I do not own "Warrior." It belongs to director Gavin O'Connor.

AP stands for Advanced Placement; they are college level courses taught in some high schools. In this chapter there will be some switching between perspectives without prior warning, mostly from Brendan to Jane and back.

Chapter Two: Brothers (Part Two)

The young woman Tommy brought is not the kind of girl he'd been expecting; granted, he never really knew what type of girl his brother preferred. All the same, he and Tess are grateful that he thought to bring someone outside their fucked-up little family. It gives them something less excruciating to talk about.

"So, how'd you guys meet?" Frank says, tapping his fork against his plate.

From the way Tommy and Jane look at each other and glance nervously at the two girls playing with their food, Brendan suspects the worst and thinks to say, 'If you don't want to say, that's fine.' Before he can, however, Jane looks over at Rosie, and back at Frank, as if to inform him that she'll be telling him in a way that is safe for children.

"Well, um, you know how in fairy tales there's sometimes a princess who is in danger?" Rosie and Emily both look up, because she's suddenly speaking their language. "And how a knight will appear just in the nick of time and save the princess?" She looks over at Tommy, who looks as though he's trying very hard not to interrupt her and say something like, "We met at a coffee shop." Frank and Tess both, however, look like they're caught between understanding, respect, and complete amusement.

"Uncle Tommy's a knight?" Emily says.

"No, just a very brave man who saved my life," she says. Brendan makes eye contact with Tommy, who looks back at him as if to say, 'I'll tell you about it later.' Jane gives him a deeply apologetic look that slowly turns into a small smile, and from the way he sighs and brushes a strand of hair behind her ear, he forgives her. While the knight analogy is a bit ridiculous, it somehow fits him. Before he'd left, everyone had pictured a future for him in Olympic wrestling. But he'd become a soldier, which somehow suits him more. He's not just a fighter; he's somehow, oddly and inherently protective. And he does nothing halfway, leaves nothing partly done.

And since his daughters love him so much, Emily says, "We have the video of Daddy as a princess."

"Oh yeah?" Tommy looks at him and thinks, clear as day; Now it's your turn to be embarrassed. At least I was just a knight. You're a princess.

Frank looks just as eager to poke fun at him. "Do you think we can watch it?"

"Yeah!" the girls pogo up and down in their seats. He looks over at Tess, smiling in spite of himself, and she's grinning back. He tries and fails to keep a straight face, as embarrassed as he is, and says, "After dinner." And, like a good sport, he steers the conversation away from him and back to his brother.

"So I heard you got a job?"

"Oh. Yeah. It's at a place called Colt's Gym. It's nothing big; just something to do to earn a living."

Frank leans forward. "Colt? As in 'Colt Boyd?'" he says, looking eager.

Tommy looks over at him. "Yeah," he says, sounding weary, wondering where Frank's going with it and not liking what he guesses.

Tess looks over at Jane and, knowing his wife, Brendan figures Tess knows Frank will forgive her for interrupting just this once, in order to avoid something unpleasant. "So Jane, what do you do?" she asks.

"Well, I'm a waitress at a diner near downtown Pittsburgh, and outside of that I'm a part-time student." She says it with little sense of apology, and, from what he can hear, not a trace of a Pittsburgh accent.

"Not to pry, but you're not from Pittsburgh, are you?" he says.

She smiles. "Don't worry; I get that a lot. And no, I'm from Washington D.C."

"What brought you to Pittsburgh, then? U Pitt or what?" Frank asks, leaning forward.

And Brendan notices two things: he notices Tommy scowl, eyes burning a hole through Frank and Jane laying her hand over Tommy's, twining her fingers with his as she says, "Well, I don't attend Pitt. I'm actually in community college right now. And I came to Pittsburgh to get a fresh start."

And it's clear that not only he but Tess and Frank want to ask, 'A fresh start from what?'; after all, Pittsburgh is not the place on usually goes for a 'fresh start', like New York City or Southern California, but they don't. He respects the girl's candor and notices how much effort she puts into keeping Tommy from losing his temper, keeping his head clear, and he's grateful for that. It's clear she has a good idea of what kind of animosity's gone on between him and his brother; she wouldn't be trying to play mediator if she didn't; he and Tess share a look partway through the meal and through that one look find they're thinking the same thing: 'Thank God Tommy's found a girl who can put up with him and his anger, and can sense it while it can still be extinguished'.

He tells them about how he's back in his preferred career as a physics teacher; the school is thinking of incorporating AP courses into the curriculum but until that happens, his classes will include the occasional bright, eager student amidst those who will scrape by simply to get the credit and spend most of the class goofing off or texting. He likes both groups of students all the same. It would be impossible to teach if he couldn't like—or even handle the kids who fall farther behind.

