Fic: This Is the Way the World Ends, Ch. 52 RPS AU
Author: Sema
Pairing: Billy/Dom
Rating: R, overall for violence, language and sexual situations.
Summary: The world of Lotrips mingles with Stephen King's The Stand (and The DarkTower). Billy wakes. Major angst alert.
Feedback: is much loved and appreciated.
Disclaimers: This is entirely fictional. No disrespect to anyone, real or fictional, is intended. The Stand was written by Stephen King. The title comes from T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men. Max's book is, of course, Peter Pan, by J. M. Barrie.
Previous chapters: Chaps. 1 through 45; Chap. 46; Chap. 47; Chap. 48; Chap. 49; Chap. 50; Chap. 51
This Is the Way the World Ends, Chapter 52
Billy's drifting, and the place he occupies is clean, white and bare. He supposes it could be called comfortable, but not in any way that gives comfort in its true sense-it's not like lying in bed with Dom in their house in Hawaii on a lazy Sunday afternoon, after a long, sweet shag, Dom wrapped around him, warm and bony and cuddly at the same time, Dom's soft hair brushing his chin, Dom's voice murmuring to him as they drowse.
That would be comfort. This is only the absence of discomfort, which makes it nothing at all.
"To die would be a mighty big adventure," says a voice from quite nearby, what sounds like a child's voice, one he doesn't recognize.
This isn't an adventure, Billy thinks. It's fucking daft.
He's supposed to be alive. Dom meant to save him, and if Dom meant to save him, with his stubbornness and his love, he'd have been saved. There's no question about that.
Unless Dom hadn't strength in the end to finish what he started. Which, now Billy considers, is a distinct possibility. In which case Dom would be dead too--and then shouldn't they be together here? There's no fairness anywhere in the universe if there is something after, some eternity, and they're not together.
Billy's afraid then, and he begins to fight, trying to see something besides the clean, bare whiteness, and as he fights he begins to feel again, only a little at first--the tips of his fingers and tips of his toes, the weight of his head against a surface that might be a pillow, the way he seems to be famished and nauseated at the same time.
"That's where it ends, Billy," the child's voice says.
No, it fucking isn't! Billy tries to protest. I won't let it. I won't let it end here, with this… nothing.
"The chapter," the voice explains, with exaggerated, childish patience. Then, "He doesn't die. Peter doesn't."
Who in hell is Peter? Billy thinks. It's aggravating enough that he forces himself to crack open an eye, half-surprised that he can do so. The light burns him, though the place he's in isn't white now. It's shadowy, like a room in the afternoon when all the draperies are drawn. With almost more effort than he believes possible, Billy raises a hand, rubbing at his eyes. His arm seems to weigh a tonne, and his fingers are numb and clumsy, but the action clears his vision a little.
There's someone sitting beside him, child-sized, with a halo of blazing red hair. Large hazel-green eyes gaze down at him thoughtfully. He should recognize this child, Billy knows, though the eyes are wrong, and something about the face--the face he knows with those features is more somber, frozen into a mask of seriousness that's completely unchildlike. This little boy looks like any little boy of five or so. But still…
"Max?" Billy asks. His throat hurts when he speaks, and his voice is shredded, deep, rough and harsh.
The little boy looks down at him, smiling a little. "My name is Simon," he says, a trifle shyly. "But you can still call me Max if you like, Billy."
"Simon," Billy echoes.
"When the fire went away from me I wasn't Max anymore." The little boy's holding a book in his arms: Billy recognizes the cover from his own childhood, a flying boy in green, and realizes the words he'd heard are the same words his mum read to him when he was a wee lad no older than Max. Unlike Max, he wasn't, at that age, able to read them for himself.
He's not dead after all, neither is he in limbo. He's just waking up in his own room, in Idaho, and Max--no, Simon, he corrects himself--has been reading to him, perhaps to keep him company.
Dom, it seems, has saved him after all.
Billy's half afraid of what that means.
More than half afraid, he slides his hand under the covers, under the clean t-shirt someone's dressed him in. There are no bandages, no blood. His belly hurts like hell, he realizes now, but it's a pain more like the aftermath of having done a thousand sit-ups without respite than the pain of having one's guts torn out. There are five long scars running diagonally over his skin, but they're cleanly closed, mildly sore, but nothing like so painful that they can't be touched.
