Note: Chapter 32! I don't know why I keep being surprised when these chapters take longer than I think they will to write, what with past experience over the last ten years and all, but it never fails. I've had quite a bit of this chapter written since the very beginning, so I thought it'd be faster, but given how my understanding of healthy relationships has changed over the last five years, I ended up rewriting a ton of it. It turns out that's one of the nice things about coming back to a fic after awhile—you get to write from the place and person you are now and make everything that much richer. One chapter left, after this, which I'll hopefully get done within another month. So many feelings!

Musical accompaniment: for atmosphere! Links on my profile. :)

Gustav Mahler, Symphony No. 5 in C-sharp minor: IV. Adagietto. Sehr langsam
Richard Clayderman, Over the Rainbow

For: shades111, for being here (still!), and for RhapsodyInProgress, for understanding.

—viennacantabile

fell the angels

thirty-two : over the rainbow

.

Kannst du dir den denken, dass ich Jahre so—ein Fremder unter Fremden fahre, und nun, endlich nimmst Du mich nach Haus.

Can you understand how much I've wandered, a stranger in a world of strangers, and now at last you take me home?

—Rainer Maria Rilke

.

He never intended to love her. But now it was over. He had crossed over the gulf to her, and all that he had left behind had shrivelled and become void.

—D.H. Lawrence, The Horse Dealer's Daughter

.

There is just one last thing he has to do before he sees her.

"Oh," the man behind the counter says as Ice pushes the worn wooden door open early that evening. "It's you."

Ice looks him in the face. The old man looks exactly the same: shoulders stooped from work and face creased from care. "Hi, Doc."

"Hello, Ice," says the storekeeper, voice as tired as he remembers. "So you're back."

Ice nods. "Yeah," he says, a little unnerved by the fact that Doc, just like his mother, seems somehow not at all surprised to see him. "I am."

Doc shrugs and begins wiping the counter. "Well, I don't got what you're lookin' for, kid. Your buddies ain't here."

Ice shakes his head. "I know," he says and hesitates for just a moment before saying it out loud. "I saw 'em. I'm done with it, Doc. All of it."

The old man pauses for a moment, then glances up at him, a faraway expression on his lined face. "I've heard that before. It didn't end so well."

Ice takes a deep breath. He knows what he has come here for, but suddenly it's hard to just open his mouth and say it. "Look, I don't know if you remember, but last year—"

"'Course I remember," the old man says, passing a hand over his eyes before gesturing around the dusty store. There are ghosts here for both of them, Ice realizes, laughing, carefree memories that linger behind the counter and in the back. "What else do I got to do around here with the neighborhood hoodlums runnin' off every customer?"

Ice gazes at him. "Then ya know what I'm askin'?"

Doc gives a sad chuckle. "Yeah, I know that, too. I been figurin' on it ever since ya joined the Jets, Ice. It came to Tony; I knew it'd come to you. I just didn't know what was gonna happen in the meantime."

"None of us did, Doc," says Ice, remembering one hot summer day a year ago. "Not none of us."

Doc laughs again, a short bitter sound in the stillness of the store. "Even if ya did, don't tell me you'da done different. 'Cause I know you'd be lyin'. Kids," he says, breathing out slowly, shaking his head, and Ice knows he is revisiting that same morning and all those threads of connection that led to three deaths under the city streetlamps. "Oh, God, up to the moon an' walkin' on air on just one crazy night."

By now, on the other side of this gut-wrenching year, the old guilt Ice feels about his friends has combined with reluctant understanding to paint a clearer picture to him of those twenty-four hours after the dance. "Tony's head was up in the clouds, all right," he says with a sigh. "Maybe things woulda been different if he'da come back down to the ground a little sooner before walkin' into the rumble."

"You think?" says Doc, wearily rubbing his forehead. "I don't know, Ice. All that hate bottled up inside of you all—it had to go someplace."

