Fic: The Promise
Title: The Promise
Author: G
Characters: Luke/Reid, Lily, Noah
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I own nothing of As the World Turns.
Summary: Luke vows to uphold a request from Reid.
Author's Notes: The premise of this story was built on a discussion my sister and I routinely have, about possibilities and the what-ifs of life. This is my sort of fix-it fic for the show, though it may still seem a little sad. I also put in my own variation on the chess piece, because I felt the knight was too obvious. :-) Special thanks go to my sis for her endless beta read-throughs, extra background info on this particular subject, and the perfectly quaint passage from the Bible that she inadvertently supplied me. :-) Hope you all enjoy!
My Father’s house has many rooms. If that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you?
John 14:2
*
It had been two years, six months, and twenty days since Luke Snyder had last laid eyes on Reid Oliver.
Roughly two months before Luke’s twenty-fifth birthday, he saw Reid again. The first thing Reid said to him was:
“I told you to take care of that kidney.”
*
Lily Snyder sat in a hard, molded plastic chair, next to her son’s hospital bed. She flipped casually through a magazine, her eyes dry. It was the first time in days her eyes had remained dry.
The doctors had assured her that Luke was in the clear, and he would wake up on his own. She had nothing left to fear, because, despite this minor setback, her son was healthy. A simple switch of medications to suppress his immune system more efficiently, and Luke would be back on his feet in no time.
***
A year after Reid’s death, Luke still felt nothing and everything all at once.
He could see the green leaves on the trees. Hear the wind rustling softly through the branches. Watched as the ripples gently met the shore at his feet.
The pain was there, but it didn’t burn him like fire like it should have. It stayed tucked behind his ribcage like a subtle reminder that he couldn’t access at the moment. Like maybe if he ignored it, it would never really rise to the surface. If he just kept going, and did what was right, the pain would melt away like ice cream on a hot summer day.
The rook was nestled in his palm, and the section with the missing chunk on the top of it dug into his skin as he held the cardboard box in his hands. He stood motionless and watched as Noah built the raft of twigs and gently placed it in the water for him.
Luke placed each item on the bed of twigs, arms moving robotically, eyes vigilant but not really seeing. It was his duty to perform, and he wanted it done well.
So it was. The twigs snapped in the blaze, the heat from the lighter. Luke stood at the shore with the ripples lapping at his shoes and watched the last remnants of Reid Oliver’s life burn.
At the last moment, Luke chucked the rook into the fire. His palm bled where the section with the missing chunk of plastic scraped his skin.
***
When Luke woke up of his own volition, it was peaceful but jarring.
Lily was out of her chair in an instant as her son opened his eyes and blinked twice, then let his head fall to the side to focus on her. The moment their eyes locked, the dam inside of Luke broke, and the tears began to cascade down his face.
Lily quickly put her arms around him and held him close, wondering what could have set him off so quickly after just waking up. It wasn’t long before Luke was clutching at her with all his might, clawing madly to get closer to her, sitting up in his bed, letting the blanket fall from his chest to his lap. He sobbed openly, wetting Lily’s thin sweater, harsh but relieved breaths shaking from his lips.
They said nothing to each other. Lily just held her son as he cried, and it took her a while to notice the stabbing pain in her shoulder, where Luke’s left hand gripped her tightly. It was even longer before she saw the object in his grasp that was causing her pain.
And even longer still to believe the story Luke told her behind it all.
*
Luke remembered his mother through closed eyes.
He remembered regarding her with fondness as she sat in the hard, molded plastic chair next to his bed. He remembered thinking that she looked so pretty, even in the rough overhead lighting, even with the glossy magazine pages in front of her shooting odd shadows onto her face.
He remembered feeling warm in her presence, feeling grateful that he had a mother such as she who understood him so well, and remembered thanking someone - God, himself, Lily, who knew - that the two of them had had each other their whole lives; had been each other's first and only life-long best friends.
Then he blinked - or something that felt like a blink - and she was gone. Instead of his hospital room, he was standing in a white-walled hallway in his hospital gown and stockingfeet. The corridor was deserted.
