The Jigsaw

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I hope you'll find your answers below... and that you'll want more.
Enjoy!

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It Isn't Right

"Now, I want to know everything." Luke LaVay pinned Sarah to the wall of a public convenience cabin. "Who the hell are you?"

"Nobody," she hissed, trying to move her neck as far as possible from the sharp knife.

"I'm not a good cop, honey." Luke's eyes were evil. He wasn't joking. A good cop would never have survived as many years as he had. "And I work off-record. So my hand won't tremble when I cut your throat. You have ten seconds to make up your mind whether you prefer to introduce yourself properly or have NN carved into your gravestone."

"You already know my name." Sarah believed him. His expression was very convincing.

"I don't give a shit about your name. Who do you work for?"

"CIA."

"Are you fuckin' kiddin' me?" LaVay pressed the knife harder, leaving a thin red line on her skin.

She twitched and grunted quietly. "No, it's true," she answered nervously. "I swear, I work for the CIA."

"Give me a name."

"Ramson. George Ramson. He sent me."

"Ramson?" The man's face expressed pure surprise. "What—" he stammered, trying to gather his thoughts. "Fuck! What do you know about him?"

"Nothing. I work for him, that's all. He doesn't share his life with me!" she snapped.

"And you shoot people whenever he orders you to?" Luke jibed.

"No," she said quietly, her eyes skittering away. "Just this one time."

"Wow, I feel honored," the man sneered. "What makes me so special?"

"You...you killed my father." Sarah looked him straight in the eyes, her voice deadly calm.

"Your father?" Luke seemed confused. "Meaning who, exactly?" He’d killed more than one person in his life, very probably some fathers among them, and such a scanty description didn't tell him anything.

"A cop. Winston Blade." Sarah's pride made her eyes shine with a just rage. She felt superior to this scum that had shot her father and now was threatening her.

"Winston Blade," he repeated blankly, staring at Sarah with a strange expression. "So that's what he told you?" He smirked after a long while, shaking his head in disbelief. "Yeah, I should expect something like that. He never changes, that bastard."

"What do you mean?" Sarah dared to inquire, as the pressure of the knife lessened. "How do you know Ramson?" Something was terribly wrong here and she was starting to get lost.

"Are you kidding me? You were gonna kill me but you know nothing at all? Fuck, you're stupid!" LaVay laughed unpleasantly. "I worked with your father. I was his partner, idiot. And Ramson worked in the same department."

Sarah leaned her head back against the wall and closed her eyes. God, I’m so unbelievably stupid. Suddenly the ludicrousness of her action revealed itself in all its glory. She had wanted to find the killer so much, to administer what she’d convinced herself to be justice, that she had swallowed the bait as soon as the opportunity had arisen. It took a complete fool to believe Ramson just because she’d wanted everything to be true. And now someone was dead. Fucking someone. Not the killer—whoever he was—not LaVay, not Ramson, not even her. Someone accidental. And that made her a killer. What a cruel irony of fate.

"You're—who are you?" she asked hesitantly.

"It doesn't matter who I am now. The less you know, the better for both of us."

"So who—" she started. "If not you, then who?" Her face was nothing like a minute ago. All her pride and arrogance had been swept away by misery.

"I didn't say I didn't kill Winston." LaVay ran the blade down Sarah's cheek, marking it with a drop of blood, toying with her as she was poised at the edge of a breakdown.

"Tell me, please," she begged, feeling very, very weak.

"I didn't."

Sarah sighed with relief. Somehow it was good that it wasn't this man.

"You should ask Ramson once again who did it. Maybe he'll show you another target," LaVay jibed. "Or—well, I don't think so. You see, we have some unsettled matters. I guess it haunts him a lot more than I expected. I suppose it was all about me, all the fucking time. Your father was only to lure you into the job. So now—" he wiped the blood off Sarah's face and with a condescending gesture pretended to tidy her ruffled hair— "we'll make a deal." He smiled, but there was no warmth in his smile.

---

Simon sank down to sit on a bar stool near his brother. He felt upset and tired. They had had too many slip-ups lately. One after another, missions had been turning out to be messes that cost people’s health. Well, sure, they could consider themselves lucky to be still alive. What miserable luck it was, though. And that last action....

"He woke up," Simon said casually, although inside he was all tensed up.

