REVIVAL
by Kelonzi

"Are you incredibly stoned? This'll never work!"

"You've never tried, so how do you know?"

Kara shook her head in amazement. "Can you even hear yourself? What you're proposing can only work in fantasy stories on TV!" She blew out Andrea's candle. "I don't have to have tried to raise someone from the dead to know that it won't work."

"Hey!" Andrea exploded as her best friend extinguished the flame before her eyes. Irritated, she pulled out her father's silver zippo and lit the candle again. "Dork." She took a deep breath, "I can do this. It's just a matter of balancing the positive energies on the image of the deceased--"

"Whatever, Dree." Kara cut her off. "Who knows what nasty thing you could summon with that black magic?!"

Andrea glared. "It is not black magic. This is to HELP people."

"Yeah. People who are currently you. He's dead! I hate to sound like a heartless bastard, but there's nothing you can do to change that. Not even some hocus pocus mumbo jumbo will bring him back to you."

"You're my best friend," Andrea's voice cracked with emotion, "and even you don't understand."

"I understand that he was your baby brother," Kara began, "and I get how loosing him in a car crash hurts deeply. So deep that you want to rip out your heart so you don't have to feel the pain anymore."

"How could you?!" Andrea poured black sand from a ziplock bag and began to walk around in a circle.

Kara swallowed hard. "My cousin was seven when he died. He got sick very fast, and went from a bouncy little boy to his grave in eight days. He was torn-- ripped--- away from us. One weekend he was fine, and the next, we were helping my Aunt prepare for his damn funeral. So don't you dare question how I know. I do."

Andrea paused. "I-I'm sorry. You never said anything about it."

"I know how it kills you inside. How you don't want to feel ever again. But this isn't the answer!" Both girls stared, regarding each other for a moment.

"I'm sorry," Andrea repeated, "but this is something that I have to do." She flipped the zippo open again and dropped it on to the pile of powder at her feet. The black substance ignited instantaneously, spreading flame around in a hoop. Andrea and Kara were now separated by a wall of flames.

"Dree!" Kara screamed over the roar of the fire. Somewhere inside the ring, Andrea was chanting something in Latin. The heat pushed Kara back against the shed wall, coughing not from the smoke, for the fire was, oddly, smokeless, but rather from a strange, exotic perfume that had filled the air. Was this death?

"You hold one cut down in his prime! Let him cross over!!" Andrea had switched back to English. "Osiris! Release him!"

Blue energy sizzled through the air like an electric current. Sensing the danger, Kara ducked behind the family lawnmower in the shed's far corner. Just as she disappeared from sight, the circle of fire expanded and roiled like a storm. A clap of sound, akin to thunder, split the air and everything went dark in front of Kara's eyes.

She opened them a moment later, fearing she had lost consciousness for a lengthy amount of time.

The room was deathly quiet. Kara stood up and looked around for Andrea, finally catching sight of her, thrown up against the far wall from the force of the explosion.

"Dree. Dree? Wake up." Kara shook her friend, heart racing. "Please... don't be dead."

Andrea winced and opened her eyes. "I... I don't feel too good."

Kara yelped a little in surprise. Her friend's eyes were ebony black. Must have overloaded her power again. She said this happens, but damn that's weird. Kara'd never seen this before, and was, to say the least, freaked out. It was like a massive overdose for a Wicca, she figured. "No kidding you don't feel good. Come on. I'll drive you home."

"No!" Andrea swallowed, eyes blazing with equal parts frustration and lingering effects of the spell. "I'm fine." She added a touch softer, realizing how harsh her first outburst had been. "Sorry... but I can walk myself home. Give me time to figure out what went wrong." She mumbled incoherently and stumbled out the door.

Kara realized that, as a friend, she probably should have followed anyway, but Andrea was adamant, not to mention dangerous in this state. The eighteen year old silently prayed that Dree wouldn't do something dumb like unwittingly play in traffic on her way home.

Running a hand through her coarse red hair, Kara then tied it back into a doubled-over pony tail. Renegade strands splayed out in all directions as she swept up the remaining herbs and ashes from Andrea's failed spell. Oddly, there was nothing burned in the entire shed -- nothing broken, nothing shattered -- really, nothing out of place at all.