He should have died from those cuts, absolutely should have. Even given a modern hospital and skilled surgeons, he doubts he would have survived. If nothing else, the thought of what diseases the wolf's claws must have carried is enough to turn his stomach.
He needs to see Dom. He needs to see Dom now.
Billy struggles over onto his side, gasping at the pain of turning, the effort leaving him shaking.
"You're not s'posed to move around," the boy tells him. "Toni says you might get hurt."
"Get Toni," Billy says through gritted teeth. "Or someone."
"Lijah's here," Max--Simon--replies helpfully.
"Elijah, then," Billy answers, trying to catch his breath as the small boy slides down from the bed, his trainers thudding softly on the hardwood floor.
He pauses in the doorway, one hand on the knob, cautioning, "Don't move!" It's a far cry from his "Be still!" that vanquished the wolves.
Billy shuts his eyes again, listening to Simon's footsteps on the stairs, then the small, distant pipe of his voice below. Seconds later, much larger footsteps are racing upward and Billy's door is flung open, Elijah landing on him without a seeming care for his injuries.
"Billy, Billy, Billy!" Elijah's holding him tight, nearly tight enough to hurt, positively snuggling up to him. "Fuck, man, you're awake! You're all right?"
"If someone would get off of me," Billy answers, but he finds he's hugging Elijah fiercely in return, and it's good to hug his friend, good to be hugged by Elijah, who he loves like a brother. The one thing is, he's terrified to ask the one question he knows he must ask, more frightened to hear the answer.
Elijah beats him to the punch. "You'll want to see Dom, right?" He sits up, though his hand remains on Billy's shoulder, squeezing gently. "Toni said it's probably okay for you to get up, if you felt like it. She didn't know why you were out so deep, 'cause there's nothing…" Elijah trails off, his remarkable eyes even larger than usual and full of emotion.
"Nothing really wrong with me anymore," Billy concludes softly. And it's true: he's sore, but there's nothing particularly wrong, nothing that would stop him from rising, from making his way downstairs, from seeing…
"Dom?" he asks, not surprised to hear his voice tremble. For just a moment he pretends to himself that Elijah will smile, shake his head, say, "No problem. No harm done."
Elijah does shake his head, but the emotion only increases in his eyes, little lines appearing at their corners and between his brows that Billy would swear haven't been there before. "It's not…" he begins, then, "You should see him, Billy."
The words Elijah doesn't say are, "Good," and "Before it's too late," but Billy reads them clearly on his face as Elijah's hand steals up to his mouth and his teeth begin to nip viciously at his thumbnail. It's a habit Billy had thought nearly broken, but it's back now with a vengeance.
Billy touches the back of Elijah's hand gently and his friend blinks, as if he hadn't even realized what he was doing. He glances down and away. "I guess you'd like some help, maybe," he mutters.
"If…" Billy doesn't have to say anything more. Elijah's arm slides in behind his back, helping him to sit, and he finds he's glad of the aid, as he's glad of Elijah's hand on his arm as he slides over the edge of the bed and onto his feet. He can't remember when he's ever been so shaky, or felt so utterly drained.
"That's it, that's it," Elijah's murmuring. "Take it slow."
Billy's not positive he'd have made it down the stairs without the younger man's support, but he's not certain if it's because he's weaker than he's ever been in his life, or because he's so scared, in ways he didn't even know he could be frightened.
"Look who I have for you!" Elijah calls out, in a falsely cheery voice. "Mr. Sleepyhead woke up, finally."
"Bills?" It doesn't sound like Dom's voice, which even with all he's been through lately is still deep, full of life and texture. This voice is soft and flat, drained of… Billy won't say life, because it isn't just life that's missing. It's everything.
"Oh, Dom," Billy breathes, and suddenly he doesn't need Elijah's support anymore. He's across the lounge in a heartbeat, kneeling by Dom's side where he lies on the sofa, kissing him gently as he can for needing to kiss him so terribly badly.
Dom makes a small, pained sound. He doesn't want to be kissed, Billy realizes. He can't bear it, and it's the first time for as long as he's known him that Dom hasn't wanted to be kissed. Even when they've been angry with one another, as they are from time to time, he's always been open to Billy's kisses.
"Oh, Dom," he says again, even more quietly. His heart hurts him with an actual, physical pain. Dom looks like a skeleton, like no more than skin stretched over bone, drained of strength, drained of colour, his bright, lovely eyes mirrored slits beneath their heavy lids. "I'm afraid to touch you," Billy confesses.
