So I told myself I was done with this one, but even after two (three?) years, I wasn't quite content with the first part. Originally when I wrote it, I stopped halfway, forgot where I was going with it, and did something new, and I've always doubted if it was as good as my original, lost idea. This, I think, evens it out more. Surprise!

Warnings: Loss, grief, brief, brief mentions of sex, maybe some light cursing.

Spoilers (duh): I think you know what I'll say here

Disclaimer: Here too

Enjoy!

His office had been the only place in this cavern of a home where he could breathe. Where the pictures could be turned up and down as his mood saw fit to drown in them, where the spilled ink and slowly ebbing bowl of caramels reminded him only of work, and reading, and long spells in which the only bodies to cross the threshold were the minute orbs of dust. Because he could choose to remember whether the weeks and days and hours away from the slightly battered mahogany desk were filled by his wife and sons, or if they were empty.

This was his. Truly his. The boys had never entered this room except in their idle, passing imagination. Luella had always waited for his reemergence, like an old bear hauled from its den by springtime.

This was pure of memories he couldn't stand to look at, not yet. Not while he had to learn how to breathe for the second time without inhaling his son's name.

This was his escape.

Here he inhaled only dust.

Now he was choking and he couldn't say why.

Luella sat across from him, like one of his students waxing dramatic over a late paper while he played the sympathetic professor, and for a moment he could almost keep her there at an arm's length, wanted to and it made him ill. Not his wife. Not mother to his children. Just a student who was a league from him, stony in her resolve to sway his principles but unable or unwilling to bite down the twinge of desperation. He savored the distance. Because he was in very quiet, forcefully restrained agony watching her wait for him to respond.

"I—," he tried, uncertain as to whether he was prepared to agree or shut down this idea that was too painfully, frighteningly real to be anything less than ludicrous. "What can this possibly achieve?" His voice was steady, polite and appropriately concerned for all that he nearly screamed at her. It impressed him every time. How easy this little show had become.

She did not look away. (She could only see through it, after all. But that wasn't the point. It wasn't for her.) "He isn't happy. He isn't…coping. As much as it goes against everything I've learned, he needs a change."

Martin wondered if he imagined the neither are you slipped between her sentences.

"He should be here." He wanted to add a reason. Like studies or work or even me. There were other reasons, reasons on her side. Every case report faxed to his office that felt like a series of hot slaps across his face, because he could see how much he flourished in the details of his notes. Lin's brief, succinct calls, the name Taniyama and a sound like a chuckle. Nothing came to his tongue but his damnable calm.

"Should he?"

He didn't know. "There's nothing we can do for him six thousand miles away." Too calm. He didn't want to be calm.

"Can we do anything at all?"

I don't know!

He'd shouted it. Dust tumbled off the books in little undulating waves with its force. He felt something crack in him, drain his being like the thick plasma of an egg through its own shell.

Quieter this time. "I don't know."

For a moment, a long, heaving moment, Luella stared at him. And for a moment, he could see his wife and he wasn't afraid to name her. She was exhausted, bleary-eyed, crumbling one second to the next, beautiful in a way that he clung to, while he tried to breathe around his heart jammed in his throat. Luella, his wife, mother to his children even if a corner of the picture was burned away. And God was it raw to have her so near and so lovely, ephemeral like when she reached for him in the stillness of their too-quiet home and made love to him for no more than the sounds of their breathing. As if something so fleeting could fill the space. He slid his hand across the desk's scratched and stained top, sought that hazy touch while he could stand himself to want it.

Her fingers curled around his with strength he could only pretend to have for now.

"Who else can really help him but himself?" she asked with a voice just as raw and scathed as this moment.

He swiped his free palm over his face. "I think we both know the answer to that."

But he's gone.

Luella had left him with a kiss on his forehead, lingering for the first time in months as he felt the tickle of air that meant she was breathing him in. Something swelled in him at the realization, like a sob but he only gripped her retreating hand all the tighter for a second more. He wasn't prepared to let her go, but then, he supposed, one could never really let go. These connections were chemical, a rewritten path in the mind with every touch, every exchange. Irrevocable paths.

His feet carried him away from his office, up the staircase worn by an entire genealogy of footsteps, down a hallway he'd walked too many times, to stop at a door. In those moments that blanked in his mind entirely with their explosive insistence, he could manage to open this door. He could inhale the staling cologne and aging books and barely perceptible hint of lingering. He would never cross the threshold. But he could force himself to look.

His shoes stirred a bursting of dust.

It wasn't quite a time capsule, at least, not in the deliberate sense. They hadn't enshrined their memories here, yet he felt them more overwhelmingly the longer he stood on the threadbare rug. Half of the room was neat; Noll had entered once in a fit of stoic confusion to look for a book, and spent nearly ten hours reorganizing the already meticulous alphabetization into something haphazard that could only make sense to him. The other half was tastefully disorganized, lived-in, Luella would say, despite the bitter cold of disuse. A few clothes scattered on the floor, papers stacked but not necessarily organized. The violin in the corner with its toppled-over bow, and he couldn't remember the last time he'd hear even one note from its untuned strings. He took in every detail with slow, numbing attention. The quilt with uneven stitching, the product of impulse and hobbies and something to do with Mother. The record player commandeered from the attic along with a stack of vinyl that had never been played. Cream-colored walls so plastered with maps and magazine pages and newspaper clippings that he only remembered the color from the day they'd chosen the paint.

An open closet door. He averted his eyes. Every detail, except one.

There was a dress shirt on the floor, he knew without looking. Left there after he'd pried it from Noll's convulsing fingers. Enough.

He walked towards the bed, smooth on one side and hastily straightened on the other. Hardly noticeable past the disarray of the quilt's craftsmanship. As he sat, his body prickled with a feeling like cold. One thought struck him, violently, and he shivered. He hadn't felt this mattress creak beneath him for almost eight years.

Daddy, I'm not tired. Always with a yawn, keeping himself awake because he could.

I'll strike a deal then. You sleep, and I'll tell you about the Windsor mansion. Luella may or may not have banned ghost stories before bedtime.

Wide eyes, followed by a mad struggle with sheets and pillows. He would inhale slowly, theatrically, like a countdown but before the story could even begin, the door would open, and Noll would edge in quietly to slip beneath the blankets too. It surprised him every time, this timing that he knew to be a beckoning only silent to him, though he should have expected it, just the way their rapt attention startled him. They never fell asleep before the story's end, no matter how he dragged it out. Only when he left, and he'd wait outside the door to hear them breathe quietly between themselves. Giggling too, out loud because they didn't need to hide for once. They were safe here, and they knew it. He relished the idea.

Martin clutched a pillow to his chest and didn't notice the soft cotton tickling his chin until a sob choked from his lips. Until his stomach clenched hard against the down-stuffed bag wedged between his arms.

They were supposed to be safe.

But then, he knew, more intimately and agonizingly and—I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry—and bitterly and constantly and—God, forgive me forgive me forgive me—and heavily and heavingly that you could offer no protection beyond your own weakness, and that you could never really stop the ones you love from leaving you.

He drove Noll to the airport three days later.

He drove back alone.

In case you needed a dose of depression this weekend...

I hope you enjoyed despite the feels, and as per usual, let me know if some glaring, god awful mistake pops out. Then I shall kill it with fire.

Thanks for reading!

-NHC