a few blocks away, Velma hasn't been able to stop thinking about that afternoon in the playground and the things Ice has tried so hard to hide.

"Listen," she says one night, propping her head up on her elbow and trying to keep her voice light, "Maybe a month ago, I heard ya talkin' to Anybodys about the Musclers an' the Vipers, an' about some guy whose name ya didn't know. Who was that?"

There is silence for a moment. Then Ice rolls over, stares at the ceiling.

"Nobody," he says.

Velma isn't convinced. "If he was nobody, you wouldn't be askin'."

Ice stares up at the ceiling, the sheet twisted around him. "It's just some guy who's been hangin' around. He ain't been givin' us trouble, but I got a feelin' about him that I don't like. That's all."

Velma sighs. "Why didn't you tell me before?"

Ice shrugs. "I didn't wanna worry you over nothin'. An' it is nothin'," he goes on, "nothin' at all."

"But you can tell her," she says, biting her lip. Velma knows that there's a difference—that she's not part of the gang and Anybodys is—but it still bothers her that he would tell Anybodys and not his own girlfriend.

Ice turns his head to stare at her. "Vee. Are you—you don't actually think I—"

"I don't know," she says, taking a deep breath. "But I wish you would trust me."

"It ain't about trust," Ice says, shaking his head. "It ain't—it's just it's got nothin' to do with you. That's all."

Velma reaches over and puts her hand on his shoulder. "If it's got to do with you," she says, voice firm, "it's got to do with me."

He puts his hand over his eyes, and Velma can see him fighting against some mental compulsion, something deeper and darker than all of this. "You knew who I was when you met me," he says, his voice low. "You knew I was a Jet."

She bites her lip, because she did—and then she didn't. Not really. "I didn't know it'd be like this."

"None of us did," Ice says under his breath. "But I can't do anythin' about it, not if—"

"I know ya could," Velma says, pushing just a little further, "an' if you'd just tell me maybe it'd help—"

"Quit it," Ice says, voice sharp. "C'mon, Vee, just leave it alone."

Velma stares at him. Ice has never, ever used that tone with her before, has never even come close to it and she doesn't quite know what to say or do. "I—I'm sorry," she says, stumbling over her words, feeling a new and unpleasant uncertainty settle over her. "I didn't—"

Ice looks up, and the irritated frown on his face melts into a repentant expression. "God," he says quietly, "Vee, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it."

"No," she says, shaking her head and even laughing a little. "No, I know ya didn't."

And she does. But it still can't quite change the fact that it happened.

"It really is nothin'," he says in the quiet that follows. "I swear."

"Good," Velma says, her voice a little too bright even to her own ears. "Then you can stop worryin' about it, right?"

Ice half-smiles, doesn't answer. And even though they change the subject, begin talking about stupid meaningless things like school and Snowboy's latest prank, still she can feel the silence of what isn't said stretch on and on and more than ever she wonders how this will all end.

.

Velma is trying to concentrate on her math homework when her mother sits down at the kitchen table next to her.

"Vilhelmina?"

Velma glances up. Her mother's face is timid, cautious. "Mamma?"

Mrs. Andersen links her hands together on the table and bites her lip. "I have been thinking," she says in her usual Swedish. "And I wonder what you are going to do after graduation."

"I'm not sure," Velma says with as casual a shrug as she can manage. She has been asked this question so many times over the last year, and the answer still hasn't come to her. It still depends, still hinges on so many things, none of which she controls. She still has time, after all—almost six months, really.

Mrs. Andersen just looks at her. Finally, she opens her mouth and says a few words in English.

"Are you happy?"

Velma hides her surprise with a shrug. "I'm not—not happy."

"That's not the same thing," her mother says, returning to Swedish.

Velma exhales. "Isn't it?"

"No," Mrs. Andersen says, her voice soft. "I don't think that's the same thing at all."

"Can you really do better than that nowadays, though?" Velma asks, seeing a white veil against Graziella's flaming hair, the resignation on that pale face, as if it were yesterday. "Ain't it better'n bein' sad?"