Dom sighs. "Don't. Please… don't."
For an instant, Billy's hand hovers in the air, as he thinks Dom's telling him not to be afraid. When he realizes what Dom's actually saying, it's like the wolves have torn him open all over again. "I didn't want you to, ceili," he breathes. "I told them to get you away from me."
"Love--" Something like the ghost of a smile touches Dom's pale lips. "I couldn't not. You know that."
"Do you remember me now?" Billy can't help but ask.
"Astin blabbed." If Dom could laugh, if he was still capable, Billy knows he would have laughed then. "Should've bloody known."
"You should have told me yourself," Billy chides gently. "I'd have understood."
"Yeah." Dom's eyes drift shut. "The nightmares all came back to me," he murmurs. "In them…" He pauses, obviously gathering whatever strength remains to him. "There were memories. Some memories."
"I'm sorry you had to remember that way."
"It's not all bad." Dom's breathing is labored, thick. He coughs weakly, pain obvious on his face.
He's not sure what possesses him, but Billy can't help but fold back the duvet that's covering Dom up to his chin. He's naked beneath, draped only with a sheet, a heavy pad of bandages over his abdomen. Billy worries back a strip of the sticky tape holding them in place.
There are the cuts that should be his, deep, angry gouges in Dom's ashen skin, the edges red and angry as the sunsets they've seen every night since the bomb went off in the west. It's obvious, even to Billy's untrained eyes, that his earlier thoughts concerning the wolf's terrible claws were absolutely correct.
Billy realizes he's weeping, not quietly either, but in deep sobs that feel as if they're tearing him to bits. It's not right. Whatever has done this, whatever has given this so-called fucking gift to his Dom, is more cruel than anything he's ever imagined.
Elijah comes up behind him--Billy had forgotten he was even there--and rests one hand on Billy's shoulder. "Don't," he says. "Billy, just… don't." With his other hand, he reaches past to smooth the tape down again, then covers Dom once more. "He gets cold," he explains quietly.
To Dom, Elijah says, "You just rest. Billy and I will be here, but we won't bother you, okay?"
Dom makes a sound that's soft, inarticulate. It must have taken everything he had, before, just to speak at all.
Later, when Dom's asleep, Billy whispers to Elijah, "Why?"
It's not much of a question, certainly not what he means to ask, which is, Why is he still here? How is he still here? but his friend seems to understand.
"He's wanted to go, Bill. He's ready to go."
Billy nods, not questioning. He knows, too, that Dom wasn't waiting for him, that he's no longer capable of that, neither would he have wanted Dom to wait, if he was suffering as he's suffering now.
Elijah takes both Billy's hands in his, holding tight, and Billy realizes, despite his earlier bounciness, that Elijah's not a boy anymore, than there's nothing of his boyhood left in him. There's something not right in that, and it makes him sad.
Elijah's next words surprise him, though. "Dom told me… he's not allowed. He says he went, but the old lady was there, and he had to come back again."
Billy's ready to scoff, to dismiss it as the dream of a very ill man, but in the next minute the truth of it hits him--it's like Dom's gift, being given a power to heal that destroys the healer--and his heart hurts just that extra bit more.
"It's wrong," Elijah says. "It's just… wrong." Not letting loose of Billy's hands, he wipes his eyes savagely on the shoulder of his faded jumper. "It's like a fucking wake in here. All this watching, and waiting. Toni doesn't have the slightest idea what to do. She's pumping him full of antibiotics and pain-killers, but what more is there? She's not a doctor, and even if she was, or even if we could somehow get Dom to Boulder, and they happened to have a doctor there, what could anyone do?"
Billy doesn't answer; his throat's too tight for him to speak.
"I wish he was dead," Elijah whispers, his voice breaking despite the softness of his words. "And you know I love Dom more than I love anyone in the world, as much as I loved Hannah even--maybe even more. But this isn't right. It's inhuman for anyone to have to suffer this way, and I wish he was dead."
"I know," Billy says. "I know." But he doesn't have it in him to repeat Elijah's words, unkind as that makes him feel.
"Where there's life there's hope," Margaret always used to say, and Billy would laugh at her a bit, because it was such a cliché.
He's not laughing now. He has to hope, with everything in him that's left to feel that emotion.
