A/N. I'm back already and it's only been a couple of days instead of a month, wow! Thank you all so much for the encouraging reviews. This story has been a struggle for me to write, but it has certainly helped to have all of you be so incredibly patient with me.
Nothing much happens in this chapter and it's pretty short, but I think that I really like it. It's probably a little emotional to be too much longer. Kendall is sad so I am sad.
They're quiet as they leave the pond. Logan heads straight to the police cruiser Mr. Garcia is waiting in and gets in the back, shutting the door pointedly. He doesn't want anyone else to come with him and even though he may not remember Mr. Garcia, he probably feels safest in a police car. He stares straight ahead, not even looking at his friends from out of the corner of his eyes.
But are they even his friends? Kendall nods in thanks to Mr. Garcia and watches as he pulls away to take Logan home. Silently, he climbs in the passenger seat of his mother's car, hardly registering that James and Carlos are following him. He looks out the window, watching the world pass by without seeing anything. How can they be anything more than strangers to Logan when he doesn't know them?
"I think it's best if we give Logan some space for a little while," Mrs. Knight says quietly, a detectable tremble in her voice. Her hands are steady on the steering wheel, but Kendall can tell that she wants to cry as badly as the rest of them.
"How much time?" Katie asks from the backseat. She's already crying and Kendall can't help but feel that this is all his fault.
No one answers Katie's question. No one speaks again as they endure what seems like the longest drive ever to the Knight home where Logan will be waiting for them. Kendall knows that they all feel pretty close to what he feels. They're also most likely thinking what he's thinking. What are they going to say to Logan when they see him in just a few minutes?
For the first time since the accident, Kendall shuts his eyes and he tries to put himself in Logan's shoes. What is it like to have no memory? To have people who are complete strangers to you claim to share a lifetime of memories with you? To have to take their word for it and then find out that you were being lied to all along? If he actually were in Logan's shoes, Kendall almost certainly would have run away. And he wouldn't have come back.
Shaken, Kendall sighs in relief when he sees Mr. Garcia's cruiser sitting outside the house. One thing he still believes to be true is that Logan is in good hands with Carlos' dad. That lone truth is going to have to be good enough for now.
Mr. Garcia is sitting in the family room by himself when they all walk in. "Logan is upstairs," he says, clearly about to suggest the same thing as Kendall's mother. "Right now, I think he needs to be alone so he can calm down and relax."
Kendall nods. "Okay," he says quietly. "Thanks."
"James, Carlos," Mr. Garcia turns to Kendall's two friends. "Come home with me, okay? If Logan is feeling better in the morning, I'll bring you back to see if he wants to see you."
Kendall flinches at the harsh way Mr. Garcia phrases his statement. But it's true. Logan doesn't want to have to do anything with them tonight and who knows if he ever will?
"I'll call you guys tomorrow and let you know what's going on," he tells James and Carlos, unable to look at them directly and see his pain mirrored back at them.
James and Carlos nod and leave without protest. It strikes Kendall that they're too broken to bother to protest and ask if they can stay and see Logan. They already know that he doesn't want to see them. That's how far they've fallen.
The front door closes and it's just Kendall with his mother and sister. They're all silent for some time until Katie leaves to go up to her room. Mrs. Knight lays her hand on Kendall's shoulder and squeezes it before going to follow her daughter.
With nothing else to do, and nowhere else to go, Kendall heads upstairs too. He pauses by the door to Logan's and out of complete habit, takes hold of the doorknob. He doesn't turn it though, he knows better than that. But he does lay the palm of his other hand flat against the door and rests his forehead against it. Shutting his eyes, Kendall pretends that he and Logan still have that special connection and thinks, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
He doesn't want to move. This is as close as he can get to Logan and he hates the distance between them already. Physically, they're only separated by a wooden door but it feels like so much more. Internally, Kendall can't even fathom the distance between them, but Logan is half of his identity and it makes him feel like the only person in the world without his brother.
A loud crash interrupts Kendall's thoughts and he jumps. Before he can think twice, he yanks to door open and steps inside. "Logan?"
Logan is sitting on his bed, ignoring Kendall. But across the room is a picture frame, glass shattered across the floor. Kendall doesn't want to see it, but he goes anyway, being careful to avoid the glass that seems to be everywhere.
Turning the frame over, Kendall's breath catches in his throat. It's a picture of the four of them, right after they won the championship hockey game when they were eleven. Their faces are flushed with exhilaration as they hold up their individual trophies for the camera. But it's Logan who looks the most thrilled, holding up his MVP trophy with his other one. He looks in a state of ecstatic disbelief.
Then again, Kendall thinks as he continues to stare at the picture with blurred eyesight, maybe it isn't Logan who is the most excited in the picture. Because part of Logan looks too in shock to be totally happy. No, it's actually Kendall who looks like he's in top of the world. He's not looking into the camera or at his trophy. He's not even looking at any of his friends. He's looking at Logan's MVP trophy and if Kendall didn't know better, he'd wonder if it was actually his and Logan was just holding it for him. But he does know better.
"We were eleven," he says softly, not fully realizing that he's talking. "Mom took this picture of the four of us as soon as she could. She got one with the rest of the team, obviously, but she wanted this one too." Tracing the crack in the frame, Kendall feels the jagged edge of the glass slice smoothly through his finger, but he doesn't move. "No matter how many people we were with, even if it was family and friends, in the end it was always just the four of us."
