WRITING: Gravity (Chapter 4)

[phantastus]

Title: GRAVITY
Chapter: 4 (Like Maple Syrup)
Author: phantastus
Fandom: Silent Hill
Rating: G
Genre: Horror/Drama (Romance in this one, I guess? James/Mary obviously)
Main characters: James Sunderland, Laura
Summary: Utterly exhausted, James and Laura arrive 'home', which isn't really home so much as a haven of memories, both bitter and sweet.
Notes: Chapter 4 of my ongoing, obscenely long SH2 fanfic. Set directly after the Leave Ending, but contains heavy implications of In Water. The fic is mirrored over here along with eight subsequent chapters, but I will be posting the most up-to-date edits here for the time being.
This story was initially written (and is still in progress) for NaNoWriMo 2009.
Disclaimer/Warnings: In keeping with the source material, this fanfic depicts events and situations that may be considered violent or cruel. This chapter includes concepts such as:

-written descriptions of physical wounds
-mentions of terminal illness
-FLUFF FLUFF FLUFF FLUFF FLUFF that is doomed to end in tragedy jesus christ

Please read at your own risk.

Recommended Listening:
-Old Piano
-Rumpus Reprise


Chapter 4: Like Maple Syrup




In hindsight, it had probably been a very bad idea for him to be driving, especially with someone besides himself in the car. Concussions, alcohol consumption, and mental instability were all things that could interfere with a person's ability to safely control thousands of pounds of metal and rubber moving at high speed down wet roads.

But perhaps something up there had decided that he'd suffered enough for one day, because at no point did he accidentally send them spinning off the road or smashing into any trees or other cars (of which there were very few), despite the length of the drive and the fact that they were spending most of it in silence, save for the music filtering out of the radio.

And it was a long drive.

His initial trip to the town had been smudged over by his brain the same way Mary's three-year sickness had been; it had become nothing but an increasingly-monochrome blur of passing trees and buildings that had seemed over in almost a flash, ending abruptly with him standing there in that tiny bathroom and staring at his own shadowy reflection in the mirror. The last time he had driven to Silent Hill and actually been aware of the entire journey had been years ago— half a decade to be exact— and had become little more than a series of snapshots in his head. Of clear mountain air carrying scents so different from the smell of home, of giddy laughter as Mary's hands clumsily tried to catch empty, crinkled bags of gas-station peanuts before they blew out the wide-open windows of the moving car, of late-afternoon skies wearing buttermilk dresses hemmed at the bottom with sun-drenched pines. Of the sense that they were embarking on some great adventure.

Of course, now he was returning from one, and with nothing to see but the headlight-illuminated road ahead of him, he was suddenly, crushingly aware of what a long trip it really was.

Maybe if Silent Hill hadn't been so far away, he'd have kept his promise to take her back there one day before she died...

"Hey, James?"

Taking his eyes off the road, James glanced over at the passenger's seat, where Laura had finally peeled away from the window and looked back over at him. They had been driving for so long that for a short time he'd almost thought she had fallen asleep, but she'd just been staring at the passing scenery, uncharacteristically quiet.

"Yeah?"

"Before I left town, I saw a lotta police cars. D'ya think they found Eddie?"

For a moment, James's throat tightened, as did his fingers around the steering wheel. No, Laura didn't know... couldn't know what had happened. But there was that conversation between them that James had overheard in the bowling alley... That's right. Laura might not have known about the part James had played in Eddie's fate, but she had known that the police were looking for him... that he'd been running from them.

"Yeah... probably."

"D'ya think he's okay?"

James, dry-throated, hesitated before answering.

"... No. He's dead."

Laura fell into surprised silence and James looked back to the road, trying not to let the discomfort show on his face. He wasn't sure why he told her things like this. Most people would have just lied. But for some reason, just as he couldn't bring himself to lie to her about Mary, he couldn't bring himself to lie to her about this, either.

When she spoke again, there was a slight edge to her voice.

"... Did you kill him?"

"... Yes."

"Why?" This time, there was no hesitation. It was asked in the typical blunt fashion of a child.

James looked back to her, then took a deep breath. It made his ribcage ache. "I... I didn't want to. It was..." Taking one hand off of the steering wheel, he rubbed distractedly at the bruises around his neck as he tried, feeling sick to his stomach, to find a way to explain to an eight-year-old girl just what had become of Eddie Dombrowski.

"... Laura, have you ever seen that movie, uh... Old Yeller?"

"Huh? No," Laura said, wrinkling her nose in the standard fashion of a kid raised on fast-talking cartoons and sitcoms, being confronted with something that was before their time. "It's about a dog, right? Are you sayin' Eddie was like a dog?"

"I— no. Never mind that. Eddie was... he was sick, Laura."

That was the best way he could think of to say it.

She narrowed her eyes, and then said the words he'd been hoping she wouldn't.

"So was Mary."

James swallowed hard, which made the flesh around his neck hurt even more. He looked away from her again and stared straight ahead, keeping his eye on the spot where the headlights' shine ran out. When he finally spoke again, it was in a very small voice that sounded pathetic, even to him. It was hardly more than a croaked whisper.

"He was a different kinda sick than Mary..."