Sam didn't even budge, just sat staring intently at the melting ice in his whisky. He was wearing yesterday's clothes, as black and unfresh as his hair and mood.

Did you even hear me? Simon smiled sadly and waved at the bartender. They were alone in the bar, nothing unexpected at three in the morning on a weekday. "The same for me," he said, pointing at his brother's drink. He rested his forearms on the counter and fixed his eyes on a matchbox he started to turn in his hands.

For a couple of days now he'd been anxious about Sam, but he couldn't go so far as to express it openly. It would do neither of them any good. Thus, he tried to approach the prickly hedgehog of a situation like a high-class diplomat.

"The doctors said he'd be okay, more or less," he started again.

As if he’d just woken up, Sam raised his eyes for a second and gave Simon a derisive glance. It was so difficult for him to stay focused. Too little sleep, maybe. Or too many dead bodies. Or....

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Something inside him had started to break, and all his efforts to determine what it was came to nothing. He couldn't find it. He couldn't fix it. Day by day, he measured the passing time with slow, painful beats of his old, tired heart, trying to force his head to establish perfect order in...everything. Or rather, anything at all. But the walls he had built to keep a tight rein on his simple world were crumbling dangerously and he had run out of cold, rational arguments to plug the breaches in his former outlook on life. The flood was about to burst the dam, and Sam knew he had no chance of enduring.

"Hey!" Simon's voice shook Sam out of his incoherent caricatures of thoughts.

"What?" he asked, irritated.

"You'd better get some sleep."

Sam nodded his head automatically. It was so difficult to—to—what was it? Ah, whatever. "Yeah."

"You should talk to Casey."

Sam snorted bitterly, his brain processing Simon's words with a visible effort. His fingers groped for his glass, which had lost its transparency a good half an hour ago.

"What happened to you, man?" Simon bristled, knitting his brows, and shook his head. He really couldn't understand Sam's weird behavior. "He needs an explanation, Sam, and not from anyone but you. It's obvious, for Christ's sake."

Sam shrugged lazily, twisting his lips in a vague expression that was hard to read.

"Just tell him whatever, so when he can stand up on his own again, killing you isn't the first thing he'll do." Simon's voice was unnaturally indifferent.

"I don't care. He might as well kill me. If he can, that wimp." Sam broke off and his chin jutted out in an expression of dogged persistence. Then he shook his head and snorted again. "You don't get it, Simon."

The blond man took a long moment to observe his brother attentively. "Fuck me," he said slowly. "He really got under your skin, didn't he?"

Sam only smiled ironically, his stare fixed somewhere behind the opposite wall. He said nothing, but mechanically raised his glass to take a slow sip.

"Why are you escaping, Sam? Control slipped, huh?"

"Give me a break. I’m not escaping from anything." The blood was starting to circulate in a livelier rhythm in Sam's veins. His brother decided to delve into the subject Sam so desperately seemed to want to avoid.

"Oh, yes, you do." Simon twisted his lips with disdain. "And it’s so fucking childish. You know, people go through confusing situations from time to time. It’s about time you finally found yourself in one, too. If it's any comfort to you, things like this are completely natural, and I am glad you’re finally showing your human side. Sometimes I’ve even doubted you still had one."

"Simon, you don’t get it." Sam gave his brother a sharp warning look that meant Stop right there! And think twice before you say another word. "Leave it," he muttered through his teeth, "'cause I'm extremely furious."

"About what?" Simon flicked a match across the counter, taking the words in his stride. "Because you suddenly care about someone?"

"I don't. And I don’t wanna. It’s so fucking troublesome."

"Riiight." Simon laughed a forced, unhappy laugh. Sam's attitude was so selfish it hurt. "Bullseye, you stupid bastard! You know what? You really are a snot. I think I’ve had enough of your sick ways." He flicked another match angrily and looked straight at Sam, who was mechanically rubbing his glass against his lips. "You only think about yourself. Always. You don’t give a shit that I do fucking care, all the time, even though it’s troublesome. That I'm here for you to listen to your troublesome bullshit. You’re not a damned god, Sam, so I don’t know how you could possibly expect to be able to control everything."

Regrets and reproaches filled Simon's cup of bitterness to the brim. In helpless anger he banged the table with his fist. "You can live with it. I do. Everybody does. But you never think of that 'cause it's too troublesome! That I'm fucking scared every time someone is shooting at you. That my heart aches when I see you go down and I can't do any damned thing about it. But you just don’t care—you’d like to stay in that fucking greenhouse of yours."

