Shatter

He felt empty.

Not lost, not depressed, not even a bit sad, really. Just completely empty of all emotion.

Which also meant he was empty of pain. He was empty of the hurt that had plagued him for so, so long. He was empty of love as well, but there was nothing left to love, was there? He was empty. He felt nothing. No pain, no heart-wrenching sadness, no sobs that tore at his throat and lungs as he gasped for air in the midst of the water coating his face-

Nothing. He was empty.

He could live with that.

“Gee?”

There it was again. That damn word refused to leave him alone!

He didn’t answer to it. It meant emotion. It meant pain. He couldn’t let that happen to him now, not when he had come so far, not now that he had learned to block out its harmful connotations.

“We…we can go see them…i-if you want,” came Mikey’s quivering voice. He tried to sit completely still, maybe become a statue, a work of art, a piece of the art he loved so much-

He must have nodded without meaning to, an involuntary motion he never meant to make, because suddenly he was standing, and walking, and then sitting again, with the road flying by him outside the water-streaked windows. He listened to the rhythmic pounding of the car’s windshield wipers as they followed their only path, cresting and falling like ocean waves, back and forth, back and forth.

Back and forth.

Back and forth.

Bob and Ray.

“It’s okay, Gee,” Mikey said in a voice as soothing as he could manage. “Stop crying. It’ll be okay.”

Gerard had stopped listening the moment Mikey said the word again. Crying? He wasn’t crying. Tears were streaming down his face faster than the raindrops pelting the world outside, but he wasn’t crying. It was just an instinct, something necessary, not voluntary. He just had something in his eye.
That’s all it was.

“How come my hair’s not all curly like yours?” asked the young girl, her mouse-brown, loosely wound pigtails bouncing to one side as she tilted her head in confusion. He smiled and gave a soft laugh, eyes lighting up in the warm glow, a combination of dancing firelight and sparkling, rainbow-dotted Christmas lights from the tree filling one corner of the room.

“Because I’m not your dad,” he replied gently. He motioned to a man sitting nearby, relaxing in a chair just a few feet away and relishing his few short moments of a vacation. “He is.” The girl gave a sour face they all tried not to laugh at.

“I wish you were my dad,” she said with a mixture of a frown and a pout on her face. Her eyes suddenly widened, and she leaned forward to whisper something in his ear, a secret question she wanted no one else to know. “Are you Santa?” He only laughed again.

“Trying to steal my kid, Ray?” the other man asked suddenly, rising from his place and walking over to them. Both of the men tried to conceal their laughter, as did the other two nearby. The sound quickly overpowered the lighthearted chatter and sounds of clinking dishes emanating from the kitchen.

“Of course,” he responded with a laugh. Frank picked up the little girl and set her on his shoulders, then began to run around the house making various airplane noises. Ray had to wonder if he was laughing harder than the girl; he couldn’t tell because the combined laughter of the Way brothers was overpowering the sound. Frank finally halted in the living room after a full minute of running around.

“I want Uncle Ray to be the plane now!” the girl said in the midst of a fit of giggles. “His hair is poofier.” Gerard and Mikey burst into laughter all over again, practically falling on top of each other in hysterics. Ray tried not to laugh at the two brothers or the request. Frank’s smile wavered for a single moment, then he set the child back on the ground.

“Alright, you bunch of five-year-olds,” Jamia said from the kitchen, trying to hide her own laughter. “Dinner’s ready.” They all filed into the dining room, though Gerard lingered in place, taking a quick glance at the wall behind him. His face fell as he remembered, and for just a moment he believed his blue-eyed friend would walk through the front door.

“You coming, Gerard?” Mikey asked. Gerard blinked a few times, startled out of his reverie. He sat there, staring at the picture before him, never wanting to forget it. It was gray, and bleak. It was beautiful. Perfect.

The rain outside was falling much more softly now, settling into a fine mist, as if trying not to disturb the cold world around it, though the gray stones would hardly have noticed. The moisture-laden air swirled in through Mikey’s open car door, replacing the heated oxygen in Gerard’s lungs with a frigid counterpart, only to be warmed again by his rhythmic, slow breathing, so similar to the pattern and the names he did not want to think of or hear. One dark figure interrupted the fog-like weather, something standing shorter than him. Its outline started at this height, then cascaded down to two other levels before dropping to the ground completely, like a raindrop jumping from cloud to house to tree…to nothing.

Nothing. As empty and free as his mind, as his thoughts. He thought of nothing, and, for the moment, he was content. Nothing made things easier. Nothing helped him forget the pain. Nothing allowed him a freedom he had so desperately begged for over the years.

He finally found the will to open the heavy metal door and slipped out into the rain, as silent and unnoticed as a raindrop itself. Almost immediately the picture changed; the one dark form separated into two, and as he neared them with his footsteps leaving crushed blades of glossy grass in his wake, two became three, divided exactly where the line of the silhouette dipped closer to the saturated ground.

