Weeds Between Graves
Part Nine
By Missy

SERIES: Weeds Between Graves
PART: 9 of 10
RATING: PG-13 (Adult themes, language and materials)
PAIRING(s): Lenny/Laverne; Squiggy/Shirley
DISTRIBUTION: To LW, Kai, Myself and FG so far; any other archives are welcome to ask, but disclaimers must be included, my email left intact. send a URL, and provide full disclaimers as well as credit me fully. Please inform me if you are going to submit my work to any sort of search engine. Please do not submit my work to a search engine that picks out random sets of words and uses them as key words, such as "Google"

Please contact me in order for this story to be placed on an archive, or if you want know of a friend who would enjoy my works, please email me their address and I will mail them the stories, expressly for the purpose of link trading. MiSTiers are welcomed! Please do inform me that you'd like to do the MiSTing, however, and send me a copy of the finished product. I'd also love to archive any MiSTings that are made of my work!
CATEGORY: Drama
FEEDBACK: PLEASE?!
SETTING IN TIMELINE: Milwaukee cannon, late-season five.
SPOILLER/SUMMARY: Lenny and Laverne find themselves tools of the Big Good, though they're not entirely comfortable with their mission...
NOTES: In which I steal myth arch from "Joan of Arcadia" and "One Life To Live". Don't worry, I only sort of joke ;-).

Heading up on the end. There will probably be an epilouge.

Here is an explanation for Carmine's behavior. It's not that he's a "jerk"; no, there's character motivation here.

***

"Another round!"

"Ragusa, we're cutting you off!"

"No! I needshit..."

Dominic rolled his eyes, writing down an item on an incredibly long bar tab. "I don't mind your boozin' it up, Ragusa; half the town's been knockin' 'em back since Shotz blew up. But it would be swell if you'd start paying me for them..."

Carmine, however, was beyond hearing, having passed out, his head hitting the bar with a comfortable 'smack.'

***

"Geez, Carmine, who thought you'd turn out to be a lush?"

He blinked his eyes twice to clear them, but the vision didn't change; there stood Lenny, dressed as he had been on a slab in the morgue.

Sweat trickled down the back of his neck. He wanted to pray, but he could not remember the whole of the Our Father.

"Cat got your tongue?"

He screamed, and not one person in the busy bar seemed to hear him.

"Easy there, Carmine."

He turned to see Laverne standing behind him, and yelled his confusion again.

"You're both dead! I saw you in the morgue..."

"We are dead, Carmine...."

"That don't mean we can't have a nice chat."

"Yeah."

"So, why're you bein' a big jerk?"

"LEN!"

Carmine shook his head. "I ain't bein' a jerk. It's been a long, hard week, and I just wanna..."

"Then why did ya try to rob my pop? And why'd ya do what ya did to Shirl..."

"I had my reasons. If you saw what I saw..."

"What did you see?"

He swallowed hard, and began to explain.

He had been on his way downtown when he heard the explosion.

Panic had set in on the streets; horror and fear filling the voices of those who had witnessed the explosion. He heard the word Shotz and ran the rest of the way to the plant.

He had jumped a gate, ran to a back door, up the back stairs. One entire floor burned, walls orange streaks of fire. On the third floor was the break room, where Shirley should be having her lunch.

He froze at the top of the staircase; the ceiling had caved in. Whoever had been in there was beyond his help.

As he turned, fire raged behind him. Only one way out of the plant, now; over the catwalk crossing the capping line.

He pushed through a set of doors, running across the catwalk, grateful that the girls had showed him a few of the plant's secrets, hoping that they were still all right.

"Help me!" he heard a scream below. But the strongest impulse had been to save himself. "Carmine, don't g-"

But he had emerged into a stairwell, ran until he felt the sweet brush of freedom against his lips.

He didn't realize it was Shirley until her name showed up among the missing on the local news.

"I left her to burn there...I dunno how long."

"Ya think you shoulda been a hero?" Laverne scoffed. "Shirley would've told you to go."

"I should have been a hero, Laverne. You're wrong. I'm a gutless coward, and that's why Shirl's a cripple!"

"Shirley ain't a cripple. Not yet. Not if she keeps working on her fingers."

Carmine shook his head. "It's my fault. That's why I broke inta yer Pop's restaurant, Laverne. I wanted ta pay fer her medicine. But I had to push her away from me, cause all I do is hurt her. I swear I didn't wanna hurt nothing." His speech had thickened to an unintelligible pattern of groans.

"It's going to be okay, Carmine." Laverne said, patting his shoulder.

"How?"

"Just be a better person. Be as good as you can. Find a way to bring the town together and make them feel like they're worth something again."

"I can do that." The old confidence started returning to his voice.

"Good." Laverne encouraged, releasing his head. "When you're sober, all you're gonna remember is this message."

"Laverne....you were a great friend. You too, Len." A tear trickled down from the corner of his left eye. "God, when I wake up, I want to remember..."

"You were a good friend to us. You're still here for a reason, Carmine. Remember that."

"Goodbye." They said together. "Goodbye..."

***

"Ragusa!"

He jumped to wakefulness.

"Here's your round..."

He pushed the beer back. "No thanks."

"But you...I swear Ragusa, if you stiff me..."

Carmine shook his head. "Here you go."

He emptied his pocket on the counter.

"That's about half way there." Dominic judiciously announced.

"No. But it's a start." Carmine smiled. "A start."




TBC

To Chapter 8
To Chapter 10