Simon threw his head back and close his eyes, breathing loudly. "Whatever. Your choice." After a minute's silence he added resignedly, "I’ll be here anyway, like a fucking fool." He shook his head and smiled sarcastically. "You know, sometimes I’d like to be you, to say 'Fuck it all!'. But then I think that would mean not being human."

"I do care for you." Sam's voice was calm, yet cold. A dry statement. They both knew it was true and they both knew that what Simon had said was just as true.

"Right, because I'm the only friend you have," Simon sneered. "That’s also kinda selfish, if you ask me."

"I don’t think so. I care about you the only way I can. I don’t know how to do it differently." Sam gave Simon an honest look. He felt a bit sorry for his brother, but the truth was that he could never understand people having this thing about mutual care, support, trust, and other virtual values. Why would anyone fight so hard for things that could only make them weak and frustrated? Like he was becoming now.

"I’m tired of you caring only about me," Simon sighed. "Get it? Start living, Sam. Let me be free. Let me be free of the burden of being irreplaceable."

"Bullshit." Sam was irritated by this dramatic monologue. "It's not something you can decide or change here and now. You are irreplaceable, like it or not."

"Maybe. But I don’t want to be the only one. I don’t want to leave you alone if—eh!" Simon stood up with a sigh. Passing Sam on his way to the door, he caressed his brother's hair and said, "Grow up, babe."

Sam's hand shot out to grab Simon's elbow in an iron grip. "You went one fucking bridge too far, mister martyr," he hissed, and his eyes narrowed dangerously as they fixed on Simon's shocked face. "You've had enough? Get lost, then." His words were as cold as ice. "I don't need your fucking noble sacrifice or your cheap pity. It's getting on my nerves. And maybe you should grow up and finally take on yourself all this shit I’ve always cleaned up so you could live unaware in your happy world, hoping we might be a loving family."

"Hands off!" Simon snatched his elbow from Sam's grip. "You think I don't deal with my own shit?" He pushed against his brother with his body, poking Sam's chest with an accusing finger. "What the fuck do you know?" His face expressed disappointment and derision. "Nothing! Nothing, 'cause it's troublesome!" He laughed bitterly and hissed venomously, "So how dare you judge me?"

"Judge? Don't make me laugh!" Sam’s sneer was ugly; he pushed Simon's hand away. "I don't judge anyone, in case you haven't noticed. I don't fucking care about judging people, and that includes you!" Now he pushed Simon away, and took a step forward. "Stop pretending you’re dying of worry that I'd be alone if something happened to you. What am I? Oh, right, a babe! I wouldn't manage without fucking mummy Simon!" Sam mocked, ignoring the resentment written on Simon's face. "First of all, it's high time you realized that it's me who usually has to fight for God knows whose fucking lives, although I don't give a shit about them—and second, I've been alone for almost all my fucking life! What difference does it make if I'm alone among the living or the dead?"

"You should have told me that earlier, you poor victim of fate!" Simon shouted, his face red with fury. "I wouldn't have gone so far trying to be there for you!"

"That's the point, you loser: you wanted to be there for me so much that you forgot to behave like I’m someone to you!" Sam took a wide swing with his left hand and with impressive strength he wiped the glass off the counter; it smashed against the dart machine. "Consider yourself dismissed, angel of social welfare. Drop your burden. Enjoy your freedom. And get out of my sight!"

"Sure, Your Highness! I wouldn't dare to harm your beautiful eyes—oops, one beautiful eye—with this troublesome existence of mine." Simon laughed cruelly and spat on the floor. With an expression of highest disgust he turned away and left, slamming the door with all his might.

"What the fuck are you looking at?" Sam snapped at the terrified bartender, who flattened himself against the wall near the cupboard.

"I—" he stammered out— "I'll call the police!"

"Geez, you're pathetic." Sam shook his head scornfully. We're on a fucking military base, idiot. "You're lucky you didn't hear any classified information. I'd have to shoot you." He squinted his eye and pretended to shoot with his two fingers, blowing a quiet puff as if blowing smoke from a gun barrel. Then he laughed and turned on his heel to leave, knocking over the stool on his way to the door. Outside he stopped and looked at the cloudy sky, his hands pushed deep into the pockets of his immortal leather coat. Simon didn't understand anything. He couldn't understand.

