"The sky was full of stars, and every star an exploding ship. One of ours." -Jeffrey Sinclair, 'And The Sky Full Of Stars'


I wake to whispers.

I dress as other men do. Garment by garment. Something that should not be rare, but garners my careful attention even so. My Ray sleeps behind me, oblivious to the journey his Ren takes from nudity to outwardly marked as Mountie.

I look in the mirror, dressed as I am, and feel the sting of your disappointment. I do not take off my uniform. I cannot. I will not.

But I will honor it, for you.

I seat myself at the edge of the bed and lean to place a kiss into my Ray's hair. I breathe him in; he smells like home, and I need not examine the failure to feel conflict in that statement.

I leave my love in another kiss, and quietly, I disappear.



There is grey.

She still looks as though she just rolled out of bed, her hair wild and her shirt tea-stained, but she gives me a smile that I faintly return. She jokes about brushing her hair for me, but I refuse it. I find it rather endearing. And I will not be staying.

She hands me my wallet. I do not open it before it is pocketed.

She tips her head up to kiss my cheek, and then gives me a poke to the forehead. A little reminder. I shift my appearance to match that of my twin, the addition of years and the subtraction of hair. Time is a funny thing.

She smiles at me. This time, I cannot smile back.

The morning that faded to grey fades into night.



Midnight in Nipawin, Saskatchewan, Canada is the twist of a blade someplace no one can reach. You know why. Has remaining here twisted it for you, too?

It is cold, but I do not feel it, and it is not the source of my shiver. The few trees shelter my appearance, though the parking lot is reasonably dark. My eye cannot help drifting among the few cars here, seeking 420. 414. Neither could be here, of course they could not, they are somewhere in the hands of others, hopefully before the travesty of rainbow color scheme touched her. But the scent of this place... the air calls to me and my eye follows. Something in my mind claws. Struggles. Screams.

I wish I could put out the street lamps.

I step out into the real world, and try to remember to breathe.



If it is odd for my twin to visit you during the night shift, the staff do not appear to notice it. They seem to me not to have noticed much; the camera above the door stares at me, and I stare it down in return, as though it sits in challenge of what I am. The light bounces through the lens, and the woman on the other side pays little notice to the universal blip her technology displays upon her screen. She asks me for no identification, though I show it to the camera regardless of my uniform, and does not bother to ask who I am visiting. If they treat you with the same nonchalance as they have your visitor, I will find out. Hell will be paid.

The door opens with a quiet buzz.

I am expecting an eerie quiet, the kind that should make me wonder if I have fallen into place with my younger brother instead, and should expect the incursion of infected at any moment. I do not find this. The lights are dimmed, but not enough. Staff ignore me, apparently used to the presence of uniforms, especially now. Antiseptic smell permeates everything, tipping the instinct of unease that I'm certain every human being feels at the scent. My own is half-lost amongst the static of a thousand other screaming instincts. Old ones.

The ICU is small. There is a central desk. The woman behind it seems to recognize my face; she gives me the beginning of an encouraging smile, but my expression shrinks it. I think perhaps I must look more stricken than blank.

Your area is encased in glass. You are the only occupant, save the staff member in scrubs who leaves your room with a pitying glance at me.

It seems to me that something tangles and rips inside my own head.

I draw the curtain before I can look at you again, precious little privacy behind glass that leaves you exposed to whatever stranger should walk by, believing they should have a right to what I am about to do. It is darker in here than the hallway. Still not dark enough. When I turn, you are real, and you need no darkness to sleep.

They have shaved your mustache.

It is a foolish thing to think, when you are consumed with tubes, with the medical profanity that preserves your life when it should never have reached such fragility. Sterility and metal and plastic violates the organic sanctity of your body, but nothing does this in so vile a manner as the bullets that necessitate them. They have cut you. Opened you, done things to you, because they must to save your life, and that you are not intact and untouched is a foul, repugnant thing.

I strip off my coat. I lay it across my lap, when I find myself in a chair that I have pulled to your bedside. I cannot remember doing this, but it doesn't matter.

I take your hand. I lace your fingers with mine. Gently so as not to disturb the needle. Your hospital bracelet bears your name. Sergeant. Mike.

