in other words

Not because tragedy is poetic in itself, or that pain fosters affection; but because love, at its essence, subsumes self-sacrifice. It necessitates a desire for something greater than self, compels an action more passionate than a kiss, demands a blood price. It convinces a soul to destroy itself in order to secure another.

For "love" without such is simply - pheromonic attraction, pleasurable infatuation, or a mild-natured appreciation nailed into the nostalgic framework of contentment. Butterflies, whether in one's stomach or out, are insects. Flowers wither and rot. Charm flees under a turning of light.

Maybe that is why our hearts throb so when we witness Love.

Because It is within us, and yet we cannot have It unless we forfeit ourselves.

I remembered feeling distantly regretful just prior, as if I hadn't been able to say goodbye to someone. But that faded; and then I drifted....drifted for a while.

Easily and slowly like a mote of dust carried by the currents of time. There wasn't a word or a thought. Just a submerged silence...

You woke me with your song.

There were flowers. Thousands, everywhere. The way there always seem to be so many flowers, in places and around people who are meant to be beautiful. Or is it the flowers that make them so?

Anyway - you were there, small among so many flowers.

You stopped humming.

Maybe neither of us had seen anyone in a long while, because neither of us said anything for some time.

And then, after a while, you said: "....hi."

"Hi," I said.

I found that I could move again. I had a mouth (how else could I have spoken); eyes (how else could I have seen the flowers, or you); arms and legs.... I climbed out.

You watched me, with an uncertain but curious sort of smile. "Were you sleeping?"

"I guess so." Death was a kind of slumber, wasn't it?

-

There was no one else here.

It was just us, and flowers. As far as the eye could see, like an ocean all its own. In between the green stems and leaves, there were openings of glimmering water, aquamarine. I wondered how deep that water went. Looking behind me, I realized I had been floating on water. Was it a sea? Perhaps this was a shore.

"How long have you been here?" It seemed only natural to ask in this sort of situation.

You shrugged. "I'm not sure. It feels like a while. But also not that long."

A nonsensical answer, but it seemed to make sense, for some reason. Maybe because I felt the same way. There was no day or night here. Light and space were constant.

And yet...things happened.

-

You invited me to your home. You explained it was a place you had discovered when you had first arrived, as if it had always been here. You weren't sure who built it, but it had everything you needed: a fireplace, a stove, a kitchen, a garden, a bath, a place to hang wet things to dry, a bed.

There was even an extra room for me, as if it had been waiting for me all along.

"Hope you aren't picky - there are only white things to wear here." In your hand was a white shirt. I blinked, realizing that you were wearing a white dress. I had always thought of white as an impractical color to wear, but nothing seemed dirty here.

"Thank you."

Maybe I would stay clean, too.

"Do you want to eat?"

Was I hungry?

"Sure." I decided I was.

You led me to the table to sit. I watched you cook. You weren't very good at it. Mostly you chopped some things and put them into a pot with boiling water.

"Please don't complain," you said, setting the bowl of boiled stuff down in front of me. "Cooking isn't my thing."

"Okay," I said with a small smile.

It wasn't that bad.

-

Like I said, there was no time here. But things happened.

You would go to bed, and so would I. We would wake up. Sometimes you earlier than me; sometimes me before you. We would talk about things. It was strange how we managed to find things to talk about, in a place that had nothing but us and flowers. We would eat. Usually boiled things. Sometimes I cooked too.

You liked to take walks, and I would walk with you. I discovered there were some other things here besides flowers. Some places a little further had trees. Fields. A lake. A stream. A meadow.

But it was only ever us.

-

"I think something's changed," you said. "Ever since you came."

We were walking, in a place with trees and flowers. "I feel like...."

You looked perplexed, and almost frustrated, because you couldn't find the words. "...something has changed. Is going to change."

You said it with such definitiveness that it made me a little uneasy.

I must have been wearing a strange expression because you smiled then, leaning up against a tree. "It's not a bad thing. I'm not blaming you. It's just going to be different."

