Chapter Text
The rain wasn’t letting up. For the past hour and a half—Donny had been keeping count—the rain hadn’t let up even an inch.
If anything, it was getting worse.
Thick sheets of rain battered the front windshield of their station wagon, sending fat rivulets down every pane of glass.
Washing things away.
Washing things—
“—Trying to keep the rain from w-washing things away…”
Donny took a breath. More than a year, you’re fine. It had been more than a year since Manila and Michael and—
They were halfway through their first national tour. Things were fine. Things were great.
At least, things would be great once they all arrived safely at their hotel for the night and got out of this awful rain.
If only it weren’t so late at night, so dark, maybe his chest wouldn’t be trying to squeeze the life out of him.
“At the risk of sounding like an absolute child,” Julia said, leaning forward until her chin rested on the back of Donny’s passenger seat, “do we have an estimated time of arrival?”
“That didn’t sound anything like a child,” Davy supplied and Donny silently envied the touch of humor lacing his voice. “This is a child.” From his place next to Julia in the middle bench, he slumped against the driver’s seat. “Are we there yet?”
“We’ll get there when we get there.” Wayne—bless him, he was just trying to drive, just let him drive—sounded a heck of a lot calmer than he looked, his knuckles a patchy white as they clutched the steering wheel. “Also, Julia, I’m thinking another half hour.”
“Whoa, another thirty minutes?” Donny tried to keep his breathing slow and deep. In, out. In out. “Are you serious?”
Wayne gave a half shrug. “It’s just my best guess.”
“I told him to get out…” Donny heard someone suck in a sharp breath. Julia’s steady hand cupping his shoulder told him it was probably him.
“We’re all right, though,” Wayne continued, nodding at the rain-soaked windshield. “I can still see both edge lines.”
“Well, hal-leh-lujah.” Jimmy’s quip punctured the silence just as it was beginning to thicken around Donny’s throat. “Sorry. Sorry, it’s just… Don’t you think we should at least pull over?”
The car lurched and Donny’s fingers flew to the edges of his seat, tightening around them until he was sure his skin would rip open. The rain was reaching a deafening decibel, filling his ears with an all-too-familiar buzz.
“I can see the edge lines,” Wayne repeated, gesturing at the road. Donny couldn’t tell who he was trying to convince… “As long as I can see the edge lines, we’re fine.”
Somewhere in the haze, Jimmy told Wayne to keep both hands on the wheel, but all other conversation was lost to Donny.
“... And he wasn’t there next to me… where I thought he’d be.”
The rain ruined everything. You couldn’t see in the rain, couldn’t hear in the rain. Couldn’t shout through the rain, not when it was coming down in torrential waves. Not when Mother Nature seemed hell-bent on taking the whole band out at once and burying all seven of them in a watery grave.
“He wasn’t there where I thought he’d be…”
“I stayed there all night—”
Donny slammed his eyes shut against the sudden burn of oncoming headlights.
“—Trying to keep the rain from w-washing things away.”
“Wayne, hands on the wheel!”
The car lurched again. Swerving to the far right.
“They are—!”
Someone cursed.
“I told him to get out, get—”
Julia screamed.
“Get out!”
And the car went airborne.
The last thing Donny remembered was Julia’s nails digging into his shoulder before he was showered in shattered glass
Then, someone turned out all the lights.
Johnny didn’t remember much of the war.
On bad days, Johnny didn’t remember much of anything.
Maybe he had to look at an address book to remember where Wayne and Nick lived, but he did notice things. He noticed the way Jimmy always had a book nearby, always something law-related. Or the way Wayne only relaxed his shoulders and arms when he was playing with the band. Or the slight quiver in Julia’s voice whenever she sang about Michael.
Johnny couldn’t remember all the details of the jeep crash, but he did notice the way the atmosphere inside the car had grown quieter, more tense the longer it kept on raining. From his place in the back row, he could see the entire car. Five heads bobbing to the rumble of worn asphalt and one dozing beside him. Nick had drifted off maybe twenty minutes ago and Johnny couldn’t help but feel jealous.
Once you had flipped three times in a jeep, you didn’t just sleep in moving cars like that.
