April 27th 2023

Chapter 117
We Become Support

My sweet Luke...

He barely gave mind to how he'd wake with a start anymore. Ever since that night, that had become the norm more than the exception, in the morning or any time of day or night when he'd be pulled from sleep. The only times he really noticed were when this happened in the presence of others, others he knew especially. He didn't want to get asked about his dreams, his nightmares... Even if they didn't ask, he'd see that look in their eyes, the worry for him, and it'd be just as bad.

This time, thankfully, he was alone when he broke from his dream and found himself back in his hospital room, reunited to the sounds, scents, and sensations that had become his life in the last couple of weeks. He let out a sigh, closed his eyes for a moment. All he could do was accept that he still needed to be here. If he didn't, if he let his mind go to the other place, he would start to feel restless, feel like he needed very badly to leave this room, this building, like he'd jump out of his skin if he didn't. He was starting to feel it coming just now, like a scream building up in his throat, climbing toward eruption...

"Dad? You okay?"

He blinked, looked up, and found Ella stepping up to his bedside. The scream receded, just enough. He breathed again.

"Yeah... yeah," he assured her and held out his hand to her. She took it, gave it a squeeze. "I thought you had class today."

"I do, I'm heading out there next, but I wanted to come and see you for a while first," she explained. It made him glad, and he was happy to see that she knew it, that it made her smile. "I didn't wake you, did I? The nurse said you were asleep the last time she looked in on you."

"No, I was, I just woke up before you got here," Lucas replied.

"Oh, alright," Ella slowly nodded. There it was... She hadn't even been there when he'd woken up, but she was remembering being there, more than once, when he'd flinched upon waking. He wasn't going to point it out, he wouldn't. They'd put the subject aside and focus on everything else they could talk of.

"Theo called the house to say he'd bring Tori after school," Lucas shared, and Ella smiled and nodded. Tori had been so scared for her Pappy Luke, too. The first time she'd come and seen him, she'd cried and hurried over to him. Lucas had asked for them to lift her up and set her down near him so he could reassure her, and there she'd remained for as long as they would let her. Since then, each time they'd brought her over, she'd come to sit near him.

"I know she'll be looking forward to it," Ella told her father, then, after a pause, "She misses going to the ranch for blue group. But whenever I go out there, if I can, I'll bring her along. She's been making enough drawings in your office to redecorate the whole place."

"Good, let her," Lucas smiled.

"We could start the groups again, couldn't we?" Ella asked hesitantly. "The longer we hold off on it, some kids might not come back..."

"Some of them already canceled?" he guessed, and, after a moment, she nodded. "Figured they would. I don't blame them."

"They might come back, right? After some time's gone by?" Ella suggested with hope.

"They might," Lucas echoed.

"You're going back, too, aren't you?" she quietly asked. He looked at her. "I can't help it... worrying about you," she told him, and for never having known her as a child, it felt like this would have been very much the way little Ella would have been... little Summer... when she'd be concerned for a family member. She didn't want to upset him for what she was suggesting.

"Because of the..." he vaguely gestured at himself, gaining confirmation by how she didn't need anything more to know they were talking about the same thing.

"You talk in your sleep sometimes, you look... scared," she admitted. Lucas reflected on this. "It makes me worry, like you might not want to go back."

"It's not so bad," he assured her. "Really."

"Promise?" she asked, looking up at him, holding his gaze. She knew as well as her sisters what that word meant to their family.

Confronted with it, Lucas was surprised to find he hesitated. He didn't think he would, but when she asked... He closed his eyes, breathed. After a moment, he felt Ella's hand take his. He looked back at her.

"It's okay," she told him. There were tears in her eyes. The sight of them made him feel helpless, caught up in his own emotions. "What happened to you that night, it was horrible. Of course, you need time to deal with it. But you have to deal with it. If you let it alone and don't try and... and fix it somehow, you..."

"I know," Lucas assured her. "I'm going to do my best. I promise," he told her. She nodded through her tears, leaned over him, and hugged him, careful as ever.

"I love you, Dad," she told him, and he nodded, touching her arm. She kissed his cheek and moved to stand. She had to get going, to get to class.

"I love you, too," he told her. She smiled. Yes, she knew, but it was good to hear it anyway.

