A car horn sounds outside the motel room, warranting the team to emerge into the crisp air to greet Colby and Adya. Colby throws her arms around Nate and Zion; Adya brings Reese into a tight embrace and doesn’t let go for a while. The team has had more than their fair share of brushes with danger, injury, and even death. They take every opportunity they can to count their blessings. A sight like this is unfamiliar to Leon.
Zion comes over and sets a comforting hand on Leon’s shoulder. “You fought hard the other night,” he says. “We were lucky to have you in the right place at the right time.”
“What’s their deal?” Leon says, nodding in the direction of his brother. “You guys seem to have it in for my brother.”
Zion chuckles. “How can we not? He’s a helping hand in all of our lives. Adya is a mind transfer— human brain in a bionic body. Nate was her supervisor when she first arrived at Goddard as a nervous, jumpy teenager. He taught her that she could be more than someone else’s puppet. Colby was in a bad fight that cost her her hands. Nate was there to pick her back up, carry her out.”
“And you?”
“He vouched for my promotion. Well-- I followed him out on a mission and he didn’t scold me for it. Same thing.”
“Sounds pretty different from the brother I grew up with.”
“That’s the point.” The rest of the team heads back upstairs to the motel room to come up with a plan. Zion grabs Leon’s arm, beckoning him to stay. There’s some unspoken family tension built up within him; and if anyone knows family, knows love, it’s Zion. The two sit down on the curb. As he watches the sun dip below the wall of trees surrounding the parking lot, Leon begins to let his guard down.
“How’d you end up with these arms and legs?” Leon asks, pointing vaguely to Zion’s bionics. Behind his normal facade of the charming, boisterous fighter is a person with genuine curiosity for others.
“Osteosarcoma. I got the diagnosis when I was 14. It started in my left leg.”
“Oh... I’m sorry.”
“Why?” Zion asks. “It’s just the way things are. It sucked, but it brought me here. I didn’t have to stay at Goddard, but I’m glad I did.”
“With all due respect, I don’t see why anyone on Earth who’s come that close to death would wanna do it for a living.”
Zion smiles and nods. “Even while I was in remission, my body was frail. The on-and-off bouts of sickness did a number on me. My immune system was shot and my body was bound to give out on me sooner than later.” Zion taps his feet on the asphalt. “The decision for me to go through with total limb reconstruction and the decision to be an agent was polarizing. Not everyone in my family was going to support me and I had to be okay with that. I never wanted to feel like my life revolved around an “incident”. I wanted it to be more. And I had to forgive the people in my family who felt otherwise. Nate and I bonded over that; both of us wanted to be more than the product of our lowest points in life. Two guys who were too young to feel like we were running out of time.”
Leon kicks around pebbles and pieces of asphalt on the ground. “He left me alone. I was kind of… awful to my brother growing up, but in retrospect, he was the one person in the house who I could count on. And one day, he was just gone. All the frustration that instilled in our dad, I had to take the fall for it. I guess that’s what I get for being such a jackass. But leaving me to deal with the punches-- how do I forgive that?” His question isn’t rhetorical; deep within him, he genuinely wants it. Closure.
“Forgiveness is complicated. Some people you never forgive-- but I don’t think your brother is one of those people.” Zion’s eyes meet Leon’s. “Nate loves you. There is no doubt in my mind that you love him, too. But he loves himself, too, and he had to do what he needed to find that again. Now, I won’t act like I know everything about how you guys grew up, but I know that it’s easy to let something get between you and the things that you value.”
“My dad.”
Zion nods. “Your issues seem like they’re with him and not your brother. I think that goes for the both of you.” He places a hand on Leon’s shoulder for a brief moment. “Neither of you owe your dad forgiveness. But you owe it to Nate to be the bigger man he’s always hoped you could be. And you owe it to yourself to feel forgiven.”
Leon clenches his teeth. This is all too much for him to process. “Sometimes I feel like I deserved it. He should be mad at me. He’s confused. You’re confused.”
Zion watches Leon leave. All there is left to do, Leon must do himself.
Just as Leon comes up the stairs, Nate exits the room, on his way to retrieve his brother. He can hardly get a word out before he notices the tension in Leon’s face. “Why are you doing this?” he asks.
Nate furrows his brow. “What do you mean, this?”
“All of this. Bringing me on your mission, training me, being nice to me-- it doesn’t make any sense.” He takes shallow breaths between statements, scrambling to collect his thoughts. “Is this some kind of joke to you? This isn’t some fucking Saturday morning sitcom. We are never going to have a normal family. Yet, you keep acting like everything’s fine, like I turned into this… good guy cop, just like you. Well, I don’t ever want to be like you! I spent the first fifteen years of my life doing that and it got me nowhere. You can never take me under your wing and make me better, Nate. Why doesn’t any of this bother you?”
If anything, it’s the cop comment that bothers Nate. He disregards it. “Leon…”
“All I’ve done is fuck up,” Leon yells. “I picked fights with you. I ignored you. I told lies about you to Dad. You have every reason to get back at me for that.” Leon clenches his fist and hits it against Nate’s chest. Tears begin to pool in his eyes. “So why don’t you? Why don’t you fight back, for once! The one time it counts! After all the shit I put you through, all the shit you put me through, why won’t you be mad?”
Nate wraps his arms around his brother, pulling him into a tight embrace. Leon breaks out in heaving sobs. He rests a hand on the back of his brother’s head, letting him cry for a few minutes. “I couldn’t live with myself if I stayed,” he says. “Everything that was hurting me was in North Carolina-- high school, the Brotherhood, Dad-- and I had the means to pick up my life and start over. So I did. And I’m so, so sorry I couldn’t give you that same chance.”
“I don’t want this,” Leon chokes out. “I don’t want to be Dad’s legacy. I don’t want to keep being how I was when we were kids. I don’t want to fight for anyone but myself.”
“Then start by letting me forgive you. And forgiving yourself.”
The boulder being lifted from his shoulders is heavier than Leon anticipates. Twenty two years as his father’s son, and this is the first time he truly feels forgiveness. For the first time, him and his brother have something that connects them. Nate smiles through his tears. “You know, considering the reason why you should be mad at me, I don’t think this is that bad.”
Leon chuckles. He wipes the tears from his face and steps out of his brother’s embrace. “I think I finally might be ready for my chance to start over, Nate. But I don’t think I can do it alone.”
Nate’s eyes meet his brother’s. “You won’t have to.”
Comments (0)
See all