*This chapter is dedicated to my daughter @YellowIsAHappyColor, who was also 6 at the time that I completed this story (years ago). Bea's determined little personality was drawn from my experience with her at this age <3 and like Bea, she's always had a big heart for people with trauma who need a stubborn friend and a good hug. I love and am proud of the person you're becoming, El. This mumma bear will always have your back.*

{Cary}

Jon's room was empty. Cary stood looking at Jon's rumpled bed, his head pounding like someone had been yelling in his ears for the past hour. He was heavy with the dark he'd talked up from the basement, and there was more pressing on the doors he had kept shut. There was a child down there who remembered how to cry, and the wall between them was getting thinner. When he couldn't keep himself apart anymore all of that boy's terror and heartbreak would be his.

He dug in his backpack for his drawing book and pencils and crawled into Jon's bed. He put his head on Jon's cool pillow and pressed the dark onto the page until the paper shone black with graphite. He drew until he felt something release in his chest. He let the drawing book fall, feeling so empty he scraped bottom. He thought he heard one of Jon's sisters crying; no one went to comfort her.

He was lying like that, with his frozen hands tucked under his shirt against the heat of his bruises when Jon came in. Cary blinked like someone had just turned on a light. "Where did you go?"

Jon touched him with a look. "Down to the ravine. There's some bike trails where I used to go when Todd wound me up." His face was still shadowed with anger and tears had left tracks through the dirt on his cheeks. He went to his closet and pulled off his filthy shirt.

Cary closed his eyes. That's what it looked like to not have scars. He said, "Is it supper time?"

"Not for a couple hours," Jon said. He changed quickly, keeping his back to Cary. "Have you eaten anything today?"

Cary thought about that. He was hollow inside. He shook his head.

"Well you look like crap. Come on and I'll make you a snack."

Cary got stiffly to his feet. Dark gathered in the corners of his vision, and he kept his eyes between Jon's shoulders, following him down the hall like he was a bright planet in a black void.

Jon pulled a box of frozen waffles out of the freezer and lined them up in the toaster. "Are you thinking about staying?"

"I told your dad I would."

Jon turned; his face glowed like a light had switched on inside him. Cary shivered, watching him. If he fucked this up, he would care so much about that it was terrifying.

Jon hid his grinning face in the fridge and said, "Check it out, there's real whipped cream in a can."

As if on cue, Jon's littlest sister wandered into the kitchen. She climbed onto the chair next to Cary, watching Jon with a hopeful expression. "Jonee can you make a waffle snack for me?"

"Sure Bea," Jon said.

Bea stared at the side of Cary's face so hard that he finally turned and looked at her. "What."

She had Jon's worried crease in-between her eyebrows. "What happened to your face?"

Cary slid Jon a look. What was he supposed to say here?

Jon said, "Up to you." He grabbed the waffles out of the toaster, blowing on his fingers. He put plates in front of them both.

Cary cut his waffle into four and then cut it again into eight. He did not want to talk about this with Bea. "I made my father angry."

Bea frowned harder. "What did you do?"

Cary held the memory of that morning at a distance with some effort, sweat pricking under his arms. "I was making my brother a bottle. He thought I was hurting him." He could just say it now. "He hit me."

She drew back, astonished. "That's not true, is it Jon? Did Cary's dad do that to him?"

"Sorry Bea," Jon said. "I can tell you from personal experience that people can be really mean. Not Cary though; he'd never hurt you. Anyways, he's too banged up to even catch you. You're a pretty fast runner."

Bea giggled. She shook up the can of whipped cream. "Gimme your plate."

Cary stopped with his fork halfway to his mouth. He set the waffle down and passed the plate to Bea. She made a mountain of white foam on his waffles, and then on hers, her mouth curving as she admired her work. "There. That's better, isn't it?"

He took his plate back without comment. His mouth filled with the soft, sweet taste of the waffle. It was the best thing he'd eaten in weeks.

When Bea was finished her waffle she used her fingers to mop up her plate, licking syrup off of them thoughtfully. "Did your dad say sorry to you?"

Cary darted a look at her. "No."

She made a face. "Well, that wasn't very nice. He left a big mark on you. Next time he comes here, I'm going to tell him that."

The picture was so scary Cary want to shove her in a cupboard and hold the door shut to keep her far, far away from his father.

She jumped off her chair, tossing her pigtails. "Bye." Cary watched her go, his heart doing double time before he remembered who she was. Pete wouldn't let anything happen to her. He didn't have to worry about her because Pete was her dad.