I do not know what to say, now, so I say nothing.



"You still have to teach me to fish."

The whisper leaves my lips, and I do not know exactly how long I have been here, holding your hand. The words hang on the air, the sting at my eyes the only proof that they suffuse the world around us. I know that you can hear me. Not in the first world, where life carries on in the linear fashion that has marched since the day you were born, but the one underneath that you cannot quite remember.

I am silent again for a very long time.

"Mike, I want you to..." Breathing is difficult, and I still whisper, for these words belong to no one but you, and another who bears your face but lacks his eyes. "I want you to know. That I understand why I disappointed you. And that for what you have said, I will make... make good upon my station, somehow."

I fall quiet again. I realize that tears have fallen, though I do not quite feel them. I look at your hand. One I have held before, but more lined, now. Older. A man's hand, and of course it is, I did not expect you to be the boy that I fell for so long ago for you, though I believe he is in there, too. Under the years and the training and the disillusionment and pride and pain. I wish I could explain to you how our lives have intersected out of order. I wish that I could tell you what has happened to me. That I did not mean to disappoint you. That I cannot take my place back, because it is taken, but would it matter to you? Would it change that I am what I am and do not fulfill it as you believe I should? Probably not. You have grown, become more understanding, more broad-minded, but I do not believe that would change.

"You were such a beautiful boy, Mike. I would have gone fishing with you. Taught you to cook, shared your years with you, been your ear when you went away to become a Mountie, if I could have. I should have done things differently, last time we met. I was stubborn. I should have done better by you. You were special. Are special. And I am sorry."

I breathe. I am still addressing you as the boy, I know. There is more of us than only that.

"I was not broken by what happened here."

God.


God.

"And though I was not here, your hand was as much in my healing as my own, and those of the people I love."

The sob is bitten back. The whispers charge forth, I do not give permission for my own throat to silence or slow them.

"I am as proud of you now as I was the day that you told me you would repay the wine in fish. It was not your fault, what became of me. I know that you never stopped trying. No one here could have saved me from what was happening in my own mind, Mike. Corporal. There was no means of preparation. There was no right answer in the wake of it. Nothing you could have done differently. I am better now, in part, because you took everything that I brought from Depot and shaped it into the very best police officer I could be. If you ever believe you had a hand in breaking me, you did not. If you ever stop to think that you could have done something, and were flawed because you could not find what, stop. And if you ever doubt that you should have been trusted with me, hear me now. You have never failed me. And I am all right, now, in part because of the resilience you helped to refine in me."

Your hand has a thousand little lines, and I believe I must have mapped each one, now.

I finally wipe my face.

"I should have gone curling with you."

I look you in the face, beyond all the plastic and metal and medical that covers everything. Someone has shot you, that little boy, my FTO, the man who I can say now that in some way I know, and that I love. Perhaps these are things my twin should get to say. I hope that he will. I will speak on my plane, to allow him to speak on his.

Silence falls again. I am unready to let you go, but have no more to lay upon your subconscious mind. For the longest time, I hold your hand. When I release it, it's with reverence.

"Get better, Mike. Be safe. Goodbye for now."



Guy Laurent standing by the main entrance garners little more than dull, aching surprise.

He looks exhausted. I can only imagine why, as night is his native time. I do not know how he knew my brother might be here. I have wiped my face, but I know that tears are apparent. I square my shoulders. He unfolds his arms to give me a salute.

If I simply walk by, I can disappear in the shadows, and collapse. Underneath the tears, however, I find I cannot pass up this opportunity.

"Renfield," he drawls upon my approach, taking himself up from his lean against the wall. He motions at me with two fingers. I am not unfamiliar with this. When he goes, I follow. Even if I do not know why. Even if, honestly, I no longer want to be in the light.

We stray in the direction of the emergency department. He stops by the payphones.

He digs in his pocket, takes the receiver off the hook, and slides a quarter into it. He presents me with the phone, matter-of-factly.

"Do not go back to Rhy'Din without calling your sister."

I stare at him.

While most of me is incredulous at the words that have spilled so damnably easily from his lips, part of me rages that the universe has aligned such that he can know what you cannot. I gape, the expression I feel on my face an angry one, though even I do not know why. After what he has just spoken to me, he is making demands? He feels no need for explanations?