Maybe it was the way he had said it, or maybe it was the way his shoulders had taken on a vulnerable hunch, but the accusing vibe left Laura's stare slightly, replaced by something unreadable. She watched him a little longer and he could feel her gaze on the side of his face even though he wasn't looking at her.

After awhile he spoke up again, still unable to fully get rid of the weakness in his voice.

"I'm sorry... he was your friend too, wasn't he?"

"... Sort of," Laura said, turning her gaze back to the window. She lapsed into thoughtful silence for a second or two before adding, "... He was okay, I guess. I met him just outside of town and we walked in together. An' later he shared his pizza with me."

James's stomach, which had been mutinously reminding him every so often that it was going to start eating itself if he didn't put something of substance into it soon, made its presence known again by gurgling miserably. Somewhere in between all the mixed feelings on Eddie that were swirling around in his head, it occurred to James that he actually felt a little bit annoyed that he hadn't been offered any of that pizza when he'd walked in on that conversation.

But then, considering the locale, he hadn't been particularly hungry at the time...

And, considering it was Laura, Eddie probably hadn't 'offered' it so much as she'd just shown up and demanded it.

So maybe it was a moot point.

"And he didn't treat me like I was a little kid. I liked that. ... But I knew there was somethin' fishy about him," Laura said finally. "He said he'd done somethin' bad."

James did not say anything. Just nodded. It was a barely-perceptible motion, hardly more than inclining his head slightly once or twice. Nodding for real made his head hurt too much.

"... Besides," said Laura in a forced airy tone— once again, she was blowing it all off as though she wasn't bothered. Like with Mary, as she'd walked through the graveyard. Like with Todd. "He was just a big gutless fatso."

The previously-growling stomach clenched. Something about that just didn't sit right with James... hearing that. After what had happened down there in the meat locker, and why...

"Don't talk about him like that," he said, voice raising slightly. It wasn't much of a difference— certainly nothing like the time in Brookhaven when he'd yelled at her. Right now, he couldn't have yelled even if he had wanted to— it was all he could do to just raise his voice above a murmur. But it got the same reaction anyway. Laura's eyes widened and she turned her gaze back over to him, pressing back against her seat unsurely.

Flicking his eyes towards her briefly, James's brows creased upwards and he added, with a sigh and a gentler tone, "I know it... seemed that way. And I guess... I guess it mighta been a little true. But just... don't, all right? What happened to h— nothing about what happened was fair. To anyone."

Then he looked back to the road, a little uncomfortable under the force of that stare. The fact that there was fear in it didn't make it any less forceful. If anything, it only made it worse. That fear sent stabs of guilt through him like javelins.

She didn't say anything for awhile, but when she did...

"Are you gonna kill me, too?" came the blunt, accusatory question, shocking him thoroughly for the second time that day.

"What?! No, I— no!" James took his hands off the wheel briefly and spread his fingers, choking back something like a laugh that had come sputtering upwards at the sheer, horrified surprise of hearing a question like that. Do I seem like that much of a monster? "I— Laura, I don't want to kill anyone. Ever again."

The fear had turned into a calculating glare with which she squinted at him, pulling one knee up to her chest and wrapping her arms around it. After a time, she said darkly, "Well, you'd better not."

"I won't. Why would you even think—" That question died in his throat, because the answer was obvious. A better one would be 'Why wouldn't she think that'. Feeling his throat tightening again, James bit his lip, clenching his fingers around the wheel once more. Then he sighed deeply. "... I don't wanna kill anyone. Not you, not... anyone. ... And, Laura, if anyone ever tries to kill you, you run away from them, understand? You run away and get help, all right?"

When she didn't reply, he reluctantly took his eyes off the road again, a little worried that he would still see fear in her eyes when he looked at her. It was a relief to find that it was gone. In its place was a calculating look as she stared at him from her spot in the worn passenger-seat of his car... stared at the man who had murdered Mary.

He swallowed, trying again. "You'll do that, right? Laura?"

After a moment longer of staring, she huffed and leaned back, folding her arms.

"You're real weird, James. You know that?"

"... Yeah, a little," James admitted, looking back to the road.

"I still don't like you."

"Yeah, I know."

~*~

By the time the territory began to look familiar, the sky was already starting to lighten again and James's eyes were itching from the urge to close and stay closed. He had no idea how he'd stayed awake all this time, or how much longer he was even going to. By all rights, his body should have involuntarily shut down to recharge a long time ago.

Laura had fallen asleep eventually, curling up on the seat and leaving streaks of mud from her shoes on the upholstery. A few years go, James would have scolded anyone for putting their feet all over his seats. It might not have looked like much now, but this old rattletrap had been his pride and joy as a teenager. A little piece of living proof that he wasn't completely useless, that he could provide for himself. But right now, he couldn't bring himself to care much. This car had seen worse things than a pair of muddy little shoes. So he let her sleep.

The sky was still gray as ever, but the highway was long gone. The road that the little blue car was traveling down now was winding, shady, and lined with lawns and houses nestled in patches of lush woodland. Not pines like the ones that had littered the slope leading down to Toluca Lake, but thick-trunked oaks and majestic maples. On sunny summer days, their leaves had always lent a soft, green-gold glow to the acorn-littered sidewalks. The houses were nice. Not mansions or anything, but still big— the sort with porches and trellises and big bay windows that looked out onto foliage-dappled yards.

