Disorder Ch. 08

Charles led him into the park, an area that may have been less interesting to pass through if not for the rain, which served well enough to chase away those who lingered to the darker reaches. Hunching under trees, moisture dripping, groups of youths lit up cigarettes and watched them pass by, but John and Charles didn't mean anything to them, just a side influence and nuance in their lives that they did not understand or even care to understand. They didn't know their importance in the city, how much Donnie, at least, had done behind concrete walls and security systems of his own design. And, for once, that was just how Donnie wanted it to be, not needing anyone to break way or give way for him as John had needed, just to be as he was and not be noticed for more than a man on the path.

A little shelter but not much begged attention at the edge of a pool of street light that was poorly positioned. The bench itself looked like it had been dug up from the concrete at some point and moved but Donnie could not have said quite what the reasons behind that were. He'd never walked through the park before. Nature was not something that he partook in and a manufactured nature, such as the park, was even worse than the other options out there. He may have done something with John if that had been at all in his range of interests but, of course, John only wanted to get out if he had a fast car to play with on long, open roads and climbing, arcing mountain tracks. To him, there was nothing quite like going fast.

They didn't need to talk, sinking into a kind of brotherly silence as Charles passed him his food, sodden and broken up in parts. And yet something drove him to eat it as if he was pushed on by an otherworldly force, just enough to get him going through the motions, chewing and swallowing, as dull and cardboard-like as the bread tasted, thick and heavy in his mouth. It stuck to the roof of his mouth and he worked his tongue to push it off and send it down the channel of his throat, eyes half-narrowed in concentration. Eating had never before taken so much focus.

There was something about sitting there in companionable silence even as the wetness of the bench seeped into their trousers, neither really caring all that much. Things like that didn't seem to have much meaning anymore as life moved on and the rain eased up just a little, their jackets keeping off the worst of it. What difference did a little bit of water make when things were already so fucked up?

But there was something lingering there, something untold, and Donnie sighed, shaking his head as a droplet of rainwater slipped languidly off the end of his nose.

"What now? You made me come out here."

He didn't mention at what cost, guts churning with the need to empty what little sustenance he'd forced into his stomach. Charles shrugged.

"Sit. Eat. Seems as good a plan as any."

Not usually so restrained or so forlorn, the severity of the situation sliced through Donnie, although it was something that, already, he considered himself well familiar with. The pain had begun with a lick of fear back when he'd realised that John was gone, that everything had rushed ahead, gone on without him, the watchful eye that he had kept on the family nowhere near watchful enough, apparently. What plan was worth it?

Yet the food beckoned and, in a strange way, the first bit of bread and meat had felt good sliding down. Keep eating. That's all he had to do. Methodically working his way through his while Charles pretty much devoured what he'd gotten for himself in one, Donnie breathed shortly and shallowly, stomach aching, although whether it was for more food, the presence of the food weighing down too heavily or for the life lost, he could not say. There didn't seem like there was very much that he was at all sure of anymore with life spinning around him, one man but a passing fancy to the wills of fate and all else.

But, once the food was gone, an unhealthy silence stretched between them, aching and yearning like all that they had lost. Hunching over -- it was hardly as if anyone was going to pass comment out there -- Donnie ground his teeth together, the ache growing and growing more and more with the course of every passing second. Was that because he'd eaten? Yet he knew what it was even if he didn't want to acknowledge it, forcing each and every strangled sob that threatened to grind its way up from the hollow emptiness in him, driving them away over and over again.

It was all he could do.

To his credit, Charles was the more mature of them at that time, if maturity was at all linked to how well one could hide and hold back their emotions. He kept his expression carefully blank but the tightness at the corners of his eyes was still there, how he pressed his lips a little closer together, flattening out into a thinner line. There were no jokes left to come from his lips as he was so like to do and there was neither any lightness in his soul. Maybe the two of them were prone to the darkness, the tug and the pull from the pool of no light that called so very sweetly for them to let go, to release all humanly possession and go...