Ice allows himself to imagine a world where he'd knocked Bernardo out cold in two rounds and the Sharks had slunk off in shame like all the other gangs the Jets had gone up against. That's easy enough. But to stretch it further, to an ending where Tony is a brother to Riff and Bernardo both… "Maybe not," he says with a sigh. "Maybe things were too far gone."

Doc stares out the window. "He talked big, Tony did. Riff, too. Made me want to believe 'em when they said they was going places."

The corner of Ice's mouth edges up. It had been, he thinks, their best quality as captains: the confidence and vision that made every single Jet want to follow where they were leading, no matter where it went. "Me, too."

The old man casts a skeptical look at him. "You goin' after 'em, Ice? You boys think I'm deaf as a doornail but I got ears. Those Soviets're still around, y'know. They ain't any less trouble than before ya left."

Ice shakes his head. "Look, Doc, I an' you both don't want this to go the way it did last year," he says. "So I'm goin' to do my best to keep outta things so I don't end up where they did." And then Ice tells Doc what he has been repeating to himself, over and over again, willing the old man to understand. "This time it'll be different. I swear."

Doc raises his weary eyes to Ice's and stares, for a very long moment. Ice, holding his gaze, can only imagine what the shopkeeper is thinking. How things look, over from his side of the counter, and what he is searching for, in the eyes of a boy he has watched grow into a man.

And then Doc sighs.

"All right," he says, voice barely audible. "All right. God help me, I hope you're right."

Ice releases the breath he hadn't realized he was holding. "So you'll help me?"

"What can I say?" asks Doc, shrugging, a rueful half-smile on his face. "I'm just a sorry old fool with a bleeding heart and too much time on my hands. I'll help you."

Ice thinks about it for a moment, then extends his right hand across the counter to one of the only adults he trusts in the world. "Thanks, Doc," he says. "I mean it."

The expression on the old man's face shifts to something like a cross between a grimace and a smile as Doc reaches forward and grasps his hand. "I hope it works out for ya, kid. Ice," he adds, giving Ice a half-doubtful, half-hopeful smile. "I really do. You an' that girl-a yours."

Ice, heart beating steady and strong, gives Doc's hand a firm shake. "It will," he says. "Count on it."

.

As he exits the candy store, Ice blinks at the skinny figure shuffling a pack of cards on the stoop. "Baby John? What're ya doin' here all by yourself?"

"I'm runnin' protection on Doc's place," the kid says, riffling the well-worn deck, eyes darting around the street. "Someone threw a stinkbomb in last week, when they oughta know better than to touch Jet headquarters. Y'know I been helpin' him out with the heavy liftin' around here, so I told him I'd keep an eye on the place so's no one would—"

Baby John lets go of the cards and he swings around on the stoop to look up, mouth agape, as they scatter all over the steps and the sidewalk. "Ice?"

Ice half-smiles. "Present an' accounted for."

"You're back! Gee whiz, Ice, you're just in time," Baby John says, scrambling to pick up his deck. "We're buildin' up to a rumble with the Reds again an' we're gonna need every man we got!"

Ice, dropping down to the sidewalk to help him, shakes his head slowly. "Baby John—I didn't come back here to fight."

"Man, just wait til the Reds see ya," Baby John says, scooping up the cards, "they'll be so scared they'll piss 'emselves—"

And then the cards fall out of his hands again and he wheels around on the step, eyes wide. "But Ice, ya gotta fight, ya just gotta!"

Ice, for once at eye level with the kid, sighs. Every time he has this conversation, he gets a better picture of what it must have been like for Tony to leave, knowing full well that none of his friends would understand but trying to explain anyway. Knowing that for every step he took out, the Jets would be there trying to pull him back in, and how hard it would be to keep saying no. And Ice thinks for once that he is lucky, because in his own case, every time he tells someone that he is done he is more sure than ever that it is time.

"Why, Baby John?" he asks now, picking cards up from the pavement. "It ain't like my bein' there solved much, last time."

"Well, that ain't true," protests Baby John. "They cut an' ran from the last rumble because you busted Reaper's face up good! Anybodys says you're the only one they're scared of, y'know."