"It might be," agrees her mother, "but even so—that is what we want for you, your father and I. To be happy. Whatever that means."

And Velma rests her chin on her hands and stares off into space. "Whatever that means."

Does anyone really know? she wonders. And even if they do—does it even matter?

She doesn't even realize she's said this last thought aloud until her mother rests her hand on Velma's cheek.

"It matters," she says, her quiet voice once again in English. "It always matters."

.

"God, Vel," says Graziella, lighting her cigarette with a theatrical sigh. It's only the second week of November but this year the winter is early and in the open air of the playground, Velma can already see their breath mingling with the white smoke. Cold or not, though, it's the only place they can talk. "I can't stand him. I can't."

"He loves you," Velma offers. She knows, though, that it doesn't help, only makes Graziella despise him more. "There's that, at least."

"Then he's even more of a dumbass than I thought," Graziella sighs as she takes a deep drag on her cigarette and clutches her coat tighter around her stomach. "He's like a dog that keeps comin' back to get beat up."

As she watches the smoke spiral upwards Velma bites her lip. "Graz—y'know, I saw Midge the other day in Doc's, an' she told me somethin' about how maybe you shouldn't smoke when you're—expectin'," she says. "She said there was some new study about it this year an' it could be bad for babies."

Graziella waves her cigarette in the air. "Load-a bull, that's all it is," she says, inhaling. "My ma smoked a pack a day when she had me, an' I turned out fine."

Velma smiles in spite of herself. "Yeah, but—"

"Oh, fine," Graziella snaps, and drops the cigarette to the ground. She stares at it, twisting her hands around the chains of her swing, and Velma watches her, troubled. After a moment, she speaks again in a very different voice.

"It's so soon."

Velma knows what she means. "You've got four months."

"That's nothin'," sighs Graziella. "An' then after that—my whole life, Vel, my whole life I gotta take care-a this kid. That's a long time, y'know?"

Velma isn't sure what to say, but Graziella, it seems, only needs someone to listen. "I keep thinkin' this is dumb. I don't wanna be a ma, Vel," she says. "I don't want anythin' to do with it. I hate babies. But—" Her face crumples. "Then I remember it's his—an' I just—I don't know," she says, her hand drifting to her abdomen. "I start to think maybe it won't be so bad."'

"It won't be," Velma assures her. "We'll all help, an' we all—"

"But you won't be its ma," says Graziella quietly. "You won't be the one who's with it all day, every day this time next year." She takes a deep breath. "You won't be the one missin' its dad so bad it hurts like you're gonna break, like you're gonna die 'cause it's all too much."

Velma says nothing. It's true, what Graziella says. After a moment she touches her hand to Graziella's arm. "You know if I can do anything—"

Graziella shrugs her off, her face unreadable once again. "I know. C'mon," she says, shaking her head and lurching to her feet. "Let's go."

As they leave the playground, Velma glances back. There on the pavement are the remnants of Graziella's cigarette, the last red-orange embers smoldering and telling the truth: no matter what Graziella says about the baby, it's what she does that counts.

"I start to think maybe it won't be so bad."

It will be okay, Velma tells herself, for what seems like the thousandth time, it will be okay, for Graziella and for all of them. It has to be.

.

It's the soft, involuntary grunt of pain that Velma hears first as she rounds the corner by the record store.

There is a man, there, and at his feet is a stocky dark-skinned boy curled up and lying in the snow.

It's none of her business, she knows, but for some reason, Velma looks again. And when she does, she stifles a gasp and ducks back around the corner, her heart pounding.

It's Ice.

And then she looks—not because she wants to, but because she has to. Velma has to see this, has to know that darkest part of him he keeps hidden away. She has to face the truth. And what it is…

The boy—who Velma recognizes now as a Muscler—is up now, and trying to hit back, and on maybe any other Jet, his fist would make contact, but Ice is taller and stronger and his experience gives him every advantage to the boy in the snow. He can't even get close, can't even get in a good punch or kick on the Jet captain who just steps away as if dodging a fly. Who lands a punch to the boy's gut that leaves him doubled up and gasping again.

