Yes! That's right, Link's POV when we haven't seen him in a long time. Also you technically (in the vague way of saying you wanted more Link) asked for this so you can't really be mad at me for it.

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Link took a sip of his coffee and lowered his mug. He stared at it but all he could see was the plate of eggs and bacon waiting on the counter. Another mug of coffee sat by the plate. Ever since that day, a stone had lived in his chest, and bit by bit it grew. He didn't think it would ever go away.

"Do you need me to take it today?" Maddy asked, behind him.

Link shook his head and finished off his coffee. Collecting the plate and mug, he turned to face his wife. She watched him with eyes tinged with sadness. It had been a month since Carter... Since she died.

He wondered if Maddy held a stone in her own heart.

"You sure?" she asked.

"No."

Nodding, she kissed him lightly on the cheek and cupped his face. She didn't say anything. There was nothing to say, they had said it all. When she let go, Link stepped over to where Harrison sat in his highchair smashing his food, and kissed his son on his head.

Harrison laughed up at him and smacked his hand again on the tray. The sound warmed Link as it always did. It gave him the strength to cross the hallway.

No matter how many times Link had seen Donovan, it always felt jarring. Instead of the neat, clean-shaven, well-built man he'd always known, there was a scruffy, disheveled, shrunken man.

Link could no longer see his confident, dependable friend.

The man he'd known was gone.

Donovan lay on the couch in the clothes he'd worn the day before. He wasn't asleep. Link didn't know if he slept at all. Dark circles lived under his eyes. He didn't have the shocked, lost look he'd had the first few weeks after Carter's death, instead there was a hollow emptiness about him.

Steve and Maggie had taken Kennedy away a week ago, deciding Donovan needed space. But Link didn't know if that helped. Kennedy had forced Donovan to move and act. But Link also saw how much Kennedy looked like Carter and acted as a constant reminder to Donovan of his loss.

"I brought food," Link said.

Donovan nodded but didn't look away from the ceiling. Link nudged Donovan's legs and slowly Donovan sat up. He accepted the plate and mug. When Link brought him a fork, Donovan accepted that too.

He ate but slowly as if he couldn't remember why he needed to eat at all. Link said nothing, only sat beside his friend. He felt like they lived in a strange parallel universe. How many times had Donovan sat next to Link when he was younger, not saying a thing just being there so Link knew he wasn't alone?

Donovan only ate half the food before he got up and left the living room. The door to the bathroom closed and Link heard the shower running. It was a simple act but it gave Link a tiny bit of hope. Donovan hadn't even remembered to shower early on. Now he did.

Link clung to that with all the ferocity of a terrified child.

He'd already lost one best friend, he feared losing another.

When Donovan reemerged he was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt that didn't fit him like they used to. He pulled on his shoes near the door and grabbed his keys. Link didn't question it, he went with him.

"I can drive," Link said, taking the keys from Donovan as they rode the elevator down.

Donovan didn't argue.

He wasn't the catatonic person he'd been the first two weeks. He spoke but there was a hollowness about him that Link feared would never go away.

As they drove through the city, Link glanced at Donovan.

"Do you want to stop and get flowers?" he asked.

"Carter doesn't like flowers. Why would that change now?"

Link gripped the steering wheeling at the use of the present tense. He knew about Donovan's dreams. The Carter who visited him there. The Carter who was still alive.

He remembered the knife-like pain in his chest when Donovan had stared out the window and told him that Carter was alive, that she'd visited him in the night. How did he tell his best friend that the delusion that comforted him was a lie?

He couldn't.

The weeks passed and when Donovan had realized dream-like Carter wasn't real it was like watching Donovan lose her all over again.

At the cemetery, Donovan climbed out and Link followed. Gray clouds blanketed the sky and mist chilled the air. A solemn wind whispered condolences through the rows and rows of gravestones. Link shivered as it spoke to him.

As each time before, he forced his feet forward, following Donovan, following the path to her headstone. With each step, he felt his heart shrink inside his chest. How? How could she be gone? How could the girl who'd come barreling into his life have left it so swiftly? She had a fire that burned too bright, where had the fire gone?