He and Mary had not been poor. They hadn't been rich, either— James's job didn't pay well enough for that. But her parents were on the upper side of middle-class and they had made sure their daughter and her well-intentioned but not-too-prosperous fiancé had somewhere to live, a nice house in an equally-nice neighborhood. Somewhere good for raising kids. Not too rural, but not right in the middle of the city, either. The kind of place where there were trees to hang rope-swings off of and streets where the cars drove slow.

Mary's parents were the sort of people who thought ahead.

Of course, it had mainly been their money that had gone into paying Mary's medical bills, too... He'd helped as much as he could, but there was only so much a clerk's paycheck could cover.

As they had ceaselessly reminded him shouldn't have been the case...

"James."

The sleepy but still to-the-point voice caught him by surprise and he actually jumped slightly. He half expected the car to swerve, but apparently he was so tired, not even his startled spasms had enough oomph in them to actually change the car's trajectory. It was a blessing in disguise, he supposed.

"Huh? Oh— I didn't... know you were awake..."

"Where're we?" She was rubbing her eyes tiredly and stretching her legs, which were hardly long enough to reach the dashboard.

"We're— oh. We had... um. I gotta stop somewhere before we go anywhere else. I'll take you wherever you need to... um, go. But we just gotta stop here first, okay?"

It occurred to him now, far too late, that he'd never even asked Laura where she was supposed to be going, and that he might well have just wasted a whole night's drive if wherever it was happened to be closer to Silent Hill than it was to here. But she didn't seem too concerned as she squinted out the window critically at the passing mailboxes.

"Are we going to Mary's house?"

James swallowed painfully.

"Er... yes. Is... that okay?"

He wasn't quite sure why he was asking her permission on where to go in his own damn car, but it felt like something he had to do.

She didn't answer right away. Just kept staring out the window, and it was obvious she was looking at the houses now, trying to figure out which one was their destination. When she did reply, it was in a flat voice.

"Mary always said she wanted to take me home with her from the hospital to visit someday. She said I'd really love it there."

Something about the words made James's chest tighten as last autumn's acorns popped and crunched under the car's tires.

"... Well... I... I'm glad you're at least getting to see it now..." The words were as brittle and meaningless as dead leaves to his tongue, and Laura didn't even turn away from the window, which she was pressing her forehead against and slowly fogging up with her breath.

"... I wanted to see it with Mary," she murmured after a moment.

Maybe, somewhere, there existed the right thing to say to something like that. But James couldn't think of it. He probably wouldn't have been able to even if he hadn't been close to the keeling-over point. So he stayed silent as he flicked the turn signal on out of habit— though there was no one behind, before, or anywhere near them— and slowly pulled into the drive that had seemed a thousand miles away the previous day.

... It still seemed a thousand miles away.

He didn't need to tell Laura that they'd arrived— it was obvious. The mailbox, which stood like a lonely sentinel at the edge of the street and was crammed to bursting with weeks' worth of mail (at first, the sight made him panic— had he been gone that long? But then he remembered that the last time he'd strolled down that driveway to check it had been long before Mary had come home from the hospital for the last time...), bore the name 'Sunderland' in faded, peeling letters.

And up at the end of the driveway was the tall, white house that he and Mary had called home, dark-windowed and nestled in a bed of overgrown bushes and flowers of every shade of rich blue and succulent purple that they'd been able to get their hands on at the garden store downtown. But in the gloom of the overcast sky and the shadow of the trees that towered along three sides of the house, the flowers looked like they'd been painted from the same desaturated palette of grays as everything else.

The house had been brick-red originally, but Mary had insisted on repainting it. That had been one of the only things she'd wanted to change, though. They had both fallen in love with everything else about the house.

The paint was nowhere near as radiant as it had once been. Chips were missing everywhere, making what had once been a blinding blue-sky-cloud white transform slowly into a flea-bitten gray, like the coat of an aging horse. Like the car, the house had been less and less cared-for as the years had passed. In the later stages of Mary's illness, James had hardly been able to motivate himself to leave the house at all, much less play the hardworking handyman.

As the car pulled up to the end of the little strip of pavement, James's tired eyes flicked over to the clock on the dashboard. Six thirty AM. Too early for the neighbors to be stirring, which explained how lonely the neighborhood felt. On one level, that unnerved him... made him think of those empty, desolate streets in Silent Hill. But on the other, he supposed it was for the best. He wasn't sure he wanted to see anyone else right now. Or for anyone else to see him, for that matter.

Turning the engine off, James's eyes slid shut and he let out a deep sigh, just sitting there for a few seconds before forcing himself through sheer force of will to open the door and get out of the car. The pain in his ankle, which had tapered off to a dull ache during the trip, came back with a vengeance, twanging away like an over-stretched rubber band. Groaning, he took his weight off of it and just leaned on the car, inhaling deeply.

The air still smelled the same. It was thick, sweet and heavy with the scent of the flowers that Mary had insisted on planting in every spare inch of property that wasn't already covered in lawn. Honeysuckle, irises, lilacs, speedwell, cornflowers, purple aster, hydrangeas, tassel flower, and monkshood came bursting in walls of color along the edges of the yard and the corner of the house, around which he knew there were even more. A trellis threaded through with morning glories crawled up the side of the house and a small row of flowering trees that had been there when they'd moved in stood on the side of the driveway, where they would paint the pavement with little white polka-dots every year when they shed their petals.

