That night Tor slept deeply and dreamlessly. He was flabbergasted when he opened his eyes again and discovered it was morning…and not just because he was on an unfamiliar couch instead of his tent beneath the old overpass. There had been no nightmares, no whispers of the voices telling him that he didn’t deserve to be alive. Instead, he was greeted by the glow of dawn’s early light outside the apartment’s wide windows and his mind felt clearer than it had in ages. 

He sat up and stretched. Josey’s bedroom door was still closed, so Tor quietly used the bathroom and then padded over to the kitchen to look over the morning’s offerings. He smirked when he saw the giant box of Cocoa Puffs and shook his head.

“Josey Green,” he murmured. “Let’s start taking care of you, beginning with a proper breakfast.”

Tor pulled out the oatmeal and searched the pantry until he found brown sugar and a crushed bag of walnuts. He felt a twinge of guilt that he wouldn’t be at the soup kitchen to assist this morning - they always needed the extra hands - but it was better if he stayed away for a time. Besides, he decided that Josey needed him most right now; he couldn’t forget the horrible, faraway look on the younger man’s face the night before. Apparently everyone has at least one demon to haunt them, even someone as bright and sunny as Josey Green.

“I expect it has something to do with his parents,” Tor thought as he read over the instructions for Josey’s coffeemaker. “It’s awfully strange that he doesn’t have any pictures of them around the apartment. But I’m not going to ask…he promised he’d tell me one day and I’m going to trust him on that.”

Tor busied himself with coffee and oatmeal, and by the time that Josey came out of his room the table was laid for breakfast. Tor felt his heart flutter when he saw Josey’s bed-rumpled hair and he almost reached out to smooth it down before he stopped himself. He was struck by how good-looking Josey really was; the younger man could be described as more ‘beautiful’ than ‘handsome’, but something about those big fawn-like eyes and the lithe body under the loose pajamas made Tor want to gather him up and…

“Not now, old fellow,” Tor warned himself, gripping the counter tightly to cool his imagination. “That wasn’t in your agreement with him.”

“Good morning,” Josey yawned. “Sleep OK?”

“Better than OK,” Tor answered truthfully. “I slept great. You?”

Josey nodded. “Me too. There may be something to this vacation concept after all!”

Tor smiled and motioned to the table. “I hope you don’t mind, I made breakfast…but you don’t have to eat it if you don’t want to…”

Josey laughed when he saw the oatmeal. “I knew you were a health-food guy! But don’t worry, I’m not stupid enough to turn down a homemade breakfast…thank you, Tor!”

“I put both brown sugar and maple syrup in yours,” Tor admitted and Josey groaned with pleasure at the first bite.

“Perfect!” he said. “Almost as good as Cocoa Puffs!”

“That is the highest compliment you could have given me,” Tor chuckled. He was genuinely pleased at how eagerly Josey scarfed down his oatmeal and it made his own breakfast taste all the sweeter. They did the dishes together, and when they were done Josey brought out his notebook and showed Tor a handwritten list.

“These are the places I’d like to visit in the next two weeks,” he explained. “But I don’t want to force you someplace you don’t want to go, so you’re going to pick our destination for each day. Or if you have any suggestions, you can add them here too!”

Tor glanced over the list; he wasn’t surprised to see it was filled with museums, art galleries, parks, the aquarium, botanical gardens, and a fancy candy shop in the expensive shopping district.

“No zoo?” he asked with a grin.

Josey actually frowned. “No, zoos make me sad. I don’t like seeing animals in cages. But if you wanted…”

“I don’t want to go to the zoo,” Tor quickly reassured him, and he tapped at the list. “Here, the Natural History Museum. Let’s do that today.”

“You want to see the dinosaurs, don’t you?” Josey asked with a knowing grin.

Tor nodded in agreement. “I loved ‘Jurassic Park’ as a kid.”

Josey opened his mouth to ask another question and Tor added, “Yes, we can go into the gift shop.”

Josey burst into laughter.

“Oh boy, I must seem like an open book to you,” he said. “OK, let me shower quick and then we can go!”

They both got dressed and brushed their teeth once Josey was finished with his shower, before catching the train downtown to the Natural History Museum. It was warm enough that Tor could go without his parka, instead choosing his cleanest sweatshirt and a scarf that Josey insisted he take. Tor was pleased that the scrape on his cheek was pretty much healed without so much as a bruise (“Thank goodness I let Josey take care of it right away” he thought), but he still felt startlingly naked without his beard. He expected everyone to stare at his scars. And yes, people did stare at them in the subway, but it wasn’t with morbid curiosity – rather, they smiled when they caught his eye, just like the people in the park the day before.

“Must be a side-effect of traveling with Josey,” Tor thought. “Who wouldn’t want to smile when they see him?”

