The Slow Path (1/2)
Title: The Slow Path
Summary: Luke survives.
Disclaimer: If this were mine, this would not be a canon fic.
Spoilers: Do we really even have to worry about spoilers anymore?
Rating: PG/PG-13??
Warnings: You know, the train thing.
A/N: Yes, the title is inspired by Doctor Who
The sun glints off Reid’s bare skin, and small droplets roll down his chest. He’s laughing as he tackles Luke and sends them both under the water of Snyder Pond. When they surface, they’re kissing… The air is bitterly cold, and Reid is complaining about being dragged along by Luke for Christmas shopping. Not that Reid complaining is anything unusual, but this time it almost makes Luke nervous. Reid is remembering Texas weather fondly, and Luke doesn’t want him to get any ideas about moving back there. He reaches out quickly for Reid’s hand, pulls him close, whispers suggestively in his ear that as soon as they get somewhere private, he’ll warm Reid up. He steps away then, continues to walk. Reid doesn’t let go of his hand… Reid is inside him, filling him, driving him to the brink of ecstasy. It’s their first time together and it surpasses all of Luke’s expectations. He doesn't remember why he wanted to wait now. He can't understand how they managed to… Reid laughing… Reid telling Luke he loves him... Reid gloating over his 100th win at chess… Reid celebrating an unlikely success, another patient saved against all odds… Reid… Reid… Reid…
Luke wakes up alone. The waiting room is dark and silent. He is aware there are other people around somewhere, huddling together as they wait for news of Chris. He wants to be by himself, though. He asks his parents to stay away. Whenever someone comes into the room, he responds with the barest minimum reply until they leave. He needs to be alone.
He chases after the fleeting images still lingering in his mind. He desperately wants them to be prophecies, predictions of the future. He knows they aren’t, though. He knows they are dreams that will never come true.
**
Days after Reid…, Luke manages to perform something resembling a normal routine. He is in Java with his grandmother when Noah arrives. And when Luke finds out Noah is planning to give up his amazing opportunity just to stay in Oakdale, Luke becomes possessed with the need to convince him to leave.
In some small, dark, quiet corner of his mind, Luke recognizes that there would have been a time when he’d be on that plane with Noah. There would have been a time when Noah leaving him behind would have destroyed him. But now, Luke just pushes Noah, steamrollers over his objections in a way that will make Katie and his grandmother proud when they hear about it. Luke wants Noah to leave, for his own sake as well as Luke’s. He still loves Noah and he wants him to be happy. And he knows in a way that Noah hasn’t accepted yet that that future happiness will never be found with him and certainly not in Oakdale.
As Noah disappears from sight, though, as Luke stands alone in the quiet studio, all he can feel is resentment growing into rage. He fights the scream bubbling up inside of him. Every morning when he wakes up and sometimes when he’s alone and remembering, he touches his fingers to his lips, feels the last kiss Reid gave him, the last time his mouth touched Reid’s skin before they wheeled him away. It should have been his choice to give that up. And now all he can taste is Noah pressing against him.
It doesn’t surprise Luke, not really. It is simply the latest in a long series of selfish acts Noah has hurt him with.
**
Almost one month after Reid…, Luke finds the courage to drive out towards Bay City, towards the tracks. He goes alone, and he doesn’t tell anyone where he’s going. Beyond a few gouged and scarred trees, there is no evidence of the accident. Luke wonders for a minute if he’s even at the right crossing.
He looks around, hoping for some sign, some…something. Some message, maybe even an apology, from beyond. He feels there should be a gaping hole in the world here. This is where a good man was killed, and it shouldn’t look so peaceful and normal.
Luke climbs out of the car and he walks the few feet to the steel rail. He stares at it. He balances on one foot and suspends his other just above. He cannot touch it. He cannot step down. He cannot cross.
No one has mentioned anything. Maybe it hasn’t even really been noticeable. But Luke knows that he’s a prisoner right now, fenced in by the tracks here and the ones at varying distances in the other directions from Oakdale. He hasn’t admitted to anyone yet that he doesn’t think he can drive or walk or even ride a bike across them. Maybe he can fly somewhere, but what is the point? Reid is in Oakdale, and that is where Luke will stay. Luke convinces himself that is why he doesn’t venture too far; it’s not because of the fear that clutches at his heart with every phantom blow of a nonexistent whistle.
