Birds Fly Backwards: The Revision 4/? and 5/?
BIRDS FLY BACKWARDS REDUX Yeah, that’s right. BFB, edited from the beginning and continued.
Birds Fly Backwards: The Revision
I am reposting this to the communities starting now because it is, after this chapter, a new story. Same fun characters, entirely new plot.
Author: Buiochas_le_dia
Title: Birds Fly Backwards (4/?) and (5/?)
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: R this chapter
Summary What Johnny sees in the closet changes everything . . .
disclaimer: don’t own jack ‘cept the kids.
author’s note: i told myself I wouldn’t do this, but a good, if new, friend of mine, dared me. And if you’re irish you’re irish unless you’re texan and either way you can’t renick on a dare.
Feedback: is money.
Other chapters: Master Post
What Sam sees is a man in tatters.
What Sam sees is his brother breaking down.
Dean is on his knees, on the lawn, his baby girl is clutched, crying, in his arms, Johnny is clinging to his leg.
Sam stands inches away.
Together they watch their house, their home burn. Sam can’t hear but he thinks Dean is whispering Not again, not again.
The fire chief asks routine questions, but its clear this isn’t arson. He says again and again, lucky you got her out, pointing to Nina, you know it started in her room. He shakes his head and Sam nods, beneath all this, Dean’s tear streaked face keeps catching Sam’s eye. He wants nothing more than to go to his brother, curl him close and never, ever let go.
“Your alarm never went off?”
“No. My, our, son woke us up.”
“Good kid.”
“Yeah.”
From a neighbor Sam is able to borrow a crib to set up in the motel room. Too late, now, to do much of anything about anything. When he gets Johnny settled down in the bed farthest from the window, and has soothed Nina’s sobs; has salted and re-salted and drawn protection runes and muttered prayers and incantations, when he’s done all this he moves to lay next to Dean and is unable to stop the shudder that runs through him.
Dean is curled on his side, facing away from the kids, eyes ever on the door. In this light there’s no way to tell if he’s breathing, save for a hitching gasp now and again. His eyes don’t blink.
“Dean?”
“I killed him.” The whisper rolls like gravel and sounds nothing like the brother Sam knew.
It sounds like defeat.
“We’ll figure it out.”
“I killed him, and I put all those things back to where they belonged, I saw Dad crawl out of hell and I buried you. I was done. I was supposed to be done. This was supposed to be done.”
“They’re okay.”
“No. Sam, don’t you see? This is how it started for us. Johnny and Nina, they don’t deserve to grow up terrified, terrified of every shadow that flickers strange, I can’t have them staying up at night waiting for us, thinking, with every minute they don’t hear the Impala’s engine that we’re never coming home.”
“Dean, you and me, we’ve still got each other. Okay? You and me.”
“I don’t have any energy left. I gave that battle everything in me. I just got you back, Sam. Do I get no peace?”
Sam rubs his thumb along the skin behind Dean’s ear. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, to no one in particular.
Sam jolts awake, sunlight in his eyes, shoulders stiff from tension held too close, too long. “Dean?”
“Here.” Dean is up, Nina bouncing on his knee, last nights fear and exhaustion all but gone from his face, held still in the wrinkles bordering his eyes. Johnny sits next to him at the rickety table slurping down corn flakes with chocolate milk.
“That’s bad for you.” Sam mutters ruffling his kids hair, shaking his head, smiling.
“Dad said.”
“Yeah, yeah. Dean?”
Dean laughs and throws his hands up. “Innocent.”
“We should. . . we should call Ellen, and Bobby, and whoever else we can think of.” Sam says finally, scooping Johnny up and stealing his chair.
“Later. We should go by the house, see if we can salvage anything. Pictures, clothes maybe.”
“Yeah. Oh. Yeah.” Sam nods, angry with himself for forgetting, but not used to having anything to go back for when all hell breaks loose. “We should.”
“Koch?”
“Yeah, Johnny?”
“Did I make the fire?”
“No.” Sam startles himself with the harshness of his voice.
“No, baby, you didn’t.” Dean adds softer and pads his fingers along Johnny’s cheek.
“The man. . . the yellow-eyed man. He said, he said if I told you he would burn everything. But, I didn’t want him to hurt Nina.” Johnny hangs his head a little and Dean stands to put Nina in her crib, coming back and pulling Johnny into his arms. Sam is struck by how much of Dean there is in Johnny, and after such a short time.