I looked out at all the flowers. They looked the same as they had when I had first come here; but somehow different.

"Yeah." I had to agree, even if I didn't want to.

-

You hugged me. It was the first time you had.

"I think I'm going to be leaving soon."

You let go, and started to walk away.

I reached out to touch your hand. "Do you have to?"

You smiled. "Do you want to come with me?"

"Kind of."

You laughed. "Then come."

If there is, it must be something divine. An entity that doesn’t operate by the principles of this universe.

Is love such a thing?

in the quiet, peaceful moments, I find myself asking:

Is this it?

And later, like a soft dusk descending over my restless heart: I hear the answer.

Isn’t it enough?

Though he concealed it well, the slender, pale scar that snaked around the column of his neck, forked tongue splitting out against the Adam’s apple into a four-armed star, was obvious to anyone who paid attention to detail.

It irked her.

Just like his smile - that benign and innocuous expression that seemed to want to lull you into a state of unguard; to convince you of its earnestness.

There was no use in asking questions with him. He’d never answer honestly.

Nevertheless, her fingers trail against the blue river of his jugular; unbutton the starched collar, and rest insistently against the pale, silent scar.

“How?” she asks. She spares further words, knowing that he knows what she means.

make sure you find someone at least half as handsome as me, Jolie,” her father intones gravely.

“Find someone who cares for you,” her mother corrects, with a roll of her periwinkle eyes. “Someone who would give their life for you, preferably.”

At the tender age of twelve, Jolie can only giggle, because the future her parents allude to seems like a fuzzy, faraway vision; something to ponder on when she’s lain her head on her pillow at night and is waiting for sleep to come, rather than anything concrete. And even if she does manage to find someone who’s handsome like her father and treats her well, she can’t imagine they will ever elicit more affection than what her heart already holds.

Two decades later, she no longer ponders a fuzzy future with her cheek on a pillow, in a house dark but warm with the murmurs of her parents’ voices down the hall. That fuzzy future is her present now -- and it’s far different from what she would have ever pictured.

She can’t remember exactly what sort of future her twelve-year-old heart had hoped for – but reality had overturned her expectations a long time ago, ever since her 18th year, on that fateful trip into the forest that had left her in a darkness bereft of her parents’ voices.

Neither can she recall the partner that her twelve-year-old imagination might have fashioned for her future self – what was her conception of handsome back then, anyway?

The one at her side now is an existence she could never conceive.

As if sensing her thoughts, she feels Lukh’s gaze shift to her and she turns to meet it with a small smile.

“I was thinking about my parents,” she explains, though he hadn’t asked. His gaze remains trained on her for a beat longer before flickering back to the window, where the simmering orange of dusk punctuates the horizon.

She takes the opportunity to examine his profile, backlit in burnished copper, eyes tracing his features. It’s a face she’s nearly memorized from years spent in each other’s company, and she marks each part fondly – the dark, wild hair, the strong, stormy brow, the piercing eyes—

He’s handsome, she thinks with a private smile, though he’d never accept the description for himself. Was she biased? She didn’t think so.

Her eyes trace a path down from his face to his muscled frame, arms wiry and wrought from years of combat; drift gradually to the hands that hang by his sides. Even from where she sits, she can see the mottled scars that wreath through his fingers like senescent flames.

Her gaze pauses over his hands, recollecting their deeds. How much had they done for her? Each scar runs like the mark of a sacrifice made on her behalf; too numerous to count, obvious to anyone with eyes to see. His devotion baffled her. How had someone as strong and wonderful as him, come to care for someone like her?

She feels the weight of Lukh’s gaze returning and lifts her eyes to meet it again. He’s waiting for an elaboration. (She had been staring at his hands for a good while.)

“They would have liked you,” she replies, finally.

He makes a quiet sound that’s barely above his normal exhalation, but it’s enough to make her heart swell.

They sit in companionable silence until the dusk drains to darkness. She gets up to clear the table, putting the plates and her teacup and the silverware away, and then prepares for bed.