**
Luke spends a lot of time at the pond these days. He tries to keep his mind clear of every thought. He just stares out over the water, not really focusing on anything.
Sometimes, Katie joins him. She sits next to him and neither of them says a word. Luke wants to ask her to stop coming, wants to blame her in a way she doesn’t deserve, but he doesn’t.
And one day, he speaks.
“I don’t know why I put his ashes here,” he whispers.
He senses Katie look at him, but he doesn’t turn to meet her eyes.
“The hospital was understandable. But this pond, it doesn’t - didn’t mean anything to us. We didn’t spend any time here. It’s an important place to me, but there really was no place I could think of that is - was important to him and me. Your apartment? Java? The elevator at the Lakeview? None of those would have really been appropriate.”
Katie is silent for a long time. Then she shrugs. “I don’t know. I think he would have liked it here. I think, if nothing else, he would have wanted to be somewhere you can be with him.”
Luke sighs.
**
Luke has the house to himself, and he’s thankful for it. The girls and Ethan are at the farm, so he doesn’t have to deal with Natalie’s awkward sympathy and Faith’s inconsiderate surliness. Or Ethan’s clueless disappointment that Luke doesn’t play with him anymore. And his parents are on a date. After the years of his life Luke has spent fretting over the state of their relationship, he finds he doesn’t care this time whether they work it out or not.
Luke has the house to himself, but he’s not alone. He holds his hands to his ears, pressing and squeezing in an attempt to quiet the voices. He’s scared sometimes that he’s losing his mind. Often, the bittersweet memories of conversations with Reid comfort him. But not tonight. Tonight, he hears Reid’s broken, straining attempts to talk as the life leaves his body. He hears Reid demanding he take care of himself and ensure they have a future, not long before he himself throws away any chance they have at a life together. He hears Bob telling him there’s nothing the doctors can do. He hears Tom encouraging him to sign the papers before it’s too late for Chris also.
The voices won’t stop. They won’t stop, no matter what Luke does. He hurries downstairs with half-formed plans of physical exercise or going to town and losing himself in a crowd. He stops immediately, though, when he sees the bottles in the corner bar. He knows that is one way to clear his mind. It’s not like he has to keep his promise to Reid anymore. Reid has already broken all of the promises he made to Luke.
Even still, once Luke lines up the bottles on the table and places an empty glass in front of them, all he can do is sit down, rest his chin on his crossed arms, and stare at them. He doesn’t know where to start. And some tiny little voice in his head, nearly drowned out by all the others, is screaming at him to stop.
That is how Holden and Lily find him when they come home an hour later. His mother exclaims, begs him to tell her how much he’s had, wants to take him to the hospital to pump his stomach. She reminds him that they are his partners in this and will always be there for him and he needs to come to them first, if it ever gets to be too much. Luke ignores her and goes upstairs again.
In the morning, Luke goes downstairs for breakfast. Every bottle in the house is now empty and in the recycling bin. Luke skips breakfast and he goes to a meeting instead. Carly is there, watching him carefully. Luke wonders if this was her regular meeting or if his mother or father called her. She doesn’t say anything, for which Luke is grateful. She just sits quietly two rows back, and at the end, she pours him a cup of coffee.
**
Reid has been…It’s been six weeks now, and Luke gets word that Damian is being transferred to another facility. Damian has asked for him, and Luke is feeling off enough to go. He sits in the visiting room on one side of a glass wall, and he waits for Damian to appear. He feels nothing when he sees Damian’s face. At one time that would have been odd, but Luke is now used to his emotions making no sense.
Damian asks how he is and Luke shrugs.
After a pause, Damian says, “I heard about your - ”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Luke replies. “That isn’t why I came here.”
“What do you want to talk about?”
“You’re the one who wanted me to come,” Luke reminds him.
Damian sighs. He looks down at his handcuffed wrists and then back up at Luke. “I want us to have a relationship. I know you are angry with me, my son, but everything I did was out of love for you and your mother.”
Luke stares at him for a long time. “I don’t think you know what that means. Love.”
“I love you, Luciano,” Damian repeats urgently. “I want you to be happy.”
Sudden tears spring to Luke’s eyes, and he blinks them away angrily. He looks to the side and inhales. When he looks back at Damian, he’s resolute again.
“I don’t get to be. I accept that now. I still don’t quite understand it, you know. Why aren’t I allowed to be happy?” Luke shrugs. “Maybe it’s genetics. Or karma. Or just bad luck.”
