You Were Once A Friend And Father, Then My World Was Shattered
Title: You Were Once A Friend And Father, Then My World Was Shattered
Fandom: Fringe
Characters: Chris Broyles. Mentions of Alt!Phillip Broyles and Diane Broyles.
Warnings: Spoilers for 3x07 and 4x18.
Rating: PG
Summary: Chris Broyles struggles to deal with recent events.
Cross posted to fringefiction, fringe_tv, overtherefringe
No one had understood it when he first went missing. This was Dad, after all. He wouldn’t just disappear without telling anyone. Even if he hadn’t wanted to be married to Mom any more, he wouldn’t have just left Chris, not like that. He’d promised him, right after the Candyman took him and they first knew he wasn’t going to get better, that he’d be there with him until the end. It was never going to be easy for him to accept his fate, but it did help knowing that his dad was always going to be there for him.
Mom had never wanted to believe it either. She always said that something must have happened to Dad, that he must have gone down in the line of duty. Colonel Phillip Broyles was a hero, a man who would do whatever it took to protect their world. Even complete strangers were always approaching him in the street telling him that they thought he was a hero. And that was what Chris clung on to throughout those weeks when they didn’t know what had happened to his dad. It was what he needed to get him through the days.
*****
Chris has been having a lot of those dreams recently, where things happened differently, where his father had died. He’s not sure where they’re coming from. But in some ways, he prefers the reality that’s in his head, because there he can hold on to his illusions about his father. He can believe that Phillip Broyles is still the hero he’d always believed he was.
No one picks Chris first in hitball any more. And Stacy, who’d told his friend Danny that she liked him? Forget it. He’d tried to talk to her in school a few days after his dad had turned himself in, and she’d acted like she couldn’t get away from him fast enough. He’d heard afterwards that Danny was taking her to the school dance. It’s been like this ever since people found out his dad was working with David Robert Jones. There’s more than one person in his class who’s lost someone because of one of Jones’s shapeshifters, and since people can’t direct their anger at Jones or Chris’s dad, they’re aiming it at the next best thing: Chris. For a few weeks, Chris had finally felt that he was accepted by his peers for the first time since he was taken, and now he’s the class outcast again.
But there’s a part of him that feels that doesn’t even matter. Chris hasn’t seen his dad since he handed himself in, although he knows his mom has. Part of him wants to ask him why, to hear him say it. Why had his father gone with Jones? Why had he deliberately sacrificed one of his own agents to help that man? Chris had met Captain Lee a few times and had liked him; he remembered Captain Lee coming over for dinner with Agent Dunham one time and how he’d tried to help him with his homework, and how both agents had answered all his questions about what really happened with the school bus and the Class 3 vortex until his mother had told him to stop pestering them. He needed to know how his father had sent one of his best agents to his death, why he had chosen Jones. Yet another part of him doesn’t want to hear his father’s explanation: I did it for you. I worked with Jones so that you could be healed. His mom’s told him over and over again that it wasn’t his fault, yet Chris knows he’s always going to carry the guilt for that. And he doesn’t want his memories of his father to be tainted; he wants to be able to hang on to some kind of good memories of his father, even though he’s no longer sure that’s possible.
Chris had felt for a few weeks that there was hope, for his world as well as for himself. The degradation of his universe was slowly healing, just as he himself was. But he feels now that if the choice was for him to stay sick and his dad was still the man he’d known and loved, and Captain Lee and the other people would still be alive, he’d choose it in a heartbeat. He’d choose to still be able to say that his father was a hero, the man he’d once known.
Fandom: Fringe
Characters: Chris Broyles. Mentions of Alt!Phillip Broyles and Diane Broyles.
Warnings: Spoilers for 3x07 and 4x18.
Rating: PG
Summary: Chris Broyles struggles to deal with recent events.
Cross posted to fringefiction, fringe_tv, overtherefringe
No one had understood it when he first went missing. This was Dad, after all. He wouldn’t just disappear without telling anyone. Even if he hadn’t wanted to be married to Mom any more, he wouldn’t have just left Chris, not like that. He’d promised him, right after the Candyman took him and they first knew he wasn’t going to get better, that he’d be there with him until the end. It was never going to be easy for him to accept his fate, but it did help knowing that his dad was always going to be there for him.
Mom had never wanted to believe it either. She always said that something must have happened to Dad, that he must have gone down in the line of duty. Colonel Phillip Broyles was a hero, a man who would do whatever it took to protect their world. Even complete strangers were always approaching him in the street telling him that they thought he was a hero. And that was what Chris clung on to throughout those weeks when they didn’t know what had happened to his dad. It was what he needed to get him through the days.
*****
Chris has been having a lot of those dreams recently, where things happened differently, where his father had died. He’s not sure where they’re coming from. But in some ways, he prefers the reality that’s in his head, because there he can hold on to his illusions about his father. He can believe that Phillip Broyles is still the hero he’d always believed he was.
No one picks Chris first in hitball any more. And Stacy, who’d told his friend Danny that she liked him? Forget it. He’d tried to talk to her in school a few days after his dad had turned himself in, and she’d acted like she couldn’t get away from him fast enough. He’d heard afterwards that Danny was taking her to the school dance. It’s been like this ever since people found out his dad was working with David Robert Jones. There’s more than one person in his class who’s lost someone because of one of Jones’s shapeshifters, and since people can’t direct their anger at Jones or Chris’s dad, they’re aiming it at the next best thing: Chris. For a few weeks, Chris had finally felt that he was accepted by his peers for the first time since he was taken, and now he’s the class outcast again.
But there’s a part of him that feels that doesn’t even matter. Chris hasn’t seen his dad since he handed himself in, although he knows his mom has. Part of him wants to ask him why, to hear him say it. Why had his father gone with Jones? Why had he deliberately sacrificed one of his own agents to help that man? Chris had met Captain Lee a few times and had liked him; he remembered Captain Lee coming over for dinner with Agent Dunham one time and how he’d tried to help him with his homework, and how both agents had answered all his questions about what really happened with the school bus and the Class 3 vortex until his mother had told him to stop pestering them. He needed to know how his father had sent one of his best agents to his death, why he had chosen Jones. Yet another part of him doesn’t want to hear his father’s explanation: I did it for you. I worked with Jones so that you could be healed. His mom’s told him over and over again that it wasn’t his fault, yet Chris knows he’s always going to carry the guilt for that. And he doesn’t want his memories of his father to be tainted; he wants to be able to hang on to some kind of good memories of his father, even though he’s no longer sure that’s possible.
Chris had felt for a few weeks that there was hope, for his world as well as for himself. The degradation of his universe was slowly healing, just as he himself was. But he feels now that if the choice was for him to stay sick and his dad was still the man he’d known and loved, and Captain Lee and the other people would still be alive, he’d choose it in a heartbeat. He’d choose to still be able to say that his father was a hero, the man he’d once known.