"Why're things headin' back to a rumble again, then?" Ice asks, pushing past the gratified pride the former captain can't help feeling. "Why ya gotta fight?"

"Because those Commies ain't gonna stop til they run us out an' take over the whole West Side, Ice," Baby John says, smacking his fist into his palm. "An' that's why we gotta show 'em who the best gang in town is!"

And Ice, seeing again how little has changed, feels very tired. "There's more important things to fight for, Baby John."

Baby John stares at him. "More important than the Jets?"

"Yeah," says Ice, but as with his other friends he knows Baby John won't see it, won't understand until he comes to it himself. "More important than that."

"Like what?" Baby John asks, forehead knitting together. "What could be more important than your best buddies, Ice?"

Your life, for one, thinks Ice, but he doesn't say it. "Look, ain't there nothin' that knocks ya over with just how much ya want it?" he asks instead. "Nothin' that wakes ya up in the mornin' 'cause ya can't wait to get to it? Like, I don' know—Minnie."

Baby John's eyes widen. "M—Minnie?" He ducks his head. "Sure she's my girl, Ice, but what's she got to do with the Jets?"

"More than ya'd think," Ice says ruefully, remembering the last time he'd seen Velma. "She ain't a Jet, sure, but like you said, she's a Jet's girl. Ain't it worth makin' sure she don't end up old before her time like Graziella?" He hesitates, remembering a girl draped in black. "Or—Maria?"

In the lengthening shadows, Baby John's face looks contemplative. "Well, yeah," he says slowly. "I mean, I ain't thought about it much. But Loco says his girl's been sayin' stuff like that, too. Teresita, I think her name is."

Ice blinks. "Loco?" he asks, though of course he knows who the short, always-up-for-a-scuffle Shark is, and what the names of all of his friends are, too. It's strange, he thinks, remembering the quiet boy in the cemetery, all the things that take up space in his head these days. He guesses he'll know all their names forever, now.

Baby John fidgets. "We trade comics sometimes. Him and Juano, an' me. That way ya pay a third as much to read three times as many. I'd do it with a Jet," he adds quickly, a little shame-faced, "but they ain't interested in comics."

"Smart," Ice says, somewhat impressed. "How'd that get started?"

Baby John brightens. "I ran into them at Murphy's newsstand around Easter, pickin' up Adventure Comics after Lent, an' we got to talkin' about the new Legion of Super-Heroes."

Ice absorbing this, has to smile. "The Legion of Super-Heroes?"

"Yeah!" says Baby John, his face lighting up. "It's Cosmic Boy, Lightning Boy, Saturn Girl, an' Superboy. They all got special powers, see. The three of 'em came back through time to join up with Superboy an' now they're a team an' fight all the baddies together! Gee, it's great."

"Sounds friendly," Ice says. He has a idea, now, of how it is that Juano knew about Ice's disappearance, and about Reaper. "Speakin'-a friendly, they tell ya the Reds've been sniffin' around Shark territory too?"

"Yeah, an' how Pepe an' the Sharks don't wanna fight, but they don't wanna stand for it neither," Baby John says, before his face falls. "I told 'em the Jets'd take care of 'em but to be honest, Ice, we don't got near enough of us. I don't know if we can win without ya."

"Too bad ya don't got the Legion of Super-Heroes," Ice says with a sigh. He's not going to fight, no, but he has to admit he's not sure how to end things with the Reds without a whole lot of his friends getting hurt. "Sounds like a team-up's just what ya need."

"Yeah," Baby John says mournfully, gathering up the last of his cards. "Us an' the Sharks both." And then he freezes.

"Their numbers are down, too, I heard," says Ice, wanting him to know it's not just Tiger, not just him. To see that for the Sharks, too, it's beginning to be time to move on. "Somethin' like eight now."

"But that'd be enough," says Baby John slowly, as if in a trance. "To get the job done. Just enough." He shoves the deck of cards into the open window of the candy store and grabs his jacket. "Thanks, Ice—I gotta go!"