Damian sighs. “You’re wrong. You will be happy again.”
“Whether that’s true or not,” Luke answers coldly. “you won’t get to see it. I used to believe in second chances. But life is too short to waste on the hope that a person will change.”
When he leaves the prison, Luke doesn’t look back, and he regrets nothing.
**
Luke abstains from the chief of staff vote. Despite his lobbying for Chris, he can’t actually vote against Reid, even if he can’t vote for him now. What’s more, Luke has reservations about someone with such poor judgment about their own health being ultimately in charge of the whole town’s. He also resents the fact that Chris has basically stopped campaigning for the position anyway, that he doesn’t seem to care if he gets it or not. At the same time, he knows the competition for the job was all but responsible for Reid’s… He doesn’t want it all to be in vain.
Luke is used to feeling conflicting emotions such as these by now. And they become even more complex moments after the tallies are counted and Susan Stewart is named the new chief of staff. A wave of disappointment crashes over Luke. And at the same time, he tries to hide his smile. Chris doesn’t deserve the job, as far as Luke is concerned.
**
It’s very cold out, although it still hasn’t snowed yet. Luke wraps his jacket around himself tightly, and he sits on a log instead of the hard ground. The surface of the pond shivers whenever the wind whips over it, and Luke wonders if it will finally freeze over soon.
“Brrr!” Katie’s exclamation announces her presence, and Luke shifts slightly to the side to make room for her.
She sits down next to him, closer than she normally does, but Luke doesn’t mind the added warmth.
“How’s Chris?” he asks.
And then Katie shrugs. Luke nods at the confirmation of the rumors he’s heard.
“Good, as far as I know.”
Luke doesn’t know whether to feel bad that Reid’s heart got broken, or vindictively joyful that Chris lost, or bizarrely disappointed for himself. He has taken comfort in the fact that, if he couldn’t listen to the sound of Reid’s heart beating, then at least Katie could. At least Reid’s heart was still with someone the man himself had loved.
“Why’d you…?” he asks.
Katie shrugs. She looks out over the pond as she searches for words to explain. “It annoyed me that he gave up with the chief of staff thing. It reminded me how flighty he can be, and how much Jacob and I don’t need that in our lives. That was the last straw, I guess.”
Luke nods slowly.
“I think,” Katie continues, “I stayed with him even longer than I really wanted to because I thought…I thought that Reid wouldn’t have tried so hard if it hadn’t been for me. I felt guilty about that. And I didn’t want to waste his efforts.”
Luke smiles softly. “I don’t know about that, actually. I think he tried hard because he was an arrogant surgeon who liked to win and wouldn’t recognize his own limits.”
Katie chuckles. “Maybe.”
They are both silent for a minute.
“Even if that’s true,” Katie says, “a part of me still blames Chris. He put Reid in such an impossible position, and maybe if he hadn’t, Reid wouldn’t have felt so personally responsible, you know?”
“Katie,” Luke points out. “Maybe you’re just grieving now. You shouldn’t end things with Chris if you might regret it later.”
“I won’t,” Katie confesses. “I do care about Chris, but I never did like that, not enough anyway. I felt like it was something I should do. Everyone was telling me it was time, that I had to move on and live again. Chris was pushing me most of all. But I don’t think I was ready. And his illness just heightened everything into a frenzy, and it brought a lot of stuff back for me, and so I wasn’t really thinking straight. But now that things have calmed down somewhat…” Katie shrugs. “I look around at the happy couples in town. I remember - I just remember how Reid felt about you and how I felt about Brad and…I don’t feel that way for Chris. I want to wait for someone that does make me feel like that again.”
Luke is silent for a long time.
“I understand,” he finally says. “There are…some people are telling me it’s time to…You know, to ‘get back out there.’ It’s only been a few months, but they don’t understand - they don’t think Reid and I were together long enough to, I don’t know, to warrant how I feel. They think I just need to…”
“Don’t,’ Katie advises. “Wait until you’re ready. Only you can decide that.”
Luke sighs. “I don’t know if I ever will be.”
“You will. You better; I don’t think Reid would want - ”
Luke interrupts her with a bark of laughter. “Are you kidding me? Reid would love it if I mourned him for the rest of my life.”
“He’d want you to be happy,” Katie argued.
