Brother Bear 3

Bobby had a far away look, just for a moment. Jack wondered what he saw; but he wasn't brave enough to ask. Then it was gone. Jack felt his brother back in the here and now; and smiling to boot. "You got home early. Didn't stop for beers, did you?" Bobby pulled out a key fob with seven keys on them and tossed them to his older twin. "Get me one while you're out there, willya?"

Jack took the keys back out into the garage and opened up the beer fridge in the back. This used to be Bobby's man cave back when he was on the force. Now with all the foster children living under his roof, it was more like an second living-room for the boys. If there were another place for the ice box, Bobby would have moved it. But the basement had been converted into bedrooms and the attic had been converted into bedrooms. So, instead it stayed out here, under lock and key. He took three beers with him; one for himself and Bobby. The third in case Bobby felt slightly verbose or, worse, morose.

Back in the house, Jack passed back the keys with the first beer. Despite years at art school, he'd never really developed the taste for beer. Another of bit rebelliousness, perhaps. Either way, his holding a beer seemed to relax his younger brother. He sat on the opposite end of the couch, mirroring his brother's pose unconsciously. One bear brown, the other black.

Not every set of twins are identical.

Quietude, however, made them relax with exactly the same sighs.

They turned to watch the silent screen with appreciation. Their whirling thoughts and worries slowing to a contentment in sharing the silence and strengthening their bonds. They drank. The beer giving them an excuse not to talk and ruin the moment, the daily reconnection and affirmation they both needed for the reason men needed to share such quiet moments.

About 15 minutes into it, the television started showing images of different Repts in still life photographs. Jack recognized Pale Umber and then the images all clicked into place. "Oh, what the fresh hell did we do now?" he moaned as the images were replaced with the anchor interviewing two talking heads. An Opossum with his skull shaved bald and a General who appeared to be a Civet of some sort. Or maybe a Sport Lemur. His regulation shave and uniform making it hard to tell from the shoulders up.

Bobby sighed, mourning over the shattered silence. He could have turned on the sound and backed up the broadcast and replayed it. Instead, he paused it. "Reported bank robbery on the west coast. Police and SWAT get there just as four naked lizards burst out of the bank being chased by some tellers with broken furniture. Command structure isn't established yet. Somebody's knee jerk reaction fired into the lizards. Killed one, clipped two others. One of the bank tellers got his ear pierced by another accidental discharge." Bobby took a draw from his bottle.

"Please tell me the tellers overpowered the lizards and chased them out of the bank."

"Nope. Not quite." Bobby sighed. "Some some stunt Lizard Protection League... they called in the media so they had the cameras ready when shots were fired."

"So... we shot unarmed Rept protesters? Ohhhh, thank god, I'm not in that department."

"Oh," Bobby said, "It's worse than that." He said it with the sour joy of someone who's problem it wasn't any more. "The guys they shot? Apparently, NOT the suspects."

Jack moaned. Not because someone made a mistake. It was easy enough in the chaos, before people took their positions, before you got the lay of the land. Anyone could make a mistake. Accidents and misjudgments and suddenly an innocent life was lost. It was a thing that he prayed never happened to him. But he moaned because the media had its teeth in it, now.

Every cop would be a suspect now. In the last year or so since Pale Umber's death, every police shooting was questioned. As, of course, they should be. But not in a sensationalized news program where viewership was more important than facts.

The media had one thing right; too often the only community his brothers in blue were concerned about was the uniformed brotherhood on their side of that thin blue line. That line did run a little crooked at times.

Jack and Bobby were each thinking their own thoughts when the sound of quiet, alien sobbing surprised them both. Jack looked at Bobby in alarm, not at all sure what it was that he was hearing, if he was hearing anything, soft as the sound was. He could tell Bobby heard it, too. He smiled briefly at his brother's discomfort. "That's Andy. The new one."

"The Turtle?"

Bobby nodded, but corrected, "Tortoise, actually." A sip of beer, as if the story he was to tell was going to thirsty work. "We had a bit of drama here, ourselves today. I left the kids at the park to play while Roosevelt and I went to the hardware store to get paint and stuff. I gave them very specific instructions to play with Andy, to make him feel welcome. They waited about a half an hour before ditching him."

"That's not good," Jack said meaning it. Andy's parents had both died recently and the Foster agency had placed him with Sissy and Bobby because they had a large brood. Studies showed Repts did very well with large foster groups. Jack wondered if they missed a key element in that study. A lot of Repts came from large clutches of eggs. Andy was an only child. "Still," he said because he could tell Bobby had more to say, but his face was clouding, eyes seeing something Jack would never see.

