Categories > Original > Drama > Separation
April 1, 1979
“Al?”
Few people dared to call him that. Misty was one of them.
“Yeah?”
“Can I talk to you?”
He shrugged. “Shoot.”
“What happened?”
“Huh?” Alex blinked, honestly perplexed.
“I wasn’t here, I was getting cussed-out by Ray’s parents that week. I know it probably wouldn’t have made a difference if I or anyone else had been here to mediate,” except Ray, “but… Seriously, what happened? You two’ve had fights before and always managed to kiss and make up.”
There was kindness in her eyes, and sympathetic honesty on her face. She wasn’t asking to satisfy her own curiosity so much as presenting a chance for him to vent. Although not a telepath herself, Misty looked as if she might start his crying for him.
“C’mon Al, talk to me. Please.”
He looked over at her, clenching his jaw and swallowing convulsively. He hadn't explained it to anyone, not even Tasha, just said that it was over and Charles had moved out. Charles was gone, Ray was gone, he was marooned by himself in a house that was too big for just him -and Christ, he felt the irony of something being too big for him - and he'd spent the past week sleeping on the couch in the game room because he couldn't take the big empty bed. "I - can't, I mean it..." he trailed to a halt. He'd never been good with words, not when it came to emotions; his eloquence was limited to events, things, places. Feelings lodged in his throat and choked him. There was a reason his two best friends were telepaths.
Being in love with a telepath meant never having to say you're sorry, he'd thought. Somehow it seemed he'd been wrong.
"It's okay," she told him, doing her best not to let an edge of power-laced compulsion into her voice. The last thing she wanted to do, after all, was force him. However, the undernote of things unsaid remained intact: You don't have to act all macho for me. Don't be ashamed. I'm here if you need me. I understand. She did understand at least in part, what with a brief succession of unsuccessful relationships in her modest dating history. Breakups were awkward at best, even under completely amicable conditions. This was something in which she was guiltily glad she had no first-hand experience.
"I...I miss him too..." The catch in her voice had been unintentional, she was supposed to be the supportive one in this scenario. However, coming home after an impressive upbraiding from Ray's parents to find she'd lost yet another friend had not been pleasant for her either. Granted her relationship with Charles had not been close, but they'd traded insults and the smiles to go with them like siblings. Three seemed like such a small number now, especially since two legs of the trio had been removed, leaving her and Dan to try to keep the remaining support from toppling over without its fellows. The irony wasn't lost on her either.
He shook his head. "It's not even that," he said, and cleared his throat. "He just - I just...." He shook his head again and swallowed convulsively. The words were hard, sharp and pointy and they got caught in his chest. Best to shove through them; when had pain ever kept him from doing something? "He's not who I thought he was."
Of all possible answers, somehow, Misty hadn't been expecting that. Charles had never exactly been out-going, but he could be personable in his own sarcastic way. Certainly he'd held things back from his friends- telepaths or not- but for him to have hidden something damaging enough to destroy what she had assumed to be a solid relationship? It did not compute to say the least.
"I don't understand," she told him, voicing her confusion. "I mean sure he could be an ass, but...it was never personal."
She wanted to believe the best of both of them, to be told it was a mutual misunderstanding, yet another of their loud yet ultimately recoverable differences of opinion. There were no Bad Guys in this house. Yet she couldn't retract the words that escaped:
"Alex...what did he do to you?"
"It wasn't me," he replied, looking up at her with something like surprise. "What could he do to me? No. It was Ray." He rubbed the back of his neck and shivered. "He wanted to pull the plug on Ray."
From a distance she felt her jaw drop, her eyes grow wide. Alex's shiver traveling up her arm and down her spine into her stomach made her gag and shudder. Pull the... Her brain would not finish the sentence, the thought.
"I... He..." she couldn't get any farther. Horror etched on her face, she could only gape. How could anyone even consider doing that to their best friend? Surely this must have been immediately after the accident, when Ray was more dead than alive, still in pieces, lost deep in oblivion. That she could almost understand, almost forgive. The suggestion had to have been made out of grief, out of guilt and desperation and later retracted.
Voice constricted with revulsion she begged, "Please tell me this was early on?"