From the magic that had swirled about mere moments before, Kara did wonder about the safety of this location, but she had to clean up, or her parents would absolutely freak out. Conjuring powders, black taper candles, and a leather bound tome of spells weren't exactly the teen magazines and nail polish her parents had assumed the girls were using in the back yard. And I thought smuggling in the band's equipment was breaking the rules.... that's nothing compared to THIS.

Better get all this up and out before mom and dad get back from dinner. She said to herself, casting a sideways glance at her acoustic as she cleaned. Getting rehearsal time was growing increasingly difficult. Back in middle school, she and the others would have just slipped out here after dinner and jammed for a while. High School, and the looming monster that was college, greatly chopped away at that time.

After a bit, she set the broom down and headed over to the cabinet, took out her old Sony radio and jacked it into the wall. Tuned to the local Oldies station, the speakers blared out the last verse of "Love Potion #9" as she also removed a thick biography she was reading for English class from a drawer. Here was the symbol of her problems, with a twist of irony. If stupid school was going to eat up her time, she was going to twist around the requirements so they held at least a shred of interest for her-- and that meant picking a biography of a man whom she greatly admired as a musician. They hadn't said her reading selection had to be about some old war general, now had they?

She took the book under her arm and resumed work with the broom. Her mind wandered from the task at hand, however, when a new song came over the airwaves.

"When the moon is in the second house... and Jupiter aligns with Mars... then peace will guide the planets... and love will steer the stars..." The music of Fifth Dimension swooped from the speakers and Kara dropped everything she was doing to grab her guitar. This was one of those songs she was learning to play and often liked to strum along in time to see that she was getting things just right.

Something rumbled behind her a moment later, and Kara suddenly was washed in a sense of dread. Dree's experiment strikes again. I wonder what little surprise she left for me--- Another rumble slowly crescendoed in a crash akin to thunder, and the whole room was bathed in an ethereal blue. "Crap!" She exclaimed and his the ground hard. This would alert the authorities yet. In fact, she was more than a little surprised that the police hadn't already come around to find out what was going on in the small bungalow at the end of Willow Court. It was usually a nonassumiung, quiet street in the outskirts of a small New York town. Well, it was low profile in comparison to the bustling life of New York City, mere miles to the south. Even the most radical nightclub had nothing on the light show that was going on in her shed at this moment, though.

A pressure began to form behind Kara's eyes as she squirmed towards the farthest corner of the storage area. It was like a sinus headache, only it came and went at regular intervals. HELP! she screamed with every fiber of her being. She wouldn't live to crack Andrea across the skull at this rate. Blackness eventually claimed her senses and the room grew still. Silent as death.

* * * * *

"W-what's goin' on?"

Kara heard the voice at the edge of her consciousness and froze. Great. On top of everything, I have an intruder on my hands. Apparently, someone had heard what was going on. So the people around here aren't as stupid as I figured. She started to get back up when a hand took her by the arm and helped her up.

"Yah alright?" An older man now stood before Kara. "Took quite a hit there, dincha?"

She squinted a bit at the light, assaultingly bright on her senses that were still used to the dark. She was fairly certain that she had never met this man before, and yet he still seemed extremely familiar. "Yeah. But I'm really okay now. Just a lot of stuff has been happening today, that's all."

The man, assured she wasn't injured, then stepped back, the expression on his face suddenly changing. It was as if he had just remembered something very traumatic... and sad. "My God. Is this.... Ah was in... then there was this tuggin' an'..." He faltered. "Is this hell?" He turned to her with pleading eyes, begging for an explanation.

"Well, I'm not much of an interior decorator, but I didn't think it was that bad." Kara joked, glancing around the room she had designed herself. Two summers ago, her freshman year just ending at high school, Kara's parents had let her create a decor for the work shed. Besides music, she loved design and art, and that was reflected in the art-deco, eclectic style of the room. Half of the interior was still for storage, but the other half was furnished nicely, (nice in her mind, but not necessarily to other people). She had a beanbag chair in the center of the room, a black shag rug on the floor, and a massive futon positioned under the picture window, set just so a person could stare out at the stars in the middle of the night and dream... or compose... or whatever the brain was given to do at that late hour.

"Ah'm serious, 'ere." The man's eyes regained focus, sensing he was being talked down to. He snagged a pair of glasses from his pocket to get a better look at his surroundings. "Who are you, an' where are we?"

