Page 183 of Savior
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
DEAN
My own ragged breathing is the only sound in this cemetery now, as I dismount my bike and step onto the dewy lawn. A slight fog drifts across the dark, hallowed ground, slowly swirling around the bases of headstones, and obscuring my now scuffed dress shoes. I walk at a slow but steady pace, towards the old gnarly oak where Madeline sleeps.
The severity of my mistakes tonight, weigh heavily upon me, and I’m beginning to feel the beating I received earlier in stronger waves with each step. Unclamping my arm from having had it wrapped around my abdomen in an attempt to subdue the pain in my side, I realize my hand is wet with blood. Son of a bitch… I’ll probably need stitches.
Sinking to my knees before her white marble headstone, it almost seems to gleam a bit in the pale moonlight. With a sigh, I bring my gaze to my mother’s engraved name. I haven’t been to her burial site, since I introduced her to Vanna, on Christmas Eve.
“Hello, Madeline.” I say, placing my hand atop her headstone and brushing my thumb across the M of her name. A dark smear taints the white stone. My blood. I attempt to wipe it away as best I can with my other hand. “I’m afraid I’ve come to disappoint you, yet again.” I sigh, my side throbbing more and more by the minute. I wrap my arm around myself and lean forward, resting my forehead against the back of my hand still placed on her gravestone. Sucking in a breath of cool night air, I can feel the dampness of the ground seeping into my knees through the slacks.
“I fucked up tonight…” I confess to the cold stone before me. “I fucked up in a way that’s made me realize…” the words catch in my tightening throat, and I attempt to swallow the painful knot down in order to speak. “I’m sorry, Madeline… I… I can’t do this anymore.” I whisper through the overwhelming shame I feel. That familiar tidal wave of uselessness that’s gnawed at my soul damn near my whole life… Since I let my own mother die… “I’m sorry, M-” I stammer, my body rejecting the word I long to say to her again, but can’t. Conditioned by my own feelings of unworthiness to even call her Mother… “Madeline.” I say instead.
It’s difficult to imagine now, what she’d actually say to me about the life I’ve lived. The street justice I’ve carried out in her name all these years. The fucked-up shit I’ve taken part in to make ends meet. I may be a Savior again, but God knows I’m far from a Saint.
“Part of me hopes you’ve never looked down on me, if you are in Heaven… if there really is something after all this.” I say to her gravestone, lifting my head and sitting back on my heels to stare at her name in the darkness. “But I also wonder, if I’ve ever done a God damned thing, you’d be proud of… Regardless, I do it for you, Madeline.” For them, too, of course… But I’d be lying to myself as well, if I didn’t admit that I’m trying to earn my mother’s love and forgiveness as best I can from down here in the muck of this world. Doing now for other innocents, what I couldn’t do then, for her. Attempting to earn redemption, so that I might one day, see her again.
A slight breeze rustles through the leaves of the old oak tree towering over us, making the shadows of the branches dance across her headstone. I close my eyes and imagine the wind as her breath… a sigh of empathy for her lost son, groveling before her.
“Can you ever forgive me?” I ask, “For what I’ve done… and what I can no longer do?”
As per usual, and as to be expected, since I’m not completely insane, despite desperately straining to hear an answer of some kind on the wind from her anyway. I don’t hear anything. Forsaken, or just a fool looking for signs where none exist… I’m not sure which is more depressing. Just in case, I go on...
“I’m not sure what I’ve done to deserve any shred of happiness in this life, Madeline, but I’ve been granted a new purpose... I’m going to be a… a father.” I nearly choke on the word as an unanticipated sob racks my body. I lean forward to grip the stone once again, taking another breath to compose myself. “I’ve got everything I could have ever hoped for, Madeline… And tonight made me realize, there’s nothing worth risking that over… Nothing… Vanna and our baby, they are my life now. It’s my duty to provide for and protect them… I… I can do that now. I can protect my family… But… I can’t do that, if I’m dead. If some prick gets the drop on me… I could have made Vanna a single mother tonight.”
I sit in another bout of silence, staring at the white marble until tunnel vision sets in, and everything darkens further and blurs. A slight shiver runs up my body, whether it’s from blood loss, or just a chill from the cool dampness seeping into my bones as I kneel on the wet lawn, I don’t know.
“I’ve done things, Madeline… very bad things, for good reasons… mostly. But it’s catching up to me now… And… though I failed you, I’m hoping that whole unconditional motherly love thing, might still come into play here. Maybe not for me… I don’t blame you there… But… for your grandchild?” I reach into my back pocket to grab my wallet, removing the latest sonogram of our baby, as if I can show her through the cold stone that bears her name. “We’re having a boy… And he’s mine. Ours. Yours, Madeline. Your blood…” I say, still hoping, somehow, she can hear me, and what I’m about to ask of her. “And so, I was hoping, that you might find it in your heart to watch over Vanna and this baby. That you could maybe look past the fact that I couldn’t do the same for you… and just… do this one thing for me…” I whisper, feeling foolish, unworthy and desperate all at once. Maybe I really am crazy… Between Serene, and now begging a slab of marble to help me protect my growing family.
The sound of a motorcycle entering the graveyard has me shoving the sonogram and my wallet back into my pocket, and grabbing for the gun Viking insisted I borrow from him. In the darkness, I can’t make out the rider, but they pull up along-side my bike and dismount, arms up in the air as they begin to cautiously make their way in our direction.
“It’s me, Dean.” He calls in the darkness.
I let out more of a groan than a sigh, tucking the gun back in my waistband. “The fuck are you doing here, Daniel.” I mutter, turning my back on him to face our mother’s grave again. He comes to stand beside me.
“I followed you here. Figured I’d give you a few moments alone, before rolling up on you.” He says. “I made sure none of the Demons tailed you here… Viking let me through.”
“You knew this was going to happen tonight? Thanks for the assist, bro.”
“I called Viking as soon as I knew what was about to go down. It’s not like Legion announces his plans! He plays everything close to the chest! He keeps everyone in the dark about everything, until they’re called to action!” Daniel insists. “I rode off and waited a short distance away, after I led your guys to you. Then I tailed you here... Figured I’d give you a few moments alone with mom.”
“I’ve got nothing to say to you.”
“Then would you just listen to me?”
“I did. I’m done now.”
“For mom, then?” he presses. I grit my teeth. “You know she’d hate what happened between us.”
“Well, you’ve come to the right fucking place if you’re going to try to pin any of that shit on me.” I growl at him. I’ve got a good mind to just lay him out on our father’s grave beside her.
He lets out a remorseful sigh. “Funny.”
“What’s funny is you think I’m joking.”
“I’m your brother. I know you wouldn’t kill me.”
I chuckle darkly to myself, thinking back on that night I stood outside his living room window, contemplating just that. “You over estimate the ties that bind us, brother.” I say the word with a sneer.
