A/N:

Yep, you guessed it. I'm starting another Virals fic. This is strictly a hurt/comfort and angst fic and does not correlate directly to anything that happened in the books. This started out as a one-shot but it's looking like a multi-chapter now. Not sure how long the chapters are going to be, but probably around the length of this one. Hope you enjoy, please read and review!

The phone rings, one two three four times, before I reach it.

I don't recognize the number, or the voice that accompanies it.

"Is this Victoria Brennan? Christopher Howard's daughter?"

I nod, then realize that the speaker can't hear me.

"Yeah," I reply quickly. "May I ask who's calling?"

"This is Sergeant Michael Griesbaum from the Charleston Police Department. I'm calling about your father."

My heart slides into my throat, choking me. I had gotten a call like this before, right before I had to uproot my life and move in with a parent that didn't know I existed.

I manage to keep my voice steady, despite the fiery tendrils of panic rushing through my veins.

"Wha-what about my father?"

"Your father was involved in a car accident about half an hour ago in downtown Charleston."

"What...is he- is he-" my voice trails off, and I can't bring myself to say it. Dead, dead, dead, dead.

"Fortunately, no. He is in the intensive care unit at Charleston Memorial Hospital."

I lean heavily against the kitchen countertop, my sweating fingers slipping on the cool granite.

"Thanks for letting me know."

My voice is barely a whisper, and Sergeant Michael Griesbaum does not have a chance to reply before I hang up. I lose my grip on the phone, and it falls to the tile with a thud. This is happening too soon, much too soon.

My knees give out, and I slump to the ground. My hearing cuts out, my surroundings fading to a dull gray blur.

I am not sure how long I lay there, curled on the cold floor like a fish floating through a murky gray sea. The tile feels good against my sweaty skin and I can't bring myself to move.

You have to go to the hospital.

I'm not sure where the voice comes from, or whose voice it is.

How the hell am I supposed to get to the hospital?

I don't know, but you have to go. You can't pretend that this isn't happening.

It takes an eternity to even sit up, and by the time I get to a standing position, clutching the counter for dear life, I am ready to collapse again. This cannot be happening, it simply cannot be happening.

I find my way up the stairs and into clean, somewhat presentable clothes. I know who can take me to the hospital - but getting him to actually do it will be an entirely different story.

Ben is at his usual spot, tying up Sewee at the Morris Island dock. It is a gray, windy, day, unseasonably cold for March in South Carolina. The unpleasant weather fits my mood, and the sudden turn of events that my day has taken.

He is kneeling, knotting the rope connecting his boat to the dock with surgical precision. The wind tosses his hair into a silky black cloud. He doesn't look at me, even when I'm close enough to reach out and touch his shoulder.

Ben is angry at me, for a reason that should be inconsequential. Hopefully he'll be able to forget about it long enough to take me to the hospital, but it's always hard to tell with him.

"Ben?"

The wind blows a lock of hair in my face, and I furiously brush it away. He turns, and I can see the annoyance set deep in his dark brown eyes.

"What?"

"Can you give me a ride? Please?"

He finishes tying off his boat and stands, brushing splinters of wood off the knees of his jeans.

"I don't give people rides. Anyway, can't you just ask Jason?"

"Ben, for the last time, I'm sorry."

My thoughts crawl to a dark place, a place that I try to avoid whenever possible, and I suddenly see a glossy, dark wooden box, piled high with flowers, empty words, and broken promises. A lump begins to grow in my throat, and I dig my fingernails into my palms to prevent the onslaught of tears that is soon to follow.

"It's always sorry, every time, Tory. I'm not giving you a ride."

He brushes past me, jamming the keys to his boat in his pocket. I am left standing in the bitter cold, hugging myself. A torrent of steely water splashes onto the dock, soaking my left shoe. I don't have the energy to move, or to run back to Ben and beg him to give me a ride.

I picture my father's funeral - his colleagues from LIRI would show up, and so would his high school buddies. Whitney, his girlfriend, would sob and dab her eyes with scented tissues, making sure not to smudge her makeup. I would stand in the receiving line, shaking hands and accepting cheek-kisses and bouquets of flowers from people that I didn't really know.

Of their own volition, the tears leave my eyes and spill down my cheeks, salty rivulets of sorrow that pool at my chin before landing in the fabric of my sweater. I turn away from the water. I will walk to the hospital if I have to.