Velma can't tear her gaze away.

It's like he said. She's known all along, she thinks, that Ice is in a gang. She's known all along that as a Jet, he fights other boys. She's known for more than a year.

But she's never seen it before.

It's the expression on his face that gets her. The fact that—while he's beating another boy, another human being into a pulp—there isn't one there. His face, his eyes, are empty. And it scares her more than anything she's ever known.

"Stay outta here," he says, and in his voice is a chill she's never heard before.

Who is he? she wonders, feeling bile rise in her throat. Who is this boy in front of her? Who is Ice and how has she never seen this part of him before? Is this what Clarice thinks he is trying to protect her from?

She doesn't need protecting, Velma thinks, staring at the man and the boy in front of her and swallowing hard. Not from this.

Ice raises his fist again, and Velma turns on her heel to leave. She has to go, has to get out of here and find someplace where all of this—any of this—makes sense because she doesn't understand anymore, if she ever did, what they are all fighting for.

.

After more than a year with the Jets and their girls Velma should be used to the sound of footsteps in the darkness, but still she's startled when the night is interrupted by a thump, and a stumble.

"Vee?"

She opens her eyes and sees only shadows and moonlight, a pause at the intersection between waking and dreams. But after more than a year—she would know that voice anywhere.

"Ice?"

And then he staggers into view and Velma's eyes widen in the gloom because as Ice drops his jacket and moves over to her bed, that loping gait of his unsteady and wavering, she can see that he is drunk.

He presses his cold mouth to hers and slides his arm around her body, works his hand up under her slip, and normally Velma is happy to go along with this kind of hello—it's more than just the liquor on his breath that's making her dizzy—but not this time. Not tonight. Ice doesn't drink that often, even with the boys, but when he does, it's not like this.

"Ice—"

"Shh," he murmurs, very close to her ear. His whisper vanishes as soon as it comes, and as she inhales Velma remembers the boy from that afternoon and wonders if she's still dreaming. "Don't talk."

Velma sits up, feeling unsettled as she pushes Ice back a few inches and tries to find his gaze. She can feel his heart sounding a skittering beat through the too-thin fabric of his shirt, and it worries her. This is too close to another night. "Ice, what's wrong?"

He leans in again, buries his face in her hair, tries again. "Nothin's wrong, not here."

Velma puts her arms around him and ignores the rising heat in her body. If something's the matter—whatever what it is, she has to know, and she can't let him distract her. "Promise me everything's okay," she says. The words fall breathless from her lips and she bites down on her tongue. She sounds like a child, and she hates it, but she can't help it. "Please."

He laughs, low and dark, and it sends a shiver down her spine. "Vee," he murmurs, "even if I did, what good would it do?"

"Stop it," she says, putting her hand on his shoulder and forcing him to meet her gaze. She can't stop seeing all the things that could have have driven him here, terrified, in the middle of the night, and in her own fear, Velma gives him a little shake. "You're scarin' me, Ice, stop it."

He looks at her, pale eyes dull and colorless in the shadows cast by the moon, and she sees him pause, take a deep breath, exhale.

"Sorry," Ice whispers. "It's nothin'."

Something flickers in his gaze, but before Velma can see what, his eyelids close and his muscles relax and he sinks down onto the bed. He stretches his arms out over his face and in another moment, he is carved from stone, still and silent. Gone.

Velma stares at him, her breath coming in short, shallow gasps. If she didn't know better, she would have thought he'd been there all along, sleeping. She should be relieved, she thinks, that he is not speaking in that slow fatal voice anymore, that silent or not, he is Ice again. She should, she thinks, leave him alone.

But somehow this absolute quiet is even worse, and she has to stop it.

She touches his arm, and as he flinches at the contact, Velma bites the inside of her lip and tastes the faint bitterness of iron. It hurts her that any part of him would draw back from her, even after that afternoon, but that is not important right now.