“You did the right thing. You’re a good boy, Johnny, a real good boy.” Dean hugs Johnny as tight as he can and whispers over and over into his ear: “The right thing.”
“Ellen? Sam Winchester here.”
“Sam? Well, Jesus. How are you?”
“I’m-- I’m okay, considering.” Sam smiles to ease the words.
“When Dean called to say, I had to talk to Missouri myself, couldn’t half believe it. I hear you’ve got your self a little one too? When do I meet the hell raiser?”
“Sooner then you’d think.”
“Sam? What’s wrong?”
Sam swallows a ball of tears, Ellen’s motherly instinct something he grew up without, something he can’t help missing even as he hears it over the phone.
“We think -- uh. Well, our house burned down.”
“The demon?” Ellen sounds both furious and in awe.
“Johnny, that’s my boy, he says he saw a ‘yellow-eyed man’ in the closet. And the thing is, Ellen, I haven’t told him about all that yet. So. Unless he’s been reading our minds, there’s no way he’d know--”
“So you’re saying it’s not a nightmare.”
“Right.”
“We’re in Wyoming now, me an’ Jo an’ Bobby. Come on by.”
“Okay, let me get a pen for your address.”
Author: Buiochas_le_dia
Title: Birds Fly Backwards (5/?)
AN: Plot changes ahoy!! The old BFB has been retired and the revision has begun full-force
Ellen is nothing if not a soldier. She is adept in the language of putting a family back together. But, when the Winchesters hobble in her eyes don’t know where to rest first.
Sam, Sam after all these years, or Nina still growing and looking more like her dad, defiant stare and all.
Johnny, maybe, who looks like neither of the boys and like both of them, too. Hair and eyes different, but the way he holds his shoulders all Sam and the way he juts his chin all Dean.
Or Dean, so obviously a father now, but still Dean, only more broken, tired, softer.
“You must be Johnny.” Jo breaks the silence first, bending so that she’s eye level with the three year old before her. “You, my friend, remind me a lot of your dads.” She is rewarded with a small, if exhausted smile. “Do you want to see the bedroom I set up for you and your sister?”
“Are there any mean men there?” The sound is sucked from the room again and Jo teeters a bit on her feet.
“No, little man, not here. ‘Sides, I’m right next door, we’ll watch each others’ back.” Jo sticks out a hand for Johnny to grab and he nods satisfied, if only for the moment.
Sam slips Nina and her carrier from Dean’s arm. “I’ve got her.” He whispers when Dean starts at the loss. “S’ok.” Sam follows Jo to the bedroom and is happy to see it’s nestled safely between hers and his and Dean’s and across the hall from Bobby’s and near enough to Ellen’s.
After all these years Jo isn’t sure what to say to Sam. “We rearranged a bit. Thought circling them would be good.”
When he agrees she seems relieved.
Dean slumps against the bar counter, can almost picture Ash rolling off of it, smiling and complimenting Dean’s taste in music. He shakes the dusty memory off and rolls out a crick in his neck. “Can’t keep running, Ellen.” He bats his beer between his hands and shakes his head. “Not fair to them.”
“Honey, life ain’t fair to no one.”
“I’ve got a chance though, to make it right by those two. To make sure they see life as safe and forgiving--”
“Dean, you’re talking about lying--”
“No!” He stands up and paces away from the stools, fists clenched. “It’s true to some people, somewhere. There-- it can be like that.”
“No, not for a Winchester. The best you can do is love them up and not die and show them that family, that us, we’re important. They’ll pick through life, they’ll make it--”
“Just getting by isn’t good enough. Just surviving isn’t good enough. I’m not watching what happened to Sam, happen again. It killed me well enough the first time. “
Sam props his foot up on the porch railing and pushes the bench back and forth, the light swaying calming his nerves, quieting his drumming fingers.
“Sam?” Bobby’s voice, when he steps outside, is reverently quiet, like he’s talking to a ghost, or a mirage.
“Yeah? Hey.”
Bobby sits and for awhile the rain that started just after they arrived fills the quiet between their breaths, the creaking of the porch.
“How’s Dean?” When Bobby speaks again, Sam is expecting it.