They reached the headstone and Donovan stood there, hands in pockets, gaze lifeless as he stared at it. Link didn't look at the cold, etched stone. He looked at Donovan.

Right there, he didn't feel like the lawyer who had all the answers, who could prove he had the answers. His logical brain couldn't find the way out this, out of this grief.

He was a little kid again with his life thrown into upheaval. A truth he hadn't known possible was now his only reality. Carter was dead.

Carter was dead, his best friend was disappearing and he felt like the boy Donovan had first met because he was clueless about what to do.

Donovan had been the one to have the answers then. He'd been the towering pillar of calm and support.

Now when Donovan needed Link to be that pillar, he'd crumbled. He had no answers. He had no way of guiding his friend out of the darkness he was trapped in.

When it could have been the time for Link to repay Donovan for all that he'd done for him in the past, Link came up short.

"Do you want to say something?" Link asked.

Donovan continued to stare.

"It's a slab of granite. It's not her and she can't hear me."

His tone came out as dead as the bodies buried around them. Link looked away. It felt like Donovan's heart had died while Link's still bled inside his chest.

Donovan lifted his head and gazed at the surrounding. Eventually, he wandered away as if searching for something. Link never knew what he searched for. The feel of her? A sense of peace?

Link let him go.

Finally, he let his eyes settle on the stone.

Her name.

The date.

The inscription.

"I get it," he said.

He cleared his throat and looked around.

No one was there.

No one could hear him.

And yet, he needed to say it.

Needed to give the conclusion that had written itself in his head over the last weeks.

"I knew that Donovan loved you," he said. "I knew it in the way he looked at you. Talked about you. Would smile at nothing at times when he didn't think anyone was watching him. I knew it but in so many ways I didn't know the depth."

Link let out a slow breath to loosen the tightness in his throat.

"Looking back, I see what I never did then. You came into his life during a time when he was so alone. He had me, yes. But I leaned on him in a way he could never lean on me. He was my best friend, but in the important ways, I wasn't his because he still needed to protect me. He had his brothers, yes. But there were miles away, living lives vastly different than his."

Without realizing it, Link started to smile softly but then the smile faded.

"Then you came into his life. You could see him for who he was. You could challenge him in a way he hadn't been in so long. You were a ship that saved him from being trapped on a deserted island. You became this piece that filled a hollow in him."

Link dropped his gaze and stared at his clenched fists.

"Now you're gone and the hollowness is back."

Link closed his eyes, still able to see Donovan laughing and smiling at Carter. 

"And I don't know how to help him. You were everything to him."

"Who are you talking to?"

Link jerked his head up. Donovan stood there looking blankly at Link. Link glanced at Carter's headstone then at Donovan.

"No one."

Donovan gave one last look at the stone and walked away. Link spared another look as well and followed him.

He hadn't finished his closing, but then again there was no one there to hear it so what did it matter?

*****

Link stared at the notes before him but couldn't see anything he'd written. His mind was trapped back in the cafe he'd taken to Donovan after the cemetery. Locked in the moment of watching Donovan, watching as he went from hollow to bursting with life as he leapt from his chair. Watching as he said Carter's name and reached for a woman walking by.

The woman had had Carter's messy brown hair and warm skin tone but that's where the similarities ended.

Then Link had to watch as the life drained out of Donovan and he slowly sank back to his chair. For one fleeting moment, Link glimpsed his friend and then he was gone.

Link clasped his hands together and laid them on his notes. Notes about a case for compensation for a family who'd lost someone they loved because of a big corporation. He knew he could get them the money they deserved. He hadn't lost a case in years. For this family, he could do something to help alleviate their grief. But for Donovan...

Link jerked up from his desk chair and grabbed his suit jacket off the back of it. He put it on as he left. His secretary glanced up as he walked out.

"Clear my schedule," he said. "Apologize to Judge Fletcher for having to cancel."

"Yes, sir."

Link left the office, walking into the gray day. He lifted his face and felt mist brush his skin. For a long time, he stood there, absorbing the sorrow of the day.

