Note: HELLO IT'S ONLY BEEN A MONTH SINCE MY LAST UPDATE I AM SO PROUD OF MYSELF. Three more chapters to go, folks, and at this rate we should finally have an end to this behemoth before 2018! I'm sorry this is so long, but certain characters got to talking and wouldn't stop and after two decades of writing fanfiction I've learned better than to get in their way.
For: shadeslayerprincess111, who left a completely touching review (bless you thank you it is a miracle people are still reading this thing), and for RhapsodyInProgress for her help bringing this chapter to life years and years ago.
—viennacantabile
fell the angels
thirty : the swift and the swallow
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"Long is the way, and hard, that out of Hell leads up to Light."
—John Milton, Paradise Lost
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All things considered, Ice supposes that he shouldn't really be surprised when he finds himself out of cash after a month. Actually, he's surprised the little he's been able to pick up has lasted this long. But the further he gets out of the city, the trickier it is to brush up against some clueless idiot's wallet or billfold and grab what he needs, and the stranger he feels about it. It's different out here, somehow.
He's not really sure what to do, though. Back in the old days, he and Riff and Tony used to ride the subways telling sob stories and asking change from people who didn't know any better, but when they got older they learned how to take what people weren't giving, and the rank and file took over subway duty. It's been awhile since Ice had to ask.
All the same, though, his stomach is loud enough that by afternoon, when he passes a construction site, he decides it's worth a shot and heads toward all the noise.
It's a group of guys working away on a building, putting in steel beams and drilling them in place. Ice waits until the guy in charge breaks off from his team and heads toward what looks like a small office.
"Hey, mister!"
The foreman turns. He is dark-skinned and well-muscled and his gaze is tough.
"You got any spare change for a sandwich?" Even the words feel strange in his mouth.
The foreman looks him up and down. "How old're you, kid?" asks the foreman, an unlit cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth.
Ice eyes him, pretty sure he knows why the man is asking, but sees no reason to lie. "Twenty."
"Twenty. I got guys younger'n you," he says, shaking his head, and Ice starts thinking where to go next, already ready to hear the man tell him to scram. But the foreman doesn't, just studies his clipboard.
"Pretty dangerous age," he says, finally, and Ice is surprised to hear him sound almost wistful. "Lost a lot of friends, when I was twenty."
Ice takes a closer look at him. The man looks like he's in his mid thirties, maybe, which would mean he was twenty in the mid '40s—oh.
Ice half-smiles. "For us it's different," he says, thinking about the danger they never knew was waiting in their own streets. "Us, we've gotta worry about gettin' it closer to home."
The foreman clears his throat. "You ain't worried 'bout the draft?"
Ice shrugs, again surprised, because the draft seems like such a faraway thing compared to the gang wars of the Upper West. "I registered six months after I turned eighteen, just like every other guy I know. My number gets called, it gets called. No sense in worryin' 'bout it til then, I figure. 'Sides," he says. "What's the chance of another war?"
The foreman sighs, long and slow. "That's what I said in '45. Korea was barely even five years later."
"That didn't last long, though," Ice says, then frowns when he realizes he actually doesn't know for sure. He'd been twelve in 1950, too busy dodging his father and learning to fight to pay attention to some place way over on the other side of the world. "Did it?"
"Three years. Long enough." He looks at Ice and the corner of his mouth turns up. "But then, what would you know about any of this stuff?"
Ice stiffens. "I lost two buddies last year. One knifed, the other shot," he says. "Gang war."
"You think that's war," the foreman says, and there is no change at all in his voice. "Try watchin' your unit drag your buddy through the mud, screamin' his head off 'cause his leg's blown off an' the Germans're right behind us an' he don't know what's gonna get him first, the blood or the Jerries. Then tell me about war."
Ice swallows hard, wondering how in the world they got on this subject and why it seems like every man he meets outside the city wants to talk about it, then says the only thing that comes to mind. "Which one was it?"
The foreman's voice is very clear, and very even.
"I don't know," he says. "We had to leave him, in the end."
Ice stares. "You left him?" That's something he'd never do, he thinks, no matter how bad things were.
The foreman stares straight ahead. "Sometimes I think it would've been better if we'd put him out of his misery first. Better than livin' to die another day in that hell."
