(no subject)

[chaoscentral]

Ficcage! Warnings and such may give it away -

Fandom: The Hardy Boys
Rating: PG for minor violence
Warnings: Character death

Credit for the title goes to kahn who also served as my trusty and loyal beta.

If you're willing to risk reading it as it is, skip below.



Confessions to an Empty Room

Four years later and his key still fit the lock.

He hadn't thought it would work. Even as he'd been sliding the key into the lock he hadn't believed it would actually work. Shouldn't they have changed the locks? Weren't they afraid he'd come back?

A gust of wind made him shiver and he glanced around to make sure no one had seen him standing there. The schoolyard was dark and deserted, the only light coming from the streetlights in the student parking lot, and the single-bulb lights at the exits. A similar light gave off a faint hum above his head as he stood indecisive at the side entrance to the old gym.

He gathered his conviction and pushed the door open, stepping through into a dark building musty with disuse.

He reached out and flipped on the lights.

The flourescent lights flickered dimly before slowly flaring to full brilliance, lighting the gymnasium. He took a deep breath and coughed on the stale air, then shut the door behind him and thumbed the lock.

To either side of him stretched empty rows of bleachers, and across as well. The main gymnasium was a basketball court, with tape along the floor to mark out boundaries and goal lines for indoor soccer. There was enough dust built up to show that the building had not been used in some time.

His feet carried him to the center of the court with no input from his mind.

The wood was stained a rust color brown. If he looked, he could see the indentation from where he dropped the gun.

It was late in the game and they were tied with Southport. The bleachers were full of fans, the players were riding high on adrenaline, and he knew they could pull it off. Twenty seconds left in the game and all they needed was one basket.

He was the only one who noticed the police officers coming into the gym.

He crouched down and rubbed his fingers over the shallow dent in the wood.

"People don't really come here anymore."

The voice startled him and he tried to stand and turn around at the same time. Instead he overbalanced and fell backwards, landing hard on his tailbone. He stared up into the bemused face of a teenage boy. "What are you doing here?" he managed to ask, fighting down the urge to get to his feet and run. He couldn't run away again. It had taken him too long to work up the courage to come back at all. He might not have the strength or will to do it a second time.

"I could say the same to you." The boy was probably a senior, tall and well-built, with blond hair. He wore a letter jacket and a pair of battered jeans. The boy looked like any one of the hundreds of athletes he had coached over the years.

"I used to work here," he finally said. "I just wanted to take a look around."

"Yeah?" The kid wasn't getting too close. "You're Ben Wainwright."

The sound of his name was like adrenaline shot into his veins. No one had called him that in four years. "I am."

The kid stuffed his hands in his jeans pockets and eyes Ben warily. "I bet the cops would be interested to know you're here. And few other people as well."

"They'll know soon." Ben had made sure of it. He wasn't leaving himself a way out this time.

Just don't run away, you coward.

"You don't say." The kid seemed skeptical, but not afraid. Nothing in the way he held himself, or the steady way he watched Ben, indicated he was at all apprehensive about being there with a wanted man.

"Should you even be here?" Ben asked defensively, feeling ridiculously like he was being sized up and found wanting. "I thought they closed this place down?"

The kid nodded. "They did, a few months after you skipped town. He glanced at the floor beneath Ben and shrugged. "They never could get the blood out. And they needed a bigger gym anyway, so they just built a new one as fast as they could and shut this one down. Cheaper to ignore it than to demolish it, I guess."

"They could have just replaced the flooring." Ben slowly stood, then checked his hands, as if he expected the blood to have come off on his skin.

"A lot of kids wouldn't come in here anymore. Especially the ones who were there that night. And hell, if the entire basketball team refused to set foot on the court…" he shrugged. "High school sports are like bread and butter to a school board. They caved in to demands for a new gym pretty quickly, by all accounts." He crossed the rest of the distance between them and stared down at the bloodstained floor. "The kids still talk about what happened, you know."

"Do they get it right?" Ben asked coldly.

"Probably not." The kid gave Ben a disconcerting look, one that pierced straight through him. "I figure there's only two people who know what really happened, right? You and-"

"Him," Ben said hoarsely, and felt himself slide backwards in time. "What do they say?"

"Lots of things. You were on drugs, you were a secret pedophile, you were actually a closet serial killer and this was supposed to be your big massacre. Never mind that serial killers generally don't go in for the big explosive showdown." He grinned at Ben. "I guess the truth was tame in comparison, huh?"

