clint "idk the archer or something" barton (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
brandingproblem) wrote2023-01-10 03:10 pm
brandingproblem) wrote2023-01-10 03:10 pm
open post
overflows, misc psls/memes, starters that don't seem to fit anywhere else, etc
overflows, misc psls/memes, starters that don't seem to fit anywhere else, etc
no subject
He'd be forgiven for thinking the place is well and truly abandoned. But there are some sounds of life coming from inside. Someone banging around, could be drawers opening and closing, feet hurrying up stairs and then back down again. Could be a robbery. Could be some unfriendly neighbors helping themselves to the remains of the Barton family homestead.
What happens instead is the moment Frank sets foot on the first porch step, Clint hauls the door open, gun in hand trained right between Frank's eyeballs. His eyes are wide, wild, but his voice is a low growl of warning: "Don't even think about it."
But reality catches up, the who in front of him recognized as friend rather than foe. He blinks, once, twice, mouth falling open but no other sound coming out. His finger flies from the trigger, gun lowered to his side. And all at once, he looks so lost.
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It's the noise that catches his attention, has him taking his own gun in hand before he even ascends the porch, nearly silent — nearly, until he recognizes a set of shoulders, and his boots thud, and then he's eye to eye with the barrel of a gun.
There's a fleeting moment where Clint looks wild-eyed and Frank thinks he might do it on accident, out of reflex. He's never had an itchy trigger finger, though, and that's good for Frank, who'd already started to gently hold his hands up in a tiny little peaceful surrender.
He knows already. He knows. He knows what's missing here and he knows all that shit wouldn't still be splayed out if Laura was here, or if there was a single kid to keep up pretenses for. He knows, and it's so goddamn devastating he can't put it into words — but equally if not more in this very first moment of comprehension, what's really shredding through his chest right now, is that he knows exactly how Clint feels. He knows exactly how it feels.
The gun gets holstered, and then slowly, carefully, he reaches out, Just one hand, aiming for a shoulder. Ready to back off in an instant if he gets the wrong kind of signal here.
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He sees the hand coming, and he only seems to register the fact at the last second, and if Frank touches him, if he gets that comfort that his brother in arms is willing to give, then he's pretty sure he's going to just collapse right there and wait for the universe to turn him to dust, too. It's a quick twitch, pulling his shoulder back. Standing there looking stupidly at Frank, but also not quite at him, somewhere a little beyond him, through him. He breathes quick for a few seconds that last for hours and also picoseconds at the same time, and he turns on his heel to go back in.
At least he sets the gun down. Within reach if needed, but disarming him for the immediate moment.
There are two duffel bags sitting on the floor, in the middle of being packed. Clint's ransacking his own home. And doing a poor job about it, too. This is different than just a go bag. Clint marches into the kitchen, braces his hands on one of the counters, and tries to remember how to steady his breathing. Fucking pull it together, Barton.
His voice is thick when he finds it again. Filling the hollow space where there'd be the sounds of the kids running around or listening to music or having the tv on too loud, where Laura would be hauling up a load of laundry telling them to turn it down a notch, or--
"Natasha's coming to get me." Frank got there first, but he also would've ignored speed limits, and even in a quinjet, international overseas flights aren't quick. "They gotta, um. Assess the damage in Wakanda first."
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He sees the bag. Sees the contents. Sees the house — he can't stay in this house anyway. Frank couldn't stay in his own. Hopefully Clint doesn't try to follow in his footsteps there; something about the thought of this one burning to the ground feels like a travesty. Maybe it's all the blood, sweat, and tears Clint put into it with his own hands. Rebuilding, remodeling. Frank never did that to his.
He trails after Clint into the kitchen, and braces himself against a familiar wooden table. Too many kids, so many they had to drag in other chairs from other tables in the house sometimes when they came to stay. There's too many chairs now.
"You're not goin' to Wakanda," Frank says, and it's just... a statement of fact. It's like come on, man only- less. It just is. Clint's not gonna be in any fucking state to do that kind of shit any time soon.
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When he could finally get through to her, somewhere between timezones and busy signals and comms blackouts, she'd tried to give him the rundown, and he's sure some part of him absorbed it, but Frank's also not part of that wider, crazier world, so. Just the barest details matter. It's crazy stupid Avengers-y space magic bullshit is what it is, and that's the only thing that needs knowing.
"Gonna fly me out to the compound. Regroup. Figure...something out."
