I don't own the characters or the show. Also, I dunno if I should mention this separately, but I keep making references to lines from the show etc. In this chapter, I even have Piper say something that Danielle said. I hope this doesn't constitute plagiarism: I mean it completely as a tribute! Finally, I don't own either The Breakfast Club or The Godfather (not even on DVD! What kind of person am I?).
He didn't see Parker until that evening. Because it was Saturday, he didn't have to meet Adonay and Daniel, so he spent most of the day playing with the kids and planning what he was going to say to Parker. He hadn't made much progress by the time the kids had been called away for the evening.
The truth was, he'd been thinking more about Annie. The guilt that he'd forced away had been coursing through him. He remembered the first time he'd killed someone better even than he remembered what he'd had for breakfast that morning. Long ago, he'd come to the conclusion that stealing another person's life was about the worst thing you could do – even if that person shared no such belief. Surprisingly, he wasn't concerned about the ethics. No, what bothered him were the emotions that plagued you for months and years afterwards. I was so mad that I couldn't talk to you. Despite pretending he hadn't heard her, he had understood everything Annie had said, and he wished more than anything that he could go back to the day he left and just talk to her for an hour. Who was he to decide that his problems took so much precedence over hers that he couldn't just slow down for one freaking hour?
Unlike before, though, the guilt was tempered with a sense of purpose. After a month of wringing his hands, he was ready to be Auggie again. He was going to work out whatever this thing with Parker was, he was going to take action, he was going to do actual work again, he was going to – goddamit! – he was going to move that stupid chair away from the door and find some proper shoes before all his toenails fell off.
Grumbling to himself, Auggie shunted the chair off to the right then promptly flopped down into it. He tried again to think of how he should begin his talk with Parker. It was weird that he couldn't work it out: he had always been good at talking problems through. Then again, there was a lot more at stake here than a failed relationship, and he didn't fancy the painful talk of Billy that would come with a discussion of his and Parker's situation. That's what had really started this, wasn't it? Of course, Parker was sharp and ambitious and funny and, he could tell, beautiful, but so were all the women he flirted with and inevitably let slip away. Since setting out for Eritrea, he'd kept asking himself what made him call his fling with Parker love, and every time he shied away from their shared past that reared up in answer. It sounded so morbid, but in the end, the thing that made him so afraid of letting Parker go was his dead army buddy. He had only just begun to remember that there were a hell of a lot of good memories in his past to balance the bad ones he'd tried so hard to forget. So when his link to that world had flown off to Africa, he'd followed her here and called it love. To a certain extent, he hadn't been lying. But he loved the wrong things about her: they were all things that were left over from a Parker he used to know. He didn't love her laugh or the way he could always recognize when she was around or the sound her heels made – woah, wait a second: Parker never wore heels! He viciously dug his toes into the dust wondering what shoes had to do with any of this.
He breathed in a lungful of dry, spicy air, and smoothed the dust back over the little craters his toes had made. This melancholy reflection was all well and good, but how the hell was he going to talk to Parker about it? She didn't deserve to be told that he was basically hung up on a memory. Would she even want him to leave? He'd just been assuming that her feelings ran along sort of the same line as his did. What an ass he was! Five years! Tikrit would never be far enough away for him to fully recover, but he had hoped that at some point it would cease being his life and just become his past. He couldn't keep screwing up other peoples' lives because he was bad at dealing with his own problems.
He got up and paced outside, feeling the grit crunch in on itself as he stepped on it. The sun bathed the back of his neck and hands, and he marveled at how his brain still recognized the feeling of light even as his eyes refused to capture it. He concentrated on these small, physical things, and felt some of the tension spiral out of his muscles. He laid his fingertips on the gritty wall of the hut, and began circling the tiny space that had been his home for the past month and a half. He still didn't know what he would say to Parker, but obviously agonizing over it was not going to do him any good.
He'd done ten and a half circuits when a hand on his chest stopped him.
"Aug, how long have you been pacing?" Parker's soft voice sounded concerned, but was tinged with fond amusement. It made him smile: he might not love her, but he definitely did like her.
"I've done ten and a half laps. I might have made it to a mile if you hadn't come along."
"I'm guessing this pacing is about earlier and not some sudden fitness craze…"
He sucked in a breath. This was the perfect segue. Now or never; come on, August say something! Before he could, though, he was enveloped in one of Parker's light hugs. He squeezed her back quickly, but then pulled away.
"Hey Parker," he paused searching with all his senses for her eyes. If he was going to do this, he was at least going to look at her straight on.
He heard a breath as she let out the tiniest of sighs. "It's time isn't it? To talk? I didn't know how to begin, so I was waiting."
He cocked his head, and smiled a sad and surprised smile. "Am I that obvious?"
"Not at all. We're more alike than you give us credit for. Well, aside from the jazz. If I'm right, I've been wondering the same thing you have for the past three weeks."
He held his breath. What if she'd completely misread him? That would make this conversation even more painful than it was already going to be. Tentatively, he asked, "So tell me, miss psychic, what have I been wondering?" Damnit – did that sound like flirting? Did he have only one mode of communication all of a sudden?
There was a pause, and he guessed she was looking at him, trying as he was to find where to begin. So what she said next kind of threw him off. "Follow me, OK?"
He decided not to argue. He took her arm and let her lead him. Their steps moved from the packed earth of the road onto shifting dirt littered with stones and occasional scrub. It was sharp in places, but he liked the feeling that Parker was guiding him, steering him through the worst bits. They wound their way over what Auggie could only guess was scrubland until the air dampened and he could hear water swishing between banks. Parker slowed to a stop beside him, and they stood for a minute or two in the hypnotic thrall of the flowing water. The sun was pooling on the ground now: Auggie could feel it on his feet. He thought for one crazy moment that Parker had brought him to watch the sunset.