“Bad, I think. I’ve only been back five months, and I’m back which is its own thing, and all of a sudden he has a daughter and a son. . .” Sam lets his words trail off with the next gust of wind.
“He’s tough.” The weather shakes the trees and minutes past. “Do you think it was really the demon?”
“What else?”
“Well they say that demons can project themselves into certain points in a persons life. . . in the future. . . so even if they die they can haunt the person. Like an. . . image. They call them talocs.”
“Can talocs set houses on fire?”
“Not that I know of, but I don’t know much about it. It’s rare, unheard of really, but when Ellen told me. . . the colt killed the Demon, I don’t see how he could be back.”
Sam sighs and studies his hands. “Well, we’re going to have to figure something out. Can talocs be projected through salt lines? Protection runes?”
“I don’t know. I wouldn’t think so.”
“That house was like Fort Knox, Bobby. We’re talking about Dean and his family right? So, how did anything get in?”
“Maybe something was already there.”
Jo leads Johnny and Dean with Nina to the community pool. The heat this time of day, this time of July, is stifling and is making everyone cranky.
Dean hums to quiet Nina and Jo spins a tale about a bunny and deer for Johnny who trots next to her grinning.
“The pool is just up here. Can he swim?”
“Not that I know, we were going to start him with lessons but--”
“I used to be on a swim team, you know.” She nods at Johnny, “We’ll get you swimming in no time.”
The water is warm in the sun, but cooler then the air, and a relief. Dean settles against a step in the shallow end, easing Nina in and out of the water, she quickly learns how to splash and shrieks every time she gets him wet.
Jo spends the afternoon teaching Johnny to float, on his back, on his tummy, and how to blow bubbles. Dean wishes that Sam were here to see this, and promises himself that tomorrow, Sam will come and he will force himself to stay home and do the research.
They are barely dry from the pool when Ellen hands Dean a burger bigger then his hand and a bun to slap it between. “Start serving ‘em up. You know better then I do what they’ll eat.” She laughs gesturing to where Sam and Nina and Johnny are lounging in the grass next to the bar’s fading wall.
Nina totters between Jo and Sam barely making each time, but getting stronger with each pass between the two adults.
When ever she gets close to Jo, Jo picks her up and kisses her tummy and Nina kicks and wiggles and giggles, flails until her feet touch the ground again. When she gets close enough to Sam, he picks her up and nibbles at her toes making her pump her legs and screech alarming laughs that make even Bobby huff with a sort of laughter.
Once, she wanders too close to Johnny and his coloring book, in retaliation Johnny leans forward and blows a half kiss against her ear which makes her sit with a surprised flop and just when she might cry she points her chubby finger and shouts.
“Bruwder!”
Sam’s mouth drops and Dean almost breaks his plate.
A new word, they eye each other as if to say Did you know?.
Johnny just smiles and says “Just like I taught you.”
And Ellen had to turn away and wipe her eyes repeatedly. “Damn allergies.”
They pack up the next morning. Dean has a lead on a house one neighborhood over from where they used to live. Insurance hasn’t come through from the fire, but Dean has the down payment ready - turns out John Booth, their father left them a tidy sum when he passed.
“A toloc?” Dean sounds skeptical.
“Sure, we’ll keep looking.” Bobby taps the top of the Impala. “This thing baby safe?”
“We were raised in it.”
“You were a soldier before you hit kindergarten.”
Dean laughs and salutes Bobby. “Sure was.” He points to Sam then, “I don’t want them growing up like he did.”
“He turned out all right.” Bobby opens the passenger door and gets in, motioning for Dean to do the same. “Listen, you sure Sam is Sam?”
Dean doesn’t hesitate. “Yes.”
“Yeah?”
“Bobby, I’m not doubting Sam, not for a second.” Dean leans back, settling into the bench seat that has molded to his shape; his life. “Only thing I’m doubting is Johnny, and ain’t that hell on earth.”
“He just showed up one day?”
“Same day Sam showed up, I guess.”
“Missouri doesn’t doubt him though?”
“Not that she’s saying.”
Bobby adjusts his cap. “Why don’t you boys stick around a few days? I’ll look into Johnny’s past, maybe send Jo out to, where’s he from?”
“Missouri thinks Iowa.”
“Send Jo out to Iowa, then.”