"Why'd ya stay?" asks Ice, remembering the man under the overpass. "If it was like that?"
The foreman turns his gaze on Ice.
"I liked to think it meant somethin'," he says. "That I was fightin' for somethin' bigger than all of us. That I was makin' a difference." He shrugs; lifts his hands and studies his dark skin. "Then I come home, and it ain't no different at all."
Ice shifts his weight. For all the judgement he's worn like armor through his life for being the poor son of an immigrant, for not being good enough, this, he supposes, is something he's never had to think about. "That don't sound fair."
The foreman sighs. "You do what ya gotta do," he says. "To survive. To make somethin' of yourself."
Then he swings around, studies him. Ice doesn't flinch under his gaze. And after a moment, the man picks up his lighter.
"Look, I don't have change, but I do got a coupla things I need done around here I can't spare my guys for," he says, lighting his cigarette. "Ain't easy stuff, but it ain't complicated neither. You do what you're told, an' you'll get food an' enough money to get you where you're goin."
Ice considers this. Work. It's almost like being respectable. And if there's one thing the Jets aren't, it's respectable. What would Riff think? What would Tony—
He stiffens. He knows what Tony would think.
In the end, though, it's his stomach that makes the decision for him.
"You got it, mister."
The foreman chuckles, then. "Mister," he says. "That's my old man. I'm George." He jerks his head toward the trailer by the lot. "Tell 'em George sent you, and they'll set you up with a ham 'n cheese. Then come back here and we'll get ya started."
Ice nods. "Thanks, George."
The foreman shrugs, and holds out his hand. They shake. "Don't mention it."
Once his stomach is settled, Ice considers taking off while the foreman is busy with his team. After all, who needs lousy stinkin' work? He can just lift some cash off the next guy he sees. He doesn't need to be here.
And then he remembers.
"You shook on it," Riff reminds him.
"Yes," says Bernardo, voice tight. "I shook on it."
Ice stares at his hand, then looks at the dark-skinned man with the clipboard, now shouting orders to his men. George. And he sighs.
He does it because he needs the money, he tells himself a little while later as he's loading pipes onto a cart to bring to the team. Because he'll need to eat tomorrow, too. At least he doesn't have to think so much while he's busy.
At 6 o'clock, the foreman drops a few bills in his hand. "Fair's fair. Ya did a good job." The man claps him on the shoulder. "Good luck to ya, kid."
"Thanks," Ice says, then pauses, not sure what else to say. "G'bye, George."
He leaves, then, begins the walk to the next road, the next hitchhike. Job. It's the word he's been avoiding because it wasn't really a job, just a half a day's bargain, Ice thinks as he stuffs the money into his back pocket. Just some things off a to-do list in exchange for something to eat, stuff they'd needed a strong guy for.
But he guesses it's not a bad way to get by, he thinks, folding up the bills and putting them in his pocket. If you like that kind of thing.
.
The next trucker drops him off in a small, sleepy town by a park. Ice stares. Even in Central Park, he's never seen so much green before.
He follows the shaded path inside and before too long, reaches a grassy meadow with trees ringing the edges. What with the blue sky and the fluffy clouds overhead, it feels like a scene from one of the stories his mother used to tell him in grade school, out in the old country where fairytales happened.
Hell, he thinks, there are even birds singing.
He isn't surprised to see a family there: two little girls, and an older couple who look like they're probably the girls' grandparents. They've spread out a picnic on a red and white checkered cloth and look very much like they belong in that storybook.
Ice doesn't want to get too close, so he heads off in the opposite direction to work on his new favorite hobby: lying in the sun and enjoying not thinking for awhile. He hasn't been there for ten minutes, though, when behind his eyelids, the sun is blocked.
"What are you doing, mister?"
Ice opens his eyes and stares. The smallest girl is standing over him, all dark hair and blue eyes and curiosity. She's holding a colorful kite in her arms.
"Anna!"
Ice sits up to see the old woman hurrying over, followed by the older girl and the old man.
"Sure and I am sorry if she's botherin' ye, dear," the old woman says with a smile. She has pale, short curly hair and reading glasses hanging around her neck. "She's just that friendly, she is."