"Murder's become tame?" Ben said. "It makes you wonder about people."

The kid didn't point out that he was the last person who should be passing judgment.

"I was the coach for all the boys' teams," Ben said quietly, and as he gazed around the gym he could remember a hundred different moments, games, practices, classes. "Soccer, football, basketball, baseball. Taught gym class. I knew most of the kids here by name. The athletes on my team never failed a class, and knew that if I caught them smoking or drinking or taking anything that wasn't prescribed I'd have their heads on a platter." He closed his eyes against the memory. "We were playing for the championship that night."

"I remember."

"We had a good team that year. Twelve good kids, solid players. More than half of them were seniors, we might have been in trouble the next year. But at that point we didn't care, because we were going to win the championship. It would have been the third year in a row." Ben closed his eyes. "It was a good team," he repeated dully. "It was a sure bet we'd win."

"That's why you bet on the game?"

He opened his eyes to stare at the kid, watching him quietly. "I guess some of them are still telling the truth, boring as it may be," he said.

The kid shrugged.

"Do they tell the rest of it?" Ben asked bitterly. "Do they tell you I had spent three years racking up enough gambling debt to make a sane man fear for his life, but still hadn't stopped? Did they tell you that I bet on my team to win because the winnings would be small, but it was a sure thing? I needed to win."

"For the money to pay back your bookie?"

Ben laughed. "Hell, no, kid. I just needed to win. It was like a drug, gambling. And no matter how many times you lose you just keep risking it all on the one in a million chance you'll make it big. I'd been losing for so long even a small win would have been like gold."

"And everyone knew Bayport was going to win that game."

"Well, everyone except Southport, obviously," Ben grinned, despite everything. "They kept in there, but our team was better. I knew we could pull a last minute win. All we needed was one basket." He rubbed a hand over his eyes. "Twenty seconds left in the game, and that's when the cops came in."

He knew they were there for him. He knew by the way the first officer caught his gaze across the gym and started working his way through the crowd. He knew by the way the second officer caught the referee by the arm. He knew by the way his stomach dropped out of him and his hands began to shake.

Ben had been afraid of the Cortez family's bookies. He'd never thought once about the cops coming after him.

They were going to stop the game. They were going to make him lose.

He couldn't lose. Not again.

He had nothing left. The Cortezes would come after him, the enforcers would come looking for money he couldn't even pretend to have. And if he was in jail he couldn't get the money at all. He'd be a sitting duck, locked up in a small room waiting for a mobster to come and blow him away.

One of his best players had the ball, but the referee was about to call for a timeout.

"Frank Hardy had the ball. Good kid, natural athlete, but he spent most of his time in the library or on the computer. His dad used to be a cop. When he saw the police come in he hesitated."

"Make the shot!" The words are tearing his throat to shreds and the panic is bubbling in his chest. "Make the goddamned shot, Frank!"

People are staring at him in surprise but he barely notices. The referee signals for a time out, the team jogs to a halt.

"Make the shot! Make it!" His team is staring at him in surprise now, and one of the boys points toward the ref, obviously thinking he hadn't seen the timeout. Ben's shaking so hard he can't see straight. "Frank! Make the shot!"

There's a presence at his side. One of his football team, there to watch his brother play. Joe Hardy gave him a worried look. "Coach, the ref called a time out."

If it had been anyone but him, maybe the next few minutes would have played out differently.

"I can still see the look on his face." Ben's voice was heavy and echoed in the gym. He wondered how long he'd stood there in silence, remembering.

The kid just tips his head to the side and regards Ben with that damned piercing gaze. "Which one?"

The gun was a safety measure. You don't get mixed up with bookies and loan sharks and expect not to have to protect yourself. Ben had gotten the gun when he'd started losing in the thousands instead of the hundreds. He didn't even remember bringing it to the game that night, but there it was in his hand.

It was almost like he was watching another person, he thought as he watched himself grab Joe Hardy and pull the boy against his chest. He wrapped an arm around Joe's throat and pulled, the gun pressed against the side of his head. "Make the goddamned shot, Frank!"

"Police! Freeze!"

"Frank."

Ben had noticed that Frank was pale and his fingers were clenched white on the ball as he took a step toward the coach and his brother. Ben noticed that Joe's breathing was rapid but shallow. Ben noticed that the entire stadium was in pandemonium. But none of it was affecting him, none of it was real. "Make the shot, Frank. It's for the championship."

Frank nodded slowly. "If I make the shot, you'll let Joe go, won't you coach?"