He stopped a fair distance away, and Mikey stopped next to him. And still Gerard commanded his mind to remain empty. The water on his face was not tears. It was just the rain. A few harmless raindrops that had chosen to congregate on his pale, drawn skin. That’s all it was.

“Where’s Uncle Ray, daddy?” asked the girl. Gerard felt his heart crack and crumble at the sound of her voice. It was definitely older, but still young, still so very young and undeserving of hurt.

He couldn’t think about the hurt. He had to be empty. He had to be nothing. He would only ever be empty. He would always be nothing.

“He’s in Heaven, sweetie,” Jamia replied softly, trying to restrain her own tears as much as any of them.

“Then why’s his name right here?”

Jamia turned her face into Frank’s shoulder so that the girl, who was now facing them and glancing up at them quizzically, did not have to see her mother cry.

“Hey, Frank.” Gerard stepped forward and interrupted what he knew would soon be an awkward silence. Frank’s face lit up immediately.

“Hey, Gerard,” he said with dancing eyes, trying to keep his enthusiasm to a minimum. Gerard felt one corner of his mouth twinge upwards in an attempted smile. But it felt empty, for he was empty, and the small flutter of happiness dropped back into his heart like a lead weight.

“Gerard!” the little girl cried suddenly. Gerard smiled fully - genuinely - and knelt to her level, holding his arms out in request for a hug. She raced toward him and embraced him.

“Hey, Leila,” he said as he gently hugged her back. She seemed so small, so fragile and breakable in his arms. He carefully pulled away from her. “How old are you now? Nine?”

“Nine and a quarter,” she corrected, smiling proudly. Gerard gave a small laugh and stood, facing Frank.

“Come on, Leila, let’s go back to the car and dry you off,” Jamia said, taking the girl’s hand and completely erasing any trace of sadness from her look. Frank smiled as they walked away, managing a light laugh. It died out soon after, though, when his eyes met Gerard’s. He had never seen them so empty and cold. It frightened him into stunned silence.

“I missed you, Frankie,” Gerard said softly. His voice cracked when he said Frank’s name, and Gerard suddenly embraced him, and emotion was suddenly spilling from his sullen heart as though it had been locked there for years. He knew he was crying now, and that there was no way he could keep the hurt and the pain inside himself that way. He knew it would tear him apart.

Mikey stood off to the side, glancing down at the ground and allowing his eyes to travel over the stones. He shuffled one foot in the grass uneasily, watching tiny droplets of water spray up from his shoe and become lost in the rain. He was glad they got to see Frank again, but sometimes it made him a little jealous of their friend. Gerard hardly ever spoke to Mikey anymore; and yet, here he stood, spilling his heart out to Frank. Mikey just gave a sad little sigh and continued to stare at the ground. Two arms suddenly encircled him as well.

“Hi Frank,” he said in a muffled voice, trying not to laugh at the sound. Gerard managed a smile in spite of the broken feeling that had settled over him. Frank pulled away from Mikey, leaving one arm around his shoulders, then wrapped an arm around Gerard’s shoulders and pulled him closer.

“I missed both of you guys,” he said with an exaggerated sigh. Gerard almost laughed, but it came out as a series of hiccups. Frank just hugged him even tighter.

“How long has it been?” asked Mikey, breaking away from the trio to face both of them. Frank gave a smile in spite of the mood.

“If you listen to Leila, nine and a quarter years,” he said in the lightest tone he could. He suddenly realized his mistake, but knew there was no way to fix it. The damage had been done. “Since…well, since-”

“Since Bob died,” Gerard broke in suddenly. “Since he was killed. You- you might as well j-just say it, F-Frankie.” His words were beginning to shake. “Because it d-doesn’t matter. It won’t ch-change anything.” He sniffled several times and took a few deep breaths, but only just managed to keep control over his voice. It was reduced to nearly a whisper so he could do this.

“It won’t change anything because it doesn’t matter to the person who killed them,” he said slowly. He couldn’t meet their eyes for fear they might see how much it was hurting him, murdering his own heart, to say it. “Because he has no heart and he doesn’t care about how it hurts us. So we shouldn’t pretend it never happened because it did, and there’s nothing we can do about it, and nothing will ever change, and he’ll just keep going, killing us off one by one until none of us are left, and then he’ll go after our families and-”

“Shut up.”

The words were quiet and nearly unheard, but the sound was enough to bring Gerard’s ramblings to a grinding halt.

“Frank?”

“I’m sorry,” Frank said quickly. “It’s just that…I don’t want to think about it, y’know? It…it still hurts a lot…”

But Gerard had long since stopped listening. He was still looking at Frank, and his brain was processing the words and spitting out random responses for him to use, but something about the whole situation didn’t seem right to him. He couldn’t tell exactly what because his mind had become empty once again.