trajectory CHAPTER FIVE: CAUGHT

Callen stared down from the loft window, letting his gaze wash over the landscape which glowed marvelously beneath the late-morning sun. He'd remained in bed, watching the increasing light as it poured through the window beside him until he knew that his hosts were asleep. The rising sun was chasing away the night's darkness, and he couldn't bear to miss a moment of the new brightness that it brought.

And so it was that - though it was really hours beyond the time when work would have begun on the Kent farm on any typical day - Jonathan, having just been awakened by the aroma of fresh coffee, was astonished to find Callen in the barn looking out over the land, the work of which had already been tended to with nothing more to be done until the evening.

"Callen?" Jonathan whispered, a part of his mind still disbelieving that the boy was really there.

Callen jumped, startled by the voice behind him. He wheeled to face Jonathan and simultaneously stepped away from him, frantically searching the loft for some task that he might appear to have been involved in. "I'm sorry, Mr. Kent, I - I wasn't daydreaming, I can do whatever else needs finishing."

Jonathan was incredulous. "You're sorry? I… what could you be sorry for?" He turned a circle and took note of the barn's interior, which had always been neat enough, but was now nearly as clean as Martha kept her kitchen. "Did you… how… Callen, did you do all this? All the chores, and cleaning the barn…?" He continued to crane his neck, looking around in wonder until his eyes fell again to the boy.

Callen looked uncomfortable. "Did I not do it right?"

"Did you not… what?" Jonathan stared at Callen, aghast. "The stalls and fences and the… the milking and the feed and… did you - how did you…?"

"How did I what, Mr. Kent?" Callen replied inquisitively, confused as to Jonathan's awe.

"How long did it take you do to all this?"

Callen cast his expression downward and toed a nail that was protruding from a floorboard, pressing it easily back into place with his toe. "Almost two hours. I would have been done sooner if I'd known where everything was, I'll be faster next time, I promise." His tone fell into a mumble as he braced himself against the anticipated punishment. It didn't come.

He raised his head finally to find Jonathan still staring at him, his coffee cup tipped precariously so that its contents were in danger of slipping over the lip. "You did half a day's work for five men in less than two hours?"

"Half a day's work!" Callen exclaimed before clapping a regretful hand over his mouth. "Half a day - if I ever took half a day to do that little I wouldn't have eaten for a week!"

Jonathan's confusion was apparent and consuming. "They starved you if you didn't…' He pensively rubbed a shaking hand over his face. "How would that even be possible, for you to… " Yet another sentence trailed into silent disbelief, and with it slipped Jonathan's grip on the steaming mug in his hand. He flinched and tried to recover the cup before it hit the floor, but his outstretched hand found nothing to catch. He blinked at the empty air where the cup should have been, and the dry, bare floor where it should have landed and spilled his coffee across the boards… but there was nothing.

Then he glanced back toward the window, and again the expectation of his eyes was eluded - the boy was not there.

"Here you go, Mr. Kent," Callen's voice offered meekly from just behind him, to his left. Jonathan turned to find him tentatively holding the cup, from which not a drop had spilled.

Jonathan's head swiveled again from left to right, from the window to the boy at his elbow and back again. "How…?" Sentences were becoming more and more impossible to complete.

"I'm sorry," Callen answered apologetically. "You just didn't look like you were going to catch it."

"Of course," Jonathan said distantly. "So you - you caught it. Yeah, makes sense." He was nodding, wide-eyed and jumpy. "Yeah, you - you were ten feet away, and you caught it. Didn't spill it. Just caught it." He stared down at his reflection on the surface of the dark liquid in the cup.

"Mr. Kent?" Callen prompted quietly. "I'm… sorry, Mr. Kent - did I do something wrong?"

Looking up into Callen's lonely eyes, another piece of Jonathan's heart broke for the boy, jutting sharply into the part of his soul that carried a sense of responsibility for his welfare. Clearly there was something extraordinary about him - something that it had been Jonathan's duty to protect - and now he was faced with eyes overrun by a decade's worth of maltreatment. In Callen's eyes, Jonathan saw his own failure.

A tear filled the corner of one eye as Jonathan fought the choking sensation that rose in his throat. "No," he managed almost mutely. "No Callen, you've done nothing wrong." He nodded to himself, to the floor, to his coffee - then reached for Callen's shoulder.

He did not shy away.

Moved beyond words, Jonathan grasped his shoulder and then gave his back a gentle clap. "We… ah. We ought to go talk with Martha now."