(Untitled)

[m_pinocchio]

When he wakes up, his head is hurting. That isn't entirely new--he's been waking up with headaches more often lately, and this one isn't even the worst one he's had. But the room is unusually dark, smelling strangely musty, and he groans and rolls over, his hand going instinctively to his face

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[m_pinocchio]

He opens his eye, and really, he's not surprised at all, not even at this, because he's suddenly, shockingly sober, and he remembers all of it. Everything.

He wants to scream. He doesn't. He wants to cry. He doesn't. He wants to wake up back in his own bed with his husbands there next to him and his daughters in the next room, and of course he doesn't. He lies there in his old, narrow bed, not even his anymore, scratchy, strange sheets against his bare skin, everything throbbing gently, everything pain.

Scrap of paper on the bedside table. Phone and pills and booze in the kitchen. Gun on the endtable. He knows it would all be there, if he got up, if he looked. All of it a dead end, all of it one huge taunt.

And what he's been tricked into doing. What he's done."What the fuck do you want me to do?" he whispers, turns his face into the pillow and closes his eye again. Rain drums on the window; normally he'd find it soothing, and now it's just more torture. Every second of this is torture

[little_moons]

I knew it was going to happen. I knew it the moment we stepped in through the door. That doesn't mean I was ready to see it. That doesn't mean I was ready for any of this. It was just muzzle flash, a brief glimpse of gore, his life blown clear out of him, but I don't even have time to shout, don't have time to do anything at all.

The world tilts and I catch myself on a lamp-post, bending over and emptying the contents of my stomach on the sidewalk at my feet. We have to move, we have to get to him sooner, but I'm standing on the street, in the rain, puking into a gutter, and the sudden rush of embarrassment that washes over me is so strong it nearly brings tears to my eyes.

Or maybe the tears are for something else. Whatever.

[out_of_realm]

"Come on," Tom said woodenly, no inflection. He spread his hand on the back of Neils' neck for a moment, trying to bend down, offer more than that, but he was shut down. He'd been shut down since the flash of a muzzle in the dark, and something thick and tar like was spitting in the pit of his stomach.

"Come on," he said again, pulling Neil upright. No inflection. He shook his head, licked his lips.

"We have to go. We gotta get there quicker."

[little_moons]

Wiping the back of my hand across my mouth, I straighten up and stumble after him, shoulders hunched and my eyes fixed to some point in the distance. It's only a few blocks from here, but it feels too far. Like we'll never make it. Like we'll never make it in time.

And there's a tiny part of me, a part I shove aside before it can get too loud, that's afraid to go back there. Afraid that it won't make any difference. He won't listen to us. He's too far gone. He doesn't fucking care. Tom warned me, but I'd been so sure... I was so fucking sure.

There's someone coming out of his building, and I hurry ahead, slipping in before the door bangs shut and holding it open for Tom. I can't look at him. I don't want to see if that look on his face matches the dead sound in his voice.

[out_of_realm]

"I can't believe he -" he spat out angrily, but that's all there was, anger and bile and gore and the flash of a gun, the boom, the white light, the silence. He felt dangerous, unwieldy, and when he got to the bedroom door, he didn't knock this time. Cheap building, cheap door, one kick banged it open and he was inside the apartment.

"Pinocchio, that worked like a god damned charm didn't it? Where the fuck are you?"

[m_pinocchio]

He doesn't respond. It's not a big apartment, they'll find him sooner or later, and the anger in Tom's voice... he's not sure what he'd even say. If he could even say it. How to apologize for something like that? How to apologize when he's not sure that part of him would even mean it, when a significant portion of him is cringing away from it, not that he had done it, but that it hadn't even worked.

If it had, would it have been worth it then?

It had been hard facing them before. Now he's grateful for the dim light, wishes it was full dark, just wants to hide from the look he already knows is on Tom's face, on Neil's, without even having seen them yet.

[little_moons]

I slip past Tom, stumbling through the half dark through the cramped living area, passing the gun on the end table, eyes drifting over it as I weave through the mess on my way to the bed.

"God, you fucking asshole," I breathe, wanting to hit him, wanting it so bad the ache of it tastes bitter on the back of my tongue, but he's a pathetic, miserable lump under the sheets and what the fuck good would it do, anyway?

"You stupid fucking asshole," I say again, stopping at the side of the bed, eyes flickering up to Tom as I reach down and find Mike's face in the dark, trying to turn him, force him to look at us.

[out_of_realm]

"Don't ever, ever make us see something like that again," Tom breathed, shaking his head. "Jesus Christ, Mike, I..."

