"It looks nastier than it is." The nurse turned over Oliver's wrist with a little empathetic grimace. "Why didn't you come in when it happened? You're lucky it's not gotten infected."

Oliver nodded dumbly, he sat on the nurse's bed-bench thing, refusing to look at his father's quiet glare.
They avoided eachother all morning and Oliver was intent on not relenting despite the uncomfortable quiet it brought. So, he kept his eyes down and ruminated on his spiteful silence.

They didn't bring Dindet, though he might have preferred it if they had. That morning Jon simply trudged down the stairs, interrupting their breakfast and shortly demanding Oliver get in the car. She was left at home, and he imagined she was probably freaking out about it all, that, or she was watching them from in between.

She was particularly bad at hiding stress, and he gathered that regardless of his opinion on the matter, she felt horrid about it. As of recent, she started getting quiet- really quiet and that meant it really bugged her, didn't help that everytime she happened to see him or get a glimpse of the bandages she just simply walked away, or changed the subject all quick like.
Oliver decided not to talk about it anymore.

"Hey!" Douglass's voice caught his attention as they were headed out the door and the boy jogged up to greet him. "Hi, Mr. Tarsul."

"Woah, what happened to your arms?" Douglass eyed the fresh gauze on Oliver's arms.

"Dog bite."

"On both?" He questioned, not quite believing him. Oliver rolled his eyes, catching his dad's line of sight and quickly changing the subject.

"What are you doing here?" Oliver glanced behind the boy at his dad, who was impatiently bouncing his leg and glancing every few seconds that the clock.

"Routine checkup before I spend winter break with my mom." Douglass stuck out his tongue in exaggerated blegh. "I wanted to help my dad with his project but Mom and Gary decided to throw a fit about visitation so now I have to go all the way to Maine for the whole two weeks, it's not fair."

Oliver nodded, not really listening while Douglass continued, as he was want to do.

"On the bright side I get to see my dad present his new machine to all the big science guys at the lab- and when we go for physics he might be able to show it off to our whole class."

"Oliver." Jon turned to look at his son, and Douglass quickly cut off his conversation.

"Guess I'll see you later." He smiled, heading back to his seat to try and evade the obvious tension between the kid and his dad as they left.

"He didn't look particularly happy." Chris mentioned when his son sat back down. Douglass shook his head.

"He's kind of always like that." He said, peering down the hallway impatiently for the pediatrician. They've been waiting for at least an hour now and both wanted to get back to check on the test results from that sample his dad took.

After Oliver left with Dindet's weird orange thing that Douglass was eighty percent sure was some kind of pet, they found a bunch of the same goop his dad brought home. So, for the past couple of days they had been messing with it to see what it was.

"Seems kind of rude though." Chris replied, getting up and gesturing for his son to follow the nurse back to the check up room.

"Nah, he's just butthurt." Douglass remarked lightly, ignoring that Oliver was sort of rude. He didn't mind though cause he was sure the kid probably hated everything and he was kind of, sort of getting better at not being a complete jerk.
He figured it was because he had a semi-permanent house guest and felt a little obligated to be somewhat personable around Dindet.

Dindet was nice, and about ten times more friendly than Oliver even if she didn't return Douglass's feelings. She was that kind of person who made you want to be nicer because half the time you were sure she didn't know what being mean was. She didn't really talk a lot, but it'd be a lie to say Douglass didn't turn flush red when she smiled at him or said anything at all. The only thing he wasn't fond of was that she was always with Oliver and kind of looked like she didn't know what to do without him around. Which made no sense and also maybe made him a little jealous.

"It's a shame that girl of yours never came around." His dad said as he unlocked the door to their house and held it for Douglass to come in.

"Yeah..it's alright though." Douglass replied, a little disheartened at the mention of it. He followed his dad back toward the garage. "I've sort of been avoiding her but Oliver said she felt bad about it too."

"Better luck next time?" Chris headed straight toward the sample he borrowed from Jon and began collecting tubes from the scanner as it spat out rolls of results on receipt paper. "What about that girl from your class- the one who came down to help with your English homework? She seemed nice."

"Cassidy?" Douglass picked up the results that were already piling up on the ground and helped his father sort the papers. "I don't think she really likes me all that much."

"I don't think that's ever stopped you before- oh, look at this, Douglass!" He spun around, and handed him a peice of paper he had torn off from the test results.

"There are tons of electrodes bouncing around in this stuff!" He quieted for a moment, "I wonder if it's conductive."

The scientist quickly moved to another machine that somewhat resembled a coffeemaker and dropped a dose of the matter into the glass casing, setting it to fifteen amps. The machine whirred up with a high pitched squealing noise and a small arc of electricity down into the substance, causing it to spike out like an urchin and redirect the current out toward the glass casing.

Chris promptly shut it off and shot a wide flashy grin at his son.

"I think I found what I need for my machine!" He remarked, pouring out the now liquified matter into another test tube as he licked a label and taped it across the glass. "I don't know what Jon made, but I'll have to stop by to ask him if he has more of it."

