We are not traitors

When he wakes up, his head is hurting. That isn't entirely new--he's been waking up with headaches more often lately, and this one isn't even the worst one he's had. But the room is unusually dark, smelling strangely musty, and he groans and rolls over, his hand going instinctively to his face.

And then two things happen. He realizes that he's alone in bed, completely alone, with no warmth of any other body, no familiar scent.

And he feels his own skin.

He sits up so sharp and so hard that his head gives a splitting lurch. He cries out softly, eye squeezed shut--eye. His right one is frozen half open, twisted and stiff with scar issue. He's back in his own apartment, in Trenton, New Jersey, and he's alone, and he's crippled, and he's lost everything.

The bandages are still on his wrists. He can feel them pulling at his skin. He remembers that clearly--it had been rage more than anything else. More than anything else, he had just wanted to hurt something. It had been convenient.

"What the fuck," he whispers. For a horrible minute or so, he considers that maybe it had all been a dream, all of it: Florence, Eostre, Neil, Tom, the girls, the Island, the Realm, everyone he's known and loved anywhere other than here. Wishful thinking, grasping at increasingly ridiculous straws as whatever's left of his real life slips further and further away.

He never would have thought that he would want the Realm to be anything more than a bad dream.

He opens his eye and looks around. The room is dimly lit and gray, colorless, strewn with books and laundry that he hasn't bothered to pick up, because what would the point be? What day is this? How long has he been asleep? His gaze settles on the digital clock by the bed: 4:30. It has to be afternoon. Toward the end he had been sleeping most of the time. He drags himself closer to the clock and the window over it, spreading the shades apart. Just as gray outside, and raining in a sullen, noncommittal way.

He hasn't looked at his leg. He can't. There's a prosthetic on the floor, looking strange and broken and sad. He can look at that, barely. He almost laughs. I buried you.

For a long time he just sits there. What else to do? He's never experienced a loss like this. Not the leg, not Eostre, not Chris, not Florence. He's never lost years of his own life. Never...

There's a scrap of paper on the table. The white of it catches his attention all at once and he leans over, squinting. A phone number. Not his handwriting. Far too steady.

He recognizes this. He knows what this is. And then he knows a lot more--or he wants to know it, wants to believe it, because it would mean that he doesn't have to let go.

A loop, like Neil's. Something he has to do. He holds the paper in his hand, shaking slightly. So what? What the fuck is he supposed to do to get around this, if he can?

Not that many options. Being in this body hurts him. He had forgotten how much it hurt, how much he had wanted to be out of it. Who remembers pain once it's gone? But now he remembers all of it, and the Island and all those beloved faces are slipping through his mind like sand on the beach.

Finally, because he's not sure what else to do, he manages to get hold of one of his crutches--he'd been using them for therapy, he remembers, and to get around when he didn't want to bother with the prosthetic. he manages to get to his feet and hobbles, naked, down the short dark hallway and into the kitchen. Dishes are piled high in the sink, and the whole place smells faintly of food going bad. He fumbles with the phone, almost drops it, fumbles with the paper and almost drops it as well. But he gets the number dialed, and it's ringing, and it's answered after two rings.

He doesn't wait to hear what the voice says. "My answer is yes," he breathes. "I'm in."

And everything goes white.

Sometimes, he thinks he was made for this. Or maybe not quite this, but things like it. It's not something he's proud of or something he'd really talk about, but on days like this--good days, really good days--he's got the weight off the gun in his hands and prey somewhere in front of him, and the warm presence of Tom Hobbes next to him and waiting at home, Neil and his daughters, and for just a moment he can believe that this all fits together.

Even if those moments are coming fewer and further between.

There's boar. A big fellow. He knows it, even though they've lost sight of it for the moment. It's a hot afternoon and the sweat is rolling down his neck in tickling little trickles, but he doesn't notice it. Weeks in the desert over a decade ago cured him of that.

"Easy," he breathes. "Sooner or later, he's gotta come back this way."

"Daddy, found tarfish," Mack calls merrily, crouched down in her sundress and poking at something in the sand. Mike leans over to peer at it, a greenish round thing, and shakes his head, grinning. Beside him, Flo is filling her hat with sand and shells with extraordinary concentration.

"That's a sand dollar, honey," he says. "Not a starfish. Leave it alone, it's alive."

"Kay," Mack says, looking mildly put out but forgetting all about it when a long conical shell catches her eye. She picks it up and turns it in the sunlight, blue eyes following its elongated spiral. "Pretty," she murmurs, and Mike tugs at her hat.

"You're pretty," he says, and she bats at his hands and laughs.

"Wan' lunch," Flo announces, looking up from her hat, and Mike ruffles her blond curls. It's not yet high noon, there's a fresh breeze, and the sun feels good on his bare back.

Perfect. Pretty much.

"Daddy Tom'll be here soon," he says, glancing back up in the direction of the boardwalk. "We'll have lunch then."

[continued from here]

He stumbles out of the club mostly backwards, hands on Neil's hips and grinning at Tom over Neil's shoulder. He wants... he doesn't even know what he wants. His skin is warm and buzzing and what he really thinks he wants is to touch them both all over, to be touched.