Ice's eyes widen as he shakes his head. She sounds just like his mother. "Nah, there's plenty-a park here for both of us."
Anna grins. "I knew he was nice," she says, as Ice, the toughest Jet around, tries to figure out how he feels about being called nice. The little girl holds out her kite. "Fly it with me?" she asks, and Ice glances at the old woman.
"I don't know—"
"Please?" asks the girl, fidgeting.
The old woman gives him an encouraging smile. "Go on, then. Make the wee one's day."
"He don't have te if he don't want te, love," the old man says with a sigh. He thumps his cane on the ground. "Could be he was just havin' a nice day in the park and tryin' te mind his own business and got interrupted." He chuckles. "Wouldn't be the first time a lady in this family did that."
And again, the lilting accent that makes Ice feel like he's back in his kitchen again, listening to his mother sing.
"It's okay," he says, feeling a bit awkward as he stands up and brushes the grass off his pants. When was the last time a kid asked him to play with her? "I don't mind."
The older girl comes forward now, and while she seems tall for her age Ice still towers over her. "I'm Moira, and this is our Gramma Kate and Grampy Jim."
"Just Kate and Jim, if ye please," says the old woman cheerfully.
"I'm, er—Ice," Ice says. It feels strange to give his gang name out here to this family, but if Kate and Jim notice his stumble, they don't say anything. "I've never flown one-a those before."
Anna offers him a brown, bird-shaped kite. "Here, Mr. Ice."
"Don't be mean," says Moira with a nudge. "Give him the nice one."
The little girl sighs. "All right," she says, handing him a another green and blue bird. "You can use this one. But be careful!" she adds sternly. "Grampy made it and it's my favorite."
"Okay," he says, stepping forward and taking the roll of string. "What do I do?"
"Just hold it up and let the wind catch it," says Anna, demonstrating with the brown bird kite, which snaps into the breeze and flies up into the sky. "See? It's easy?"
Eyeing the little girl, Ice tries to imitate her and fumbles. The kite drops to the ground.
"Sorry," he shrugs, feeling embarrassed. "First time."
The little girl shrugs back. "It's okay," she says, with the single-minded patience of the very young. She picks the kite up, reels the string, and hands it back. "Try again."
Ice blinks. It's so simple for her. "Okay."
Exactly nineteen attempts later, Ice is feeling pretty discouraged. Either this is much harder than it looks, or he's just really bad at flying kites. He has a feeling it's the latter.
"Look," Ice begins, "Maybe I—"
"I know!" Moira says brightly. "Let's be partners."
"Partners?" Ice asks warily.
Kate smiles. "They used te do it all the time when Anna was learnin'. Go on, girls," she says. "Show 'im."
It takes a little more convincing, but within a few minutes Ice is set up holding the roll of string at the foot of a small rise with Moira and Anna holding the kite at the top. With the kite so far away from its anchor, he can feel the tension on the rippling string, especially as the wind picks up.
"What now?" he calls, and Jim puts a hand on his shoulder. Ice glances at him, startled.
"Ah, just wait," the old man says. "The wind takes her time, see, but soon enough—"
And up the bird-kite goes, flashing blue and green on its way up to the sky.
Oh, he thinks, the string taut between his hands and the kite, eyes on the flutter of color up high. This is how it's supposed to go.
Moira comes running down the hill squealing, followed by Anna daintily picking her way down. "You did it, Mr. Ice!"
"Well, not really," Ice says, keeping a iron grip on the roll of string. "You kids did it."
Anna finally reaches them and dimples. "We all did it, Mr. Ice."
"And I have you te thank fer gettin' them to work together like the sisters they are," says Kate with a mischievous smile. "Makes a nice change from fightin' over that swallowbird kite all the bleedin' time!"
"That's what you do in a family, Gramma," Moira says, freckled face grinning, so close to her grandmother's that Ice almost does a double take. "Fight!"
Family. The Jets were family, he thinks, gazing up at the bird-kite, watching it sail and glide in the air. But this is something different.
A little while later, Ice is sharing the family's picnic at the girls' urging, eating turkey sandwiches and trying not to spill tea out of the small pink cups. The Jets would give him hell for this, he thinks, half-ashamed. Ice, the great Jet captain. Playing tea and kites with little kids. It's dumb, yeah, but he's not out to ruin their day, so what else is Ice supposed to do?
