Broken Angel

While her sisters attempted to keep Quinn from falling apart any further, Jamie and Logan had retreated to his bedroom. Now, the twelve-year-old was waiting patiently for his cousin to speak. Logan had flopped onto his back on Jamie's bed and was staring blankly at the ceiling. "What's going on, buddy?" he asked finally. "I'm not a mind-reader, you know. You kind of need to talk."

"You won't like what I'm thinking right now," Logan warned him in barely more than a whisper.

"Try me." Jamie nudged his cousin's feet out of the way and perched at the foot of his bed. For a while, the only sound was Chester pawing impatiently at the bars of his cage. "See, even Chester wants to know what's on your mind."

"He's cute," said Logan, barely glancing at the aging bunny. Jamie nodded and lifted Chester out of the cage onto his lap. He scratched the bunny's back while waiting for Logan to start talking. The eight-year-old's next words were so sudden that Jamie almost didn't catch them. "This is all my fault."

"Your fault…what?" Jamie echoed in disbelief. "You mean Aunt Quinn losing the baby?" Logan nodded mutely, looking so distraught that the first reaction Jamie could muster was to dump the bunny in his lap. "Dude, you need this guy more than I do. How in the hell is any of this your fault?"

"Don't you remember?" said Logan quaveringly, stroking Chester half-heartedly. "On my birthday, I got so freaked out about there being a new baby. That feeling never really stopped. It's like someone thought I wished for this baby to disappear, and now it's gone. It's no wonder that Mom hates me; she wanted this so much. Now it feels like Dad is caught between her and me; it just…sucks."

"Where to start with that?" said Jamie at long last, after taking a long moment to digest his cousin's speech. "It totally sucks, I'll give you that one, but you being freaked out by this baby could not make anything happen to it. Seriously, Wolverine, you can't actually believe that! Bad things happen, and it sure looks like Aunt Quinn and Uncle Clay will be really upset for a while, but you did not make this happen. Do you understand me?"

"You didn't hear her, Jamie," Logan argued, his eyes stinging with the effort it took not to cry. "She said it's not okay because she can't be a mom now. She's my mom, and that's not good enough for her anymore. What am I supposed to do with that?"

Logan took a deep breath and reached behind him for the Christmas angel he had dropped on the pillow in his distress. "What's that you've got there?" asked Jamie, welcoming the distraction since he had no idea how to help.

"That's my mommy and her sister," said Logan, pointing at the two smiling blondes pictured on the front of the Christmas angel's gown. "Mama Q went to the hospital while Dad and I were looking for a tree, so Grandma let me keep the angel. We use it every year at their house, but we couldn't get a tree for it this year. I don't even have real memories of my mommy, but with this angel around, I feel…safer. Especially now, Mom is so upset, and there's nothing I can do about it."

"That gives me an idea," mused Jamie under his breath, and Logan stared at him curiously. Depositing Chester back in his cage, to the bunny's dismay, Jamie pulled Logan to his feet. "Follow me and bring the angel."

The two boys stepped out onto the landing and tip-toed down the stairs for good measure. Sure enough, the first thing they saw in the living room was Taylor, who looked up at them and pressed her finger to her lips without a word. Quinn was fast asleep in her lap, and Haley was nowhere in sight. "Where's Mom?" Jamie asked in a low voice.

"Your sister summoned her," said Taylor softly, gesturing at the staircase. "What are you boys doing?"

"A good deed for Christmas," Jamie replied, leading Logan to their Christmas tree. "Lydia and I were fighting about how to decorate our tree all day," he explained, gesturing expansively at the decked-out fake pine. "I made that thing years ago," he added, pointing at the paper Christmas angel at the top of the tree. "It's seen better days, no matter how much Lydia wanted to be the one to put it at the tip."

"It's sweet," said Logan absently, staring over his shoulder at Quinn. "Hey, what are you doing?"

Jamie had grabbed the angel from his hands and reached for the homemade tree topper. He pulled the paper angel down and balanced Logan's treasured ornament in its place. Then he flicked on the Christmas tree's lights before turning to grin at Logan. "Well, how does that look? Your angel deserves to fly this year."

Logan gaped up at the tree in wonder for a moment. When he turned to face Jamie, his hazel eyes were sparkling; "Are you sure about this?" he said, and Jamie nodded with a proud smile, then had the wind knocked out of him when Logan tackled him. "It's so beautiful, thank you."

"It's a lot prettier than mine," Jamie agreed, squeezing his cousin affectionately. "I hope I've made my point now. Things are sad right now, but you still have your mommy watching over you, and Aunt Quinn loves you, I just know it."

"I really hope you're right," sighed Logan, glancing forlornly at Quinn again for a moment. Then he turned to watch the angel twinkling at the top of the tree. "Dad would really love this; it's amazing."

"Why don't you show him?" Taylor suggested, and Jamie obligingly went to grab the cell phone she was holding out to him.

"Strike a pose," he told Logan. Opening the camera on his phone and seeing the huge smile on his cousin's face, Jamie knew that whatever else happened, he had done a good thing this Christmas.

It was mid-afternoon by the time Kevin arrived back in Tree Hill. He barely slowed down even after getting off the highway; his urgency was fueled more by anger than concern for his family. There was still plenty of available parking at New Brunswick County Hospital when the detective arrived. Kevin grabbed his badge for good measure as he hurried into the emergency room. Before he could reach the reception desk and demand answers from the busily typing woman, his cell phone rang, and Kevin lunged for it, half hoping it would somehow be Melissa. But no such luck; it was, in fact, his partner calling from the Tree Hill police department. "Ollie, I really can't talk right now," he said by greeting. "It was my family in the crash on the edge of town around noon; I'm just getting to the hospital now."

