The bus ride back to Baycrest was not a pleasant one, as Will sat in the back with his exhausted wife. His face fixated upon the artificially textured ground of the transport as he just tried to force out all stimuli from his mind. The left side of his face where his eye would have been began feeling those sharp pains once again; that distressing time of his life when a man stabbed his face and robbed him of half his eyesight when he was barely ten years old. He tried to hold it it, he tried to maintain his composure, but the tears on his cheek betrayed him as Tessa looked over with concern.
``Will . . . William O'Hara please don?t shut me out,'' Tessa begged as her hand reached for his, ``Not now. You've put me through so mu-''
``Shut up, p-please,'' Will begged in return as his voice trembled, his one eye leaking tears profusely as he tried hard to keep every single moment of agony in his life shut inside his body.
``''You don't have to do this Will. Please . . .'' Tessa pleaded with her husband as she just kept one paw gripping his own, trying hard to be the unmovable stone she always was in his life.
``I . . . I don't know where it all went wrong, Tess,'' Will began to whimper even louder as his eye could not hold back years of torture that was drowned into submission through years of liquor. His body shaking as everything now came back to him; the years of trauma and the fears he once swallowed with every shot of alcohol he took.
``Don't think about that anymore please. We?re going to take you home; we'll get you into Alcoholics Anonymous, we?ll get you into a program, just anything . . . I don?t need you running off again. Peter. Greg. Kelly . . . they a-''
``I don?t need a damn program Tessa!! I don't need any of that bullshit!!'' A hiss roared from Will's mouth as he sharply twisted his head to face Tessa, staring her blue eyes down with his lone green eye. ``Don't you get it?! I don't want any of that artifice . . . I . . . I just want this pain to stop . . .''
Tessa could only bear witness to a decade's worth of pain finally pouring from Will's lone eye as his body slumped forward onto her lap; the bellowing pain of his voice rung between her thighs as his tears finally broke the dam.
``I . . . I just want it all to stop! . . . please, make it stop . . .''
He cried, as the music in the bus blared shamelessly, as if to either mock him or to sympathize with him. Tessa couldn't tell either way; she could only pet his head as he mourned for his life. A life robbed of happiness as the pain from his mother's drug addiction got no satisfying closure; just him realizing he was left miserable with his mother having bettered herself. His own biological father wouldn't even recognize him, as he was either offered money or shamed out the door; forever disregarded as a bastard.
He was, in his mind and in his heart, forever and truly alone. Tessa could almost feel that bitter vinegar hit her maw and tongue as her expression soured, knowing she would be the only one there to truly carry his burdens for him. She wish secretly she didn't, but she had no choice; she loved him. Tessa loved the man more than life itself, and would gladly carry him through a sea of lava and toss his body to the shore before the molten rock took her life. She would bear the penetration of spears and men inside of her to save her husband?s life; to bear every pain in the world for him, because she wanted to ease his.
Inside of her heart, she knew his pain; forever alone with only one other person who would even know a fraction of the loss and suffering she had gone through, and that would be enough for her. Yet, her ears would flatten and her face tighten in dismay and disgust as she couldn't help but feel angry; angry that the world would turn her back on her husband, how the pain and suffering he felt would get no resolution, as he couldn't bear claim victory over his mother. His mother found redemption, and begged in front of him for forgiveness; forgiveness he could not give at that time. His father forsaken him, and whatever family he could have was now forever lost . . .
Now he had to pick up the pieces of his life, alone; to consul a son he couldn't tame or earn respect from, to gain the love of another he didn't even father, and to save a daughter from the precipice of that unending abyss of suicide. He was overwhelmed; burdened with burdens beyond his own and forever afflicted with demons he could not face. Now it was up to his wife to help him, and she knew she could not do this task alone; she was helpless, but all she could do was carry on.
That anger turned to a deep hatred for what the world at large turned themselves into; broken people forever fighting for broken promises and lost dreams. A familiar distortion of strings echoed through the low quality speakers as she resonated with the pain of the guitarist, joining into a sea of pain and pouring that chaotic anguish into something orderly yet personal; something ungodly yet holy. Her own tears began to pour as she could feel that bending of the guitar strings to a distorted timbre as if the guitar begged her to finally cry. Cry not only for her husband, but for her broken family who were in long need of help. The bus driver could only look back in reflections as the couple cried in lyrical unison with the song blaring through the bus's radio.
For in a twisted since, they were indeed, alone. They were both in suffering and their only company was the driver and a song by a band jamming out months of pain into a song; all the while heading back to a place they called home.