Ice furrows his brow—starts to ask—then thinks better of it. If it's to be a clean break, as he is determined it will be, then it has to start now. Even if the idea he thinks is running through Baby John's head is both very risky and very possibly the only solution to this mess with the Reds. It's a new generation in charge, now, and as bittersweet as it feels, he has to leave it to them.

Still, though, he can't help calling out as the kid dashes away. "Hey, Baby John!"

The boy looks back, face as open and curious as ever. "Yeah, Ice?"

Ice remembers his first day as a Jet, that strange and wonderful sense that everything was taken care of because he was never going to be alone again. And Ice, feeling that same warmth in his chest, realizes that he's proud of the kid. Little Johnny Kowalski, baby of the Jets, who used to spend his days getting shoved in trash cans and strung up by the ankles from streetlights, has come a long way.

"Good luck," he says, raising his hand in salute. "An' walk tall."

Baby John grins. "I always walk tall, Ice," he says with all the confidence in the world. "I'm a Jet."

And as the boy heads off in the direction of Shark territory, Ice feels the corner of his mouth lift into a smile. Maybe, just maybe, Baby John can see what he didn't, do what he couldn't, and find a new kind of solution to this mess. And maybe, Ice thinks, things will be okay for the Jets, after all.

.

He's almost made it to his destination when he sees the big dopey Jet rounding the corner near the deli. And though Ice would like nothing more than to turn and walk in the opposite direction, a newly strong sense of what is owed to this Jet—this friend—compels him to call out.

"Mouthpiece!"

The blond boy turns, and Ice looks him in the eyes. They have the same coloring and are very nearly the same height, but Mouthpiece's gaze is more open and trusting than Ice's ever was. "Hiya, Ice. Good to see ya."

It costs him a lot—but he does it.

"Listen," Ice says, swallowing hard. "I heard what ya done. Lookin' out for her. An' I wanna say—thanks."

Mouthpiece just shrugs. "We're Jets, Ice. You'da done the same for me."

Ice, wordless, claps a hand on the other Jet's shoulder, grips it tight. And Mouthpiece, without hesitation, does the same.

"She's a real nice girl, Velma is. And she's loved ya from the second you two met," Mouthpiece says, and Ice doesn't think he's imagining the slight wistfulness to his tone. "Take good care of her, okay?"

Ice nods. He can't promise anything, because this one, most important thing of all—unlike every other decision he's made in his return—isn't a foregone conclusion. This is not about what only he wants. For the first time in two years someone else holds all the cards and Ice, trying desperately not to think of all the bad draws he's seen in his time, is all in and hoping his hand is the winning one.

And if it is—

Ice gives himself a shake, says goodbye to his friend, and gathers up all the courage he has. Time to go find out.

.

At sunset, he finds her sitting on the fire escape outside her window.

Ice, lingering on the street below, takes a moment to look—really look, in a way he hasn't done since they met—up at Velma. She's hugging her bare knees to her chest and leaning her head on the metal guardrail and she seems—not serious, exactly, but not happy, either. Like she's thinking about something way out there beyond the horizon. And when Ice looks at her in her yellow dress, all lit up in the warm glow of the setting sun, it's like he's that eighteen year-old again, the one who thought summer went on forever and the things he loved would never leave him, the boy who had never seen someone so beautiful he could hardly catch his breath.

He wonders, for a moment, if he has the right to be there. If after all that's happened, after all Ice has done to hurt her, he has anything worth offering to someone who deserves so much more.

But if, out of all the people in this broken, messed up world, they can find each other, and choose each other again, that would be something, he thinks, his breathing shallow and his heart sick with hope. And as Ice begins the climb up, her name escapes him like a wish for everything he's ever dreamed of. "Vee."

Up above him, Velma lifts her head. She doesn't even blink as he reaches the landing below hers, and Ice is just beginning to wonder if she even sees him at all when a spasm of some emotion flickers across her face.

"Ice?"

The expression is gone as suddenly as it came. Velma sits up straight, hands folded on her lap and face wiped blank as he takes the last stair up, stopping just below her eye level to look up at her. He takes a deep breath.

