Chapter 2: the Morning After

Piers chuckled to himself, watching the older man fall unconscious after asking him that question. Piers turned back to his book, deciding to wait for Chris to wake up again, but then he heard his phone buzz. Piers picked it up from the table next to his bed and slid his screen across. He had a text from one of the guys from last night, Marco.

*Hey buddy, Chris wake up yet?*

*Yeah thinks we actually did something but he blacked out *

*Oh damn that sucks. Just play along though, see how long it'll take until he figures it out *

*Sure thing met him last night in a café, although I don't really think he knew that was me in the club.*

*Damn no kidding? Dude I don't think he remembers ANYTHING after we spiked his drink last night!*

* He sure doesn't. First thing the old man asked me was "Did we fuck"*

*Uh… did you?*

*Umm… is that a yes or no?

* Cya later.*

Piers silenced the buzzer on his phone and turned it off, so incase either Andy or Marco decided to call it would go straight to voice mail. Piers set his phone down on the table next to the bed and went back to his book. Reading a few lines, Piers absently glanced over to his shemagh, remembering how he had gotten it in the first place.

December 24th, 2007 6:03 P.M.

Piers and his mom at been at home for three weeks after receiving news that Piers' dad had gone missing in action. Piers sat in the living room, watching the snow fall slowly to the ground. He sighed and watched as his breath fogged up the window in front of his face. He started writing words into the fog on the window, giving a written form to questions he couldn't bear to voice out loud.

*Where are you, Dad? How did this happen? Why hasn't anyone told us anything else or why you're gone?*

Eventually, Piers' mom came in to try to comfort him and get him to eat some dinner. He hadn't been eating well lately and he was starting to waste away, the stress from having no new information wearing down on him heavier every day. Piers wouldn't move, just sighing again and watching his breath fog up the window over the questions he had written. His mother tried for a few more minutes to get him to come eat, but she eventually gave up and just brought a bowl of soup in and sad it down next to Piers. It didn't seem like anything short of his father could snap Piers out of his depression, and his mother was starting to fear the worst.

6:42:04 P.M.

Piers was still sitting in the living room, staring at the window, waiting for someone to come home who never would. The soup next to him had gone cold and it was still left untouched. Now lining the window was dozens more questions, some starting to not be covered up by the warm fog of new breath on the window itself. Piers heard an engine coming down the road and perked up, hoping to see something that he never would.

In the next moment a pair of headlights appeared out of the gloom, the snow picking up and the headlights being the only visible thing more than two feet from the window. Piers couldn't even see the black box that was carried up to the door when he rushed from the window to answer. Piers grabbed the handle and turned it, swinging the door back while his heart began to beat faster out of eagerness.

Piers' heart sank through his chest; standing in front of him was an old family friend holding a black box that Piers had always dreaded seeing. His fears were confirmed by the solemn look on the woman's' face. Jill Valentine was holding the last belongings that their father had with him before he went missing. Jill gave Piers a sympathetic look but he wouldn't acknowledge it. He let Jill push past him into the house and called for his mother, telling her that Jill was here.

Jill walked with Piers' mother into the living room, taking a seat on the couch to deliver the news. Piers stood nearby, not wanting to meet Jill's eyes but instead staying focused on the box. After a minute or so of talking, giving praise and all that other crap nobody ever cares to hear after someone dies, Jill opened the box. Piers was almost overcome by grief and tears pricked the corners of his vision as he stared at the shemagh his father always- used, to wear. Jill saw Piers all but ready to break down, standing at the edges of her vision. She set it down and walked over to him, giving him a reassuring hug.

*Hey, it will all be OK Piers. Just remember what things used to be like, the impact he made OK? Don't ever let anyone tell you he wasn't a good man, he saved a lot of people from much… more dire situations.*

Piers cringed back when she said that. How much more dire could it be for anyone other than to be reported M.I.A. and have no sign of them for almost a month before they were apparently declared as dead? Piers pulled himself from her grasp and went up to his room. Jill didn't do anything, just watched as Piers stormed away from her to deal with his grief in his own way. Jill looked to his mother and she looked to be in much the same way, but she was silently sobbing to herself, knowing that the news they had been hoping to never get was finally here.