"He asked me if I'd let his brother go," Ben remembered distantly. "I hear him asking me that every night when I try to sleep. I'll hear him asking me for the rest of my life."

"You didn't."

"No."

"The game is over, Coach Wainwright. You need to come with us." The younger of the two officers was standing in the center of the court, holding his gun on Ben. His partner was waving the players off the court, and had one hand wrapped around Frank Hardy's wrist.

The game was over. He'd lost.

"It was a sure thing," he whispered.

"So why'd you do it?" the kid asked. "Were you mad? Was it a way to hurt Frank for not taking the shot?"

"It was a distraction."

He's no longer outside himself, watching. Now he's locked inside his own mind, feverishly trying to find a way out. All he had was the gun and a hostage.

"I pushed him toward the cop, threw him halfway across the court. Looking back, I think the cop was going to catch him." Ben spoke slowly. He'd never told the story before, had barely dwelt on the details of these last few minutes himself. He wanted to tell it right. "I was too far gone with panic to realize it at the time, but he must've been choking, the way I'd been holding him. So I pushed him, and he fell, and I think the cop was going to catch him. But all I saw was the cop coming toward me." He turns around slowly, staring down at the rust-colored stains. "I think I was trying to shoot the cop. I don't know. I wasn't rational, I was scared." He laughed quietly. "So I shot a seventeen year old kid in the back."

The gun was tucked into the waistband of his jeans and he pulled it out, holding it in his hand. It felt heavier than it had that night. He knelt, and set the gun down on the floor above the indentation he'd made when he dropped it four years earlier.

"Everyone froze. No one seemed to react at first. I dropped the gun; I'd never fired it before, can you believe that? Owned a gun and didn't even know how to use it. That I didn't shoot myself was a miracle." He crouched there for a moment, dragged his hands over his face. "Oh, god, I wish I had."

In the silence, Ben could hear the sound of a car pulling up outside.

"I only remember voices," the kid said quietly.

"You closed your eyes," Ben said.

"My brother and parents were there. I didn't want them to see the look on my face when I died."

"I picked up the gun and ran. No one tried to stop me, they all scrambled to get out of my way. The cops weren't prepared. They hadn't expected me to do something so-" he swallowed and laughed. "So crazy."

"But you came back?"

"Four years to the day. I've been moving around a lot. Doing odd jobs. Living in the back of my pickup. The Cortezes would probably still like to find me. And your brother never stopped looking for me." He risks a glance upward and the kid's eyes are sad and tired. "I always knew he'd catch up with me eventually. He's smart. He's good."

"He is," the kid said with defiant pride.

"He's here now," Ben said heavily.

They both heard the door open, and Ben raised his eyes to watch the young man step into the gym.

Frank Hardy looked older than twenty-two, but he was still a handsome man. Right then his face was blank of expression as he met Ben's gaze across the empty court.

"Four years to the day," Ben said again. "And every day of it an agony. I'd have killed myself if I weren't a coward." He stood, leaving the gun on the floor. "If I didn't owe your family more than that."

He risked a sideways glance at the kid, at Joe, still seventeen and still in the same clothes he'd worn that night. "Can he see you?" he asked, wondering what Frank will make of the question.

Joe shook his head.

"Were you always here?"

"Not till tonight. I knew you'd come here."

"Wherever you go next," Ben said. "I hope you know I'm sorry."

Joe offered him a grin and a shrug. "Coach, I knew that a long time ago. If I hadn't forgiven you, I wouldn't be here tonight."

"Why did you come?" Ben asked. Frank isn't making any effort to come closer, and he wondered if Joe had lied, if Frank knew who Ben was speaking to.

"A lot of reasons. Mostly because I thought you needed some help turning yourself in."

"You were a distraction." His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. "Again."

"I just kept you talking till Frank got here." Joe watched his brother with a wistful expression. "It'll help him, knowing you've been caught, that you'll stand trial."

"It'll help me, too," Ben told him. "For what that's worth."

"Wainwright." Frank finally spoke, and Ben turned to face him. "It's time for us to go."

"Can you see him?" Ben asked. "Do you know he's here?"

Frank shook his head. "I don't need to see him." He nonetheless managed to fix his gaze at Ben' side, where he knew Joe was standing. "I know."

He felt himself pulling the trigger, felt the kickback jerk his entire arm and shake his grip loose. He dropped the gun and watched Joe fall, a splatter of red across the back of his letter jacket.

Down the court he watched Frank jerk as if shot himself.

And then he realized what he'd done.

end