"It's me. I'm back," he adds, feeling newly uncertain. Everything he's had to do since coming back—facing Doc, the Jets, his mother, even those three graves—is nothing compared to this. This is everything.

Velma's tone is even, her words clipped. "I see that."

Ice swallows hard. Already he can tell she's not going to go out of her way to make this painless for him, and while he can't blame her, it feels so strange to not know what to say to the one person it's always been so easy with. "Can we talk, Vee?"

She tucks her skirt around her legs and looks away. "Go ahead. I'm not stopping you."

He's heard this person before, Ice realizes. This is cool, remote Velma from the Upper East Side, channeling her favorite icy blonde actress to make herself untouchable. This is how she speaks to Schrank and Krupke and all the other people she doesn't trust, how she deflects suspicion by fitting herself in the mold they've assigned her to. This is the face Velma wears to cover how she really feels. Ice has seen it plenty. She's just never used it on him before.

He takes a deep breath. The only way through this, Ice thinks, is forward.

"I came to tell ya I'm here," he says. "An' that I'm sorry."

Velma's gaze is somewhere above his head. "Is that it?"

"No," Ice says, and forges on. "Not by half. Look, I did a lot of thinkin' while I was gone. About you, an' me, and this whole lousy year. I messed up somethin' awful, Vee. I hurt you, an' I'm sorry. You don't know how much I wish I could take it all back."

And there, as she meets his eyes, is the first crack in that impenetrable wall. "You can't," Velma says, very quietly. "When you break something, you can't just unbreak it. Even if ya put it back together, it ain't ever going to be the same again."

Ice shakes his head. "That's the thing," he says, coming further up the stair. "I don't want it to be the same. It wasn't working, the way things were, and we both know it."

Velma stares at him for a moment, then gets to her feet on the landing, shaking her head. "So—what, then, Ice?" she demands, voice frustrated. She is two steps above him, looking him square in the eyes and all the aloofness is gone from her face. "If ya don't want it to be the same, what do you want from me?"

"I love you," he says, holding her gaze. "I love you, an' I want to be with you. That's what I want."

Velma's eyes flash. "Do ya?" she asks. "You left, Ice! You left me! You almost died, an' then you just left me outta nowhere like you did die, anyway!" Velma's face constricts as her voice turns bitter. "Sorry if I don't see how up an' leavin' with no word for two months means you want to be with me."

Ice takes this in. It's true, he thinks. Except if he'd died, at least she would've known he hadn't abandoned her by choice.

"I didn't leave 'cause I don't love you, Vee," he says. "I left 'cause I couldn't see how to be all the things I needed to be to you an' the Jets an' my ma without goin' crazy. An' bein' out there, away from everythin'—things started to make sense."

Velma shakes her head, eyes bright, and looks down. "So you come back when ya feel like it, an' I'm here waiting for ya like always. Ain't that nice for you. God, Ice," she says, lips trembling, "how could you do that to me? You had all of me. All of me."

The hurt in her voice twists through his gut like the knife he'd spent weeks thinking should have gotten him. Of all the things he's done, Ice thinks, maybe this is the worst.

"Don't you get it?" she says, folding her arms and hugging them against her stomach. "How can you just come back here and think everything will be okay when you took what we had and shoved it in the dirt like it was nothing?" There is a hollow, almost disbelieving ache in her voice. "Like I was nothing."

Ice stares at her, cursing himself as he witnesses her raw pain. This is his bed, he thinks. He made it, and now he has to lie in it, and accept whatever the consequences are. But he'll be damned if he doesn't go down fighting as hard as he can for what he loves most.

"You're right," he says. "I left you after all that happened, when you didn't deserve it, an' I'm sorry." Ice has never been a big talker, but if this is his one shot, he has to get everything out. She has to know it all. "But I came back because I couldn't live with myself if I didn't try to fix things with you," he says. "Because the truth is that I love you an' I always will."