Davy had still joked here and there with Julia, though the comedic commentary wasn’t flying as freely as it had before. Jimmy had kept his book open and his little flashlight on, but he wasn’t reading anything; his gaze flicking back and forth, from the semi-dark pages to the blurry road to Wayne’s white-knuckled grip on the wheel.
To the average civilian, Julia might have seemed indifferent or oblivious, but Johnny noticed the edge to her features… the way her lips seemed a little too pinched.
And Donny… Donny was barely holding it together. Though trying to put on a good show of it, Johnny didn’t miss the sharp intakes of breath or the jerky movements. The way their leader balked at thirty more minutes.
Jimmy’s unusual outburst of sarcasm didn’t help any. Even with the swift apology, it only added to the thickening tension. The drummer wanted to take a knife and just hack away at it, wanted to clear it away so they all could breathe again.
Just breathe…
Johnny couldn’t remember all the details of the jeep crash, but he knew for a fact that edge lines on the road were just a guide. Yellow and white only kept the vehicle as safe as the man behind the wheel… and the surrounding traffic.
“Wayne, hands on the wheel!” Wayne was already gripping the thing with both hands, but Jimmy shouted about it anyway. It was sort of ironic and Johnny almost laughed.
But the sight of the oncoming car stole his breath away. It was swerving too far to the right. Biting out a curse, Wayne gave the steering wheel a sharp jerk, but he wasn’t fast enough.
No one is ever fast enough.
The car sailed toward them like an enemy missile, whistling through the air with only one thing on its mind. One mission, one objective.
Death.
Julia dug her palms into Donny, clinging to his shoulder for dear life.
“Out of the way!” Someone was shouting, the voice familiar, though Johnny couldn’t place it. “Get out of the way!”
His hands gripping the wheel.
A jeep bumping along a dirt road.
“Incoming—!”
But he couldn’t remember… Couldn’t—
—Someone was shouting. Shouting in his ear to stop, to slow down.
Now, they were cursing. It was all anyone could do in the split second before the impact.
Davy braced himself against Wayne’s chair as Jimmy slid closer to Julia, using both his arms and book as a makeshift shield against the incoming explosion.
Johnny wanted to take a breath. To fill his lungs before everything went dark. Before the shock of the blast sent their car flying, tumbling, flipping three times.
Three times one plus three equals—
Three operations.
One shell.
Three flips.
Three soldiers.
Two dead with a remainder of one—
His mind was moving faster than it ever had before the war. Before the shell. Before the jeep and the flip and the three operations on my back and—
The most he could do in the last remaining seconds was press his knees against the back of the bench as the whistling came to an abrupt stop…
… And the shell exploded in a burst of light. Deafening. Blinding. An uncontrollable fury of flame and destruction.
Both cars were sent careening off the road and into a side ditch. The first explosion was almost better than the sudden stop. Whereas the explosion merely lit up the sky, the jolting stop slammed Johnny against the wall.
Glass shattered and Johnny swore he saw Donny go through the front windshield, but he couldn’t tell. Couldn’t remember.
Why can’t you ever re—?
The pain snuck up on his so quietly, so suddenly, that he almost missed it. The needles piercing his back, the jolt wracking his spine. The stabbing rush as all the air left his body in an all-out Blitzkrieg attack.
Closing his eyes against the onslaught wasn’t helpful, so he forced them open. He had to do something. To hold onto the steering wheel before they all flipped three—
Except… they were stopped. Everything was still. Quiet.
Too quiet.
It was in the quiet that the pain screamed the loudest, licking at his back like the flames of hell. He needed to move. To beat out the fire. To make it go away.
Like something straight out of a B-29, it hit him as he shifted against the seat, as he tried to will his limbs to take some sort of action… He’d been good at math before the war. Good at math on purpose. Maybe even going to school for it, or planning to. Or something. Wanting to teach, wanting to show others how to feel the warm satisfaction of numbers lining up in a row. The feeling of putting a neat, tidy bow on the end of even the most chaotic equations.
Maybe.
It was an unattainable dream, now, and yet… for a split second, with blood trickling down his temple and pain flooding his back and chest…
… For that single hairsbreadth of a second, it was a dream he could touch. One he could remember. It was as if this second shell had done the opposite of the first, giving him a burst of memory instead of robbing him of the life he once knew.
