A Solid Core of Alpha (35 page)

“Can we get her a tissue?” he asked Dr. Silverberg, and she grimaced at him, tears in her own eyes.

“Here, Cassie, I’ve got plenty,” she said, and there was a hitch in her voice too.

“Why is everyone so upset?” he asked, feeling bad.

“Because we want what’s best for you, Anderson,” Dr. Cherry said, stealing one of Dr. Silverberg’s tissues with the familiarity of a good friend or a lover. “And we want what’s best for C.J., and you two are going to be really good for each other, but you’ve got to be patient. And you’ve got to let each other go. And that’s going to be really hard for right now. And that hurts us all.”

Anderson waved his hand by his ear before the others could start adding their opinions.
These are C.J.’s friends
, he thought distantly. He remembered C.J. talking to Dr. Cherry while they were up at the station. “C.J. has them too,” he said in wonder.

“C.J. has what, sweetheart?” Cassie asked, and he knew the others were meeting eyes, but he couldn’t do anything about that.

“He has a Kate and a Bobby and a Henry and a Risa… but he doesn’t have an Alpha. He doesn’t have an Alpha. That’s the difference,” Anderson figured, a little bit of wonder in his voice. “He doesn’t have an Alpha. That’s why C.J.’s happy.”

“Naw, baby,” Cassie said, and Anderson thought it was funny that she knew what he was talking about when no one else did. “He’s not happy because he doesn’t have an Alpha. He’s happy because
you’re
his Alpha, and you’re a really good guy.”

Anderson swallowed, feeling the weight of a grief he’d never known he could hold. “But I killed my Alpha,” he said, feeling mournful and hating himself for it. “I killed my Alpha. How can he love me when I killed my Alpha?”

“You didn’t kill him,” Cassie insisted, putting Dr. Silverberg’s tissue to good use. “You deleted a hologram that had outlived its use. Alpha—that was you all along, baby. And there’s not a world, in space, in a holodeck, or in the imagination, where Cyril couldn’t love you, especially not for that.”

Anderson wasn’t crying, was he? He wanted to, but he wasn’t… he wasn’t, was he? Of course, he wasn’t screaming either. But as far as he could remember, he hadn’t cried in a long, long time. The last time he’d cried had been… had been….

I don’t remember.

Neither do I.

I wasn’t programmed yet.

Me neither.

Had been lost in a big, black void of unimaginable loss. “How crazy am I?” he asked pitifully, wiping his face on his sleeve. “Am I too crazy for C.J. to love?”

Cassidy shook her head. “You’re going to be fine, baby. You’ve just got to give C.J. some space so he can heal too. Can you do that? He won’t go unless you let him. He won’t even ask, Anderson. He won’t even tell you that it’s time to go back. But it is time to go back. He’s going to lose his job, and everything he’s worked for, and his whole life he thought he was a fuck-up, you know? He thought he was the least of us….”

“That’s not true!” Anderson insisted, knowing that in this, at least, he wasn’t crazy.

Cassie nodded her head. “You’re right, it’s not true. And with you, he’s become the man we all knew he could be. But he’s never going to know that, not here, not trying to do the impossible while you’re not well enough to know he’s here.”

She’s crying, Anderson. You need to do something about that.

Aw—see, Anderson. Even Bobby’s upset! You’ve got to help her!

Anderson, she’s really unhappy, and she only wants what’s best for C.J.

Please, Anderson? Poor C.J.

“What do I have to do?” Anderson asked, lost in the conversation again.

“You have to let him go.”

The cacophony in Anderson’s head was so deafening after that statement that he didn’t come to until after his sedation.

C.J.
WAS
there, at his bedside, and Anderson felt helpless tears leaking out of his eyes. If C.J. was here and he was in bed, he’d skewed off course somehow. He’d finally set a reliable course through the day so that he would be alert and ready for C.J.’s visits.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “I didn’t mean to sleep.”

C.J. chuckled and rolled his eyes. “Not your fault, my man. Here, let’s sit up, okay? You sit up. I’ve got some food here. I guess you skipped lunch when you… uhm… what did you call it again, Jensen?”

Dr. Cherry looked at Anderson and grimaced, as though begging Anderson to go along with him in something. “A catharsis, C.J., you know, like when you watch a really good movie and cry?”

C.J. brightened. “Well, that’s got to be a good thing, right? I mean, I always feel good after that.”