He has to have hope enough for both of them
Pairing: Billy/Dom
Rating: R, overall for violence, language and sexual situations.
Summary: The world of Lotrips mingles with Stephen King's The Stand (and The DarkTower). Billy wakes. Major angst alert.
Feedback: is much loved and appreciated.
Disclaimers: This is entirely fictional. No disrespect to anyone, real or fictional, is intended. The Stand was written by Stephen King. The title comes from T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men. Max's book is, of course, Peter Pan, by J. M. Barrie.
Previous chapters: Chaps. 1 through 45; Chap. 46; Chap. 47; Chap. 48; Chap. 49; Chap. 50; Chap. 51
This Is the Way the World Ends, Chapter 52
Billy's drifting, and the place he occupies is clean, white and bare. He supposes it could be called comfortable, but not in any way that gives comfort in its true sense-it's not like lying in bed with Dom in their house in Hawaii on a lazy Sunday afternoon, after a long, sweet shag, Dom wrapped around him, warm and bony and cuddly at the same time, Dom's soft hair brushing his chin, Dom's voice murmuring to him as they drowse.
That would be comfort. This is only the absence of discomfort, which makes it nothing at all.
"To die would be a mighty big adventure," says a voice from quite nearby, what sounds like a child's voice, one he doesn't recognize.
This isn't an adventure, Billy thinks. It's fucking daft.
He's supposed to be alive. Dom meant to save him, and if Dom meant to save him, with his stubbornness and his love, he'd have been saved. There's no question about that.
Unless Dom hadn't strength in the end to finish what he started. Which, now Billy considers, is a distinct possibility. In which case Dom would be dead too--and then shouldn't they be together here? There's no fairness anywhere in the universe if there is something after, some eternity, and they're not together.
Billy's afraid then, and he begins to fight, trying to see something besides the clean, bare whiteness, and as he fights he begins to feel again, only a little at first--the tips of his fingers and tips of his toes, the weight of his head against a surface that might be a pillow, the way he seems to be famished and nauseated at the same time.
"That's where it ends, Billy," the child's voice says.
No, it fucking isn't! Billy tries to protest. I won't let it. I won't let it end here, with this… nothing.
"The chapter," the voice explains, with exaggerated, childish patience. Then, "He doesn't die. Peter doesn't."
Who in hell is Peter? Billy thinks. It's aggravating enough that he forces himself to crack open an eye, half-surprised that he can do so. The light burns him, though the place he's in isn't white now. It's shadowy, like a room in the afternoon when all the draperies are drawn. With almost more effort than he believes possible, Billy raises a hand, rubbing at his eyes. His arm seems to weigh a tonne, and his fingers are numb and clumsy, but the action clears his vision a little.
There's someone sitting beside him, child-sized, with a halo of blazing red hair. Large hazel-green eyes gaze down at him thoughtfully. He should recognize this child, Billy knows, though the eyes are wrong, and something about the face--the face he knows with those features is more somber, frozen into a mask of seriousness that's completely unchildlike. This little boy looks like any little boy of five or so. But still…
"Max?" Billy asks. His throat hurts when he speaks, and his voice is shredded, deep, rough and harsh.
The little boy looks down at him, smiling a little. "My name is Simon," he says, a trifle shyly. "But you can still call me Max if you like, Billy."
"Simon," Billy echoes.
"When the fire went away from me I wasn't Max anymore." The little boy's holding a book in his arms: Billy recognizes the cover from his own childhood, a flying boy in green, and realizes the words he'd heard are the same words his mum read to him when he was a wee lad no older than Max. Unlike Max, he wasn't, at that age, able to read them for himself.
He's not dead after all, neither is he in limbo. He's just waking up in his own room, in Idaho, and Max--no, Simon, he corrects himself--has been reading to him, perhaps to keep him company.
Dom, it seems, has saved him after all.
Billy's half afraid of what that means.
More than half afraid, he slides his hand under the covers, under the clean t-shirt someone's dressed him in. There are no bandages, no blood. His belly hurts like hell, he realizes now, but it's a pain more like the aftermath of having done a thousand sit-ups without respite than the pain of having one's guts torn out. There are five long scars running diagonally over his skin, but they're cleanly closed, mildly sore, but nothing like so painful that they can't be touched.
