SquidgeWorld Archive

Family
by Lucy Hale

I have never felt so alone in my entire life.

Not even prison. Solitary. I didn't feel this alone. I had people out there -- I knew Kevin was off performing his overgrown childhood experiments. I...

Well, come to think of it, I never did have too much in the way of friends. Maybe it was enough for me, knowing Kevin was out there. In my line of work, you didn't make fast, lasting friendships too easily. I had a lot of pals, acquaintances. People I'd say hello to on the street, but not people who cared enough to show up at my trial.

I don't regret it much. I regret losing the few people who were close to me. Liz, my old mentor. I regret what she did, and I regret her coming back just to leave again. I regret Casey, although with everything I've gone through since she left, it's better that she's gone. If she couldn't handle the gland itself, she really would have freaked when Simon Cole showed up, or the last few days, when I thought Kevin was alive.

Kevin. I regret losing Kevin. Man, that's gotta be the big one. We were never really all that close, but he was my brother. He was the one person who would still love me, however grudgingly, no matter how bad I screwed up and how long I sat in jail.

Doesn't explain why he decided I'd be the best one to experiment on, but I'm done wondering about that. I can be sure that Kevin thought, however insanely, that he was helping me.

I can't even think of him as being in this coffin. I know he's there, of course. I wasn't going to bury a still-empty casket. Still, it's easier to think of him as being dead and gone, instead of decaying in a box.

God, it's strange what a person thinks to himself when he's alone in a graveyard burying his brother's coffin for the second time.

My priorities are changing. The ironic thing is, it's too little, too late. Just now, as I stand here shoveling dirt into this whole, I'm discovering how important my family really is to me. Now that Kevin's dead -- now that I know he's dead -- I'm figuring out how I should have treated him.

My aunt has a lot to do with that, I think. She smiled when she saw me. Asked me if I was out, and then said we wouldn't talk about prison anymore. I can't imagine another person on the earth that would have been so accepting, and so uncaring, about the prison time. She loves me.

When I was looking at those pictures in the old house, the same ones I keep stashed in a jumbled pile in my apartment, it hit me even more. The only pictures of me were from childhood. There was one of Kevin, all grown up, standing between my aunt and uncle as he graduated from the U, but nothing from me after puberty.

I want to give her something else. I want to do something that'll deserve her putting a picture of me up beside Kevin. All grown up, Darien Fawkes as he is now. I want it to be real -- not some mocked up shot I could work out in a few minutes. Something genuine. I want her pride in me to be justified.

Funny. I guess I'm starting to grow up.

This place is nice. Kinda peaceful. Not that I'm even close to considering where I want to be buried, but still. I might come out here and visit every now and then. I'll do the corny thing and sit by the grave and fill Kevin in on what's happening in my life. Why not? It'd be someone to talk to.

Man, I guess I'm really feeling alone. I've been alone a lot of times in my life, but I've never felt it so strongly.

Maybe it isn't that I'm alone. Maybe for the first time, I'm really, truly lonely.

I should have taken Claire up on her offer of dinner.

But no. I wouldn't have been able to come here. And she would have plagued me with questions the entire time. As well-meaning as she is, I don't think she has any idea what to say to me right now. She'd pull the psychologist approach, try to get me to open up about my feelings, crap like that. And as much thinking as I'm doing right now, no way do I want to say any of this stuff out loud to someone.

I think what I want most is someone who understands what I'm going through. And that, above everything besides getting the gland out, is probably the most impossible thing I could wish for.

Oh, shit. Hobbes.

I don't know how he does this. How does he find me? The guy can't have tracked me here -- what would be the point? Jesus, if he tells me the Boss needs us, or I'm due for a shot, I'm gonna walk out of here, let the professionals finish burying Kevin.

He goes over to the other side of the coffin and picks up a shovel. He glances over at me, a question on his face.

He wants to know if this is okay. I don't know if it is or not, so I don't say anything. What's he trying to do?

He must take my silence as approval, because next thing I know there's twice the dirt being thrown into the grave.

I don't want to break the silence. Silence is becoming a fast friend of mine. So, silently, I shovel more dirt in and try to figure out if I mind him being here.

I guess I don't. In fact, it's kind of nice. There's something...I don't know. Something inevitable about it, like he would have shown up sooner or later.

