Walking Into Danger With Eyes Wide (PR RPM) part 10

[estinose]

And here it is! The end/epilogue.


Walking Into Danger With Eyes Wide
Part 10: Fears and Foibles and Joys


"Heya, Ziggy."

Ziggy looked up from his book to where Benny Highsmith was walking towards him. He glanced over at where his parents and the rest of the team were playing volleyball. The team needed some rest and relaxation, and so Doctor K had sent them out to enjoy themselves, while remaining behind herself.

He wasn't with them because of a still-healing ankle that Doctor K had sternly told him not to aggravate, and so he was staying down. Which was just as well; volleyball had never been his game. And, as he told his parents, if he needed help, he'd yell.

"Hi. Pleased to see you again." He managed a smile. His parents had said nothing about ever contacting the mobster, or that he shouldn't, so he chose to cautiously talk to the man.

"Yeah." Benny plopped himself down by Ziggy. "Figured since I saw you, might check in, see how you were."

He'd known Ziggy before, after all, or so he'd said, and an offhand comment on Doctor K's end told Ziggy that the man had been telling the truth about it.

"I can safely say that getting hurt sucks."

Benny laughed. "Yeah, well. You're a fighter, kid. Been paying attention to the whole Ranger thing ever since Ziggy went legit." He looked at Ziggy. "Thanks for having your parents call me, by the way. I may not be a person they want to really associate with, but ya know, I kind of had some things to say to them."

Ziggy shrugged. He wanted really to talk to Benny about his original self, but like with his parents and team, Benny probably wouldn't think to talk about the things important to Ziggy.

"I guess from what your folks told me, not directly of course, that you kinda know who you are."

"Yeah." He wouldn't have phrased it quite that way, because he was still trying to figure out who he was, but he had a better understanding of who he had been.

"Did ya know when we last met?" Benny quirked an eyebrow at him. "'Cause I hate to have been over-cautious-like."

"Yeah. But I didn't know you, either."

The man nodded. "Yeah, wise choice there, kid. There's a lot of people out there that knew Ziggy Grover, and not all of them remember him fondly. There's a big debt that he owes, and some people are never going to forget it."

He remembered being told about that, the night where they'd all just gotten together to share stories of the man he'd once been. It had been a night full of laughter, and silly stories, and somber recollections. All immensely useful to him.

"I know. Someone told me. Doctor K, in fact."

"She'd know the whole story," Benny leaned back on the bench. "Heck of a lady. I wouldn't want to go against her, ya know. Been busy myself, 'cause there are some in the cartels who've noticed a… certain resemblance between you and him." Looking at Ziggy's parents and team, he added, "Hate to tell your parents this, but we lived through a computer virus that destroyed the world; isn't that hard to look at ya and realize that Ziggy didn't precisely die like they said he did. Especially with you as a Ranger."

He somehow wasn't surprised. Once he'd gotten over the shock of having been someone else before, it hadn't taken him long to realize that some people probably still remembered Ziggy Grover and saw the resemblance.

Well, apart from the not moving or talking like him bit. His parents had coaxed Dillon into sharing some of the handful of videos he had, the ones where Ziggy Grover had videotaped himself. Most of them had been from before he'd become a Ranger, as Ziggy's parents had suspected, but there were a few after, including right after he became a Ranger, an entire monologue on how things kind of really sucked and he didn't want to be a Ranger and how stupid he'd been. Ziggy suspected that he'd made it just so that he could look back someday and laugh, but he hadn't been planning to share it with anybody else.

Doctor K'd had one or two as well that she'd dug out of her records, but hers had been so much more somber, discussions about his diagnosis and treatment, including computer scans of the leg and scary long medical terms, and his former self had been sitting there, hooked up to a machine, while Doctor K's antivirus program targeted the growth inside him. Ziggy had only watched the video maybe twice, because compared to his growths - which really were tiny, she'd showed him - Ziggy Grover had whole sheaths of metal and machinery in there, up and down his fibula.

"I kind of wondered about that," he said, looking over at Benny. "But I'm not him." He did not want to be Ziggy Grover. And even if he wanted to, he couldn't be.

Ziggy Grover had been human, full of foibles and fears and joys. He'd never really wanted to be an example, never planned to be turned into a preschooler. He didn't want to be a role model. He'd stumbled into being a hero and as Benny had said, was too stubborn to stumble out. Charging into battle even when he didn't want to.

He'd been maybe the example that Ziggy Truman-Landsdown had needed, because his performance on the battlefield had gotten better, and he'd gotten his class time back.

There had been good in him, as Ziggy's therapist had pointed out, and it wasn't like Ziggy hated the man he'd been before, the man who was in some ways as much his parent as his adoptive parents were. Just… genetically instead of an actual physical parent.

"Nah, you aren't." Benny looked over at the team, playing volleyball. "If ya were, you'd be lifting my wallet and then convincing me that I should give to a children's charity while you were at it." He grinned at something, some memory, but it soon faded. "Ziggy was always the kind of kid that should have been adopted himself. That's why I took him under my wing, you know."

Ziggy nodded. There was so much he wanted to ask about Ziggy, but he wasn't sure it was the right time. "There's so much I don't know about him, still."

"I could tell you stories, but there's a lot I don't wanna remember on my end. And others that your parents would go after me if they knew. When you're a teenager and running with cartels, you kind of do things that are stupid, you know?"

Maybe he didn't want to know the man that Ziggy Grover had been before he pretty much followed Dillon into Ranger HQ. "Yeah, so not a good idea."

"Thought not," Benny said, chucking again. "You're better off hearing their stories, kid. Not that I don't have a few myself that I could probably share, but I don't want to get a set of Rangers pissy at me. One of the first things you learn in the Cartels is there are people you just don't touch." He nodded towards the team. "You're looking at a bunch of them, right there. And you."

It was a relief. "Yeah. Thanks for telling me, Benny."

The man didn't seem to take it as a dismissal, for which Ziggy was glad. "Anytime, kid. Gotta go, but when you're older… lemme know. I got tales to tell."

"I think we all do," Ziggy said, looking at his family, his team.

"Yeah." Benny grinned once more and got off the bench. "Take care of yourself, Ziggy." And with that, he was away, walking off as if nothing important had happened.

The last few months had been important in ways he couldn't have imagined. He'd lost who he thought he'd been, learned that he'd been someone else, and tried to become himself again… except that it was a little harder than he thought. Maybe it was all part of being an adult. Or maybe it was just him.

He didn't know, but for once, he felt comfortable with it.

-end

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Whew! That's the last of the 10 prompts for my parthenon claim, and the end of the story. I've done a bit of lengthening on two parts because they were under 1000 words, the minimum for Calliope.

I enjoyed writing this, even though it took some unexpected twists and turns (like falling into continuity the events of "Warm Spot" and the sequel for it I haven't written yet, thank you brain), and went in directions that I didn't quite anticipate. I hope my readers have enjoyed it!