Author's Note: My muse took me to a heavier place here, but it's a story of survival and, ultimately, hope.

One Last Hail Mary
By Marissa Lynn

Even with nobody sitting next to him, it was impossible for Mark Tyler to twist his body into a position to sleep.

Buses like this weren't made for sleeping anyway, but how he wound up on it wasn't helping. Anybody looking in his direction would have seen a thin young man of average height. A stocking cap, more for cushion than warmth, covered up a fresh, severely short hair cut.

What they wouldn't have seen was how much that hair hurt him, almost as much as the bruises and that cut as they were hidden by a nondescript forest green sweatshirt.

Maybe, if they were paying attention, they'd have seen his eyes, how they made him look older than his 20 years, carrying the weight of the pain, inflicted in more than one direction.

Then they'd have seen those eyes close, as he drifted into sleep, not a deep sleep, but in chunks, 30 minutes here, an hour there, as he traveled to an uncertain fate, one that he felt as responsible for as anyone.

Mark's efforts to sleep further became fruitless at some point after it became daylight. He stared out at the blur of passing trees, the exits and their truck stops and fast food joints. The last thing he wanted was to be on this bus. And not just being on the bus, but going where he was.

The last person he wanted to see was Michelle, not for his sake, but hers. But desperate times call for desperate measures and he had nowhere else to turn. He closed his eyes again, not because he could sleep, but because he had zero desire to see the world right now, a world where resolutions were for fools.

Eventually, the bus pulled into the station at his destination. He opted to save his money. From his handwritten directions, he figured it was only a couple miles. Pulling two wheeled suitcases, one with each hand, he walked to the corner and waited for the light, hoping against hope that he wasn't wasting his time on a pointless Hail Mary.

"Hey, babe. You about finished?" Michelle asked Wendy. "We need to pick up a few things for tomorrow night so we can stay at home during the day, since it looks like the weather's looking lousy."

Wendy Thompson brushed back her curly blonde hair, looking back through her round glasses at Michelle. "Just about. Just a few more things to do with that new trattoria opening in the spring. You know, Dad. Got to have those T's dotted and I's crossed," she said with a wink.

She'd crossed paths with this beautiful brunette who was working at the local organization helping LGBTQ youth. She was there for a local restaurant group to hammer out the details on some charitable work, including an employment program.

There was no coming out as Michelle's identity was naturally there as part of her advocacy work. Even with what she'd been through, she was one of the kindest people she'd ever met. They hit it off and after six months of dating, they moved in together.

Michelle was a client of the center first, having run away from home before she could finish her senior year. They helped set her up to finish high school, then start college classes as she worked.

Her job wasn't just a needed paycheck, it was paying it forward. She'd come a long away, her therapist had helped her a lot with the trauma and PTSD that living under the Tyler roof had caused. She couldn't wait to get rid of her last name soon, going with Gorman, the last name of a kindly aunt who was the one person in her family who showed the slightest bit of affirmation to her, at least until her husband picked her up from work, lost control with a blown tire, crossed the center line and got crushed by a semi.

Her "parents" had rather rigid views on gender, a kind of piety without setting foot in a church. She quickly knew she couldn't trust them, fighting a losing battle to hide herself. They taught her not to expect any better from them, but what really stung was when her younger brother turned on her when she was in high school. Even three years younger, he'd hit his growth spurt early. They'd been each other's rock, but he started to parrot his father in unfortunate ways. He was mostly verbal with her, starting to pepper his act with more slurs. Then that summer before she left, it got worse.

One day, after he'd been gone for a week, he was the worst he'd been. She had enough and pushed back. She can still close her eyes and picture his face as he knocked her to the ground with one punch.

She was too shocked to cry at first, seeing his expression change almost to panic as he ran off. Of all the things that went on in that house, it was Mark who was the final straw. They stayed away from each other, which helped her plan her escape.

It turned out the walk was closer to three miles, but Mark finally arrived at the apartments where his sister lived. He found her door, took several deep breaths made difficult by the pain in his right side, and pressed the buzzer.

It was Wendy who looked through the eyehole first, not recognizing this kid standing outside their apartment, looking like hell. "Michelle, any idea who this is?" she whispered.