“Two days.” Dean scrubs at his eyes. “And, then we’re gone.”
“Good.”
Birds Fly Backwards: The Revision
I am reposting this to the communities starting now because it is, after this chapter, a new story. Same fun characters, entirely new plot.
Author: Buiochas_le_dia
Title: Birds Fly Backwards (4/?) and (5/?)
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: R this chapter
Summary What Johnny sees in the closet changes everything . . .
disclaimer: don’t own jack ‘cept the kids.
author’s note: i told myself I wouldn’t do this, but a good, if new, friend of mine, dared me. And if you’re irish you’re irish unless you’re texan and either way you can’t renick on a dare.
Feedback: is money.
Other chapters: Master Post
What Sam sees is a man in tatters.
What Sam sees is his brother breaking down.
Dean is on his knees, on the lawn, his baby girl is clutched, crying, in his arms, Johnny is clinging to his leg.
Sam stands inches away.
Together they watch their house, their home burn. Sam can’t hear but he thinks Dean is whispering Not again, not again.
The fire chief asks routine questions, but its clear this isn’t arson. He says again and again, lucky you got her out, pointing to Nina, you know it started in her room. He shakes his head and Sam nods, beneath all this, Dean’s tear streaked face keeps catching Sam’s eye. He wants nothing more than to go to his brother, curl him close and never, ever let go.
“Your alarm never went off?”
“No. My, our, son woke us up.”
“Good kid.”
“Yeah.”
From a neighbor Sam is able to borrow a crib to set up in the motel room. Too late, now, to do much of anything about anything. When he gets Johnny settled down in the bed farthest from the window, and has soothed Nina’s sobs; has salted and re-salted and drawn protection runes and muttered prayers and incantations, when he’s done all this he moves to lay next to Dean and is unable to stop the shudder that runs through him.
Dean is curled on his side, facing away from the kids, eyes ever on the door. In this light there’s no way to tell if he’s breathing, save for a hitching gasp now and again. His eyes don’t blink.
“Dean?”
“I killed him.” The whisper rolls like gravel and sounds nothing like the brother Sam knew.
It sounds like defeat.
“We’ll figure it out.”
“I killed him, and I put all those things back to where they belonged, I saw Dad crawl out of hell and I buried you. I was done. I was supposed to be done. This was supposed to be done.”
“They’re okay.”
“No. Sam, don’t you see? This is how it started for us. Johnny and Nina, they don’t deserve to grow up terrified, terrified of every shadow that flickers strange, I can’t have them staying up at night waiting for us, thinking, with every minute they don’t hear the Impala’s engine that we’re never coming home.”
“Dean, you and me, we’ve still got each other. Okay? You and me.”
“I don’t have any energy left. I gave that battle everything in me. I just got you back, Sam. Do I get no peace?”
Sam rubs his thumb along the skin behind Dean’s ear. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, to no one in particular.
Sam jolts awake, sunlight in his eyes, shoulders stiff from tension held too close, too long. “Dean?”
“Here.” Dean is up, Nina bouncing on his knee, last nights fear and exhaustion all but gone from his face, held still in the wrinkles bordering his eyes. Johnny sits next to him at the rickety table slurping down corn flakes with chocolate milk.
“That’s bad for you.” Sam mutters ruffling his kids hair, shaking his head, smiling.
“Dad said.”
“Yeah, yeah. Dean?”
Dean laughs and throws his hands up. “Innocent.”
“We should. . . we should call Ellen, and Bobby, and whoever else we can think of.” Sam says finally, scooping Johnny up and stealing his chair.
“Later. We should go by the house, see if we can salvage anything. Pictures, clothes maybe.”
“Yeah. Oh. Yeah.” Sam nods, angry with himself for forgetting, but not used to having anything to go back for when all hell breaks loose. “We should.”
“Koch?”
“Yeah, Johnny?”
“Did I make the fire?”
“No.” Sam startles himself with the harshness of his voice.
“No, baby, you didn’t.” Dean adds softer and pads his fingers along Johnny’s cheek.
“The man. . . the yellow-eyed man. He said, he said if I told you he would burn everything. But, I didn’t want him to hurt Nina.” Johnny hangs his head a little and Dean stands to put Nina in her crib, coming back and pulling Johnny into his arms. Sam is struck by how much of Dean there is in Johnny, and after such a short time.
