This is a scene I wrote on a whim, one that has taken on a little more meaning in the months since I wrote it. It’s a scene with Tim and AJ McConaway, both of UNSETIC, and takes place a few months before Ghosts and the Future. This little piece is from Tim’s point of view. Enjoy!
She found me perching on a concrete wall overlooking the lake, a glass of something amber cradled between my hands but long since watered down by the ice that had melted in the time between I’d started drinking it and the time she’d found me. My hand didn’t even twitch toward the sidearm I wasn’t wearing—tonight was khakis and a dress shirt, not even a sport coat.
Tonight had been for my sister and I’d tried to be good. I really, really had.
Something about something in that exhibit had really unsettled me, though, enough that I couldn’t stay, I had to go—had to walk away. The damnable part of it was that I couldn’t figure out—couldn’t remember—why it had upset me so much.
“They’re all wondering where you went,” AJ said softly as she sat down next to me. I thought she looked beautiful, smartly attired in her dress and heels. “That departure was a little sudden.”
I closed my eyes. “Go back inside,” I said quietly. “This is your party. It’s not every day that…that you get an exhibit at the Field, AJ. Go back there and enjoy it.”
“I can’t enjoy it without my brother with me,” she said. Her palm skated across my shoulders and spine. I shivered, biting down hard on my lip and squeezing my eyes even more tightly shut. “Talk to me, Tim. Just…talk to me. What set you off?”
“Don’t you think I’d tell you if I knew?” I rasped, then tossed back half of what was left in my glass. The whiskey was so far gone it didn’t even burn on the way down. “I don’t remember. I just…I had to get out of there, AJ. I couldn’t stay.”
Her arm slid around me. “I get that. I’m just—I’m more worried about the why. If there’s something in there that can set you off like this, Tim—”
“I probably overreacted,” I said quickly. “It’s probably nothing. Don’t worry about it.”
“Too late.”
A sigh I couldn’t stop escaped me and her arm tightened.
“You’ve got more important things to worry about,” I murmured.
“There’s nothing more important than family,” she whispered. “We both know that, Tim—at least we should. You’re my brother and I love you—and I spent too much time without you to be willing to let something like this go. I know that some kind of ghost of your past swam up from the shadows back there. I want to figure out what it was so we can slay that bloody demon.”
“AJ—” I stopped, sighing again. This fight wasn’t one I was going to win.
Just let her help.
I felt like I let her help too much, but in reality, the opposite was true and there was a part of me that hated myself for both things.
“I don’t know which artifact it was,” I said, swallowing hard against the bile that started to creep upwards in my throat. “Must have been one, though. It just—whatever it was, it triggered a major flight response. I had to get out of there. Blank spot in my memory, though. Don’t know what it was, or quite where it was either.”
“Damn,” she breathed. “Damn and damn.”
I just shook my head, staring out at the water, at the slowly fading light against the horizon. “It happens like that,” I said.
“I know.”
“You never—I never told you.” My stomach sank. She hadn’t seen it happen before, had she? I couldn’t remember her ever being around for an episode and I sure as hell hadn’t told her.
Kate? B?
“You didn’t have you. You’ve got a partner that looks out for you when I can’t.”
Brigid. Brigid told her. It shouldn’t have surprised me at all. The woman was my fucking guardian angel.
I was grateful to her as often as I was angry at her—probably far too often on the latter count.
It was just as well.
“She’s got a big mouth,” I mumbled.
“She cares about you,” she said. “It’s a good thing.”