What?

I am a hypocrite, it would seem, and he is still offering me a phone.

"Guy-- What--?" I shake my head. "It is the middle of the night."

Guy motions the receiver at me.

"There will be questions."

He motions it again. I grit my teeth, entertaining the bizarre urge to take it and break it into small bits against the wall. I do not know why I am so angry.

Guy's expression softens, somehow, and I cannot maintain the anger. I take it and press it to my ear, awaiting the dial tone. He brings out a handful of quarters, the likes of which would make a fine weapon if pooled into a sock, and begins to feed them one by one into the phone.

When I dial, it is entirely without purpose as to what I shall say. It rings. And rings, for my poor sister is no doubt sleeping, and I will have woken a woman pregnant with twins who no doubt needs the rest for the experience. If not her husband.

She doesn't even answer customarily, when the rings cut out to an abrupt click.

"...nn? Hello?" She sounds offended. Or worried, or perhaps waiting to be one or the other, and I cannot blame her. I swallow. Guy is watching me, I know that he is, and her voice raises the sting back to my eyes. I shut them.

Myra repeats herself, still groggy, sounding as though she is erring to the side of offense at the silence. I do not know what time it is here, much less there, but apparently I have indeed woken her. I open my mouth. There is nothing I can think of to say, nothing that would not mean difficulty and worry and trouble for my twin. I close my mouth.

"Hello?" she says a third time, the tone her final warning, I know.

Guy's eyebrows go up; questioning me, as to whether I will speak, I think. I shake my head. I cannot sabotage my brother, however tempting it would be to hear her speak especially for me.

Guy leans in, offering something to prevent her from immediately hanging up.

"I am sorry, have I woken you? I believe I have gotten my time zones mixed up. I was seeking Jeanne." He has dialed his accent up considerably for what he says, in what I can only assume is an attempt to sound properly French. Though it screams against the urge to curl her to myself, even over the phone, I angle it so that if he stands close, he might hear. Even so, I give Guy a glare, if only because he has lied to my sister, but he apparently makes no effort to acknowledge the look.

Down the line, I hear her attempt to hide a sigh from the receiver. She is too polite for her own good, sometimes. For the moment, I am grateful. I will hear more of her voice.

"I'm afraid no one by that name lives here, sir," she says at tired length.

"Oh. My sincerest apologies, madame, for the disturbance."

"It is no trouble, sir. Goodbye."

"Au revoir."

I turn the phone back fully to my ear, so that I might hear the minute carry of her weary sigh. After the click I listen to dead air. Guy has paid for it. I may as well.

A pair of brown eyes regard me from behind tinted glass, and on a delay, I meet them.

"Thank you," I whisper to him in spite of myself. The sound carries down the line, into the ether.

He does not reply. Guy motions me out behind him. The dull reminder within me that I should simply leave this place now slides off of me.

"I must not be seen," I whisper.

He nods. I hang up the phone.



"From the diner," Guy qualifies when he hands me a styrofoam cup of water from the cup holder of what is, very frankly, a pile of rust and bolts.

"Whose car is this?" I am still whispering. It seems nearly impossible to raise my voice beyond it, and absent the exception before the phone call, I realize I have not since I arrived.

"Loaner," he replies. I decide that I do not care. I do not know where we are going, and for the moment, neither do I care about that. He drives. I fill the gaping hole where my gut should be with cold water through a straw.

Silence falls. The roads we pass make me want to disappear, but I resist. Perhaps it is for you. Perhaps it is for Guy. Perhaps, even, it is for me, though what part I would do this for is buried now under undefined fear and some long-delayed sense of loss.

He pulls into what I recognize to be his old home, if only because I have seen the address on enough paperwork to make such things stick. I have no desire to enter this building. I never have. I'm only mildly intrigued that he still possesses rights to the place. He exits the car without a word. I follow him, because... because.

I am walked through a domicile left in what I would consider devastation. I imagine Guy only regards it as mild inconvenience. Bits of the ceiling are falling in, and there are a few places where damp encroaches. The carpet is shag of a thick pile. When he shuts the door, ambient light from the street is cut off, and we are in darkness.