He should have died from those cuts, absolutely should have. Even given a modern hospital and skilled surgeons, he doubts he would have survived. If nothing else, the thought of what diseases the wolf's claws must have carried is enough to turn his stomach.
He needs to see Dom. He needs to see Dom now.
Billy struggles over onto his side, gasping at the pain of turning, the effort leaving him shaking.
"You're not s'posed to move around," the boy tells him. "Toni says you might get hurt."
"Get Toni," Billy says through gritted teeth. "Or someone."
"Lijah's here," Max--Simon--replies helpfully.
"Elijah, then," Billy answers, trying to catch his breath as the small boy slides down from the bed, his trainers thudding softly on the hardwood floor.
He pauses in the doorway, one hand on the knob, cautioning, "Don't move!" It's a far cry from his "Be still!" that vanquished the wolves.
Billy shuts his eyes again, listening to Simon's footsteps on the stairs, then the small, distant pipe of his voice below. Seconds later, much larger footsteps are racing upward and Billy's door is flung open, Elijah landing on him without a seeming care for his injuries.
"Billy, Billy, Billy!" Elijah's holding him tight, nearly tight enough to hurt, positively snuggling up to him. "Fuck, man, you're awake! You're all right?"
"If someone would get off of me," Billy answers, but he finds he's hugging Elijah fiercely in return, and it's good to hug his friend, good to be hugged by Elijah, who he loves like a brother. The one thing is, he's terrified to ask the one question he knows he must ask, more frightened to hear the answer.
Elijah beats him to the punch. "You'll want to see Dom, right?" He sits up, though his hand remains on Billy's shoulder, squeezing gently. "Toni said it's probably okay for you to get up, if you felt like it. She didn't know why you were out so deep, 'cause there's nothing…" Elijah trails off, his remarkable eyes even larger than usual and full of emotion.
"Nothing really wrong with me anymore," Billy concludes softly. And it's true: he's sore, but there's nothing particularly wrong, nothing that would stop him from rising, from making his way downstairs, from seeing…
"Dom?" he asks, not surprised to hear his voice tremble. For just a moment he pretends to himself that Elijah will smile, shake his head, say, "No problem. No harm done."
Elijah does shake his head, but the emotion only increases in his eyes, little lines appearing at their corners and between his brows that Billy would swear haven't been there before. "It's not…" he begins, then, "You should see him, Billy."
The words Elijah doesn't say are, "Good," and "Before it's too late," but Billy reads them clearly on his face as Elijah's hand steals up to his mouth and his teeth begin to nip viciously at his thumbnail. It's a habit Billy had thought nearly broken, but it's back now with a vengeance.
Billy touches the back of Elijah's hand gently and his friend blinks, as if he hadn't even realized what he was doing. He glances down and away. "I guess you'd like some help, maybe," he mutters.
"If…" Billy doesn't have to say anything more. Elijah's arm slides in behind his back, helping him to sit, and he finds he's glad of the aid, as he's glad of Elijah's hand on his arm as he slides over the edge of the bed and onto his feet. He can't remember when he's ever been so shaky, or felt so utterly drained.
"That's it, that's it," Elijah's murmuring. "Take it slow."
Billy's not positive he'd have made it down the stairs without the younger man's support, but he's not certain if it's because he's weaker than he's ever been in his life, or because he's so scared, in ways he didn't even know he could be frightened.
"Look who I have for you!" Elijah calls out, in a falsely cheery voice. "Mr. Sleepyhead woke up, finally."
"Bills?" It doesn't sound like Dom's voice, which even with all he's been through lately is still deep, full of life and texture. This voice is soft and flat, drained of… Billy won't say life, because it isn't just life that's missing. It's everything.
"Oh, Dom," Billy breathes, and suddenly he doesn't need Elijah's support anymore. He's across the lounge in a heartbeat, kneeling by Dom's side where he lies on the sofa, kissing him gently as he can for needing to kiss him so terribly badly.
Dom makes a small, pained sound. He doesn't want to be kissed, Billy realizes. He can't bear it, and it's the first time for as long as he's known him that Dom hasn't wanted to be kissed. Even when they've been angry with one another, as they are from time to time, he's always been open to Billy's kisses.
"Oh, Dom," he says again, even more quietly. His heart hurts him with an actual, physical pain. Dom looks like a skeleton, like no more than skin stretched over bone, drained of strength, drained of colour, his bright, lovely eyes mirrored slits beneath their heavy lids. "I'm afraid to touch you," Billy confesses.
