Note: Written for The Dead Zone Photo Challenge. Prompt images follow at end of story. Enormous thanks to lomedet for the beta and to versaphile for running the challenge! PG-13.
His sight flickers and he's in a forest, green with dappled light. It's cool but not cold, and the trees are loud with leaves clattering together in the wind. He feels his feet shift under him, sliding in a muddy patch, and grips the trunk of a young pine. Its bark leaves sap on his fingers. Ahead he sees a single grave, a tall cross in the forest.
It's a place he doesn't recognize. It doesn't feel like the Indian cave. This place is greener, flatter, not so far up in the hills. The breeze gets colder and he shivers—
And then the room's wavering back in around him.
Candles, right. Ivory pillars that Dana brought him once, a long time ago. He picked up the lighter from the street near his driveway on one of his walks. He picked it up because it still had fuel in it, he could see through the plastic. Dumb to waste it.
Dumb to pick up other people's garbage, physical or psychic—that's what Bruce keeps telling him every time this happens.
No telling how long he stood in the gutter in front of his house, piece of gritty blue plastic clutched in his hand. He ought to know better by now. At least this one is…at least this vision is nothing he needs to do anything about.
*
Candles, he lights the candles, though now he doesn't even remember why he wanted them. He thinks of Sarah by firelight, naked under his hands, kissing him like no time had passed at all.
He thinks of Sunday dinner, the squat red candle in the centerpiece of the Bannerman table, the look on Walt's face, Sarah's self-conscious glance at Johnny, the big-eyed recap of J.J.'s game as the boy pretended everything was fine…
Hell, maybe everything is fine.
*
The scene flickers in each time he rolls his thumb over the sparkwheel. It's just an old, translucent blue disposable, nothing special. Each flash, he sees this place, this grave, this cross in a forest somewhere. He still doesn't know where.
In the distance, there's a clearing with a red-roofed house on the hillside, maybe a barn, too. Everything is overgrown, the underbrush is dense, pollen is thick in the air. It's summer. It's humid.
The marker is just wood, old wood, carved dark on dark and half-rotted with age and wet. He doesn't know why it's his to see, if it's lost family history or something he needs to research. He's still assuming that Purdy is right and the things he sees do actually bear meaning, no matter how small the details seem sometimes.
He doesn't know if it's past or future. He never gets more than a glimpse before it's gone again.
*
He dreams. He always dreams. Often it's Armageddon. It follows him. It chases him. He's on the Washington Mall. He's on a bridge over the Potomac. He's on the steps of the Supreme Court building. He's in a bar in Georgetown with a tight knot of Congressmen scheming in the back. He's sitting on the Bannerman's back patio with Sarah, arguing politics while Walt and J.J. throw a ball back and forth. He's kissing Sarah in his living room. He's with her in her bed, her bed that smells of her and Walt.
Walt stands next to the bed, watching them, and says, "Come on, John, you can do it better than that. Honey, show him how you like it."
And Johnny growls, "I know how she likes it."
And Walt's eyes glitter as he says, low and challenging, "Oh you think so, do you?"
And then Johnny's on hockey skates with J.J. zipping around him like a gnat, still slow with youth, still careless. Nonetheless, he gets the puck in, because Johnny's legs aren't built like they used to be, and J.J.'s calling impatiently, "More, Johnny! Hurry up!"
And in the dream he thinks, "What if I'd missed this?" as he sends the puck down the ice and watches his boy haul after it.
*
He and Sarah made a baby. He and Sarah made a son. Their son, who has her eyes, his nose, her mouth, and his hair. Their son, who doesn't know what to call him, because Walt was the guy doing the midnight feedings and pushing him on the swing set and teaching him to catch and throw and skate.
But he and Sarah made him. Even if it's Walt's last name, it's his first name: J.J., little Johnny. His boy.
*
At dinner, Johnny picks up his fork and watches time jump backwards.
"Why is it such a big deal anyway?" J.J. huffs.
"Set the table, please," she says. She's wrestling a roast out of the oven. "Honey, it's only that we want you to know you will always have all of us to rely on, no matter what, and we love you."
"I know that, Mom." He has his hands on his hips. He's looking at her, half-offended, like she's treating him like an infant. "Don't worry about me," he says with finality.
"We have things to work out, that's all." Sarah makes it light, casual, and J.J. doesn't see how hard she stabs the roast to get it out of its baking dish and onto its oval platter.
J.J. lays the fourth knife, fork, and spoon in place and turns back to her, frowning. "Dad's still my dad. Johnny's weird, but it's okay. I mean, he's all right," he amends quickly.
