Angels of the Silences	Angels of the Silences

 by MR

  

 Author's website: http://unhinged.kixxster.org

 Disclaimer: Not mine, never will be, but it seems a shame to just let
them sit around gathering dust.

 Author's Notes: Written for the DS Flashfiction Threesome Challenge (not
THAT kind of a threesome, you perverts-get your minds out of the gutter!)

 Story Notes: 

 

 

 Angels of the Silences
 By MR 

 She watched him tonight as she had so many nights since her death, unseen
and silent. In the beginning she'd wondered why it was he never seemed to
realize she was there, never sensed her presence, but she'd eventually
come to accept it as part of being allowed to remain behind when she
should have been going forward. She was waiting for something, but she
didn't know what it was. 

 So she comforted herself with the fact that he'd been too young to really
remember, or perhaps that he remembered only too well and was unwilling to
confront that knowledge. And she'd watched him grow from a vulnerable
child into a solemn young man who had, as she'd feared, followed in his
father's footsteps. Feared because he wasn't his father and would never
be. He was too different, too isolated. He spent far too much time living
in his head instead of the real world. 

 When Robert had died she'd assumed her waiting was over, until she
realized he couldn't see her either. That their son could not only see him
but talk to him had made her unaccountably angry for quite some time.
Robert could sense her, she knew, and she'd gradually come to realize that
just as she was waiting for some indefinable moment in the future, so was
he. The Powers that controlled their destinies was not to be trifled with
or denied, and in the end she had, again, resigned herself to waiting. 

 And she had followed him to Chicago, watched as he befriended Ray
Vecchio, and had been happy that, at long last, he seemed to have found a
friend, someone who accepted him as he was. That this wasn't always the
case she'd been willing to overlook. She knew her perception of such
matters were colored by how she felt towards him. 

 Then Ray Vecchio had disappeared from his life, to be replaced by another
man who bore the same name but was as different from him as day is from
night. And that was when she began to see something blossoming in him that
she had, till then, been only partially aware of. 

 She supposed it should've made her angry or disappointed, though unlike
his father she'd never had the time to harbor hopes of a daughter-in-law
and grandchildren to dandle on her knee. She'd realized when he was still
quite young that such a road wasn't his desire. The incident with Victoria
had only further strengthened that belief. Something inside him cried out
for love, true, but it wasn't the love that had drawn her and his father
together. He needed the love of an equal, someone who understood him
totally, good and bad, someone who would fathom the life he lived because
they lived on that was similar. 

 She'd known immediately this Ray was such a man, despite the presence of
an ex-wife, despite his short temper and the openness that made him, in
every way, the antithesis of her son. Opposites attract, and never moreso
than now. He was strong where Benton was weak, weak where Benton was
strong and, most important to her, loved him with a fierceness that almost
matched her own. 

 So she had watched as it bloomed, unacknowledged by either of them,
though always present just below the surface. When Ray was in danger, her
son was the first person he sought out. When they seemed on the verge of
ending their partnership, it was her son who finally backed down, admitted
he had been wrong. They're banter amused her, because she saw only too
clearly that almost everything they said was a admission of their feelings
for each other. 

 She had been thrown off-guard by Ray Vecchio's reappearance, confused
even further by his ties to Muldoon. Things had happened too fast, much
too fast, and she would never forget the look on her son's face as Holly
threw the ugliness of what had occurred at him. She had wished, in that
moment, that she possessed the power to kill him where he stood for
hurting her boy in a way that would never truly heal. 

 It was odd that her next clear memory was the mineshaft, standing there
watching as Robert had come so close to betraying everything he stood for
and believed in. And wondering that, in the end, it was Benton who saved
them both, who persuaded his father not to take a path from which there
was no turning back, who subdued Muldoon. 

 It was when Robert began to fade that she'd known. This was what she'd
waited for all this time; this was what had been left undone. The reason
neither of them could move onward. The realization amazed her, even moreso
when she realized that Robert saw her now as she came forward to take his
hand. 

 And then she'd heard the word. A single word, one she hadn't heard in so
long she'd almost forgotten how it sounded. The word spoken by the small,
frightened boy that was still, after all this time, trapped inside her
son. 

 "Mom?" 

 She'd turned to him then, seen the tears in his eyes, realized he could
see her, knew she was there, and was flooded with such an overwhelming
tenderness she believed for a moment she was simply going to break apart
like a soap bubble. She wanted to speak, to explain to him how she'd been
there all along, that he'd never been truly alone, but she couldn't get
the words to come. In the end she had simply reached up and touched his
face, marveling at how her little boy had grown into such a beautiful
young man, letting that one, lingering touch convey everything she'd
wanted to tell him. 

 And he'd understood. She saw that clearly in his eyes. He knew the truth
now, and in knowing would be freed from the burden that had weighed on him
so long and heavily. Free to live as he wanted. 

 She'd smiled then and turned to take Robert's hand, now as solid in her
own as real flesh and blood, and together they had turned their backs on
the world of the mundane and gone forward into...what? She hadn't really
known, but she wasn't frightened. The long waiting was finally over, and
she felt only a deep, abiding sense of peace. 

 But in the end she had returned for one final look. And so she stood,
silent and unseen again, on the very fringes of the campfire, watching as
Benton explained what'd happened to Ray. His Ray, she thought, and found
herself smiling. From this moment forward, their lives were intertwined
just as she and Robert's had been. 

 And Ray, God love him, Ray accepted it all, never questioned, never
suggested (well, perhaps obliquely) that Benton had taken a harder hit on
the head than he'd thought. He'd just sat there, solid and comforting, and
when Benton began to speak of seeing her again, of feeling her touch him
after so long, he tried to turn away, to retreat, but Ray wouldn't let
him. Beautiful mercurial Ray, who instead pulled him close, wrapped his
arms around him, and let him cry it all out; all the pain and sorrow and
loneliness that were inside of him until finally he was quiet, relaxed and
drowsy, in Ray's arms. 

 "Caroline?" 

 She looked at Robert standing next to her, marveling at the change in him
since the afternoon. The weary careworn man in the mineshaft had been
replaced by the man she'd fallen in love with so long ago. She wondered,
briefly, how she appeared to him, but decided it didn't matter. Nothing
mattered now. They had stayed the course and it was time to move on. 

 She smiled and held out a hand to him. He took it, and with one final
glance at their son and the man he loved, they stepped forward into the
unknown. 

 FIN 

End Angels of the Silences by MR: psykaos42@yahoo.com

Author and story notes above.