Falling Through the Cracks
by Aimme,
with touches by My Note Book
Summary: His mask was flawless. His walls were perfectly structured. Protection and cautionary containment at its finest. Even a perfect pretend held fractures, though, and no matter how strong his glue, under the right circumstances, glue cracked and had to be gutted and filled in again.
Author's Note: Please see the first chapter for all thorough disclaimers, warnings, and notations made by the author(s).
I know you all probably wanted to hear more about the twins, but in the words of Miyagi from The Karate Kid (the original one), "Patience, Daniel-san, patience." We return to the twins soon, I promise. There's a lot of drama(tics) in this chapter, but the show is a comedic drama...
BlackKeys96, thanks for your review! Your thoughts were a pleasure to read, and totally awesome. I am interested by what you said about a line in the last chapter being like a double-meaning for what is going on with him right now. Would you care to elaborate on that thought, if you can? I would love to hear more! And you are right, the way he talks inside his head says that he is not the idiot everyone thinks he is. In chapter 5, he said, "Contrary to fooled opinion, I'm not an idiot." (I added the emphasis here to make that stand out more in this context as we are discussing this.) The questions, I suppose, are why he thinks he has to hide or why he pretends to be an idiot? Is he protecting someone or himself? Does it have to do with Cody? If so, what it is about Cody? Is it about, perhaps, making his brother look better so Cody can obtain all those dreams of his since Zack knows he would never come close himself to such a meaningful, purposeful, impacting life like his brother would have if Cody can manage to get this or get that (like, get into a top Ivy League school)? As I continue writing, these and other questions will be pondered and explored. I do not know what will be in this story, particularly, but I plan on writing more stories after this one. And also, I wanted to note that it is true—it is sad how the way he talks in his head, showing that he is not an idiot, reveals how well his mask is since everyone is so thoroughly fooled. Once more, why is it and what does it all go back to? Maybe we will find out in FTtC, but if not, there will be other stories coming along eventually! Thanks so much for your review; My Note Book and I appreciated it greatly!
On to the next part, then...
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Chapter Eight - Therefore Death Could Not Take Him Away
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"When you are sorrowful, look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight." -Kahlil Gibran
Her distress ran so deeply, and so intensely keen, that there was not a shred of her brain energy devoted to her surroundings, but auto-pilot for her legs took the rest of her body through the halls on a headlong rush for the infirmary. Her subconscious drew her to the destination of her course, while her conscious filled her head with terrifying scenarios. The broken record of thoughts skipping in her head was the catalyst for the horror and the desire to simply wake up which pounded through her veins with every frightened beat of her heart.
How could this have happened? How could this be? Was this not some crazy dream she would surely wake from? When would she open her eyes to her cabin ceiling and London's insults about her chicken clock, or wake up in the storm shelter at home to find out the last week had been some kind of trauma-induced nightmare? The logical side of her mind said nothing of the sort was going on, that she was not dreaming and there would be no waking up this time. She wanted to silence that part of her mind…she wanted to silence every part of her mind, for all the horrible thoughts spinning like twisters over her rattled wits.
Bailey shivered, but the tremors running through her were more from her trembling heart than a chill on the air.
Goose bumps decorated her arms, though, as tiny hairs stood on end and a lack of warmth swept across her body, her blood feeling as though it was frozen yet it remained rushing through pathways under her chilled skin. Adrenaline kept her heart pulsating a drumbeat which could rival the intense rhythm and firm tone of Indian war drums, but the way the garrison of her innermost being ached deeply in her chest reminded her that her heart had stopped already and would not thrum with life until this nightmare had faded away.
But would it?
Tears coursed down sun-kissed cheeks, trickling out from hazel eyes. The water of emotion clung to the contours of her expression, wetting her face and clumping her eyelashes together. Misery embraced every aspect of her frame, adhering sharply to her attentions. Is this what coming undone looked like, what your world falling apart feels like?