“You did the right thing. You’re a good boy, Johnny, a real good boy.” Dean hugs Johnny as tight as he can and whispers over and over into his ear: “The right thing.”
“Ellen? Sam Winchester here.”
“Sam? Well, Jesus. How are you?”
“I’m-- I’m okay, considering.” Sam smiles to ease the words.
“When Dean called to say, I had to talk to Missouri myself, couldn’t half believe it. I hear you’ve got your self a little one too? When do I meet the hell raiser?”
“Sooner then you’d think.”
“Sam? What’s wrong?”
Sam swallows a ball of tears, Ellen’s motherly instinct something he grew up without, something he can’t help missing even as he hears it over the phone.
“We think -- uh. Well, our house burned down.”
“The demon?” Ellen sounds both furious and in awe.
“Johnny, that’s my boy, he says he saw a ‘yellow-eyed man’ in the closet. And the thing is, Ellen, I haven’t told him about all that yet. So. Unless he’s been reading our minds, there’s no way he’d know--”
“So you’re saying it’s not a nightmare.”
“Right.”
“We’re in Wyoming now, me an’ Jo an’ Bobby. Come on by.”
“Okay, let me get a pen for your address.”
Author: Buiochas_le_dia
Title: Birds Fly Backwards (5/?)
AN: Plot changes ahoy!! The old BFB has been retired and the revision has begun full-force
Ellen is nothing if not a soldier. She is adept in the language of putting a family back together. But, when the Winchesters hobble in her eyes don’t know where to rest first.
Sam, Sam after all these years, or Nina still growing and looking more like her dad, defiant stare and all.
Johnny, maybe, who looks like neither of the boys and like both of them, too. Hair and eyes different, but the way he holds his shoulders all Sam and the way he juts his chin all Dean.
Or Dean, so obviously a father now, but still Dean, only more broken, tired, softer.
“You must be Johnny.” Jo breaks the silence first, bending so that she’s eye level with the three year old before her. “You, my friend, remind me a lot of your dads.” She is rewarded with a small, if exhausted smile. “Do you want to see the bedroom I set up for you and your sister?”
“Are there any mean men there?” The sound is sucked from the room again and Jo teeters a bit on her feet.
“No, little man, not here. ‘Sides, I’m right next door, we’ll watch each others’ back.” Jo sticks out a hand for Johnny to grab and he nods satisfied, if only for the moment.
Sam slips Nina and her carrier from Dean’s arm. “I’ve got her.” He whispers when Dean starts at the loss. “S’ok.” Sam follows Jo to the bedroom and is happy to see it’s nestled safely between hers and his and Dean’s and across the hall from Bobby’s and near enough to Ellen’s.
After all these years Jo isn’t sure what to say to Sam. “We rearranged a bit. Thought circling them would be good.”
When he agrees she seems relieved.
Dean slumps against the bar counter, can almost picture Ash rolling off of it, smiling and complimenting Dean’s taste in music. He shakes the dusty memory off and rolls out a crick in his neck. “Can’t keep running, Ellen.” He bats his beer between his hands and shakes his head. “Not fair to them.”
“Honey, life ain’t fair to no one.”
“I’ve got a chance though, to make it right by those two. To make sure they see life as safe and forgiving--”
“Dean, you’re talking about lying--”
“No!” He stands up and paces away from the stools, fists clenched. “It’s true to some people, somewhere. There-- it can be like that.”
“No, not for a Winchester. The best you can do is love them up and not die and show them that family, that us, we’re important. They’ll pick through life, they’ll make it--”
“Just getting by isn’t good enough. Just surviving isn’t good enough. I’m not watching what happened to Sam, happen again. It killed me well enough the first time. “
Sam props his foot up on the porch railing and pushes the bench back and forth, the light swaying calming his nerves, quieting his drumming fingers.
“Sam?” Bobby’s voice, when he steps outside, is reverently quiet, like he’s talking to a ghost, or a mirage.
“Yeah? Hey.”
Bobby sits and for awhile the rain that started just after they arrived fills the quiet between their breaths, the creaking of the porch.
“How’s Dean?” When Bobby speaks again, Sam is expecting it.
“Bad, I think. I’ve only been back five months, and I’m back which is its own thing, and all of a sudden he has a daughter and a son. . .” Sam lets his words trail off with the next gust of wind.
