Friends and Loved Ones

"Look, Baxter," Phil said calmly. "Nothing personal."

"Right," the invincible man muttered from the chair to the right of his.

Phil shook his head. "How would you feel if people kept doing this?" He took his fork and jabbed Ozzy lightly in the arm. "Does that hurt?" he asked in an innocent tone.

"Stop," Ozzy snapped.

Phil kept going. "Does that hurt? Does that hurt? Did it break the skin? No? Not even like this? Wow, you must really be indestructible!"

Ozzy glared at him. "I get the point."

"Do you?" Phil raised an eyebrow. "Look, I'm generally a nice guy, okay? You just need to learn a bit more common sense before you go prying into people's lives like that."

"Relax," Priest said from across the table. "When Phil first got here, Dirk would give it to him almost nonstop."

The veteran members paused briefly as they remembered one of their own who was no longer with them... which quickly brought to memory all the others that had departed in one way or another.

"Damn," Danny muttered. "All this change in one short year. Just this time last year, we would've been sitting down here with Chance and Dirk and Mick and TC and..." His voice trailed off.

"Things change," Phil said almost to himself. "Life happens. You lose people you love." He glanced over at Leslie, sitting to his left. "But it makes you appreciate those you still have that much more."

"We've still got us," Danny agreed. "Everyone sitting around this table. Things are getting even harder for us. We've got to stick together if we're going to survive." He looked at Ozzy and Phil. "That's why we can't have all this infighting all the time. We've got to learn to have patience with each other. None of us know when someone else might be taken from us."

Leslie took Phil's hand under the table and squeezed it. He looked over and she smiled.

"Well, this is a lovely scene!" Mason Templar boomed mockingly as he strode into the room. "Have you any meat and drink for a hungry man? Or can't you spare a moment while waxing sentimental?"

Danny sighed.

"Patience," Phil reminded him with a smile.