Dom sighs. "Don't. Please… don't."
For an instant, Billy's hand hovers in the air, as he thinks Dom's telling him not to be afraid. When he realizes what Dom's actually saying, it's like the wolves have torn him open all over again. "I didn't want you to, ceili," he breathes. "I told them to get you away from me."
"Love--" Something like the ghost of a smile touches Dom's pale lips. "I couldn't not. You know that."
"Do you remember me now?" Billy can't help but ask.
"Astin blabbed." If Dom could laugh, if he was still capable, Billy knows he would have laughed then. "Should've bloody known."
"You should have told me yourself," Billy chides gently. "I'd have understood."
"Yeah." Dom's eyes drift shut. "The nightmares all came back to me," he murmurs. "In them…" He pauses, obviously gathering whatever strength remains to him. "There were memories. Some memories."
"I'm sorry you had to remember that way."
"It's not all bad." Dom's breathing is labored, thick. He coughs weakly, pain obvious on his face.
He's not sure what possesses him, but Billy can't help but fold back the duvet that's covering Dom up to his chin. He's naked beneath, draped only with a sheet, a heavy pad of bandages over his abdomen. Billy worries back a strip of the sticky tape holding them in place.
There are the cuts that should be his, deep, angry gouges in Dom's ashen skin, the edges red and angry as the sunsets they've seen every night since the bomb went off in the west. It's obvious, even to Billy's untrained eyes, that his earlier thoughts concerning the wolf's terrible claws were absolutely correct.
Billy realizes he's weeping, not quietly either, but in deep sobs that feel as if they're tearing him to bits. It's not right. Whatever has done this, whatever has given this so-called fucking gift to his Dom, is more cruel than anything he's ever imagined.
Elijah comes up behind him--Billy had forgotten he was even there--and rests one hand on Billy's shoulder. "Don't," he says. "Billy, just… don't." With his other hand, he reaches past to smooth the tape down again, then covers Dom once more. "He gets cold," he explains quietly.
To Dom, Elijah says, "You just rest. Billy and I will be here, but we won't bother you, okay?"
Dom makes a sound that's soft, inarticulate. It must have taken everything he had, before, just to speak at all.
Later, when Dom's asleep, Billy whispers to Elijah, "Why?"
It's not much of a question, certainly not what he means to ask, which is, Why is he still here? How is he still here? but his friend seems to understand.
"He's wanted to go, Bill. He's ready to go."
Billy nods, not questioning. He knows, too, that Dom wasn't waiting for him, that he's no longer capable of that, neither would he have wanted Dom to wait, if he was suffering as he's suffering now.
Elijah takes both Billy's hands in his, holding tight, and Billy realizes, despite his earlier bounciness, that Elijah's not a boy anymore, than there's nothing of his boyhood left in him. There's something not right in that, and it makes him sad.
Elijah's next words surprise him, though. "Dom told me… he's not allowed. He says he went, but the old lady was there, and he had to come back again."
Billy's ready to scoff, to dismiss it as the dream of a very ill man, but in the next minute the truth of it hits him--it's like Dom's gift, being given a power to heal that destroys the healer--and his heart hurts just that extra bit more.
"It's wrong," Elijah says. "It's just… wrong." Not letting loose of Billy's hands, he wipes his eyes savagely on the shoulder of his faded jumper. "It's like a fucking wake in here. All this watching, and waiting. Toni doesn't have the slightest idea what to do. She's pumping him full of antibiotics and pain-killers, but what more is there? She's not a doctor, and even if she was, or even if we could somehow get Dom to Boulder, and they happened to have a doctor there, what could anyone do?"
Billy doesn't answer; his throat's too tight for him to speak.
"I wish he was dead," Elijah whispers, his voice breaking despite the softness of his words. "And you know I love Dom more than I love anyone in the world, as much as I loved Hannah even--maybe even more. But this isn't right. It's inhuman for anyone to have to suffer this way, and I wish he was dead."
"I know," Billy says. "I know." But he doesn't have it in him to repeat Elijah's words, unkind as that makes him feel.
"Where there's life there's hope," Margaret always used to say, and Billy would laugh at her a bit, because it was such a cliché.
He's not laughing now. He has to hope, with everything in him that's left to feel that emotion.
He has to have hope enough for both of them