He wanted to hold onto it, to grab it and never let go. To write it down, or… or something. But he could hardly move, much less pick up a pad and pencil.
A groan echoed beside him.
Maybe he couldn’t get his arms to work properly, but he was able to turn his head enough to watch Nick shift, face all twisted up in a wince as he rubbed at his neck.
And just like that, the car turned into a sort of moving picture, one in which everyone slowly came to life again while Johnny sat and watched.
He didn’t particularly like this film. It starred Wayne jerking back into awareness, going from confused to frantic to eerily calm in less than half a minute.
Wayne took a long, deep breath. “I need anyone who’s still conscious to get out of the car. Slowly. No sudden movements. Davy?” An affirmative groan answered. “Davy, thank God. You need to help me with Donny.”
Johnny couldn’t tell through the haze in his mind if there was actually a slight quiver interrupting Wayne’s forced calm every few seconds, or if it was just his imagination. So many things happened in his imagination these days that sometimes it was hard to tell fact from fiction, memory from creation.
As the main cast eased themselves out of the car, handling the doors like they were bunches of dynamite primed to explode at any moment, the supporting actors took center stage. Julia looked just about as shocked as Johnny felt, her hands that had once held Donny’s shoulder now hanging limp and empty atop the front bench. Jimmy still clung to her side, one arm outstretched and pressed against the far wall in a makeshift lap bar across her, and the other clutching her shoulder in a white-knuckled grip that could have rivaled Wayne’s.
His book, nowhere to be found.
“You’re gonna be okay.” Jimmy repeated one of his only lines in a muted, desperate tone. “You’re gonna be okay. Just hang on a little longer. I promise, you’re gonna be—”
“Donny!” Where Jimmy’s was soft, Julia’s shrill voice pierced the air, sending shudders down Johnny’s spine. “Where’s—? Jimmy, stop! Where’s Donny? ”
That’s when Nick stepped in, still massaging his neck, like rubbing it long enough would make the pain go away.
“He’s going to be just fine.” Johnny couldn’t recall the trumpeter ever sounding so kind, so reassuring. “We’re all going to be just fine. Are you okay?”
It took longer than usual for Johnny to realize someone was talking to him. Why? Maybe he’d taken too many of his pain pills. He didn’t need to be slowed down any more than he already was, so why hadn’t he waited until after rehearsal to—
Had they even rehearsed yet? No. That didn’t seem right.
And there was something he’d been wanting to remember… Something he’d wanted to write down. What was it—?
Fingers snapped mere inches in front of his face and Johnny locked eyes with a very concerned Nick.
Why? We’re all going to be just fine, right…? So why—?
“Johnny, are you all right? Geez, that’s one hell of a cut… Just, uh… wait there for a second, okay?”
There must have been some sort of mixup in production planning because now Julia and Jimmy had the same script. Her Where’s Donny? mantra had shifted into a panicked I can’t lose anyone else!
And at some point, Jimmy had stolen her lines, squeezing his eyes shut as he whispered, “I can’t lose anyone else. I can’t lose anyone else…”
Donny’s part in the show had been cut altogether. Wherever he was, Johnny couldn’t see him—or Davy and Wayne, for that matter—and that was enough to spark a bit of life into his limbs, even though Nick had told him to stay put.
“Hey, knock it off! She’s fine! Donny’s fine.” Nick’s tone was gruff again, more in line with the usual, but it was laced with a rare twinge of worry around its fraying edges. Carefully, he pried Jimmy away from Julia. “Look, you’re both going to be fine, okay? Just calm down so we can get out of this car.”
Johnny couldn’t figure out why it was so important to get out of the car. He could divide percentages and multiply numbers by the fourth power, but he couldn’t figure this equation. Wayne had told them to get out of the car, hadn’t he…?
Giving Jimmy’s shoulders a quick shake, Nick pressed on. “Snap out of it, sailor! You need to get her out of here right now. That’s an order.”
Maybe it was the words themselves or the mere urgency in Nick’s voice, but something about it made Jimmy’s body snap to attention. He reached for Julia’s hand, but she beat him to it, snatching it up and hanging on for dear life. With her free hand, she tried opening the door.
It was stuck.
Another memory surfaced. No air. Can’t move. Bloody hands trying to shove open the door of a jeep.
Mangled body. Mangled jeep.