“That doesn’t mean he’d want me to be with someone else. You don’t even realize how jealous he could get over Noah. Nope. At the very, very least, he’d want me to compare everyone I ever met to him and conclude that they only could ever be second-best. Which wouldn’t be too difficult, really. How do you compete against someone who could make the blind see?”
Katie’s chuckle echoes out across the lake. “Maybe,” she allows.
Luke laughs freely. It feels good and entirely unfamiliar.
**
Luke receives letters from the people alive today because of Reid. They’re sent to him via an organization that serves as an intermediary between donors’ families and organ recipients. They talk of indescribable gratitude and second chances and dreams now being realized. They say they understand how difficult it must be, must have been, and they hope their messages offer some comfort. The first letter Luke receives is unexpected. It hits him hard in the gut, and he can barely glance at it. As others arrive, he does start to find solace. He smiles, tears in his eyes, as he reads and rereads. Some include pictures of happy people surrounded by loved ones. It is something, Luke decides. It is something.
The idea is strange to him. To this day, he never asks questions about where his kidney is from. He doesn’t want to know the answer. He doesn’t know if there’s anyone out there who wonders what ever happened to the kidney inside him. He doesn’t know if there’s anyone who even signed off on it in the first place.
After he reads a letter from a young college student who almost can run now after years of health problems and even eventually being strapped to an oxygen tank, Luke cuts a check for the organization. Although he has continued to work on the neuro wing, Luke hasn’t engaged in any other charitable work through his own foundation since…since everything happened. He knows that throwing money around doesn’t solve everything; he knows it can help a lot.
And a few weeks later, he is invited to an event in Brooklyn for the organization. It will be attended by major financial contributors, donor families, and transplant recipients. Luke stares at the invitation, and he swallows thickly. He wonders if they will be there, the people who have written him letters. He wonders if he will be able to stop himself from forcing his way through the crowd and staring into people’s eyes in the hopes of finding Reid looking back at him. He wonders if he will shake someone’ s hand and feel Reid’s skin again. A part of him is disgusted at the thought. Another part of him thinks that is why he accepts the invitation.
He flies there, closing his eyes against images of plane crashes, of mangled metal and fire and crushing pain. He feels the walls closing in around him and he flashes back to the day in the elevator with Reid. He thinks that Reid must have panicked that day on the tracks, that it’s the only explanation. Luke blames himself sometimes, for not insisting to go along. He could have talked Reid down. He could have prevented him from trying to cross in the first place.
As the plane prepares to take off, Luke takes a deep breath and searches for a happy place. He thinks of Reid telling him he loves him, of them kissing in Luke’s house, of them arguing over the wing as they walk up and down the halls of Memorial. He remembers, and he relaxes.
At the event, when people ask him who he is, why he’s so generous with his money when it comes to this cause, he tells them that he has had a transplant himself. He doesn’t tell anyone about Reid.
The next morning, he postpones his flight. He walks down to the square and watches the elderly men battle each other in matches of strategy and intelligence. He spots the man he's looking for almost immediately. Although Luke has not yet been able to watch the video his parents found, he knows it’s him. The man looks exactly like Lily described him once. And there is a family resemblance. Luke pauses to imagine what Reid would have looked like at that age. Luke thinks he would have been hot. Reid would have complained about needing glasses someday, and Luke would have teased him and called him a silver fox.
Luke makes his way over to the table where Angus Oliver sits. He stops right next to him and watches as he moves a piece. The man across from him, 85 years old at least, grumbles good-naturedly. Luke smiles softly to himself.
Angus Oliver looks up at him then.
“Kid, you’re blocking the light,” he says.
Luke takes a breath and reaches into his pocket. He pulls out the black knight, and he places it next to the board. Angus stares at it silently. Seconds stretch out, and then he looks over at his opponent.
“Sorry, Bill. I gotta play this kid here.”
By the third game, Angus starts speaking. He tells Luke of Reid’s childhood, of the verbal and sometimes physical battles between them, of Reid’s ultimate victory and his own vague regrets. He tells Luke that, besides the genius thing, Reid was simply a normal, shy boy who didn’t know how to talk to people. With a better parent, with his own parents, Reid might have overcome that and learned how to interact normally, politely. With Angus, Reid never stood a chance.
Luke finally speaks. He says he loves - loved Reid the way he is - was. He wouldn’t change one small bit of him, including his lack of social skills.
Luke loses seven games before the sun sets. He laughs as he thinks about how Reid would have responded to that, how he would have hid tips and lessons beneath endless teasing.
