Let's Walk Together

Cast Away

Travis broke his arm climbing a tree when he was six. It wasn't until a week later that his mom noticed. He wore a plain white cast for 8 weeks. His mother didn't like colors and wasn't a fan of patterns, so he kept his cast blank until his arm healed and could take his cast off. Not that Travis had to reject many children from signing his cast. Travis, as his mother took to telling him, was hard to like. 

He didn't share often. More ready to fight someone over a box of crayons than dare to split the colors between them. He was also quite the pessimist, often telling his peers that there was no way there would be a snow day, that their dad wouldn't remember to pick them up, or that the class pet would surely die sometime soon. Besides that, Travis was simply boring. With his neutral-toned clothes and clean-cut hair, he looked like a Young Sheldon.  

It wasn't Travis' fault, though. None of it was ever Travis' fault. He was sure of it. 

When Travis was eleven, his dad moved to a different district across the state. So, for a little while, he stayed with his mother again. He remembers her pushing him to join a club. After a whole summer of her asking, Travis decided to run cross country in the fall. What Travis did not know was that he absolutely hated running. He hated the constricting feeling in his chest at every turn and the soreness in his legs up every hill. The only thing that made him finish the season was the fact that his mom and dad would watch him run. 

At first, they watched on separate sides of the course. But slowly, ever so slowly, Travis noticed them drift closer together each meet. Travis kept running. 

The next season, they were actually talking. The season after that, they started coming in the same car. And then Travis made varsity as a freshman and they started having dinners together again. Travis' dad moved back into the house, granted, it was the basement, but Travis seemed to have his family back together. Travis kept running. Running with shallow breaths and the weight of his family on his back, he grew faster with each stride and stronger with every race. 

Eventually, Travis got scholarship. A full-ride to Syracuse for his cross country running. Everything would be paid for him as long as he could stay in their honors program. Travis kept running. Running and breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth and seeking a future that he did not know. Travis kept running and running but he didn't know where he was going. The finish line? What about the miles in between? What about Travis' life? His childhood? Were he and his family going to keep running past and away from everything?

Travis "got slow" in his junior year of college. His coach and teammates were worried at first. It wasn't from a lack of practicing or staying up late like his coaches thought. Travis just couldn't run. No matter what he was doing it was like he was constantly getting slower. His splits started getting uneven and his mobility worsened. When the cross country season ended in his senior year and Travis graduated with a degree in technical engineering, he couldn't run anymore. He could put headphones in and go out on the track to do a few laps but as soon as he was on grass or dirt, next to all of his teammates, and heard a gun go off, his legs sunk into the mud and his head hung low. 

His parents split for the second time somewhere during the second semester of his Senior year. They told him that it wasn't his fault, or at least his dad did, but he knew the truth. So his legs did the only thing they knew how to and they ran. This time, away from home. As an adult, you couldn't really call him a runaway but he felt enough like a child to say that he was. He felt like a six year old in an unsigned cast. Hard to love, his mother would say. 

These were the memories that flashed before Travis' eyes as he stared down the barrel of a pistol. A pistol attached to a frighteningly calm looking man. "You wanna put the knife down now?" the stranger asked. 

Travis hesitantly sheathed his knife on his hip and stood to his full height. He noticed that he was taller than the man with blond hair and cat-like eyes. Not that that mattered to Travis at that moment as he rose his hands in surrender. 

"What's your name?" the man asked. 

"What's yours?" 

"Ahhh, so the giant does speak. I apologize for my rudeness, but you have to understand that being threatened with a knife is quite shocking," the man said whilst holstering his gun, keeping the belt that holds it in place unclasped. 

"You handled the shock well, then."

The man just smiled. "Mikhail Mikhailov. But my friends call me Mischa."

Travis doesn't, or couldn't, respond at first, "Travis," he offered simply. 

"Travis...?" Mischa egged. 

"Just Travis, for now.'

"Well, just-Travis-for-now, mind if I sit by your fire for tonight?" the stranger, Mischa, said with a smile as he sat down, "My legs are awfully tired."

Travis said nothing as he carefully sat down across the ashen pile of sticks and relights the fire with a lighter. Travis tries to never take his eyes off of Mischa for longer than it takes for him to blink. As if he's a nervous driver, his eyes flit over Mischa like he's a hazard on the road. 

Travis was always closer to his father than his mother. His mother was a very emotional woman. With no fault or malice towards her, Travis knew he was not the child she had dreamed of, and frankly, Travis did not mind the distance. They both made peace with that a long time ago. He got along with his father, mostly because they both didn't want anything to do with the other. Miscommunication implies that their was communication to begin with and the relationship that he and his father shared was not a talkative one. 

Travis loved both of his parents and he knew that they loved him. Both were very different in showing their love. While his mother preferred to tell him outright, his father enjoyed changing the channel from football to basketball or giving Travis the aux in the car in order to show he cared. Although his birthdays were never grand his his picture rarely taken, never hit and always fed he grew up simple and happy. Because Travis didn't feel the need for love. He wasn't the loving type. 

So, Travis was slightly perplexed with his infatuation with the eyes of stranger who called himself 'Mischa'. He thought he knew what beauty was. Although not intimate with the definition, he decided that he found the origin. 

"You headed anywhere, just-Travis?" 

Travis flips through his options. However, the only options seem to be answer his stranger or potentially get shot. "Nowhere." He chose life. 

"Hmmm," Mischa hums in agreement, "Well, I'm headed somewhere."

Travis returns a hum.

"And I would very much like your help, Mr. Green."