"I think she likes you," Jon said.

"She doesn't know any better," Cary said, ducking his head. "You're so fucking lucky. All of you."

They spent the afternoon in Jon's room. Cary stretched on the bed working on his drawing. Jon laid on the floor reading comic books. The noise of Jon's house—his sisters playing, his parents talking, the hum of the dishwasher—washed around them like waves.

"Bea is six," Jon said, after more than an hour of silence.

It was a moment before Cary could pull himself out of his drawing and look at him. Jon was lying on the floor with his arm over his eyes. His mouth was flat and unhappy. "That stuff happened to you when you were six."

Cary put his eyes on his page. He'd had something lodged in his mind like a glass shard since he dragged it out for the social worker, and this drawing was the best he could do to get it out. He'd pushed the perspective so the child's outstretched hands in the foreground were as large as the figure raised to strike in the shadows behind him. But he didn't feel anything about it. It was like looking at the photograph of someone else's kid; he knew it was real, but he didn't care.

"I don't really remember what that was like," he said. "Like it happened to someone apart from me."

Jon sat up. "That's why you don't cry."

Cary looked silently at him. He thought about opening the door to the pink nursery, and how he'd cried then. What would happen if he opened all the doors? He dropped his eyes to the page, resting his fingertips on the paper. He didn't want to find out.

"Sorry." Jon pressed his fingers against his eyes. Tears had slipped out of them. He let out his breath slowly. "Sorry, I said I wouldn't cry."

Cary lifted his shoulders. "There's nothing wrong with you," he said. "You don't have to apologize for who you are to me."

"There's nothing wrong with you either," Jon said. "In case you're too stupid to figure that out too."

Cary's shoulders tightened. "I could have broken your face, Jon. I still could."

"That's not who you are. That's just the shit you learned." Jon's voice vibrated with anger.

Cary's face stung like Jon had slapped him. "That's the shit he carved on me and it's in me now—" He dug his palm into his chest. "—scars on my scars. I can't just—cut them out and be something different. You don't know a fucking thing about that."

Jon absorbed that with his eyebrows drawn down and tear-tracks still on his cheeks. "Just what I know from you."

Cary muttered a swear. He was responsible for so much shit in Jon's life right now.

"And not just you." Jon bent his head and drew in his breath. "Jesus has scars."

Cary watched him sideways. This was the part about Jon he didn't know anything about. "So?"

Jon was quiet for a bit, his hands cupped together in his lap, like he would use them to scoop a mouthful of water. Like he needed that water to speak. "So Jesus knows what it's like. He knows how to be good, even when he was so hurt." Jon lifted his face to him; his expression was full of light, like sunlight on water held quivering in a bowl.

Cary had to look away. He had rooms full of darkness, frozen inside him, and that light was what was inside Jon.

"He says he can take your hurt and heal it," Jon said, soft and low. "I don't know how he can do that, but he wants to and that must mean he can." He caught his breath like tears were close.

Cary made a disbelieving noise. "Jesus said that to you?"

Jon shrugged, his face pinking. "Well... yeah."

What if that was true? Cary was clenching his battered hands so tightly his knuckles ached. "What would I even say to him?"

"I don't know—sorry?"

Cary caught his breath. "I can't." It was so easy for him to picture Jesus with his face smashed in, getting back up and reaching for the shovel. He cupped his hands over his mouth, panic making him short of breath. The basement was so close, ready to drag him out of this room and into a black hole of memory.

Jon frowned at him. "Why not? Just say sorry and get another chance."

Cary could taste concrete dust and copper in his mouth and feel the electric crackle of his father's anger making the hairs all over his body stand to attention. Then the basement swallowed him whole, the force of it slamming him against the wall and pinning him there. He wanted to say sorry but his father wasn't going to let him until he'd made him twist and break and bleed.

please

please

Jesus-God please

He couldn't breathe. The bed rocked and Jon said, "I'm coming over there, don't punch me in the face." His solid warmth settled against Cary's shoulder and he put his hand lightly on Cary's shoulder blade. Cary drew into a ball with a whimper.

"Jesus." Jon's hand lifted. "Cary...I'm not going to hurt you."

Cary made a wrenching noise that was supposed to be a laugh, brought back to this room by the ridiculousness of Jon saying that to him. "I know." Panic beat him back, teetering on the top of the stairs, and he fought to stay here, with Jon.

Jon took a shaky breath. "What's going on?"

Cary was still trying to scrape his mind back together. "I said sorry." His voice was uneven. "A hundred fucking times. In the basement."