He focused instead on the weight pulling down on his forearms as he transferred bags (some plastic and translucent; others, recycled paper with handles that chafed) and boxes (mostly cardboard; one, large and wooden) methodically into the trunk of the mini-van. There was a comfort in the quiet burn of muscle fibers, the preoccupation of a task that allowed him to ignore (or at least pretend to) the gaze on his back.

But it was inevitable.

At some point, there were no more bags to carry or boxes to load. The trunk was full. It had to be closed.

He did so, reluctantly; and there was a strange sense of finality to the click of metal before he finally turned to face the man.

There was a smile on his father’s face.

It was a peculiar expression. Not that his father didn’t smile often – on the contrary, his father almost perpetually wore that sort of expression – gentle, airy, and cautious, as though he were always entertaining company. Growing up, he never quite knew how to feel about it.

But this smile was different. It felt less practiced; a little heavier and more sallow, somehow. He couldn’t bring himself to return it, even as his father’s eyes settled on his own, expectantly.

(What was he expecting?)

“Take care, Cho,” his father said, eventually; and he felt a sense of relief that the older man had finally taken it upon himself to break the silence. He was almost grateful, too, for the embrace that followed –though the gesture felt thin, the late autumn wind blowing through gaps to chill his bare arms - with his chin meeting the brown shoulder of his father’s suede jacket, he no longer had to contemplate that expectant smile.

He nodded, unable to murmur anything beyond a bland acknowledgement; that hollow-heavy smile skirting the periphery of his vision.

The car started with a gentle rumble. He watched it stutter to life, tremble, and then sputter slowly off into the distance.

-

It was the end of the quarter, and winter break had arrived.

Jae-seung had already made his exit earlier, duffel bag slung over a shoulder as he saluted a flamboyant “Farewell, captain!” before hopping into a carpool van headed for the airport terminal. He’d booked a trip to Thailand months ago, never one to suffer the dreary gloom of winter if he had the choice.

The apartment was quiet now, except for the sounds of his remaining apartment-mate packing. Eventually, she emerged with a laundry basket toted on one hip and a backpack hanging off the other shoulder. Lowering her load to the ground, she shuffled to join him at the kitchen table.

She blinked up at him owlishly.

“So, you’re just planning to stay here over break?”

He paused around a mouthful of cereal. (Even he got lazy about dinner, sometimes.)

“Yeah.”

She quirked an eyebrow at him and he mirrored the gesture. “Is your…” she began, then seemed to think better of it. Shaking her head, she instead gave him a half-perplexed, half-mock-sympathetic expression. “Well….I guess if that’s what you want to do.”

(Was it?)

 He paused, spooning in another two mouthfuls before eventually replying. “Still going to be working around here, so it’s more convenient. My brother might visit me for a few days. He’s flying in from the East Coast.” Another pause. “I might see my mom for a little, too.”

Her eyebrows rose toward her hairline. “You have a brother?”

He hid a smile behind another mouthful of cereal. “Is that so hard to imagine?”

She cleared her throat to backpedal her enthusiasm. “Well, no, but…I don’t know. You don’t talk about him much.”

Her eyes flickered to his. He felt the other questions simmering in the look, unspoken; and while the attention wasn’t unpleasant, it did make him feel a bit self-conscious.

He shrugged. “Guess not.”

Faintly, her lips twisted, as if dissatisfied with the answer (which, admittedly, was a bit sparse); but she held whatever other inquiries she had and settled for a shrug of her own. “I’m just trying to picture what kind of person he’d be...is he older or younger?”

“What do you think?”

She rolled her eyes, before cocking her head to professionally examine him from various angles, as if that would shed light on the details of his genealogy. “Hmmm, maybe…older?”

He opened his mouth to reply before he was cut off.

“Oh—“ her eyes flickered to the screen of her buzzing phone, and she quickly swiped to answer, gaze now on the door. “Hey, yeah – okay, I’m coming. See you soon.”