Neither Tor nor Josey had been to the Natural History Museum since they were children, but they agreed to forgo the guided tour and wandered around the halls at their own pace. As Tor had guessed, Josey was a lot of fun to be around. The younger man studied everything with unfeigned interest, played at the interactive displays, and pointed out all the neat little details that Tor would’ve missed on his own. Josey’s cheerfulness was infectious and Tor couldn’t help his own eagerness when he pushed through the crowd to get a look at the triceratops display in the dinosaur hall.

“Is this your favorite dinosaur?” Josey asked.

Tor nodded. “I wanted one as a kid so I could ride it to school instead of the bus. I told my mom we could keep it in the backyard and that I’d clean up after it. She only laughed at me.”

Josey grinned, but he didn’t laugh. “Did you have any pets growing up?”

“Nah,” Tor answered and they moved aside so a group of schoolchildren could take their places in the front. “My parents divorced when I was about six - they weren’t soulmates - and I moved back and forth a lot between their houses. Neither of them had the patience to add a pet into the shuffle.”

Tor hadn’t thought about his parents in a while and he frowned. He wasn’t particularly close to either of them – they had their own lives and preferred to let him take care of himself. That was one of the reasons why he’d joined the Army once he was old enough: he wanted other people around who’d notice if he was missing. He’d always considered his army friends as his real family, but then he’d failed them and…

Tor nearly jumped when someone touched his hand, but it was only Josey.

“Let’s go somewhere it isn’t so crowded!” the younger man shouted over the voices of the schoolchildren.

Tor allowed himself to be led into a quieter hall filled with rocks. They stood in front of a display of semiprecious stones for a minute while Tor caught his breath. He hadn’t realized how tight his chest had gotten and he did his mindful breathing exercises while Josey rubbed his thumb across the back of Tor’s hand.

“Better?” Josey asked.

“Yes,” Tor answered truthfully, and he squeezed Josey’s hand. “Thank you for getting me out of there.”

Josey nodded. “If you don’t mind me asking, could you tell me what you were thinking about?”

If it had been anyone else, Tor would’ve refused; but he was serious about wanting to change and he knew that Josey wouldn’t judge him for the moment of weakness. So, carefully, he told him all his thoughts about his parents and how he’d joined the Rangers to get the family he’d never had as a child. He stopped short of telling Josey the truth about the day he was injured – he couldn’t quite bring himself to venture into those memories willingly. But as they walked through the halls of rocks and fossils and insects, Tor found himself remembering more and more of the good memories from his time in the Army. He even talked about Garcia and Ellwood, sharing the story of when the two tried to cook a beer-can chicken during a training exercise, except they didn’t know it wasn’t supposed to be a full can of beer and so the damn thing exploded once it got too hot.

“There was chicken everywhere!” Tor laughed, wiping tears from his eyes with his spare hand. “We teased them about cooking with hand grenades for weeks afterwards!”

Josey was laughing too.

“They sound like such characters!” he chortled.

“Yeah, they were,” Tor agreed and he sobered a little. “They liked to do things their own way. As their commanding officer it could be frustrating – it was almost impossible to stop them once they got an idea into their heads.”

And then Tor had a thought he’d never considered before: maybe there WASN’T anything he could’ve done that day to save them. After all, what exactly was he supposed to do when they ran ahead like that against his orders? Garcia and Ellwood knew better – they had endangered the entire unit with their recklessness and it was all Tor could do to keep anyone else from getting into the line of fire! Lt. Colonel Bridge had told him the same thing in the hospital afterwards, but Tor had dismissed it as merely something said out of sympathy to keep him from dwelling on his injuries.

“Because of your leadership, Winters, we suffered no other casualties,” Bridge had said. “Two died but seventeen were saved – it’s ugly math, but given the situation we couldn’t have asked for better results. Don’t blame yourself for this!” 

The memory of Bridge’s words didn’t take away all the blood and pain, nor the mental anguish of the last six months…but a little of Tor’s guilt slipped away and left him feeling lighter. Maybe he hadn’t frozen that day because he was a coward – maybe it was because he’d known it was going to be a losing situation!

“It’s just how life is sometimes,” he murmured, remembering Josey’s words from their first meeting. “It doesn’t mean anything about my value.”

“I’m sorry?” Josey asked, interrupting Tor’s musings.

The younger man was watching him with a worried expression, so Tor smiled and squeezed his hand.

“I was just thinking that life is unfair sometimes,” he explained. “But it was nice to remember some good memories for a change, so thank you for listening Josey. I owe you one.”

Josey squeezed his hand back. 

“Does that mean we can go to the gift shop now?” he asked with a little grin.

Tor pretended to be exasperated, but it was difficult to hide how charmed he was by that grin.

“I suppose you’ve been well-behaved so far,” he replied. “Alright.”

Josey gave a cheer and dragged Tor off towards the museum’s gift shop, not letting go of his hand once as they went.