haunted
pg-13 | no warnings apply
He wakes up sometimes in a cold sweat.
They aren't the nightmares of his childhood. There aren't monsters in his closet or phantom figures chasing him through darkened alleys. Two faces he longs to remember, then two more that he's never seen, but he'll never be able to forget. Flashes of ineffective news coverage. The police saying senseless things like, 'random act of violence.' People wearing black and never-ending funeral processions. He keeps hoping it was nothing but a dream.
But then he wakes up. Sometimes, there's a reassuring arm around his waist. Sometimes, it helps.
-
"You're only haunted by the ghosts you invite in," Danny tells him.
-
On his bad days, every other man that he passes on the street looks like one of the composites. He's stopped going to the police, because they don't listen to him anymore. After three years of half-baked leads and crazy accusations, the detectives just look at him with barely disguised pity.
He resists the urge to confront the random men on the street. Most of the time.
He tells himself that he's not obsessed.
-
It was Danny, while standing in his kitchen, sipping orange juice, who suggested that he see someone.
-
The girls seem fine, but he worries there's something growing within them, something he can't see, but something that will destroy them. They never saw the blood on the walls, or heard their parents screaming, but they watched the news. Reporters detailing the crime with feigned compassion. Bad pictures of their mother, making her look years older than she was. Unflattering pictures of their father, his face screwed up in an unpleasant grimace.
He silently waits for them to break, hoping it never happens, failing to see that which he fears festering in his own heart.
-
When Danny has his tongue in his mouth, it's almost enough to make him forget everything, almost enough to make him feel alive.
-
On a lazy Sunday, while he watched him grading papers, he said that Danny was the best thing that ever happened to him. He immediately felt guilty. If his sister hadn't been slaughtered, he'd still be in the DC field office, and he never would have moved here, never would have met the attractive, young teacher.
The best thing in his life had grown out of his most harrowing tragedy.
Danny just offered him a sad smile, and told him that was how the world worked from time to time.
-
Last year, while walking through a parking lot, a car backfired, and he tackled Danny to the ground. It made no sense; he hadn't been anywhere near the house when it happened.
-
Every time the phone rings, he prays for the words he fears he'll never hear: "We got them, Mr. Fitzgerald." But it's only another parent, a bill collector, or a telemarketer. Confirming the next PTA meeting, reminding him the electric bill is past due, trying to get him to buy life insurance.
It violated the balance of the universe. Two people shouldn't be able to go into a home that wasn't theirs, take the lives of two people they didn't know, and never be caught. Everything was off-kilter, and it would be that way until the bastards were in jail.
The girls were convinced that would never happen. He clung to a shred of hope that seemed to grow thinner each day.
-
"This isn't normal!" Danny shouts. He doesn't even remember what normal felt like.
-
Survivors guilt, the doctor called it. He was the one who had chosen a dangerous life in the FBI, but it was his peace-loving sister who died at the other end of a gun. He was miles away, sleeping in his bed, unable to protect her. She died and he lived and he felt guilty for being able to breathe.
The doctor just kept nodding as he wrote a prescription. Just something to take the edge off, help him sleep, let him get his life back to normal.
And it did, for a while.
-
He tells Danny to leave; maybe it would be better that way.
-
They stopped taking the edge off, so he kept taking more until he was numb. The doctor kept writing the prescription, and the pharmacy kept filling it, so he assumed it was okay. He hid them from Danny, but he told himself that didn't mean anything. Danny would overreact, is all. Any time his guilty conscience tried to make itself known, he took another pill, and it went away.
When he spills the little tablets all over the floor, he panics. He's not sure if it's because he can't stand to be without the pills, or because he's afraid Danny will find a stray one under the sofa and jump to conclusions.
Conclusions that aren't true, because it's not as if he has a problem.
-
"You can talk to me," Danny whispers. He opens his mouth, but can't find speech.
-
Jamie finds them instead. Rolls the pill between her fingers as she asks him about them. Lies flow so effortlessly that he feels ashamed. She either accepts his excuses or just doesn't want to push the issue, because she lets it drop.
Hours later, he's trembling, counting the hours until the pharmacy opens, muttering to himself, "I'm not addicted, I'm not addicted."
He doesn't even believe it himself. His body feels as if it's going to shatter, and he's about ready to let go. Breathing is overrated.
-
"Jamie told me," Danny admits. "But I know where you've been, and I'm not going to leave you there."
-
He keeps all the presents his sister had given him in a box. He's not sure why. On the really bad days, he pulls them out, running his fingers over the cloth, the glass, the leather. He can feel her hands on his arms, her body pressed against his as she hugs him. He can hear her voice, even smell her perfume.
That's where Danny finds him, crying into an ugly tie.
(fin.)