Hey, this is just a short one-shot I wrote because I couldn't sleep.
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"You know, Liss, I've never heard you talk about your dad."
Melissa Sheppard looked up from her math homework at her friend's comment. She'd been expecting it. She had been listening to Courtney complain about how her own father is a fascist dictator all morning. Just because she'd been expecting it didn't mean she wanted the question to be asked.
Melissa had been living in Boston for a little over two years at that point. She'd never mentioned her father to any of the friends she had made there.
What was there to say?
A lot, she supposed, but she was never allowed to know what those things were. Her father was a military man, a United States Air Force Colonel.
John Sheppard had always been a man who never did anything half-assed. She supposed she could tell Courtney how he would always make her day shine just a bit brighter. At least, he would when he was home, which wasn't often.
Her father was stationed at some secret military base really far away, and that was all he and her mother had ever been willing to say about the subject.
She could talk about how she used to wait by the mail box at the third of every month waiting for his letters. They were always amusing and always filled with love. Liss still had some of the more precious letters. She could tell Courtney that she always knew when something bad had happened at wherever her father was because his letters were always more intimate.
His letters usually ended with "I love you, Dad. P.S. Give your mother a hug for me." when something bad had happened though, they ended differently. "You are my whole life. I fight for you, to keep you safe. I love you with all my heart, Dad."
There was never anything about her mother in those letters. Liss used to wonder why, but as she grew older she realized her parents had never really been all that serious for each other. Just a comfort in a far away war zone.
Liss could talk about the last time he came to visit, three years ago, when she was thirteen. They'd gone to the fair and her dad had won her every stuffed animal available. She still had every single one.
No, Liss decided, she knew what she would talk about.
"My dad was in the Air Force. A colonel, actually. He was the C/O of some huge Military research thing that he never let me know about. I only saw him when he got leave, which was maybe once or twice a year. He only stayed for about a week at a time." Liss stopped for a second.
"He actually managed to get leave on my birthday when I was thirteen. We went to the fair that day. The next day some weirdo broke into our house with a gun, ranting and raving about aliens. Apparently he thought whatever my dad did and wherever it was he did it had something to do with aliens. I don't know. I don't really remember much."
She didn't remember much, but it was still too much.
"He went to shoot my mom, but my dad jumped in the way."
"Oh my god, Liss!"
Courtney was horrified, Liss knew she would be. She kept talking though, it felt good to talk about it to someone who wasn't trying to find out how much she'd figured out from the whole event.
"Yeah. He died then. This one guy who was a friend of my dad's told me once that it was ironic. My dad apparently did a lot of stupid, life threatening things all the time. It was ironic that something as simple as a crazy guy killed him." she wiped a tear away from her eye.
"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have asked. I didn't realize-"
"Don't say sorry. It's okay. If I hadn't wanted to tell you I wouldn't have."
Courtney nodded.
Melissa turned back to her homework, still thinking about that day, and the ones that followed. She would have believed that man was insane if it hadn't been for the days that followed.
Men came to her asking her questions about what the man said to her father; asked her relentlessly if she believed the words that man spoke. They wanted to know how much about what her father did had she managed to decipher from the event.
She'd managed to decipher quite a lot.
She just didn't let anyone know.
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Thanks for reading all the way through! I know it was probably a tough read, I didn't proofread it.
This was just a one-shot, so please, pleas, please don't asked me to continue it, please don't say you like where it's going, and that it's good/bad/okay so far. It's a one-shot, there is no more.
Review Appreciated
Flames Encouraged