That moment, just before he’d shot Casey....

What he felt at that moment....

No, Simon wouldn't understand.

---

Thera slipped quietly into the ward. Actually it was a nice, cozy room, with yellow walls, probably supposed to have a positive influence on patient's mood. On a beside trolley, apart from a not very demanding book, there was a small bunch of flowers in a cup. It must have been one of the nurses; who else?

"Yo, man!" Thera started joyfully. "Nice to see you back."

Casey turned his face to the big black man and puffed through his nose, slightly amused. "Hey," he said, smiling faintly.

"How are you?" Thera moved a chair close to the bad and dropped his ninety kilos onto it with a loud thud.

"I don't really know." Casey’s eyes went blank and glassy. He’d been asking himself that question since he'd woken up.

"Hurts?"

"Dunno. I guess." Casey shrugged weakly. Of course it hurt. Especially when he moved. From his hips to his chest he was cemented into a strange contraption to keep his guts in place and equally strange, thick substances slowly flowed down from a few drips through the tubes tucked into the brace or whatever it was. He couldn't see how it looked inside, but he wasn't sure he wanted to see it anyway.

Eating normal food was not an option. His digestive tract wasn't able to process anything, so he was condemned to another series of IVs, pumped into his veins. And yet, that wasn't the worst thing he had to deal with.

With his stomach patched up with some cosmic inventions, full of foreign substances to stimulate his body's functions, with his heart and his head helpless and lost, he found himself in a dark abyss.... Oh, all right: deep shit, basically.

Thera took a long look at the convalescent. "It's not your body, is it?" Casey looked miserable. His pale skin was furrowed with the violet strings of veins, and his bloodshot eyes had an empty look.

"Hm," the prone man snorted ironically. "Or is it? My stomach kinda blew up, so it's really weird that it hurts, huh?"

"Chill out, man." Thera knitted his brows. For a such miserable creature, Casey sure was loud-mouthed. "You're on so many painkillers they could cut your head off and you wouldn't feel it."

"Lucky me, then," the patient mocked. "But it fucking itches. Do you know what it’s like when I can't scratch myself under this...case, or whatever? Sometimes I think pain would be better."

"You're not that bad if you can be so catty," Thera smirked. "Well, I brought you something." He carefully put the small microcard on Casey's palm. "I'm sure you wanna see it. If I said it would put you in a better mood, I'd be lying, but...things will get better somehow, I promise."

"What's this?" Casey gave Thera a mistrustful look and eyed the small item.

"What do you think?"

"If this is what I think it is, then I don't wanna see it."

"You're stupid, aren't you? Darkness is never good, believe me. It's not me who should be here—well, I'm not the only one—but Sam...he’s having kind of a hard time, so, um...some other time, I guess." Thera shrugged his shoulders, feeling slightly awkward.

"Why don't you just tell me what happened?"

"Yeah, that's one option. But I think it's better for you to see it with your own eyes. We can watch it together, so if you have any questions...." Thera stood up to turn on a small screen on the wall. "May I?" He reached out to take the card from Casey's hand and placed it in the right slot. "Well, prepare yourself for a tough ride, bro."

"Tell me 'bout it."

The recording started. Casey saw Thera showing the team to hide. Then there was the approaching guard and Casey himself, hiding behind the rack of computers. The camera, placed in Sam's artificial eye, followed him to the safe place, and then froze for a moment. Thera stopped the picture. "Here, see it?" He pointed his finger at the red light on the lowest server in the rack.

"Yeah." Casey crinkled up his face and craned his neck to see better. "What about it?"

"Keep watching." The black man pressed the Play button on the remote.

The red light blinked a few times. After a short moment and Sam's muffled, husky "Fuck!", Casey saw the barrel lift, and a lethal missile soared in his direction.

He tensed up instinctively and his heart could hardly stand the shot of adrenaline at this déja vù. He could swear he felt that pain once again at seeing himself thrown back by the devastating force. But there was no time to take a good look at the scene because two seconds later the rack, his shelter-to-be, exploded.

Thera stopped the action again. "Well, that's it. Makes sense now, doesn't it?"

"What was it?" asked Casey thoughtfully, his eyes staring at the ball of fire on the screen and his fingers clenching involuntarily on the sheets. The solid ground of his catastrophic theory was slipping out from under his feet, making him all nervous and impatient to grasp the new meaning of what had happened.