"Bailey, are you alright? You look as though someone has died. Is this about the tornado? Did it get Porkers?" Mr. Moseby's voice halted the girl's weeping course for the infirmary as he briefly touched her arm to garner her attention.
"No, Mr. Moseby," Bailey answered, distractedly, stumbling over her thought and her words, "I'm not… I… well, that is… um…" She looked away, trying to connect a coherent explanation in her head and transcribe it to her tongue so she could tell him about Zack.
She knew that, deep beneath everything else, the ship manager truly cared about the oldest twin (both of them, for that matter), and that no matter how angry, frustrated, exasperated, or plain overborne with the teenager he got, there was a soft spot deep beneath all the other gruff exteriors reserved for Zack (and Cody, too). How could she tell him about the atrocity bearing down upon the twins even while they stood here, him awaiting an explanation and her trying to assemble one? It was unthinkable, but the whole situation was that and she did not think she could survive thinking about it.
Half of her mind had magically abandoned her; half of her brain had become a giant mass of useless protoplasmic fibres.
A hand upon her trembling right shoulder caused her eyes, which had fallen away, to rise to meet a gaze filled to the brim and overflowing with concern and understanding and gentility.
"Bailey, dear, what is it?" The voice was mild and prodded with the softest touch, but the question filled her ears, ringing and echoing and clogging them. How to tell?
'Should I tell?' She asked herself, her mind spinning upon the wheels of questions she struggled to unwind, determine, process, and answer. She knew millions of answers, never faltered; she simply raised her hand -or sometimes, did not- and spouted off at the mile-a-minute way her brain spun its wheels and regurgitated the answers she had memorized. Here, there was nothing to memorize and no handy textbook to help her articulate what went into her brain and put it back out once more for others seeking the end to a question.
She stared into Moseby's chocolate browns and saw the genteel and calm look which quietly prompted her to answer, and she knew…
'I must.'
She swallowed solidly, her own hazels staring hard between the two eyes locked upon hers.
'If I don't tell him, then who will? If not me, then why not me? Besides…I have always been good at telling people these kinds of things. Goose-darnit!' She paused to wonder if it was a good thing or not. 'Stay on track. I must tell. Oh feathers…I have to tell him. Now.'
Already staring him straight in the eye, Bailey attempted to tell him about the awful news concerning a certain older twin.
"Well, Mr. Moseby…Zack is…he, uh…um…" Bailey trailed off, her eyes drifting off towards the ground. How could she regurgitate such a horrible pronouncement? Another tear tracked down her face, falling from crestfallen eyes and tracing tear-stained cheeks with a doting, nigh-mockingly gentle, finger.
Before she could attempt to finish her horrendous thought, Mr. Moseby interrupted the recitation.
"What did he do?" the ship manager's voice asked, and if her gaze had been raised so she could have seen, she would have noted the suddenly narrowed gaze; as it was, all she knew was what she heard—and she heard that he had used The Tone.
Bailey lifted her gaze, now seeing the slanted eyes boring into hers, and tears slowly made their way, renewed, down her face. Picking back up her courage, she ignored the implication of the other's words and tried to ignore the implication of her own as she continued, taking in a deep breath to cruelly give a piece of life -part of her own precious one, no less, when there was already a life being taken- to the death knell dying to bear down on them.
"Mr. Moseby, something awful has happened…someone very close to m-I mean, both of us, is in pain. Very bad pain." 'Fatal pain,' her oh-so-helpful mass of protoplasmic fibres added for her. "What I mean to tell…is that…well, it is that… that is… what I mean, is that Zack… He is…" Bailey took a moment to get herself back together, for her voice kept hitching and scratching and her tongue stumbling over the words as her chin trembled terribly. Her heart kept screaming that she could not do it. She could not, she could not.
She closed her eyes against the onslaught volleying inside of her, a groundswell determined to bleed her dry, drown her outright, and cast her aside like the useless walking system of organs she was. She swiped a hand across her face, soaked by sorrow and pain and pieces of a breaking, overborne heart.
