“Coming to Terms”
“No…Stop…Please!”
Nosedive’s eyes fluttered open as a familiar but foreign hand trailed through his sweat-ridden hair, freeing the strands that had stuck to his clenched face. The rhythm continued, methodical fingers working their way through his hair, untangling knots and massaging his scalp. The feeling and pattern comforted him and urged him to fully emerge from the night-terror.
A tugging on his arm jolted him closer to reality, along with insistent plea in a high-pitched voice, “Uncle Dive…wake up…please…Uncle Dive…”
A second voice, deeper than the first, soothing and warm, “It’s okay…We’re here now, baby bro…Everything’s okay…We’ll stop them…”
“Wing…” he was able to mumble, as the fingers played with the end of his hair.
Through his half-lidded eyes, Nosedive saw his big brother, the white mallard’s tired eyes filled with warmth and concern. On his lap sat a young hatchling, barely five, smiling gleefully.
The child looked up at Wildwing. “He’s awake now!”
“That remains to be determined, kiddo.” Wildwing smiled gently at his son, then at Nosedive. “Hey, baby bro. We were just checking up on you.” He still smoothed down Nosedive’s hair as the younger drake slinked up in bed and pressed his back against the wall. “Nightmare?”
More like night-terror, but Nosedive wasn’t about to say that in front of his nephew. It was hard enough for the kid growing in a world of death and chaos; he didn’t need to bring in his own horrifying memories, too.
“Uh…I’m fine,” he replied flippantly, wiping the sweat from his face with the front of his tee-shirt. He then tried to smile reassuringly, but even his nephew wasn’t fooled.
“Uncle Dive!” he pouted, causing Nosedive to blush. “You’re supposed to tell us when you have nightmares.”
Nosedive had to blink to remember his nephew was five, yet he sounded so much like his thirty-two-year-old brother. He ruffled the boy’s fire red hair. “I was just… remembering… stuff from before.”
Wildwing smiled sadly, one hand clasped about his son on his lap, the other still fussing with Nosedive’s hair. “Puckworld or Earth?”
“Either. Both. Neither. It really doesn’t matter, does it?”
“I guess it doesn’t,” Wildwing agreed, his grin falling a little. He patted his son on the head and nuzzled the boy’s cheek. “Crease, why don’t you run and get us a few extra pillows, okay?”
“Okay, Daddy!” Crease climbed down from his father’s lap and quickly dashed out the door.
Nosedive watched him go, then looked at Wildwing. “Isn’t he supposed to be asleep? It’s gotta be pass two.”
“He slept
most of the day after coming back from
“I’m fine,” Nosedive stressed again, laying his elbows on his bent knees and tipping his head against the wall. “Look, I’m tired, okay? Can you leave, so I can go back to sleep?”
Wildwing shook his head, not at all fazed by the harshness in his brother’s voice. “The words come out of the mouth, but the eyes say a completely different story.”
Nosedive averted his eyes and pushed back his still limp bangs, saturated from sweat, out of his face. “What do you want from me, Wing?”
“I want you to confide in me like you used to,” Wildwing said gently, as he reached out to touch his brother’s palpitating knee. His shocked hand stopped just above Nosedive’s leg, and the older brother gazed shocked. Nosedive had flinched.
Wildwing quickly retracted his hand. He, too, looked away and sighed loudly, staring at the empty bed against the opposite wall—Canard’s. “What happened to you, Dive?”
Nosedive shrugged. “It doesn’t matter, does it? It’s over.”
“It matters to me.”
“You were dead,” Nosedive snapped, then shook his head, disgusted. “Let it go.”
“You haven’t.”
The younger mallard took a deep, drawing breath before letting it out gradually, his chest slumping from the deflation. “You don’t want to know.”
“Don’t make decisions for me,” Wildwing retorted bitterly, glaring at his brother.
Nosedive continued to elude his brother’s eyes. “You’ll feel guilty.”
“So? What else is new?”
“It wasn’t your fault, though, and technically, it never happened.”
“But you remember it, and you lived it,” Wildwing disputed.
Nosedive crossed his legs and slumped forward; his shoulders seemingly appeared to be pulled downward toward the ground by gravity. He squeezed his eyes shut. “Wildwing, I just want to forget it. Please. Just let me.”
“But you’re not forgetting, Dive. You’re reliving it, night after night, and I refuse to stand by any longer and watch!” Wildwing finally exploded, slamming his fists on his knees.
“Why are you bugging?” Nosedive asked pointedly, raising his infuriated eyes.
Wildwing’s breath caught in his throat. “Wha…” he croaked, his bearings lost at the nonchalance in his brother’s voice. “What the hell do you mean by that?”
Nosedive snorted sardonically. “Look, it’s not your prob, Wing. You’ve got a Resistance to lead and a hatchling to raise. You don’t need your little brother’s problems on your list of things to fix. I think you have your hands full as it is. Just let it—”
A hard, shaking hand clamped his beak, effectively silencing the younger mallard. “Who the hell do you think you are?” Wildwing seethed in barely contained rage.