As Brendan talks about the pure element of fun in teaching physics even to those weary to learn, Jane decides not to mention that despite having taken and miraculously/barely passed physics in high school, most of what she knows about the science is what she's seen from the occasional episode of The Big Bang Theory. What she finds is that when all else fails, at least in terms of conversation, everyone else thinks that turning to the new person and asking about her personal life is the easiest thing to do. What part of D.C. are you from? How long have you been living in Pittsburgh? How long have you and Tommy known each other? She tries her best to answer the questions as truthfully as she can while leaving out as much detail as possible. She feels Tommy sitting tense next to her, offering the minimum allowed number of words when asked how he's healing, and she get how excruciating this is. She's sat through holiday meals with both sides of the family treating her like a ticking time bomb, wondering when she was going to relapse, escape, and terrorize the village. The way people take extra care to use as many euphemisms for "rehab" as possible. Only now everyone's replacing it with "physical therapy treatment", and instead of a barely-out-of-her-teens young woman, it's a thirty-year-old man they're treating like this; being overtly polite more for his sake than for that of the children, who by now probably couldn't care less what the grown-ups are saying because it's so boring. It's not the first time she's missed sitting at the children's table during family events, and she's not the only one who feels this way.

Several times he reaches for her hand. A little over halfway through when she excuses herself for the bathroom, he's waiting for her in the hallway.

"I don't know how much more of this I can take," he mutters to her.

She thinks. "It's a long drive home," she says. "That saves you a few hours."

"Yeah." He sighs and starts walking back with her. "Thanks for this."

At one point, though, when asked if there's anything she likes better in Pittsburgh than in D.C., she mentions the zoo. And Brendan says, "Hey, Tommy, remember when I was eight and you were six and we were looking at the polar bears, and one swam right up to us and just stared at us for about thirty seconds; didn't do anything, just stared with its nose pressed against the glass?" and one of those rare and thus impossibly beautiful smiles breaks Tommy's exterior and for a moment provides relief to everyone in the room.

"Yeah, I remember. That thing was…"

"Huge. Or maybe it seemed that way because we were so young." He looks at Emily. "We were around your age once, believe it or not."

For a moment a connection is formed, and this trip is not as hellish or hopeless as Tommy had thought. And a moment is all it takes for them to realize that a civilized conversation between the two of them is possible. When dinner is over and the serving plates are cleared away, Brendan braces for the moment someone brings up the video. To his horror, it's Tess who does the honors and leads everyone into the living room, popping the VCR into the player.

It's possibly summer, from the way the light hits the camera and the color pink is splashed around everywhere, from the garments to the gift-wrapping. There are a few playmates here and there, but that's all moot: Frank is the first to start laughing when the handheld camera pans in on the seated figure on the patio wearing what appears to be a ridiculously large bonnet, with his two daughters painting pink and yellow circles on his face, like an odd blush.

"What's going on over here!" comes Tess's voice, sounding both cheerful and close to good-natured laughter.

As the girls continue painting his face with utmost concentration, Brendan says, "Well, it seems that Daddy is now a princess." He seems to be on the verge of laughing as well. Jane glances over at Tommy, who seems to be fighting a grin, and she wonders if he's thinking about the unbelievable difference in personality, and whether it's something innate or the product of two different outcomes. That maybe if he and his mother had stayed that he'd be someone's husband and father, laughing freely, undeterred by the skeletons in his closet.

But not letting anyone put pink paint on his face. God forbid.

She giggles at the thought, and Tommy, it seems, finally lets himself laugh. Something genuine, not ironic or humorless. And at once she's more interested in this than the video.

When it's over, Frank claps Brendan on the back. "Well, I gotta say, Princess Fiona's got nothin' on you."

Brendan turns to him. "You mean before or after she's stuck as an ogre?"

"Hey; let's let you be the judge of that, eh?" And this starts another roll of laughter.

"Mommy? When can we have dessert?" Emily's probably been waiting with ironclad self-control throughout the video to ask; she did, after all, see the cake with the frosting roses. Enough to send a kid into a hyperglycemic fit, one of those frosting roses.

"In a little bit, sweetie." She looks over at her husband. "Are the two of you going to need the kitchen for a while?" she says in as soft a voice as she can manage.

Brendan looks over at his brother, who meets his eyes. He gently picks Rosie up off of his lap, sets her beside him, gets up and walks over to him. "Do you want a few minutes just to talk or something?" he asks.

Tommy hesitates, looks away from him for a second before tightening his jaw and forcing a curt nod.

Brendan turns back to Emily. "Tell you what," he says, "Let's wait a few minutes and when everyone's ready we can have dessert while we unwrap presents. Does that sound good?"