He has to admit, though, that it's kind of nice just sitting here soaking in the picture perfect day as Anna and Moira decide to give Gramma Kate a turn with the kites. Ice half-expects her to say no: he doesn't have much experience with old women apart from the grandmother who occasionally mans the deli down the street from his apartment, and old Mrs. Katz certainly wouldn't be up to much more than telling the girls to pipe down and keep themselves busy. But with a leap Kate is up and chasing after a kite, riotous short curls flying up into the air.
Ice stares, wondering just how old she is to still have so much energy, then goes with the more diplomatic question. "How long've you been married?"
"Oh, about forty-six years, give or take a few months," says the old man, settling back. He gives a wry chuckle. "Not that I'm keepin' track now, mind ye."
"That's a long time," says Ice. He can't even imagine the memory of all those years. And again he wonders what it's like to be old.
"Aye, well," says Jim, a small smile coming to his lips, "I'll tell ye, me boy, sometimes it feels like forever and sometimes I don't know where me life went. Blinked, and it was gone."
"You still got plenty-a time," Ice offers. He realizes how awkward it sounds after he says it but he doesn't know what else to say, really. There aren't many adults he talks to on a regular basis, and he doesn't even think he knows this much about Doc's life.
What was his life like? he wonders, and Ice comes to the sudden realization that he's never thought very much about Doc's life before the Jets first camped out in his candy store. What was Doc like, when he was younger?
Jim chuckles. "Sure and I think you've the right of it, but even if ye didn't, we've lived well, in our time, we have." His smile turns thoughtful. "I'll not regret it, when me time does come."
Ice considers this. "Sounds like the perfect life."
"Well," says the old man with a short laugh, "if there's one thing I've learned, it's that nothin's ever perfect."
"God's truth, love," says Kate, appearing with a pert grin before Ice can respond. "Even this summer sky's lookin' like showers."
She's right, Ice realizes, craning his head up to look at the dark clouds gathering. Which means he should be finding a place to camp out soon.
He turns back to the couple to see Kate helping Jim up, his hands resting equally on her right palm and his cane as she steadies him. They're both clearly not as strong as they once must have been, but all the same they seem to have figured out how to make it work together anyway. And Ice, watching the old man pull his wife close to press his lips to her hair, wonders at the absolute trust there.
"If ye'd like," says Jim, dusting himself off, "ye can come and have a bit o' supper with us too."
Ice gazes at the old man in his peaked cap, and the woman with her twinkling eyes.
"If I ain't too much trouble," he says.
Jim snorts. "Trouble! Katie here can't get enough of trouble. An' if she did, trouble'd come te find her."
"Well, it does make life more interestin'," shrugs Kate cheerfully, entirely unrepentant. "So let's go home, now, aye?"
Home, thinks Ice, the word opening up an odd ache in his chest as they begin the walk back into town because he isn't sure what that means anymore. Home.
.
Ice stays with the Farrells for two weeks. It's strange, at first, having a roof over his head and a bed to sleep in for as long as he likes, but despite the endless chatter and being shanghaied for each and every play-acting game under the sun, he finds himself feeling happier than he has in months. For one thing, they don't ask too much about where he's come from—just if he wants to stay—and for another, it's the first decent shower he's had in awhile.
"Ye clean up real nice," says Kate the first time she sees him without a dirty face. Her eyes are dancing. "Sure and I am glad ye smell a wee bit better, too."
Ice has to chuckle in spite of himself. Even he'd been getting sick of his own stench.
The second morning, Jim takes him into his workshop, and shows him his projects. Jim is a master at all things worked in wood, and after a few minutes, Ice thinks it might be interesting to try it himself. The old man, who doesn't seem to miss much, hands him a knife with an old, worn handle.
"Go on, then," he says. "Try it."
It's much harder than it looks, but to Ice, there's something fascinating about finding something to shape, to create out of a block of wood. If he looks at it, really looks at it through the haze of sawdust and golden light, he can see it there, waiting to come alive, and he forgets about everything else in what could be.
They make a table that day, and though Ice doesn't do much but hammer in the nails, he still can't help but feel a little bit of pride when he looks at the finished piece. "Where'd ya learn how to do this?"