She suddenly spoke, "This is my favorite spot. The sunset is always spectacular." She had brought him to watch the sunset! Auggie laughed and squeezed Piper's hand.
"I come out here to think, and I realized I wanted you to see it how I do. We're facing a river that's a sort of brownish gray, and there's this really old and twisted tree on the other side. Did you know, Auggie, that ten years ago nobody came here because it smelled of death? They'd dump in bodies from the fighting, and the people in this village would retrieve them and give them a proper burial. It's clean enough now for the women to wash clothes here." She paused, and Auggie waited, letting her sort out what she needed to say. "Geez, listen to me – when I'm not sure what to say I get all morbidly poetic," she half-laughed, "I just – I dunno – I like this spot. Lots of people read the news and feel hopeless for places like Eritrea. They'd come here and see the harsh desert and the muddy water. I see a beautiful sunset and a river that continues to flow even after being clogged for 30 years with corpses. It's a land that's struggling, but at least it's still doing something. I want to do something too, you know?" She paused then added very quietly, "I'm done just sitting around being sad."
"Yeah, I do know." Auggie replied quietly. She was telling him why she'd come: she needed to help, to hope that what she was doing was the something that the village needed.
"That's what makes you better than me. You know you're helping even when you're just teaching kids English. I have to be in control – see all the pieces moving and meshing and finally falling into place…" he trailed off, surprised that Parker's confused musings had prompted this insight that he himself hadn't realized until now.
"Not better," she replied quietly, "different. You need action; I need calm. We might be fighting different battles, Aug, but they're both the right battles to fight."
He smiled over at her, "Thanks for that. Sometimes I'm not sure myself."
"But at the end of the day, you know exactly why you do what you do. It's why you're leaving." She said it calmly, almost with relief. Auggie had to marvel for a second: she'd just managed in three minutes to explain to him what he hadn't been able to figure out in three weeks.
"You know, I had this whole thing about Billy prepared. I agonized about it all day," he mused.
Parker laughed sadly, "Oh sure, he's in there as well somewhere. He always will be, won't he?"
"I guess that with us he will be, yeah." They stood quietly as the last of the sun dribbled into the river and was washed away. Something occurred to Auggie suddenly that made his heart lift for the first time since coming out to the river.
"Hey, you said always! Does this mean we're going to do the whole we-can-still-be-friends thing? You know, that rarely works out."
Parker laughed. "Dude, you have the best movie collection I've ever seen. When I get back, I'm coming over whether you like it or not." By now they'd begun to walk back, and she pulled him out of the way of a scrub bush.
"Oh, well, if you just use me for movies, it'll probably be okay." He smiled, deciding that this was how breakups should always work. He actually felt better around Parker than he had for the entire six weeks he'd been here.
She paused, and for some reason Auggie knew the next thing out of her mouth was going to cause him trouble. "Though I guess I'll have to call well in advance if I ever want to see The Breakfast Club. Something tells me Annie Walker is more into things like The Godfather."
Auggie looked over at her weirdly. "What's Annie got to do with this? How do you even know if she uses me for movies too?"
They stopped beside the hut door, and Piper said with a smirk in her voice, "Aug, I might not be a spy like you, but your voice changes a little when you talk to her on that long-distance phone of yours."
Auggie frowned, "Sure it does. I always have to yell into that thing because the reception's so bad." If they'd been cartoon characters, he just knew that his avatar would be making shifty eyes right around now.
Parker evidently decided to have mercy on his frazzled brain because she let it slide, instead saying, "So what're you going to do now?"
"I dunno," Auggie said. He hadn't really planned beyond The Talk, and it turned out that Parker had totally beaten him to that. "I mean, I can't just leave Adonay and Daniel half way through their course…"
"If you can stand another month here, I know it would mean the world to them," she sounded hopeful, and Auggie knew it was for the boys not for some weird delusion of their continuing relationship. He was going to agree, but stopped short.
"I guess I can probably stay one more month, but I should check in with Joan first. You know, I've been gone a while…"
"Sure, sure. Go call Annie. Make sure she's not going to die without you. I'm going to go lock up the school," Piper said, turning away with a smile in her voice.
Auggie just stood there. Seriously, was she really a psychic? He shook his head. There wasn't even a way he could call Joan if he wanted to. He hadn't memorized her number. Feeling slightly confused but mostly happier than he had in a while, Auggie made his way inside to call Annie for the second time that day.
AN: Wow! Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry! I left everyone in the lurch for a long time there. I wasn't angry, sad, discouraged, or dead: I'm just really really lazy. So I hope this chapter is worth it... I can never tell because all my chapters are un-beta'ed. If you catch me calling Parker Piper, please let me know. For some reason I kept typing Piper (irony I know!). Do Parker's comments make sense? I tried, but sometimes stuff that makes sense to me just looks like gibberish to other people. Do you think I was too harsh on Parker (with the whole Billy thing)? Too harsh on Auggie (with his whole I-need-to-sort-out-my-problems)? Don't worry! That's not at all what I think about him: it's what HE thinks. Finally, I apologize for the lack of conflict... I tried at first, but I've just accepted the fact that I can't stand people being mad in real life and so cannot create anger in the fictitious world no matter how hard I try.
Also: THANK YOU FOR THE REVIEWS! THEY MAKE ME SMILE INSIDE and also outside! And to iwatchiwonder: after much pondering, I've BS'd an excuse as to why Auggie hates the coffee: although Eritrea produces top-quality coffee for export, the village where they live is too poor to actually hang on to any of it and has to make do with whatever it is they give him.