Till Human Voices Wake Us
Fandom: Dreamcatcher.
Author: Epigone.
Pairing: Henry/Jonesy, mention of Pete/Jonesy.
Rating: PG.
Warnings: Language.
Archivists: Ask first.
Summary: The aftermath of that week in the woods.
Date Written: September-October 2004.
Author's Notes: Sometime in late 2004 I watched the horror movie Dreamcatcher on a whim, mainly because it featured two actors from Band of Brothers. Against my will, I saw slash. I read the book, I raved about the slash there, too, I swore not to write it, I wrote it. It happened too fast for me to do anything about it. In any case, thanks to Meredith, who is such a gracious fandom friend that she went out, bought the book, and saw the novel shortly after, and then kept asking to see what I was writing. Here it is.
Feedback: Can be sent to kmaru1701 [AT] hotmail [DOT] com, and is much appreciated.
Till Human Voices Wake Us
There are days and days gray and glazed over when Henry wanders through the aftermath of that winter like a tourist through ruins, footsore and detached. In the beginning the native impulse for suicide revisits him almost hourly, whenever he pours a glass of water or eats a meal or goes to bed or wakes up. The first time it returns is a few nights after they come out of the woods; he puts his tongue to that old toothache and is stunned by the concussive jolt. It almost takes his breath away. But that�s the entire object of it: to take his breath away.
So there are days and days spent in limbo, waiting for something to give. He�s still coming out of those woods, and it�s like emerging from a great depth too fast: he gets the bends. �Doctor, heal thyself,� he sometimes thinks wryly, when he thinks; or sometimes there�s the fractured foreign tongue of death gibbering beneath the surface, and he thinks �Starving hysterical naked� or �Suicides have a special language.�
Other people�s words, other people�s voices. That's what he thinks, when he thinks.
One evening brings a break in the long, gray, unshuttered tunnel of days � Jonesy comes out of a session with their psychiatrist white-faced and wordless. The military bastards running their rehab won�t let them leave the base for weeks yet, and they don�t have any specialists in reconstructing joints, so Jonesy normally spends his nights sweating and suffering with his broken hip, on a moderate morphine drip. But that night he doesn�t make a sound, and in their shared room Henry watches the pale upturned circle of his face until morning.
Henry gets up before first light, because that�s something about living in the world: you have to keep getting up. He throws on a robe in a memory of modesty. There�s no real need, because by this point they�re in their own private apartment, without constant surveillance.
The stairs creak with his descent. He has gained nearly twenty pounds here, and they make themselves known daily in little ways: less space between his belly and his belt, less ease in maneuvering. The stairs complain under this bulk, this bulk new and strange after he has lived weightless for so long, with the promise of an end. Now he knows that he doesn�t have that out. He has Jonesy, whose hip is in pieces and whose mind nearly was. What�s he going to do, slit his wrists one afternoon in the bedroom with the Army-issue shaving razor? They�ve had enough murder.
He makes a pot of lousy coffee and scalds his hands on the first cup. Standing before the sink in his robe and bare feet, he feels something skim the edge of his mind. Silence. Then it comes back with greater insistence. Jonesy�s thought arrives drugged and amorphous and clammy, cold as the kitchen tile, but Henry recognizes it.
Oh, Jesus, H.
He drops his mug in surprise. No, he�s not really surprised, he reflects numbly as he looks at the intricate shatter pattern on the floor, like a relief map of their vague twilight lives. He�s not surprised because he never honestly believed they�d lost this power. Synchronization has something to do with it. The synchronization of their terror in the woods forged it anew.
He heads for the stairs in a stupor, his mind swinging crazily on a hinge between then and now: as he takes the stairs two at a time, he�s remembering a night from years ago, one of their first at Hole in the Wall. The night they woke from a shared dream of killing Richie Grenadeau. He�s remembering how they stumbled out into the snow, barefoot, single-minded. The Beav fell to his knees and vomited. Jonesy�somehow always the most empathetic of them all�was still on his feet when he, too, helplessly threw up, stopped there against the sky with his red hair and white face and slack arms. In a way it didn�t even matter whether or not they�d really caused Richie�s death. What mattered was that they knelt together around Beaver at the foot of a skeletal tree, and that Henry, tasting bile, put a hand on Jonesy�s bare cold shoulder.