He sunk down beside the bed, staring up at Mike over Neil's shoulder.

"We're a part of this now whether you like it or not," he said, reaching out to cup Mike's good knee. "Just accept it. We're here. We're here to help you."

[m_pinocchio]

"Don't fucking--" he mutters, pulling away from Neil's hand, and it feels like it's all been for nothing, all of it, all the time on the Island, all the distance he'd thought he'd gone, for nothing, because once he's back here in this body, it feels like none of it matters.

And he'd let himself believe that it did, at the waterfall with Neil so deep in him. He'd let himself believe that, because this hadn't been his reality, that it didn't matter as much as what he'd gained.

"I can't fucking do this," he whispers. "I thought it would... I can't fucking do this."

[little_moons]

"How the fuck do you even know? You haven't even tried," I hiss, jerking away from him, stopping just short of reaching over and smashing the lamp by the bed. Needing to fucking break something, just to dull the whitehot anger surging up in my chest.

"This is... fuck this. I'm not helping you. Help yourself," I say, banging my way into his tiny bathroom, the door banging loudly against the wall. Inside, I twist on the faucet, hunching over to rinse the sour taste of puke out of my mouth.

[out_of_realm]

"You have to do this," Tom said, looking up at him, voice tense and steady. He didn't watch Neil go, he couldn't blame him. He felt the same, sharp stab in his stomach.

"You didn't deal with it back home, and you didn't -- you didn't fucking deal with it the last time. Why the hell do you think we're here, Pinocchio?" He swallowed hard, shook his head. "What do you think this is about?"

[m_pinocchio]

He doesn't immediately answer. Part of him knows--yes, it's true, it makes sense, it's just about the only thing that does in the middle of so much anti-sense--but knowing isn't always enough, and right now his mind quails away from it, screaming denial. Because doing that... Apparently the idea of death is easier. Apparently the idea of Hell is, too.

He turns his head finally, looking at Tom, and even that takes almost more effort that he has. "I never wanted you to see me like this," he whispers, and his face twists into something that feels like a horrible parody of a smile, humorless, pathetic, sad. He reaches up, touches Tom's cheek with the tips of his fingers. "You were always so... fucking perfect."

[little_moons]

Dragging in a deep breath, I splash water on my face, looking at myself in the mirror, how fucking gaunt and sallow I look in the sickly yellow bathroom light, like this place has drained the life out of me in less than an hour.

Finally, I turn to lean in the doorway, arms folded, my head tipping to rest against the frame. "I don't know who the fuck you've been with all these years, but neither of us are fucking perfect."

[out_of_realm]

"None of us were perfect, Pinocchio," Tom said quietly, grabbing Mike's hand with his own and holding it against his face. He took a shuddering breath. "I love you, do you understand me? If we woke up tomorrow and...and this is how you'd have to live, I'd be there. We both would."

"The fact that you think this would change it..." He shook his head. "No. Stop it. This isn't about us," he said, nodding back at Neil. "This is on you, Mike. You have to do this for yourself."

[m_pinocchio]

I'd be there. We both would. And suddenly he's angry, viciously so, a little bit of that old, wounded anger that tore him to the top of the Republican Guard and left the ashes of countless lives in his footsteps. He pulls his hand away again and shoves himself up, sheets pooling at his waist, staring past Tom at Neil there in the bathroom doorway. He's not trying to hide anything now. He wants every bit of it to show.

"You said you hated him," he says, and he hates the way his voice is still shaking. "You said that wasn't me. Well, look. Fucking look." He turns his face, bad side toward and good side away, and just for a moment he wants to leap across the bed, grab Neil's shirt and drag him in as close as he can get. "Do you have any idea what this is like? Do you?"

[little_moons]

"What the fuck are you even talking about?" I say, face twisting up in confusion even though I know exactly what he means.

I don't know if I'm supposed to cringe. If I'm supposed to feel sick. If I'm supposed to hate him for what I see. He's expecting all those things. Fucking look, like that's supposed to be a difficult order to follow, but he's wrong. In the dim light of his apartment, his skin is thick and glossy, his eye milky and dead in the socket, and it's angry and horrible and it aches, knowing what kind of hell he went through, but if he's expecting me to be disgusted, he's going to be fucking disappointed.

Pushing away from the doorframe with an angry grunt, crossing the short distance to the bed and sinking down onto the mattress on my knees, shuffling toward him, and before he can jerk away, I hook a hand around the side of his neck, palm sliding over scarred skin, and pull him closer. I know, in the back of my mind, that probably the only people who ever touched him like this were nurses and doctors.

"I didn't know