He took a cautious few steps and suddenly realized that while he had been down this hall a thousand times before, he had never been down this hall. There was something different about this hall, something infinitely cleaner, whiter. Something more crystalline in color that shimmered with a brilliance he couldn’t put into words.
And then the sentence came, and Reid Oliver swam into his view.
“I told you to take care of that kidney.”
It wasn’t anger or annoyance in his tone. It wasn’t concern or arrogance or gloating.
It was love. The kind of love that accompanies a bit of advice that one gives when not really expecting the advice to be followed, and enjoying the result when it isn't.
Luke took another two steps and faltered, letting his eyes run the length of Reid’s body. There was no way this was an apparition. It looked real. It looked like Reid.
He stood in front of Luke, in his mauve taupe button-down shirt and black jeans. His stethoscope was slung around his neck. His sandy hair brushed his forehead in the front and twisted curly in the back. His blue eyes sparkled in a color that only resembled what Luke knew to be blue. They were somehow deeper, stronger, and something more than blue in color.
Luke took another step, and Reid mirrored him. They played this game until Reid finally took the last two steps and closed the distance between them. He looked at Luke with a smile playing in his eyes, a grin buried deep within the color of which Luke could not name.
Luke opened his mouth to speak, and his voice surprised himself. “I did take care of it,” he croaked. He found himself smiling without having to think about smiling.
Reid smiled back, in his half-crooked, loving way. “And now you’re here.”
Luke nodded, and suddenly he felt the urge to cry rise from the depths of his stomach and seize his chest. It had been two years. Two years.
“Reid?” he asked in a shaking voice.
The return was simple and calm. “Yes?”
The urge to cry grew stronger. “Reid?” Was it really him?
Reid stepped closer. Luke could feel his heat, smell his scent. Something stronger than Reid, something more defined than shampoo and detergent and aftershave, but still him. Still Reid.
But Luke's brain couldn't seem to process the realization fast enough to send word to his mouth. So he kept asking. “Reid?”
Reid put his arms around Luke, who was now shaking. Luke's voice had involuntarily risen two notches, and the tears were pricking the backs of his eyes. “Reid…?” His voice was muffled against Reid's shirt, the soft material welcoming against his cheek.
Luke put his arms around Reid then and pulled him in without another second wasted. When the tears finally broke free, Luke expected to sob hysterically.
But he didn’t. He cried, but they were tears of joy. He let out gasps of breath, but they were happy gasps, like he couldn’t get enough of the wonderful oxygen around him. He wanted the despair to overtake him, to drown him out, to finally be released from inside him, but relief and joy flooded his body from head to toe.
He held Reid and cried happily into his shoulder. Held him tighter than he’d ever held anyone before. When he pulled back and looked into Reid’s face - his wonderful, soothing face - Luke grinned from ear to ear.
Luke took a step back from Reid and felt the calm settle over him. He wiped his eyes and cheeks, feeling the curve of his own smile still lingering under his fingertips. Reid smiled right back, in his half-crooked, loving way.
“I swear, I took care of myself,” Luke said then with a laugh. “I did. It wasn’t my fault.”
Reid laughed softly under his breath. “I know it wasn’t your fault, Luke.” He put his hand on Luke’s cheek, and his skin was warm to the touch. Or maybe something better than warm, something more comforting and more relaxing than warm. “It wasn’t your fault.”
Luke looked into those more-than-blue eyes, and he tried to feel shame, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t feel embarrassed, even though he knew Reid was no longer referring to his health. “It wasn’t my fault,” he repeated.
Reid shook his head. “No. What happened wasn’t your fault.”
Luke grinned harder at Reid. He had spent two years in therapy pouring his heart and soul out to a complete stranger behind a desk while juggling hectic Grimaldi Shipping schedules and cramming in night classes at OU with a sheer determination to do little else there but graduate, and had devoted the rest of his free time dreaming up new directions for his foundation in order to simultaneously keep himself occupied and help others, but not one of those things had taken his guilt away faster than that one sentence from Reid.
Luke pressed his hand over Reid’s hand against his cheek, keeping Reid’s skin against his own. “Are we really here?” he asked. He had no idea where ‘here’ was, yet it felt as familiar to him as his own skin.