“He’s tough.” The weather shakes the trees and minutes past. “Do you think it was really the demon?”
“What else?”
“Well they say that demons can project themselves into certain points in a persons life. . . in the future. . . so even if they die they can haunt the person. Like an. . . image. They call them talocs.”
“Can talocs set houses on fire?”
“Not that I know of, but I don’t know much about it. It’s rare, unheard of really, but when Ellen told me. . . the colt killed the Demon, I don’t see how he could be back.”
Sam sighs and studies his hands. “Well, we’re going to have to figure something out. Can talocs be projected through salt lines? Protection runes?”
“I don’t know. I wouldn’t think so.”
“That house was like Fort Knox, Bobby. We’re talking about Dean and his family right? So, how did anything get in?”
“Maybe something was already there.”
Jo leads Johnny and Dean with Nina to the community pool. The heat this time of day, this time of July, is stifling and is making everyone cranky.
Dean hums to quiet Nina and Jo spins a tale about a bunny and deer for Johnny who trots next to her grinning.
“The pool is just up here. Can he swim?”
“Not that I know, we were going to start him with lessons but--”
“I used to be on a swim team, you know.” She nods at Johnny, “We’ll get you swimming in no time.”
The water is warm in the sun, but cooler then the air, and a relief. Dean settles against a step in the shallow end, easing Nina in and out of the water, she quickly learns how to splash and shrieks every time she gets him wet.
Jo spends the afternoon teaching Johnny to float, on his back, on his tummy, and how to blow bubbles. Dean wishes that Sam were here to see this, and promises himself that tomorrow, Sam will come and he will force himself to stay home and do the research.
They are barely dry from the pool when Ellen hands Dean a burger bigger then his hand and a bun to slap it between. “Start serving ‘em up. You know better then I do what they’ll eat.” She laughs gesturing to where Sam and Nina and Johnny are lounging in the grass next to the bar’s fading wall.
Nina totters between Jo and Sam barely making each time, but getting stronger with each pass between the two adults.
When ever she gets close to Jo, Jo picks her up and kisses her tummy and Nina kicks and wiggles and giggles, flails until her feet touch the ground again. When she gets close enough to Sam, he picks her up and nibbles at her toes making her pump her legs and screech alarming laughs that make even Bobby huff with a sort of laughter.
Once, she wanders too close to Johnny and his coloring book, in retaliation Johnny leans forward and blows a half kiss against her ear which makes her sit with a surprised flop and just when she might cry she points her chubby finger and shouts.
“Bruwder!”
Sam’s mouth drops and Dean almost breaks his plate.
A new word, they eye each other as if to say Did you know?.
Johnny just smiles and says “Just like I taught you.”
And Ellen had to turn away and wipe her eyes repeatedly. “Damn allergies.”
They pack up the next morning. Dean has a lead on a house one neighborhood over from where they used to live. Insurance hasn’t come through from the fire, but Dean has the down payment ready - turns out John Booth, their father left them a tidy sum when he passed.
“A toloc?” Dean sounds skeptical.
“Sure, we’ll keep looking.” Bobby taps the top of the Impala. “This thing baby safe?”
“We were raised in it.”
“You were a soldier before you hit kindergarten.”
Dean laughs and salutes Bobby. “Sure was.” He points to Sam then, “I don’t want them growing up like he did.”
“He turned out all right.” Bobby opens the passenger door and gets in, motioning for Dean to do the same. “Listen, you sure Sam is Sam?”
Dean doesn’t hesitate. “Yes.”
“Yeah?”
“Bobby, I’m not doubting Sam, not for a second.” Dean leans back, settling into the bench seat that has molded to his shape; his life. “Only thing I’m doubting is Johnny, and ain’t that hell on earth.”
“He just showed up one day?”
“Same day Sam showed up, I guess.”
“Missouri doesn’t doubt him though?”
“Not that she’s saying.”
Bobby adjusts his cap. “Why don’t you boys stick around a few days? I’ll look into Johnny’s past, maybe send Jo out to, where’s he from?”
“Missouri thinks Iowa.”
“Send Jo out to Iowa, then.”
“Two days.” Dean scrubs at his eyes. “And, then we’re gone.”
“Good.”