She inhaled another deep breath into aching lungs—a side-effect -literally- of her aching heart, which resided in close proximity to the air sacs holding a gas which would breathe upon the air outside of her no more deeply dreaded words than ones pronouncing certain death.
Unveiling hazel depths of fatality-induced pain, she looked back once more into deep browns and found nothing but concern and, now, worry. Mr. Moseby had fallen silent, apparently deciding not to say anything, which was something off and rather weird in and of itself, but something for which she was grateful. He must have understood that something was terribly -oh-so-terribly- wrong and realised it would be better to say nothing, which let her find her thoughts and make half-hearted, but insistent, attempts at assembling them.
"He is…dying," she managed out the harsh word. She winced internally and felt part of her weep stronger than ever at the pronouncement, a deep keening sound deep within her which threatened to split her body down the middle with its ferocity and let her bleed out, until all of her internality had spilt everywhere across the clean, neat print of the traditional carpet.
Bailey's words hung, suspended indefinitely, always, forevermore, in the air before they finally sunk into the depths of fast-paced hearts exploding with dread and terror and intense pain.
"He's WHAT?" Mr. Moseby suddenly screeched and Bailey winced more pronouncedly, and the man appeared not to care how passengers quickly rushed by, scared by the manager's precipitous outburst.
Bailey stood, frozen to the carpet, barely able to breathe with frozen air and frozen lungs and frozen heart, shell-shocked and bowled over by this sudden turn of events; a jump backwards was part of her body's initial reaction to the startle, but not one her brain registered or seemed to allow. Her nerves shot, her heart raced, gushing blood throughout veins and arteries and capillaries in pristine condition, but she could not move again.
She was not afraid of him, but adrenaline had exploded through her at his sudden screech and the rapid and abrupt and far too keen outburst of both had made her body jolt. Now her own overbearing emotions and way too put upon body had become melded to the floor in the hallway of a ship which had given her a family…and had now, apparently, become the deathbed of one of the members of the family it had provided her.
More than that, though, she had her suspicions and hopes that before too much time, a few years or so, Zack would be her affine. Surely her and Cody were headed to the altar in eventuality, right? So, how could she lose Zack before he had become that? She felt a strange possessiveness steal over her, a part of her heart which said he was hers, a tightfisted covetousness which had nothing to do with romance and everything to do with simply pure and true amorevolous feelings for one she realised meant more than only friend, and therefore death could not take him away.
"What happened? When? Where?" Mr. Moseby was talking so fast, it was hard for Bailey to understand him. Panic had set into his frame, sheer, unprecedented horror written across his stricken features.
She always knew he cared for Zack. They all did.
"I don't know much yet, Mr. Moseby," she began, her thoughts awhirl still as she tried to organise some semblance of order in her muddled brain. "Woody saw Cody dragging Zack through the halls, on their way towards the infirmary. There was a lot of blood all over Zack, and he looked…pale, worn, tired…" 'Dying,' her brain supplied. "So out of it. And Cody had blood all over on his arms, too."
"Had what all over his arms?" the horror, the silent plea to be mistaken, was unmistakeable in that stricken tone.
"Blood."
Manager though he was, Mr. Moseby did not seem to notice or care about the scene they were making or the passengers giving them a wide berth. He looked frantic, scared even. He began to pace back and forth, creating an even wider circle around them as people went out of their way to avoid the agitated alopecic man.
"Does anyone else know?" the mouth at the bow of the restless frame spouted as it moved to and fro in its beeline, repetitious circuit of the room.
"Yes," Bailey began, but before she could elaborate about who, the study in apprehension voiced the predictable question.
"Who?" he asked, throwing a plough-sized wrench into his pacing, drawing up short to cast her a searing look.