Reid laughed softly under his breath again. “What do you think?” he replied. The shade of his eyes sparkled at Luke with the most miniscule of movements, and the intensity of the color radiated pleasantly through the length of Luke’s body.
“I think…I feel happy,” Luke answered. It sounded childlike coming from his twenty-four year-old lips, but again, he wasn’t embarrassed. “Does this mean that I’m--?”
But Reid dropped his hand from Luke’s face then and turned, facing down the corridor that sprawled in front of Luke. He held his hand out, beckoning. “Come with me,” he said. “I want to show you something.”
Luke took his hand immediately, and together they walked in step down the hallway. Reid stopped in front of a closed door that Luke recognized instantly as Reid’s work office.
Reid reached for the handle and opened the door, then gently guided Luke inside the room ahead of himself. Luke stood in his hospital gown and stockingfeet, and allowed his brain to adjust to the sight that met his eyes, penetrated his being.
They were both standing in a wide-open space with heat from the sun that felt more like love. There was a soft breeze that smelled like sweet through Luke’s nose. There was a light chattering of voices that floated past him, past Reid, that lodged somewhere within unlimited walls. This place felt hot and encompassing and lovely and soothing and happy and alive. And Reid felt the same way by his side.
“Where is this?” Luke asked, agape. His vision settled on two gentlemen who sat at a stone bench in front of them, both staring intensely down at a chessboard. One of the men stroked his goatee, then made a swiftly calculated move, his arm moving through the air as easy as breathing.
Reid smiled at him yet again. “Harvard Square,” he replied. "This is where--"
"You learned to play chess," Luke supplied. "And they taught you." He nodded towards the two old men, who paid them no attention.
Reid chuckled softly under his breath, a sound that shimmied down Luke's body like raindrops sliding against dry skin. "It's good to know you haven't forgotten about me."
Luke looked at Reid, and he expected the dread to come, the pain to settle in behind his ribcage at Reid's words. The pain was there - he knew it was. He'd felt it every day since Reid passed. He knew it because he carried it with him every day, continuously searching and absolutely failing to find any small way to absolve it.
But the pain didn't come. Instead, Luke found himself smiling without having to think about it again.
"I could never forget you," he breathed, and he reached to hook his arm through Reid's. He was strong to Luke's touch, warm and comforting and other things that Luke couldn't describe with his own meager words. "I love you."
Reid smiled at him, in his lop-sided, loving way. "I have something else to show you," he told Luke, in a tone that said I love you too. He slid Luke's hand down his arm till their palms met and their hands interlocked. Luke followed Reid out the door behind them, the door that led back into the crystalline hallway.
They reached a door at the end of the hall. Reid gestured for Luke to open it, and he did so.
"What is this?" Luke asked, not trusting his brain. He glanced at Reid, who dropped his hand and gave Luke a gentle push inside the room.
"You know what this is," Reid replied, his eyes shining. "You've created it, after all."
"I've...?"
But Luke couldn't finish his sentence. He couldn't finish it because he knew without explanation that what Reid was saying was true.
The pond stretched for endless miles in front of him. The water was azure to Luke's eyes but something far beyond azure to his body. It lapped gently at the shore. The green trees swayed in the gentle breeze, and Luke closed his eyes.
Home.
More than home. It was everything. Everything he could have asked for, where troubles melted away, where things always made sense. Where his head would clear and the truth always seemed bright as day.
An earlier thought of his quickly re-materialized, and Luke opened his eyes. "Am I...? Does this mean that I'm...?" He couldn't get the words out, but not because he was afraid of being dead.
He didn't want to ask because he was afraid of still being alive.
"This is yours, Luke," Reid explained, facing him, and a shot of white heat streaked serenely through Luke's body. "But you're not ready yet. It's not your place or time."
Immediately, Luke wanted to argue, to get angry and tell Reid that yes, he was definitely ready. He'd been ready the day Reid had left him, the day Reid's eyes had closed forever. He'd been ready to rid himself of the guilt and the shame and the pain that ate away at his heart every time he'd taken a breath, and this place, here with Reid, was the only place he'd found solace from the angry hurt that took daily residence inside his body.
