Ticket To Devon

[enzo_the_rhino]

Chapter Six

Title: Ticket to Devon
Fandom: Green Wing
Characters/Pairings: Mac, (Carmac)
Rating/Warnings: PG-13, very angsty
Length: 462 words
Spoilers: Up to the special
Summary: Mac remembers how he felt when he mother was dying.
Disclaimer: None of the characters etc are mine. They belong to Victoria Pile and Channel Four.

Chapter Seven - Nightmare

Mac’s eyes snapped open to reveal a dark room, silent apart from the sound of his heart racing in his chest and soft breathing, showing that Caroline at least was still asleep. The faint green light at his side announced the time as being 02:37. He had forgotten that such a time existed now that Juliet no longer wrenched him out of his slumbers several times a night. He tried to relax into his pillow in a vain attempt to reclaim sleep, before his thoughts inevitable turned to the dream world he had just left.

He had been dreaming about his mother, but not the pleasant dreams that sometimes visited him, full of smiles, laughter and sunshine. This time she appeared to him as he can’t fail to remember her. Her fragile body swamped by clinical white bedclothes. Bed central in a bleak room, empty except for the monitors and tubes that confirmed her “life.” Face sunken in and withdrawn, her sweet beauty stolen by the cancer. It was effort for her to lift her hand to greet her son, brought to visit by a husband who couldn’t look her in the eye. She tried to be enthusiastic about the gifts they offered, even though little pleasure could be found through them.

The fact that tainted these memories most for him was that deep down he had not wanted to go, could not bear to visit because seeing made it real. Words could be dismissed easier, but there was no arguing with the indelible images forced onto him. He went because he missed her, because it made his father happy and in order to hold onto her for as long as he could in the hope that one visit would be different. That when they entered the room they would find her sitting up and smiling, waiting to tell them that she was coming home. But it didn’t happen. The visits became quieter and more static. The brief respites were less and less frequent and the tears that flowed down his father’s cheeks on the way home became more abundant.

When you are a child, you think your parents are indestructible. But with one dying and the other grieving before it had even ended, it felt like an alien world. And it was a world he was fated to re-enter, but with a new perspective. This time he would be the cause of all the grief and suffering. The one who would only evoke painful memories in those he loved. Memories of incapacity, misery and pain. And there was nothing he could do to stop it.

He closed his eyes again, trying to block out the thoughts, trying to find peace in sleep. Desperately hoping that tomorrow would be a better day.

Chapter Eight