Ben is staring at me from the doorway of his townhome, fifty yards away. My shoulders are shaking, but I can't tell if it's because of the tears or the cold. My vision is blurry and fogged, but I can see him start to walk back to me. I haven't moved off the dock and into the hard-packed sand yet. I don't want him to see me cry.

He reaches me quickly, even though he wasn't walking that fast. His arm slides around my thin shoulders, and I lean closer to him because I feel like the wind will pick me up and blow me away.

"Tory? What's the matter?"

"It's my dad," I choke out, and my voice sounds raw and ugly and thick with tears. "Car accident. He's at the hospital downtown. That's why I needed a ride."

"Oh, God," he whispers, wrapping me in a bone-crushing hug. "Why didn't you just say so?"

I tuck my face into his shoulder. My head feels like it's in a fog, and God it's so cold.

Ben eventually pulls away, and laces his fingers through mine, urging me back towards the townhomes. I am surprised that I can walk without collapsing.

It takes much too long to get to the hospital. I clutch Ben's hand as tightly as I can without shattering his fingers. I don't know what I'm about to see, and I'm not entirely sure I'm prepared for it.

They won't let Ben into the ICU with me, and it pains me to detach my hand from his. My feet move robotically through the sliding glass doors. There are no private rooms in this unit of the hospital, or any real rooms, for that matter. There are 15 areas curtained off into cubicles, and two beds in each. As I walk past, I see that some of the doors are open. The sound of people breathing into ventilators fills the air.

Kit is stationed in room 14, and my knees wobble a little bit when I see him. He is draped in a nest of shiny plastic tubes. Saline drips run through his arms. There are electrical nodes taped to his neck, probably to stimulate brain activity. His face is as white as the sheet draped over him.

The nurse looks up from where she is busily adjusting the drugs being pumped into my Kit's veins. She doesn't look much older than me, but already has the "don't-even-think-about-it" frown lines etched into her face that I see on all the nurses.

"You're Victoria, right?" she asks.

I nod. I can't even muster up the strength to tell her that I'd rather be called Tory.

"I'm Faye, your father's nurse. It's nice to meet you."

She extends a latex-gloved hand. I don't take it.

"Is he going to be okay?" I ask. Better cut to the chase.

Faye presses her lips into a thin line. "Victoria, I'm going to be quite honest with you, it's hard to say. Your father is in extremely critical condition. He has a few broken bones, but that isn't the problem. The accident left him with collapsed lungs and a bundle of inflamed nerves in his spinal column. It's a miracle that he even lived this long. We're working to re-inflate his lungs, but the bodily trauma has left him in a coma, and we don't know when or if he'll wake up."

I stand completely still, feet locked to the ground. Faye offers me a sad smile and leaves the room, dumping her gloves in a hazardous waste container on the way out. My heart beats wildly in my chest, smashing relentlessly against the bone prison bars of my ribcage.

I turn and walk out of the room. I should do something - squeeze Kit's hand, kiss his cheek, cry, anything that a normal daughter would do. I don't - I just keep walking, back through the doors and to the waiting area where Ben sits, elbows balanced on his knees. He looks bored. He should have left. I don't know how long it's been since I walked into the room with Faye and my not-really-alive husk of a father.

Ben stands up when he sees me. I must look awful, because his eyebrows crease in concern.

"How is he?" he asks. "Is he gonna be okay?"

I don't say anything in reply, and after a few seconds Ben grabs my shoulders.

"Tory, please say something."

"He's going to die." All I can manage. "That's what's going to happen. He's going to die."

Ben looks shocked. "Did they actually tell you that?"

I shake my head. "They said that his lungs collapsed. He's in a coma and they don't know if he's going to wake up."

"So they didn't say that he was going to die."

He pulls me into a hug, one arm wrapped around my shoulder blades, the other around my waist, so close to him that I can feel his heartbeat. I can't move my arms to hug him back; I'm as still as a statue.

"It's going to be okay," he whispers in my ear, hot breath on my cheek. "I promise."

I pull away from him, and when I reply my voice is flat and toneless and deadly serious and it scares me.

"No, Ben. I don't think it will."

PART 1 and DONE! More to come hopefully in the next couple days, I'm also working on Taken and that's my priority in terms of fanfiction right now. Thanks for reading, please comment!

~Tasi~