But he couldn't. There was no fight in him. There was no despair, no heartache, no pain. No hurt. No guilt or shame or hate or confusion or questioning. He simply felt at peace.
Peace.
"So..."
Luke looked at Reid, who looked more Reid-like than he had ever seemed before. The thought didn't even make sense, but that was what Luke felt, looking at him. Somehow, here in this place, the nonsensical seemed to define everything more than accurately, and with less words.
"It'll still be there when you get here," Reid assured him with that lop-sided smile. "Scout's honor."
Luke grinned. Reid had never been a scout. Probably would have earned all the badges while making every other kid feel bad about himself in the process.
"Do I have to leave?" Luke asked then, with less unwillingness than he thought he felt.
Reid nodded, but it was a compassionate motion, one that conveyed Reid's understanding but also told the truth.
They exited Luke's space and found themselves back in the corridor. The corridor of Memorial Hospital where Reid had once kissed him in front of everyone on the floor without a second thought.
"Here," Reid said, pressing an object into Luke's hand. "I want you to keep it."
Luke fumbled to grasp the small item for a moment, then opened his hand once it was secure in his palm. "This is--"
"My rook," Reid finished. "The rook that won me my last game when I was nine."
"The one you--"
"--threw against the wall at home after the game. And then cried over." Reid scoffed at himself, but it was a friendly scoff, a sound of fondness at the memory. "The one that cut your palm."
Luke repeated his words. "The one that cut my..." and he promptly trailed off.
He looked at Reid. He remembered the sorrow, but he couldn't feel it now. "I'm sorry," he said anyway. "I didn't want it to burn."
"I know," Reid replied. "That's why you need to keep it."
"I will," Luke said, and he could feel the tears again. Calm tears. Comforting tears. Joyous tears. "I'll keep it till I can give it back to you."
"Promise?"
Luke squeezed the small plastic object, clutching it tightly in his left hand. "I promise."
"Okay then."
And Reid was gone, and Luke opened his eyes.
[End.]
Author: G
Characters: Luke/Reid, Lily, Noah
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I own nothing of As the World Turns.
Summary: Luke vows to uphold a request from Reid.
Author's Notes: The premise of this story was built on a discussion my sister and I routinely have, about possibilities and the what-ifs of life. This is my sort of fix-it fic for the show, though it may still seem a little sad. I also put in my own variation on the chess piece, because I felt the knight was too obvious. :-) Special thanks go to my sis for her endless beta read-throughs, extra background info on this particular subject, and the perfectly quaint passage from the Bible that she inadvertently supplied me. :-) Hope you all enjoy!
My Father’s house has many rooms. If that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you?
John 14:2
*
It had been two years, six months, and twenty days since Luke Snyder had last laid eyes on Reid Oliver.
Roughly two months before Luke’s twenty-fifth birthday, he saw Reid again. The first thing Reid said to him was:
“I told you to take care of that kidney.”
*
Lily Snyder sat in a hard, molded plastic chair, next to her son’s hospital bed. She flipped casually through a magazine, her eyes dry. It was the first time in days her eyes had remained dry.
The doctors had assured her that Luke was in the clear, and he would wake up on his own. She had nothing left to fear, because, despite this minor setback, her son was healthy. A simple switch of medications to suppress his immune system more efficiently, and Luke would be back on his feet in no time.
***
A year after Reid’s death, Luke still felt nothing and everything all at once.
He could see the green leaves on the trees. Hear the wind rustling softly through the branches. Watched as the ripples gently met the shore at his feet.
The pain was there, but it didn’t burn him like fire like it should have. It stayed tucked behind his ribcage like a subtle reminder that he couldn’t access at the moment. Like maybe if he ignored it, it would never really rise to the surface. If he just kept going, and did what was right, the pain would melt away like ice cream on a hot summer day.
The rook was nestled in his palm, and the section with the missing chunk on the top of it dug into his skin as he held the cardboard box in his hands. He stood motionless and watched as Noah built the raft of twigs and gently placed it in the water for him.