Jill stayed for another hour or so, talking with Piers' mom to help as much as she could. After that she left without the box, giving as much of a heartfelt goodbye to them as she could, saying that she would check in from time to time. Piers' mom stayed in the living room for a moment, watching Jill leave. After Jill had left she took the box, making sure to keep the shemagh neatly inside of it, and made the agonizing journey up to Piers' room.

Opening the door Mrs. Nivans found Piers sitting on his chair by the desk his father had built for him. The desk was made from the wood of an oak tree, and Piers' dad had hand crafted him that desk as a birthday present last year. Piers was using the chair to sit next to his own bedroom window, arms crossed and rested on the ledge next to it, staring out into nowhere. His mom inched closer, trying not to startle him and saw even more questions written onto window's fog.

*Why Dad? Why didn't you tell us what was going to happen? Why wouldn't you just leave and come back?*

Piers' mom moved forward, setting the box down on the desk next to Piers. He ignored her, didn't even acknowledge her when she shook his shoulder. So Mrs. Nivans left the room, leaving her son to deal with everything how he would.

8:39:01 P.M.

Sitting at the window for over an hour Piers finally decided to manage a glance to the box that contained something Piers never thought he would see without his father. He opened it and stared at the shemagh. The color of a forest, something his father always used on his missions, and now there was nothing left for it to camouflage. Piers stared at it for a moment, seeming to comprehend more about it than anyone ever thought he would be able to. Piers covered the shemagh back up inside of the black box, letting the tears roll down his face as he buried his head in his arms. Sometime that night, Piers drifted off into a fitful sleep filled with nightmares of what could have happened, and dreams of the one person he would never see again.

7:32:41 A.M. 25th December, 2007

Piers woke up in the morning on his bed, momentarily forgetting about the events of the night before. Piers thought everything that just been a terrible dream, and then his eyes fell on the box sitting on his desk. Piers' heart sank again, and he fell into a depression that his mother wasn't able to break. Piers ate a little, but he wouldn't talk to his mother or acknowledge her whenever she spoke to him.

The next two days went the same; Piers continued to ignore his mother and his moods seemed to become darker and darker. Piers spent increasingly longer amounts of time staring at the windows and scrawling questions into the fog that would never be answered.

8:31:59 P.M. 27th December, 2007

Piers had been sitting at home, staring at the box containing his father's shemagh. His mom at gone out to pick up some things they needed, but that had been over two hours ago, and she should have been back by now. Piers heard a ring at the door and slowly got up, making his way to the bottom of the stairs and eventually, the door.

Opening the door, Piers' face contorted with confusion. Jill was standing there again, a tear threatening to fall from her left eye as a blizzard was raging during the night. She asked Piers if she could come in, and he didn't reply verbally but instead moved aside and motioned for her to come in. As she did Piers started to wonder why Jill was coming to his house so late at night.

Piers watched her as she stooped down to balance on the balls of her feet, to be a little lower to Piers considering she was over a foot taller than him. Piers continued to look at her in confusion and eventually Jill drew him into a hug, which brought a surprised gasp from Piers, the first noise he had made in almost three days. Then Jill delivered the news that broke Piers even further.

*Piers… I'm sorry your mom she's… she's gone…*

At first Piers didn't even register the words Jill had said. Then it hit him, she was saying that his mom was gone. First his dad is reported missing and they get no information other than he is labeled as dead after three weeks, and now, not even a week after that, his mom dies too. Jill kept Piers in a hug for a while, even when he tried to break away from her. After Piers was able to get free he went up to his room, burying his face into his pillow and letting all his bottled up grief flow freely from his eyes. Jill came up after about five minutes, standing at the door way and just watching Piers.

After everything was done, Jill did as much as she could to help Piers. She offered to take him in and care for him, but eventually he was forced into foster care, and Jill couldn't do anything other than watch in dismay. Piers spent the rest of the time he had until he could get out of foster care moving from home to home. He never made friends with anyone, keeping to himself as much as he could which caused him to move homes so much. He always kept the shemagh with him, always wearing it around his neck. In one of the homes, some kid had decided it would be funny to tear a piece of it off, and Piers had broken his arm for it. He was immediately moved to a different foster home and from then on everyone was warned.

