We're All Just Victims of a Crime

****A/N: I didn’t feel like boring you all by doing endless chapters of Mikey and Gerard arguing over Gerard leaving while Frank laid unknowingly in a coma. It seemed superfluous and I know a lot of you already hate Gerard for leaving. So I’m going to speed things up, mainly so I don’t get bored with this story and end it. Because then all of you would probably track me down and kill me. So... I digress and on with the story.****

3 Months later

Mikey’s POV

Waiting, waiting is definitely a pain in the ass. Especially when you don’t know how long you’re going to have to wait. That’s when you get restless, because you don’t have an end that you know is coming up. Thankfully, I had one of those now, well in a way I had one.

Frank was doing good enough now that they could take him off of the medication that they had been using to keep him in the coma. Now we only had to wait for him to wake up, we knew he would, it was just a matter of when. So again, like I said, waiting is definitely a pain in the ass.

I hadn’t talked to Gerard, its not that I hadn’t tried, because I had quite a few times, he just wasn’t there. Whether he was ignoring me or had just decided to put all of us behind him, I didn’t really know. I just knew he was in College, and that was it.

But back to the waiting part, the big part of these last few months, because when Frank woke up, I was the only one there. In a strange way, I found it ironic that I was the one there, remembering the last thing I had said to my brother. I was doing homework, I had been stopping by everyday after school mainly because it was on the way. But like I said, I had been doing homework when I heard something, it sounded more like a dry squeak then an actual word.

I closed my book and looked over at his bed, watching it for a few moments wondering if I had just imagined it until his left hand lifted off the bed and he began prodding and pulling at the bandages over his eyes. I had always wondered why they had just left them there.
“Frank?” his fingers stopped moving.
“M-Mikey?” I got up and ran over to him pulling his hand away.
“Don’t pull at it, I’m going to go get the nurse.” I turned around and paced to the center station where there were two nurses working on papers.
“Frank woke up,” Tonya, one of the nurses that I had gotten to know over the months looked up at me. Nodding she shut the file and followed me back to his room where he was sitting up now, with the ripped up gauze laying in his hands and he was just staring off into the distance.
“Frank, I told you not to pull at those.”
“I can’t see.” he didn’t sound scared, or worried. More like he was confused.
“I’m going to go get Dr. Torres.” she whispered and ran out. I looked back at her with a dumbfounded look, thanks a lot for just leaving me. I looked back at Frank who was busy pulling at his eyelids with a frown.
“Mikey... w-why can’t I see? Did they do something to me?” his hands began searching, tugging at the chords.
“Where am I?” his voice began to quiver and I went to him, grabbing his arms again.
“Just calm down ok? You’re in a hospital but the Doctor is coming so just... don’t pull at anything.” I explained with a sigh.
“But its so dark, Mikey I don’t like this.” he whimpered shaking his head.
“I wish there was something I could do Frank.” he was quiet for a moment, his gaze cast downwards only to look at nothing before his head shot back up.
“Gerard! Where’s Gerard?” I frowned. His arms went limp, and I realized I was still holding them.
“He’s not dead is he? I didn’t screw up again did I Mikey?” leave it to Frank to worry about someone else while he’s sitting blind in a hospital.
“No, he’s not dead, at least I don’t think so. I haven’t talked to him in a while. He kind of.... he’s distant.” I nodded to myself, I would explain it to him later. Right now he was pretty fragile and he was getting ready to find out that he was never going to see again.
“Mr. Iero, its good to see you up.” I looked over my shoulder to see Dr. Torres standing there with his folder.
“I’ll go call your Mom and let her know you’re up.” I let go of his arm and walked out without giving him a chance to protest. I stepped outside and walked towards an empty hall while pulling my phone out and called Gerard instead. It rang a few times, and then continued to ring till finally I got his voicemail.
“Hey its me. Look, if you even listen to this I need you to call me back. Its important Gerard... really important and I’m really getting fed up with you ignoring my calls. If you don’t call back then fine, don’t bother coming back home. But like I said, its important, its uh.... its about Frank.” I hung up and looked down at my phone before calling Frank’s Mom. Instead of it ringing forever, she picked up by the second.
“Michael?”
“Hey Ms. Iero, I just wanted you to know that Frank woke up. Dr. Torres is with him right now... he knows he can’t see and he was starting to freak out.” by the time I had finished there was dead silence and then that annoying tone telling me she had hung up. I figured she was on her way and headed back to his room where Frank was staring blankly at a wall and Dr. Torres was gone.
“Frank?”
“I’ll never see again.... Mikey... what am I going to do?” he whimpered, tears slipped from his eyes and I sighed pulling him into a hug.
“Don’t worry about that. We’ll come up with something, besides you don’t need your eyes for everything.” I stated trying to get him to look on the bright side.
“How will I get to school? How can I even learn in school if I can’t see what I’m doing? I’m fucked Mikey, positively fucked.” he cried.
“No, you’re not. You can take classes Frank, we’ll get you a sight dog or whatever the hell they call them. You have me, your Mom, my parents.”
“But not Gerard.” he mumbled, sniffling as he wiped his face and nodded his head.
“Forget about him Frank, you don’t need him.” he shrugged his shoulders.
“I hope you’re right about that. Thanks Mikey.”