Her gaze swept back to him before she stood.

“Alright, I think I’m going to head off now.” Bending over, she reached for her things. He rose to help, but she quickly waved him off. “No, no, I’m fine—go finish your sad excuse of a dinner.”

He rolled his eyes as she wrested the backpack from him and scurried towards the door; he followed her, despite her chiding. A bit harried, she turned to him. “Cho –“

Odd.

That was the only way he could describe the feeling that jolted suddenly through his chest; sharp and searing and frankly disorienting, but only for a fraction of a second, like a bolt of lightning. 

Nevertheless, she must have noticed it; because she had stopped now and was looking at him carefully.

(Was he that transparent?)

She slowed her movements as she pulled on her shoes. (The back of her left sneaker had folded under a heel, and he could tell she was ignoring the discomfort of it to focus her attention on him. Funny.)

“…have a good break.” The words were soft. He wasn’t sure why she felt the need to speak to him in so gentle a tone.

(Or maybe it was just his imagination?)

“You too.” His hand met the top of her head, mussing her hair - to which she shot him a mildly annoyed look.

“I’ll see you later, okay?” she called, trouncing out the door with a hop, urgently lugging her laundry basket towards the pick-up turnaround.

He stood at the doorway until her figure blended with the crowd of other students reuniting with their rides, disappearing into the darkening sky, and then returned to the dinner table.

A small ding sounded from his phone. A text.

By the way, if you’re not doing anything, let’s meet up on one of the weekdays?

Pondering the message, he finished his cereal with a smile.

-

there are different kinds of good-byes

- 

I can hardly remember anything from it except for the sensation of you rubbing your prickly stubble against my forehead and me fighting not to giggle.

It’s been a while since I’ve dreamt of you. I feel like I think of you more often now. As if my subconscious is seeking you out for all the times my conscious mind has turned a blind eye. Certain scenes pop into my head and I replay them over and over. The saddest ones are from the last days - you were so tired and so weak, but still so /you/.

If I think about it too long or hard, I feel like crying. But it’s nothing like the movies. I’m not sobbing out loud or beating my pillow. I can’t wail like Mom. It’s momentary and small - a nose wrinkle, a sniffle, a watery eye. Sometimes I wonder if I should be more dramatic.

People always say, “They wouldn’t want you to cry.” But is that really wholly true?

I think about if (or when) I die - wouldn’t it be kind of gratifying to see some tears shed on my behalf? But that’s too selfish to say out loud. Maybe when we die we lose the human selfishness that attaches us to our bodies. Maybe we do become more like saints.

For now, I’ll continue being occasionally sad and chronically selfish.

He’s set up camp right next to the ramp – not on the sidewalk, but a little further ways off in the shrubbery where you’d miss him if you weren’t paying attention. I noticed him at the beginning of my residency in July and he’s been there all these months (he did disappear in the winter, I assume to a warmer place). But he’s back now that spring is underway.

Because it’s always crowded and congested on that exit on my way home, I find myself always sitting there, watching for him as I’m waiting to make my right turn. He’s older – white hair and a bushy mustache, and this sort of comfortable, lounging demeanor. He has a cardboard tarp that he lies on, a shopping cart, newspapers, sometimes a blanket or a jacket, a grungy olive green t-shirt and a pair of sunglasses. He looks rather cozy when all is said and done. It makes me feel both strangely fond and saddened whenever I see him.

I find myself wondering what it would be like to live his life. Is he happy? Does he have things to look forward to each day? Or does he just scrape by, trying to survive?

But then I thought: those questions could apply to anyone. Even if we materially possess more than that man – are we happy? What do we have to look forward to? What brings meaning to life? ….

I realized, then, that the big difference between the homeless man and me isn’t the disparity of material wealth. It’s the difference in community and relationships. Who does that man have to turn to when he’s sad or miserable? Who will listen to him? Who will view him as an equal, a brother, a friend? Who won’t look at him with an inbred prejudice or guardedness?