Second Part
Summary: Luke survives.
Disclaimer: If this were mine, this would not be a canon fic.
Spoilers: Do we really even have to worry about spoilers anymore?
Rating: PG/PG-13??
Warnings: You know, the train thing.
A/N: Yes, the title is inspired by Doctor Who
The sun glints off Reid’s bare skin, and small droplets roll down his chest. He’s laughing as he tackles Luke and sends them both under the water of Snyder Pond. When they surface, they’re kissing… The air is bitterly cold, and Reid is complaining about being dragged along by Luke for Christmas shopping. Not that Reid complaining is anything unusual, but this time it almost makes Luke nervous. Reid is remembering Texas weather fondly, and Luke doesn’t want him to get any ideas about moving back there. He reaches out quickly for Reid’s hand, pulls him close, whispers suggestively in his ear that as soon as they get somewhere private, he’ll warm Reid up. He steps away then, continues to walk. Reid doesn’t let go of his hand… Reid is inside him, filling him, driving him to the brink of ecstasy. It’s their first time together and it surpasses all of Luke’s expectations. He doesn't remember why he wanted to wait now. He can't understand how they managed to… Reid laughing… Reid telling Luke he loves him... Reid gloating over his 100th win at chess… Reid celebrating an unlikely success, another patient saved against all odds… Reid… Reid… Reid…
Luke wakes up alone. The waiting room is dark and silent. He is aware there are other people around somewhere, huddling together as they wait for news of Chris. He wants to be by himself, though. He asks his parents to stay away. Whenever someone comes into the room, he responds with the barest minimum reply until they leave. He needs to be alone.
He chases after the fleeting images still lingering in his mind. He desperately wants them to be prophecies, predictions of the future. He knows they aren’t, though. He knows they are dreams that will never come true.
**
Days after Reid…, Luke manages to perform something resembling a normal routine. He is in Java with his grandmother when Noah arrives. And when Luke finds out Noah is planning to give up his amazing opportunity just to stay in Oakdale, Luke becomes possessed with the need to convince him to leave.
In some small, dark, quiet corner of his mind, Luke recognizes that there would have been a time when he’d be on that plane with Noah. There would have been a time when Noah leaving him behind would have destroyed him. But now, Luke just pushes Noah, steamrollers over his objections in a way that will make Katie and his grandmother proud when they hear about it. Luke wants Noah to leave, for his own sake as well as Luke’s. He still loves Noah and he wants him to be happy. And he knows in a way that Noah hasn’t accepted yet that that future happiness will never be found with him and certainly not in Oakdale.
As Noah disappears from sight, though, as Luke stands alone in the quiet studio, all he can feel is resentment growing into rage. He fights the scream bubbling up inside of him. Every morning when he wakes up and sometimes when he’s alone and remembering, he touches his fingers to his lips, feels the last kiss Reid gave him, the last time his mouth touched Reid’s skin before they wheeled him away. It should have been his choice to give that up. And now all he can taste is Noah pressing against him.
It doesn’t surprise Luke, not really. It is simply the latest in a long series of selfish acts Noah has hurt him with.
**
Almost one month after Reid…, Luke finds the courage to drive out towards Bay City, towards the tracks. He goes alone, and he doesn’t tell anyone where he’s going. Beyond a few gouged and scarred trees, there is no evidence of the accident. Luke wonders for a minute if he’s even at the right crossing.
He looks around, hoping for some sign, some…something. Some message, maybe even an apology, from beyond. He feels there should be a gaping hole in the world here. This is where a good man was killed, and it shouldn’t look so peaceful and normal.
Luke climbs out of the car and he walks the few feet to the steel rail. He stares at it. He balances on one foot and suspends his other just above. He cannot touch it. He cannot step down. He cannot cross.
No one has mentioned anything. Maybe it hasn’t even really been noticeable. But Luke knows that he’s a prisoner right now, fenced in by the tracks here and the ones at varying distances in the other directions from Oakdale. He hasn’t admitted to anyone yet that he doesn’t think he can drive or walk or even ride a bike across them. Maybe he can fly somewhere, but what is the point? Reid is in Oakdale, and that is where Luke will stay. Luke convinces himself that is why he doesn’t venture too far; it’s not because of the fear that clutches at his heart with every phantom blow of a nonexistent whistle.
**
Luke spends a lot of time at the pond these days. He tries to keep his mind clear of every thought. He just stares out over the water, not really focusing on anything.