Kara was a bit startled by his sudden outburst of open hostility, unconsciously shrinking back a few steps. As the minutes passed, her mysterious visitor seemed to be rapidly coming back to himself. Was he violent? Some escaped convict? Her eyes strayed momentarily to the ground where she suddenly beheld 'it'. There sat a pile of Andrea's conjuring powders that she had swept up... and her biography for class! "Oh damnit." She pushed by the man, bent down and picked the book up, dusting it off gingerly. "If I'd ruined this thing the librarian would have my head. Plus, my teacher would---"

"'Ello?!" The man barked, quite put out by her shifting attention span. "It sounded like Ah was speakin'. Sound was comin' out. Now yer gonna--" He stopped. "What's so special 'bout that book, anyway?"

"What? Oh, it's just something the teachers assigned to keep the class busy. We were told to read about someone in history that we admired." Kara made a face. "And then write a four page thesis paper about him or her." She sighed, features relaxing again. Turning the book so her new companion could read the cover she said, "I picked---"

"-- John Lennon." The man's anger dropped once more into a blank look of shock and... something else.

"Wow. Good job. You can read!" Kara said sarcastically, indicating the gold and red letters on the book jacket. "Actually, that probably puts you several steps above over a quarter of my class." She chuckled.

The man chuckled a little, but his mind was clearly elsewhere. "So of all thah people in history, ya picked him? He wasn't all that special, ya know. Just a guy."

"I know. But most people in history were just ordinary folks. It's posterity that tries to make them into Gods or whatever." She leafed through the several pages full of pictures in her book. "I'm a fan of his... and the other Beatles too, of course." She added.

"Oh."

"But not in a scream-ey, teeny-bopper sort of way." Kara quickly added, interpreting the look on the gray-haired man's face as disgust. He probably had the mental image of girls throwing themselves against fences and reaching out to try and grab at their idols. Heck, he probably had seen the news reels, or even been alive during that time. He looked old enough. "I get that they were individuals too. Actually, some of the solo stuff was better than the group work."

"Oh?" The smile returned to the man's face at this added comment. "So much for the 'ell theory. Either that or my demon warden 'as good taste..."

"Okay, my turn now. HUH?" Kara asked. "Why do you keep saying that this is hell? This is EARTH. United States of America, to be specific. Now, to answer your first question, my name's Kara Menyer.. now who are you?"

He stared directly into her eyes, "My name is John Lennon. Well, last time Ah checked it was..." John trailed off. "An' Ah think Ah'm s'posed to be dead..."

* * * * *

Kara wasn't sure whether to laugh out loud at the absurdity, or believe him. It wasn't possible. "You >>>do<<< know that John Lennon died nearly 22 years ago?"

"Hmmm. Makes sense then. Everythin' looks so different."

Rolling her eyes, Kara was about ready to dismiss the man as crazy and send him off. "Let me get this right. You're Lennon, and yet just a few minutes ago, you were putting him down?"

"Ah.. Ah thought you were one of those insane fans. Ya know, the ones that would toss themselves on the limousines? Hang around until all hours at the hotels? Mail themselves to me?" John looked disgusted at the memory. "Why would Ah just give myself away if you were gonna launch yer whole body weight at my feet?"

Man... certainly remembers things. But anyone who read an autobiography from that time could say that. She scrutinized his appearance carefully. He looked to be about 60 years old, which would be Lennon's age if it weren't for the lone gunman who'd pumped John's body with five slugs on that bitterly cold day in December, 1980.

The man groaned and touched his temples while Kara was considering everything. "Not to mention the lingerin' headache Ah've got that makes everythin' confusin'... not even sure which way is bloody up right now."

Headache? Why should I care about---- She glanced down to the pile of Andrea's powders. Hadn't it been a dark blue before she dropped the book? Because it's sure as hell black now.. and smoking... and...

"My God." Kara found herself sitting down hard on the couch. Very hard. The damn spell had still been active. Dropping her Lennon biography had provided the target of reincarnation. Dragging a guy back from the great beyond sure would cause a bit of a headache...."Why didn't I see it before?"

"What?"

"You're alive!"

It was John's turn at the sarcasm. "Wow. Quite perceptive of ya. Did Ah mention yer a brainy bird?"

Kara glared at him for a moment. He stared back. Effectively creeped out at staring into the face of a man who had been nothing more than a memory captured in pictures moments before, she felt her stomach turn. "I-- I think I need to sit down."

"Already are." John cocked his head and grinned a bit in amusement.