"Not in the old country, that's fer sure," Jim says with a rueful chuckle, handing him some sandpaper. "Learned most of it right here in the land of opportunity."
"It's really so much better here?" asks Ice, unable to keep himself from sound skeptical as he begins to go over the wood one last time. "The city ain't so pretty now, y'know."
"God knows 'twasn't when we first came either," says Jim. "But ye ask anyone who leaves his home—if it was better there than here, would he've left?"
Ice thinks uncomfortably about another type of immigrant spreading over the Upper West, taking up their food. Taking up their air. "Guess not, no."
"In Ireland, I'da been Jim Farrell, fisherman all me life 'til it killed me like me Da," the old man says. He picks the old knife up and runs his fingers over the smooth handle. "At least here, I had a chance. An' I took it."
A chance, Ice thinks, and wonders if his own parents had made the same gamble when they'd crossed the sea, and how they would have felt knowing what would happen, knowing they'd become a dead abusive drunk and a widowed mother of a delinquent. "They don't make too many of those nowadays."
"Well they don't just fall into yer lap, boy-o," says Jim, and Ice is struck by the faraway smile on his face which seems—almost sad. "Ye've got te keep an eye out. And when it does come te ye—ye've got te take it and not look behind ye."
It sounds so easy, Ice thinks, if only he could stop remembering.
.
"If ye can chop wood, ye can chop the carrots fer supper," Kate says the next evening, and Ice finds himself press-ganged into cutting up vegetables for the stew in their small, bright kitchen.
She's not like his mother, that's for sure. Even in her old age, Kate is a whirlwind of action, dropping potatoes, carrots, and onions in front of him and demonstrating how to peel their skins and chop them in flashes of movement before she takes a few whacks at the stew meat with a cleaver.
"I always think it's a terrible disservice to our young men, not teachin' 'em the ways of the kitchen," Kate says, setting a pot of water on to boil.
Ice stiffens. Even if he'd been around for it, his mother certainly hadn't had time to teach him how to cook between collecting bruises. "Depends on the kitchen."
"Oh, I didn't mean it that way, boy-o," Kate says, bustling over with an apologetic pat on the shoulder, then hesitates. "Only that there's been such a to-do over our boys bein' men an' goin' off te fight for the last I don't know how long, that sometimes I just wish we could teach 'em how to make a home, too. 'Tisn't just a woman's work, ye know."
Ice doesn't know what to say to this. Talking to Kate, he's found, is very different from talking to her husband. While Jim is quick to catch a hint and act on it in ways Ice wouldn't notice if not for his attention to detail, Kate seems to know everything about his life and why he's left it—and doesn't hesitate to show it.
"Have ye been in love, me boy?"
Ice almost slices his finger with the knife at this abrupt change of topic. "What?"
"So ye have, then," Kate says, cheerily tipping his roughly cut carrots into a bowl.
Ice feels himself redden. "Why d'ya ask?"
"No reason in particular," she says, sweeping the potatoes in too as Ice starts in on the onions. "Just gettin' te know ye better."
Ice clumsily takes the peel off an onion and stares at it before he slices into its yellow flesh. "I have, yeah," he says after a moment, not sure why he's bothering. "Least, I think so, an' I said the words. I don't know if I even really know what it is, if I'm bein' honest."
"Don't be daft," Kate says with a kind smile. "'Course ye do."
Ice blinks at her. "What?"
Kate chuckles. "Maybe ye don't know what te call what it is ye felt, but ye did feel somethin'. Tell me about what that felt like, then."
Ice gets through a whole onion and a half before he can figure out what to say, and when he speaks he's still not sure why he's even telling this kindhearted busybody grandmother about Velma.
"I know I couldn't imagine anythin' better, when I was with her," he says at last. "I know what we went through. An' I know I wouldna made it through the last year without her. Even though she's probably fine without me."
Kate nods, seemingly unsurprised. "Aye."
"It still wasn't enough to fix everythin' though." Ice hesitates, a girl in a red dress surfacing in his memory. A boy with a torn once-white shirt. "An' it wasn't enough for other people I knew, either. I guess that's why I don't know anymore."
"If that was love?" Kate asks. And Ice gives the barest of nods, still staring at the pile of onions on the cutting board.