“It’s only good if you’re crying for the right reasons, buddy,” Dr. Cherry muttered, and again, that grimace, begging Anderson to go along with him.

“I don’t even know what the right reasons are,” he said to the doctor, and that earned him a grateful smile, even though it was nothing less than God’s honest truth.

“The right reasons will come along soon enough, Anderson,” Dr. Cherry said quietly. “Anderson, do you remember what we talked about this afternoon?”

You know what he’s talking about, Anderson.

Man, this is totally fucked up. I mean, I get the reasoning, but really?

Yes—stop making excuses for him, Bobby.

I just don’t like seeing him get hurt, Henry.

Stop it! Please stop arguing. It hurts my head.

See? You guys are making Risa afraid again. Anderson knows what he’s supposed to do. Leave him alone. He’ll be fine.

“Yes, Dr. Cherry, you can leave if you like,” he said, wanting this to be as private as he could manage at the moment.

There was a reassuring squeeze on Anderson’s arm, and then the handsome auburn-haired doctor walked out quietly, and Anderson was left looking at C.J.

His light green eyes were bloodshot, and he was pale underneath the coffee and cream complexion of his skin. His cheekbones seemed… prominent, somehow, and so did the edge of his jaw and his collarbones.

“You’ve lost weight,” Anderson murmured, surprised when there wasn’t an entire chorus to chime in on the simple observation.

“So have you.”

Anderson reached out and grabbed C.J.’s hand. “It’s going to take me a long time to get better,” he said, treading very carefully.

“I’ll be here.”

Anderson squeezed his hand, feeling the bones underneath the skin, fragile and bare without the muscle and fat to protect them. “You shouldn’t have to be,” he graveled, not sure how he spoke at all.

C.J. shrugged. “It’s worth it, right? I mean, I know you don’t remember right now, but it was
really
worth it!” C.J. waggled his eyebrows and cracked a joke, and Anderson was suddenly assaulted by the thinness of his voice. There was not much of C.J. left to crack the joke, to make the smile, to bear Anderson’s weight, as scant as it had become.

“It will be,” Anderson promised. “It will be. I’ll get better.”

It was worth it. Whether the statement was true or not, making the effort was worth it. C.J. seemed to grow more substantial with every word.

“I’m sayin’!” he crowed, and Anderson smiled, feeling finally that what he was doing was right. There was no chorus to back him up in this, no internal warble of friendly voices, and that alone was encouraging.

“But I need you to do me a favor first,” Anderson said, and fought those helpless tears again. Well, fuck. He would have liked to do this with dignity.

Not possible for goofy kids like us.
Bobby’s voice was unmistakable—and unmistakably familiar. For a moment, Anderson felt like he was chasing a sunbeam through a blackened window, and then he focused on C.J. and what he needed to do.

“What’s that, baby?” C.J. said, and he was so fervent, so sincere. Anderson realized that he’d claw his way to the space station in a fishbowl helmet with a piece of string if Anderson asked. For that kind of devotion, there was really only one reward Anderson could offer.

“I need you to leave me here for a little while—”

“No!”

“Hear me out!” Anderson sounded stern, even to himself, and he both hated the sound and was glad for it, because C.J. was paying attention to him like that voice mattered.

“I’m not going to leave.”

“You’re hurting yourself here,” Anderson said. “I can’t… I… I need you to go so I can be better for you. I’m worried for you. I… I’m not strong enough to worry.”

“Well don’t worry about me—”

“I can’t help it! And I want to worry about you. I want to do what’s right for someone else for a change. I want to make sure you take care of yourself. You can’t do that here. You need… you need to give me some room. Give me some dignity, C.J.!” Anderson inwardly glared at Bobby, but he felt this in his bones.

“Dignity?” C.J. sounded skeptical.

“Do you think this is how I want you to see me? Helpless and… and lost?”

“I can find you.”

“Don’t you see, baby?” The endearment came so easily—Anderson wondered if he’d ever used it before, and he didn’t think so. But C.J. was crying, and Anderson was stroking his hand and the inside of his wrist, and he wanted to say something… soft. Something that would make the rest of it less fucking hard. “Don’t you see? I don’t want you to have to find me. I want to find myself and then show you who I am.”

C.J. took a deep breath and then wiped his eyes on the inside of his shirt—something bright today, with gold-tinted rainbows across the front. “I’ve already seen who you are.”