Michelle looked and said, "You have got to be kidding me."

She opened the door, staring at the brother who'd betrayed her. She turned to her girlfriend to say, "I've got this, Wendy," before looking at Mark with almost pure venom.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

"Sorry, Michelle. I know I'm about the last person you wanted to see, but-"

"You're damn right. Did the birth canal and the sperm donor send you here to 'teach me a lesson'?"

"What? No. Mom and Dad-"

"I don't care. You can call them that, but they no longer exist to me and neither do you. You hurt me and you damn well enjoyed it. Forget you ever found me and if I see you here again, I will call the cops on you."

"But, but, Sis."

"Don't you call me that! Don't you dare call me that!"

And with that, Michelle slammed the door, locked it and stormed past Wendy to their bedroom.

Mark hung his head. This went as poorly as he feared. He thought better of knocking again. "Sorry, Michelle. I-I deserve that," he said as he turned to leave the building, having no idea where he was going to go next and, frankly, not caring in the slightest.

Remembering a park nearby, he made his way there slowly. Finding an out of the way bench, he sat down, memories he'd tried to push back, now with nothing to stop them.

He'd always looked up to Daniel when they were young and didn't understand why Mom and Dad picked on him. Then they got meaner and nastier. He didn't get why, even though at some point he knew Daniel was different.

Over time, Daniel swore him to secrecy that he was a girl. That he could call him "Dani", but it would be their secret, that Mom and Dad would think it was "Danny."

So, he looked up to his sister. They looked out for each other as much as they could, treasuring the moments like their parents being out of the house on hunting trips or meeting with their pals who ranted about immigrants, communism (as if they knew what it was), not to mention the evil of "homosexuals" and "transgenders." No parents being around was Safe Time.

Over time, Mark couldn't put his finger on why, but he related more to Dani. Even as awful as Mom and Dad were, she still kept her true self, even as she hid it.

During one weekend while Aaron and Eve, as Dani had taken to calling them, were at a "patriot retreat," as they called it. She let Mark in on a new secret, that she was Michelle. He vowed to keep her name under lock and key. As she hung around the house in the one dress she'd been able to keep hidden, Mark envied how happy she looked in those stolen moments, instinctively feeling she would do great once she got out of this hellhole.

"She's a girl. Maybe I could be, too. Maybe. I wish," Mark realized. She wanted to tell Michelle badly, so that she'd have a secret to protect, too.

But for this girl who didn't have a name yet, this was too fresh, too raw, too frightening. She saw what they did to Michelle. If they knew she was the same? God.

As much as she tried to bury it, it stayed under the surface, but close. She panicked, figuring that her parents, Dad especially, would figure it out.

She started to be rude to Michelle, which seemed to win his approval, that she was going to be "a real man." She felt progressively more awful, trapped between the desire for safety from Dad and the pain at hurting her sister, all mixed in at her own growing self-loathing at being trans.

It was a vicious up-and-down cycle until the one day she slipped and Paige got too close to surfacing.

Dad was griping about some trans rights ordinance somewhere, blathering about "that freak Daniel" and how "someone needs to do something about these perverts."

Angry at his vile hatred, Paige snapped. "What if I was like her?"

"What the hell did you say?"

"You heard me. There's nothing wrong with her being who she i-"

Aaron cut her off with one blow to her solar plexus.

"You'd better not be like that, that thing, Mark. You're a man. God made you a man, not an it. You will not be a sick thing."

As Paige tried to get her breath back, Aaron stormed off to make a phone call. When he returned, he said, "Pack some clothes. A friend of mine is picking you up. You need to be reminded how to be normal, you little perv."

It was one of Dad's buddies, some guy named Roger, who they'd almost sent Michelle to. The week was hell. Sleep deprivation, every slur in the book and pain, inflicted by someone who had the training to do it without leaving marks.

When she was back home, she was tired and confused, a torture survivor with no one to tell and no outlet for her anger, until she saw Michelle.

"This is her fault. If she was normal, I'd be okay. Mom and Dad would stop this. Dammit, Daniel needs to stop," she thought.

She barely remembered anything that happened until she realized she was standing over Michelle. The look of utter pain and shock on her sister's face snapped her out of it. She couldn't believe she'd actually-, she fled to her room and laid down on the bed. Putting her pillow over her head turned out to a pointless gesture, since her sobs were silent.

She couldn't bring herself to be near Michelle after that. It wasn't that much longer that she got out, Aaron and Eve only paying lip service to finding her.

Paige's true self never went away, as her sense of survival as well as spite towards her parents kept her near. Normally, her not being a jock would have been another sticking point, but she had picked up the guitar.

Aaron found that was a "manly enough" pursuit for "Mark." Paige even got him to go for longer hair, pointing out all the guys on his album covers who had it, especially since she reluctantly let facial hair grow.

It was all good until her true self wanted to be above the surface, to be, like Michelle hopefully was wherever she was. And, then..

"Stop it Paige, don't think about that," she thought in the present. The exhaustion began to kick in and she crashed right there in the park. Eventually, a voice woke her up.

"Hey, you okay, kid?"

It was a park cop.

"Look, you can't sleep here. You got some place to go?"

"Um-"

"I'll take that as a no. There's a shelter a couple blocks from here that I might be able to get you into. Come on, get up. What's your name?"

"Pa-Mark. It's Mark."

"Alright, come on, Mark, get going."

Luckily, the officer, Paige never caught his name, knew the lady at the shelter and before she knew it, she had a small bed. It wasn't great, but today, it felt like the Ritz Carlton and the food they offered tasted five-star, as she realized how long it had been since she'd eaten.

That night, she had the longest uninterrupted sleep she could remember having in a while. When she woke up the next morning, she noticed the pain in her right side was worse, but she shook it off. She had one more shot.

She retrieved a pen and a notebook from one of her suitcases and started writing, but she was trying a different tactic.

"Wendy -- Michelle's told you about her terrible brother Mark. I can't deny it. Probably everything she's told you about me is true. But there's one thing she doesn't know about me: I'm trans, too. My parents found out and that's why I came here. If I had anywhere else to go, I'd have left her alone. But I don't. I don't know you, but if Michelle trusts you to be with her, that speaks well of you, so...

Paige went on to condense her version of what happened at the house, what happened to Michelle, what happened to her.

She finished, "I know Michelle hates me. I don't blame her for that, but trust me, she can never hate me more than I hate myself. I'd love to have a sisterly relationship with her, but I understand if she sticks with never seeing me again. Just let her know that I always wished I could be like her because she was strong, smart and kind, everything I'd want in an older sister. I will always look up to her. It's a new year coming up and I resolve to survive as Paige, to honor Michelle and to spite the bastards who try to destroy us. Please look after her and, if you ever think she'd be ready to hear it, tell her I'm more sorry than she'll ever know and that I love her -- Paige."

She asked at the front desk if they had an envelope, which they luckily did. She put the letter inside and wrote, "To Wendy" on the outside.

Paige knew she'd have to leave the shelter before coming back. If she left now, she'd have enough time to get to her sister's apartment, slide the note under the door and get back before the line was too long.

"It's getting tougher to do this," Paige thought it was more uncomfortable to walk than yesterday. But she made it to the apartment, held the letter so it touched her forehead and wished to whatever deity or fates could let her get through to Michelle, got it under the door, then walked away, trying to hold in her tears and failing completely.

Wendy, fresh out of the shower, was wearing the new lavender robe Michelle gave her for Christmas. As came out of the kitchen with some fresh coffee, she happened to notice an envelope sitting on the floor. "Must be a piece of mail that fell off," she thought, only to see the words "To Wendy" on an envelope from Mercy Center.

She sat down at the kitchen table, put her glasses on and started reading.

"Oh, dear God," Wendy said. A fast reader, she realized that there was so much more than what she knew about Michelle's family, more than Michelle knew. And Michelle needed to.

As she was about to call Michelle, the door opened.

"Hey, babe. I picked up everything for dinner tonight. What's wrong? You look like you've seen a ghost?"

"Michelle, sit down. There's more to what happened with your brother yesterday. To what happened to both of you."

"What the hell are you talking about? Did he come back here and bother you? I swear if he-"

"She."

"What?"

"It's she. Her name isn't Mark. It's Paige and she's your sister. Here," Wendy said, handing her the letter.