"Thank you," she says with exaggerated courtesy. "He only wants to know you, you know. And I think it's a good idea."
J.J. shrugs. "Okay."
*
He and Walt have hockey. They have hockey and beer and football and J.J.'s games and weekly dinners. Sarah does the PTA stuff. Sometimes Walt brings him in on cases. Once in a while they all go on family outings together. Sometimes Johnny brings Bruce—not that it helps much. It just leaves Bruce alone with Sarah while Johnny and Walt both devote their attention to J.J.
Johnny feels Sarah's heartache and Bruce's gentle calm. He figures Bruce can calm a person down from twenty paces, given half a chance. It works on him, at any rate. Works on Sarah, too.
Walt's still the king of repression, though; still the guy who insists he's fine while bristling at every third word. Makes Johnny crazy, especially knowing Walt's the one going home to the comfort sex afterwards.
*
Sarah. Sarah loves him. Sarah loves all of them, and that should not surprise him. She'd always had to be careful not to get too attached to the kids in her classes.
It shouldn't surprise him just like it shouldn't surprise him that she sat by his bedside in the hospital both before meeting Walt and after. Before J.J. was born, and after. Before marrying Walt, and after—even though she had to know what it looked like.
He could see her, clear as day, telling off Purdy and his mother, the doctors, even Walt. "I won't give up on him. Yes, life goes on. God knows I know life goes on, but he'll always be a part of my life. Little Johnny guarantees that."
Sarah loves him. Sarah loves J.J. Sarah loves Walt. For a long time he thought she was only being selfish, having her cake and eating it. But Johnny knows better now: she couldn't choose if she had to. She can't choose. If she could, J.J. wouldn't have two dads.
But Johnny's selfish, too. If Sarah gets to have Walt, then by rights Johnny is free to play, as well. There was Dana. Then Rebecca. Beautiful women who don't look anything like Sarah. A reminder that she doesn't actually have his balls locked in a box in the top of her closet.
He sees the hurt in her eyes and swallows it down, just like she does when she catches him watching her with Walt.
They're equal in that, at least.
But he can't wish for Sarah to love any less than she has to. And she has to. It's what she is.
*
He and J.J. have a lot of awkward silence. They eat Johnny's gourmet pizza and watch games together. It isn't that far off from what Johnny does with Walt, really, when Sarah makes them spend time alone together not on a case. And for a long time it feels just that cautious, that uncomfortable.
The only exception is schoolwork, and Johnny takes a ridiculous amount of pleasure in going over basic fourth grade science lessons. They tromp around the backyard looking at stems and root systems. Then they look underneath rocks and search the bushes until they find a nice, big spider web to spray water on. The spider isn't very happy about it, but J.J. is thrilled.
One day J.J. says, "Mom and I were talking about hockey and she said you used to be really good and she said maybe, since you don't need your cane so much anymore…maybe we could go to the rink? If you wanted to, I mean."
J.J. looks so hopeful. This is the first thing J.J.'s ever come right out and asked him for, and Johnny's chest aches, he's so happy. It takes him a minute to formulate words, but finally he gives J.J. a broad smile and brushes his hand over his hair. "Let's go see if my skates still fit."
*
"What was the coma like?" J.J. asks him over his mug of hot chocolate. They're in the kitchen, trying to get warm after two hours on the outdoor rink in the park. Johnny's limping as he puts a plate of cinnamon toast between them, and his hip hurts like a bitch, but it's worth it—he hasn't had this much fun in ages.
"I don't remember it, actually. It was like no time passed at all."
"Do you remember the accident?" J.J.'s forthright curiosity is a mild surprise; Johnny has to remind himself that J.J.'s older now and can handle more of the details. It seems…important, somehow, that J.J. wants to understand.
Johnny looks across the kitchen island and for a moment, the blue of J.J.'s eyes become the blue of Sarah's as she waved to him that night from her doorway. Blinking back to J.J., he says, "Your mom and I had gone to a carnival and when we got back to her place, I decided to go rent a couple of movies for us. I don't remember much after that."
"You guys were really going to get married?"
Johnny sits back on his stool and sighs. "That was the plan, yeah."
"Then you slept for six years."
Johnny nods. "Is there something you're worried about, kiddo?"
J.J. shakes his head.
"It's a weird situation for all of us, you know. It's okay to have questions."
"I know."
"Good deal."
"I was thinking…"
"Yeah?"
"You and Dad don't have to hate each other."
"We don't!" Johnny protests. "We hang out and watch—"
"No, what I mean is, he's my dad, but you're important, too. And Mom doesn't want things to be hard."
Johnny puts his hands on the counter and levels his gaze at his son. "J.J., this isn't something you have to worry about."