Stuck door.
Johnny sucked in a breath before trying to elbow Julia’s door open from behind.
A hand grabbed his shoulder.
“The other one’s already open. Come on!” Jimmy had been poised to kick open the door when Nick hissed the words.
Then, he was tugging at Johnny, making for the exit at the same time as Jimmy and Julia.
Only when Johnny tumbled out into the fresh air at last did the answer to the equation hit him.
Smoke. Smoke could mean fire.
A thin trail of smoke drifted out of the front of the car. The smashed, mangled front of the car.
“What about the instruments?” Raised to be heard through the thick rain, Jimmy’s question seemed both logical and absurd at the same time.
Nick brushed him aside, moving toward the growing tower of smoke. “Not a priority right now.”
“But they’re not insured.”
“Where’s Donny?” Julia’s question brought Jimmy’s line of questioning to a swift halt.
Where’s Donny…?
A quick glance about proved to be fruitless. No Donny. No Wayne, no Davy… But Johnny did see the other driver. Through sheets and sheets of pouring rain, he saw the other driver, the other car. The shell. Passed out against his steering wheel, the middle-aged man didn’t look like he’d be going anywhere anytime soon.
After a brief stumble, Johnny regained his footing and his wits enough to make his way to the other vehicle. Somehow, Jimmy was right there at his side. Maybe he’d found his wits again, too.
Part of Johnny wondered how his bandmate could even see through the many droplets clinging to his glasses, but another part of him knew that wasn’t important right now.
Like Nick had said, not a priority.
The mission was to make sure everyone was all right, and then make sure neither of the cars were going to explode in a fiery inferno.
Somewhere along the line, Julia had stopped crying out for Donny, and by the time they heaved the driver out into the rain, Johnny could see why.
Their leader was stretched out on the ground, unresponsive. Julia on his right, clutching his unconscious face while Wayne attempted to revive him on his left. Through the rain, Johnny couldn’t tell if he was breathing or not, so he forced himself to cling to Nick’s words.
We’re all gonna be just fine.
He’ll be fine, he’ll be—
“You okay, kid?” Someone was gently prodding at his temple and Johnny glanced up from the driver to find Davy. “That looks nasty.”
He wanted to shrug it off. It was nothing compared to flipping three times in a—
Instead, he let a couple fingers drift up to his skin, feeling the gash for the first time. Before his mind could fully comprehend the gloppy swirl of blood and rain that came off on his hand, another voice shot through the downpour.
“Make sure he’s all right,” Jimmy told Davy. It took Johnny a moment to realize he meant the driver.
As Jimmy made to stand, Davy grabbed his arm. “Hey, where are you going?”
“There’s another car coming.” He spoke as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, yet Johnny hadn’t noticed the oncoming headlights until then. “We need help.”
His tone was steadier than before. Almost too steady, like its rigidity was the only thing holding him together. It was logical, tight, all-business… broken only by a slight stumble as Jimmy got to his feet.
“You heard the man. Now, let’s see here…” Davy began to prod at the driver’s neck and head, coming to a relieving conclusion after only a few minutes. “More than likely concussed, but I think he’ll be fine.”
Good. That was… that was good. That was…
Davy sucked in a sharp breath, the emotion behind his eyes more than enough to send several jolts down Johnny’s spine.
“If I’ve had even one drink,” he said, voice barely loud enough to be heard above the squall, “don’t you dare let me get behind a wheel. Don’t any of you ever let me behind a wheel…”
Before he had the chance to be confused, Johnny caught a whiff of alcohol on the driver’s breath. The shell, the explosion… It suddenly all made sense. And he wished it hadn’t.
Sometimes, it was simpler to be confused. To be the one who didn’t remember things, who didn’t make connections. But even still, maybe he couldn’t always remember…
He would still notice.
Notice the way Davy didn’t reply when he was asked about Donny.
Notice the way Wayne looked like he was doing CPR back there—even though Johnny knew it couldn’t be that. The rain must have been playing tricks on his eyes.
Notice how another pair of headlights joined their group.
Notice the way Nick had to catch Jimmy before he tumbled back down into the embankment because he could hardly see.
Johnny would always notice.
But maybe after all this was over; when they had finally reached a good hotel…
… Maybe then he could forget.