It feels like a decade.

My mind understands, but the truth hangs like a storm cloud overhead: mystical & somber & somewhat perplexing, but made less heavy by the assumption that it should one day - eventually - soon - dissipate. 

But it remains.

Hovering, and not always so intrusive, but in the solitary moments, the melancholy strikes like lightning.

I think it’s the part of human nature that hates being reminded of its limitations. Loathes the thought of the impossible, fears the inability to overcome, struggles against that constraint:

that I can’t ever call you again,

that I can’t ever share a meal with you again,

that I can’t ever ....

But really, at the end of the day, it’s a plain and simple truth.

she thinks absently, as her fingers ghost over the line of his jaw. The strong shadows delineate his features in a way that mimic a handsome caricature -- like one in the novels she read as a child. The vampire count who resides in a manor on the hill, dangerously charming, with a smile as sultry as the blackest ink. He’d welcome damsels into his abode for the evening and suck them dry.

She can feel his eyes watching her with an intensity that was once unnerving- but she’s come to learn that this is simply his nature. He means no harm.

She imagines glacial curves, the soft refraction of light against a frosted surface as she continues tracing the planes of his face. He doesn’t blink. Sound is muted.

Ice. The image echoes itself in her head and in his eyes and she feels the coolness of his skin beneath her fingertips. 

Gloriously refreshing in the blaze of summer; chilling the rest of the year. A biting cold. You would grow numb if you held it too long. 

She draws his head closer, cradling his cheeks. The pace of his breathing shifts imperceptibly. She could almost imagine warmth in the breath that fans against her neck. She stares into his eyes.

If you held it too close, it would escape you in a quicksilver rivulet. 

“...what is it?” he asks, smiling. 

(The vampire’s smile. He’d welcome damsels into his abode for the evening and suck them dry.)

White and wide, he dreams of something powerful pulsing through his veins, an exuberant, thrumming force that lifts him up, up, up –

He dreams of flying.

In a city like this, constructed of concrete boxes packed tightly in tandem, tamped shut by grey ceilings until there is hardly room to breathe between the glass and the smog – it is merely that: a dream. In this plane of reality, flight is something that takes place in a torpedo-shaped container that serves trays of processed food and affords hardly any leg space.

But still, he dreams.

A glorious white-wide-blue-sky vision that visits him with enough frequency that the nights become a rehearsal of anticipation, until eventually the darkness of his eyes closing bleeds into the sensation of an Abyss, a big black hole sucking him down with awful intensity, crushing the air out of his lungs; he is falling, falling,

falling—!

He awakes with a start, clutching his bed sheets until he can reassure himself that gravity still works the way he remembers it. He breathes out slowly, releasing the steel coils of his mattress and feeling apologetic for the small squeak they produce as he lets go.

There is a pain between both his shoulder blades when he sits up. Like the dream, the pain becomes perpetual over time. Poor posture, some of his classmates say. (He does have a tendency to slouch.) An amicable stranger tells him to try physical therapy. (He tries it.)

But it’s a different sort of ache, unresponsive to balms and heat packs and stretches found on the Internet. One that runs deeper than the muscle; simmers like a quiet flame between the sinewy sulcus of tendon and bone. A hungry ache that throbs most fiercely in the early hours of the morning when he’s just awoken from the dream, an ache like a hole after a tooth has been wrenched out, an ache like the stump of a tree cut down, an ache of absence, an ache of - 

“Is something bothering you, Keane?” she asks, in that wide-eyed, gentle way of hers. Her face is practically spilling over with worry as she peers closely at him, plum-colored hair catching the light. Her name is Ein. She’s a friendly stranger that he’s newly met in the city a few weeks ago; but there’s an odd kinship that brings them together from the start. It only feels natural.

(Sometimes she is in his dreams too; but of course he can’t tell her that. They’ve only just met.)

His hand quickly lowers from where it had been creeping up towards the inner curve of his scapula, responsibly stuffs itself into his back pant pocket.