"Ice," she murmurs, "what's wrong?"

He is silent for so long that she doesn't think he is going to answer. And Velma thinks of the time that has passed. The exhaustion written in every line of his body. The blankness in his eyes. Riff, Tony, and Bernardo are five months gone and still it hasn't gotten better.

"Please," she whispers, hardly daring to move as she waits, perched on the edge of hopelessness. Talk to me, she wants so badly to say, to make him hear. Let me in. Please.

And then, finally:

"I miss 'em," he says, arm still slung over his eyes. She can barely hear his voice, flat and toneless as it is. "I really do."

Velma leans forward, rests her hand on his shoulder once more. And here it is, she thinks, feeling that familiar sadness pass from his body to hers, what he never, ever forgets. "Ice—"

"I can't be the goddamn leader, Vee," Ice goes on in that same quiet, dead tone. "I can't. Ain't what I signed up for when I joined. Tony an' Riff. Them was the leaders. Not me."

Velma shifts to lie down as close as she can and puts her arm around him. "I know," she tells him, wanting him to understand. None of them ever expected any of this. "But—even if it ain't what you wanted—you're doin' a good job," she says, keeping her voice soft and pushing the knowledge of how he's done it away from them. "Thanks to you, the Jets've stayed outta trouble an' in one piece. I don't know who else coulda done it."

"It was their gang," he says, and in the darkness he sounds young, younger even than Baby John. "Tony an' Riff's. I can't just let it fall apart, not when they're—"

"They'd be real proud-a ya," Velma tells him when he stops, unable to say the words. She knows it's true. Ice had been third-in-command, after Tony and Riff, and even if he wasn't quite part of their double captaincy they'd have trusted him with the Jets. Had. "But Ice—they wouldn't want ya to tear yourself up about alla this, y'know."

She sees him swallow, the muscles in his throat working. "They wouldn't want me to forget 'em, neither." He lets out a bitter laugh. "Not that there's much chance-a that. I can't get it outta my head."

"Maybe not, but they wouldn't want ya to feel so awful, neither. It's okay, y'know," she tells him quietly. She has a pretty good idea of what he is talking about. Even if Velma hadn't seen Riff die, she still remembers Tony, eyes closed, body shuddering into slack stillness under a pool of white light. And Ice—Ice had been there to see both his best friends murdered. It's no wonder that the weight of it is still with him. "To be okay. To be happy, even. It's what they'd want."

"But they ain't here," Ice says, voice muffled. She has never heard him sound so hopeless before. "An' nothin's right without 'em. Nothin'."

Velma takes a deep breath. She doesn't want to say what he couldn't—since that night, they've all avoided it as much as possible—but for his own sake, she has to.

"Riff and Tony're dead, Ice," she whispers, holding him tighter. "But you're not. Don't crawl in the grave with 'em."

He makes a small, choking noise. "God," he murmurs, bringing his arm back down to his side. She doesn't know what she was expecting but his eyes are open, staring, dry. If she were only looking she'd never know he was anything but the cool, confident leader of the Jets. "How the hell did this happen?"

Velma stays quiet, leaning her face against the soft, worn fabric of his shirt. She can feel his body shuddering, gasping for air, and she wants so badly to help him.

"It'll be okay," she says, resting her hand on his hair. "I promise. It'll be okay."

He takes one last breath before turning to her and burying his face in her throat. And then his hands are moving over her once more and his kisses are urgent, desperate, a wordless plea he can't voice—tell me again—and Velma, hearing him, wraps her arms around him and responds, fighting back the tears he can't shed, because holding him, keeping him safe from all that comes for them in the night, is the only thing she can do for him right now.

Later when he is asleep, she gazes at his hand, clasped with hers. It's the same tanned, callused hand as always. But now that she knows what it can do—what it has done…

"Riff," he murmurs in his sleep. "Tony. Vee."

Velma stares at him, doesn't move. "I love you," she says aloud. He could be the worst person in the world—a thief, murderer, it doesn't matter—and it would still be the one truth she can't escape. She glances back down at their joined hands and thinks of the vows from Graziella's wedding. For better, for worse.