After she was gone, Lucas embraced the quiet for a while. He rested with his thoughts. He'd surprised himself in his hesitation. Why couldn't he promise her that he would go back to the ranch when he was recovered? Of course, he would go back... wouldn't he? He had devoted so many years, just as she was doing it now, in order to get to the point where he was now, running the ranch, the place his grandparents had built together, the place where his mother... his mother had been raised... It had always been his honor and his privilege to do it, even before he'd lost his mother. For years, he had been working day after day to uphold his grandparents' legacy and to build on it. He knew that, if they could see what he'd done over that time, they would have been proud of him. That wasn't the whole reason why he did it, but it was part of it, no doubt. These people had shaped him into the man he had become, whether or not they'd gotten to live long enough to see him do it.

So how could he go and let this one incident take him away from all that? It wasn't right. Had those two men, in one night, taken all that from him? Had they managed to make him feel so utterly unsafe in this place that had been a haven for as long as he could remember? He refused to believe it. He couldn't. He was solid, that was who he was, that was who he had always been. People could depend on him, in any and all things. But that night... He had only to think about it, and he felt himself tense up, his hands twitch... He felt ridiculous when he caught himself in this, but he didn't know how to make it better. He didn't know how to make it stop. He needed to go back to the ranch. He was going to, he would... if only to show himself that he could be there, that all was well. He could promise himself that.

"Lucas?"

He blinked, looked to the door, and there he spotted...

"Rafa?" he smiled. "What are you doing here? Aren't you supposed to be in school?"

"He is," Cristina appeared behind her son. "But he had an appointment, and he wanted to see you."

"What kind of appointment?" Lucas asked, not following. Rafa looked to his mother, shook his head, but Cristina gave him a look and he sighed before looking back.

"I have to see this guy because of... that night, at the ranch," the fifteen-year-old explained. "I didn't want to, but the guidance counselor at my school suggested it, and the principal insisted, so now I have to go."

"Because of how you found Sylvie and me out there," Lucas understood. Rafa nodded, his gaze growing unsteady.

He tended to forget, or maybe his brain just didn't want to dwell on that night so much, but he knew the part that Rafa had played. He had gotten suspicious enough, seeing the truck leave that night, to go and see where it had been, and for that he'd come upon the prone and unmoving bodies, near the stables. Knowing very well what both he and Sylvie had looked like when they'd both been seen to at the hospital, he didn't even want to think about what they would have looked like in the immediate aftermath of their attack. They probably looked... dead... If Rafa hadn't come along, maybe they would have been, eventually. But he had come, and he had determined that they were in fact alive. Lucas knew that he had been the one to call 911, even as his mother had reached the scene and found him there, crouched between the pair in the grass.

This wasn't their first visit, to Lucas' room and Sylvie's either. But each time, Lucas had looked at the boy and seen something in his eyes. Something of fear lingering. He remembered that night in a whole other way than Lucas or Sylvie did, but he remembered, and like them, he struggled with the memories and their existence near him.

"Is he nice? The man you have to see?"

"He's okay," Rafa shrugged, uncomfortable. "But I have to miss school to go, and then it's just more work later... I just want to move on," he lamented, turning a look to his mother. She wouldn't be moved. He would keep going so long as they thought he needed to.

"Are you okay, being out there?" Lucas asked. If he had trouble with the idea of going back himself, what would it be like for Rafa when he lived on the property? He was within walking distance of the place where it had all happened.

"I am," Rafa told him. "I just sort of... don't go near there, not right now," he admitted.

"That makes sense," Lucas agreed. "Tell you what. When I get to go again, after I leave here, we'll go together. Deal?" he asked holding out his fist. Rafa reached out a fist of his own, and they bumped, over and under: pact sealed.

"They're starting to film again, on the sets," Rafa told him.

"Yeah, that's what I heard," Lucas replied. "That's good."

It had been agreed, by everyone who'd examined the stolen horses, that they were both in perfect condition, neither of them traumatized in any way that would put their riders at risk. They were cleared to return to work, as part of the productions out at the ranch. Everyone looked at this return to norm as a good thing, for all of them. Some things had changed, especially with added security measures, but so many more needed to stay the same, or to get back there... as close to there as they could... It would be the best way for all of them to do exactly as Rafa had said it: they had to move on.

"Maybe, soon, the afterschool program will start again," Lucas told him.

"That'd be great," Rafa smiled. That had been the thing to bring him to the ranch in the first place. "I can help with the little kids in green until you get back." This made Lucas smile with him.

"That sounds like a really good idea."

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners