A Solid Core of Alpha

by Amy Lane

  “Why would you want to do that?” C.J. asked, truly lost.

  “Because you know the words to the dialogue and the words to the opening songs and even the beats between the lines. You’ll be asleep before you can even think that asleep was a thing to be.”

  She must have been right. He didn’t even remember sitting with her on the couch, but he woke up late the next morning under a blanket from the back of the couch. His sister was in the kitchen again, fixing him breakfast, singing a song their mother had taught her, something about sailing away. He thought it had come with the original colonists on the ships, and the thought made the decision she needed him to make even harder than ever to face.

  Part 5: Anderson

  Chapter 17

  Human Songs

  ANDERSON remembered C.J.’s sister. She’d scared him at first—her tongue had been so sharp, and he could tell C.J. wanted to just smack her sometimes, just like Anderson had wanted to do with Melody.

  Anderson had a picture of his family by his bedside. It had been one of the few things C.J. had remembered to grab when they had been transported down to the planet. At least that was what Anderson had been told—he didn’t remember that part at all.

  He looked at that picture every morning and tried to figure out how he fit into that family at all. He knew he was the one boy, but he didn’t know anything else. He had that association of C.J.’s big sister and C.J. wanting to smack her with how he’d felt about his own big sister, but other than that, it was like an old video, faded, even in his memory.

  C.J. had told him about the letters inside the tablet with the picture, but Anderson hadn’t read those yet. He thought that maybe he should remember something about the family first—otherwise it felt like intruding, or worse, cheating.

  Cheating is bad, he thought somberly. Cheating in little things, like memory games or computers, that was bad.

  He couldn’t remember why.

  But he remembered Cassidy, with her lovely midnight skin and her high cheekbones, her exotic, almond-shaped eyes and full lips. She reminded him of Kate, not in appearance, but in that no-nonsense set of lines between her eyebrows. Cassidy and Kate had gotten along—he knew that for a fact.

  “Yes,” he said serenely, when Dr. Cherry let Cassidy into his room. “Of course I remember you. You’re C.J.’s sister. I had dinner in your quarters.” He smiled a little, remembering fruit juice and laughing a lot. “We had a good time. I’m glad I didn’t kill you when I killed my family. That would have hurt.”

  Cassidy grimaced. A lot of people made that face when talking to Anderson these days. He sort of wished they’d stop.

  “I’m damned glad you didn’t kill me either,” she said tartly. “But then, it would have taken more than two buttons on a computer program to do that.”

  The words made something buzz electrically on the back of his neck, but he couldn’t put any words to the feeling or to the sudden clarity of the world around him. It was like a fog in his vision had grown less dense, but since he didn’t want to explain the fog in his vision to the doctors anyway, he sure wasn’t going to mention when it got better, was he?

  “I hope so,” Anderson answered neutrally.

  You hope so? Seriously, you even programmed Bobby with better manners than that!

  Cassie smiled wearily and patted his knee, and Kate subsided so he didn’t have to answer her.

  “I know so,” Cassie said. “Honey, how are you doing here?”

  “It’s tranquil.” And boring! Is there any possible way we could get out and go have some fun?

  “C.J.’s sorry he forgot about yesterday. He’ll be here today. Is that okay?”

  It is possible that C.J. is not in the best emotional health, Anderson. Perhaps you should tell him that his presence is not needed every day. “It’s fine.”

  Cassidy sighed and peered at Anderson through the fog like she was trying to figure out what was going on inside his head. A whole lot, actually. Kate and Bobby were having a whispered conversation, Henry was taking notes on his tablet about what Cassie was saying, and Risa was simply all big eyes, taking in their conversation. She did so love a diversion.

  “Anderson, baby, I need you to do me a favor, okay?”

  “Sure, Cass, whatever you want.” There was a voice trying to whisper that he didn’t give a shit about anyone, but he ignored that one. He’d killed that voice. He didn’t have to listen to it anymore.

  Cassie sighed. Anderson was getting used to that sound too. “I need you to let C.J. go.”