"An' you love me," she says, quieter this time. Ice, swallowed up in the darkness, doesn't hear, but it doesn't matter. As long as they have that— "That's all that matters."

.

The next time Velma sees the captain of the Jets alone, he is just outside her apartment door on Thanksgiving afternoon, looking as uncomfortable in a jacket and tie as he always does. His mother is with him, and as Mary Kelly moves into the apartment to greet the Andersen family, Ice catches her hand. "Vee, wait."

Velma glances back at him. "What?"

Ice looks uncomfortable, the toe of one shoe worrying the other. "There's somethin' I wanted to talk about."

Velma, eyeing him, steps into the hall and shuts the door behind her. "What?"

He won't look at her. "Well, you know with all the stuff that's been happenin'—the Musclers, an' then those little Viper kids, I thought maybe we—"

Velma's eyes narrow as she sense where he is not, can not be going. "You thought what?"

He sighs. "I thought—everything's comin' all at once, an' I ain't myself right now, an'—maybe—" His voice falls. "Maybe we oughta cool it a little."

"What?" she asks, feeling her heartbeat stumble, skip a beat. "Ice, what the hell are you—"

"Just for a little while," he says. "'Til things get better."

Velma takes a deep breath and tries to keep her voice level. "Y'know, every time a guy says that to his girl in the movies he really means he don't want her anymore. If it's that, just say so."

"No," he says vehemently. "That ain't it at all, Vee—I just—don't think it's a good time right now."

"Ice," she says, "look at me."

He avoids her gaze, and Velma reaches up to turn his face forward. "Look at me."

At last his unwilling eyes meet hers. "I'm lookin'," he sighs.

Velma takes a step forward. "What d'ya see?"

He shrugs. "I see you."

"Do ya?" she asks, watching him. She sees his pale eyes, clenched fist, a few drops of someone else's blood in the snow and still she doesn't care. "Because I'm right here. An' I ain't runnin'."

She takes his hands. His skin is freezing cold and he isn't looking at her anymore.

"Look, I just thought—"

"No," Velma says, voice like steel, "no. I know you're tryin' to do the right thing here, Ice, but trust me: this ain't it."

Ice's shoulders sag. "Vee…"

"I don't care," she says, shaking her head. "You need me. An' I need you. An' if you expect me to just sit back and let you act like that ain't true, you're a lot dumber than I thought."

He stares at her, pale eyes conflicted. "Look," he finally says, "yeah. I do. But—"

"No buts," Velma says firmly. "You're not gettin' rid-a me that easy, buddy-boy."

Ice closes his eyes for a long minute. When he opens them, he looks straight at her and nods slowly. "Okay," he says, sounding resigned. "As long as it's what's best for ya."

Velma wraps her arms around his neck. "You're what's best for me, Ice," she says softly, settling into him. "Don't ever think otherwise."

He says nothing, just holds onto her like a drowning man in the middle of the sea. And after a long moment, he pulls back. "We better get in there," he says, sounding closer to himself than before. "Let's go."

Velma smiles. "You go," she says, opening the door for him. "I'll be right in, okay?"

Ice glances at her, but does as she says. It's not until the door is safely shut behind him that she lets herself take deep, desperate gasps of air, because the one thing she is afraid of is losing him, and if he is the one to break them, then that will be worst of all.

Please don't, she thinks, terrified as her hand reaches up to clutch at her mouth. She can't breathe, can't move. Please. Please don't.

She stays outside for five minutes until her breathing has steadied and she can say and act everything that she doesn't feel. When at last she comes back inside the apartment, her father smiles at her. "Happy Thanksgiving, Vilhe," he says.

Velma's gaze runs over the room. Her father, her mother. Peter and Chris. Mrs. Kelly. Ice. And underneath it all, the uncertainty of whether this will all look the same next year.

"Yeah," she says, swallowing hard and giving him a smile in return. "Happy Thanksgiving."