Nosedive tugged but his brother refused to relinquish his beak. Instead, Wildwing gripped him by the cheek with his free hand and forcefully turned his brother’s face toward him.
“You think that just because you’ve been alone for the last five years that you’re just excused from your brash attitude and this chip on your shoulder that you just won’t drop? Bullshit.” Wildwing’s hard eyes never wavered nor broke their connection with the little brother. “Did you forget who you’re talking to? Did you forget who I am!”
“Yeah! Dead!” Nosedive cried in retaliation, as he freed with his beak with one forceful tug. He pushed off the bed, standing and starting to pace. “You left me here! Do you have any idea what that did to me? Do you! I was buried under hundreds of pounds of rock, as that egg hatched, and I felt it. I felt the joy of holding my nephew, and at the same time, I couldn’t breathe! I couldn’t think! I just felt this gapping void in me that wouldn’t go away! And I knew it! I knew it, and I couldn’t do anything but sit there and hold your kid and cry! And finally, Canard unburied me.” Dejected tears coursed his cheeks, as his voice fell to a demoralized and utterly broken whisper that hardly beseeched the air. “Y—You have no idea what it’s like to see your body there. And I held you, and I couldn’t let you go. I—I couldn’t.” He looked away, his eyes distant as he once more relived the horrific event. “Canard finally had to pull me away, and still I thrashed and screamed and cried, and I refused to believe it! I refused to believe that you were gone, and I kept waiting for you to come back, even after the funeral. I knew you would be back…” He turned his back, shaking his head as he whimpered, “…but you didn’t. You never came back.”
The door to the hallway opened with a swoosh, catching both brothers off guard. Canard strode in, eyes tired, hair bedraggled. He halted suddenly, gazing at the tearful Nosedive, then at the solemn Wildwing. Without a word, he turned and left.
Nosedive shook his head, turning his back to his brother when Wildwing stood. A soft hand appeared on his should, hesitant at first but slowly increasing in intensity.
“Baby bro—”
“Why didn’t you take me with you?”
Even though Nosedive wasn’t looking at his brother, he could practically see the emotions flashing through Wildwing: regret, sadness, anger, and acceptance.
“I don’t know, but you lived,” Wildwing claimed softly. “I made the right decision.”
“The right decision!” Nosedive jerked away from his brother’s grip and scowled, “How can you say that you made the right decision? Yeah, sure, I raised your kid, and he’s alive, but…You know what happened to me!”
“No…” Wildwing murmured brokenly. “I don’t.”
Nosedive stared bewildered at his brother until he realized the validity in the words. He clenched his fingers into his fists at his thighs. “I—I had to live without you, a—and I get night-terrors from it. I keep seeing your dead body! And—and—sometimes I yell at you not to go, to take me with you, but…” His voice gave out as he gasped suddenly and ducked his head. “And if I don’t see that…then…t—then I see…her.”
“Her?” Wildwing repeated, croaking, as he fell back on the bed, one leg bent on the mattress, the other still on the floor. “Who’s her?”
At first, Nosedive couldn’t answer, reduced to simply sniffling. Then, he collapsed onto the bed, too, and softly professed, “I told you when I went back in time I had a contract with Syra…”
Wildwing blinked, befuddled, until he gasped in horrid and sickened realization. “Dive…you didn’t…”
Nosedive refused to meet his brother’s eyes or question. He couldn’t tell Wildwing. He just couldn’t.
“Nosedive…you…and her…” Wildwing pleaded, then stopped, appalled.
Slowly, Nosedive opened his eyes and raised them, seeing the horrified look on his brother’s face, the wide and rapid eyes, beak agape. Plagued by guilt, he closed them again.
“That night in the hanger…the night I destroyed her communicator…”
Nosedive winced sharply, his body writhing as his brother put the pieces agonizingly together in front of him.
“You…you gave yourself to her…to save the Resistance…didn’t you? That was your deal. If you s—s—slept with her that night, then she’d let you relocate.”
“Every week,” Nosedive interjected wearily, his voice lower than even a whisper.
“What?”
“Every week for five years.”
Nosedive cringed again and waited for his brother’s reply. The tone in Wildwing’s voice had been something he didn’t expect. Guilt, yes. Shame, okay. But disgust? He didn’t …Wildwing believed what Nosedive didn’t dare to think. Nosedive had disgraced his brother, his family. He was too tainted to deserve the love Crease gave him or the comfort that Wildwing leant. He didn’t deserve to be in the Resistance any more, dirtied to the point of Syra’s slave.
Slowly, he rose from the bed. He would grab a few things then leave. Even though he was the only one imprinted on Crease, it would okay. Wildwing would give him that extra comfort he needed, and his brother probably wouldn’t want him around the boy anymore anyway if he stayed. He was dirty, too dirty.
As he passed his brother, a hard hand clamped down on his wrist, and with one forceful tug, Nosedive was yanked back to the bed and into Wildwing’s arms.
“Let it go,” Wildwing commanded, his grip stone tight.