  Everybody was silent. “Go where?”

  “Go back to the station.”

  Anderson, you need him!

  Don’t worry about it, Anderson—we’ll be all right.

  It’s not right that he should spend his time here when you’re otherwise talking to us, is it, Anderson?

  But Jesus, Anderson, are you ever planning to get laid again?

  “Why does he want to leave me?”

  “He doesn’t,” Cassidy said, her voice rough. “He doesn’t want to leave you at all, not to sleep, not to eat. Even when he’s gone, he’s thinking about you. He missed yesterday because he was trying to reconstruct the hologram program for your friends….”

  Well, that’s not a lot of fun for C.J., is it?

  Yes! Make him do that! Anderson, we could watch vids again!

  That’s not a very constructive use of his time.

  Poor C.J., he must be so worried.

  “I don’t think he can do that,” Anderson said quietly. “It was too jumbled. Alpha really fucked with the controls before I got there. Anything else that happened probably….” He swallowed. They were dead.

  Wasn’t your fault, buddy.

  Well, technically, he was the one who pressed the delete button.

  That’s not what he meant, asshole!

  (Hurt silence.)

  Cassie was looking at him with shiny eyes and a full, quivering lower lip. “That’s not the problem, Anderson. The problem is that he’s killing himself looking for a way to fix it. For a way to fix you.”

  Bullshit, Anderson, you’re not broken!

  Dude, nothing can fix you! That’s why we’re awesome!

  Anderson, I don’t think that’s healthy for C.J.

  Oh, poor C.J.—he must feel terrible!

  “I don’t want C.J. to be hurt for me,” Anderson said quietly, feeling a little dizzy. Alpha, he thought. Alpha would have barked over all their voices by now and probably demanded Anderson’s attention on Alpha himself. Anderson could have tuned out this painful conversation, on the inside, on the outside, and let Alpha tell him how this was all his fault, and how loving anybody was only going to hurt the people he cared about, and how Alpha was the only one who knew what was good for Anderson.

  But Alpha was dead. Anderson had killed him so Anderson could be with C.J.

  “I don’t want C.J. to leave me, though.”

  Cassidy took a deep, shaking breath. “Anderson, will C.J. be any less real if he leaves you here to heal?”

  “I don’t want to be alone.”

  You’re not alone.

  Shut up, Bobby. It’s not like we’re real.

  Are you alone if your delusions talk to you?

  (Hurt silence.)

  There was a warm, comforting, and masculine hand on his shoulder, and suddenly Dr. Cherry was there. “Anderson, you won’t be alone. I’ll be here. Dr. Silverberg will be here. We’re C.J.’s friends, and we’ll take care of you.”

  Dr. Silverberg was suddenly crouching at his feet, her pretty red hair pulled up behind her and a sweet smile on her face. Anderson liked Dr. Silverberg; she was often quiet, like Risa, except she was confident when she did choose to talk, like Henry.

  “C.J. needs to heal too, Anderson,” Dr. Silverberg was saying. “He loves you a whole lot, and you were suddenly….”

  “Otherwise occupied,” Anderson said grandly, and Kate and the others smirked.

  Even Dr. Silverberg smiled. “E
xactly,” she said, as though she was fully aware of the people he murdered holding court behind his eyes.

  Suddenly Dr. Cherry was crouched at Anderson’s feet too, and Dr. Silverberg’s hand was resting on his shoulder, maybe for balance, but Anderson thought it looked like comfort too. “Anderson, you’ve got to understand. I know you and I have only just met, but I’ve known C.J. forever, and he would stay with you for longer than that, if it was possible. But he’s hurting here. His heart is wasting away, watching you when he can’t help.”

  That sucks, Anderson, but there’s nothing you can do about it.

  Anderson, you were brought up better than that. If you care about him, you need to let him heal.

  Anderson, I’m not sure you’re psychologically ready for a real relationship at this point. You’ve read enough literature to know that your psyche is going to need considerable healing.

  Oh, poor C.J.

  “I love him,” Anderson said with as much dignity as possible.

  Cassidy sniffled and wiped her face on the inside of her red sequined shirt. Anderson liked the way she dressed, and it distressed him to see her wreck something that made her look so pretty.

  “Can we get her a tissue?” he asked Dr. Silverberg, and she grimaced at him, tears in her own eyes.

  “Here, Cassie, I’ve got plenty,” she said, and there was a hitch in her voice too.

  “Why is everyone so upset?” he asked, feeling bad.

  “Because we want what’s best for you, Anderson,” Dr. Cherry said, stealing one of Dr. Silverberg’s tissues with the familiarity of a good friend or a lover. “And we want what’s best for C.J., and you two are going to be really good for each other, but you’ve got to be patient. And you’ve got to let each other go. And that’s going to be really hard for right now. And that hurts us all.”

  Anderson waved his hand by his ear before the others could start adding their opinions. These are C.J.’s friends, he thought distantly. He remembered C.J. talking to Dr. Cherry while they were up at the station. “C.J. has them too,” he said in wonder.

  “C.J. has what, sweetheart?” Cassie asked, and he knew the others were meeting eyes, but he couldn’t do anything about that.

  “He has a Kate and a Bobby and a Henry and a Risa… but he doesn’t have an Alpha. He doesn’t have an Alpha. That’s the difference,” Anderson figured, a little bit of wonder in his voice. “He doesn’t have an Alpha. That’s why C.J.’s happy.”

  “Naw, baby,” Cassie said, and Anderson thought it was funny that she knew what he was talking about when no one else did. “He’s not happy because he doesn’t have an Alpha. He’s happy because you’re his Alpha, and you’re a really good guy.”

  Anderson swallowed, feeling the weight of a grief he’d never known he could hold. “But I killed my Alpha,” he said, feeling mournful and hating himself for it. “I killed my Alpha. How can he love me when I killed my Alpha?”

  “You didn’t kill him,” Cassie insisted, putting Dr. Silverberg’s tissue to good use. “You deleted a hologram that had outlived its use. Alpha—that was you all along, baby. And there’s not a world, in space, in a holodeck, or in the imagination, where Cyril couldn’t love you, especially not for that.”

  Anderson wasn’t crying, was he? He wanted to, but he wasn’t… he wasn’t, was he? Of course, he wasn’t screaming either. But as far as he could remember, he hadn’t cried in a long, long time. The last time he’d cried had been… had been….

  I don’t remember.

  Neither do I.

  I wasn’t programmed yet.

  Me neither.

  Had been lost in a big, black void of unimaginable loss. “How crazy am I?” he asked pitifully, wiping his face on his sleeve. “Am I too crazy for C.J. to love?”

  Cassidy shook her head. “You’re going to be fine, baby. You’ve just got to give C.J. some space so he can heal too. Can you do that? He won’t go unless you let him. He won’t even ask, Anderson. He won’t even tell you that it’s time to go back. But it is time to go back. He’s going to lose his job, and everything he’s worked for, and his whole life he thought he was a fuck-up, you know? He thought he was the least of us….”

  “That’s not true!” Anderson insisted, knowing that in this, at least, he wasn’t crazy.

  Cassie nodded her head. “You’re right, it’s not true. And with you, he’s become the man we all knew he could be. But he’s never going to know that, not here, not trying to do the impossible while you’re not well enough to know he’s here.”

  She’s crying, Anderson. You need to do something about that.

  Aw—see, Anderson. Even Bobby’s upset! You’ve got to help her!

  Anderson, she’s really unhappy, and she only wants what’s best for C.J.

  Please, Anderson? Poor C.J.

  “What do I have to do?” Anderson asked, lost in the conversation again.

  “You have to let him go.”

  The cacophony in Anderson’s head was so deafening after that statement that he didn’t come to until after his sedation.

  C.J. WAS there, at his bedside, and Anderson felt helpless tears leaking out of his eyes. If C.J. was here and he was in bed, he’d skewed off course somehow. He’d finally set a reliable course through the day so that he would be alert and ready for C.J.’s visits.