Michelle didn't know what to think, but she trusted Wendy, the first person who made her feel safe and protected in her life, so she started to read.

The letter brought everything back, the trauma front and center, but then she realized the trauma her brother, no sister, had gone through.

She was utterly stunned. She had no idea. She still had doubt because of how Mark had hurt her. But then she saw Mark had been hurt in ways she didn't know about. By the time she reached the end, she didn't know where she was with how she felt about her sister, but she knew she hated the people who called themselves her parents even more.

"Sigh. Okay, this is so much to take in and I don't know how to handle this, but, I think we need to find Paige first. How do we find her?"

Wendy smiled and held up the envelope. "Let me get dressed and let's go for a walk," she said.

Paige stood in a line that was longer than she hoped, but still not too bad. "Damn this hurts," she thought. She put her hand there and it felt unusually damp.

"Maybe I should sit down. I don't want to lose my place in line, but, steps. Steps right there. Just for a minute."

Paige made the steps and closed her eyes, then, nothing.

"Talking, I hear talking," Paige thought. "Where am I?"

Her eyes flickering open, she saw she was in a hospital room and is that? Wendy?

"Michelle! Honey! Your sister, she's awake!"

"Oh, dear," Wendy said, briefly touching Paige's arm. "I'm so glad you're awake. Your sister's going to be, too. She went to get something from the vending machine. I'll go get her. Oh, she read your letter and, well, I'll have to let you two talk, but she's here."

"Thanks."

"You're welcome. Now let me go get your sister."

"Michelle's here? She's actually here? But why am I here?"

A nurse came in. "How are you feeling, Paige, right?"

She nodded and said, "I'm okay, I think. What happened?"

"Well, you probably should have seen a doctor for that cut after you got mugged. It got infected, but luckily we got it in time. You're on some antibiotics and the doctor got you stitched up. Dr. Mehta will come around to see you in a bit. But, for now, take these and I'll get you some more water."

"Thank you."

Michelle entered the room, "Paige, thank God you're okay."

"Are you sure?"

Michelle winced, but said, "Yes. I am. I'm still trying to process all this. I'd be lying if I said I didn't have some anger about what you did to me, but at the same time, reading what you wrote, it reminded me who deserves that anger more than anyone -- the two people who were supposed to protect us, but who did more to hurt us than anyone else could have."

Michelle looked down at Paige's bandaged wound and instinctively touched where hers was on her left. Seeing Paige's eyes now, she saw what she saw looking into a mirror three years ago.

"Michelle, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I don't deserve this. I don't deserve y-"

"Stop it, Paige. You do. I might have only known you're my little sister for a matter of hours but you're still my little sister. After all that's happened, you deserve a chance. And you deserve a family."

"But-"

"But nothing. I'm your family and so's Wendy. And you're right, she is really good for me. I have one question, though."

"What's that?"

"You didn't say why you're here. I mean, I know why you're in the hospital. I guess Aaron learned to cut better than he did with me," Michelle said as she lifted her top to show the scar.

"I thought I was safe," Paige said. "We moved after you left. The property had a small building, a joke to call it a guesthouse, but it was a space I could call mine. Mom and Dad had started to spend more time with their oath-keeping friends. They were supposed to be out of the state for the whole holiday weekend. But, no, they decided to trade whatever cluster that was for spending Christmas with their 'good son.'"

"And they found you dressed as Paige."

"Worse. They found me partly dressed with Jake, a nice guy I'd met when I'd snuck out of town to a LGBTQ support group. Somehow in that town, that sea of sewage, I'd found someone who saw me for who I was. And then they come waltzing in and-"

"Oh, no," Michelle gasped again, knowing how evil their parents were.

"Yeah. Mom screamed like someone dropped a severed human lead in her lap. Dad's face went lobster red, I've never seen him that angry. He went back outside, going to the car to get his gun. I screamed at Jake to run. He managed to get out the back. Dad chased after him, but luckily he'd had a few, which turned his mediocre aim to crap. And it also meant he didn't get a good look at Jake's face."

"My, God," Wendy, who'd come in, said. "I hope he went to the cops."

Paige chuckled bitterly. "I don't know how much my older sister told you about the Good Sheriff James McDonald. Every election he runs on God, family, law and order and gets over 60 percent of the vote. He's also a very proud boy, if you get my drift."