...down.

Charles did not reach out to comfort him but neither would Donnie have expected or wanted it. It was something unspoken. He took his comfort in different ways, stolen, greedy snatches as if he thought that even that was something that could be taken away from him at any given moment. But that was okay, it was going to be alright. Something would come of it, Donnie could come up again, something grasping him and drawing him back and up as if a thread was rising up through the top of his skull, straightening his back and lengthening his spine.

The muscles worked out the stiffness, bones cracking, and Donnie groaned, although it was, for once, one of relief and not pain, despite the remaining ache in his gut. The rain pattered down lightly, alternating between light drops and teasing at the fact that it may just very well disappear altogether, but neither paid it all that much attention. Clothes could be washed. Or be bought anew.

Clearing his throat, Charles tipped his head back to the dark sky overhead, cloud sweeping across the scape of the city, what loomed above them. There wouldn't have been any stars even if there had been no cloud cover, what with all the lingering light and visual pollution. There was no doubt that their endeavours, at least in part, had contributed to that in some way, shape or form.

"What happens next?" Charles said quietly, almost as if he was afraid of the answer. "We've...taken care of things. For him. So, what happens now?"

The words hung hollow in the air between them, the man that they'd known lingering elsewhere, buried in an unmarked grave. They both knew that having one with the headstone and the ceremony would have, of course, only drawn attention to things, the scheme and the management that they now had to take over, take on themselves or lose everything that John had worked for. Perhaps the drug empire was one of the few things indeed that he'd worked for in his life or maybe still he'd solely come into a fair bit of luck during the course of it: there was no way anymore to ask John what he thought about that either way.

What now, indeed? Donnie pressed his lips together, tipping forward onto his thighs, elbows digging in, water streaming down the back of his neck as his collar shifted, releasing a tiny stored pool. The collar of his coat was angled just wrong, allowing the rain to pour into his shirt but the increasing sense of dampness was hardly something that mattered to him in the moment, expression hollow and dead, the only sounds around him seeming to come externally rather from anything internal.

His breath? Just what right did he even have to that anymore? He didn't need to keep breathing. It would be much easier just to stop, to not 'do' anymore. It had just been John keeping him going some of the time, keeping him from the darkness that was now, very much, overhead, him sinking and the surface crawling ever further away by the second. It wasn't as if either that anyone wanted him to break the surface ever again -- why, in fact, he could actually list many off the top of his head who'd want him dead, who would have been quite happy to never see him or the likes of him ever again.

Down and down and down. Rain ran off the end of his nose and the cigarette hung soggily from the corner of his mouth. The tobacco was still comforting, however, the taste of it thick and heavy on his tongue, reminding him of that first cigarette that he'd shared with John so many years ago. It seemed like an age ago, a time when they were underage, even, and doing all sorts of things that kids really shouldn't have been getting up to when they had no time for a real childhood, and yet he still remembered every last moment as clear as day. Sitting on that stone wall in the park, a park not entirely dissimilar to the one they were in right then and there, musing over the facts and events of the day, coming up with grand schemes that would, ultimately, go to pot in the face of a distinct lack of motivation. There was only so much that kids could do, after all, when they didn't have much of a home to go back to and there were the daily concerns of just getting by to attend to first and foremost. Only later did Donnie delve more deeply into technology, a secure lock providing sanctuary, and uncover his true calling, the respite in lines of code.

"We keep going," Donnie said, although his words did not even convince himself. "It's all we can do. You know that."

"Jeez, some pep talk this is, Donnie," Charles said with a roll of his eyes that was, at least, a shade more typical of his brother. "You really know how to light a fire under a guy, you know that?"

"Oh, shut it."