"A bomb. With some kind of a sensor. You must have activated it somehow."

"So...." Casey bit his lower lip, his heart pounding violently. "So...."
If not for Sam and his quick reflexes, he would have been already dead, ripped apart by the exploding rack.

"Yeah." Thera said slowly, nodding. He knew exactly what Casey wanted to say. "Then things got really fucked up." He pressed the button again.

They heard a strange, unidentified sound, something between a violent cough and a growl. It came from Sam when Casey smashed against the wall like a rag doll, as blood gushed out of his mouth. But the agent had no time to analyze the pitiful effects of his decision. Heavy boots rumbled across the corridor and the first guard was already lurking behind the door, ready to take them out.

"Take him away from here," Sam demanded, in a voice that brooked no argument. "Now."

"Are you insane? How am I supposed to do that?" Thera snapped, reloading his gun.

"It's a server room. They have plenty of ventilation pipes here. Move!"

"And what are you going to do?"

"I'll kill 'em all." Sam's voice made Casey and Thera, watching the recording, think of a steel blade.

The black man turned off the screen.

"Hey, I wanna see the rest of it!" Casey drew his brows together and spread his hands, palms up, in a gesture of demand.

"No, you don't wanna. Nobody would." Thera's tone didn’t exactly encourage discussion.

"Why?"

"'Cause things went fucking ugly. He killed seven of them. And then he freaked out."

"Wha—" Casey's heart stopped for a moment from sudden pain. It hurt. Why? Who could tell why. But it did. Terribly. "What?" he whispered, his throat tight.

"Yep. Even for him it was too much, apparently."

Casey felt soft, acute sadness of a kind that made him want to hug Sam close or something equally stupid. "So where is he now?"

"Dunno. Messing around, I guess. He has his ways. He didn't let the doctors examine him."

"I'm not surprised," Casey snorted ironically.

Thera shrugged and put on an indifferent face. "Maybe he'll be okay after a while. Or maybe not. Every human has his boundaries, after all."

"And if he’s reached his?" Casey asked dryly, a bit more rudely than he intended.

"Then he's finished."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean he's finished. A human wreck. They'll get rid of him."

Casey shuddered at those cruel words, but the anger he expected didn't come. Although it was painful, he knew what Thera said was true, and his recent life had already taught him to dismiss his anger and not waste it on obvious things. Yet, still....

"How can you—" He shook his head. What he wanted to say was naive and ill-judged.

"I can." Thera answered the question Casey hadn't voiced. "Everyone's on his own, Casey. Sam made his decision. He'll pay for it." He shrugged.

Casey knew it was exactly as Thera said, but he couldn't agree to accept it. It wasn't fair. "I wasn't on my own," he whispered helplessly, a lump in his throat stifling his words.

The black face turned to him with an unreadable expression. Thera didn't say anything, just squinted his eyes and laced his fingers together nervously.

"Hey," he said after a minute of silence, trying to sound as gentle as possible. "Sam is too good for Ramson to give up on him easily. Ramson will fight to have him back."

"Well, that’s certainly a comfort," Casey snapped angrily, which Thera took in with even greater surprise.

"Well, it is a comfort," he answered dryly. "Like it or not, Ramson is good at bringing back people's sanity. Sam is neither the first nor the last to experience it. Besides, he's a tough bastard. He'll be okay."

"Yeah? Why don't you say 'I promise'? In stupid movies they always say that." Casey laughed unpleasantly.

Thera did not take up the challenge. "It’s got you good, Casey." He shook his head slowly, his expression thoughtful. "Making friends here is the worst thing you can do. Really."

"It's not right, Thera. It's not right." Casey's voice was filled with pain and internal conflict.

"What?" The black man raised his brows in a question.

"Everything," Casey answered simply. "Never mind." A faint smile flicked across his dry, pale lips. "It's just that...you're wrong, Thera."

Finally the most crucial things found their places in Casey's exhausted head and he found his right and his wrong. Thera was mistaken. They all were mistaken. They all did what was easiest, but it just wasn't right. Now Casey was sure that sometimes you couldn't have things going both easily and correctly. The imperative to do the "right thing", to do what he thought was the right thing, managed to win over the temptation to take the least troublesome, easy way.

He made his decision.

"You can't have everything, Thera, can you?" Casey smiled absently, not even looking at Thera and not waiting for his answer. "But there are some things worth having more than others."