"Oh." Kara sank deeper into the cushions. "Good for me." She took a deep breath. "I'm not sure where I'm supposed to go from here. "How was eternity?" or "Is heaven everything it's cracked up to be?". Or was it even heaven? Because there are some fanatics who swear you went straight to hell."

John seemed to consider his answer carefully. "They could be right...." He chose to alleviate her clear guilt by giving a 'straight' answer. "Ah was in 'ell an' you saved me. Gave me a chance ta get things right."

She bit her lip. A man who had preached love and understanding had been in a state of nothing! John didn't deserve that. No good person who died bravely deserved that. But it wasn't exactly a brave or natural death. He was killed by a coward. A crazy man took him out of the world right as he was trying to turn things around.. Tears came to Kara's eyes, which she violently rubbed from her face.

The silence was driving John mad, however. "Not ta press things 'ere, but I'm kinda curious how ya brought me back."

"Wasn't me." Kara's sentences were choppy and forced. "My friend Andrea... she, uhm... she cast a spell. Or, at least, I think that's what it was. Well... whatever it was, it was dark and scary. Not simply her usual parlor tricks like floating a pencil or faking movement on a Ouija board... I told her it was risky, but she didn't listen."

John crossed the room and over to the shed's doorway. Black magic was his deliverance. He'd hoped there was an actual purpose for his coming back. Evidently not. The world had gone on without him. Probably hadn't even missed him if there were people who'd hoped he'd gone straight to hell. If only they knew. Glancing through the glass, his breath steamed the pane. Gentle snowflakes drifted before his eyes. These were simple things... and yet... where he'd been... these things weren't. There was no fear or pain or politics or war....

His eyes moistened. But he refused to cry. Never.

So he did the next best thing. One loud cough followed by a little hemming and hawing to cover.

Kara read this as impatience and quickly scrambled to say something. "Is there anything I can do for you.. Mr. Lennon..."

"Call me John." He said numbly, reality starting to hit home. "An' Ah'm alright. Gonna try an' get some sleep, Ah think." He motioned to the couch which Kara instantly vacated.

She went to the cabinet and removed a pillow and blanket. "Whatever you need. It's the least I can do since it was my friend's screw up that got you here in the first place." She handed the items over and tripped on her way to the door.

His 'welcome back to your life' haze lifted for a moment to give her a reassuring smile. "Bloody, yer all wound up. Cool off, a'right? Ah don't blame ya or yer friend. What 'appened, 'appened. Can't change things now. But Ah don't want ya beatin' yerself up 'bout this either. Ah'm fine, yer fine. Let's be glad for that."

"O-okay." Kara didn't really appear to be believing him, but turned the nob and called as she left, "Just try to keep a low profile in case my parents come home tonight. I'm not quite sure how to make up an excuse for this yet."

John lay down. "Ah can see 'ow that could be a problem. Don't worry... not a peep." He drew a hand across his mouth in the fashion of a zipper.

The door closed with a thunk and John curled up. Frankly, he didn't care if he ever woke up. The more he thought about it, the more this felt like one, massive, awful, nightmare.

* * * * *

The cracked sidewalk passed along under John. His chrome accented white bicycle shone in the afternoon sun like a newly minted dime. The peaceful solitude was indescribable. Lennon was quite certain that no one had ever been as happy as he was at that moment. "Daisy... daisy... give me yer answer, do... I'm half crazy all for the love of you..."

"JO-OHN!"

He glanced over into the park where his mother sat on a red checkered picnic blanket. She indicated a patch of green grass beside her and waved him over.

"It's time to come home now! You don't have to race around any more. You have all the time in the world!"

"But Ah still 'ave somethin' ta do... so much ta finish..."

"No, John. Come now. You're finished. Time to rest."

Hopping off his bike, he dropped it to the ground with a crash. "Okay, mum." He felt sad as he left the broken toy behind, but shrugged it off. Julia Lennon's arms were warm and inviting, and he ran to her like child. She enfolded him in her arms.

"Oh baby... it's been hard... but I promise you, it's over now." She let him go for a moment and began laying out their picnic lunch.