Dimly, he heard the passenger door open and close as Laura got out of the car as well.

"So you and Mary lived here? she asked, and even through the standard tough attitude that accompanied almost everything she said, he could tell she was impressed.

"Yes..." he said, eyes still closed. Then he shook himself mentally and shut the door behind him, heading for the porch steps. Each one felt taller than the last as his boots clunked on the damp wood. When he reached the top, he felt like he'd climbed a lot more than three. A wave of dizziness washed over him and he swayed woozily, grabbing for the railing with one hand to steady himself for a moment before moving on.

The swing that hung by the rail of the porch creaked back and forth gently as he passed it on his way to the door. Dead leaves littered the seat— it hadn't been used in years. But he could remember the days when it had; almost every evening had been spent in it. The memory made his throat tighten, so he banished it. His nose was still plugged, so he needed his throat to breathe.

Unlocking the door with a series of rattles and clicks, James stepped into the hall and was met with the stale air of a house that had been closed up tight for far longer than it should have been. Hobbling in, his footsteps turned from hard clunks to muffled thuds as the wood became dusty carpet. He couldn't remember the last time he had vacuumed. What was the point? He was the only one who'd done any walking around in that house anyway.

As he dropped his keys on a mounted tray by the staircase— one that already served as a resting place for several mostly-empty medication bottles, one of them lying on its side with the last of its pitiful contents spilled around it— he could hear Laura stepping inside as well.

"Close the door behind you, okay?" he asked, limping slowly down the hall towards the living room. His voice fell flat against the heavy, oppressive silence of the house, which seemed to muffle his every sound like a mute on a trumpet. Walking through the house again had a distinctly dreamlike quality to it. After everything, being back here was... surreal.

The dim gray light filtering in from the outside somehow did little to penetrate the gloom, and in addition to the stale, musty smell that permeated the air, there was something else too. Indefinable. It wasn't a smell exactly... but if it had been, it would be the melancholy sweet scent of one of those old-fashioned hard candies, left in the corner of some desk drawer and forgotten about until it had melted and re-hardened over and over, crusting fast to papers and wood, nothing but a crumbly residue leaking out of a disintegrated wrapper.

It hadn't always been like that.

It had been...

"Perfect! Oh, James, it's perfect! See, I told you they'd find something good!"

Her voice, then clear and bright and unhindered by coughing or wheezing, had resonated in the small space of the entry hall, which was then unfurnished. She had turned to face him, a radiant smile stretching from ear to ear. It had been warm that day, and she'd been wearing a long, flowing blue skirt that rippled like water whenever she turned. Her hair had been pulled back— she had only just started doing that back then. Before, she'd always worn it down. James liked it better up.

He had been lingering in the doorway, running his hands up and over the wooden frame. It had seemed a little odd at the time, but he'd realized that he'd never actually felt old wood like this before. There was nothing like that in the apartment complex he'd grown up in, or the ugly, tacky little box of a house that Mary rented from her aunt— the house that he'd practically been living in ever since he'd proposed to her and finally convinced her parents that he wasn't secretly an axe murderer.

"Well don't just stand there, you big dummy. Come on!"

Grabbing his hands, she had tugged him inside and down the hall, laughing when his sandals snagged on the carpet and made him stumble. They had emerged into the living room, the bare walls of which were painted with great bars of golden sunlight from the backyard. The room was fairly empty besides an old couch, apparently left behind by the recently-vacated previous owners.

"It's a little bare, dontcha think?" James had said critically, rubbing his chin and keeping his face deliberately blank, only because he loved it when Mary put her hands on her hips and shook her head at him in combined amusement and exasperation whenever he stated the totally obvious.

"That's because we haven't bought the house and moved our things in yet, honey," Mary pointed out patiently, hands slipping down to her hips as she shook her head, wearing an arched brow and ever-so-slight smile.

Unable to keep up the blank face any longer, James had grinned as he slipped an arm around her shoulders and said, cheekily, "What things? You mean my three duffel-bags and the one dresser in your aunt's place that's actually yours?"

Laughing, Mary had planted an elbow in his side and nudged him away from her so that she could investigate the kitchen, ignoring his mock whines of protest.

"You know what I mean. Anyway, Mom and Dad said they'd help us furnish the place." Her head poked back out of the doorway after a moment. "Since we're too pooooor to afford furniture on our own, thanks to a certain somebody who couldn't hang onto the post office job."

James's grin had remained, both because this was long before he had come to realize how much of a failure he was, and also because Mary's good-natured ribbing was yet another thing about her that he loved.

"Hey, I promised I'd find something else soon, remember? Come back to meeee." He followed her into the kitchen with outstretched arms and a pitiful expression, which she playfully ignored as she investigated the taps.

"Look at the neat designs on the faucet, James," she gushed, paying no attention to the fact that her fiancé was currently feigning blindness and blundering in circles around the kitchen in a zombie-like shamble, searching for her. "Don't you just love old houses? I never thought we'd be able to find an affordable one!"

"I like any house with you in it!" Finally, his course of movement had brought him within bumping range and he draped his arm over her shoulders, nestling his chin against her neck. "Hi."

"Ow, James, you need to shave."

