Stay

The room in which he sat was burned with activity. People zipped by in the hustle and bustle of the busy time-slot, but he saw none of it. His hands supported his head, the heels of his hands digging into his eye sockets, though it didn’t stop the tears leaking, dripping slowly down his arms.

As he sat the noise blurred out until he could no longer hear it, his mind slipping further into the recent past.

“Don’t do this, Jack,” he pleaded, his voice breaking with the swelling of a myriad of emotions, ready to take him under as the wave finally broke.

“It’s done, Daniel.” Jack looked up at him then, his eyes telling Daniel everything Jack wasn’t saying aloud. His tone wasn’t one of anger, or contempt. But of such a deep, longing, and sad desperation that Daniel thought for a moment that the words would be recanted. He waited in vain.

“Why? Why now after everything we’ve been through?” Daniel took a step back as Jack took a step forward. “You promised me.”

The words were merely whispered, coated in a red-hot pain Jack had always sworn to himself would never occur because of him. He’s broken a few promises it seems. “Danny, please. This isn’t…this isn’t my choice.” Jack felt something in his chest shatter then at the utterance of those words. Looking away he closed his eyes, trying to regain his composure. He hated himself for this.

“Then don’t do this!” Daniel cried, his arms flying in front of him in gesticulation, showing the other man, if it was before in doubt, how upset the other man was. “Don’t do this, Jack.” Daniel wrapped his arms around himself in a protecting self-hug as his steps took him backward. He stopped, sliding down the wall he’d back into; making himself as small as he could. As Jack approached he could hear the other man’s quiet sobs, his repeated mantra of don’t leave me.

“Oh, Danny…believe me when I say this isn’t what I want.” With shaking hands Jack reached out, letting his fingers glide along the silky strands of Daniel’s hair, stopping to rest along his shoulder. “Please believe me.”

“Then tell me why! If you don’t want to, if it isn’t your choice, then fucking tell me why? I deserve to know. I…” Daniel’s bloodshot, puffy eyes met with Jack’s gaze. “You said you’d never leave me. You said that you loved me.” Daniel laughed without a trace of humor in his tone, in his eyes. “I believed you. For years.” Jack looked away, unable to watch Daniel’s world shatter further. “It was all a lie, wasn’t it?”

These words, spoken in such despair, broke Jack’s resolve. “No, Danny.” Collapsing onto Daniel’s shoulder, Jack’s cries finally broke the surface. “God, no, I didn’t lie to you.”

“Then why won’t you tell me?”

Jack’s shoulders began shaking as the memory played on. “I couldn’t tell you, Danny. I couldn’t tell you.” But Daniel couldn’t hear him now. This thought sent Jack into a fit of uncontrolled lamentations. His world was collapsing around him and he had no one to blame but himself.

“Just go, Jack,” Daniel told him after an arduous, heartbreaking pause. “Go before…” he stopped his words, cutting them short.

“Danny…”

“No. You’ve hurt me enough to last a lifetime tonight already. I can’t stand anymore, Jack.” He sounded deflated as he spoke, resigned to the knowledge that, for whatever reason, he was once again being abandoned. Jack waited for Daniel to move out from under his hold, or to force him to let him go. He did neither of those things, he simply stayed still, his chest hurting so badly that breathing was too much of an effort. An effort he suddenly wished he didn’t have to exert. Jack’s grip on Daniel’s shirt tightened as those words were spoken, his body tensing at the thought of walking out the front door. “Please, Jack. Just go. If you’ve ever loved me in the last seven years, if any of it was real…go now. If you won’t tell me, just go.”

He wanted to hold him as his weeping increased. He wanted to hold on to prevent him from leaving as he finally detached himself. Daniel closed his eyes against more tears as Jack’s lips pressed against his temple. Must you betray me with a kiss? “I do love you, Daniel. My Danny. I’ve loved you longer than you know. I’ll always love you.” Standing, Jack turned and ran from the house before he didn’t care about the consequences of staying. Of telling him everything. He ran still as he heard Daniel’s screams of absolute devastation. He couldn’t turn back now. Even as his heart shattered at his toes, his breath no longer existent, and his life now reduced to ashes and rubble, he had to keep going.

He felt a presence at his side and without looking up, he knew who it was. He loved and hated her for coming. Her being here only reinforced the truth of the matter. Her being here kept him from going completely off the deep end. He felt her hand along his shoulder, comforting. He wished he could accept that he deserved her comfort. But he failed. He failed Daniel in the worst way.

“Jack…” he didn’t respond to her. He didn’t want to hear what she had to say. “Jack, the doctor is here. Come on, now, it’s time to find out what’s going on.”

Somehow he found the strength to pull himself together. He stood.

He made it four blocks before he stopped running, his heart suddenly lurching in his chest, every single one of his internal alarm bells blazing Danger Will Robinson and it was a feeling that Jack could not simply ignore. “Danny…” He made it back in record time, his legs burning from the intense workout they received without a thought of mercy.