Douglass was tinkering with the tubes of matter, only sort of half listening to what his father was raving on about.

"You really think he'd give it to you?" He asked, picking up the test tube his dad had just set down and inspecting it closely. "He might need it for his project too."

"I doubt it- if he synthesized it for his molecular transporter he wouldn't have let me take the sample in the first place. I think it's a side project the lab had him start on, or he just wanted to tinker with his chemistry set, you know how he is."

"I don't Dad." Douglass replied with a smirk, his father had a habit of forgetting that he wasn't actually his lab assistant and never actually knew what his neighbor did in his free time, nor did he particularly care.

"Right, right, Kistle and Abadi would have a hoot hearing about all the help you've done." His father mused as he left the garage to grab something from the kitchen to snack on."Oh, by the way, they're headed over to have a few drinks tonight if you want to join us."

Now he was talking about thing Douglass sincerely didn't care about. The other guys at the lab only ever came by on occasion, and when they did they only talked about stuff way past his level of expertise- which wasn't much, and he'd prefer to hang out in his room and catch up on anime.

"I'm good, thanks though."

Chris's colleagues showed up around six in the evening, carrying cases of beer and burgers for the brief temperate weather and were already starting up idle chit chat about the work week before they were even in the backyard.

"So, the director comes in and Abadi is covered in eel excrement trying to wrangle the little fuckers back into the net and I'm just trying to keep the rest of them from popping out of the leak!" Douglass could hear Kistle's loud and thick southern accent while he retold some story on the way through the house. "You should have seen her face! It was hilarious!"

"Yeah it was funny up until she threatened probation." Abadi remarked, causing the man to erupt in laughter as he opened the back door to the yard.

"So, how is your project going?" Kistle change the subject and plopped down in a lawn chair, cracking open a cold one and offering it to his colleagues.

"Pretty good actually," Chris obliged and moved to brush the leaves off his grill and start it up. "Douglass has been helping me finish everything up and Jon lent me some synthesized sample that works perfect as a conduit for the current. I'm planning on presenting it to the board of directors before December and..if it goes well, I'll secure more funding for my sustainable energy addendum and get it into the court house."

"Your boy interested in you work?" Kistle let out an exaggerated breath and took another sip. "I can't get my girls to look twice at what I do- they're more interested fashion and something about drag queening?"

"Yeah, he helps around every now and again- love bug bit him hard this year though, and he's been crushing on the foreign girl staying at the Tarsul's" Chris mused, tossing a couple of patties onto the grill.

"How's he been doing?" Abadi declined a beer and began starting up a fire in the pit. "Jon, I mean."

Chris hesitated for a second, not sure if it was his place to disclose the state of his friend and coworker. He let out a quiet sigh, "Not great."

"I'd imagine...I don't know what I'd do if I lost Khadīja. What about his kid?"

"Not sure," Chris admitted, "Douglass hasn't really mentioned anything but we saw the both of them today and things looked tense."

Chris pressed a spatula down on his patties and took a small sip of his beer as the three of them fell into a moment of silence.

"We oughtta do something for them, to honor Marie- remember that time she shrink wrapped all the directors cars and filled them with ping-pong balls?" Kistle smiled at the memory, cracking open another beer to toast. "She was the life of the lab, but god forbid you forgot your PPE."

"Once she caught me running to the sample room and she switched out orange juice for egg yolks." Abadi reminisced as he threw a match onto the logs and fire plumed up and cast an orange, smoky glow over the three of them.

"To Marie." Kistle raised his can, and Chris and Abadi followed suit.

"To Marie."

"The best of all of us." Chris remarked solemnly.

Nothing had been the same since that day. None of them talked about it, none of them wanted to. They preferred to only speak about her in quiet moments or happy memories and never in front of Jon- whenever he planned to come back to work. It needed to be soon, but they all were reluctant to try and push him to do anything. Six months wasn't enough, hell, six years wouldn't be.

Oliver followed his father through the front door with his eyes to the floor until the clown's tiny voice caught his attention and he drifted off and away from his dad to greet her. That is, until Jon briskly waved her away.

"We have work. Come on." He coldly ordered as he made his way up the stairs. She shared a brief look of worry with Oliver and followed the scientist upstairs.

"I'm sorry." Oliver breathed as she brushed past him.

It had been like this for days, and even if neither of them would admit it, Oliver knew his father was intentionally keeping the clown increasingly more busy so the two of them had little spare time to hop off somewhere else. He wanted nothing more than that at the moment. Nothing more than to do that for the past week and a half.

But, they were getting closer and closer to completion and such a small part of him also wanted so terribly for his mom to come back and just fix everything.

Oliver went straight to his room and slumped down in his desk, fiddling with his pencil while he thought of something to draw that would get his mind off of the atmosphere that had a stranglehold on everyone in the house. He tugged at a few peices of sketch paper until the fell out in a pile on his desk and then rummaged through them for one that was hopefully mostly empty. Most of them were animals and cartoons he doodled before the accident. He hadn't really drawn a real picture since then.