Kate smiles. "I hate to break it te ye, me boy-o," she says. "But that's love. 'Tisn't perfect, 'tisn't the be all an' end all of everythin'. The good kind'll make yer life better, but still it's only ever as good as we are. That's bein' human."
There's a prickle behind Ice's eyes now. If the quality of his love is only as good as he is, then he supposes Velma has been pretty short-changed for awhile then.
"Sure an' you're right," Kate says as the water behind them starts to bubble. "There's only so much love can do, all on its own."
To his horror, Ice feels his eyes start to water. He passes his hand over his face, hoping it'll go away, but his eyes only sting more.
"Just the onions," Kate says, voice kind as she passes him a tea towel. "No hands, that'll only make it worse."
Ice lowers his hands, feeling sheepish, and dabs his eyes with the tea towel instead.
"Y'know," says the old grandmother conversationally, as she makes short work of the remaining onions and adds them to the bowl, "in me long life, I've found that love means a fair amount o' different things to a fair amount o' people. 'Tisn't the same fer everyone."
Ice lets out a short laugh as he goes to the sink to wash his hands. "Yeah? What is it for you, then?"
Kate smiles at him. "Jim an' me? We look after each other. Ever since we met on the way over from the old country. He looks after me, an' I look after him. It's a nice way of things, if ye ask me."
Ice turns to gaze at the old woman. Her pale hair, he realizes now, still has strands of fiery red underlying the white of her age.
"Look, somethin's eatin' ye up inside, an' ye won't feel right until ye get it out," she says kindly. "Trust Gramma Kate on that, boy-o." She laughs. "An' likely it won't be as bad as ye think, when ye do manage to bleedin' spit it out."
Ice has to chuckle. "Have ya always been this nosy, Gramma Kate?"
The old woman flashes a grin. "The menfolk have been askin' me that all me life, boy-o," she informs him. "An' me answer hasn't ever changed."
"Didn't think so," grumbles Ice, but if he asks himself he has to admit he doesn't mind as much as he would have thought. It's almost—nice, even, though he can't put his finger on why.
Just as the water begins to boil in earnest, Moira and Anna dash in, both outfitted in long dresses with tiaras on their heads.
"Would ye look at the two of ye?" Kate says, smoothing their hair, and Ice is struck by the resemblance between her and Moira in particular. "To what do we owe the pleasure?"
"We're playing princess," Anna says, and dimples. "Will you be our prince, Mr. Ice?"
Ice stares. "Who, me?"
Moira grins. "You're the only boy we've got except Grampy Jim!"
"Don't ya need someone all—noble, an' all that?" Ice asks helplessly. "I ain't—I mean I don't—"
"Pleeease," the girls beg, with identical wide blue eyes and clasped hands, and with a sinking feeling Ice realizes he can't say no.
"Sure," he says in a very small voice, and the girls cheer. They each take one of his hands, and start pulling him out of the kitchen.
"I ain't a prince, though," he says, more than once, but no one really listens.
Kate smiles.
"Ye see, me boy-o," the old grandmother says her voice low and kind, "that's just it. They know that—and they don't mind a'tall."
.
Near the end of the second week, he tells Jim about the last year. About the Upper West Side, and three boys he once knew.
It's such a strange feeling, talking. Velma was there for it—had seen most of what happened—so he never had to tell her, never had to paint the laughing, energetic forces of life that were Riff and Tony for her. Jim, though—Jim never knew them, and so Ice finds that to tell the full story he has to tell him about Riff. About Tony.
He finds himself describing little things he didn't even know he remembered. Like the time the Jet leaders stole a reporter's camera and ended up the cover of the Times's piece on juvenile delinquency, or how they'd stay up late at night planning to make the greatest gang in history, or the way they could talk in their own shorthand, in half-sentences and skipped words that seemed like a different language the rest of them could only half understand. Little, tiny details that mean nothing outside the context of Riff and Tony, but make perfect sense within. And for the first time, he's almost—happy—remembering them and all the things they did together.
He even tells Jim about Bernardo—about taunting him with Tiger just for the hell of it the first day the Puerto Rican had moved there, just because he didn't belong. About how even so, Ice had had a grudging respect for his opponent, and how no one had ever really thought about the other gang members dying, or about what that would mean.