Velma looks up at him then, and on her face is the heartbreak he knows is his fault. "If there's anything I know now," she says quietly, "it's that love doesn't fix everything."

The reality in her words, more than anything, pierces his heart. Ice thinks of a friend whose belief in the invincibility of love led him to his death, and sighs. "No," he says, tamping the terrible fear in his chest down. "It don't. But it is a reason to find out what will."

Velma avoids his gaze, pale eyes searching the street to her right. "Look, even if that's true, it wouldn't matter. You're back, sure, but you're just going to go runnin' off with the Jets again the second they need you. They come first; they always have."

"They did," Ice acknowledges, knowing now how much that had to have hurt. "But not anymore. This ain't about the Jets, or the Sharks, or the Reds, or any-a that, Vee," he says, moving up one step closer. "None-a that matters now. It's about you'n me, an' what we do." He says it again, quieter. "What d'ya think, Vee? About you and me."

Velma presses her lips together. "You said you loved me two months ago, too. Why would now be any different? I don't know if anyone told ya, but the Reds ain't exactly puttin' up the white flag."

"Because it ain't them that's gotta be different for us to work," Ice says. "It's me."

Velma raises her gaze to his, and her eyes are so tired. "Yeah? How?"

Ice reaches up and touches his hand to her cheek for the briefest moment, light and gentle as a feather. "I'm done usin' fists to fix things, Vee." He sees the scars on his fingers and flashes back to the moment he'd almost done the unthinkable and shivers. Never, ever, he'll die before he ever comes close to that again. "I promise ya that."

Velma takes a short, shuddering breath and glances downward. "Like I said, you say that now an' it sounds real nice, but when you see them—"

"I already told the Jets," Ice says, watching her. "They know. I ain't fightin' their wars anymore."

She stares at him, confusion wrestling with the realization dawning on her face. "An'—what, that's supposed to make me fall into your arms and forgive you, just like that?" she asks after a moment, dashing an angry hand at her glimmering eyes.

"No. Look," he says, reaching forward. He catches hold of her fingertips and laces them with his. "I screwed up, an' I hurt you. An' I know I don't got the right to ask you to forgive me. But I was hopin' you could try." Ice takes a deep breath, concentrating on the air rushing into his lungs, and lets it out. "I spent so long stuck in my own head, but I know what I want now." And even though it's true, he's still scared, so fucking scared, because what he's asking is bigger than his whole life and if he's wrong then it's not just his own life he's messing up. He'd left the Jets to escape the all-consuming responsibility he'd felt, and this, he knows, is infinitely more precious to him. What if he's wrong about the solution to all of this? Ice wonders. What if he just ends up messing it all up again?

But looking at Velma now, taking that last step up to intersect his feet with hers on the landing, Ice is pretty sure he knows the answer to the question that's been following him since before he knew how to ask it. Because this—this understanding that's existed between them, this safekeeping of another human heart, this pure and simple love—this is worth living for.

"I know what I want," he says again, letting go of her hand and meeting her blue eyes with his. "I know how lucky I am to be standin' here with you after all that's happened, askin' if we can do this. So all I'm askin now is what you want."

At this the tears she has been holding back spill over, and she shakes her head violently. "Ice—I don't—" She is silent for a moment, bringing her hand to her mouth to stifle her sobs. "I can't—"

"You want time to think, I'll wait," he says softly. "You want me to leave, I'll leave." The crushing thought of it is unbearable and he is aching to hold her, to comfort her, but Ice knows he's done all he can and now it has to be her choice. "But if you want me to stay—I'm yours, Vee. You tell me what you want, and I'll do it."

At first Velma visibly stiffens. Her hands curl into fists as the tears flood silently down her face. And Ice waits, hardly daring to breathe as she reaches out and grasps the front of his shirt, bracing herself up against the enormity of this entire year, arms trembling from the weight of all they have had to carry since that rainy night under the highway.

But then, little by little, her body relaxes, leans into its familiar spot within his until her cheek is resting against his heart, tears dampening his shirt as she takes shallow shuddering breaths. And finally her arms slide around him in a loose, tentative circle. Like she's afraid to hold him too tight.