“No—no, it’s nothing,” he assures her, assures himself, hastily smiling to ward off any further concern.

There is no need to worry when it is only a dream.

-

“Holy Sepulchre Cemetery,” reads the large granite sign out in front. It’s a gloomy June day when they visit, and the clouds cast a sizable shadow over the letters.

The grounds are large and spacious; well-tended, if the greenness of the lawn is anything to go by. Every so often they pass a straggle of visitors in quiet assembly. Flowers dot the landscape as they walk in silence.

He has no idea what to expect. His father had merely asked him to accompany him for the day, and jumping at the opportunity to spend time with the frequently absent man, Judah had quickly agreed.

A small knot of apprehension twists in the pit of his stomach, his eyes glued to the up-and-down motion of his own feet as they pass over gravel, grass, gravel. 

His father is silent, but when Judah happens to catch his gaze, there is a reassuring smile. The knot in his stomach loosens slightly and he focuses instead on the scent of the summer humidity mingling with the grass that reminds him vaguely of tropical fruit. Mango and citrus.

They stop in front of a plot at the far perimeter. A lone oak tree stands a few feet off, large branches covered in summer foliage. He stares at the placard in front of them, trying to decipher the inscription.

“Judah,” says his father. His head snaps up and he meets his father’s gaze. His father is squatting beside the marker, hand resting atop the worn surface. “This was Rudolph Lennox. He was my best friend. I was about your age when we first met. We grew up together. Joined the army together.” There’s a pause, and Judah shifts, unsure where he fits into all of this.

His father continues. One time Rudolph – or Rudy, as his father called him – jumped into a river in the dead of winter to save a dog. Another time Rudolph shed his socks for a homeless man. And another time Rudolph fell off a fence and broke his arm because he drank too much. Rudolph also had a ladyfriend named Daisy and together they had a baby girl named Petunia. This was just before Rudolph was sent on a mission that he never returned from.

Judah still doesn’t understand what his father is trying to get at, but as he listens to the story of this man - his father’s best friend who jumped into rivers to save dogs and gave up his socks for homeless men and fell off fences and fell in love and had a daughter named after a flower - a feeling creeps slowly into his chest.

His confusion must have shown on his face because his father eventually stops his story and looks at Judah. It is a long look that makes Judah slightly uncomfortable.

“What do you feel?” his father asks.

Judah doesn’t know what answer his father is looking for, and that worries him a bit. But he focuses on answering as truthfully as he can, to the best of his ability, because that is what his father has taught him.

“Sad,” comes the eventual reply.

His father nods, then stands, brushing the dirt from his knees. “Judah, I want you to remember that feeling. When you’re older and you’ve seen a lot of things, sometimes, if you’re not careful – you can forget what sorrow feels like. It’s important that you remember. Do you understand?”

It seems like a very strange lesson to Judah, but he nods anyway. He thinks about Rudolph on the way home. He thinks about Daisy and baby girl Petunia and wonders what has happened to them now. The feeling in his chest lingers all the way into the night, as he drifts to sleep; but it’s gone by the next morning.

-

 He is a decade and a half over twelve when he visits the cemetery again.

His father isn’t with him this time – but everything else is the same. The same old granite sign, Holy Sepulchre Cemetery, the same grass, the same green, the same scent of mango and citrus mixing with the summer humidity.

The place is the same, but he isn’t.

He is older, and he has seen things. Death and pain and suffering and plain old moral depravity – war was exceptional for showcasing the worst that humanity had to offer - and he understands now, the lesson his father had tried to teach him those many years ago. It isn’t until he is under the lone oak tree, in front of the grave of a man he never knew, that he realizes he had been dangerously close to forgetting. He closes his eyes and thinks about his father and Rudolph and Daisy and Petunia and he feels something like a scab slowly peeling off of his heart.

And he remembers.

-

Ladies shouldn’t have to scream. But the city be damned if she wouldn’t scream her lungs out now.