And it's so easy to talk to Jim. Ice was right: the old man has had a hell of a life. And he tells Ice a little about it. But what Jim does most, and best, is listen. When Ice tells Jim, he doesn't feel like he's hurting him, doesn't feel that he's crushing him with the weight of things. He doesn't need to protect the old man, who has seen more than Ice hopes he ever will.
"'Twasn't yer fault," the old man says one day in the workshop as he's whittling a piece of wood. "Ye know that, right?"
Ice, as always, shrugs. "Sure."
"But ye don't believe it," he says.
Ice shrugs again. "Does it matter?"
"Yes," Jim says. "There comes a time, me boy, when ye have to get past the guilt of having lived while others died, right or wrong as it might have been." He hesitates, looks up. "That's something I do know."
Ice just looks at him, sees the weight of what seems like thousands in the old man's eyes. "How d'ya do that?"
This time, there is no hesitation.
"Ye live."
Ice meets his eyes, asks again. "An' how d'ya do that?"
Jim sighs. "Ye do the best ye can. No more, no less. What's past is past, and ye let it be."
"But how do ya forget it?" Ice asks, because he don't think he ever can.
Jim quirks up a half-smile. "Ye don't. Not really," he says, and Ice lets go the small sigh in his chest. He should have known it wouldn't be that easy. And then Jim speaks again.
"Ye don't forget it," he says, "but ye keep goin'. An' little by little ye start to come te yerself again."
"Did you?" Ice asks. It's all too plain the old man has his own demons and while Ice is almost afraid of the answer he has to know.
Jim shaves a long curl of wood off the piece in his hands. "I did," he says. "After a time. But it did take time."
"Ya weren't scared?" Ice asks before he can stop himself.
"Scared? God Almighty, 'course I was scared," Jim says, the corner of his mouth turning up. "Ye'd be a fool not to be scared of what life can do. But ye bloody well ought te be scared for anythin' worth doin'."
"But how did ya know?" Ice asks. "How'd ya know you were doin' the right thing?"
The old man shrugs. "I didn't. Look, nothin's ever certain in this world, and I don't know that I was ever sure I was doin' right by me an' mine. I just thought that if I did what I could, it'd turn out right in the end."
"It's that simple," Ice says, because as Doc has said so many times, it usually isn't. How can it be with so much water under the bridge, so many things lost? He couldn't save Riff or Tony, couldn't keep that promise. How can he know he won't be making more promises he can't keep?
Jim smiles again, his gaze far away, and Ice wonders again what lies all those years ago in his memories.
"It won't ever be exactly what you think," he says. "Life—she's a fickle one. An' God's truth, it won't ever be perfect, boy-o," he goes on. "But maybe if ye keep tryin', ye can get as close as can be. Closer, even."
Ice stares at the wood shavings on the floor, at the pieces all around the workshop waiting to be shaped and completed.
He remembers what he had, so long ago. A mother. Maybe even a father. Jets, as close as brothers. Someone he loved. A home. And he wonders: is this what he's been looking for?
Maybe he can wind it back, he thinks. He can't bring Riff and Tony back. But he can remember that point in time when everything was still good, and start over, and make it better this time. Do the best he can, and hope to God it'll all be okay.
Maybe this, he thinks, is what having a father should have been like.
.
Kate and Jim send him off with a rucksack full of food, a few crayon drawings, and enough money to get him comfortably on his way. He also leaves with a phone number and a promise to let them know how it all works out. He has a feeling that Kate, inquisitive as she is, wouldn't have let him leave with anything less.
As he's heading out the door, Jim catches him by the elbow.
"This is fer you," he says. In his hand is the old man's worn knife. "Go on, take it with ye."
Ice stares. Where he comes from, a man's knife is his word and honor. "I can't."
"Ah, don't worry yerself over it," the old man says with an embarrassed wave. "Me hands're gettin' achy in me old age, an' I couldna held that one too much longer. Don't do anythin' foolish with it, now," he says gruffly. "It's a good knife, ye'll do well with it."
Ice considers this, then nods, taking the knife. "Thanks, Jim."
He's almost to the road when he turns around.
"What do I do now?" he asks.