"I was too excited about coming to see the house! I woulda cut myself if I'd tried."

"You are a liar, James Sunderland. I had to drag you out of bed this morning."

James drew away as though burned, pressing both hands to his chest and looking at her reproachfully.

"That hurts my heart, Mary. My heart."

Mary looked over her shoulder and caught sight of what she had titled, early-on during their dating phase, his Kicked Golden-Retriever Puppy Expression, then clucked and reached out. She never had been able to resist the sad eyes. "Awww, come back here. I love you. Even if you are a lazybones."

Just to be a pain, James leaned out of reach, keeping up the act even though the corners of his mouth were starting to creep upwards.

"You promise?"

She let out an exasperated sigh. "Yes, James. Now hurry up or I'm gonna go out and look at the backyard and leave you here. And you won't get a hug. Because I'll be outside and you'll still be in here, being lazy."

"Okay, okay!" James relented, laughing as he leaned in for the promised hug and a peck on the cheek. "Lead the way."

The backyard was just as beautiful as the front. It had smelled like summer on that day, and the air had been humming with the whirring buzz of far-off cicadas. As they stepped out onto the back porch, which had a swing just like the front did, Mary let out an awestruck gasp and broke away from him, stepping out onto the grass and squinting in the bright light before spreading her arms and turning in a wide circle.

"Oh! Look— just, look how beautiful...!"

Sometimes when Mary got really excited, she forgot to finish her sentences. James thought it was adorable. And— even though he had spent most of his life trying so hard to be the cool, unflappable guy who wasn't bothered or impressed by anything, he was about two millimeters away from getting swept up in her enthusiasm and running out onto the lawn to turn in circles with hr.

He didn't need to, because she came back up onto the porch and proceeded to drag him out into the yard, herself.

"Look, see how the trees block out the other houses? It's like a secret little world, just for us."

The excitement was catching strongly now and James leaned down to run his fingers through the grass, which was just overgrown enough to make his bare ankles itch.

"I've never had a lawn before," he'd murmured, curling a few locks of grass around his fingers and tugging them. Mary ceased her spinning and stepped over to lay a hand on his shoulder.

"Well, don't pull it all up, love, or you still won't have one," she had teased, but her voice was gentle. She knew what he was talking about.

He looked up at her with a smile, then hauled himself to his feet and grabbed her hand, walking across the yard and pointing towards the back. Now the enthusiasm had started to leak into his voice.

"I think I can see an old birdbath back there! We can wash it out and fill it up with birdseed, maybe put it in the middle of the yard? You always wanted to be able to see the birds from your window." He looked over his shoulder earnestly, only to find her wearing that smile, the one he occasionally glimpsed on her when he caught her watching him when she thought he didn't know. It wasn't like her other smiles, and he still didn't know exactly what it meant. Only that no one but her had ever looked at him like that, and that it made him feel a little like his blood had turned fizzy. "... What?" he asked, with a slightly self-conscious laugh.

She shook her head slightly, also laughing— but with her eyes rather than her voice. When he still looked confused, she reached up to cup the side of his face with her hand. "There's what I wanted to see. You're always so quiet, I never know what you really think. I was worried you didn't like the house. You should let yourself look happy more often. It's cute."

"You thought I didn't like the house?" James started to get down on his knees, the grin returning. "If I get down and roll around in my new lawn for ten minutes, will that be proof enough that I like it?"

She had laughed, out loud that time, and pulled him to his feet again before he could start.

"That won't be necessary." She straightened up to plant a kiss on his lips before drawing back and beaming, "I would love to be able to see the birds from our window."

"Me too. Can I have another kiss for coming up with the idea?"

Mary pursed her lips and deliberated for a moment before finally deciding "Yes," and wrapping her arms around his neck.

James had been glad at that moment for the fact that the yard felt so cut-off from the rest of the world, because the length of time they'd spent standing there with locked lips might have made onlookers worry about whether or not they were getting enough oxygen.

When they finally broke apart, each taking a deep, exaggerated breath to compensate, Mary beamed at him.

"You know what else I'd love? Flowers."

"Flowers?" said James, one side of his mouth quirking upwards in slight confusion. "We always get flowers anyway."

"No, I mean flowers." She spread her arms. "For the yard. Lots of them."

"Flowers?" James repeated, but this time there was a scandalized note in his voice. "We're getting this great new house and you wanna make it all... girly?"

"Hey, you're a husband-to-be now. You're not allowed to worry about your yard looking too girly. What would make a yard manly, anyway? A basketball court?" When he started to turn on the puppy face once more, her tone turned pleading and she tugged on his shirt plaintively. "Please, James? ... I promise we'll plant some suitably-masculine flowers to make up for it."

"Masculine flowers? Those exist?"

"Of course they do! Like..." She paused, looking around the yard as though trying to visualize what it would look like once it was filled with the flora she wanted. "... Sunflowers. Those are quite manly. Like big lion heads."

"Sunflowers," James had said flatly, looking at her. When she didn't appear to be joking, he repeated again, even more incredulously, "... Sunflowers?"

"Yes, James, sunflowers," she'd said, smirking. "C'mon, Sunny, they suit you. They even go with your name."

"SUNDerland. With a 'd'. Not 'Sun'," James grumbled, but he already knew he'd lost, and also that he didn't really mind having lost. "Sunny is a girl's name."