---

The cold was good. The frosty, silvery air was like ice against a burn. If he could, he would happily freeze. Maybe it would restrain whatever this was that was ripping at him from inside in a crazy, blind desire to get out.

Sam looked around. The night was so beautiful, so calm, so pure. He thought that his existence was a stain on its excellence. He watched his freezing breath, making an abstract observation that it shouldn't be possible that it was only air that left his insides instead of that grim, ugly mess that threatened to overflow every minute.

His gaze followed the dispersing mist and landed on the cross of a small chapel. He made a stupid face at it. He hadn’t even known it was there. For all those years.... Well, yes, he remembered the building, he remembered the cross. But not until now had it got through to him that it was actually a temple. He laughed quietly, a bit insanely, at the sudden ridiculous thought that he might enter it. When had been the last time he’d done such a thing?

His legs moved as if of their own accord and carried him, slightly embarrassed, into the silent darkness of the chapel, filled with the faint yet soothing smell of incense.

He didn't know that such places, with such serious peace captured between stone walls, existed. To his surprise, this simple temple seemed to absorb his pain better than the hot girls in the brothel he’d left half an hour ago.

Involuntarily he let his legs take him to a pew, where he sank down heavily, feeling strangely at home. He sat there for a long time, staring at God nailed to the cross. Fuck, it would hurt, he thought. Who did that to you? His knowledge of the Bible was limited to awareness of the fact that such a book existed. He also knew there was Jesus—God who landed on earth, or something, and died. So what kind of god does that make you, huh? Loser.

"Hello." Sam jumped at the warm voice echoing in the silence. He turned his head to see a man in his forties, wearing a black shirt with a white stripe around his neck. A priest. Sam merely twisted his lips in a mocking smile and directed his eyes to the altar again.

"I've seen you around." The priest wouldn't give up.

"I sure haven't seen you." Sam could swear he was very determined to get rid of the man, but the truth was different. This place, like no other, with its seriousness and permanency, seemed able to embrace his raging inner chaos. The madness had stayed outside; now only overwhelming sadness and tiredness suppressed his soul.

Sam simply felt miserable. And weak.

"I'll live with it. I don't have the makings of a celebrity." The priest chuckled and sat down near Sam.

Great. Get the fuck out of here! the agent thought abrasively, from force of habit rather than because he really meant it. But he said nothing, only gritted his teeth.

"You're a soldier?"

Although Sam had decided not to open his mouth, his lips acted on their own. "No. I'm just a hunting dog," he said bitterly.

"That's harsh."

"It is. And don't ask about it."

"Why, you can't tell me? Or you think I'd be shocked?" The priest smiled slightly. He knew them well, all these messengers of death who marched bravely through the valley of darkness, each of them thinking they were the greatest motherfuckers in the valley.

"Do I think?" Sam gave the smile back, but his was ironic. "No. I know it."

The priest raised his eyes to the ceiling and rested his folded hands on his knees. "Well, this is neither the place nor the time for throwing down the gauntlet, but you seriously underestimate us." He smiled mischievously. "Military chaplains, I mean. Do you know how many confessions I've heard throughout my life? Do you have any idea what I've heard? There aren't many things that can shock me, really."

"Yeah, right. Following your line of thought, people who listen to the everyday news and watch war movies are on good terms with death and killing. Don't make me laugh."

"Trying to convince yourself that you're the only one who knows what it all means is a lousy idea. I've been a soldier. Well, I still am, but in a different way now. I was in Rwanda. In Iraq. I was in New York after September eleventh. You're running ahead of death, and I follow it, brother. I'm always right behind it to take its toll. I try to save what I can, but I keep failing, over and over again. It's devastating to look on helplessly at agony, you know?"

"Then don't look at it." Sam rolled his eyes impatiently. He was far from understanding these utopian ideals, but talking to this shaveling didn't feel that bad. Rwanda? Iraq? Well, that was something, at least.

"The fact that I don't look doesn't change the fact that people die," the chaplain noted philosophically.

"They die anyway, so why bother?"

"To share their suffering, maybe? To let them know they're not alone? I think I can at least sacrifice my comfort if I can't offer anything else."

"Would you? If you could?"

"What do you mean?"

"Would you sacrifice your life, let's say, in exchange for someone else's?"

"I hope I would. Although I can't say I'd have enough faith."