"But I do."
*
"Dad! Dad!"
"Yeah?" Walt calls.
"What's this doing here?" J.J.'s all boyish curiosity as he tromps off the trail and up a short slope to a tall wooden cross marking a small, fenced-in grave.
"Hunh." Walt catches up and stands at the foot of it, taking a moment to scrape his muddy boots against the bark of a pine sapling.
In his vision, Johnny can't read the inscription.
"Must be old," Walt says.
"Like from pioneer days?" J.J. asks excitedly. They're doing that unit in his history class, and the house has been full of chatter about cowboys and Pony Express riders all week.
"Maybe not that old," Walt answers. "Wood doesn't last that long out here."
"It would have to be stone, so it didn't rot."
"That's right."
"So, who do you think is buried there?" J.J. looks up, blue eyes wide and innocent, and the vision fizzles into nothing before he can hear Walt's answer.
That's when Johnny realizes that the lighter must have fallen out of Walt's truck the last time he came over, that night they watched the Bruins get plowed by Montreal.
*
Other people's garbage. Johnny should have been on that camping trip. They'd made plans. It was going to be a boys' weekend, just him, J.J., Walt, and Bruce. Sarah was going to be busy with some school event planning committee and thought it would be fun for them, so they said, sure, why not.
Except when Bruce picked him up that morning, he'd been in the middle of another blackout. He finally woke up on Dr. Gibson's examination table in the hospital, with Bruce at his side, and Dr. Gibson shining her damned penlight in his eyes.
Walt didn't want to disappoint the boy. Or waste his day off.
Dr. Gibson insisted on another overnight evaluation. Bruce stayed half the night and played magnetic chess with him until he fell asleep.
Sometimes he hates his brain.
*
One afternoon a few weeks later, J.J. brings him a brown and beige striped rock. It's flat and smooth and about an inch across.
"Here," he says. "I put it on my dresser and forgot until now, but it's for you."
Johnny holds it and watches J.J. splash from flat stone to flat stone, across a shallow river, Walt's warm laugh trailing behind him.
"What do you see?" J.J. asks, face shining with wonder. He's never sat and watched Johnny read an object before.
"You," Johnny says with a smile. "You got your shoes wet crossing the stream."
"That's so cool!"
"Next time I won't get sick," he tells J.J. "First warm weekend of spring, all right? I won't miss it."
"Okay," J.J. says, but he's old enough now to spot the difference between good intentions and solid promises. He doesn't seem mad, though, just not interested in long-term plans. Then Johnny remembers that Walt lives his entire life on-call, and ducks out on plans with J.J. and Sarah far more often than Johnny's yet had the chance to.
He wonders if J.J. knows what he's missing. He doesn't think so, and in a way, he's glad.
*
"Come to dinner," Sarah says, so he does.
It's Saturday night and she made lasagna. It's her mother's recipe and Johnny keeps seeing flashes of dinners from thirty years ago. It's good lasagna. There's ice cream for dessert, and then a movie. J.J. falls asleep before the end, curled up in a ball at the end of the couch.
Johnny doesn't want to leave at the end of the night, but he has to. He hugs Sarah tight and says thanks. Walt's rolling his eyes, folding him into a manly half-hug, saying, "Don't forget J.J.'s science thing Tuesday. He wants us all there."
Johnny smiles at that. It's more than he'd hoped for. It's some of what he's wanted ever since J.J.'s existence became real in his mind. He's about to say thanks again when Walt puts his hand on Johnny's chest and says, "Look, you're family, as weird as this family is…"
"Nontraditional," Sarah says with a laugh, and that makes it a little less awkward. Then he says goodnight. He needs to leave before he completely embarrasses himself.
Sarah kisses his cheek in the doorway. "We love you," she whispers.
"Goodnight," he says again, and goes.
*
He holds the little stone in his hand. Three pale stripes divide four dark stripes, but the beige lines don't go all the way down. The back of the stone is a solid cinnamon-color, and he can see along the edges where the color bleeds together and where it separates.
It's polished smooth from years in the river.
Holding the stone, he lets the vision rise around him. Even if it hurts, he wants to know what he missed.
J.J. already has a handful of rocks in his pockets. Walt makes a joke about his pants falling down with so much extra weight in them, so J.J. dumps them all out on the bank. He throws the boring ones back in the river, but standing at the edge, he sees the little striped stone. It's the only one like it he's ever seen.
Back on the trail, J.J. holds it in his hand for a long time before zipping it into the pocket of his windbreaker.
In Memoriam
Phoenix Thornhill
August 16, 1978 -
December 22, 2005