Logan is at his side, taking the frame away gently and then holding his hand and inspecting the cut. Kendall is afraid to breathe, yet somehow he continues to talk. "That was the year you won MVP. There was never any contest. You scored the most goals and had the most assists. You were so fast that no one could ever catch up to-"
He stops talking. Logan has his first aid kit next to him and he's cleaning the little cut. Kendall watches in fascination as Logan goes through the motions, wiping away the excess blood with a clean cloth and then cleaning it with an antiseptic pad. He takes a band-aid from the box and applies it carefully. "You should be more careful," he advises so quietly that if Kendall wasn't listening for the sound of his voice, he would not have heard him.
Kendall lets his hand fall to his lap when Logan drops it abruptly. He stares at the band-aid and says, "You know, that's how we first met."
"Kendall," Logan says in a pained whisper. "Don't-"
"We were skating at the pond. I fell and cut my finger on a stick. The same finger. You came up to me and-"
"Kendall-," Logan's voice is pleading.
"And you gave me a band-aid. A Spiderman band-aid. You had a whole box of superhero band-aids and you asked me who my favorite superhero was." Emotion is flooding Kendall, making it hard to breathe properly. "I kept it for a week," he chokes out. "And then you came over and said it was unsanitary to keep used band-aids. So you gave me a new one. I never used it though. I just kept it. I still have it."
Logan stands up, shaking his head. "Stop," he begs. Sitting on his bed, he bends over and clutches his head with his hands. "I can't do this right now. It's too much."
Worried, Kendall stands up and touches Logan's shoulder. "Are you okay?"
"Please," Logan says in a muffled voice. "Just leave, Kendall."
Kendall snatches his hand away like he was burned. "I'm sorry," he whispers because they don't have that connection and he needs to say it. "I'm so sorry."
Logan doesn't reply, and Kendall backs slowly out of the room. He shuts the door behind him and heads to his own room. Walking over to his dresser, Kendall picks the picture frame up and sits down on his bed.
It's the same picture. Kendall's arm is over Logan's shoulders, eyes on the MVP trophy. Carlos is on top of James' shoulders because they didn't listen to Logan about what a dumb idea it was to be in that position on the ice. They fell right after the picture was taken and both broke their right wrist. If he looks carefully, Kendall can see a hint of alarm in James' eyes, hidden somewhere beneath the excitement.
"We did everything together," he says to himself. They really did. They triumphed together, hurt together, everything. How can all of that just be gone like it never existed? All of those memories are erased in Logan's mind, maybe permanently. Kendall might actually be able to stand the loss of those memories if the bond between all of them and Logan still existed. But it didn't, not even the bond between himself and Logan which Kendall considered to be sacred.
It killed him when he saw Logan wearing his jacket, because there were so many times growing up when Logan wore Kendall's clothes, sometimes for the simple desire to feel safe. Logan didn't look like he felt very safe today, although Kendall saw that he had thrown the jacket over the back of his desk chair.
It also killed Kendall to have Logan fix that stupid little glass cut. He's still the same Logan, wanting to take care of complete strangers. He's the same Logan without Kendall.
Kendall lays flat on his back and stares up at his ceiling. How did things get this bad? The same Logan without Kendall. That makes him the same Kendall without Logan. He can't feel Logan or read his mind anymore. Even right next to each other, Kendall can't tell what Logan is thinking or feeling. There's a invisible wall between them, thick and impenetrable.
Kendall never told anyone, but the day Logan and his mother got into that terrible car accident that killed Mrs. Mitchell, his left hand started to hurt. And when they were seven and Logan fell off the swing set and knocked the breath out of himself, Kendall's chest hurt. When Carlos accidentally hit Logan in the face with a hockey stick at nine years old, Kendall's nose didn't bleed like Logan's did, but it hurt.
The same thing continued to happen over the years. When they were twelve, Logan was checked into the boards and suffered a dislocated shoulder. Kendall had a sore shoulder for a week. Logan twisted his ankle playing tag when they were thirteen and Kendall unconsciously limped for the rest of the day. When they were fourteen and Logan jammed his finger in a game of dodgeball in gym, Kendall failed a test later that same day because he couldn't hold his pencil with his aching finger. The day of Logan's accident, Kendall ignored a migraine while they waited in the hospital emergency room.
Sympathy pain. Kendall had looked it up after the dodgeball incident. It happened when someone witnessed another person getting hurt and somehow suffered the same pain but to a lesser degree. The closer the two people were, the stronger the pain. It scared Kendall a little bit because they had been six when it first happened with his and Logan's wrists and they hadn't even been together that day. Everything he read about sympathy pain had said that the people involved needed to be together. But then again, those people didn't know Kendall and Logan.
Kendall wonders if he still has at least that connection with Logan. To physically hurt with him. Because he can't hurt emotionally with him. Sure, they're both afraid and frustrated and confused and grief-stricken, but not together. Separately. They're separate.
Kendall, still laying on his back and staring up at the ceiling, brings the picture frame up to his face. It's not the same as the one in Logan's room, he thinks. This one represents how things used to and still should be. The one in Logan's room, with the big crack cutting Logan off from the rest of them, represents them now and how they might always be.
A/N. Just so you know, sympathy pain is real and I believe that the people involved do NOT need to be together and have one of them actually witness the other person's pain. I've had similar things happen to me and those I'm close with and I haven't always been around to actually see them get hurt. I thought it would be a good trait to apply to Kendall and Logan's relationship.
Anyway, like I said in the beginning, I think this chapter was short because it was sad and there was only so much emotion I could handle. There's still a lot that needs to happen in this story so I have to conserve my angsty energy haha. Don't worry though because more will happen in the chapters to come. I'm brainstorming the next one even as you read this! In the meantime, I hope that you all enjoyed your weekend and that you have a wonderful week as well! Thank you for reading!