"Charles said he was gone, that there was nothing left and there was nothing to hope for." Alex stared past her, unseeing. "I didn't want to believe him. I told him that I wasn't giving up; that Ray was our best friend and our teammate, and he wouldn't abandon us like this. I told him that I knew he wasn't gone, and I was willing to wait until he came back. Forever, if I had to."
Misty nodded silently. Everyone had gotten banged up in that particular fight, even Melody, though she hadn’t been present on the front lines. News of Ray's injury had been delayed in coming, and her own injures had slowed her flight to his bedside.
"I'm glad you spoke up for him. I would have said the same thing."
By the time she'd gotten there, the legal ramifications had already been turned over to the NSA. No one had ever asked her opinion, but then, why would they?
Putting both her arms around one of his, Misty leaned her head against Alex's shoulder in a miniature hug. She knew how he must have felt, but it seemed needlessly cruel to say so.
"My partner, my teammate, the telepath told me that he was gone, Misty. That there wasn't anything left to save. I didn't agree with him and he called me an idiot. But I was right, and if I'd backed down I would have murdered my best friend as surely as if I'd snapped his neck myself." He looked up at her, the anguish plain in his eyes. "And later, I asked him why. Was he - just wrong? Did he miss him somehow? Did he think Ray wouldn't want to live after that much damage had been done?" A trace of worried guilt slipped across his face. "That's all he'd have to say, really. That it was a mistake, that he was sorry. That he was wrong. Or maybe that he didn't think Ray would want to be helpless like that." He buried his face in his hands.
“Oh honey…” Misty stretched her arms around as much of Alex’s wide shoulders as she could reach, the motion as much to calm herself as him. “It’s okay…” It wasn’t- at least not now- but there was, perhaps, hope that things might improve.
For some reason she felt as if she ought to defend Charles, to try to extrapolate a reason for his bizarre actions. Perhaps Ray had been goggling at the pearly gates when Charles had tried to reach for him? But even if that were true, wouldn’t he have been able to sense his wandering psyche later? She’d probably never know. She wasn’t sure she wanted to. Maybe he had felt that life as a quadriplegic would be unbearable for Ray? Perhaps he’d feared Ray might awaken not knowing his friends, his brain so badly damaged that he would never remember them or anything else again? A third possibility nagged at the back of her mind, but she could not believe it, and therefore did not acknowledge it. Thoughts and stomach churning, she did her best to soothe her friend while a choking feeling crept ever higher in her own throat.
“He…he was probably just upset, scared, we all were. We were all nervous he’d either
wake up so damaged he’d barely remember who he was, let alone us; or worse, never wake up at all.” Even knowing Ray was alive and intact and probably even awake at that very moment did not help. The words still caught in her throat, too large and terrible to pronounce without choking. “It was probably just… He was only…” But the excuses created emptiness in her mouth and she couldn’t find words to make herself finish.
Alex's laugh was brittle, bitter, unlike anything she'd ever heard from him. "He told me," he said, "that he was jealous. Because I loved Ray. Like that made the slightest fucking difference to either of them while Ray was okay; like I'd given him a reason to stop trusting me. Like I'd done a single goddamned thing different. Like it affected how much I loved him." He made a strangled noise, somewhere between laugh and sob. "But he was fucking jealous of my best friend, who will never, ever want me as anything but that - jealous enough to let him die."
And there it was, the thought she'd refused to recognize, the stark and ugly truth said in Alex's voice. The guys could be oblivious when it came to emotions, especially Ray, who often was so pre-occupied with the future that he sometimes forgot about the present. She'd seen snatches of it here and there, not very often, but for some reason she'd remembered that handful of times when Charles had looked at Ray and Alex with a more envious tint to his green eyes. Despite knowing, she hadn't wanted to believe, still did not want to believe.
"I don't understand..." The words were delicate, as helpless as she felt. She wasn't expecting an answer from Alex or anyone else really, though a reason that would explain away the complete and overarching wrongness of the whole thing would have been nice. More than two years had gone by since the accident, but having this conversation thrust her back in time, as if they were having to make the same terrible decision all over again.
Jealous enough to let him DIE.
The phrase kept chasing itself through her head, and she clung to Alex, fighting the urge to be sick.