Short and sharp for him -- no one was hardly acting like themselves anymore -- Donnie mocked Charles too with a roll of his eyes directed straight back at him, grunting under his breath. That could have been a chuckle, if he'd allowed it out, but that was a little something that he was not quite ready for at that moment. Maybe later. Maybe never. It would come if it was going to and that was all that it had to do.

And yet there was nothing that 'had' to come, nothing that 'had' to be. There was no one there anymore to tell them how they were well enough supposed to live their lives -- not that either had really listened to him all that much anyway. Sure, Donnie had been roped in and drawn in to a plan that he was now stuck with but it was more a parting gift in the hindsight of the fact, if he tried to look at it at least a little pragmatically. The rest of the world could go get stuffed -- who cared about what they thought? It had rarely ever been a concern of Donnie's regardless but the knowledge that he no longer had to even think about that, concern himself one little bit with the world he'd willingly forsaken, lightened his soul.

Not much: just a bit. But it was enough.

The ache was still there and yet he could hold it lightly for the moment, turning his head back and up to the cooling kiss of rain, a ghost's whisper against his lips. The moments that would never again be flooded in close, clustering and hassling, begging for the painful tug of attention, but it could not be all the time and he had to push them away, gently redirecting them to a purpose and form that could be put to something of a better use.

Chin up now, dear.

Against himself, Donnie smiled, lips pressed so tightly together that anyone looking at him could have been forgiven for mistaking it for a grimace. Something of him was still there then. Maybe what people said about people living on in memories meant something after all. Of course, memories could never be a replacement for the real thing, the man who had given up his very life to protect the one that he actually loved, but it was a little comfort at least, the first bandage wrapped around a heart that would come to need many, many more to fully heal in the end.

Charles looked at him strangely, eyebrow crooked at an odd angle that didn't quite seem natural.

"What are you thinking?"

"I know what we have to do."

Taking a deep breath, Donnie shot him a look that promised more out of the corner of his eye, trying not to think of or even consider just how unsure he must have looked in the moment. He felt unsure. He felt very unsure indeed, in fact.

"We have to keep going. No, not just like that," he added quickly, holding up his hand to stave off Charles' interjection. "Just... It's what John would have wanted. Everything he's done, he wouldn't want to see that laid to waste."

"No, just thinking that is too fucking poetic for him."

And Donnie laughed at that, the sound releasing from him in the absence of tension, breath rushing out as he wheezed and scraped for breath, moisture prickling at the corners of his eyes all over again. But this was a traitor of his own body that could be allowed in, tears in laughter, and he leaned against his brother, shoulders bumping as it infected Charles too, their hollow mirth echoing softly out into the cold and damp of the night.

That night, a plan was hatched. It was, perhaps, missing something without John there to steer and direct the wild craziness of it but it was still a plan and it gave them hope, life, something to cling onto. Maybe that was all a person needed in a time of true need but they would find the 'something more' if needs came to it. All they could do in the interim as they shakily returned to Donnie's home and cleared a space in which to work was consider how to keep things going, what could be delegated and what could be left to those in now Donnie's employ alone, the head of an empire that he had never once considered that he solely wanted for himself.

No... Other brothers may have schemed to topple their partners, stealing all for themselves and their glory, but it would never have been like that if John had lived. They had a different kind of relationship altogether and that in itself was perhaps what had made them work so well together.

Leaning over paperwork, the hidden door to his computing quarters (thus dubbed as that was what John had teased him with) open and all within ready for action, Donnie looked out over plans and plots, John's scrawled handwriting, things that they should really have encrypted. Now, it was a remnant of who he had been and even Donnie could not help but allow his lips to perk up just a little in memory, the good times warming his extremities if not his heart, the cavern of his yawning chest.

There were things to be done and there was only one way to go and that was forward. Always...forward. Charles nodded, in for the long haul, regardless of his feelings on the matter. Their family, their kind of family, after all, had to try to stick together where they could. Donnie took a deep breath with just a little vodka to wet his tongue, tension strained across his cheekbones.

This one's for you, John.

He had work to do.