*If anyone messes with his scarf, they aren't going to like what happens.*

On his eighteenth birthday Piers left the foster system. He got by doing odd jobs for the next few years, doing whatever he could when he could. Whenever he had extra money lying around he would head to a shooting range to vent his grief and remember the days that his life used to be like, when his dad was still around. After the first few years Piers started going around to clubs, dancing as an actual job rather than just doing whatever came his way. It seemed like his life couldn't get any better until he had met Chris in the café, and it all seemed just a little bit brighter.

oOoOoOoOo

Piers kept looking at the shemagh, still lost in his memories when he decided to get up for the day and try to wash it all away. Piers climbed out of the bed as softly as he could, so he didn't wake up Chris and headed into the bathroom. Piers turned on the shower and waited for it to get hot. Stepping in Piers let the steaming water run down his body, washing away the worries and disparities if only for a moment. Piers eventually relaxed a little and slid down to sit in the tub, the shower still running and beating down on his entire body as he sat there.

Piers sobbed silently to himself, letting the grief overcome him for a rare moment. He had never spoken to anyone about it all, not even Jill on the night that she came to tell him the news. Piers rested his head in his hands, letting his tears mix in with the hot water running down his body to drain out of the tub. Piers sat in there for several minutes, and then turned the shower off to step out of his and towel off.

Piers looked at himself in the mirror. The circles under his eyes were a little darker today, and his eyes were red, obvious signs that he had been crying. Those would be gone soon enough though, replaced with the shroud that he kept over himself, keeping anyone else from ever looking in. Piers sighed, pushing back from the mirror and stepping out of the bathroom, wrapping a towel around himself. He slowly walked over to the bed, sitting down on the edge of it and looking at the shemagh again, becoming immersed in his own memories like they were alive before him.

Piers kept looking, never tearing his vision away from the one item he had left from the man he had always looked up to. He suddenly felt a trembling hand on his shoulder and turned around to see what it was. Piers had almost forgotten that there was someone else in the room. Chris had his eyes shut tightly, one hand gripping his head and the other one trembling on Piers' shoulder. Piers looked at him a moment before Chris started trying to speak.

"W-what the hell happened last night?" Chris felt like he was about to vomit.

Piers smiled wryly. "What, didn't get enough of me last night, that was a pretty rough ride wasn't it?"

Chris forced and eye open to look at Piers. "What are you talking about? What happened last night, who are you?"

Piers turned around more fully and Chris' face flushed, seeing Piers' exposed chest. "What, was it really that great that you just forgot about everything?"

Chris shook his head in response. "I really had no idea what you are talking about."

Piers shook his head, seeing the anguished look on Chris' face he decided to tell him what happened. "Well, ok fine. You're friends brought you up to a club and spiked your drink. You remember me from the café?"

Chris nodded in response, able to remember most of the conversation the two of them had had the night before. Piers smiled and swung his legs up onto the bed, Chris flinching back a little when he realized Piers had on nothing but a towel. Piers chuckled as Chris continued to clutch his head at the raging headache coursing through him.

"Oh don't worry, I won't do anything you don't ask for."

Chris groaned. "Ugh, what the hell did we do?"

Piers smiled. "Nothing, actually, your friends spiked your drink and decided to play a prank on you."

Chris groaned again. "I'm going to kick their asses the next time I see them."

Piers laughed a little and got up, walking away to go get Chris some stuff to help with his headache. Chris waited a few agonizing minutes while his headache continued to rage before Piers came back in. As Chris watched Piers came over and set some water and a few pills down next to him, then moved to the other side of the room and let the towel drop, revealing the rest of him that Chris hadn't seen yet. Chris flushed red and turned his head away, occupying himself with the water and pills.

Chris downed them and turned back around, seeing that Piers was now fully clothed. Piers didn't say anything to Chris, just dropped back down into the bed next to him. Chris watched with his one open eye as Piers absorbed himself back into a book. It was some kind of military book but Chris couldn't make out much with his bitch of a headache, and then he noticed something on the other side of the room, on an oak desk next to Piers.

Chris motioned to it and grabbed Piers' attention from the book. "W-what's that?"

Piers looked to where he was pointing and sighed, closing his book and turning back to Chris. "It's… it's a memory of something I used to see."