"Alex I'm so sorry...about everything." She was.
“Al?”
Few people dared to call him that. Misty was one of them.
“Yeah?”
“Can I talk to you?”
He shrugged. “Shoot.”
“What happened?”
“Huh?” Alex blinked, honestly perplexed.
“I wasn’t here, I was getting cussed-out by Ray’s parents that week. I know it probably wouldn’t have made a difference if I or anyone else had been here to mediate,” except Ray, “but… Seriously, what happened? You two’ve had fights before and always managed to kiss and make up.”
There was kindness in her eyes, and sympathetic honesty on her face. She wasn’t asking to satisfy her own curiosity so much as presenting a chance for him to vent. Although not a telepath herself, Misty looked as if she might start his crying for him.
“C’mon Al, talk to me. Please.”
He looked over at her, clenching his jaw and swallowing convulsively. He hadn't explained it to anyone, not even Tasha, just said that it was over and Charles had moved out. Charles was gone, Ray was gone, he was marooned by himself in a house that was too big for just him -and Christ, he felt the irony of something being too big for him - and he'd spent the past week sleeping on the couch in the game room because he couldn't take the big empty bed. "I - can't, I mean it..." he trailed to a halt. He'd never been good with words, not when it came to emotions; his eloquence was limited to events, things, places. Feelings lodged in his throat and choked him. There was a reason his two best friends were telepaths.
Being in love with a telepath meant never having to say you're sorry, he'd thought. Somehow it seemed he'd been wrong.
"It's okay," she told him, doing her best not to let an edge of power-laced compulsion into her voice. The last thing she wanted to do, after all, was force him. However, the undernote of things unsaid remained intact: You don't have to act all macho for me. Don't be ashamed. I'm here if you need me. I understand. She did understand at least in part, what with a brief succession of unsuccessful relationships in her modest dating history. Breakups were awkward at best, even under completely amicable conditions. This was something in which she was guiltily glad she had no first-hand experience.
"I...I miss him too..." The catch in her voice had been unintentional, she was supposed to be the supportive one in this scenario. However, coming home after an impressive upbraiding from Ray's parents to find she'd lost yet another friend had not been pleasant for her either. Granted her relationship with Charles had not been close, but they'd traded insults and the smiles to go with them like siblings. Three seemed like such a small number now, especially since two legs of the trio had been removed, leaving her and Dan to try to keep the remaining support from toppling over without its fellows. The irony wasn't lost on her either.
He shook his head. "It's not even that," he said, and cleared his throat. "He just - I just...." He shook his head again and swallowed convulsively. The words were hard, sharp and pointy and they got caught in his chest. Best to shove through them; when had pain ever kept him from doing something? "He's not who I thought he was."
Of all possible answers, somehow, Misty hadn't been expecting that. Charles had never exactly been out-going, but he could be personable in his own sarcastic way. Certainly he'd held things back from his friends- telepaths or not- but for him to have hidden something damaging enough to destroy what she had assumed to be a solid relationship? It did not compute to say the least.
"I don't understand," she told him, voicing her confusion. "I mean sure he could be an ass, but...it was never personal."
She wanted to believe the best of both of them, to be told it was a mutual misunderstanding, yet another of their loud yet ultimately recoverable differences of opinion. There were no Bad Guys in this house. Yet she couldn't retract the words that escaped:
"Alex...what did he do to you?"
"It wasn't me," he replied, looking up at her with something like surprise. "What could he do to me? No. It was Ray." He rubbed the back of his neck and shivered. "He wanted to pull the plug on Ray."
From a distance she felt her jaw drop, her eyes grow wide. Alex's shiver traveling up her arm and down her spine into her stomach made her gag and shudder. Pull the... Her brain would not finish the sentence, the thought.
"I... He..." she couldn't get any farther. Horror etched on her face, she could only gape. How could anyone even consider doing that to their best friend? Surely this must have been immediately after the accident, when Ray was more dead than alive, still in pieces, lost deep in oblivion. That she could almost understand, almost forgive. The suggestion had to have been made out of grief, out of guilt and desperation and later retracted.
Voice constricted with revulsion she begged, "Please tell me this was early on?"