He faltered as he saw three men beating another who was on the ground, having been pulled from his house to the front lawn. As he picked up speed, pushing his legs ever harder, he barreled into two of the three, knocking them down and away from the unconscious man. The third was behind him before he could figure out where the man had gone, his arm wrapping tightly around his throat. He stopped struggling, trying to think of a way out of this situation. He tried not to focus on Daniel lying there in a pool of blood and shattered glass. He didn’t know if he was dead or alive. “What do you want from us?” Jack asked in a moment of fury.

“To purge the world of the likes of you,” was the answer he received. The cold, steely tone behind his ear made Jack’s breath catch. In front of him one of the men stood, the shining metal of a sharp blade reflecting off the street lights above them.

Jack calmed himself, ready to fight or die as the man with the knife approached. In a split second move as the knife lunged toward Jack, he threw his elbow backward and moved as his captor’s arm released him. Swinging his body around, still in possession of his captor’s arm, threw him forward. He heard the knife that had been intended for him slide into the abdomen of the other man. Jack would never forget the sound it made for the rest of his life. As Jack’s would-be killer let go of the knife that had plunged into his partner-in-crime, the two remaining criminals ran as sirens began to wail in the not far off distance.

Dropping to his knees next to Daniel he began to check his vitals. “Danny?” He felt for a pulse, his heart stopping as time passed without feeling one. There. Jack’s breath caught. There. Faint. Very faint, but there. Jack listened for breath, felt for the tickle of Daniel’s life signs. “Please, Danny, stay with me. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I was only trying to protect you.”

“I’m Doctor Sanders, Daniel’s neurosurgeon. Follow me, please. I’d like to talk to you both in private.”

Jack grabbed Jamie’s hand. “Doc? Please tell me he’s still alive.”

The doctor smiled a sympathetic smile. “Yes. He is alive. However, there’s much to discuss about Daniel’s future. Please, follow me.”

They were taken to a smaller waiting room with privacy doors and windows, locking out most sounds from outside. They each took a seat; Jack and Jamie facing the doctor, their hands still clasped. “We found bits of glass embedded in Daniel’s scalp. He was hit with what appears to be a full JackDaniel’s bottle.” He let the information sink in before he continued. “There was a lot of bleeding on the brain that we did manage to get drained and under control. From what we can tell at the moment, and we will know more once the swelling goes down further, that the main area of damage is centered around the hippocampus, which is located in the brain’s temporal lobe. I don’t know at the moment how extensive the trauma will be until he wakes up.

“If I were you, I would begin to prepare myself for what may be coming.”

“And what might that be, exactly?”

“What you have to understand here is that with this type of traumatic brain injury, is that his memory will be mostly affected.”

“You mean like…amnesia?” Jamie asked what Jack couldn’t find the courage to speak himself.

“Yes. Though I’m not sure how long it will last or what kind of amnesia he will be afflicted with. Anterograde amnesia is the inability to create new memories. This also leads to an inability to recollect the recent past. Sometimes the victim of such trauma will not remember the events leading to the memory loss, even though the long-term memories remain perfectly in-tact. Meaning he will remember the two of you and his life up to now. But that he may not remember what you told him an hour ago. He will get confused easily. Forget where he is or why he’s there. If this turns out to be the case, there’s a lot of decisions to be made as far as his living situation, medical care after he’s released, and the like.”

Jack’s heart broke at hearing these words. His throat closed and his eyes stung and he was angry. Angry at himself. Angry at the world. “When can we see him, doc?” Jack looked up then, meeting the man’s eyes before him. “Please, can I see him?”

Doctor Sanders considered denying the man his request, but changed his mind a split second later. “I will give you ten minutes. That’s all I can offer right now until he’s a bit more stable. And I do expect him to come out of this.”

Jack nodded and stood. “Thank you, doc. And I hope you’re right.”

When Jack stood at Daniel’s bedside he felt his lungs freeze over behind his ribs. His head had been shaved so they could drain the pooling blood on his brain, now neatly bandaged. His face was almost unrecognizable, as purple and swollen as it was. Every inch of him was covered in bruises or bandages. He didn’t even notice the tears that fell freely as he looked at the damage these monsters had done.

Jamie leaned forward and kissed her brother’s forehead. “I love you, little brother.” She made her way around next to Jack as he continued to stare at the unknown figure on the bed that used to be the love of his life. “I’ll let you have some privacy with him. I’ll be outside.”

He waited until he was alone before his knees collapsed from under him and he sank down to the floor. He held Daniel’s hand in both of his, his forehead pressed against warm fingers, as the first of many floods was finally released. “I’m sorry, Danny. Come back to me. Please, come back to me.”

Days passed. A week. Two. Then one, not so special day, Daniel opened his eyes. “Ja’k?”

It was the most beautiful thing Jack had ever heard and his heart rejoiced even as his eyes watered. “God, Danny,” he said as he stood from the chair he’d hardly left since they moved him into a private room a week and a half ago. “Oh, god, you woke up.” Jack kissed him soundly, but gently, tears and smiles exploding onto his face at once. “I thought I lost you.”

“What’s…happening? Where are we?” He looked around. “Why am I in the hospital?”

“Let me get the doctor, Danny.”

“Jack, no, please don’t leave me.”

The plea stabbed Jack in the gut, but he managed to smile the slightest bit, fighting off the onslaught of tears that threatened. “I’m not going anywhere, Danny. I’m never going to leave you.”