Sometimes, Katie joins him. She sits next to him and neither of them says a word. Luke wants to ask her to stop coming, wants to blame her in a way she doesn’t deserve, but he doesn’t.
And one day, he speaks.
“I don’t know why I put his ashes here,” he whispers.
He senses Katie look at him, but he doesn’t turn to meet her eyes.
“The hospital was understandable. But this pond, it doesn’t - didn’t mean anything to us. We didn’t spend any time here. It’s an important place to me, but there really was no place I could think of that is - was important to him and me. Your apartment? Java? The elevator at the Lakeview? None of those would have really been appropriate.”
Katie is silent for a long time. Then she shrugs. “I don’t know. I think he would have liked it here. I think, if nothing else, he would have wanted to be somewhere you can be with him.”
Luke sighs.
**
Luke has the house to himself, and he’s thankful for it. The girls and Ethan are at the farm, so he doesn’t have to deal with Natalie’s awkward sympathy and Faith’s inconsiderate surliness. Or Ethan’s clueless disappointment that Luke doesn’t play with him anymore. And his parents are on a date. After the years of his life Luke has spent fretting over the state of their relationship, he finds he doesn’t care this time whether they work it out or not.
Luke has the house to himself, but he’s not alone. He holds his hands to his ears, pressing and squeezing in an attempt to quiet the voices. He’s scared sometimes that he’s losing his mind. Often, the bittersweet memories of conversations with Reid comfort him. But not tonight. Tonight, he hears Reid’s broken, straining attempts to talk as the life leaves his body. He hears Reid demanding he take care of himself and ensure they have a future, not long before he himself throws away any chance they have at a life together. He hears Bob telling him there’s nothing the doctors can do. He hears Tom encouraging him to sign the papers before it’s too late for Chris also.
The voices won’t stop. They won’t stop, no matter what Luke does. He hurries downstairs with half-formed plans of physical exercise or going to town and losing himself in a crowd. He stops immediately, though, when he sees the bottles in the corner bar. He knows that is one way to clear his mind. It’s not like he has to keep his promise to Reid anymore. Reid has already broken all of the promises he made to Luke.
Even still, once Luke lines up the bottles on the table and places an empty glass in front of them, all he can do is sit down, rest his chin on his crossed arms, and stare at them. He doesn’t know where to start. And some tiny little voice in his head, nearly drowned out by all the others, is screaming at him to stop.
That is how Holden and Lily find him when they come home an hour later. His mother exclaims, begs him to tell her how much he’s had, wants to take him to the hospital to pump his stomach. She reminds him that they are his partners in this and will always be there for him and he needs to come to them first, if it ever gets to be too much. Luke ignores her and goes upstairs again.
In the morning, Luke goes downstairs for breakfast. Every bottle in the house is now empty and in the recycling bin. Luke skips breakfast and he goes to a meeting instead. Carly is there, watching him carefully. Luke wonders if this was her regular meeting or if his mother or father called her. She doesn’t say anything, for which Luke is grateful. She just sits quietly two rows back, and at the end, she pours him a cup of coffee.
**
Reid has been…It’s been six weeks now, and Luke gets word that Damian is being transferred to another facility. Damian has asked for him, and Luke is feeling off enough to go. He sits in the visiting room on one side of a glass wall, and he waits for Damian to appear. He feels nothing when he sees Damian’s face. At one time that would have been odd, but Luke is now used to his emotions making no sense.
Damian asks how he is and Luke shrugs.
After a pause, Damian says, “I heard about your - ”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Luke replies. “That isn’t why I came here.”
“What do you want to talk about?”
“You’re the one who wanted me to come,” Luke reminds him.
Damian sighs. He looks down at his handcuffed wrists and then back up at Luke. “I want us to have a relationship. I know you are angry with me, my son, but everything I did was out of love for you and your mother.”
Luke stares at him for a long time. “I don’t think you know what that means. Love.”
“I love you, Luciano,” Damian repeats urgently. “I want you to be happy.”
Sudden tears spring to Luke’s eyes, and he blinks them away angrily. He looks to the side and inhales. When he looks back at Damian, he’s resolute again.
“I don’t get to be. I accept that now. I still don’t quite understand it, you know. Why aren’t I allowed to be happy?” Luke shrugs. “Maybe it’s genetics. Or karma. Or just bad luck.”