"Okay," Emily says, trying to exaggerate the toll the wait will have on her as she takes Rosie by the hand and leads her back to their toys.

F

As the other three adults stay in the living room and the girls retreat to their room to dress up Barbie until dessert's served, Brendan and Tommy head back to the kitchen and have another face-to-face discussion; one that hopefully will end differently.

"She's a nice girl," Brendan says, nodding towards the door, where in the living room he imagines Tess, Frank and Jane are having a slightly more candid discussion, and probably asking the same thing Brendan does now. "So the knight thing…"

"She was walking home from work and a skinhead with a gun was dragging her into an alleyway while I was coming out of the gym across the street." His words are blunt and he seems to try not to fidget as he slumps back in his chair. He drums his fingertips against the table.

"So whatever you fucked up, she must've forgiven you for it."

"That's what I'm hoping."

Brendan hesitates. He almost wants to bring Tommy's date back in to make sure there's a mediator here. "Listen, that talk on the beach four months ago...I was lying when I said I forgave Pop."

Tommy nods and looks down. "I know."

"I didn't really get it until I had kids of my own just how much he fucked us up. The drinking and the physical abuse were bad enough, but even the smaller things; the playing favorites. That's gotta be one of the cruelest things a parent can do to his child, treating him like less of a person than the other. With my girls, I'd never be able to do something like that. Wouldn't want to."

Tommy suddenly sits up straight. "You think I wanted that?" he says. "You think I wanted him to do that?"

Brendan sighs, runs a hand through his hair.

"You really think I did, don't you?"

"I just know he preferred you. And when you left he still didn't want anything to do with me."

"He was an idiot." He leans forward and tells Brendan with utmost conviction, "I looked up to you. I thought you were the better one. I wouldn't have spent years of my life staying mad at you if I hadn't felt cheated when you stayed behind."

Brendan's not sure how to react to that.

"Were you also lying when you said you forgave me and Mom?" Tommy asks him, pointedly looking away for a moment.

"The time I said it, kind of. Now, no."

Tommy sighs and sits back. "I wasn't sure how I'd be able to tell you she was dying without Pop finding out." After a moment, he adds, "And I didn't think you had the right to say goodbye to her when you hadn't…when you chose to stay behind. You didn't have to see her like I did, or take care of her when she couldn't even walk. I felt like you gave up that right when you said you wouldn't come with us."

Brendan nods. He's heard enough to know what he can say. Tommy seems calm enough that he can say this with a clear conscience. "I'm sorry for all the pain I caused you. And I'm sorry for what you had to go through. But if I was given that choice again, I'd still choose Tess."

"Yeah. I know that, too."

Tommy looks over at the door. The silence that follows is unnerving; makes Brendan wonder what he's supposed to be looking at. "She's been through a lot."

"Who? Jane?"

He nods. "She hasn't been through some of the things I have, and I'll never have to go through some of the shit she did." He looks back at his brother for a second. "I remember you saying that I wasn't the only one who's suffered. I'm still pissed at you. Sometimes, anyway. But you didn't stay with the old man because he was good to you. You stayed because there was someone else worth staying for."

E

He honestly doesn't really remember what goes on when dessert's passed out and presents are exchanged. Rosie alternates between climbing into Tess's lap and then Brendan's, and Emily sits between them, loudly giving her opinion on every present as it's unwrapped, on a sugar high after insisting she get one of the pieces with the most frosting.

It's a kind of domestic setting he's not used to. It's way too stable and sober to be anywhere close to the birthdays from his childhood. It's much closer to the times Manny invited him along home with him during leave and treated him like family—in the normal sense of the word. The difference is that while he's related to the man unwrapping presents, he couldn't feel farther apart. Times like these he feels a buzzing under his skin, a throbbing behind his eyes, and hears noise instead of conversations. Not for the first time today, he wants out. He's not one of those fun uncles, he's not good at parties of any kind, he doesn't even fuckin' like cake, so what is he doing here?

Why'd Brendan want him over for this? It's not like he's livening things up. If anything, he's what's keeping people from enjoying themselves. It's 5:30 and all he really has to look forward to is a five-hour drive home. And he doesn't even…

At six he figures he'd put in enough time that he can say he has to leave without breaking any rules. The five-hour drive actually works in his favor this time. Brendan understands. Tess looks relieved.

Don't worry. I wasn't going to break any of your china, he thinks. "So, happy birthday," he says.

"Thanks. It was great having you over," Brendan says and sounds like he actually means it.

And when it's all over and he's out of that house, Jane touches his shoulder.

"Hey," she murmurs, "You did it."