"Um," she stumbled over her thought, trying to construct order in her now demolished sense of construction and order in her studious brain. "As you know, Woody knows, and I'm sure that London should know by now. I'm not exactly sure how many people know by this time, however," she answered to the best of her ability, but her scattered stability and tidiness amongst the trappings of her mind did little to assist her mouth or most of her motor skills.
One of them dying? They might as well all be useless, pathetic blobs of listlessness, lacking any of the necessary components to constitute 'living' and 'being alive' since one of them was about to be robbed of all that.
Yes, she had officially dropped all of her caring about most everything else. She itched now, only, to get to the infirmary, certain that Cody was an emotional wreck—and she was certain he was well within his right to be.
His brother was dying.
Zack was leaving them.
Now, he had done plenty of mean things, made a nuisance of himself up one side and down the other lots of times, but now…now he had never made such an absolute jerk out of himself as he was right now.
How dare he! He could not leave. He could not die. Surely he knew there were rules about that!
Granted, Zack hardly cared for rules…except for ones about being a wingman, or when it came right down to being there for his brother, or the one about getting what he wants because he wants it. But dying would not accomplish the keeping of any of these exception-rules. What use did he have to go off and die on them? It served no purpose whatsoever.
Bailey knew she was being ludicrous, ridiculous, outrageous…but her grief-stricken mind stuck steadfastly and stubbornly to anything else than accepting and submitting to reality.
Reality could go hang itself.
It deserved to die. Not her affine—er, Cody's brother.
Still shocked over the way her life had completely gone off the rails and had crashed beyond recognition in a twisting pile of smoke and heat and dangerous metal (like that train wreck at the end of that children's fantasy series), she stepped slightly forward in an attempt to let the thought in her mind step out from her mouth. "I need to go and see them," she stated as another tear coursed down her right cheek, heartache scalding her chest all the way up her throat.
She wanted to break down and sob her heart out; that is, until the ember blazing inside her had choked out on the tide of tears and had washed away from her. It hurt too much.
"Alright," Mr. Moseby waved offhandedly, reaching a hand inside of his jacket. "I will go and call Carey. She needs to know." His resigned tone made her want to keen loudly and curl up in a little ball, rocking back and forth on the flood awash inside of her.
"Wait, Mr. Moseby," she managed out, hiccupping slightly in her attempts to control her emotions and her voice at the same time. "I think Cody should t-tell her."
He was, after all, her son. And Zack was his brother. Was it not appropriate that one brother give the atrocious news about another brother to the soon-to-be grief-riddled, shattered mother?
Moseby paused, casting the tear-stained farm-girl a dry-eyed look, but the depth of heartache deep within his gaze wrenched her own heart tightly inside of her.
"You are right," he stated, drawing his words out slowly, a thoughtful purse to his lips and pucker to his brow. He seemed as though to agree with her, but then a thought, connecting painfully and dreadfully sluggishly, within his mind drew out his response, "But…Cody already has so much to deal with right now," he rationalized, a slight tremor to his voice speaking thousands of more words than the ones breathed upon the air. "I do not think he will be able to handle telling her. To be dealing with the shock of it right now, and add on top of that a mother's grief when he is her son as well? He needs time. He needs to take this all in, and he should not have to find a way to handle her initial reaction on top of trying to keep his own head and keep himself together enough as he is."
They both knew how emotional Cody could get…how extremely sensitive he was. And that when something was wrong with him, it was everywhere, all around outside of him, at once. It was blatant and in everyone's face, especially his. He was as transparent as crystal glass, and his emotions just as fragile. He would be too distraught to get through a conversation with their mother, having to pronounce words he surely had not come to even being ready to acknowledge yet.
He would never be able to say those three words. He would never be able to handle it. They would simply have two hysterical people on their hands, and Cody's conversation with Carey would hold no semblance of keeping together. The fallout would be enough just for him—he could not handle their mother going to pieces when he had shattered beyond recognition or repair himself naught moments before.
It would be best if Moseby gave the initial call, and let Cody grasp at the straws of his own fragmented life. Cody would choke to his death first on the words, "Zack is dying," before he would give them life and breath and ear for their mother. He would be a wreck, and could not think for anyone else to save his life.
