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Sandy had intended to look for something new to read, something that wasn't sitting in the jumbled library that was his room at the brownstone. Instead, his feet had brought him like a man possessed to the fiction section, to the B's, and he'd pulled down the faded copy of Whispers in Darkness by Dian Belmont like it was an old friend.
Mostly, because it was.
When he'd first returned and restarted the JSA, when Jack had still been there with a joke or a groan or a smile, it had been one of the few discussion topics that led to productive discussion between them. The book was Jack's favorite, and once he'd gotten a chance to read it, one of his too. And Jack, for all that they hadn't always agreed on every little point, was a good memory. Someone he truly missed, though the sting was somewhat mitigated by the fact that he knew Jack was well and healthy and raising his son somewhere on the west coast in a life that Sandy knew he'd never be a part of.
Then there was the book itself. Written by his aunt, her familiar cadence woven throughout the text, her sly wit, her dry wit, her boundless hopefulness even in the darkest of times. It was a beautiful book, and there was a reason it was still around, still read, still remembered, but for Sand, it was beautiful because when he read it, he could hear his aunt again, hear her voice the way that memories never quite allowed for. He didn't know how many sleepless nights he'd spent paging through his own copy, and there were quiet, happy memories there too.
Once when he'd gone into one of the common rooms, Courtney had come out looking to see why the light was on and she'd decided to read with him only to pass out on the couch beside him after a few minutes. But her presence, the soft rhythm of her breathing, had made the night far less lonely than most. The first time he'd found his favorite coffee shop, he'd been in the midst of a reread. The first book he'd gone for after returning from the Earth, reforming himself. So many memories tied to the words, the story, the pages.
So if Alan perhaps saw what Sand was reading and simply left the folded clothes beside him before heading back to the brownstone...
Well, there were reasons.
And if Sand was still wearing Scott's oversized clothes and curled up in a corner like a teenager, it was a lot better than he could have been.
Sandy had intended to look for something new to read, something that wasn't sitting in the jumbled library that was his room at the brownstone. Instead, his feet had brought him like a man possessed to the fiction section, to the B's, and he'd pulled down the faded copy of Whispers in Darkness by Dian Belmont like it was an old friend.
Mostly, because it was.
When he'd first returned and restarted the JSA, when Jack had still been there with a joke or a groan or a smile, it had been one of the few discussion topics that led to productive discussion between them. The book was Jack's favorite, and once he'd gotten a chance to read it, one of his too. And Jack, for all that they hadn't always agreed on every little point, was a good memory. Someone he truly missed, though the sting was somewhat mitigated by the fact that he knew Jack was well and healthy and raising his son somewhere on the west coast in a life that Sandy knew he'd never be a part of.
Then there was the book itself. Written by his aunt, her familiar cadence woven throughout the text, her sly wit, her dry wit, her boundless hopefulness even in the darkest of times. It was a beautiful book, and there was a reason it was still around, still read, still remembered, but for Sand, it was beautiful because when he read it, he could hear his aunt again, hear her voice the way that memories never quite allowed for. He didn't know how many sleepless nights he'd spent paging through his own copy, and there were quiet, happy memories there too.
Once when he'd gone into one of the common rooms, Courtney had come out looking to see why the light was on and she'd decided to read with him only to pass out on the couch beside him after a few minutes. But her presence, the soft rhythm of her breathing, had made the night far less lonely than most. The first time he'd found his favorite coffee shop, he'd been in the midst of a reread. The first book he'd gone for after returning from the Earth, reforming himself. So many memories tied to the words, the story, the pages.
So if Alan perhaps saw what Sand was reading and simply left the folded clothes beside him before heading back to the brownstone...
Well, there were reasons.
And if Sand was still wearing Scott's oversized clothes and curled up in a corner like a teenager, it was a lot better than he could have been.