He ignores the light switch by the door and disappears ahead of me before my eyes may adjust to the dark. I hear the striking of a lighter. Warm light filters toward me, and I follow it. I pass a dimly lit kitchen, its condition the epitome of many of my worst nightmares, and I jump to feel Guy's hand upon my shoulder.

He appears apologetic for my startle. It is now I understand that something is different. When I open my mouth, his expression returns to neutrality, and his free hand offers me what appears to be an ancient couch, covered in a thick blanket, lit by several candles arranged on an equally ancient coffee table.

My eyebrows climb at what else casts shadows in the candlelight. What is left of it, scattered and charred. "George."

Guy turns a look upon me. When he gestures at the couch again, I know that it is a question, and that is why I slowly remove my gun belt, watching him.

I lay it over the armrest and accept the seat.

I have a thousand questions for him, contained behind a small dam within my mind. A larger one lies behind it, holding everything I would pour out for you, now. He remains silent, carrying a taper candle to light the room, and if I were to guess, stall. He looks even more exhausted in this light. Ghostly. I wonder how he sees behind those sunglasses.

He settles closer to me than I would prefer, and we sit in silence for a little while, watching the flicker of candles change the pattern of dinge in the room.



"You know."

Guy nods.

"How?"

He smiles.

"Guy..."

"How is Rhy'Din?"

"I wouldn't know," I quietly snap, annoyed, and how is it that he can so easily raise my ire this way, when just a moment ago I was worried? If he knows everything, why in God's name would he ask me that? "Were you tracking me?"

"Not quite."

"Then what?"

He laughs, a sound so lacking mirth that I ache for it.

My annoyance bleeds away, and I make myself look at him.

"You know," I repeat, still disbelieving, a dull shock that seems, upon reflection, quite foolish. I shake my head. I shut my eyes. It hurts, to my very core, because through no fault of anyone, he can have this where you cannot. I should be happy. I am not alone, on this world. I am glad. But I cannot share it with you.

"Hm," he offers up in the affirmative. Staring off, as though he has not just shifted my world again, as though he is not something perplexing and impossible.

My hypocrisy is staggering.

I sigh, crossing my arms and shifting in the seat, uncertain of precisely why I am so irritated, except that Guy Laurent is irritating. He does not deserve blame for knowing what you do not. I try to breathe it away.

"I can see it on you," he tells me eventually, the firelight flickering in those sunglasses. I find for what may be the first time that I wish he would take them off. "Did you find what you needed, Renfield?"

It was most emphatically not about that, and I suppose my look must say what I do not. Awkward silence falls again. On my part, anyway.

Out of nowhere, he puts his arm around me. I know he can feel my stiffen. I have the most terrible urge to tear away from the contact, and I am most certainly baffled by it, but there is a trickle of quiet amusement at myself for being the subject of such a thing. Perhaps I should apologize to you, Mike; well. Perhaps not.

A hand is placed at the side of my head, and I am staring my utter confusion at this turn of events into the rotting eyes of George, lit by the burn of a candle, as my head is quite literally laid upon Guy Laurent's shoulder. It is not especially comfortable. I am bent strangely. I glance up at him side-long, and find behind the dim gap of his sunglasses that his eyes rest with George, too.

Oh.

I shift so as to be somewhat more comfortable. I have never... never. With Guy. I do not know what to say. To the opposite shoulder I offer a pat. I hear his quiet chuckle rumble from where my ear rests at his shoulder.

"Drew was..." The sentence tapers when I actually feel Guy stiffen, as if it is I that have just violated a personal space. I look up, abandoning the sentence, because even I am not sure how to complete it. "I am sorry, Guy."

Another drop in the bucket of unfettered bizarre comes in the form of a brief pet to my head. It draws goosebumps. Not pleasant ones. The touch is no longer alarming, though I will admit to preferring the reverse configuration, but it is so deeply out of place.

"Stop that now," he whispers, and it is not an order but a shush. I tip my head up to look at him properly. His look betrays little, at least purposefully. I drop it and look back to the candles as they burn away.

We sit this way for a while, in the silence and the dark.