They spoke for a long time. Minutes into hours, hours into days.... and yet it didn't seem strange. He was overwhelmed with the feeling that time meant nothing here. One second and one thousand years were equal. Here was his mother, whom he loved and had lost at the age of seventeen, perfectly healthy and as loving as he remembered. Glancing about, he saw a lot of people whom he thought were long gone. There was Paul's mother.... and Brian Epstein.... and Stu Sutcliff.... Yet their presence elicited no tears. Just happiness. Happiness at seeing everyone no longer in pain and suffering, but vibrant and alive. This was Eden. Or Shangra La. Or whatever name a religion assigned to a place of happiness and peace.

Such was the pace of time that it could have been a couple decades for all he knew, before the peace was suddenly disturbed. A dark cloud suddenly appeared on the horizon.

"Mum?" John looked up with concern.

Julia looked greatly saddened. "Oh John. I'm sorry."

"W-what's goin' on?" He glanced around, panic growing. He ran to the edge of the meadow to a hill overlooking a valley. The cloud was spreading quickly and he was aware suddenly of everyone waving to him. But Ah'm not goin' anywhere....

The cloud engulfed him slowly and he became aware of a yanking. It was as if someone was pulling him by the arm to show him something or take him somewhere. He had no choice but to follow... to leave the peace and solitude and enter....

There was a girl on the ground here. He walked over to help her. "Yah alright?" She took his outstretched hand. "Took quite a hit there, dincha?"

* * * * *

John awoke in a cold sweat. Of all the things Ah didn't want ta remembah... it 'ad to be that... He couldn't sleep anymore, for fear of going back to that place in his unconsciousness. Instead he turned over to glance at the alarm clock nearby which Kara had been good enough to bring out to him. It was around 4:30am. Still too early to be up and about. Perfect time for a little reading.

He crossed the room and buried himself in a stack of back magazine issues. Everything from Time to the National Enquirer. John got the idea the Kara's family never threw much away....

Kara came in an hour or so later, looking like she herself had just rolled out of bed. Hair flying in several directions and flying cow print PJ's hanging loosely from her frame, she looked the picture of insomnia. "Hey. Couldn't sleep?"

"Could ask you the same question." John turned a page in the November, 1999 Reader's Digest.

"Touche." She shrugged and settled down on her futon in the corner. "How's the reading?"

The effort to process all the information laying before him was clearly written in John's features. "Ah'm pretty much up ta speed on everythin' real important." He chuckled. "Paulie must've been pretty pissed the day the U.S.S.R. broke up..."

"Huh?"

"Never mind." John slurred, feeling sleep trying to tug at him again. He shook himself awake forcefully. Going back to sleep was simply not an option when one knew exactly what REM fun awaited him.

Kara added after a moment, "My parents are out of town for the evening. Seems dad had a bit too much bubbly and mom opted to stay in a hotel in the middle town, rather than risk driving home. So, we should be safe through the rest of today. Maybe even tomorrow." She sighed. "It was good to hear from them, but I was hoping that call at 2am would be from Andrea. I haven't heard a word from her since I sent her home last night. When I called her cell phone, no one answered."

John stood unsteadily raising his arms above his head to equal parts stretch and keep his balance. Wonder where that bird went, anyroad? He mused. "Yer worried?"

"Despite all the times she's made a mess of things, she's still my friend. Her intentions are usually good, but somewhere along the line she tends to go one-track-mind-girl and then there's no stopping her."

"An' then ya can't get 'er to think of anythin' or anyone else." John nodded his head. "All that matters is her ideas. Nothin' that ya say can change 'er mind----"

"Sounds like you've heard the story before."

"Ah know the type. Up close and personal." John replied cryptically, all the while thinking back to 'the good ol' days' of recording "Let it Be" when Paul had turned into the all-controlling dictator of the group. He swore that, given the correct lighting, one would easily be able to see the dollar signs in Macca's eyes.

While leafing through the magazines, John had done more than simply brush up on missed history. He had recovered most of the memories of the past which had been foggy at best when he first came to. The good stuff was there-- playing the clubs in Hamburg, the Cavern Club-- but so was the bad. The fights, the insults, the break up of their foursome which he had come to regard as a family of sorts.... his brain was practically a traffic jam of faces, names and dates.

"Have you given it any thought?"

"What?"

"What you're going to do next. I said we've bought ourselves another 24 hours, but after that...." Kara fumbled. "See, as much as I'd love to keep you in the shed..."

John looked hurt. There was no really good reason for it, he knew. This >>was<< her house. Still, he reacted badly to having to move on so fast. He needed time to think, especially now that his past was rushing back to him. "Ah'll get out then." He replied tersely.

