Page 32 of New Beginning

He turned it all the way over so it was still wrong and ran off again.

Teddy laughed. For so long he’d believed happiness was something other people were allowed to have. Something he’d forfeited. But apparently happiness was more stubborn than that. It had crept up on him. The children in Sparlow who had discovered that if they brought him broken toys, he would mend them. The house making him his favourite drinks. Mikkel calling him a good boy. Teddy calling Mikkel a bad boy and finding a way to punish him. Who’d have guessed they’d play like that!

He’d come to the village with nothing but his broken mind and his hands. The village had helped him get his head straight and he’d helped the village. He’d always loved making things. Before, he’d thought of it as a hobby—something to occupy his hands when his mind wouldn’t leave him alone. Here, it had become something else.

Useful. Necessary, even. A chair with a broken leg came through his door and left whole. A child’s spinning top. A garden gate. A set of shutters. The old bench outside the village hall, which everyone had agreed was beyond saving until Teddy had taken it apart, piece by piece, and discovered that most of the wood was still good.

He hadn’t just been repairing things. He’d been making himself useful. And somehow, without anyone announcing it, that had become his place. There was a particular pleasure in it now. In taking something damaged and refusing to throw it away.

He understood that better than most.

Behind him, the workshop door opened and he felt Mikkel come up at his shoulder bringing him a cup of tea.

“Thank you.” Teddy smiled at him.

Once, he’d thought surviving was the best he could hope for. Now he wanted mornings like this. He wanted the arguments and the noise and the ridiculous children with wooden swords. He wanted people to knock on his door. He wanted to be whatever Mikkel needed him to be.

He wanted all of it.

The thought should have frightened him. Instead, it filled his chest until there was hardly room to breathe. Because this was what he’d been missing all along. Not forgiveness. Not forgetting.

A reason to wake up.

A reason to stay.

A reason to love.

He turned his head and looked at the man beside him.

His heart gave one of those stupid, helpless little thumps he’d stopped trying to deny.

This is my home.

He belonged here.

~~~

They lived happily ever after until the day they didn’t. Mikkel had just taken Teddy to the stars and gone there with him, and they were lying in a heap on the bed in post-orgasmic bliss, when Azrael appeared in the corner of the room.

“I hope you weren’t watching,” Mikkel said.

Teddy’s head shot up beside him. “What? Who are you talking to?” He spun round. “Who are you? What are you doing in here? Don’t fry him, yet, Mikkel. He might have brought ice cream.”

Mikkel sighed. “This is Azrael. He’s the angel who sent me to help you when you were caught in The Drift.”

“It’s time, Mikkel,” Azrael said.

“I don’t like the sound of that,” Teddy said quietly.

“It’s time to come with me, Teddy.” Azrael held out his hand.

Teddy clung to Mikkel’s arms. “No.”

“The upper realms are waiting for you. Your friends: Gio, Piotr and Jon.”

“No,” Teddy repeated.

“This is no place for an angel,” Azrael continued. “This…in between, this limbo.”