She continued, "I tried to leave. Mom blocked the back door and said she'd tell Dad to shoot me herself. I thought he was going to anyway but instead he called the sheriff. He restrained me on a chair in the kitchen. Mom told me I was going to look like a man and cut my hair off. Dad told me to stop crying, then went to work. He said he wouldn't hit me in the face, so he hit me everywhere else. When he got tired of that, he grabbed his chef's knife, said, 'You want to be like your brother. Here you go.' He said 'brother' with this tone that showed more hate than any slur."

"I'm so sorry," Michelle said, holding tightly to her sister. Paige, shaking and apologizing profusely, let her tears flow, the dam finally burst.

After several minutes, Paige thanked her, then continued. "So, after that, he told me that he and Mom were going out of town and that I had 24 hours to be gone and if I weren't, this was a warmup. Then, for an encore, he burned every Paige thing I had that he could find, tossed my cellphone into the burn barrel, then smashed my guitar and threw it in there, too. The last thing he said was, 'You're dead to us.' He didn't know it, but it was the kindest thing he ever said to me in his miserable life."

"I packed up what I could into the two suitcases and put some stuff to eat into a bag. Pulled out your address and spare cash from where I'd managed to hide it and you know the rest. Oh, and by the way, thank you for telling them about the 'mugger who I didn't get a good look at who cut me' and thank you for letting them know my name."

"We're sisters and it's time we start looking after each other again," Michelle said.

Dr. Mehta came by not long after to give her the good news. Her tests were looking good so far and if they looked good after overnight observation, she should be able to go home tomorrow.

"Home..."

"Yes, home. You're staying with us now," Wendy said.

Things did indeed go as hoped overnight. As a nurse wheeled Paige on her way out the building, Paige told Michelle, "Sis, I need to do something about-- gesturing at "Mark's" clothes she was wearing by default.

"I'm getting you a head start on that," Wendy said. "My sister Hillary is about your size, so I asked if she had some things you could use. She'll be coming by later."

"With that size as a guide, I picked up some underwear, jewelry and things for you," Michelle added. "And I have some contacts in the theater world through my job who know my story and sometime today, you should have a wig. It's your natural color. Wait, here's a pic of it."

"Evan Rachel Wood," Paige said.

Michelle and Wendy exchanged a knowing look before Michelle said, "That's exactly what I said."

"Heh. Great minds," Paige said.

After they arrived home and settled in, Wendy said, "It's a shame that the people who were responsible for so much pain in your lives are still out here, unaccountable for the hurt they caused you two."

"That's something I still wrestle with, but at the end of the day, they're in a miserable world of their own making. They've driven away their children. It is a shame, but you know, we're free of them. That's a victory I'll take," Michelle said.

Paige nodded and thought, "A shame, indeed."

Epilogue
Paige, clad in a cute sky blue pair of pajamas, sat at Michelle's desk. It had been wonderful New Year's Eve. She could see the path forgiveness and to her true self and now that she had a real home, she resolved to get there.

She'd met Wendy's sister and parents and saw exactly where Wendy came from, what a real, loving family is. That they'd obviously welcomed Michelle had been so comforting.

She and her sister still had a lot of serious repair work to do, but with their New Year's resolutions firmly set to do that, she felt an unfamiliar feeling. Something Wendy called "hope."

Paige turned on her sister's computer, knowing exactly what she was looking for. That same day while back she went out of town to that LGBTQ center, she stopped at a library first. She looked up a number of things, finding Michelle's address, on the slim hope they could ever reconnect. She went to look up something else she'd found that day.

She soon found the same two photos on the site. There, they were: Aaron and Eve Tyler, bandanas shielding the bottom halves of their faces, inside the Capitol on January 6. Dad in his confederate flag T-shirt with the mustard sauce stain, the one she knew he still had a week ago. Mom, wearing one that said "Rope. Tree. Journalist."

"They thought I didn't know where they went. Nice of them to get those matching tattoos on their hands, though," Paige, now safe from their reach, thought as she hit the send button, knowing that accountability might not have been on Aaron and Eve's list of resolutions, but they were going to get it.