Should've been there, though. Maybe he could've done something. Or, maybe he would've just gotten killed. Maybe would've been better, though. Jesus, he can't think that kind of shit when Frank's still kicking...
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He shakes his head.
"You're not goin' there either," Wakanda, the compound, wherever. Back to work? Nah. It's just not happening. Clint can let those dark thoughts out all he wants, Frank's had 'em himself. Had 'em a few hours ago in Karen's apartment. Has them every other day even after all the healing he's done. He'd get it. He doesn't want that for Clint, it feels wrong, inherently and viscerally wrong for this man in particular, an ill-fitting suit, but he'll get it.
"You stopped at all since it happened? You sat down for longer than ten minutes?" He's willing to bet not, 'cause if he had it'd probably become clear exactly why that's an awful idea. If he has, then he somehow managed to thread the needle through the eye of a calm in the storm like the luckiest son of a bitch in the world, but that luck ain't gonna last. Sooner or later... sooner or later... "Look at me, man."
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He scrubs his face hard with one hand, presses at his eyes, breathe in, hold it, breathe out... "Can't stop. Gotta finish packing. I don't know what all to bring. Fucking stupid, I know what to bring, just gotta get up and go. I gotta go. Gotta take what I can and go to work." Because then he can do something instead of just being here doing nothing. "You can come with; I'll vouch for you." And so will Nat if she doesn't want a fight on her hands.
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Regroup, fix this, sounds like a plan. He's all for it. Let the heavy hitters and the big names and the billionaire and the celebrities put those brilliant minds together to think about how they're gonna fix it all and un-kill half the world. The second they start bringing back the dead is the second he puts in his application for the goddamn Avengers too, but until then-
Until then, Clint's a man who just lost everything. Everything. Absolutely everything he had. It's gone. He's not gonna be able to keep this up, this rigid self-control he's enforcing to contain lightning in a glass jar.
He considers what Clint's offering. Considers the merits of fighting him on this, trying to rationalize, to rip the bandaid off, but... no. No, let the man have his breakdown on his own terms, Frank doesn't need to dictate when it happens, he's just gotta be there to help pick up the pieces before the wind carries them off.
"Okay," he says finally, his voice hoarse but steady. "Fine. I'll go. Wherever you go, I go. That's the rule right now. You wanna go to the compound, we'll go to the compound."
You wanna go to work, we'll go to work. You wanna go somewhere else, we'll go somewhere else. Just don't go without him. Frank did this part on his own by choice, he didn't give anybody the chance to help him through it, and it was the worst goddamn time of his entire life, it always will be, forever.
He's not gonna let his best friend, his brother, go through it alone. Whatever that means is what it means, whatever it takes is what it takes. The world is chaos, and he's got nowhere better to be than here.
But if it goes even remotely close to the way it went for him, they won't be upstate very long.
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This is probably the longest he's stood still for in hours. Makes his skin feel itchy. Can't stop. Can't stay still. He can stay still in the jet. And then they can get the hell to work.
Laura's been his rock for so long that it's the strangest god damn thing being in this house feeling like he's going to fall apart and not have her there keeping him together. Frank's great, that's his brother, but he's not exactly Laura.
He pulls out a drawer sharply. Here's a thing he keeps tripping up on. And in the back of his mind where he's shoved all the logic, he knows it's nonsense. But the panic and the pain of the right now is hung up on it. "I keep thinking, I gotta take the silverware. She'll kill me if something happens to it. Wedding gift, y'know? The good stuff." Frank's seen the good silverware that gets brought out with the good china on holidays and celebrations. "That shit starts rusting, she'll kill me. A wedding gift. We didn't get much, since it was on the downlow." Which Frank also knows, being one of the very few people who had known about the Bartons before a rampaging rogue AI in a robot body tried to kill humanity.
There's no practical reason to stuff some forks in a bag. There's zero practicality to it. And if/when Laura comes back, then there won't have been any reason to take any of it from where it all currently rests.
His brain is a broken, skipping record regardless of logic or practicality.
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He almost says it was the piano for me, would've broken Maria's heart if she knew he stopped playing after she died. She'd have been all broken up about it, about music, about how much she loved hearing him play and so did the kids, and he ought to take the piano at least. But he couldn't move the piano by himself, and he didn't have anywhere to put it, so he felt too guilty to even touch the keys the last time he went home.
"Tell you what," he says instead. "Everything you need for work, you put in those duffel bags. Everything else you wanna take for safekeeping... I brought the van. We box it up, stick it in the back, I'll hang onto it."
