In the End

Harbored at Bay

Andy is sitting across the table from Brett, watching the way he hangs his arm over the back of the chair, and wonders to himself how it was possible that they are here now. If even a year ago he had contemplated Brett Shelton, he would have held the same bitter resentment towards him that he had when they had first met so long ago at Kent. But in a strange twist of fate, they are here instead, waiting on lunch inside a Steak n' Shake diner while Brett recalls how he first moved into town.

"Kristen saw me first, I think," he says, thoughtfully. He frowns. "She'd thought I'd been seriously injured- killed, even- after that old supposed paintball war. Remember that? It turned out to be real bullets in there."

Andy remembers, but he says nothing, he just watches. He pretends he doesn't feel anything when he remembers everything about Kent. He swirls the straw in his glass, and Brett goes on.

"I barely made it out. I was legally dead. But I fought through." Here Brett pauses. Andy watches his entire body stiffen. "I wish I could say the same for Whitehurst."

Brett is silent, and Andy's heart pounds wildly. He doesn't think much about Howard anymore, but everything comes back now, whether he wants it to or not. He seems to be having trouble getting ahold of his emotional composition as of late. He takes a sip of his water, swallows slowly. Tries to calm himself down.

"I was the worst to him," Brett is still musing, and he sounds very far away, and very melancholic. "I wish ..."

But Andy never hears what Brett wishes, although he's sure he knows. Brett seems to snap himself out of his trance, and leans forward, his hands dangerously close to Andy's. Andy leans back a little bit. It isn't that he hates Brett, but he does not know him all that well yet. Even with Kristen he flinches if she touches him too carelessly. He hates it, but it's true, and so he leans away, just subtly enough that Brett does not catch it.

"But, anyways, she's actually the one who helped me find an apartment around here. I think she and Jivers had just started living together, you know, and so they'd been apartment hunting not too long ago." Brett sighs, and the waiter comes by and brings them their food. Brett immediately grabs both and places Andy's food in front of him before he can even think about moving. He wonders how anyone has so much energy.

But everyone around him seems to have so much more to give than he does, if he's completely honest with himself. He shrugs it off.

"So how about you?" Brett's asking, and he tries to stay focused. "Kristen tells me you have a little ammo shop right underneath your apartment. That's kind of nice- something to keep you busy. You get a lot of regulars?"

"Yeah- there's always something to do," Andy says, but he's thinking about who is still in his apartment instead. Now that he's sure that Chucky will not be ending his life anytime soon, he's wondering how to get rid of him. If Chucky is not there to end his misery, what will he do now?

He doesn't quite understand why though, and this bothers him. It bothers him because he had been counting on it, and now it has fallen through. It bothers him because he – while he hated to admit it – he depended on Chucky to come around again. It had happened so many times before, and always when he seemed to be at his lowest. Worse still, he looked forward to it. Even as a child, he knew that even if nothing else in his life was stable, this one thing was.

"Doesn't matter where I go, or what I do," he'd told his foster sister, Kyle, once. He remembers so clearly sitting on the bed and calmly telling her. "Chucky will always find me."

She had looked horrified, and he remembered feeling as if he should have been as well. And he was frightened, to a point, back then. But there was also a sickening twist of relief. It was something he had dealt with before, after all; it was something he was used to. A safe kind of danger.