Mary had slipped her arms around him while he griped, and proceeded to give him a squeeze, still wearing that amused expression. "And you're a big strong man, I get it. Fine, we don't have to plant sunflowers. But I would like plain old flowers. Please?"

There were times when she was better at the kicked puppy look than he was. So he rolled his eyes up and let out a big, long sigh.

"You already know I'm gonna say yes."

"Lots of them?"

"As many as you want." He paused, then added, lowering his voice a tad self-consciously, "As many as we can buy before your parents realize we're using their money for pretty plants and not nice, sensible furniture."

Before he knew it, he was on the receiving end of another kiss. He couldn't breathe, but he wasn't complaining. When she pulled away, she'd sighed in a mock-dreamy fashion, exclaiming fondly, "I knew I was marrying the right man."

The loud slam behind him of the door being shut with an entirely unecessary level of force jerked him out of that clear, warm, golden memory and back to the fuzzy gray present. He winced, regretting having asked Laura to close the door.

"Are you okay? You look like you're gonna throw up again," came her voice behind him, oddly piercing to his ears.

"I'm... hng, I'm fine, I just need to, uh... clean myself up." He paused, looking over his shoulder at her. She was standing in the middle of the hall with her arms folded, watching him the way a lioness might watch a sick gazelle. Unsure, exactly, of what she expected him to say, he coughed weakly and lifted a hand to gesture vaguely in the direction of the downstairs bathroom. "I just... you know, there's... um... are you hungry?"

"Um, yeah." She gave him a pointed glare. "I haven't eaten anything in forever."

Briefly setting aside his body's ever-growing need to have its wounds tended to, he turned to face her, leaning down as far as his aching back would allow him.

"How long's forever?"

"Um..." She deliberated for a moment. "... Not since Eddie shared his pizza with me."

"What?!" James straightened up again. That had been... well, he didn't know exactly how long. Time had passed strangely— sometimes in jumps, sometimes in slow stretches— in Silent Hill. But it had been quite awhile ago, he knew that much. "Why didn't you say anything while we were in the car? We coulda stopped at... at a gas station, or something!"

"Well, you were supposed to just stop anyway!" she replied hotly, her hands migrating to her hips as she leaned forward to give a little extra emphasis to her words. "I've never had to say anything before."

James stared at her helplessly, feeling inexplicably guilty. He had never been responsible for a child before. Was that something you were just supposed to know automatically? Did they give off... signs or something that you were supposed to look for? Should he have known this beforehand?

Laura stared levelly back, and then added, in a mutinous voice, "Mary would have stopped."

His stomach writhed at the sound of her name. Feeling sick, he turned away again.

"M'... m'sorry. Look, I just gotta... let me clean up and then I'll make something for you, okay?"

"Fine," said Laura, and without waiting for further invitation, she flounced off past him, into the living room. He watched her go, then sighed and gingerly opened the door to the bathroom where he knew the first-aid supplies were. And the shower. Oh, lord, did he need a shower.

The first thing he discovered, with a fair amount of dismay, was that the James in the mirror once more looked like he had just undergone a rigorous amount of facial rearrangement, followed by being run over by another army of bears. Except this time the bears had been drunk, and rabid.

~*~

Showering was agony.

Although the hot water had offered him a brief respite from the deep chill that had settled into his body, there was no escaping the pain. Each cut felt like a fresh wasp sting and the flesh on his stomach, now taut and an unhealthy shade of shiny blue-black like his eyes, pulsed and throbbed with agony every time he moved.

By the time the water running off of him and into the drain had gone from rusty-brown to clear like it was supposed to be, he was utterly spent and there was no heat left in the pipes, no matter how far he twisted the cold knob towards 'OFF'. Far from refreshing him, the heat had soaked the energy right out of him, and it was all he could do to force himself to get dressed again instead of just curling up naked in a corner of the stall and passing out.

The cuts, those that hadn't scabbed over yet, were still gooey and red, the flesh around their edges white and puckered from the water. They burned faintly as he stepped back out of the stall's steamy shelter and into the cold air of the rest of the house.

At some point while he'd still been in the bathroom, dimly trying to make his pants go from being crumpled on the floor to actually on him where they were supposed to be with one arm, and trying to fit a small mountain of first-aid supplies (as well as a leftover bottle of prescription painkillers intended for Mary) into the other, Laura had climbed onto the kitchen table where she now sat, watching him shrewdly as he hobbled lamely into the living room and all but collapsed on the couch.

"I promise this'll only take a minute," he croaked, letting his collection tumble out of his limp arms and onto the coffee table.

"Yeah right, Roadkill Panda," came the snappy remark from the kitchen table. James chose not to answer, because there was a very strong possibility that if he did, he'd have to add cleaning up whatever was left of the mystery-meat moonshine, because it was about to leave the safety of his stomach and wind up all over the floor.

As the girl in the kitchen accurately predicted, it took a lot longer than a minute.

He wasn't entirely aware of the order in which he'd done everything, only that the end result was him lying more than sitting on the couch, feeling like he'd just run a marathon. With his pruny, sockless feet propped up on the table and most of his lower back occupying the space on the cushions that was usually reserved for the rear, he could bring himself to do nothing more than stare vacantly at the ceiling for several minutes.