Luke placed each item on the bed of twigs, arms moving robotically, eyes vigilant but not really seeing. It was his duty to perform, and he wanted it done well.
So it was. The twigs snapped in the blaze, the heat from the lighter. Luke stood at the shore with the ripples lapping at his shoes and watched the last remnants of Reid Oliver’s life burn.
At the last moment, Luke chucked the rook into the fire. His palm bled where the section with the missing chunk of plastic scraped his skin.
***
When Luke woke up of his own volition, it was peaceful but jarring.
Lily was out of her chair in an instant as her son opened his eyes and blinked twice, then let his head fall to the side to focus on her. The moment their eyes locked, the dam inside of Luke broke, and the tears began to cascade down his face.
Lily quickly put her arms around him and held him close, wondering what could have set him off so quickly after just waking up. It wasn’t long before Luke was clutching at her with all his might, clawing madly to get closer to her, sitting up in his bed, letting the blanket fall from his chest to his lap. He sobbed openly, wetting Lily’s thin sweater, harsh but relieved breaths shaking from his lips.
They said nothing to each other. Lily just held her son as he cried, and it took her a while to notice the stabbing pain in her shoulder, where Luke’s left hand gripped her tightly. It was even longer before she saw the object in his grasp that was causing her pain.
And even longer still to believe the story Luke told her behind it all.
*
Luke remembered his mother through closed eyes.
He remembered regarding her with fondness as she sat in the hard, molded plastic chair next to his bed. He remembered thinking that she looked so pretty, even in the rough overhead lighting, even with the glossy magazine pages in front of her shooting odd shadows onto her face.
He remembered feeling warm in her presence, feeling grateful that he had a mother such as she who understood him so well, and remembered thanking someone - God, himself, Lily, who knew - that the two of them had had each other their whole lives; had been each other's first and only life-long best friends.
Then he blinked - or something that felt like a blink - and she was gone. Instead of his hospital room, he was standing in a white-walled hallway in his hospital gown and stockingfeet. The corridor was deserted.
He took a cautious few steps and suddenly realized that while he had been down this hall a thousand times before, he had never been down this hall. There was something different about this hall, something infinitely cleaner, whiter. Something more crystalline in color that shimmered with a brilliance he couldn’t put into words.
And then the sentence came, and Reid Oliver swam into his view.
“I told you to take care of that kidney.”
It wasn’t anger or annoyance in his tone. It wasn’t concern or arrogance or gloating.
It was love. The kind of love that accompanies a bit of advice that one gives when not really expecting the advice to be followed, and enjoying the result when it isn't.
Luke took another two steps and faltered, letting his eyes run the length of Reid’s body. There was no way this was an apparition. It looked real. It looked like Reid.
He stood in front of Luke, in his mauve taupe button-down shirt and black jeans. His stethoscope was slung around his neck. His sandy hair brushed his forehead in the front and twisted curly in the back. His blue eyes sparkled in a color that only resembled what Luke knew to be blue. They were somehow deeper, stronger, and something more than blue in color.
Luke took another step, and Reid mirrored him. They played this game until Reid finally took the last two steps and closed the distance between them. He looked at Luke with a smile playing in his eyes, a grin buried deep within the color of which Luke could not name.
Luke opened his mouth to speak, and his voice surprised himself. “I did take care of it,” he croaked. He found himself smiling without having to think about smiling.
Reid smiled back, in his half-crooked, loving way. “And now you’re here.”
Luke nodded, and suddenly he felt the urge to cry rise from the depths of his stomach and seize his chest. It had been two years. Two years.
“Reid?” he asked in a shaking voice.
The return was simple and calm. “Yes?”
The urge to cry grew stronger. “Reid?” Was it really him?
Reid stepped closer. Luke could feel his heat, smell his scent. Something stronger than Reid, something more defined than shampoo and detergent and aftershave, but still him. Still Reid.
But Luke's brain couldn't seem to process the realization fast enough to send word to his mouth. So he kept asking. “Reid?”
Reid put his arms around Luke, who was now shaking. Luke's voice had involuntarily risen two notches, and the tears were pricking the backs of his eyes. “Reid…?” His voice was muffled against Reid's shirt, the soft material welcoming against his cheek.