Eventually, he started to walk. He pulled out his phone and sent off a message.

Link: Our coffee shop. Whenever you can make it.

Without waiting for an answer, he put his phone away. He could have driven but he needed to move, needed the hum of the city around him distracting him.

He ordered coffee and turned away from the cashier, nearly walking into a muscular man with a clubs tattoo on his neck. The man remained steady as Link jolted back.

"Sorry," he said.

The man merely sidestepped Link to place his order. Claiming a table near the window, Link dropped into a chair and watched the world beyond. Each person had their own troubles, own struggles, own way of dealing. The loss of one human being meant nothing to the world and yet it had shifted everything in Link's world.

How strange for it to mean everything and nothing.

Link didn't hear his name called. He didn't notice the barista looking for him.

He only noticed the world in the coffee shop when a hand set down his coffee cup in front of him.

Mason slid into the seat across from him and draped one arm over the chair next to him.

"You visited the cemetery with him?" Mason asked.

Link nodded and took his cup but didn't drink.

Looking at his brother, Link could only see someone calm and in control. Where Link felt like he'd become untethered in so many ways, Mason was an anchor, unaffected by the storm. Right then, Link needed that. He needed the solidity that Mason possessed.

"Tell me what to do," Link said.

Again he felt taken back to years ago when he was always one step behind the people behind him. He wasn't a successful lawyer, he was a little kid.

"I can't do anything to take away his pain, his grief," Link said. "All I do is bring him food, sit with him, try to talk to him." He balled his fists. "I need to do something. Anything."

Mason let out a low breath and his veneer of calm melted, leaving behind someone who looked troubled and torn.

"You can't take away his grief," Mason said. "But you aren't doing nothing. You're being there for him."

"But it's not enough!" Link shouted. Heads swiveled towards them but Link didn't care. "Day by day I watch as he fades away more and more! I'm..." He swallowed hard. "I'm helpless to change it."

Mason dragged his hand through his hair and grabbed at it. He pressed his lips together as if searching for what to say.

"Link..." His eyes shifted to something behind Link. When Link glanced back all he saw was the man he almost ran into. Mason let out a heavy sigh. "I know. I know you feel helpless. But...hang in there. Don't...Don't lose hope."

Link stared at his brother, feeling the emptiness he saw in Donovan's eyes. He understood it now. This wasn't anything the brother who seemed to be able to do anything could fix.

No one could fix this.

"There is no hope, Mason. She's gone."

He walked away. He walked and kept walking, not knowing where he was going and not caring.

Eventually, his feet led him back home.

He paused in the hallway between the two apartments. He could hear Brock's voice on the other side of Donovan's door. Link wanted to go in, to join them but he couldn't do it. He couldn't bear to see Donovan barely reacting to what his brother said.

Link opened the door to his apartment and stepped in. He stood there, unable to move.

Maddy found him frozen and touched his cheek. He locked eyes with her, seeing sympathy, sadness, and pain.

He stared at her, seeing his pain reflected in her eyes. A pain that may never go away.

Helpless. He was completely helpless.

"I can't...," he said, voice breaking. "I can't do anything."

Maddy wrapped her arms around him and Link broke down, clinging to her, burying his face in her shoulder.

Lost. He'd lost Carter.

And now he lost his best friend.

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Hey there tiger!

(🤦🏽‍♀️ I'm sorry that just sounds so terrible in my head. Please forget I said that)

Let's move on. So...how ya doin? Care to share? Anyone not broken inside right now? 🗯💭💬

I know it's been awhile since we've seen Link or had his POV, the reason why is simple.

I want Link to have a happy life.

He's already gone through so much growing up, he shouldn't have more. And let's face it Donovan and Carter's lives are IN-SANE! (Well Carter's was...)

And so I decided to let Link be happy as a normal human being. That's why he doesn't show up a lot, cause he can't handle a gun and usually avoids dangerous situations.

I hope you're with me on this and want happiness for him too.

Besides the fact that right now he's currently watching his best friend fade away with grief...

Besides that.

Any who vote, comment, follow because you love Link