Brad quietly observed from the back of the Officers’ Lounge as Scarlet slipped into the room, making little more noise than a shadow as he poured himself a coffee, wrapped his hands around the comforting warmth of the mug and stationed himself at one of the round portholes, staring out at the sunset without really seeing it.
The war with the Mysterons was a month old as of yesterday, and they were only just starting to find their feet back after everything that had happened. New security protocols had been rolled out across the board after Black vanished, and agents had been detailed to keep a close watch on the families of anyone with a code name. The Mysterons had to know everything Black knew, and presumably everything that Brown and Scarlet did as well. It had all tallied up to a surprising amount when they’d actually sat down and went through all the shared and specialist information that those three had had between them.
As for Scarlet… Well, as far as Brad was concerned, he put on a good act, but he’d had the proverbial rug ripped out from under him and then put through the shredder. No way was he as okay as he’d fooled almost everyone else into thinking he was. From his own experience, half of his recovery from his near miss with paralysis had been the psychological effects, not just the physical. Paul had been murdered and his identity stolen in the most complete way possible. No way did you just get over it in less than a month.
Grey gave it a few minutes, then when the signs of distress started showing – every line of Paul’s body tense, the muscle twitching in his jaw, and making no move to drink the coffee, simply holding it – Brad decided to make himself known, unfolding himself from his chair and walking over with deliberately loud footfalls. “Bad day?” Grey ventured, standing next to Scarlet and looking out the porthole with him.
Paul glanced at him and nodded slightly. “Cinnabar thought it might be a good idea for me to pretend to tell my parents about what happened as a way to process events,” he replied in a very controlled voice. “He wanted me to draft up a letter to explain it all.”
Brad winced. Small wonder Paul was upset. “Yikes.” He shook his head. “I’m getting the idea he’s a bit out of his depth.”
“As am I,” was Paul’s quiet answer. “But he is helping, when he isn’t trying things like that,” he added, seemingly feeling a need to defend the absent psychologist.
“Well, that’s good.” Brad nodded thoughtfully.
Silence reigned for a time; well, at least as silent as it would get on Cloudbase. The great vessel always hummed around them from the vibrations of her vast engines holding her in the sky and the various support systems that made living on her viable. Distantly, Brad could hear the catapult on the deck firing, as one of the Angels took off for a perimeter patrol, and a tannoy in the hall was sounding to summon the night shift engineers. The silence had a brittle quality to it, though, as if he was standing before a cracked window and watching a storm brewing outside. “Or a storm in a bottle and the bottle’s cracked,” Brad mused, glancing at Paul from the corner of his eye. The metaphor sparked a memory and a possible solution occurred to him.
“Paul?” Brad eventually asked. “Can I offer some advice on re-framing your perspective of a life-changing incident? It might help; it certainly helped me.”
The British officer made a half-amused sound. “You know, I think you’re the first person who’s actually asked me if I want some advice,” he commented. “Everyone else has simply assumed I want it and ploughed straight in. Go on.”
“Ever heard of kintsugi?” Brad asked.
Paul frowned thoughtfully as he pondered the word, head tilted to one side. “That’s Japanese, isn’t it?” he asked.
“Yeah. The art of repairing broken pottery with lacquer and gold or silver. It takes a broken thing and not only makes it usable again, but makes it more beautiful, unique and valuable, by highlighting the flaws and the ‘struggle’ that the object has been through in its ‘life’,” Grey explained. “I hit a rough patch after my accident, stuck in a bed with my legs not working. I thought for a while I’d end up like Commander Shore, stuck in a hover chair and sitting on the shore, watching everyone else going in.” Brad quirked a half-smile at the unintended pun. “Then my sister sent me an art book all about kintsugi, with a note about how broken doesn’t always mean useless, but a chance for repair and adding value and uniqueness to an otherwise ordinary item. She told me my scars weren’t failures. They were proof I’d survived something that should have ended me, that the hardware in my back isn’t about flaws and weakness, but strength added to me.”
“Huh.” Paul made a thoughtful noise as he turned it all over in his mind. “You know, that actually makes a lot of sense.” He glanced over at Brad and quietly asked, “Would you happen to have that book handy somewhere? I’d like to read it.”
“Sure, I’ll drop it by your quarters tomorrow,” Brad offered.
“Thanks.”
There was silence again between them, but it felt less brittle now, at least to Brad’s perception. A thought occurred to him and he quickly decided to act on it before something else could intrude and interrupt. “Hey.” He cuffed Paul’s shoulder gently to make sure he had Paul’s full attention. “I don’t know if anyone’s actually said this to you yet, but you’re going to be okay.”
Paul’s replying noise was half-amused, half-rueful: “No one has, actually.” He looked at Brad, a small, grateful smile tugging at his lips, the first one Brad had seen him make in weeks. “Thank you.”