"I'm here, Vee," he says in the gentlest of murmurs. "I got you. An' I ain't goin' nowhere without you."

At this Ice feels her turn her head ever-so-slightly until her lips are touching the thin fabric of his shirt. She rests her head there for a moment before she reaches up for his face and holds it in her hands. Velma doesn't move, just gazes into his eyes for what feels like a lifetime.

And then she brings his face down to hers and it's gentle, tender, sweet, like their first kiss all over again—the amazement that someone else fits into him like they were made for each other, the absolute wonder that is how he feels about this girl—but with the sharp, oceansalt understanding that she knows him like no one else ever has and ever will. It's all there. After all they've been though. Still.

When they finally break apart, Velma stares at him and shakes her head slowly, but the anguish and hurt so foreign to her eyes have subsided. "Don't you ever do that again," she whispers, blinking back tears.

Holding her face in his hands, Ice wipes the dampness from her cheeks with his thumbs and finally lets himself feel the wave of relief and gratitude rushing up inside his chest. "I ain't plannin' to, Vee," he says, and draws her closer, savoring her closeness. "Like I said—from here on out, it's you an' me."

Velma, busying herself with a handkerchief, sniffles. "So what now, then?"

Ice stuffs his hands in his pockets. "I, er—" He supposes he'll get used to saying something so foreign, but for now it's almost harder than their entire conversation. "I got a job."

Velma stops dabbing at her face and looks up at him, the corners of her mouth curving up into a startled smile. "You did?"

Ice nods and scratches his head. "Yeah."

"How'd that happen?" she asks, blue eyes watching him with wonder.

Ice shrugs. "Well—Doc. I asked him, an' he called up a friend-a his. It ain't much, just construction stuff, but it's a job, an' I start on Wednesday."

Velma laughs, a little, and puts the handkerchief in her skirt pocket. "Well, you know what?" she says. "So did I."

And now it is Ice's turn to be startled. "What?"

"I got a job. At Bloomingdale's," she tells him. "I'm the new girl at the makeup counter."

"Why'd ya do that?" he asks, genuinely surprised. Now that Ice thinks about it, they've never really talked about what she would do after high school. Back when that was still the future, he realizes, it was always easier to think about the present.

Velma shrugs. "Well," she murmurs, "I couldn't spend my whole life waitin' on ya, Ice. No matter how much I wanted to. I thought I'd better try an' keep goin' an' do somethin' with my life."

Ice winces. He knows what leaving did to him, but from what he's seen he knows now it was ten times worse for her. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be," she says, touching his cheek. "I'd been thinkin' about it awhile, anyway."

He is silent for a moment. "Well, y'know now I'm back ya don't have to—"

"I want to," she says quickly. "For me."

Ice watches her for a moment and nods. "Sure, if that's what ya want." He cracks a rueful smile. "'Sides, I guess we could use the extra money. The guy said I could move up after awhile, but startin' pay ain't that great."

Velma furrows her brow. "We?"

Ice nods, surprised by the question. "Yeah. For, y'know, when we make it official."

Velma's jaw drops open. "Ice, are you—?"

Ice gives a sheepish shrug. "Thought that was what I was doin', yeah. I mean, I don't got a ring or whatever yet," he admits, feeling a little silly for not having thought of this particular detail. "Things happened kinda quick."

Velma is staring at him, eyes wide. "Yeah," she breathes. "I'll say."

Ice shifts his weight. It's funny, he thinks, how much more awkward it is after they've gotten past the hard parts. "So—are ya sayin' ya will?"

Velma brings her hand to her mouth and lets out a seemingly involuntary giggle. "How can I, when ya ain't asked me yet?"

Ice blinks. "Thought that was what I was doin'."

Velma shakes her head. "Ice," she says, taking a deep breath, "honey, it helps if ya say the words."

Ice scratches his head, well and truly embarrassed. He has never allowed himself to imagine this moment—this simple, uncomplicated happiness—before, and it's still hard to now, but here they are, in this moment, and he wants to do this right. For himself, and for her. One last thing to settle.