Gerard’s POV

I opened up the door and shut it behind me, looking over I saw Bob sprawled out on his bed.
“Dude your phone went off about ten minutes ago.” he stated picking up his head.
“Uh, thanks?” I dropped my back pack on my bed and went over to it, unplugging it from the charger I went to my missed calls and saw Mikey’s name. I frowned laying it back down and went back over to my bag and started to take my things out.
“Are you always going to ignore him?” I looked back over at Bob and shrugged.
“Well that’s one way of solving it I suppose.”
“He’s just going to yell at me. Its what all of his voicemail’s are anyways. Calling me an idiot for leaving and everything.” he got up from his bed and walked towards my desk picking up my phone and started messing with it.
“What are you doing?” I frowned.
“Seeing if he’s yelling at you again.” he stated before pressing it to his ear, his eyebrows nit together as he listened carefully before he looked at me.
“Dude, call him.” he held the phone out to me.
“Why?” I sat down and looked at the shiny black object in his hand.
“He said it was about Frank. Isn’t that the guy you brought to the music shop that one time? The one that was in the car accident?” I stood up and snatched the phone from him and quickly called Mikey.
“Hello?”
“Mikes?” it was quiet for a few moments.
“Oh, finally deciding to actually call back?” he mused.
“I don’t want to hear it, just tell me what happened to Frank.” it was quiet again, only longer this time before he sighed.
“He woke up, he can’t see and he’s not handling that very well.”
“But he’s okay right?”
“If by okay you mean crying, thinking his life is ruined, that you don’t want anything to do with him, then yeah he’s doing pretty damn good.” he stated with an edge in his tone.
“It’s not that I don’t want anything to do with him Mikey. I told you that before I left.”
“I remember what you told me, I just fail to understand how you leaving is helping him. Especially when he has to worry about living his life now impaired, yet he still finds himself worrying about you and wanting to know if you’re the one that’s okay.” I didn’t know what to say so I stayed quiet and waited for him to talk again.
“Look... will you just, I don’t know stop being so stubborn and thick in the head? He needs you Gerard, I can help him but I’m not you, I’m not the one he wants. If you ever cared, if you love him you’ll come home Gerard.” he finished and I looked down at the ground with a frown.
“I’m sorry Mikey.” I replied quietly and hung up letting my phone fall to my lap.
"What did he say?" I looked over at Bob who had made his way back to his bed again.
"Frank woke up, and like the Doctors predicted he can't see. But uh, he said that he needs me and that if I love him I would come home."
"Are you going back then?" I looked back down at my phone, seeing my frowning reflection.
"I.... uh... no."
"But don’t you love him?" I looked back up at him and sighed.
"I don't know."