He has that same feeling as he fumbles with the doorknob and lurches into their bedroom. He can barely make out Jonesy�s upright outline sitting awful and prophetic on his bed, but when he reaches for the light switch, Jonesy�s voice howls between his ears.
don�t turn on the light DON�T TURN ON THE�
�Okay!� he all but sobs, half-crazy with the pain of it, his scalp crawling the way it used to when Duddits cried. �Okay, okay, okay, Jonesy.� He doesn�t even realize that his legs have buckled until he finds himself on the floor, leaning on the bed with Jonesy�s crying dreams coursing through him like blood.
After a moment it stops. He lifts his head cautiously.
I�m sorry, H, I didn�t mean to do that, I just woke up....
�It�s okay,� Henry breathes. �What happened?�
�That shrink�Gerritsen? Yeah, Gerritsen�he hypnotized me today,� says Jonesy, not even seeming to notice whether he�s communicating in words or thoughts.
Henry tries to come up with a comfortingly clinical response.
�Many people find that unsettling, but actually it�s an accepted��
�No. He, he recorded me. When I was under. He talked to � something in my head, the leftovers of Mr. Gray. It was on the tape. He, it�� and here words give out. Henry gropes his way along the bedspread, blind, unnerved, along the intravenous tube in Jonesy�s arm up to his hand. He takes it in his own and thinks he can feel the clench of Jonesy�s throat, the burning of his eyes, the compression of his chest. Pushing deeper, he gets a sense of the heavy, dull, askew sensation of the shattered hip, the friction of the break, and the pain licking like flame around the edges of the morphine. Then Jonesy dumbly tells him the rest, straight through the conduit of their minds.
Henry hears Mr. Gray, his sterile tones, clipped and�yes, this is what the expression means�utterly alien. But it�s not, not really. It is so familiar that he reels, and his hand tightens on Jonesy, because it is Jonesy and beyond that it is the fragmented but so-elegant language of death that he has been picking up for years.
It�s me, says Jonesy. Oh, Jesus, H, somewhere in there it�s still me. I�ve got someone�s fucking voice in my head.
�I know,� says Henry. And he does. Hello darkness my old friend, I�ve come to talk with you again. �I know.�
He lets his cheek rest against the mattress and holds Jonesy�s hand. His psychiatrist�s instincts serve him well, for after a time Jonesy�s fingers relax a degree.
�It�ll be okay,� Henry says tentatively, testing it out. �You�ll put it away, on a shelf you never use. And you�ll keep going.�
You believe that?
Jonesy�s breathing has taken on a ragged quality.
�You all right?�
Fine. I�m awake now. So it hurts.
�Goddamn the Army,� Henry hisses. �What, they can�t even bring in a surgeon?�
Quit being such a doctor. I asked you a question.
Henry drops his hand distractedly to check the morphine drip. �Are you��
Stop being such a shrink. This is what we call avoidant behavior. There�s a ripple in it like laughter, this time � or pain. Maybe a little of both.
Henry pauses.
�Yeah, I believe that. You survived being hit by a car. You can survive this.�
Jonesy seems to toy with this thought. Henry can feel him turn it over in his mind, examine it like a jeweler with a suspect stone.
�Is it true,� Jonesy asks out loud, hoarsely, �that I died in the ambulance?�
�Yeah.� Henry picks up his hand again. �And nobody gets to die more than once.�
The next thought comes to him hard and hot, free of the drug, perfectly formed:
Why won�t you talk to me this way anymore?
And Henry almost says, Because that�s a trick of childhood. Because two of us are dead. Because I am afraid of you. But he doesn�t.
He says, Because�
And then he is in Jonesy�s head and Jonesy is in his, and it�s burned clear between them and through them, like Pete seeing the line. His nails press into Jonesy�s hand and he tilts his head back, shuddering, and the bottom of himself seems to give way so that he�s in freefall, tumbling into Jonesy. He doesn�t know if it�s the physical contact or simply the full renewal of this channel between them, but he hasn�t felt anything like it since Duddits helped them find Josie Rinkenhauer: ravaging and thrilling, turning him inside out so that he is all mind open to the world. The tears start in their eyes in unison. Remembering how Duddits was confused by this phenomenon, Henry says dreamily, Eye-oo ine?
Why you cryin�?
Jonesy withdraws at that. Henry has the impression of physically settling down, as if at the tail-end of a narcotic. He comes to rest back in his body, piece by piece, and lies there in the dark listening to his voice move whistling in the emptiness, wind over wasteland, far away.
�God, Jonesy, what was that?�
�You know what that was,� says Jonesy, and there is both outrage and tenderness in the lines of his face. �And no. No. I�ve got a wife. I�ve got kids.�
And I, thinks Henry, have no claim on you but childhood. Childhood, and that week in the woods.