"No! That's not what I meant at all!" Kara grimaced with frustration. Never were one with the communication thing, were you? She silently berated herself. "I couldn't kick you out now! I... I wouldn't.... But soon we..."

She pulls me from paradise-- my own MUM, for Christ's sake!-- lets me sleep the night, an' then pushes me out the door. So that was all there was ta this. Am Ah just part of some sick experiment?! "Pityin' me, now?" John hissed.

Struck a nerve. Kara realized with a touch of anxiety. You've read about him. He doesn't like charity... he
doesn't like the feeling that he's being patronized. She realized after a moment, Well, neither would you.

Continuing with his sudden shift in mood, John added venomously, "Ya never actually did tell me why ya brought me back. Oh, Ah know 'ow, but what about the grand plan? Ya coulda just been fakin' shock there,
couldn't ya?"

Kara started to say something, but he silenced her with a wave of his hand.

"Didja do it for giggles? Ta get LAID?"

Get out of here before he hurts you. Her brain warned. "Calm down." Kara said in a trembling voice. She knew she should probably run for it, but her feet were rooted to the floor. They had to sort this thing out.

"Ah 'ate ta disappoint ya, but ya wouldn't be the first fling. Ah've 'ad so many women before that Ah lost count a while back." He chortled. "Screwed my brains out. Didn't love 'em all.... just loved what they could do for me.... and to me."

"This isn't you." Kara backed up against the wall, and John advanced on her. Nowhere to run. she realized.

"It's the me Ah wish people knew about. Ah fancy they wouldn't 'ave loved The Beatles so much then. Make fuckin' idols out of us." He sighed. "But that's borin' stuff. Let's get it on. See 'ow well the ol' dead man can perform."

She slapped him then. Hard. "DAMN YOU! SNAP OUT OF IT!"

"Ravin' bitch." John wound up and lashed out at her, punch intended to break her jaw in a dozen places. At the last moment, however, Kara ducked, sending John's fist whizzing over her head and lodged firmly into the plaster wall behind her.

Kara got back to her feet. "You don't like taking crap, do you?! Well, neither do I. No one treats me like that and goes home in one piece."

It was John's turn to be surprised.

"Wanna know the truth? It was all a big, fat, MISTAKE. You, my friend, were a mistake! If things had turned out the way they were supposed to, you'd still be six feet under... and Dree's little brother would be alive as he was
supposed to have been. He was just a little boy! He never had a chance. How would you have felt, huh? Tell me that! What if it were Julian?! Or Sean?! Or have you forgotten about them?!"

In the wheeling images muddled in John's mind, he suddenly fantasized little Sean crossing the street. As he reached the middle of the road, a car came roaring down upon the boy. John tried to call to him--- to save him--- but it was too late. "NOOO!" John screamed, violently jerking his fist free, blood running from the knuckles. He sank to his knees in a daze.

Realizing what a dumb move it probably was, Kara crouched down beside him. She didn't dare touch him since something was obviously playing in his mind. It was better not to put herself in the line of fire. Still... His eyes opened after a bit, glassy and moist. John had come back a mess, emotions helter skelter and memories warring with each other for importance. Kara couldn't help but think of the monster that Doctor Frankenstein had created. In much the same way, Andrea hadn't been prepared for what her magic could do under the precisely wrong circumstances. The Wicca hadn't been prepared to deal with the consequences of her actions. Now it was up to Kara to figure things out. Even if it meant getting into another screaming match with a man dead 20 years.

"John..." Her voice was barely above a whisper. "If I'd known what could happen, I would have stopped Andrea. Believe me, I never wanted to hurt anyone. Least of all, you. I only said those things---"

"Because you were threatened." John mumbled. He turned to her with a look of-- respect?-- in his eyes. "Ah do the same thing. Shoot off my mouth too."

"If there's anything I can do to help you, tell me. I mean it. Anything..."

John glanced down and placed a trembling hand on her's. "It was peaceful there, ya know."

Afraid he was slipping again, Kara was almost afraid to ask, "Where?"

"No pain. No drugs. No war. Calm."

"Where?"

He looked up slowly. "Heaven."

As the snow continued to fall outside, two forms huddled together. They cried a bit, hugged a bit, and each allowed the other to speak his (or her) mind. Perhaps they weren't friends, but they understood and respected each other.