It was a good thing there had hardly been anything left in the bottle of medication, because now there was nothing left and James was pretty sure that if it had been full, he might well have put himself into a sleep he wouldn't be waking up from.

With a little blue ice-pack wedged between the back of his head and the couch (it was supposed to be refrigerated first, but that would require waiting, so he'd just tucked it behind the lump on his skull and hoped for the best) and a third set of fresh bandages now binding his ankle, middle, and brow snugly, the pain had started to slowly float away in a pleasant, medicated haze.

"Are you almost done?" Laura asked impatiently from the kitchen for what was probably the fifth time since he'd started.

"Y-yeah, I'm... I'm almost... finished. I'll... I'll be there in a sec. Just. Um... need 'nother minute. Yeah."

His lips felt like they'd been injected with lead. It wasn't the medicine— he hadn't taken enough to knock himself out. He didn't need medicine to do that. But despite his exhaustion, he knew he needed to get up— Laura had to have something to eat.

So in a few seconds, he would. For the moment, though, he ran his fingers gently over the fabric on the cushions. It wasn't particularly comfortable stuff— it was scratchy and had tufts of pulled-apart thread sticking out of it every few inches. But it had been theirs since they'd moved in.

He could still remember the honeyed light through which dust motes danced as they'd come back into the house, hand in hand.

"I think white would be a good color," Mary had been saying as they stepped over a slightly-elevated floorboard next to one of the doorways that would prove to be a spot of frequent tripping once they moved in.

"White? Really? You don't like the color now?"

"No, I mean, it looks fine, but it reminds me a little too much of rust. White is nice. It feels clean."

They had entered the living room once more.

"White it is, then. I've never painted a house before... shouldn't be too hard though, right?" He let go of her hand and hooked his thumbs into the unused belt-loops on his shorts, trying to look like the kind of person who knew how to paint a house. Wearing a good-natured but skeptical smile, Mary had quirked a brow at him before folding her arms behind her back and looking around.

"I don't know about that... I'm sure Dad would be willing to help you out with it."

"Aw, Mary, we oughta do it by ourselves! This is our first house— it's important!"

"All right, but don't blame me if you pass out from exertion."

"Excuse me?" He had straightened up, affronted. "Are you saying I couldn't handle it?"

Her response was to smile mischievously and point at his stomach, which had once been scrawny but had gotten noticeably more padded in the months since he had left the South Ashfield Heights apartment complex and moved in with her. He looked down.

"Wh— oh, come on! It's not that bad! You're hurting my feelings."

Seeing his pout and raising him a patronizing smile, she reached up to pinch his cheek.

"I'm also the one who feeds you, so don't complain."

This was not the desired result, so he pouted some more. Until something else grabbed his attention, anyway. "Hey, so... this couch, the old owners are just leaving it here? Does it come with the house?"

"Huh?" Mary turned to look back at the lone piece of furniture. "... Oh, James, you don't want to keep that, do you?"

"Why not?" He shot her a goofy grin.

"It's awfully ugly."

"But it's free!" he insisted. Old habits were hard to break. "Free is good, right?"

She had given him another one of those amused smiles and folded her arms. "You do know that my parents would gladly buy a brand new couch for us, right?"

"Yeah, but... it's free. And green."

"And ugly," she pointed out again.

"Yes," he agreed, planting both hands on the back of it determinedly. "It's ugly, it's green, and it's all ours."

Mary had started laughing at that point, putting a hand over her eyes.

"No! No! I'm seriously! See, look!" James insisted. "Look at it! Whether we keep it or not, the moment we buy this house, this couch is ours. And it'll be our first couch that we've actually owned, ever! As a couple! We can even do this—!"

With a slight grunt of exertion, he clumsily vaulted over the back of the couch and landed heavily on the cushions, causing the springs deep within to creak and groan. It also caused an unexpectedly enormous cloud of dust to come roaring out at him and, his mouth wide open to continue telling Mary just how exciting it would be to own an ugly couch, he immediately inhaled about half of it.

"And it—ihit'll be—HAUCGH! Oh GOD!"

Eyes popping wide open, he had doubled over, hacking and wheezing, onto his side.

If there was one thing Mary Shepherd-soon-to-be-Sunderland did not have that James was aware of, it was a single mean bone in her body. But what she did have was a sense of humor and the sight of her fiancé clutching his stomach and still trying to talk about how great the couch was despite the fact that he was coughing himself red in the face, was hilarious.

So she had steadied herself on the arm of the couch with one hand, clutched her own stomach with the other, and proceeded to laugh. A lot.

Lifting his head blearily from the dusty cushions as his coughing fit finally subsided, James had glared at her.

"H-hey! That wasn't funny!"

"Yehehes it was! You brought that ohon yourself!" Mary had giggled, waving a hand at him.

Letting out a few wheezy chuffs, he frowned at her and thought rebelliously to himself for a few seconds before making his move. "Fine! If you're gonna laugh, I get to laugh at you too!"

She let out a small squeal as his arms wrapped around her waist and yanked her down on top of him, the added weight sending another miniature dust storm up from between the cushions.