Damian sighs. “You’re wrong. You will be happy again.”
“Whether that’s true or not,” Luke answers coldly. “you won’t get to see it. I used to believe in second chances. But life is too short to waste on the hope that a person will change.”
When he leaves the prison, Luke doesn’t look back, and he regrets nothing.
**
Luke abstains from the chief of staff vote. Despite his lobbying for Chris, he can’t actually vote against Reid, even if he can’t vote for him now. What’s more, Luke has reservations about someone with such poor judgment about their own health being ultimately in charge of the whole town’s. He also resents the fact that Chris has basically stopped campaigning for the position anyway, that he doesn’t seem to care if he gets it or not. At the same time, he knows the competition for the job was all but responsible for Reid’s… He doesn’t want it all to be in vain.
Luke is used to feeling conflicting emotions such as these by now. And they become even more complex moments after the tallies are counted and Susan Stewart is named the new chief of staff. A wave of disappointment crashes over Luke. And at the same time, he tries to hide his smile. Chris doesn’t deserve the job, as far as Luke is concerned.
**
It’s very cold out, although it still hasn’t snowed yet. Luke wraps his jacket around himself tightly, and he sits on a log instead of the hard ground. The surface of the pond shivers whenever the wind whips over it, and Luke wonders if it will finally freeze over soon.
“Brrr!” Katie’s exclamation announces her presence, and Luke shifts slightly to the side to make room for her.
She sits down next to him, closer than she normally does, but Luke doesn’t mind the added warmth.
“How’s Chris?” he asks.
And then Katie shrugs. Luke nods at the confirmation of the rumors he’s heard.
“Good, as far as I know.”
Luke doesn’t know whether to feel bad that Reid’s heart got broken, or vindictively joyful that Chris lost, or bizarrely disappointed for himself. He has taken comfort in the fact that, if he couldn’t listen to the sound of Reid’s heart beating, then at least Katie could. At least Reid’s heart was still with someone the man himself had loved.
“Why’d you…?” he asks.
Katie shrugs. She looks out over the pond as she searches for words to explain. “It annoyed me that he gave up with the chief of staff thing. It reminded me how flighty he can be, and how much Jacob and I don’t need that in our lives. That was the last straw, I guess.”
Luke nods slowly.
“I think,” Katie continues, “I stayed with him even longer than I really wanted to because I thought…I thought that Reid wouldn’t have tried so hard if it hadn’t been for me. I felt guilty about that. And I didn’t want to waste his efforts.”
Luke smiles softly. “I don’t know about that, actually. I think he tried hard because he was an arrogant surgeon who liked to win and wouldn’t recognize his own limits.”
Katie chuckles. “Maybe.”
They are both silent for a minute.
“Even if that’s true,” Katie says, “a part of me still blames Chris. He put Reid in such an impossible position, and maybe if he hadn’t, Reid wouldn’t have felt so personally responsible, you know?”
“Katie,” Luke points out. “Maybe you’re just grieving now. You shouldn’t end things with Chris if you might regret it later.”
“I won’t,” Katie confesses. “I do care about Chris, but I never did like that, not enough anyway. I felt like it was something I should do. Everyone was telling me it was time, that I had to move on and live again. Chris was pushing me most of all. But I don’t think I was ready. And his illness just heightened everything into a frenzy, and it brought a lot of stuff back for me, and so I wasn’t really thinking straight. But now that things have calmed down somewhat…” Katie shrugs. “I look around at the happy couples in town. I remember - I just remember how Reid felt about you and how I felt about Brad and…I don’t feel that way for Chris. I want to wait for someone that does make me feel like that again.”
Luke is silent for a long time.
“I understand,” he finally says. “There are…some people are telling me it’s time to…You know, to ‘get back out there.’ It’s only been a few months, but they don’t understand - they don’t think Reid and I were together long enough to, I don’t know, to warrant how I feel. They think I just need to…”
“Don’t,’ Katie advises. “Wait until you’re ready. Only you can decide that.”
Luke sighs. “I don’t know if I ever will be.”
“You will. You better; I don’t think Reid would want - ”
Luke interrupts her with a bark of laughter. “Are you kidding me? Reid would love it if I mourned him for the rest of my life.”
“He’d want you to be happy,” Katie argued.
“That doesn’t mean he’d want me to be with someone else. You don’t even realize how jealous he could get over Noah. Nope. At the very, very least, he’d want me to compare everyone I ever met to him and conclude that they only could ever be second-best. Which wouldn’t be too difficult, really. How do you compete against someone who could make the blind see?”