Sometime before the sun comes up, my water tips over from the arm of the couch.

I catch it, but still find myself flicking the droplets from my uniform with a sigh. I do not know why Guy huffs a kind of laugh, but he uncoils from me as I sit up. It is something of a relief. I'm certain my neck will be sore, when I am capable of noting it. I want to go back. So far as it's possible, anyway. The pain of occupying air in this place has not receded, even if my ability to weather it has grown in these hours.

"You should visit," I say, before I quite realize that I have not vocalized the previous thoughts. Before I even quite realize the implications of such a statement, and how absolutely mad this man would drive me if he did.

"So should you." He puts on a leer, though I realize now just how unfelt it must be. "Come as female again."

In an instant my incredulity takes fore, and I stare at him with wide eyes, more than a little affectionately annoyed that he remembers what he should not. Explaining that to you would be an exercise in futility, I think; not even those well-versed in the intricacies of the multiverse take that one well.

"You remember that?"

"Of course. One does not forget a woman like that."

"I seem to recall you asking if we had met before, Guy. And you know what I mean."

"One does not forget a woman like that without chemical assistance," he concedes jokingly. The respite to be found in it is momentarily welcome, and it is the most at length he has spoken since I got here, absent to my sister. "If only you had been in uniform. You make the cuter sister."

"I most certainly do not--" Hm. He is misdirecting. "I will not."

"I'm hurt. You would deny me?"

"Oh, quite so."

"A loss to both of us, then." He looks over his glasses at me, as though all the promise of talented debauchery should be found behind them. Here we are, hearts laid open, and he is flirting with me in female absentia.

"I'm immune to your charm, Guy Laurent. And taken. Twice."

Guy settles back to the couch, head tipping up to look at the ceiling. "No one is immune. They all melt eventually."

"Mike never did."

If he is shocked at my use of your first name, he does not show it. His eyebrows quirk in concession, though it is the qualified sort, as though that is not the end of the story. He pats my near shoulder, sighing out, the good humor seeming to bleed from him. I do not know why it is what I said seems to have punctured that bubble.

"I am leaving here shortly," he mutters eventually.

"You... are going to help them?"

Guy has rarely looked offended; his look is not quite that. A flash of what may be determination, what may be hurt, or perhaps both.

I regard his hand silently for a moment, before taking it in apology. I nod. He covers mine, and while this is not the type of silent communication to which we are accustomed, I feel it is forgiveness. The hold breaks almost abruptly, as I feel something in my chest begin to crack, and I think perhaps he feels something similar.

Guy reaches into his pocket and pulls out a single, hot pink rubber ball. He leaves it in my hand with a brief pat.

"I am glad I waited. You will see me again, Renfield."

He gets up and wanders into the hall, and in my solitude I think of leaving again. The candles have burned themselves short, but sunrise will be upon us soon. The spots from staring into the lights transpose themselves upon already stained walls when I look away. A trickle of wax pools at the edge of one glass holder, pouring from a newly-melted gap in the taper, and for some reason this is when realization of the silence dawns.

A window in the kitchen is open. The house is empty. The large pack that sat in the hall is gone. When I round the back door, the keys to the rustpile sit on its roof.

He was saying goodbye. I missed it.

Guy is gone, and I am alone.



Nipawin awakes under the grey light of morning.

I blew out Guy's candles and locked his home as best I could before setting out, my belt strapped to me and my coat on. I am careful to stay off the road. I want to breathe and walk this place once more before I disappear, even though it hurts. I cannot be seen.

Somewhere, my twin is undoubtedly preparing to work himself to the point of exhaustion to find who has hurt you, and battling demons in a war to which I only wish I could lend strength. His Ray is with him, in body or in spirit, and I hope one day perhaps I will get to meet him, too. Guy is traveling, God only knows where, and I half expect to find him napping in my pulled-out underwear drawer when I get home. My sister, I hope, is sleeping late.

And you lay in a hospital bed, profaned, shot and stuck and cut open and sleeping.

I hope that I have given you something in what I have done. I know that you have given me something, in turn.

You will survive, I know this. I am proud of you, Mike. I hope you are, of me.

Be safe.


The final in three titles owed to J. Michael Straczynski's work.