Come to think of it, when I got the call from Kevin -- Arnaud -- and went to my uncle's old cabin to meet him, I knew Hobbes would show up.

Huh. Maybe I'm really not as alone as I thought. Bobby...okay, he's a paranoid nutcase. But I guess I shouldn't hold that against him. This time around people were looking at me like a paranoid nutcase, so I should be able to empathize. Wasn't a nice feeling, being called paranoid and that being enough of a basis to discount everything I said. Wonder if Hobbes feels that way.

Maybe I'll ask him sometime.

Bobby Hobbes doesn't bail on his partner. According to him, anyway. If worse had come to worse this time around, if it had turned out the fat man was keeping my brother from me, Hobbes would have backed me. Not the Official, not the Agency.

That's got to be a big decision for a guy like Hobbes, and as much as I pushed him into it, I have no doubt he was telling the truth.

I'm really not alone. I have this jumpy, hyper, sometimes whiney, always paranoid little man on my side. And damned if that isn't comforting. As comforting as it can be for him to be on the side of a punk ex-con whose brain's wired wrong, anyway.

Dysfunctional. That's what we are. A dysfunctional...partnership. I'm burying my brother, and figuring out that I've got maybe the next best thing to a real brother helping me do it.

It takes us a while, but we finish. Silent the entire time. I don't think we even made eye contact since he first showed up.

Now we're finishing, and the professionals are returning to top everything off just right.

I thought I'd resent them showing up, but I don't. I guess Kevin's buried now. I'm ready to leave him here, and get on with my own life.

I hand the shovel to the guy. "Thanks," I say quietly, and break my long silence.

Bobby drops his shovel on the other side and straightens, stretching out his back and looking around the cemetery. He doesn't look back at me, and I wonder if he was just going to show up and then leave without a word.

But when I walk up to him, he doesn't go anywhere. I follow his gaze out at the quiet landscape for a long moment.

"Want to grab a burger?"

I almost laugh. He sounds so casual. He doesn't sound like he just got done helping me bury a long-dead corpse, and he doesn't talk to me like I'm about to fall apart for burying my brother again.

The guy must be psychic. He always knows where I am, and right now he knows just the right way to talk to me.

"Yeah."

He nods slightly and starts off through the short grass, away from Kevin.

A second later, I follow him. I don't look back, and I guess that's symbolic of something.

As much as I appreciate his casualness, I almost want to express to him that I'm grateful for what he did for me, today and the days before. "Hey, Hobbes?"

"Huh?"

But I guess I'm too much of a guy to use my own words. As is my habit, I pick someone else's. "Guy named Richard Bach once said 'the bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect. Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof.'"

Hobbes glances over at me, his eyebrows raised.

I look at him seriously, letting him know that I'm not making a joke or anything.

He nods once, a silent appreciation in his eyes, and I know he got the point. But, being Hobbes, he can't let it go at that. "And a guy named Somerset Maugham once called the gift of quotation a serviceable substitute for wit."

I actually chuckle a little at that, surprising myself. Strange, but even though he's making cracks, I know we communicated out here.

Hell, maybe because he's making cracks. I don't have to get uncomfortable, because no matter what I said or did out here, he's my partner. I could have made an idiot out of myself blathering about Kevin and how depressed I was, and how lonely I felt, and he'd have made fun of me for it. But he'd have been there. And he'll still be here tomorrow, tagging along to be a partner to my misery, and making it better without even trying. We fight a lot, and we disagree about practically everything, but when it's important, we're there for each other.

And Bobby's a loyal kind of guy -- I know even when I get this thing out of my head and I don't want anything to do with the Agency, he'll probably still stop by and ask me if I want to get a burger. He doesn't much care about technicalities like divorce or quitting a job -- he sees people the same no matter what. Viv's still the woman he loves, even though she's probably married by now. And I'll still be his partner, no matter what.

Maybe that's what family's about. My aunt was there with a smile, despite the fact that I shamed them all by being sent to prison so many times. Kevin was there to help me out in this bizarre way when I got into trouble, no matter how little we'd gotten along before.

Nope, I'm not quite as alone as I thought. Guess I should tell him thanks.

Maybe sometime I will.

End