The Debt of Guilt [BxB]

50: before

October
1989

Danny didn't go back to his own trailer after Scott kicked him out. After all this time, that felt entirely impossible. Like meeting an old version of himself who was still too weak to fight back against his Father. He refused to succumb to that. Instead, he slept on a bench in a quiet part of town, wearing two jumpers, his backpack wedged beneath his head like a pillow.

He thought about Peter, sleeping in a jail cell. He thought about Scott and Susie, not sleeping at all. He thought about Jenifer, crying over her dead stepfather. He thought about Hannah, brought into a world so cold and lonely.

Next week, he would start filming in London. The production company were putting him up in an apartment in the city, one with great views from a great location. All of this - his friends, the trailer park, the blood - would just feel like a bad dream. A past life. A part of himself he had carved away and left in that trailer. The only place he had ever called home.

He was lost and directionless. He wandered around town the following day, head bowed, a woolly hat pulled past his hair, down to his eyes. He went to the lake, all grey and still in the October air. He thought about summer; about being here with Peter and Jenifer, about being here with Scott. The sun had beat down on their sweaty burnt skin, and the birds sung for them in the trees above. Now it was cold and silent. And though the sun and the heat would return in a few months, he was sure that this lake would never be the same again.

When he wandered back into town, he was grabbed by a pair of familiar hands, and when he looked up, he was met by a pair of familiar eyes. "Danny." Jenifer's expression was full of pain and sorrow. She pulled him into her chest, hugging him tightly, "Where have you been? I've been running all over town looking for you."

He gulped, shrugging her off, "I've just been...around." He looked away.

She tugged him onto a bench, eyes flicking to the backpack on his shoulder; the same one he had left with yesterday, "Where did you sleep last night?" She asked cautiously, and when he shrugged, she almost recoiled, "Oh, Danny, you didn't sleep out here, did you?"

He sighed, hating the sympathy in her voice. He didn't deserve it. "I had nowhere else to go." He said bitterly.

"I tried talking to Scott." She promised him, "It's not that he doesn't believe you, it's just that...well, Peter's his brother. He's loyal like that. Takes family really seriously."

Danny flinched, "I thought I was family." He said pathetically.

"Oh, Danny, you are." She told him desperately.

He leant against her shoulder, "Where's Hannah?"

"Susie's got her." She curled her fingers into his hair, combing through his matted locks carefully. After a moment of silence, Jenifer started to cry.

Danny tugged her closer, resisting the urge to cry with her. He hadn't fully appreciated how hard this must all be for Jenifer; her two best friends divided, her stepdad dead, the Father of her child - no matter how repulsive - gone forever. Not to mention the fact that she had a newborn, and was sleep deprived and hormonal. And despite it all, she was here, with Danny, selflessly so, because that's just who she was.

"They let us see him this morning." She said suddenly, regaining control of her emotions, wiping away her tears, "Danny..." She pulled away to look at him, "Peter's telling a very different story."

Danny's jaw clenched, fear bubbling up in his chest, "What's he saying?"

"That you killed him." She whispered, the words making her wince, "But the police don't believe him. His fingerprints are on the knife." She hesitated for a moment, "But then, so are yours."

His eyes fell shut, the world ceasing to exist for a moment. "My fingerprints are on the knife because I was the one who took it to the police." He explained stiffly, "Do you...?" He took a deep breath, "Do you think I did it?"

She didn't respond straight away and Danny's heart sank. "I don't know what to think." She breathed out at last. "I-I'm just so confused. And tired. A-And...And I need to get out of that trailer, I just...I'm suffocating, Danny." She stopped talking when she felt tears threatening to spring up again. "You and Peter and my best friends, I-I don't...I don't know what to do."

He gulped, flinging his arm around her again, "Jen." He murmured, "If I did it, I wouldn't have gone to the police."

She curled into her side, craving the warmth, "I-I know you're probably right." She cried softly, "B-But how can it be Peter? H-How could he?" She didn't want to believe it any more than Scott had.

Danny tried to suppress his next question but it fell from his lips anyway, "And Scott?"

She sighed heavily, "He believes Peter."

And that was the final part of himself - the part he was still desperately clinging too - shattered into dust. There was nothing left anymore.

"I'm sorry." She continued quietly, "It's his brother - he has to."

"It's okay." He tightened his grip around her, burying his nose in her ginger curls. "I get it."

After a moment of silence; "I think I believe you." And maybe it was just because he was out here and Peter was in there, but Jenifer meant it. Because she needed to believe in something. She couldn't go the rest of her life wondering, uncertain, not knowing which of her friends was the monster. She needed at least one of them to still be good.

"I'm leaving." He said eventually, "Come with me."

She looked up at him, through glassy eyes and wet lashes, "You're-where are you going?"

He smiled sadly; good news turned bittersweet, "I got the part in that BBC drama."

Despite all the heartache, she smiled proudly, "Fuck-that's amazing, Danny. Well done, you deserve it. Really."

"Thanks." He tugged at his woolly hat nervously, "We start filming in London next week. They're putting me up in an apartment - you and Hannah should come with me."

She stared at him blankly, "Are you-?"

"You're my best friend, Jen." And now Peter was gone, she was his only best friend. Not one of two. "I want you by my side. You and Hannah."

He had made a promise to her back in September; to raise her baby together. To live together. To fill their home with love. And unlike all the promises he had made to Scott, this was one he might actually be able to keep. Jenifer smiled at him through tears, "I'd love that, Danny."

The following week, he moved to London with Jenifer and Hannah.

He never stepped foot in the Wicks' family trailer again.

He never saw Scott again.

And all those happy memories he had made in his hometown haunted him for the months to come, keeping him up at night, depriving him of sleep worse than Hannah's crying ever did. Jenifer was all he had left; the only piece still remaining in the puzzle that was his life. All the other pieces were scattered. Lost. Gone forever.

Jenifer had taken Danny's side. Scott had taken Peter's.

And Danny was left torn in a million pieces; he was all scattered, between London and the trailer where he had learnt the meaning of the word family.

Home.

Love.