"Isn't it stupid? A life for a life—what's so clever about a deal like that? One is lost anyway." Sam shrugged his shoulders, sliding his eyes over the crucified figure. Just like yours, mister Jesus.

"Maybe it's not the life itself that you buy. Maybe it's another chance for someone."

"You lose yours, then."

"Giving my life for someone is a chance for me. If I can do it, I win. I believe in eternal life, after all. It gives me a different perspective."

"I don't have faith and I don't have your strange perspective. But still, I'm not scared of dying."

"For someone?"

"It doesn't matter to me. Dying is dying. That's all."

"Is it because you think your life has no value?"

"Maybe. I'm used to death, anyway."

"You know, we all have a difficult decision to make at some point: to have much, and have much to lose, or to have nothing to lose, but also nothing to cherish."

"Well, I've already made mine, I guess."

"You can always change it."

"No, I can't." Sam shook his head resignedly. The suggestion was dangerous. Even the slightest hope and wish for change was dangerous. "There are some choices you only make once," he sighed. "You see, this construction of gains and losses that my existence is based on can’t be undone any longer without destroying it to the ground. If I tried to touch anything now, I'd simply break apart. Actually, I'm not sure I won't anyway." Sam snorted quietly. "No mind could endure such an earthquake, and no heart could endure such a load of guilt. I can't afford to have a conscience. Not after all these years. It's too late."

"You know," the priest said slowly, weighing his words carefully, "my God doesn't want me to have things done. He only wants me to carry on doing them. That's why I keep trying, I keep failing, and I keep hoping. The rest belongs to Him." He stopped for a moment before he continued. "What I want to say is that maybe...you don't have to manage. Just...have the courage to start. When everything falls apart, who knows what you'll be able to build on the rubble?"

"The problem is, I don't believe in your God. Shit, it's not even in my best interest for Him to exist." Sam chuckled gloomily and combed his fingers through his hair, still amazed by the whole conversation and the fact that he was willingly participating in it.

"Well, trying would be the real measure of your strength, whether you believe in something or not. You won't know how strong you are until you go at it."

"If I wasn't strong, I would be long dead."

"Then there is hope, brother." The priest smiled and lightly grasped Sam's shoulder before he stood up. "Well, it's time for me to go. I promise I'll pray for you."

"Now I'm not surprised you keep failing." Sam snorted with brief laughter but it wasn't nasty, just forgiving.

When the chaplain disappeared into the sacristy, Sam directed his eyes to the crucified Christ again.

Are you there? Are you really there?

He laughed desperately. Fuck, soon I'll start talking to the tooth fairy. It was so pathetic. How broken must he have been to let such ideas into his head as if they could be real? A couple of tears fell down on Sam's clenched hands, and a quiet, suppressed sob escaped his trembling lips.

You'd better be made-up bullshit. Don't do that to me and don't make me realize....

And God didn't do anything. He just hung there, on the ornamental cross, dead and wooden, like made-up bullshit.

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I hope you're not disappointed by this chapter.

Tell me - do you REALLY (but completely seriously) like happy endings and can't live without them? 'Cause you know, this particular couple doesn't seem like happy ending to me... Soooo, convince me, if you want one ;)


julianYES - yes, definitely, you have to search for some info on Harry Moore ;) But in case you haven't grasped it, he was Casey's father, accidentally involved in business of mob (through his company and his coworker).
I also think Casey and Sam are made for each other, but before they can realize it... oh, well, a lot will happen :D

Lusia - yep, complicating is my hobby, i guess :D And we're not done yet, I promise ;)

Obnoxious.Awkward - well, we can make a deal: now you read, and when you write, I'll read :D
For you - more Sam, this time. And I hope the missing piece found its place.

dbz-fan-jess - yes, it was one of those rare PLANNED cliffhangers :D Do you like them?

Rawrry - patience pays ;) Now everything is clear. Right? Knowing everything from the start would be so boring!

Mirage - hello :) Nice to meet you! I'm honored that I was able to be a competition for your family dinner :D I hope the next chapter didn't cause any family catastrophe ;)
You got your ANSWERS after all :D

Anonymous Sister of the Author - yeah, lot of shooting previously. So now we took a break.
From time to time we have to go through a cliffhanger, right? C'mon, admit you like it a little bit ;)

Well, let's all carry on with this story, and see what happens next :D