He filed through them until his eye caught something he didn't recall drawing at all. It was a picture of a jester, uncolored, and it was kind of creepy, with a wide black smile and slitted eyes. He crumpled it up and threw it in the trash along with other unfinished works and started on something.

Time melted away when Oliver drew, and he had a habit of putting his face so close to the paper he was practically touching the desk with his nose. It wasn't until the sun started setting and his own shadow kept him from being able to see that he stopped to turn on a light and see the finished result.

It was a pretty simple picture of his mom sitting out on the back porch with all the cats gathered around. Just a dumb thing he thought of, but he liked the calm of it. It was the only thing he could really think to draw at the moment.

He leaned back in his chair for a stretch and turned to look at his door, taking a small moment of hesitation before making the decision to check on the two of them. Oliver stood up and quietly made his way up to the attic door, listening to the murmurs from behind it.

"After this, after my wife comes back. You go."

Oliver pushed the door open, cutting anything else from being said off as he walked in and ignored their staring.

"How close are you?" Oliver asked, looking at the machine in the center of the room as opposed to either of them.

"This weekend." His father replied, not looking up from the control panel he was rewiring. Dindet was busying herself taking pieces out of her and making components that had been drawn up on blueprints but Oliver could see her rippling and struggling to stay together.

Oliver nodded, and swiftly turned heel, flashing a glare at his father before he slammed the door shut behind him.
He grit his teeth, expecting quick retaliation, and when it didn't happen, he returned to his room to sulk for the night. He tried to go to sleep, but only really tossed and turned until he turned his lamp on and just sat there, staring at the wall, thinking about how stupid his dad was being.

It wasn't his fault or Dindet's that he was so obsessed with that stupid machine. It wasn't the clowns fault mom was gone, and it wasn't her fault he got hurt. But to his dad, none of that mattered. Nothing mattered except getting Mom back and everything else got in the way of that. Including Oliver.

He wanted her back too. He missed her too.

Oliver was drawn from his thoughts by a light knock on his door and it creaked open. He half expected Dindet to pop her head inside but was instead greeted by his father, who pushed the door open and stood in the doorway, still processing what he was going to say.

"What do you want?" Oliver growled, keeping his gaze on the wall. Jon milled in the doorway a moment longer, then came forward and stood a couple feet from his son.

"Oliver-" he paused, searching for words, "Oliver I'm sorry."

"For what." He knew what he was sorry for, but he wanted him to say it. Out loud.

"I'm sorry...I'm sorry for what I said." Jon watched his son, hoping for a response. "And did."

"Say it." Oliver demanded softly, still refusing to look at him. Jon slowly edged closer and sat on the corner of his bed, and Oliver scooted back as far as he could, making it clear how much he wanted to avoid him.

"I'm sorry I yelled at you- hurt you, and compared you to your mother."

"You hurt Dindet too." He remarked, making sure he wouldn't forget it.

"I'm sorry for that too." His father let out a small sigh.

"I don't ever want to do that again." Oliver replied, recalling his adrenaline fueled defense of the clown. "You were like Matthew."

He knew the words stung, and he wanted them to. He wanted his father to know just how awful he felt. Just how mad he was at him. This apology needed to mean something.

"You shouldn't have needed to in the first place." Jon admitted, pressing his face into his hands in shame and regret. "I should have never acted like that. It was wrong of me and I am so, so sorry."

"I miss her too, you know." Oliver finally looked at him, waiting for him to do something. "I want her back too."

"I know."

"So why can't you be better about it? It's not fair." Oliver felt tears beginning to bubble in his eyes and blinked them away as best he could. "All you do is stay up there. You don't do anything but work on that stupid machine. You don't talk to anyone...You don't talk to me."

"I'm sorry." He replied, unable to find something else, something better to say. It wasn't enough.

"You didn't even go to the funeral." Oliver bit, growing louder as he spoke. "I was alone, Dad. I was alone and I watched them bury a stupid, empty casket, and you weren't even there!"

Oliver sat forward, pulling on his father's shoulder and forcing him to face him. "Do you have any idea what that was like?! How I felt?!"

Oliver held back a burst of tears, glaring through red eyes and tearstained, burning cheeks at the person who was supposed to be there. Not just at a stupid funeral. He was supposed to be there for him.

He was crying too though, and the sight of it broke Oliver, and the child let out a pitiful sob and butted his head against his father's chest. "You were supposed to be there."

Jon sat there, in a stupor of his son's grief. He could barely breathe, or think, and shame settled around him in the most suffocating of ways and he slowly wrapped his arms around his child, pulling him close to hold and petting his head in effort to calm his rightful tears.

"I haven't..I haven't been." He admitted, dragging in a shaky breath and pressing his face into Oliver's head. "I'm here now."