Luke put his arms around Reid then and pulled him in without another second wasted. When the tears finally broke free, Luke expected to sob hysterically.
But he didn’t. He cried, but they were tears of joy. He let out gasps of breath, but they were happy gasps, like he couldn’t get enough of the wonderful oxygen around him. He wanted the despair to overtake him, to drown him out, to finally be released from inside him, but relief and joy flooded his body from head to toe.
He held Reid and cried happily into his shoulder. Held him tighter than he’d ever held anyone before. When he pulled back and looked into Reid’s face - his wonderful, soothing face - Luke grinned from ear to ear.
Luke took a step back from Reid and felt the calm settle over him. He wiped his eyes and cheeks, feeling the curve of his own smile still lingering under his fingertips. Reid smiled right back, in his half-crooked, loving way.
“I swear, I took care of myself,” Luke said then with a laugh. “I did. It wasn’t my fault.”
Reid laughed softly under his breath. “I know it wasn’t your fault, Luke.” He put his hand on Luke’s cheek, and his skin was warm to the touch. Or maybe something better than warm, something more comforting and more relaxing than warm. “It wasn’t your fault.”
Luke looked into those more-than-blue eyes, and he tried to feel shame, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t feel embarrassed, even though he knew Reid was no longer referring to his health. “It wasn’t my fault,” he repeated.
Reid shook his head. “No. What happened wasn’t your fault.”
Luke grinned harder at Reid. He had spent two years in therapy pouring his heart and soul out to a complete stranger behind a desk while juggling hectic Grimaldi Shipping schedules and cramming in night classes at OU with a sheer determination to do little else there but graduate, and had devoted the rest of his free time dreaming up new directions for his foundation in order to simultaneously keep himself occupied and help others, but not one of those things had taken his guilt away faster than that one sentence from Reid.
Luke pressed his hand over Reid’s hand against his cheek, keeping Reid’s skin against his own. “Are we really here?” he asked. He had no idea where ‘here’ was, yet it felt as familiar to him as his own skin.
Reid laughed softly under his breath again. “What do you think?” he replied. The shade of his eyes sparkled at Luke with the most miniscule of movements, and the intensity of the color radiated pleasantly through the length of Luke’s body.
“I think…I feel happy,” Luke answered. It sounded childlike coming from his twenty-four year-old lips, but again, he wasn’t embarrassed. “Does this mean that I’m--?”
But Reid dropped his hand from Luke’s face then and turned, facing down the corridor that sprawled in front of Luke. He held his hand out, beckoning. “Come with me,” he said. “I want to show you something.”
Luke took his hand immediately, and together they walked in step down the hallway. Reid stopped in front of a closed door that Luke recognized instantly as Reid’s work office.
Reid reached for the handle and opened the door, then gently guided Luke inside the room ahead of himself. Luke stood in his hospital gown and stockingfeet, and allowed his brain to adjust to the sight that met his eyes, penetrated his being.
They were both standing in a wide-open space with heat from the sun that felt more like love. There was a soft breeze that smelled like sweet through Luke’s nose. There was a light chattering of voices that floated past him, past Reid, that lodged somewhere within unlimited walls. This place felt hot and encompassing and lovely and soothing and happy and alive. And Reid felt the same way by his side.
“Where is this?” Luke asked, agape. His vision settled on two gentlemen who sat at a stone bench in front of them, both staring intensely down at a chessboard. One of the men stroked his goatee, then made a swiftly calculated move, his arm moving through the air as easy as breathing.
Reid smiled at him yet again. “Harvard Square,” he replied. "This is where--"
"You learned to play chess," Luke supplied. "And they taught you." He nodded towards the two old men, who paid them no attention.
Reid chuckled softly under his breath, a sound that shimmied down Luke's body like raindrops sliding against dry skin. "It's good to know you haven't forgotten about me."
Luke looked at Reid, and he expected the dread to come, the pain to settle in behind his ribcage at Reid's words. The pain was there - he knew it was. He'd felt it every day since Reid passed. He knew it because he carried it with him every day, continuously searching and absolutely failing to find any small way to absolve it.
