To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering, one must not love. But, then, one suffers from not loving. So, to love is to suffer, to not love is to suffer, to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love, to be happy, then, is to suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy, therefore, to be unhappy, one must love, or love to suffer, or suffer too much happiness --- I hope you're getting this down. Woody Allen

Joe woke warm, too warm. He threw off the covers and twisted, trying to find a comfortable position. He sneezed, which made his whole body hurt.

"Hey." Frank was next to him, his voice too soft, too low, as if he was an invalid, or dying. Except Joe could tell he wasn't dying. He'd come close, a couple of times, and it didn't feel like this. "You okay?"

Joe waved him off, making a face that showed that he wasn't exactly fine, per se, but he'd get over it. He swung his good leg over the side of the bed and attempted to stand up only to sway dangerously. Frank pushed him back down, an action that used too little strength. Both boys ignored the fact that Joe could be pushed over easier than a three year old.

"Want breakfast?" Joe's stomach clenched at the idea and he shook his head, croaking, "tea?" His voice was nowhere near a hundred percent, wasn't even at fifty. That's what he got for shouting in the cold during a storm.

Frank took one last, guilty look at him, something that Joe knew he'd have to remedy sooner rather than later. As he beat a hasty retreat in search of tea, Joe thought about Cathy. He didn't know how many more of her sabotages he could take. How many more he would even survive? As much as he hated the idea, he knew that the time for telling Frank had probably come, even if he was worried about what his brother would think of him. Would Frank validate everything Cathy had been saying? Would he ever look at Joe the same way?

He didn't even want to admit the whole story to himself. It was painful and embarrassing beyond belief, and made him look like the helpless cripple he knew he was. He remembered Cathy's insults: Cripple, invalid, whore, useless. Useless.

Would he really risk more injuries so that Frank wouldn't view him as a coward? It was tempting.

Frank stuck his head in the door, and Joe could read every line of worry and pity and sorrow on his brother's face. Frank looked old, and Joe felt terrible because he knew he'd been the person to make him look like that. "If I run to the store for just a minute you won't die, right Joe?" Under other circumstances, the question would have been funny, but things had been recently turned upside down.

Joe nodded, making a show of snuggling himself more securely under the covers. "Some Saturday, huh?" his throat was so dry that he would be surprised if Frank made out any of the words, but his brother nodded, flinging himself down the stairs. Not a minute later, Joe heard the car pull out of the driveway.

Sighing, Joe reached for the nearest book, coming up once again with Catch-22. He thumbed to a little past the middle, where he'd last stopped reading. He kept putting the book down, finding it hitting a little too close to home.

A rock and a hard place was something that he could understand. He practically lived in the middle ground now.

The door opened downstairs and Joe registered it, vaguely noting that Frank must have flown to the store and back if he had returned in this kind of time.

A shadow actually fell over his book, like in the movies, and Joe turned to face Cathy. He rolled his eyes, "seriously, locking me out? Is that the best you can do?" he sneezed, which didn't help his argument, but he was feeling vulnerable from his position. He sized Cathy up and reckoned she probably outweighed him by now, and with his maneuverability limited by his leg, which had crumbled under him last night, he didn't think he could move more than a few feet.

He used to take out two guys at a time, three if they were small. He used to be the brawns of the organization, all muscle and guts. What the hell had happened to that Joe?

Cathy smirked at him, and Joe wondered how his brother could possibly like this she-devil. Every time she looked at him he knew that all she wanted was to see him in pain, or six feet under. She pouted, as if she was put out by something Joe had said, and then flipped onto his legs, eliciting a small moan of pain as Joe tried to reflexively curl towards the aching limb.

"You just won't back off, will you?" He thought of all the other times he'd been trapped in this position, with different villains in different countries. It always ended the same way…It'll be okay, just stall. Frank will come.

Frank will come.

Joe clenched his jaw, trying to hold back his pain. "I have barely seen Frank since he got with you. It'd be interesting to know how you won him back."

She smiled as if she was proud of this feat. Her fist came at his stomach, lazily as if she didn't care whether it landed or not. Of course she hit right at the mess of bruises that was currently his body.

Joe had never hit a girl, not even when, in the same situation, he might have hit a guy. He didn't believe that a gentleman should ever lay a hand on a lady. "Stop." He warned, wishing that his voice came out in something more than an awful squeak, wishing he could just throw Cathy off of him and expose her for who she was.

But then he'd have to admit the part he'd played in the whole thing, the small part, the unwilling part, and then Frank would never rescue him again.

"Frank's not here, kid." As if she'd read his mind. Cathy smiled sweetly as she pressed harder against his leg. "What are you going to do?"

Abandoning every principle he'd ever had concerning girls, he grabbed her arm and held it tight. He hadn't lost much muscle mass in his arms – they'd maneuvered wheelchairs, then crutches, then canes, and made it easy for him to hang on tight as ever. "Stop." He ordered through clenched teeth.

"What's going on here?" Frank entered the room, and Joe felt his insides uncoil in relief at the sound of his voice. He managed to twist his head, to smile, maybe even to say something clever, but then he saw the expression on Frank's face….Frank, who had seen his brother holding Cathy on his bed, and jumped to all the wrong conclusions.

Cathy took advantage of Joe's second of incredulity, read her boyfriend right and played the part to a tee. "Joe, let go of me. Please…" she tugged and Joe let go, too unsettled by the change of pace to do anything else. Cathy flew across the room, into Frank's waiting arms. "Frank…" Cathy even managed a fake sob as she leaned into her boyfriend.

Frank hugged her, glaring at Joe. "Why don't you wait downstairs honey?" he suggested, kissing her hair and closing the door behind her.

"What the hell were you thinking?" Frank yelled, advancing on Joe who was too surprised at the sudden change of events to move. He seemed instead to fold in on himself, crushed, closed off. "I leave for…for five minutes and I come back to find you…and her…"

"It wasn't what it looked like, Frank." Joe assured him, but he sounded tired, not mad or defensive. "Really." He glanced at Frank's raised hand and sighed, looking too frail for the large bed he was sitting in.

He couldn't do it. He couldn't fend off Cathy and his brother…his big brother who he looked up to, who he admired. Frank was his hero, his reason for keeping quiet about Cathy for so long. If he was going to start hating Joe, going to start hitting him too…well, Joe knew he wouldn't be able to survive that for long.

But even in his anger, Frank recognized defeat when he saw it. He let out a long, low breath and sat on the edge of the bed, running a hand through his hair. After a moment of silence, he murmured, "I wasn't going to hit you."

Joe shook slightly, glanced away, "I know."

They were quiet for another minute and then Frank asked, "What happened, Joe?"

"Nothing, bro. Cathy came in here and got a little…overzealous." He stared at his dresser, because there was every chance that Frank would see through his lie. If anyone could, it would be him. They used to know each other so well.

"That's not what I meant." Frank cast about for words. "What happened?" His voice cracked on the word and he pulled Joe into a hug, hurt a more scared than he was willing to admit when Joe stiffened in his arms before leaning into the embrace.

Something had happened to his baby brother. Something terrible had made him like this, and Frank was going to find out.

For a seventeen-year-old, Joe had done a lot. He'd busted several crime rings. He'd been arrested, shot, and poisoned. He'd been kidnapped, drugged, and left for dead. He'd been beaten up more times than he could count. He'd been to every continent except Antarctica.

But the one thing he was most proud of was, no matter how hurt he was, no matter how bad things got, he had never, ever sobbed in front of his brother. Until now.

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