Until what? Until when? Until she comes back, or until Clint's ready to see all the literal baggage, sort through it, deal with it, decide what to keep for real and what to get rid of.
"We got some time. I'll help you do it. Make a list."
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A list. He can do a list. Separate the need from the don't need now but maybe later. His shoulders ease, sagging in on himself. Thankful now to have Frank here. Understanding, because of course, of all people, he would understand. Better than anyone. "Photos." Easy place to start. "Albums. There's a couple in frames that should come, but there's a couple albums. Laura's perfume." Feels more for him than for safekeeping. Can he be selfish? He can be selfish. A little bit. "Rubble, we gotta grab Rubble, that stupid stuffed toy, that's Nate's favorite Paw Patrol dog. He's gonna want--"
It catches in his throat, stings at his eyes, doubles over himself, feels like collapsing. His little boy's favorite stuffed animal. Is that what's going to do it? To topple him over? Pull it the fuck together. What the fuck is he doing, collecting things like they're gone for good, like he's never going to come back, they don't know that, they don't know anything, but all he knows is that they're gone right now and with no idea if they're dead or just vanished or...
If he keeps moving, he doesn't have to let it catch up to him.
Sure has never backfired on him in the past or anything. His therapist would be appalled. He pushes back from the counter, nearly stumbling as he scrubs his face again with both hands, then up into his hair, making it stick up every which way. "I'll make a list. I'll make you a list. I gotta finish packing. You can--jesus," and he half turns, not quite looking at Frank but not turned completely away anymore, "you're still here. What about the others? Karen?"
How selfish and self-absorbed, not to even stop and think to ask about Karen until now.
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When Clint nearly doubles over with that sweeping rush of feeling, it takes everything in him not to reach out again. He wants to; he wants to drag the guy into an embrace, wants to give him something he's not even remotely ready to accept yet, something that won't do anything, won't fix anything.
Maybe they've still got those, uh- Christmas totes upstairs, those ones with all the tangled strings of lights that are a bitch and a half to untangle and hang every year, but every year they do it anyway. He could dump 'em out, use that to store some things. The lights themselves'll be fine on the floor.
He gets about halfway across the kitchen before Clint stops him with a name.
He'd been doing the same goddamn thing Clint has, except he's been better at it because he can channel his whole mind to a task that hasn't ended, one constant thread of an objective in taking care of his friend, it's been easier to block out. And now it's gone.
He left her purse on the ground. Left the handgun spilled out onto the rug. Locked the door behind him, so maybe nobody'll break in — except Murdock, if he's still alive, Frank doesn't know. He didn't check. He went to Karen first, she was closer, and then he drove straight here. Can't pretend to give enough of a shit about Red to even think about checking on him.
But Karen-
A muscle in his jaw twitches, flexes. He brings a hand up to chew on a thumbnail, absent, distracted. It might be bleeding, or maybe he just always tastes blood.
And he says, "She wasn't home."
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She wasn't home. That sounds like bullshit Frank talk for gone. Her not being home doesn't mean a damn thing when he would've leveled all of New York to find her. If there was anything of her to find. So she's...gone. Which means Frank's in the same place all over again. Everything's gone. Everyone's gone. But they've got each other.
And Nat's on her way with the others in tow. That's not nothing.
"It was blink of an eye." He might be looking at Frank, actually and genuinely, but his voice sounds far and away. Is that a comfort to know, or does he need to shut his fucking mouth? "Literally, just, I turned my back for a second and-- I was teaching Lila archery. The boys were playing catch, and Laura was cooking, and I swear to god in the span of a blink, I was just turning my head and they all..."
Was it painless? Are they dead, or were they magicked away somewhere or reduced in size or simply not here right now? Are they waiting for rescue, millions and millions and billions of people?
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One by one, half the crew. Half the pedestrians. Half of everyone, and the chaos started, and-
He can see it in his mind's eye. Karen's blonde hair dissolving at the tips, her slender fingers reaching out for him, for help, her lips parted and then her face ashes, her handbag falling through them to hit the ground. He can imagine it.
And then he can imagine the kids, and Laura, wisps in the wind, one after another, people he loves, gone again, again, and it hits almost as hard because at a certain point they'd stopped being Clint's family and started being his too.
He's on duty. He's got a mission, a goal here, this isn't about him. As long as it's not about him, he can keep it together.
Don't go far from me isn't just about being there for Clint when those pieces need to be picked up. It's a little selfish, too. Something inevitable is headed for him eventually, but he's done this before, he can hold out longer.
