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So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue’
Whoever gives one of these little ones a cup of cold water to drink…he shall in no wise lose his reward
He was little, and in bed, and it was dark, which was something he hadn’t really liked back then (that was before he’d gotten used to being in the dark by himself, which happened pretty fast, because he’d been in the dark alone a lot), and the problem was he didn’t feel good—he needed water—but there was no one there to ask for some. He could get up, get some, but he really didn’t feel good, and he really really didn’t like the dark.
He’d had to get used to it—the dark, in the long run; the thirst, as he lay there that night in the empty house. The thing in him that always wanted something, and thought he might die without it—well, he got used to that one quicker. It was always dying. Really, why did it have to be so dramatic? It’s not like his parents didn’t love him. Or like he couldn’t get water himself! But even though he was really thirsty, he didn’t.
Tim got used to the dark, and found it wasn’t so scary after all. He discovered this primarily when one night he saw a shadow peel itself away from the darkness around it, and slipping through a patch of moonlight, stop a guy with a gun. And then beside the shadow, among the rest of them, there appeared a brilliant flash of green and red and yellow, all dazzling color, all bright, and Tim thought—if the dark had things like *those* in it, maybe it wasn’t so scary after all. It was the night after that that, lying in bed in his empty house, feeling his body start to ache and his head hurt and everything get too hot, he got himself up, and dragged himself through the dark, and got himself a glass of water. It felt a little bit like life.
It was possible, he knew, to die from lack of water.
Sometimes, he wondered if it really was possible to die from that other feeling, that feeling that desired something so bad and said it would die for lack of it. But it had gone on so long saying it would without actually doing it that he decided it was ridiculous. What did it want anyways? If it was going to die, it should die already! (He wouldn’t mind not lying awake at night thirsty, but not really thirsty, anymore).
It came to him, what it had been all these years, ironically when he was about to die. It came to him in the face of his brother—or, someone who might’ve been, if things had been different, or maybe might never have been, if they had. It had an impeccable sense of dramatic timing, he thought. (So did the man.)
It came to him in the way that he was dying, and it was someone he should have loved, who could have loved him, and whose eyes were full of something burning, something asking to be quenched. That was Tim’s first hunch.
He got another one night when, following the long trail of a case down the alleys and back streets of the night, he stumbled sideways into the rumpled half asleep form of a street kid, who barely looked like a kid anymore, who asked him for a drink. Tim was busy—he was chasing down answers—but this was a *kid*, and maybe it reminded him of his own voice, in the dark, asking no one who was around to help for a glass of water. This was asking a question too, and offering Tim a lead, and he wanted answers, so his objective had to change. Just for a bit! He would get back on track! No one would need to know he spent the next fifteen minutes hunting down the nearest 24 hour convenience store and buying a bag full of gatorades!
The kid, who’d just wanted a drink, didn’t look like he knew what to do with all the wealth deposited in front of him. Tim reached out to ruffle the kid’s hair—and maybe place a tracker on him so he could find him again later—and the kid froze, stiff and afraid, and then melted into the touch.
That was when Tim put it all together.
The kid cracked the seal on a blue Gatorade, and took a big swig, wiping his mouth after and flashing a grin. The hard edge in his eyes dissolved into a little spark of life.
Tim, laden with answers, returned home as the night drew to a close, to find his brother, who had once tried to kill him, true, but currently was not doing that, bent over a computer, angry and tight. He had been rubbing his face till Tim appeared, and then resorted to glowering at the screen. His side was bandaged, and he looked haggard in the dim light. “Move over,” Tim said, shoving the other boy into a chair. Then he thrust a bottle of water into his hand, and turned to work out the problem on the screen himself. He wouldn’t be able to, though; he had gotten enough answers to deal with for one night.
The other boy scoffed, but didn’t get up, and after a minute, he took a slow sip from the water bottle. It was cold still, and put something like a little life back in him. He grunted. “Come on, Timmy,” he said. “Leave it till later. It can wait. Go to bed, you look like dehydrated squash.”
But Tim didn’t move. Why should he go to bed? He wouldn’t be able to sleep, because he was five years old alone in the dark and terribly thirsty, and he wanted water and he wanted his parents and blast it all, he wanted someone to care.
“Hey,” Jason said, knocking him upside the head. “Bed. Now.” He put a hand on Tim’s shoulder, and began navigating him away from the screen, upstairs, and upstairs again, through the dark corridors, keeping one hand on Tim, the other holding his own helmet, brilliant and bright, a splash of definite color amidst the murky shadows. They reached Tim’s room, and Tim registered being pushed into the soft haven of his own bed. He heard a huffed, “Sleep Timmers,” but only barely.
When he woke up a few hours later, still in the dark, thirsty, he found a water bottle on the nightstand by his bed.