DaisyMaeDuke

Luke continued to draw shaky breaths. Leaning a bit against Bo, he closed his eyes as tears ran down his face.

Eventually Luke cameto a quivering stop, though his eyes were watering with the force from his heaves, his hair damp with perspiration. He gulped breaths, trying to take in air and calm down.

Luke dry heaved over and over, but it was more a nervous reaction than a need to throw up. He hadn't eaten anything substantial for days, so there wasn't really anything in his stomach. Still, he continued to heave again and again clinging tightly to Bo as he did.

"I...I feel sick..." murmured Luke. The stress and everything had pushed him to the brink and physically, he was starting to feel the toll it had taken on him. It didn't help that his whole body was shaking, causing his insides to churn even more.

"I...I dunno...wh-what...to do...it...it hurts so...so..." He let out a long sigh the thoughts of earlier still in the back of his mind, but not willing to scare Bo anymore by sharing them just stays leaned into him.

Luke's only response was to choke, and lean into his cousin, still trembling. He had never in his life been so frightened, not even in Nam. In Nam, things were happening to the Marines around him, and to himself...and he was scared...but to see something happen to his uncle...like that..it had terrified him to the very core of his being.

His words offered the comfort Luke wanted, but believing them was harder. In Luke's mind he had failed them all...and now his uncle was paying the price. "I...I wanna...believe that..."

"I shoulda...had...a plan...if...if I had known..." It ate at Luke that he didn't know what to do then. He had just froze in shock, unable to do anything. Bo had been the one to run call an ambulance. Bo had done everything... Luke just froze.

"I...coulda done more...shoulda...I shoulda told him t' let me plow that day...I..." He stopped sniffing a little. "I shoulda...figured out...a way...I shoulda....stopped it..."

"S's'sall...m'my fault..." he said in a choked whisper.

Luke hardly heard the last thing Bo said, but it was no matter. Drawing his knees to his chest and burying his face in his hands he rocked himself between sobs. "I'm scared...I'm....s-s-so...s-scared....Bo...I...I...help me...help me..." he pleaded.

Tears were dripping down his face, as he saw Bo scoot closer out the corner of his eye. He longed to just hug him and not let go, to tell him how scared he was, but he didn't. He had already let everyone down. Besides, Bo had enough worries. If Luke left, it'd be one less thing on Bo's mind.

Luke pushed himself away from Bo at his words, sitting beside him physically but trying his best to distance himself. Swallowing hard on the lump in his throat, he wrapped his arms around himself and sat looking out over the cliff as the sun slowly started to peak over the horizon.

Luke simply shook his head. Bo didn't understand. No one did. "Just...go...please..." Tears continued dripping down his face, tears of frustration that Bo didn't understand, tears of anger over what was happening, tears of fear over what was to come, and tears of agony and despair that he could not explain.

"Un-uncle...Jesse...I...I..." He didn't finish, choking on the words and tears beginning to fall more and more rapidly from his eyes*

If there was one thing Luke hated more than failure it was admitting that he had. He figured though that it didn't matter now... they all knew anyway. "I...I failed...an...an I can't...I can't...I..." He drew a couple shaky breaths trying to calm down but feeling as if he never could.

It would have been easier to sprout wings and fly than for Luke to explain what was going on inside his head. He felt like such a failure...like he had let everyone down. "I...I... j-just...I..." He choked on a sob clinging to Bo still, unable to stop his trembling.

"Bo...I...I just...can't....take it anymore..." blurted Luke between sobs. "I...I'm so...so...lost...I...I..." He couldn't finish his sentence. Instead he clung shakily to Bo, his brother, and cried into his shoulder, the guilt for feeling the way he was and the shame at his own weakness consuming him, not knowing which way to turn anymore. "M'sorry...m'so...so...sorry," murmured Luke against the yellow shirt, damp with teardrops.

Luke choked on sobs stuck in his throat. He hated who he was...what he had become. He couldn't imagine anyone being proud of him...not when he was such a failure.

Luke grabbed at his hair hugging himself. He didn't want to think of Jesse. "Stop...please...stop..." His tears trailed down his cheeks.

Luke didn't want to hear him. He knew death was a part of life. He had seen that part of life more in his first 18 years of life than most people did in a lifetime. He had had that same thing said to him each time... and it never helped. "You don't understand...no one....no one...understands..." he pleaded, visibly shaking.

Luke shook as Bo spoke to him. He could tell in Bo's voice how much he had let his little brother down. He had never wanted that. All he wanted was for the pain to end...the pain that was with him from the time he opened his eyes to the time he laid down. Even his dreams had been pain filled lately. There was no escaping it. There was no facing it. There was only one thing to do...end it. He had never before realized how much of a coward he was, but he reconed that that was how Bo saw him now. That hurt him too. He didn't want to be a coward. He didn't want to give up. He just didn't know how to keep going. How do you go on when the world around you stops turning?

Luke was by now a bundle of trembling nerves. "Why? Why?!" he demanded shaking profusely, tears starting to trickle down both cheeks.

Just as Bo dragged him back the piece of the cliff Luke had been sitting on a moment before gave way, tumbling below and crumbling to pieces. "No! No! Lemme go! Lemme go Bo! I don' wanna go back...please..." he choked on a sob. "Please.... let me go..."

Luke hung his head tears welling again in his eyes. He didn't want to hurt his uncle or any of them...but his own pain was just too much. "Bo...I...I do...love you..." he stopped as as a large section of cliff tumbled down the peak. There was no turning back-if he so much as moved what little piece of cliff he was on would break off completely.