Thankfully.

Bobby caught onto Jack's voice and came back to Earth. "He says he fell into a lake." Bobby shook his head. "There's no lake there. There's a drainage ditch the park says should be about four feet deep. But Andy can't swim, so close enough for Jazz."

"I thought all Turtles could swim."

"Tortoises cannot. Have you seen Andy's feet? If an elephant could walk on two legs, he would have those feet. No, that boy could have died if he'd fallen in a puddle and couldn't get up fast enough, I believe that part of his story." Bobby shook his head. "I was ready to paddle their tails off, I was so mad. Even Little Peter's."

That was saying something, Little Peter was the only true Hewitt by Blood child and the youngest in the group at nine. He was the family prince and wonderfully oblivious to the distinction. Bobby loved him as much as he loved Roosvelt but in a different way. Sometimes, Jack would catch Bobby staring at the little bear with a deep, almost horrified focus. Like he was looking for cracks in a china doll he had dropped.

But then, the thing with Hanna had been pretty awful. Bobby here alone trying to keep everyone together while Jack was France wasting time studying and touring and sleeping with models that struck his fancy. All the time, Jack thinking that – as an artist – that he was the sensitive soul.

What a fool he was. Seeing Bobby healing his heart by opening it up and making more room for love? That was true art. Or, at least, everything that art should aspire to be.

"How bad was it?" Jack pushed after a beat.

"He fell in, instantly over his head and he apparently swallowed a lot of water... bad water from the smell of him... he smelled like rotten eggs, old lady perfume, and gasoline. His skin's got some sort or residue on it, so I believe he fell into something. I just don't quite believe how he got rescued; and I know the other boys don't either. They, of course, weren't afraid to let him know how ludicrous his story his."

Bobby took a sip and he met his brothers eyes. It was a cop look he was beginning to recognize. Witnesses could not always be trusted. Especially in the middle of chaos.

"What story?" Jack asked, not so willing or able to be so instantly cynical. He knew he was being a CubCop about it.

"He says Fastback saved him... spun around so fast he sucked him right out the water and then used 'superbreath' to make his lungs work again... and three bottle of mouthwash later, and you can still smell that he swallowed something foul. Took him to the hospital and now I'm going to have to sit through some meetings and maybe we'll lose him." Bobby looked at Jack with such haunted pain in his eyes. "I don't want to lose anyone else."

Jack stayed perfectly still, fighting the urge to say that he'd seen Fastback today, too. That it wasn't as outrageous as Bobby seemed to think. That it could have been easily true. But that look in his brother's eyes said that he really didn't care if a faster than average turtle saved him or if the mind of a little boy was making an exciting mountain out of a few inches of bad water.

Bobby's huge heart loved this little Rept, that in the few short weeks since he moved in with Bobby and Sissy, he'd become quite attached. He loved all the boys; blood or not, bear or not.

Jack kept the expression from his face. That same expression that Bobby got when he was looking at Little Peter and he thought no one was looking. Only, he knew Bobby was staring right at him and he couldn't afford to see that look on his brother's face.

"It's possible it happened that way," Jack couldn't help but say. He willed himself to say no more.

"Bull dinkies," Bob said, "Never mind the energy that would take... or that Andy's lungs would have deflated instantly... Fastback could have run Andy to the nearest hospital in a fraction of the time it would have taken him to safely perform what ever type of assisted breathing... but yes, it's possible that a turtle could have saved him and, sure, it's possible that Fastback might have saved him and that Andy's just getting all the details wrong because, you know, young boy nearly dying. But I don't care if Fastback or The Terrific Whatzit or The Crash saved him... I'm just glad he's alive."

But Jack could see there was more. "I trusted the other boys to watch him. I misjudged them but at the same time I don't want to stop trusting them. And, I know it was an accident. I don't think any of them pushed him in. I don't think they tricked him to go down to the ditch to catch an errant Frisbee."

Jack could only trust himself to nod.

"I want to believe Andy, I really do... but I don't... and he could see it on my face. And I feel like such an asshole."

"So... why don't you believe him?"

Bobby shrugged, embarrassed. "He left the disc by the lake... ditch... whatever, he says, but we couldn't find it."

"Maybe another kid took it before you went looking for it."

Bobby looked at him like was a moron, "Not the disc, the lake. Or whatever it was that he fell into... we couldn't find it.