"It's everywhere," He says instead of tripping and falling down that road, chin tipped toward his shoulder so he can just make out Clint in his peripheral. One hand grounds him against the kitchen threshold archway molding. "It's like the goddamn apocalypse out there. People are tearing each other apart in the streets."
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But Frank doesn't need to care about half of the whole damn universe. He's not part of that bigger reality. Earth, down on the streets, New York, that's his reality. And a quaint home on the range in Iowa, too. Clint recognizes that he doesn't need to say it, but he's present enough to say it anyway. "Thanks. For being here."
He takes a breath, and then he moves. He's mostly packed anyway already. Knows how to pack for longer trips away. It's just the small details that keep tripping him up. It's the static in his head where all his feelings want to overwhelm him. It's the skipping record stuck on the god damn silverware.
The list goes a little something like: yes, okay, fine, the god damn silverware, because if someone does get stupid enough to raid the house, that shit's still worth a pretty penny, and it shuts up the record scratch; family photo albums and a couple but not all the framed pictures, takes them out of frames and tucks them into the covers of the albums; Laura's perfume gets wrapped up in leftover tissue paper from Christmases past; a stuffed bulldog in a bright yellow vest and hard hat that's definitely seen rough play and several washes and a couple bouts of emergency stitching that happens when a toy is that kind of beloved; Lila's favorite hoodie, which is hilariously Nat's least favorite hoodie, because it's Black Widow themed and worn to the point where the symbol's most of the way worn off; Cooper's wallet, not for any of the money in it, not for any of the cards to local shops, but for the driving permit tucked prominently on display.
There are other things that he vaguely recognizes would make sense to care about and bring, like laptops, but they would just sit uselessly since he's not going to break into his kids' personal computers like that. (And the silverware, what's that going to do but sit uselessly? Shut up.) If he wanted to list every single thing he wanted to bring with him, well, shit, that'd just be the whole damn house, wouldn't it? He'd dig out Laura's wedding dress, make sure Cooper's first and only Gundam build was wrapped up safely, store Lila's notebooks away from sunlight damage, bring more toys and probably half of Nate's closet. He'd take jewelry and books and movies and the fine damn china. He'd grab his tools. He'd take and take and take and then he'd be right back where he started. At home. In this house. Want to take every nail and floorboard because it's all precious.
At least hearing Frank shuffle around does something to settle some high pitched alarm in his head. The one saying it's too quiet it's too quiet check on the kids run around the yard again one more time to look just look one more time!
The weapons are the last packed. Bow and quiver of arrows get their own special case. Couple guns. Not all the guns, but there are more in the panic room he and Laura built several years ago and thankfully have never needed to use. Some knives. In case.
He takes on and hacks through the ankle monitor still wrapped around him, tosses it in the trash. Pretty sure everyone's gonna be too busy to come worrying after him. Should check on Scott, and his family. Should try to track down Yelena. He hasn't been able to get through to Laura's parents and doesn't know if that means they're also gone or if the phones are just dead or busy.
But his brother is here, and his sister is coming to bring him back to his superhero family. Whatever's left of them. Fuck.
The last thing he does is leave Laura's phone on the counter, plugged in to charge. Just in case. And then his work for the immediate moment is done, and he doesn't know what the fuck else to do.
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The photo albums go in the Christmas lights tote; the perfume, the stuffed toy, the wallet, the silverware, they go into a tote. If he stops in the kids' rooms for a little too damn long during his pass around the house, if he braces a hand against the wall and nearly has a god damn panic attack himself, all that matters is that Clint isn't in the room at the time to see it. It's the same thing again, it's the same thing all over again, and good Christ he won't say it out loud but if Clint had gone too he'd just sit down and eat a bullet to catch up with the rest of them.
But he's still here. So they're packing. Hoodies and bows and arrows and guns, clothes and the basics for necessary hygiene. He sees toys spilled out over a rug and he imagines a piano against a wall that has never held a piano, and he sees four kids dancing because the fifth was just a little too young, and every other adult in the room wanted to choke Frank to death because he just kept playing Baby Shark on repeat until that earworm drove them all fucking insane, and he's never laughed so hard in his damn life.
And he sees Karen's gun. Her purse. Her dust. The floor.
The tote goes in the back of the van. The logistics on travel are placed on hold until Nat gets here sometime in the next couple of hours, but the sun's already setting and they're running out of things to do in the meantime.
Frank cleans up the picnic remains before the spoiled food can attract any more insects or animals. He leaves the bow and the ball where they fell.