“Yeah, but that was the scary stuff. I’ve got….” Anderson had to pause, to search his mind to see if it was true. He said it anyway. “I’ve got some amazing parts I’ve saved just for you. You just have to let me figure out where they’re hidden.”

C.J. laughed, and it was maybe the most cynical sound Anderson had ever heard. “You sound like a romance story. How can you sound like a romance story when you’re breaking my fucking heart?”

Anderson wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and wondered where Dr. Silverberg had gone with her inexhaustible supply of tissues.

“I have no idea. Just give me some space, just a little, and maybe I’ll be able to tell you then.” Anderson didn’t want space. He just wanted to lean against C.J. and bawl like a lost child.

C.J. took a deep breath, sobbing on the exhale. “Oh crap, Anderson. Is that what you really fucking want?”

“Yes,” Anderson lied. “Yes… oh hell… no, C.J., I don’t want you to go. But you’ve got to, you see? Don’t you see? I couldn’t live if I killed one more goddamned lover….”

He broke then, and cried for real. Not the passive way, where the tears just fell, but the broken way, the way that ended up with his head on C.J.’s shoulder and the sobs shaking them both and nothing happening in his head at all because it was all happening in his body, in his eyes and throat and the sting of the salt against his skin, and in the blessed, heavenly way C.J.’s arms went around his shoulders and C.J.’s big hands cupped the back of his head and C.J. cried with him as they prepared to say goodbye.

Chapter 18

Of Silk Cocoons and Wings

C.J.’
S
parents came to meet Anderson the day they came to take C.J. to the shuttle that bore him away.

Anderson had prepared himself all day, and it still was not enough preparation to see C.J. as a beloved, worried-over son and brother as Catherine and Christopher Poulson came to Anderson’s favorite spot in the shade to introduce themselves.

Like Anderson wouldn’t have known who they were.

Catherine was a slightly older, much more serene version of her feisty daughter—dark skin, stunning cheekbones, full lips, and exotic, tilted oval eyes. Christopher was distinguished, with skin as pale as Anderson’s and merry blue eyes that seemed to laugh cheekily at the world as he looked around the facility.

They were not laughing at Anderson, though.

“How are you doing, baby?” Catherine had a smoky voice, and she asked the question while she was coming to sit on the cushioned bench next to Anderson. C.J. made introductions sitting across from them, and then his mother asked the question again.

Anderson looked at those gentle brown eyes and shifted uncomfortably in his seat. It seemed wrong to lie to her, but he did anyway. “I’m fine, thank you.”

Catherine raised her eyes. “Honey, please don’t bullshit me.”

Unexpectedly, C.J. and Cassidy started to laugh, and their mother looked at them sharply. “What?”

C.J. shook his head. “Nothing, Mom, just leave Anderson alone. He’s as fine as he’s going to be for the moment.”

Anderson looked at him sharply and saw that C.J.’s head was turned. With a wrench, both from the babble in his head and the lethargy that had beset him since his arrival, he reached out and grabbed C.J.’s chin, just to confirm that C.J. was not fine either.

“We will be better,” he promised, and C.J.’s father surprised him by wrapping a protective arm around C.J.’s shoulders and squeezing Anderson’s shoulder with his other hand.

“You must be so proud,” he said with a faint smile. “Look at all you’ve accomplished, Anderson. You’ll be fine. Anyone who did what you did… do you realize what you saved on your ship? C.J. and Cass have only just now sent down some of the archives to the library. You’ve preserved the memory of your entire world. Of course you’ll be fine. You’re a hero. Heroes have the strength to carry on.”

Anderson blinked at him, feeling a little stunned, and C.J. looked up at his father with a shining face.

“Did I tell you,” he said conversationally, “that Dad’s the head librarian of the Northern Hemisphere?”

“No,” said Anderson, with enough dryness in his voice to make everyone laugh. He was still holding C.J.’s hand, and he brought it to his lips and kissed the back. “But I’m sure you would have,” he added quietly.

C.J. nodded and smiled back, and for the span of a held breath, Anderson was absolutely positive that no one else in the world was real, because for a moment out of time, theirs were the only two heartbeats on the planet.

But it ended. C.J. stood up, and his family, including Dr. Cherry and Dr. Silverberg, all moved off to the edge of the yard. C.J. was about to bend down, and Anderson shook his head. “I can stand up,” he said, trying to sound vital and active. “My brain is broken. My body works fine. You know I still swim every morning.”