Jonesy sends him a brief, blurry image: the four of them on graduation day. Pete, mad on summertime, catching Jonesy at the edge of the parking lot, under the board with Josie Rinkenhauer�s face on it. Pete, gangly, all odd adolescent angles, bending Jonesy backward over his arm and kissing him. Pete, sharp and rough and unsubtle, cultivating a field of stubble on his jaw, but with a mouth that is surprisingly soft. The smell of new-mown grass and the baking tar of the lot and Pete�s sweaty hair. The slow arc to the ground of the two mortarboards Jonesy has been carrying, Henry�s and his own.
(What was Pete thinking then, what did he want? Did he want what Henry wanted, even then, even before they really knew the right way to look at a girl or the careful footwork of seduction? It doesn�t matter. Pete is dead.)
As if spurred by that incursion of an uninvited future, the memory reenters real time. It moves forward to how they laugh the kiss off boyishly, and how Henry lopes up behind them, snatches up his mortarboard, and says, There�s grass-stains on this. If I have to pay for it, I�ll do more than kiss you, Gariella.
How Jonesy says, Don�t make promises you can�t keep, fuckwad.
�I get it,� Henry murmurs. �I�m not that dense, I get it. We won�t do it again.�
�I�m sorry, H,� says Jonesy, gently running his thumb along Henry�s hand, the one that lost two fingers to frostbite. Jonesy�s thumb traverses the stumps slowly, tracing the loss. It occurs to Henry that this is the first time that Jonesy has initiated physical contact, and in that part of himself that can still at least feign professionalism, he knows that�s a good sign. Like a rape victim, Jonesy is reclaiming the minute mechanics of his own body.
�I�m sorry,� says Jonesy again. They both hear the echoing thought and know that he means I wish we could. But he doesn�t say that.
Still there are days and days, and their slow unfolding into nights, but almost imperceptibly they accrue and become months. Henry and Jonesy leave their apartment for separate houses. That�s another thing about living in the world. You have to go back.
They see each other whenever they can, but now there�s an implicit understanding that they won�t be alone together anymore. Carla, Henry thinks, all but has ESP of her own. She recognizes a threat to her marriage, as potent and seductive as the drugs once were for her. She lets the kids call Henry �Uncle� and puts him on the Christmas-card list and fills his plate when he visits, but he will catch her watching him at stray moments, staking out her turf.
And Hole in the Wall is a singed circle in the wilderness somewhere; what Jonesy the academic once called �scorched earth.� �You did good, Henry,� he said as they sat on his porch in the creeping chill of a new winter: a beer in one hand, the other idly massaging the vestigial twinge of his healing hip. �You followed historical precedent. If you gotta give ground, you burn the hell out of it.�
It�s August now. They haven�t seen each other since then.
After work, Henry usually spends his evenings in the front room of his own house, watching the night roll tidally in. The only sound is the crickets under the windowsill creaking in concert. He sits in an overstuffed easy chair with a book in his lap, a few beers in his stomach, and no one else�s voice in his head. His thoughts are heavy and anesthetized, but recognizably his: wind over wasteland, far away. Death no longer comes calling, with his guttural dialect, his endlessly black eyes, his foul sweet smell of fungus and ether. He doesn�t need to.
The phone on the coffee table squats in silence. Sometimes it rings, but less and less often. Defiant, Henry will dial out to hear Jonesy�s voice filter across to him from miles away. It will sound hollowed-out, as must Henry�s own � some lost resonance, perhaps in the registers Pete and Beaver�s voices once would have reached � but it will still emerge thinly through the static of the connection. They�ll talk about work or politics, and at some point Jonesy will usually say, Come visit sometime. Let�s have another barbecue. You doing something for Thanksgiving? Stay over Christmas; we�ll lend you a stocking.
Come home some night.
But that�s something about living in the world: there will be nights and nights and nights, but you will not come home.
He dials one night, teetering on the edge of tipsiness. He expects to pour out a maudlin-drunk phone call of the sort Jonesy delivered shortly after his accident. Instead, he waits for the whine of the line, and Jonesy�s warm voice, and the lingering strange accent Mr. Gray has left on certain words; and then he says, �Hey, Jonesy?�
�H? What is it?�
�Didn�t I say a while back that nobody gets to die more than once?�
�Yeah.� Jonesy agrees cautiously, as if loath to remember that night.
Henry listens to the long line stretched taut between them, which he will call and call, sometimes as often as weekly.
�Oh, Jonesy,� he says to it quietly. �I lied.�
~Fin~
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