All of these facts and truths and realities spread thin on the thick, stuffy air between the two devastated people who shared little more in common with each other than their mutual connection with the twins.
Moseby issued a firm nod. "I will go ahead and call Carey. Cody can talk to her later, but let me give her this…dreadful news…about…oh wretched mother of death knell!" and before Bailey could process what had happened, Moseby was hurrying off, slightly ducked over as he dug out his cellphone, but not before she had caught the sheer horror that had blossomed in his aching eyes.
"Mr. Moseby!" she called after him, taking a step in his direction. There was a certain lack of closure to their abruptly terminated conversation.
"She will most likely want to come aboard!" Moseby called back as he slipped outside, headed for the railing of the ship. "I'll call Mr. Tipton too."
"Alright," Bailey replied weakly, swiping a hand at her wet face. "I…I'm going to go on, and-and see Cody."
She saw Moseby cast her a quick glance over his shoulder, a short nod as he placed the phone to his ear. "I'll follow after I'm done making these calls."
She had never heard Moseby's voice shake that much, but the resignation and weariness therein made her want to throw something against the wall and scream that it could not be…it simply could not be.
"Okay," she managed out simply, turning away, trying to hold her trembling self together.
"The great gift of family life is to be intimately acquainted with people you might never even introduce yourself to, had life not done it for you." -Kendall Hailey
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Author's Note: Yay! Drama! -cough- Okay, but seriously, I do promise that before the end of the story, everyone will come to their senses. Should they all gang up on Woody and hang him over the ocean by his toes? No? Too drastic? How about no food but cauliflower, brussel sprouts, and broccoli for a whole day? Too cruel? Rats... Anyway, I cannot wait until Bailey gets to the infirmary. That will be interesting. -evil grin- Poor twins... Anyway, are you all tired of this story yet? I tell you something, we had not originally planned on writing so much. Truthfully, the first chapter could have been a stand-alone, one-shot.
Further notes about the chapter:
In Lost at Sea, Cody says the brain is a "mass of protoplasmic fibers," but he does not get past that because Zack interrupts him with a cough and a pointed look. Thus, that is where that part with Bailey comes from. If I spelled it wrong, that is my mistake. I tried to assure, however, that I got it right. In the words of Riley Poole, though, "I'm no expert."
You know how Moseby always has some off-the-wall expression, like "Big Ben!" and "Holy Makeover!" et cetera? Yeah, I wanted to give him another one. So we have "wretched mother of death knell," and even though it is serious, I still crack a tiny smile.
Vocabulary:
death knell - (1) signal that something is dead: a sign that something is dead, destroyed, or coming to an end; (2) bell announcing death: the ringing of a bell to announce that somebody has died
groundswell - (1) rising feeling: a strong growth of feeling or opinion that is evident but not always attributable to a specific source
precipitous - (1) done rashly: done or acting too quickly and without enough thought
affine - (2) (anthropology) relative: a relative by marriage
alopecic - (adj.) from noun alopecia—alopecia - baldness: loss or the absence of hair, especially from the human head
Once more, I have said this every time, but it is still still just as meant it as the first time and every other time I have said it—we welcome any thoughts you feel worth sharing or you feel like taking the time to, but by no means feel like they won't be appreciated!
Thank you all for reading and we continue to look forward to this journey taken with all of you! We hope to see you all again next week (updates are on Wednesday evenings)! And let me say, writing has not been going so well the past couple of weeks (a bad slump, I guess, but not necessarily "writer's block"), but I am working hard to assure the next chapter is finished by that time. Cody got ornery (and impatient) on me, and then of course there was the lack of information (some stuff about hospitals I could not find out) that was causing some issues with the writing, too. I would definitely appreciate those reviews this time around, as they are very good at prompting my brain into thinking about the story and gets me excited, once more, about writing Suite Life fanfiction.