"Charles said he was gone, that there was nothing left and there was nothing to hope for." Alex stared past her, unseeing. "I didn't want to believe him. I told him that I wasn't giving up; that Ray was our best friend and our teammate, and he wouldn't abandon us like this. I told him that I knew he wasn't gone, and I was willing to wait until he came back. Forever, if I had to."
Misty nodded silently. Everyone had gotten banged up in that particular fight, even Melody, though she hadn’t been present on the front lines. News of Ray's injury had been delayed in coming, and her own injures had slowed her flight to his bedside.
"I'm glad you spoke up for him. I would have said the same thing."
By the time she'd gotten there, the legal ramifications had already been turned over to the NSA. No one had ever asked her opinion, but then, why would they?
Putting both her arms around one of his, Misty leaned her head against Alex's shoulder in a miniature hug. She knew how he must have felt, but it seemed needlessly cruel to say so.
"My partner, my teammate, the telepath told me that he was gone, Misty. That there wasn't anything left to save. I didn't agree with him and he called me an idiot. But I was right, and if I'd backed down I would have murdered my best friend as surely as if I'd snapped his neck myself." He looked up at her, the anguish plain in his eyes. "And later, I asked him why. Was he - just wrong? Did he miss him somehow? Did he think Ray wouldn't want to live after that much damage had been done?" A trace of worried guilt slipped across his face. "That's all he'd have to say, really. That it was a mistake, that he was sorry. That he was wrong. Or maybe that he didn't think Ray would want to be helpless like that." He buried his face in his hands.
“Oh honey…” Misty stretched her arms around as much of Alex’s wide shoulders as she could reach, the motion as much to calm herself as him. “It’s okay…” It wasn’t- at least not now- but there was, perhaps, hope that things might improve.
For some reason she felt as if she ought to defend Charles, to try to extrapolate a reason for his bizarre actions. Perhaps Ray had been goggling at the pearly gates when Charles had tried to reach for him? But even if that were true, wouldn’t he have been able to sense his wandering psyche later? She’d probably never know. She wasn’t sure she wanted to. Maybe he had felt that life as a quadriplegic would be unbearable for Ray? Perhaps he’d feared Ray might awaken not knowing his friends, his brain so badly damaged that he would never remember them or anything else again? A third possibility nagged at the back of her mind, but she could not believe it, and therefore did not acknowledge it. Thoughts and stomach churning, she did her best to soothe her friend while a choking feeling crept ever higher in her own throat.
“He…he was probably just upset, scared, we all were. We were all nervous he’d either
wake up so damaged he’d barely remember who he was, let alone us; or worse, never wake up at all.” Even knowing Ray was alive and intact and probably even awake at that very moment did not help. The words still caught in her throat, too large and terrible to pronounce without choking. “It was probably just… He was only…” But the excuses created emptiness in her mouth and she couldn’t find words to make herself finish.
Alex's laugh was brittle, bitter, unlike anything she'd ever heard from him. "He told me," he said, "that he was jealous. Because I loved Ray. Like that made the slightest fucking difference to either of them while Ray was okay; like I'd given him a reason to stop trusting me. Like I'd done a single goddamned thing different. Like it affected how much I loved him." He made a strangled noise, somewhere between laugh and sob. "But he was fucking jealous of my best friend, who will never, ever want me as anything but that - jealous enough to let him die."
And there it was, the thought she'd refused to recognize, the stark and ugly truth said in Alex's voice. The guys could be oblivious when it came to emotions, especially Ray, who often was so pre-occupied with the future that he sometimes forgot about the present. She'd seen snatches of it here and there, not very often, but for some reason she'd remembered that handful of times when Charles had looked at Ray and Alex with a more envious tint to his green eyes. Despite knowing, she hadn't wanted to believe, still did not want to believe.
"I don't understand..." The words were delicate, as helpless as she felt. She wasn't expecting an answer from Alex or anyone else really, though a reason that would explain away the complete and overarching wrongness of the whole thing would have been nice. More than two years had gone by since the accident, but having this conversation thrust her back in time, as if they were having to make the same terrible decision all over again.
Jealous enough to let him DIE.
The phrase kept chasing itself through her head, and she clung to Alex, fighting the urge to be sick.
"Alex I'm so sorry...about everything." She was.
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