"Well your father is an asshole," Jon said sharply. "Jesus is not like that."

Cary shook his head. He knew this, right in his bones. "Sorry isn't good enough."

Jon's forehead wrinkled. He still didn't get it. Quick as thinking, Cary caught his face and pressed his thumb against the bruise swelling Jon's cheek. "Somebody pays," Cary said. "Somebody has to carry it."

Jon met his eyes without flinching, even though Cary was holding him hard enough to feel the ridge of the bone in his cheek. "So?" Jon said. "Why does it have to be you?"

Cary let his hand drop. The bone wasn't broken. He wasn't sure what he would have done with himself if he had broken Jon. He folded his arms over his head and rested his forehead on his knees. Everything hurt and he was exhausted. "I'm sorry," he said in a soft, dry voice. "For hitting you. I fucked up."

He felt Jon shrug against his arm. "I forgive you," Jon said. "So forget it."

Cary stayed still. Just like that.

"Was that so hard?" Jon said lightly.

Cary turned his head to look silently at Jon. That bruise would still be hurting Jon when he talked or ate or rolled over on the wrong side in bed. Sorry or no sorry, he could add that to the list of shit he couldn't take back.

Jon nudged his shoulder. "You know how my dad looked when you said sorry?"

Cary closed his eyes a moment. Jon looked like Pete when his face was like this.

"God is like my dad," Jon said. "His love is steady like my dad's. He carries the cost." Shadows passed over Jon's expression. "I have been... ungrateful and selfish, and I've hurt my dad on purpose, and he never hurt me back. He took it and still came to tuck me in and pray for me every single night until I made him stop." Jon drew a breath. "I wish I could give you all the good days I've had with my dad so you could see what it's supposed to be like."

"Don't," Cary said, low and rough. "You can't. So just—don't."

Jon set his jaw and looked at his hands spread on his knees. "At least I can forgive you. The way he's covered for me."

Cary hiccoughed a laugh, rubbing his eyes with the heel of his hand. "God, you Whites. So fucking stubborn."

Jon's smile made his whole face warm and bright. "Yes we are."

Cary let out a long shaky breath, looking at Jon's battered face wearing that smile. "If I lose it again, I need you to fight me back."

Jon's eyebrows drew together. He didn't say anything.

Cary took a hold of Jon's shirt in his fist, then opened his hand instead. "I mean it. Please. I can't hurt you again." He swallowed, feeling Jon's heart galloping along under his palm. "I need you to stop me."

"How could I stop you?" Jon asked in a flat voice. "You're bigger, and you're good at fighting."

"Look." Cary sat back and lifted his shirt.

Jon flinched, seeing the hot purple bruise where Cary's ribs were broken. "Hit me here, good and hard," Cary said. He pushed his hand against his ribs, feeling the way black tightened around him when he did that. "Get your shoulder in or your knee and I'll go down. I won't get back up. You'll be safe."

Jon drew back. "No way. I can't do that--hit you where you're hurt."

"You have to," Cary said, roughly. "Jon, that kid I fought at the shelter—his face didn't look like a face anymore when I was finished. I don't remember anything after the first minute." He was shaking, thinking about how close he came to doing that to Jon this morning. He let his shirt drop and held his hands up. "If I did that to you... if I did that to you again I couldn't bleed enough. And I would have to leave. Please help me not fuck this up."

Jon's face got hard, and Cary folded his fingers over the lines cut into his palm. Jon got to his feet. "Fine," he said. "Whatever you say."

Cary held still, watching him cross the room. "You look mad," he said.

"I am mad," Jon snapped. His eyes flashed gold in the long afternoon light as he looked back at Cary. "I hate that you hurt yourself so many ways. I hate that you think you deserve it. If you need me to say I'll do this, to feel safe enough to stay—then okay, I will. But I want you to know, right now—I'm never going to need to. Because you won't let this happen again." Jon brushed his hand over his bruised cheek. "I know you."

Cary ducked his head, out of breath. "Okay. Thank you."

Jon sighed. "Yeah, you're welcome, Cary. That's what friends are for."

When the door shut, Cary shut his eyes and slumped sideways onto the bed. He covered his face and tried to get a breath into his aching chest. He couldn't believe he'd done such a good job of hiding from Jon that Jon thought he wouldn't hurt him again. Cary wanted to believe that the Cary Jon saw was in him somewhere, even if he was bent by scars, but he was so tired. More likely that Cary was dead and gone and Jon just saw the shape of where he used to be.