“You asses move and I’ll kill you!”

It’s mostly an empty threat – she’s not a proponent of violence, and definitely not of murder, but sometimes you had to be flamboyant with your word choice if you wanted people to take you seriously - especially with this sort of audience. She’s learned that the hard way.

Caleb is looking at her like she’s crazy, and she makes a note to give him a smacking for that later. Would it hurt him to look a little relieved instead?

“Celt, no—“ The way his voice sounds just a little tremulous makes her stomach flip in a way she doesn’t really like – but then again, maybe this scare was a good thing. He’d been getting out of hand with his antics lately, and look where it had landed them. She ignores him for now.

There’s something about being young and having blood rush to your head that causes all good judgment to fly out the window. But she would ponder the physiologic mysteries of the universe later – for now, instinct sits in the driver’s seat, hand on the stick-shift, gearing full-throttle, and when Caleb yelps as his arm is twisted behind his back, it pulls the trigger.

The man lets out a yell when a bullet finds his forearm, and she would have felt a little triumphant – for a first-time shooter, she isn’t shabby at all - if it weren’t for the sudden hand fisting her hair, yanking her backward. She curses, immediately rearing back to donkey-kick the body behind her with as much force as her booted foot could muster.

And it all would have been fine and dandy if she weren’t a fifteen-year-old girl wielding a hand-me-down pistol with a single bullet left, trying to defend a thirteen-year-old boy with his hands pinned behind his back, surrounded by a group of grizzly (and now very angry) men twice their size.

She lets out another hiss when her leg is grabbed, desperately writhes into a swinging kick with her other leg. The move lands her on her back. She shuts her eyes and grits her teeth and curses herself for letting the blood rush to her head. 

With the pistol’s butt, she clobbers the nearest object, feels something wet and rubbery scrape across her knuckles. Gross. She claws again, and again, and when that doesn’t work, her teeth find something to sink into. It tastes like sweat and something wholly unhygienic.

The side of her face is on fire now – someone’s given her a hefty clout to the temple, and she can taste blood on the inside of her mouth. To her left, she can hear Caleb struggling, and is vaguely proud of the fight he is putting up. Vaguely proud, but also increasingly panicked, thanks to the pair of hands that have found her throat. Choking, she fights to let out at least one more scream, if only to be as obnoxious as she can be – they deserved that much.

The hands release abruptly. Her throat is free, but the scream doesn’t come out. A thud, shouting, crashing; dizzy, vision swimming, she belatedly recognizes a voice, hands gripping her shoulders, propping her upright. A face emerges into view.

“The hell were ya thinking?! Ferchrissake--”

Sure, it’s loud in here what with all the bungling and general chaos (apparently someone was smart enough to call the police), but he doesn’t need to yell. She presses a hand to her forehead and lets out a sigh like a pregnant woman nursing a migraine. Whether it’s exasperation or relief or both, it’s hard to tell.

“God, the hell, Celt, didja really think—“ --and no, she didn’t think, obviously, and that’s why she’d tried to rescue her kid brother from a bunch of gangbangers with nothing more than a pistol and two bullets and no back-up plan; of course she didn’t think about these things-- and he’s yammering on and on in his country drawl that won’t ever change no matter how much he tries, that she hopes will never change even if he tries, thick and worried and nagging and she swears she won’t hear the end of it until they’re seventy years old, in rocking chairs on the porch because their knees have given out. (That is assuming they both make it to seventy.)

Out of nowhere, she feels a little like crying, but that’s the last thing she needs to do. He must be a psychic though, beneath all that brawn-and-no-brains, because suddenly there are arms around her that aren’t trying to kill her. They’re holding her. Hugging her, even. An honest-to-goodness hug.

“God, yer an idiot.”

She laughs, but it comes out a little more warbled than she’d like. Oh, well.

“Couldn’t ya just say I’m brave?”

“Yeah. Yer brave. Sure as hell stupid, but brave.”

She grins. That’s enough for now.

--