And then he posts up on the front porch steps, staring out over an empty yard blue-cast by the sun sinking beyond the horizon line, and not a single bird flying overhead. Too few cicadas chirping. Everything's too quiet, everything's too still, and there's nothing for Clint to do now either, so he's waiting too. Frank's bracing himself for that to be a bad thing, because he's not optimistic enough to hope for the alternative, but maybe he'll hold out. Stillness is a haunting echo playing on a loop.
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It's hard to appreciate anything right now.
His legs ache, his chest hurts, his stomach is protesting a lack of care. He's shaking a little. That's not supposed to happen. Even in the worst conditions, his hands don't shake.
"Help yourself to whatever's in the kitchen." Is what he eventually says to Frank, distantly. Because. It'll go to waste otherwise, right? And Frank deserves a break. Is just as bad as Clint, doesn't take breaks, doesn't appreciate them like most people do either, but he deserves it.
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But it's not just him. It's Clint, too, who has it worse, and so Frank has a reason to slowly peel himself up from the stairs. He's got a reason to turn, and thud his way across the floorboards toward the kitchen.
Because, as he goes, he says, "If I cook, you're gonna eat."
And that's an order, Second Lieutenant. If you can't do for you, you do for your men, that's how it works. You have two families; one in the corp, one at home. Just so happens Frank's has some overlap.
He goes through the kitchen. Most things are still well and good, it hasn't been that long. He can put together something decent, something packed with the calories they're gonna need to manage. Something with protein, something with carbs, something with vegetables. He's Italian, this is how he shows love: by force-feeding pasta down someone's throat and complaining that the store-bought kind isn't as good as the kind his mother used to make.
That last part doesn't apply tonight, but the first does. Clint's getting a bowl of something shoved under his nose whether he's got the appetite for it or not.
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Even if the very thought of eating turns his stomach. He can survive on very little. Granola bar, or protein shake, or shit-ass rations meant to survive for years in the worst conditions.
It doesn't take too long for Clint to follow Frank into the kitchen. Because if he sits too long he might never get back up. The sounds of whipping up some grub isn't enough. He's old school enough to have a radio on the sill, something that would play whatever while cooking or while washing dishes. Something with a nice beat coming on, pulling Laura into a little spin of a dance in spite of soapy hands or a dripping stirring spoon. It's not right without more sound. Because it's too fucking quiet that out here, where neighbors are a drive away instead of a walk, and it feels like the world's gone dead.
He has to scroll through station after station, between panic-voiced news updates, static, dead air, the emergency broadcast system, shit that makes his heart start hammering out a salsa beat all its own. Until he finds a station that's still playing music. Old classic country. Someone probably set their board up to just play through anything and everything they've got, because there's no announcements, no commercials, no DJ voice between songs.
Stays on his feet until Frank's shoving something at him, and he takes it and stares at it. He's waiting for the break. He's waiting for the breaking point when everything collapses and he can't hold back. But he keeps on holding. Maybe because he has this idea that this can be fixed. And then he doesn't get to do any breaking. He doesn't get to go as bad as Frank got to be. He's not the only one that's ever lost everything. Wanda would kick his entire ass about it. If he wallowed.
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It was hard to live with Maria gone. It feels downright wrong now for it to be both of them. It's on the tip of his tongue to ask Clint over the soulful strumming of Hello Darlin', right there on his lips to ask, how could it be both of them and not us? They were the ones in the damn field, they were the ones throwing their bodies in front of bullets, how is it that things could possibly play out like this? Where'd they go wrong?
But that's not the kind of shit to put on the man, at least not sober and on the first night, and so he says nothing. Instead, posts himself up over a bowl of his own with his elbows planted on either side, fingers threaded together, head bent as though in prayer, spending more time staring at the contents than actually eating them. Circling it around, over and over in his head — how do you protect people from something like this? How do you do it, when you don't have that super soldier serum or radiation poisoning and you're not a god, and you weren't trained by the goddamn KGB or whatever. How do you do it?
Karen's purse; Karen's gun; how was he supposed to protect her from that?
Look up, darlin', let me kiss you
Just for old time's sake
Let me hold you in my arms one more time-
He gets up and shuts off the radio, and the only reason he doesn't do it by flinging it off the counter in one sharp sweep is because it isn't his and this isn't his house and he's keeping his shit together for someone else.
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He sets the bowl down on on the table harder than he should. Doesn't break, but it's a sharp sound that's damn near to dropping it. He was given an order, and he knows he should eat, but what's the point? It feels so far away.