But the pain didn't come. Instead, Luke found himself smiling without having to think about it again.
"I could never forget you," he breathed, and he reached to hook his arm through Reid's. He was strong to Luke's touch, warm and comforting and other things that Luke couldn't describe with his own meager words. "I love you."
Reid smiled at him, in his lop-sided, loving way. "I have something else to show you," he told Luke, in a tone that said I love you too. He slid Luke's hand down his arm till their palms met and their hands interlocked. Luke followed Reid out the door behind them, the door that led back into the crystalline hallway.
They reached a door at the end of the hall. Reid gestured for Luke to open it, and he did so.
"What is this?" Luke asked, not trusting his brain. He glanced at Reid, who dropped his hand and gave Luke a gentle push inside the room.
"You know what this is," Reid replied, his eyes shining. "You've created it, after all."
"I've...?"
But Luke couldn't finish his sentence. He couldn't finish it because he knew without explanation that what Reid was saying was true.
The pond stretched for endless miles in front of him. The water was azure to Luke's eyes but something far beyond azure to his body. It lapped gently at the shore. The green trees swayed in the gentle breeze, and Luke closed his eyes.
Home.
More than home. It was everything. Everything he could have asked for, where troubles melted away, where things always made sense. Where his head would clear and the truth always seemed bright as day.
An earlier thought of his quickly re-materialized, and Luke opened his eyes. "Am I...? Does this mean that I'm...?" He couldn't get the words out, but not because he was afraid of being dead.
He didn't want to ask because he was afraid of still being alive.
"This is yours, Luke," Reid explained, facing him, and a shot of white heat streaked serenely through Luke's body. "But you're not ready yet. It's not your place or time."
Immediately, Luke wanted to argue, to get angry and tell Reid that yes, he was definitely ready. He'd been ready the day Reid had left him, the day Reid's eyes had closed forever. He'd been ready to rid himself of the guilt and the shame and the pain that ate away at his heart every time he'd taken a breath, and this place, here with Reid, was the only place he'd found solace from the angry hurt that took daily residence inside his body.
But he couldn't. There was no fight in him. There was no despair, no heartache, no pain. No hurt. No guilt or shame or hate or confusion or questioning. He simply felt at peace.
Peace.
"So..."
Luke looked at Reid, who looked more Reid-like than he had ever seemed before. The thought didn't even make sense, but that was what Luke felt, looking at him. Somehow, here in this place, the nonsensical seemed to define everything more than accurately, and with less words.
"It'll still be there when you get here," Reid assured him with that lop-sided smile. "Scout's honor."
Luke grinned. Reid had never been a scout. Probably would have earned all the badges while making every other kid feel bad about himself in the process.
"Do I have to leave?" Luke asked then, with less unwillingness than he thought he felt.
Reid nodded, but it was a compassionate motion, one that conveyed Reid's understanding but also told the truth.
They exited Luke's space and found themselves back in the corridor. The corridor of Memorial Hospital where Reid had once kissed him in front of everyone on the floor without a second thought.
"Here," Reid said, pressing an object into Luke's hand. "I want you to keep it."
Luke fumbled to grasp the small item for a moment, then opened his hand once it was secure in his palm. "This is--"
"My rook," Reid finished. "The rook that won me my last game when I was nine."
"The one you--"
"--threw against the wall at home after the game. And then cried over." Reid scoffed at himself, but it was a friendly scoff, a sound of fondness at the memory. "The one that cut your palm."
Luke repeated his words. "The one that cut my..." and he promptly trailed off.
He looked at Reid. He remembered the sorrow, but he couldn't feel it now. "I'm sorry," he said anyway. "I didn't want it to burn."
"I know," Reid replied. "That's why you need to keep it."
"I will," Luke said, and he could feel the tears again. Calm tears. Comforting tears. Joyous tears. "I'll keep it till I can give it back to you."
"Promise?"
Luke squeezed the small plastic object, clutching it tightly in his left hand. "I promise."
"Okay then."
And Reid was gone, and Luke opened his eyes.
[End.]