The old man shrugs. "I can't tell ye that. But," he says, "I think ye know."
And like just about everything else Jim has said, Ice knows he's right.
.
It takes him so long to remember it that he's not even sure it's true, but this half-brushed memory won't go away. It's just a few images. But it's there.
It's his fourth birthday, and he is standing on top of the couch, waiting at the window. There is a flicker of movement down on the sidewalk below. A familiar face. In the five minutes it takes the man to walk from the street, up the stairs, and through the door, he can hardly breathe.
"Dad!" he says, running over.
His father grins. "Well, hello there, Johnny-boy." Reaching down, he ruffles his son's hair. "Ye been good fer yer mother today?"
He nods eagerly. His father has been gone the whole day at work, and John can't wait to tell him about everything they'd done: coloring and going out for a walk and dusting the apartment and even baking a small cake with the sugar his mother has saved from their rations.
His father laughs. "Good," he says. "That's me boy. Here, I've got somethin' fer yer birthday."
John takes the small package in his hands and holds it for just a moment before unwrapping it. This is his. Just for him.
As he tears the paper off, John runs his hand over the long, smooth wooden handle that emerges and watches the light gleam off its polished surface.
"It's a hammer," his father says, watching him closely. "D'ye like it?"
John can only nod, even though he's not quite sure what it is.
His father laughs a little. "'Course, a real one would be a wee bit heavier at the top, seein' as it'd be made out of metal, not wood, but I don't think ye'll see the difference fer a while yet."
John turns the toy hammer over in his hands. "What can I do with it?"
His father smiles. "Build things, son o' mine."
John gazes at it, and back at his father.
"Okay," he says. "I will."
.
He finds a dingy motel on the side of a highway where state lines meet and the girl on duty looks at him with curious half-starved eyes. She gives him his room key and he's barely dumped his jacket on the moth-eaten bed when she's knocking on his door, red-faced.
"Your lamp's broken an' the maintenance man ain't due for another coupla days," she says, "but we had this back behind the desk for us an' I thought you might want it." She holds a small stump of wax out. "Don't tell no one, though, I dunno if I was s'posed to do that."
"Thanks," he says, though he's not sure what he'll do with it. It looks so short that he can't see how it'll last the night.
She blushes. "Night, then," she says, and goes.
Ice settles down on the bed in the waning light, tossing the candle from hand to hand. He reaches into his pocket, takes out his lighter, puts his finger on the lid. He flicks it up with that small chk, gazes at the flame for a moment, and flips the lid down to sudden darkness again. Up, down. Light, shadow. Click, chk, click. Over and over again. It's nowhere near the soft, electric glow in another room somewhere in the streets of the city. But still the image burns in his mind.
And then, quite suddenly, he reaches over and touches flame to wick, and watches light bloom in the darkness.
He leans back and stares at the wavering shadows on the ceiling. Still there, but different, somehow, held back by the light. He doesn't know how long it will burn but he guesses it's enough for now.
When he leaves at dawn the next morning, the girl at the desk is there again.
"Here," he says, handing the short stub of the candle over. Against all odds, there's till some life left in it after all. "Thanks."
"Welcome," she says, twisting her hands. "Good luck, wherever you're goin'."
Ice almost smiles, thinking of what he faces next. "I'll need it."
.
It's not the same driver. He's taller, younger, with lines around his mouth that hint at a ready grin. But the expression on his face is the same as he pulls up by Ice near the outskirts of the shore.
"Where to, pal?" asks the truck driver, lighting a cigarette.
Pal. Not kid, for the first time ever. "The city," says Ice.
The driver chuckles. "Yeah? Which one?"
Ice glances at the lighter, and the flame. He remembers that pale steady glow in the darkness, and the shadows kept at bay. And he smiles.
"New York," he says. "The greatest one in the world."
Disclaimer: Kate and Jim officially belong to Maury Yeston and Peter Stone's Titanic: A New Musical (which is very good and you should listen to it), but their appearance here is really due to RhapsodyInProgress's Epic fic Fortune's Winds. Her characterization of them from just a few lines in the musical is absolutely stunning and it's the very best Titanic-related fiction I've ever had the pleasure of reading and I hope I did them justice. Moira and Anna are entirely hers. Kate's stew is mine, though!