"You think we can make it back?" he asks, laughing and pulling Neil in for a kiss once the shadows of the trees cover them a little more. He can still hear the music from inside, and there's something soft and sensual in the night air that's entirely summerish.

He treasures these mornings, especially as they come so rarely. This time Neil's doing them the favor, taken the girls up to the Compound and leaving the two of them to stay in bed, tangled in the sheets and each other. On some mornings like this they doze, on some they fuck nice and slow, on some they talk quietly together. This time they're just lying there in the bed that's Tom's gift, making pillows of each other, touching slowly and feeling the sun move in shafts across their skin.

He never used to have this, he thinks, and it's important to remember that always. Even if they'd had each other in the Realm the way he'd wanted it, it would have been all quick fucks and stolen minutes. None of this. No enjoying each other, nowhere really to be.

He's making wreaths out of the red blossoms. They're rough and half falling apart, and he's doing it without giving much thought to it, weaving the stems round each other, and the flower petals are crushed between his fingers, leaving red stains on his hands. On either side of the doorway, the little vines are curling tender green lengths cautiously upward. The girls are sleeping in their crib. The sun is lowering into late afternoon.

Somewhere, the leaves are changing and shaking off the branches in a cold autumn rain. Even here the days are getting shorter. It feels appropriate, that it would really begin after she was gone. Soon it'll be winter and she won't be here to watch the girls play in the snow and fill the kitchen with baking smells and roll her eyes at Christmas. She won't be here to warm him.

He has a feeling that he'll be warm anyway. But there's still an ache. Under his breath, he's barely singing something he remembers hearing her sing in her own tuneless voice, some time a long time ago.

She cuts the grain and harvests corn
The kiss of fall surrounds her
The days grow old and winter cold
She draws her cloak around her

It won't ever stop hurting, but he's not bitter. It was more than he ever deserved. And what he has now... It still is.

He's run until it felt like his lungs might jump out through his throat, gone and worked at the build site until his arms ached, showered, gulped down some food he barely tasted, and he feels like he's exactly where he began. Too much is happening. Too much is changing. Too much is teetering on an edge of some kind. Part of him wants to walk up to it and shove it all right over just to watch it fall. It might be his own self-destructive nature or it might be something else.

Late afternoon and he's lying shirtless on his bed with a battered copy of The Just-So Stories open on his chest. He's not reading about how the leopard got his spots (oh, best beloved). He's not sure he's really absorbed a word since he's opened it. His fingers toy idly with the chain around his neck as he stares blankly at the page.

In another world he wouldn't have walked off the hill today. He certainly wouldn't have walked off it alone. But this is the world he's living in, and he's promised...

Except he's starting to wonder about that promise. He's thinking about Tom's hands on Neil's slender shoulders and he's wondering a lot of things. Voice them? Is it worth that risk? Is anything? It's a risk that he can't even look directly at, like something too bright or too impossibly dark to see. He can't lose Hobbes. He'd rather lose his leg again, go blind.

But he's wondering, more and more, if this is something that he can just wait out.

He's had a day to stew and he's still back and forth, even more so. Beating or no beating. Maybe just letting it go. Maybe he doesn't even have any legitimate reason to be this pissed off. Maybe he should just take a few breaths.

Maybe this isn't even what he's really pissed off about.

He's never liked psychology.

And he also feels faintly ridiculous, sitting on the bed with a light evening shower drumming on the roof, waiting. Waiting like he's some kind of jilted housewife with a burned dinner in the oven. Maybe the whole thing is just hopelessly ridiculous.

Maybe that's the problem.

Whatever. He sighs and tugs aside the strip of cloth that serves as a curtain for the little window cut into the wall. Too late to change much. He can hear someone coming.

[continued from here]

"That's a stupid question," he murmurs. He shoves Tom's pants down past his hips, trying to get out of his own at the same time as he's toeing off his boots. They're already getting wet and trickles of muddy water are making their way down Tom's shoulders and chest. He can't bring himself to care. Fuck parties and fuck bead, really.

"You ever think about it?" He grins, stepping out of his pants and pressing forward. "All those firm, tight asses... you ever? Just a little?"

He doesn't love Christmas. There had been a period way back in the misty past of his childhood where it hadn't totally sucked, but after his father had swerved off into drunken oblivion and he and his mother had moved into the cramped apartment one of the shadier parts of Queens Christmas had sort of lost a lot of its luster.

It's getting it back now. A little.

There's a fire in the temporary fireplace. There's a tree, in addition to the giant center-spoke of the wheel that the house makes. Hobbes had insisted and Eostre had grumpily given way. There's a can covered with a dishtowel in lieu of wrapping, because he's not sure how the fuck he'd wrap this. There's metal clinking around his neck, under his shirt. He's waiting for Hobbes to show up and for Eostre to finish putting the girls to bed. It's Christmas Eve and the one thing he notices is that he's actually just a little nervous. Mostly about Eostre's gift.

Maybe also about the fact that the trend actually seems to be upwards.

Hope is a dangerous thing, and 'tis the season for it.