  “I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “I didn’t mean to sleep.”

  C.J. chuckled and rolled his eyes. “Not your fault, my man. Here, let’s sit up, okay? You sit up. I’ve got some food here. I guess you skipped lunch when you… uhm… what did you call it again, Jensen?”

  Dr. Cherry looked at Anderson and grimaced, as though begging Anderson to go along with him in something. “A catharsis, C.J., you know, like when you watch a really good movie and cry?”

  C.J. brightened. “Well, that’s got to be a good thing, right? I mean, I always feel good after that.”

  “It’s only good if you’re crying for the right reasons, buddy,” Dr. Cherry muttered, and again, that grimace, begging Anderson to go along with him.

  “I don’t even know what the right reasons are,” he said to the doctor, and that earned him a grateful smile, even though it was nothing less than God’s honest truth.

  “The right reasons will come along soon enough, Anderson,” Dr. Cherry said quietly. “Anderson, do you remember what we talked about this afternoon?”

  You know what he’s talking about, Anderson.

  Man, this is totally fucked up. I mean, I get the reasoning, but really?

  Yes—stop making excuses for him, Bobby.

  I just don’t like seeing him get hurt, Henry.

  Stop it! Please stop arguing. It hurts my head.

  See? You guys are making Risa afraid again. Anderson knows what he’s supposed to do. Leave him alone. He’ll be fine.

  “Yes, Dr. Cherry, you can leave if you like,” he said, wanting this to be as private as he could manage at the moment.

  There was a reassuring squeeze on Anderson’s arm, and then the handsome auburn-haired doctor walked out quietly, and Anderson was left looking at C.J.

  His light green eyes were bloodshot, and he was pale underneath the coffee and cream complexion of his skin. His cheekbones seemed… prominent, somehow, and so did the edge of his jaw and his collarbones.

  “You’ve lost weight,” Anderson murmured, surprised when there wasn’t an entire chorus to chime in on the simple observation.

  “So have you.”

  Anderson reached out and grabbed C.J.’s hand. “It’s going to take me a long time to get better,” he said, treading very carefully.

  “I’ll be here.”

  Anderson squeezed his hand, feeling the bones underneath the skin, fragile and bare without the muscle and fat to protect them. “You shouldn’t have to be,” he graveled, not sure how he spoke at all.

  C.J. shrugged. “It’s worth it, right? I mean, I know you don’t remember right now, but it was really worth it!” C.J. waggled his eyebrows and cracked a jok
e, and Anderson was suddenly assaulted by the thinness of his voice. There was not much of C.J. left to crack the joke, to make the smile, to bear Anderson’s weight, as scant as it had become.

  “It will be,” Anderson promised. “It will be. I’ll get better.”

  It was worth it. Whether the statement was true or not, making the effort was worth it. C.J. seemed to grow more substantial with every word.

  “I’m sayin’!” he crowed, and Anderson smiled, feeling finally that what he was doing was right. There was no chorus to back him up in this, no internal warble of friendly voices, and that alone was encouraging.

  “But I need you to do me a favor first,” Anderson said, and fought those helpless tears again. Well, fuck. He would have liked to do this with dignity.

  Not possible for goofy kids like us. Bobby’s voice was unmistakable—and unmistakably familiar. For a moment, Anderson felt like he was chasing a sunbeam through a blackened window, and then he focused on C.J. and what he needed to do.

  “What’s that, baby?” C.J. said, and he was so fervent, so sincere. Anderson realized that he’d claw his way to the space station in a fishbowl helmet with a piece of string if Anderson asked. For that kind of devotion, there was really only one reward Anderson could offer.

  “I need you to leave me here for a little while—”

  “No!”

  “Hear me out!” Anderson sounded stern, even to himself, and he both hated the sound and was glad for it, because C.J. was paying attention to him like that voice mattered.

  “I’m not going to leave.”

  “You’re hurting yourself here,” Anderson said. “I can’t… I… I need you to go so I can be better for you. I’m worried for you. I… I’m not strong enough to worry.”