"James! You are—"

Whatever he was, he never found out, because her words had cut themselves off abruptly with a loud sneeze. This time, James was the one laughing (wheezily) and Mary the one making unintelligible threats through her sleeve, which she was covering her face with as she sneezed repeatedly. Planting a hand against his chest, she tried to push away and get up, but James just held on tighter, sitting up and scooting back so that his back fit snugly into the corner where the armrest met the back of the couch.

When she twisted around in his arms to give him a playful swat, he just planted a deliberately-sloppy kiss on her cheek just below the ear. And then leaned back, keeping his arms around her. When the dust subsided, she leaned back as well, a little huffily, but not without a smile.

They stayed there like that for some time, not saying anything. Just sitting, James's back against the couch and Mary's against his chest, watching the late-afternoon sunlight on the wall ripple as a summer breeze swayed the thick canopies outside.

After awhile, Mary did speak up. "So you do like the house, then. Right, James?"

"Of course I like it," James had said, a little surprised. "It's beautiful." He paused, and then, a little more quietly, added, "Just like you."

"Oh, hush... you always say that."

"I mean it," James said earnestly, leaning forward to rest his prickly chin on her shoulder. His brows had creased slightly. "Why? Is there... is there something wrong with it?"

She had turned her head to stare out the window at the towering maples, perfectly cut-out against the blue sky. "No! No, it's just that..." Letting her head fall back to rest on James's shoulder in return, she sighed contently. "I have to keep asking myself... is it even real? It seems too perfect."

"Sweetie, I'm pretty sure your parents would have noticed if the house they found for us was imaginary," James replied in a very serious tone, prompting another giggle from the woman in his arms.

"You know what I mean," she said, nudging him gently in the stomach with an elbow and forcing him to bite his lip not to grin. "I just mean that it's like... it's almost like... I never thought I'd find someone in the first place... much less someone who I could leave my aunt's hole-in-the-wall and spend the rest of my life in a beautiful house on a beautiful street with. I keep on expecting to wake up and find out that it was all a dream."

James had fallen silent for a few moments, musing over the fact that she'd managed, far more eloquently than he ever could have, to sum up exactly how he felt about it. About everything. There were still days when he woke up and was surprised to see her next to him. Still days where he felt like any moment, he would wake up and still be in Ashfield Heights.

"... Yeah," he finally said. "Me too."

Then, a mischievous grin had crept across his face and he had removed one arm from around her.

"I could always pinch you to see if you're awake or not, though!"

And with that, he had darted his fingers towards her side, causing her to shriek and twist in his grip, trying to glare through the involuntary grin crossing her face.

"IEK! JAMES! You're— you're horrible! S-stop that!"

"No!" he said happily, unrelenting. "I can't tell if you're awake ye— NO. No. No. NO!"

She had tugged her arms free and was trying to work her hands under his shirt so that she could retaliate in kind. Forced to abandon the attack, James scooted away with a distinctly un-manly shriek of his own, grabbing her arms and pulling his knees up as a shield between them.

"Okay, okay, okay! Truce?"

Successfully held at bay, she stuck her tongue out and clawed her fingers at him threateningly, but relented. "Serves you right, James Sunderland. You're just a sore loser who's scared I'd win."

"Nuh uh. I let you do that. ... But hey! We're both awake now! That means this's all real, right?" He had grinned up at her in hopes that she'd forget about the fact that he'd started this fight. As usual, she did— and leaned down towards him with a smile, a few stray strands of hair that had slipped free from her ponytail trailing across his face.

"I suppose it does."

"And I'm not really horrible, am I?"

"No, you are the wonderful man that I'm going to marry. You just do horrible things sometimes." At the pouting face that ensued, she just smiled again and added, "Buy me flowers and all is forgiven."

"Then it's a deal. I'll buy you all the flowers," James declared, slipping his arms around her back.

He had been hoping for another kiss, and was on the verge of getting one when, disappointingly, Mary's head had jerked away from his and up towards the entry hall.

"Oh, gosh, how long have we been here? I think another person was going to come look at this place at five-thirty. We should get going."

"Hmm, they shouldn't even bother," James said lazily, letting his head loll off the edge of the couch. "This place is gonna be ours."

Looking back down at him, she spoke in a fond murmur. "You really do mean that, don't you."

He had lifted a hand and drawn a finger across his chest. "Cross my heart, and hope to die."

"All right, I believe you," Mary said, getting slowly up off the couch. "No needles-in-eye necessary, though."

James sat himself up and stretched his arms before actually getting to his feet and slapping the dust from his shorts. "Good, 'cause it's a promise."

Offering his arm to her like he'd always learned a gentleman should, he led her back through the entry hall and to the front door, outside of which the blue Oldsmobile, then a lot shinier, was waiting in the white-spotted driveway.

"We're gonna live here forever. Until we're old and wrinkled and wearing really thick glasses and drinking prune juice by the gallon."

"I don't think I'll ever like prune juice."

"You will. We'll start out hating it and then it'll grow on us. And we'll sit on that porch swing and drink it and glare at kids going past the house on their skateboards. And I'll be going white like Pop. And— hm?"

A soft tug on his arm had stopped before he could finish his fanciful description of their future, and he turned around to see Mary standing in the doorway and looking up at him with the quiet, thoughtful smile that had made him fall in love with her in the first place.

"You promise?"

He had smiled back, feeling his chest swell with pride and confidence and joy.

"Promise."