So he draws her close, rests his face next to her moonlit hair and takes a deep breath, feeling the weight of years—birth and death, love and sorrow, memory and time—relax and recede into shadows.

"Marry me?"

For a moment, she doesn't react, and that old fear in Ice starts to ask if two months gone and the ten months before are too much for any girl—even one as extraordinary as Velma—to handle. Then she rests her arms around him, and her soft voice is like a sigh.

"Yes."

Ice closes his eyes. And there it is, he thinks, feeling that telltale prickle behind his eyes again. The woman who knows his faults and flaws, all the stupid things he's done to get in the way of their happiness, choosing him in spite of it all. All the reason in the world to come back.

"We'll get a little place," he says, and when Ice hears Tony come out of his mouth he's only a little surprised because he thinks he understands his old friend now more than he ever could have without his death. "It's gonna be perfect."

"Nothin's ever goin' to be perfect, Ice," Velma says, stroking her hand down his back. She giggles. "But maybe we can get pretty close."

And Ice remembers Jim's words.

It won't ever be perfect, boy-o. But maybe if ye keep tryin', ye can get as close as can be. Closer, even.

"We will," he says, tightening his grip. And even though it's not something unsentimental Ice would ever say, it's there, in the back of his mind. For Riff, for Tony—all the lost kids of the Upper West Side who couldn't. "We're gonna be different. I swear."

Velma reaches up and kisses him again, and Ice, pressing into her, doesn't know how he'd stayed away for two months. That strange, wandering part of his life, learning things he never would have understood here, he thinks as she slips her arms back down around him, seems very far away now.

"C'mon in, Ice," Velma murmurs, beckoning to her open window. "I've missed you."

As she turns to lead him inside, he catches her hand.

"John Kelly," he tells her quietly. "That's my name."

She smiles at him. "I know."

He shakes his head. "No, I mean—that's me. John." He gazes into her blue eyes. If anyone has to truly see him—the totality of who he is and has been, the good and the bad, the past and the present and every moment going forward—it's her.

Velma studies his face for a moment, then nods before she gives him a fond smile. "Everyone's still gonna call ya Ice, y'know."

He laughs, because he knows now that there are parts of him he will never leave behind; he is still Ice and always will be. Just as he will be a Jet til the day he dies, and just as he will love this breathtaking, beautiful girl until he is dust gone to the earth. "That's fine. You can call me that, too. Just—I figured if you're gonna marry me you oughta know who you're gettin'."

Velma draws him closer. "Jet—Ice—John—it don't matter what name you use," she whispers, the tenderness in her voice enough to bring tears to his eyes again, "it's you I love. Just you."

And as John follows her in through the window, he smiles, because that, he thinks, is what he has been looking for his whole life, and what he has found, finally, here where it was all along.

.

"John?"

When he opens his eyes, it's to see his mother bending over him.

"John, me boy, what're ye doin' here?"

John struggles up from his nest on the rooftop. He is nine years young and old beyond his time but right now he can't help but be happy, seeing the person he loves most in the world. "Ma?"

She shakes her head, a hint of a smile on her face. "Thought ye'd run off and scare me half te death, did ye?"

John, still half-asleep, shakes his head. "What time is it?"

His mother smiles. "Time to come home, son."

John shakes his head, still confused, and looks up. "But the sun—"

It's up, he realizes, and the sky is the bright blue of September, shot through with light. His mother, following his gaze, laughs.

"Aye, it came," she says, her blue eyes happy. "As it always does."

"Will it always?" he asks, feeling very small as he squints into the light. "Sometimes I forget."

"Aye," she says, smoothing his hair and putting her arms around him. "It'll always come back to ye. Like all good things. Sometimes it takes awhile, but if it means enough to ye, ye'll wait."

And right now, held in his mother's embrace, John thinks he can believe her, even if only for a moment. "Promise?"

"Yes," she says, her voice warm and gentle and so full of love that his heart soars. "I do."