"I don't understand." And he hates how lost his voice is. "I don't--" His hand slams down a few times on the table, and the sting of it is actually kind of nice. Makes him feel something. "--fucking understand what's happening, Frank."
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Well, truth be told, he doesn't know exactly how long it took. His memories are blurry, both from the grief and the still-healing bullet to the brain, but it couldn't have been a full day before he broke down.
He's still standing by the radio through it, and he turns, hips pressing back into the counter lip, fingers curling around the edges, elbows jutting out behind him. Bent, just a little, like he's bearing weight that isn't there.
"I know," he says softly, in agreement. "I know, man. I know you don't."
Nobody understands what's happening. Not a single human left on this fucking planet does, he thinks. Even if they know, they don't understand.
Starting to wish he'd swept that radio off the counter so hard it crashed into the wall, bet it'd feel real satisfying about now. He wonders, absently, if that's gonna be roughly the fate of Clint's bowl, the way he keeps slamming his hand down. Nobody can hold themselves this rigidly for long; the shoe's gnona drop. Frank doesn't so much as flinch through the sound; passive, externally calm in a way he doesn't feel, in a way that's one more wrong thing happening away from snapping entirely.
He'd like to drive his fists into something, and he'd like to bleed, and maybe ten he'd feel some sense of control over something since it happened. Hell, at this point he wouldn't even mind if Clint threw a punch, it'd probably do 'em both good. Whatever happens, it's gotta be something. Something needs to happen. The tension's been winding tighter and tighter every hour since before he got here, even if they pretend like it hasn't been.
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By being too fucking pissed off to let anyone involved get away with it. By showing up on Clint's doorstep and getting his face punched in before getting pulled into a bear hug. By making plans. By working.
"I don't even get a fucking bullet in my skull for it, not unless I put it there myself! There aren't even any bodies to b--god," and he regrets the words as they come pouring out, because it makes him feel sick. Frank's whole family got buried. There's something there that says they were there. There's no bodies. They're just gone. If there's a funeral, it'd be with empty graves, and that's not fucking right. His fists beat at his own chest. "If any stupid fuck deserves it, it's me! I'm supposed to protect them, man. I'm supposed to make this world a safer place. Instead I've been here retired and on house arrest when maybe I could've been out there doing something about all this!"
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And yeah, here it is. Here it comes. They're different, him and Clint, but in so many ways they're the same — these thoughts, these things coming outta his mouth, Frank could be sitting in the same chair, could be under his skin saying the same goddamn things. He remembers saying the same goddamn things, raging about it to nobody and then raging about it again to Clint and then raging about it to Curt and then raging about it to Karen, and on, and on, and on, it never stops, he never really stopped raging. It's just further between now, and a little quieter when he breaks all over again.
He paces across the kitchen, drags a chair up toward Clint's side of the table, posted up by the corner, close enough to touch. Close enough that his elbow nudges Clint's when he plants them on the table's surface.
"Listen to me, look- listen to me. This is gonna make it feel worse right now, but it's the truth, and you need to hear it: there's nothing you could've done. This is not your fault. You couldn't protect them from this," and that's not comforting. He knows that's not comforting, not right now, maybe it will be in a year or two, but it's fact. The cold, hard truth of it is gonna rip away any sense of control Clint might be deluding himself into thinking he had here, but it's also gonna kneecap some of the guilt before it can eat away at his soul the way it did Frank's — at least a little, maybe, if he's lucky. "You were exactly where you were supposed to be. Only thing that would've changed is you wouldn't have been here with 'em when it happened. You'd wonder, you'd spend every minute of every damn day wondering, what were they doing when it happened? Were they in the kitchen, were they in the yard, were they cooking dinner or fighting or sleeping, you wouldn't know. You wouldn't know."
And wouldn't that be worse? Somehow, impossibly, wouldn't that be worse? It would be for him.
Why did Karen have her gun out?
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He shakes his head through the whole little speech, but he's listening. He swears he's listening. And the place where his logic's all hogtied, that bit of brain agrees. What the hell could he have done? He doesn't know. He wasn't there. And he's got no powers, nothing but insane aim and some funky arrows, and he probably would've gotten hit once and been taken out of the fight, and then he wouldn't be here.
These past two years have been some of the best of his life. Getting to be with them, every single day. And now that's gone. But he knows where they were, what they were doing. They were all happy.
"Doesn't mean a damn thing." Doesn't it?
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