Nosedive, sitting on his brother’s lap, Wildwing’s arms about his torso and not allowing for any movement, blinked in surprise. “Wing…Please…it’s okay… I understand …”
“No, you don’t, and I’m not letting go until you let it go.”
“But Wing—”
“You gave the ultimate sacrifice for the Resistance, Dive,” Wildwing murmured, detaching one hand to run it through his little brother’s hair. “No wonder you remember. You haven’t come to terms with it—with any of it. Canard let it go. Even Crease embraced us, but you…you can’t let it go.”
Nosedive closed his eyes. “Wing, please…it’s okay…really.”
“It’s not okay when you’re leaving because you think I hate you for being Syra’s slave,” Wildwing affirmed, squeezing his brother to his chest, while running a consoling hair through his little brother’s hair. “It’s not okay, baby bro…It’s not okay…”
Nosedive tried to pull away, not wanting to let it out, not wanting to talk about it—period. He hadn’t with Canard, and he wouldn’t with Wildwing.
“Wing…please…You just let it go, okay? It never happened.”
“No, to Crease, it never happened. To Canard, it never happened. But to you...”
“N—No! The past is changed! You were there, Wing,” he growled and struggled, placing his fisted hands against his brother’s torso and trying to break Wildwing’s steel hold on him. “It didn’t happen! You were alive! You stopped her!”
“Denying it won’t make it go away!” Wildwing screamed, holding his younger brother close and laying his beak on Nosedive’s head. “I wasn’t there for you!”
“No!”
“I couldn’t save you!”
“S—Stop! Just s—stop!”
Nosedive’s trashing became fiercer, as the truth mangled in his mind. Wildwing leaned forward, pressing his cheek against his little brother’s, his own tears saturating his Nosedive’s feathers. “I’m sorry I failed you.”
Nosedive stopped struggling and melted of resistance, his fists slowly uncurling Wildwing’s shirt. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“I should have been there.”
“You were dead,” Nosedive murmured, sinking against his brother’s chest.
Wildwing held him tighter. “It doesn’t matter. I should have been able to protect you.”
“I have to grow up sometime. You can’t watch over me all the time and take blame for my mistakes.”
“You’ll always be my baby brother, Dive. Nothing’s going to change that, so you might as well accept it.”
As Nosedive’s hands gradually clutched Wildwing’s shirt again, the older brother leaned inward and nuzzled his little brother’s head. “You don’t have to be strong, Dive, not in front of me. Let it go, baby bro. It’s okay.” He resituated his grip on Nosedive better and bent his head lower, so his forehead touched his brother’s. He looked into his brother’s tearstained eyes, as Nosedive raised his to look into Wildwing’s. “Let it go.”
“I don’t know how to. You were—and she and I—and…I just want to forget it ever happened.”
Wildwing broke eye contact and shivered at what his brother implied. As he closed his eyes, tears slipped through his eyelids. “Forgive me. Please.”
“Will you stop taking blame?” Nosedive scowled in fond exasperation, but not pulling his forehead away. He, too, closed his eyes, but that didn’t prevent the tears from falling once more.
“If you would just let it go…”
Slowly, Nosedive sunk into his brother’s embrace, his head naturally slipping under his big brother’s beak. He pressed his cheek against Wildwing’s chest, and despite being twenty-five, despite living the last five years without his brother, he found himself whimpering as he simply cried against his older brother. His own tears falling unrestricted, Wildwing continued to run his consoling fingers with his little brother’s hair, shushing him and slowly rocking him back and forth.
They stayed that way long into the morning, long after Nosedive feel asleep, the older brother unable to let it go himself.
*^*^*
The first thing Nosedive heard when he awoke was the tick-tock of the clock next to his bed. It sounded more like a nuclear explosion when interpreted through his massive headache. Blinking to catch his bearings, he groaned as his eyes felt tired and sore, as if he had cried, but he didn’t remember… anything… Shifting slightly, he was shocked by the warm body pressed against his chest and the strong arms clutching his waist. He hazarded a gaze down at Crease, snuggling against his chest and then over his shoulder at Wildwing, who held him close.
While he didn’t remember why or when they joined him last night—He must have had a nightmare about the camps or the Saurian zoo—Nosedive wasn’t about to complain. Canard was missing from his bed, probably taking over his brother’s duty for the morning, and if both Crease and Wildwing were there, then that meant Mallory knew and wouldn’t come to wake up her lifemate and child.
So, content to stay where he was, Nosedive clutched his little nephew closer, putting the boy’s cheek to his chest, and nuzzled the top of his red hair.
Before settling back down, however, he had the distressing urge to turn around and say, “I forgive you, big bro,” before adding, warmly, “I love you.”
He didn’t know why, but he somehow felt Wildwing needed to hear it.
Obviously, his older brother did, for a second later, Wildwing drew Nosedive a little closer. The younger nestled against his brother’s body, taking Crease back with him. He let out a relaxed sigh, his body relaxing completely, and the first time in a while, slept without night-terrors.
THE END