Katie’s chuckle echoes out across the lake. “Maybe,” she allows.
Luke laughs freely. It feels good and entirely unfamiliar.
**
Luke receives letters from the people alive today because of Reid. They’re sent to him via an organization that serves as an intermediary between donors’ families and organ recipients. They talk of indescribable gratitude and second chances and dreams now being realized. They say they understand how difficult it must be, must have been, and they hope their messages offer some comfort. The first letter Luke receives is unexpected. It hits him hard in the gut, and he can barely glance at it. As others arrive, he does start to find solace. He smiles, tears in his eyes, as he reads and rereads. Some include pictures of happy people surrounded by loved ones. It is something, Luke decides. It is something.
The idea is strange to him. To this day, he never asks questions about where his kidney is from. He doesn’t want to know the answer. He doesn’t know if there’s anyone out there who wonders what ever happened to the kidney inside him. He doesn’t know if there’s anyone who even signed off on it in the first place.
After he reads a letter from a young college student who almost can run now after years of health problems and even eventually being strapped to an oxygen tank, Luke cuts a check for the organization. Although he has continued to work on the neuro wing, Luke hasn’t engaged in any other charitable work through his own foundation since…since everything happened. He knows that throwing money around doesn’t solve everything; he knows it can help a lot.
And a few weeks later, he is invited to an event in Brooklyn for the organization. It will be attended by major financial contributors, donor families, and transplant recipients. Luke stares at the invitation, and he swallows thickly. He wonders if they will be there, the people who have written him letters. He wonders if he will be able to stop himself from forcing his way through the crowd and staring into people’s eyes in the hopes of finding Reid looking back at him. He wonders if he will shake someone’ s hand and feel Reid’s skin again. A part of him is disgusted at the thought. Another part of him thinks that is why he accepts the invitation.
He flies there, closing his eyes against images of plane crashes, of mangled metal and fire and crushing pain. He feels the walls closing in around him and he flashes back to the day in the elevator with Reid. He thinks that Reid must have panicked that day on the tracks, that it’s the only explanation. Luke blames himself sometimes, for not insisting to go along. He could have talked Reid down. He could have prevented him from trying to cross in the first place.
As the plane prepares to take off, Luke takes a deep breath and searches for a happy place. He thinks of Reid telling him he loves him, of them kissing in Luke’s house, of them arguing over the wing as they walk up and down the halls of Memorial. He remembers, and he relaxes.
At the event, when people ask him who he is, why he’s so generous with his money when it comes to this cause, he tells them that he has had a transplant himself. He doesn’t tell anyone about Reid.
The next morning, he postpones his flight. He walks down to the square and watches the elderly men battle each other in matches of strategy and intelligence. He spots the man he's looking for almost immediately. Although Luke has not yet been able to watch the video his parents found, he knows it’s him. The man looks exactly like Lily described him once. And there is a family resemblance. Luke pauses to imagine what Reid would have looked like at that age. Luke thinks he would have been hot. Reid would have complained about needing glasses someday, and Luke would have teased him and called him a silver fox.
Luke makes his way over to the table where Angus Oliver sits. He stops right next to him and watches as he moves a piece. The man across from him, 85 years old at least, grumbles good-naturedly. Luke smiles softly to himself.
Angus Oliver looks up at him then.
“Kid, you’re blocking the light,” he says.
Luke takes a breath and reaches into his pocket. He pulls out the black knight, and he places it next to the board. Angus stares at it silently. Seconds stretch out, and then he looks over at his opponent.
“Sorry, Bill. I gotta play this kid here.”
By the third game, Angus starts speaking. He tells Luke of Reid’s childhood, of the verbal and sometimes physical battles between them, of Reid’s ultimate victory and his own vague regrets. He tells Luke that, besides the genius thing, Reid was simply a normal, shy boy who didn’t know how to talk to people. With a better parent, with his own parents, Reid might have overcome that and learned how to interact normally, politely. With Angus, Reid never stood a chance.
Luke finally speaks. He says he loves - loved Reid the way he is - was. He wouldn’t change one small bit of him, including his lack of social skills.
Luke loses seven games before the sun sets. He laughs as he thinks about how Reid would have responded to that, how he would have hid tips and lessons beneath endless teasing.
Second Part