"I heard about that; sorry, Kev," said his partner. "We can talk about the case in Charlotte later; I just thought you'd want to know a car was just reported stolen from the loony bin in Georgia. Doesn't your sister-in-law stay there? Not jumping to conclusions or anything, but maybe she heard about the crash too."

"That's jumping to conclusions, Ollie," Kevin told him irritably. "I'll catch you later; I have to go now." With that, he hung up the call abruptly to keep up the indifferent persona, although the new information had instantly taken root. "What the fuck, crazy bitch?" And so it was with Katie on his mind that he finally dashed into the hospital.

A few floors above the detective in search of answers, a pediatric nurse stood at the base of the MRI machine where Bobby was getting a scan done. She held on to his foot carefully with one hand to let him know he wasn't alone. In the other, the woman clutched the broken head of a Christmas angel. She tried not to think about the look on his face when she'd pried it from his hands so they could run tests on him. At long last, the machine stopped whirring and beeping, and the little boy slid out of the tunnel and sat up slowly. "How do you feel, sweetie?" she asked gently, and he gave her a withering look. "While you were in there getting scanned, your X-rays came back. It looks like you broke your arm in the crash. It's a minor break, so you'll get a cast for a few weeks. You can get all your friends to sign it; school kids love that kind of thing."

"I'd have to have friends in the first place for that to happen," said Bobby dully, wincing when she helped him shift into a wheelchair. Before she could start pushing it towards the nurses' station, the eight-year-old reached up with his uninjured hand. "Where's my angel?"

"Right here," said the nurse, handing it to him. Then she began pushing the wheelchair, her curiosity at the mysterious, broken angel mounting. "Technically, it's the head of an angel. What happened to the rest of it, if you don't mind me asking?"

"It broke," said Bobby, his tone suggesting that he did, in fact, mind her asking. "Everything is broken." He rubbed his eyes furiously with his free hand, the other experiencing shooting pain even though it lay still on his lap. "Where's my mom?"

Although he couldn't see the nurse's bright green eyes shining with sympathy when she was behind the wheelchair, Bobby could picture them. Her prolonged hesitation made the dread come flooding back, and no amount of injuries was as crippling as the fear. "Your mom was pretty banged up, sweetie," she told him carefully. "It's probably going to be a long surgery while we try and fix her." She gripped his uninjured shoulder comfortingly and added: "Don't worry; I'm sure your Dad will show up soon. The crash you were in was all over the news; Tree Hill hasn't seen an accident that crazy in ages."

Bobby shivered at her sweet and reassuring tone, the borderline panic making his following words even harder. "No, you don't understand. My Dad showing up is exactly what I'm worried about. He just…can't!"

At that exceptionally terrified exclamation, the nurse brought the wheelchair to a halt in the middle of a long hallway and stepped around it to face Bobby just as he bent towards his knees, almost hyperventilating. "Calm down, honey, you're going to be okay," she said soothingly. "We're the best hospital in the area, and we're going to do everything we can to help your Mom, okay? Hey, just look at me." Her insistent tone made Bobby look up reluctantly, his dark eyes glazed over with tears.

The brunette was holding her pinky out to him, presumably to make the impossible promise that his mother would be alright. But rather than her finger, Bobby's gaze was drawn to the nametag on her chest. "Katie," he whispered in wonder, and the young woman followed his gaze with a smile.

"That's me," she said unnecessarily. "Katie Jennings, at your service. You're Bobby, right?" He nodded, but she misinterpreted the dazed shock on his face as some aftermath of the accident. "Alright then, speaking as your new friend, I'm telling you we're going to fix this." In her efforts to stay upbeat on his behalf, Nurse Jennings remained oblivious to the memories she had triggered. Finding it less complicated to keep quiet than to argue with her optimism, Bobby squeezed the angel's head in his fist and tried not to think of his aunt's torn expression the last time he saw her. At that moment, crazy or not, there was nobody he needed more.

Back at the Scott house, adding his angel to Jamie's tree had cheered Logan considerably. While Quinn slept, the two boys returned to Jamie's room and played a few rounds of the basketball video game featuring Nathan. After Jamie had defeated him spectacularly a few times, there was suddenly a gentle knock at the bedroom door, and Haley peeked in. "How are you doing, squirt?" she asked, noting the smile on Logan's face in relief. "I hope Jamie helped a little."

"More than a little," said Logan fervently. "He saved my Christmas, even if Mom doesn't like me so much right now. The angel has a home now; it means a lot."

"I'm glad," said Haley fondly and gave Jamie a proud smile. "Listen, Wolverine, there's no pressure from our side, of course, but I was wondering if you're ready to head home? Your mom has plenty of support here, but I feel bad that your dad's all by himself right now. We've all seen how he can get about shutting people out when bad things happen. Do you wanna go see if he's doing okay?"

At the truth of her words, Logan frowned slightly and laid his controller down on the bed. Then he moved towards Haley and hugged her. "You're totally right. Thanks for the reminder, Aunt Haley. I promised Nana I would keep an eye on him. She wants him to talk to Aunt Lily in England; I need to make it happen somehow."

Haley kissed him on the forehead; "You'll find a way, sweetie," she said confidently. "I'm proud of you for being so brave through all this." Logan smiled awkwardly at the compliment, but Haley wasn't done yet. "And just for the record, your mom really does love you, okay? That's never going to change, no matter what."

A / N Two years of nothing and now two updates in a week, it feels so good even though the story hurts like hell. Enjoy all! xx