TITLE: Resolution
AUTHOR: Blaze
RATING/SPOILERS: PG, and no specifics.
SUMMARY: He wasn't hers to miss. J/S
DISCLAIMER: Not mine. Anything vaguely recognizable as something copyrighted is also not mine, just lovingly borrowed. If I did that.
A/Ns: MGP, 'there are more than angels watching over me'. Wish you were here to see this, but He's got other plans. Hope you're bragging about all of us who miss you up there. :-) Dev, dude, you're the best. You know why. Thank you for all you've done for this fic. :thumb: And Maple Street--the best WaT posse around, hands down. You all rock! Enjoy!
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Dear Mrs. Malone,
The night your husband died, a uniformed officer with the New York City Police Department came to your door and tried the best he could to be sympathetic as he told you what had happened. I presume this is what happened on your doorstep because it is what happened on mine. He was probably young, scared out of his mind, and had no idea what to do when you started crying.
I'd like to extend an apology for the way in which you were informed. I should have told you.
I should have told you because he was my boss. Because he was a friend and a co-worker and I trusted him. I should have told you because I was with him the night he died.
Did I confirm some of your suspicions, or have I answered a question you've already had answered? He never told me all he told you. He would have, I think, had I pressed him more and he hadn't been killed for twenty dollars on his way to the subway station three blocks from my apartment.
Twenty dollars buys silence, you know. Twenty dollars out of the wallet of a bleeding FBI agent made his killers disappear.
If I could find them, I'd ask them if his twenty bucks was worth it. If I could find them, I'd ask them what it felt like to kill him, if they were more scared before they found out who he was or after. They must have been nervous. They left sweat all over his identification.
I will find them.
I have a story to tell you.
Have you ever wanted something that wasn't yours? A bike, a house, tickets to opening night of the next big Broadway hit? Granted, someone's husband isn't equal to your neighbor's Porsche, but the principle is there.
There's this woman I know who had someone she wasn't supposed to have and lost him like he'd never been there at all. Oh, there was a body, and he lingered on her mind and on the air, under her skin and in the very essence of the city, at once a hallucination and heart-breakingly tangible. But he was not there.
He came back all the time. When she walked into what was his office those first few mornings after he was gone, she'd see that self-assured grin and a slight head nod, rolled eyes at the person on the other end of the phone. He would give her a look that begged her to tell him all her secrets, to laugh at one of his snide remarks, to believe in him, to let him in and let him love her. And she had to close her eyes against this look because, God, he was dead and he was never going to return to the office.
When she opened her eyes, he'd be gone again. And it killed her like it had every other time he'd crossed her mind.
You see, he was not hers to miss but she missed him anyway.
She missed him as she took her socks out of the washer and into the dryer; missed him on the subway when a young guy in a suit looked her over and, embarrassed, looked away; she missed him when she sat in his chair in his office, answered his phone and directed his agents. It was as simple as that. She didn't know when not to miss him, didn't know how to get away from missing him, didn't know how badly she wanted to miss him.
Didn't know what she would do when she stopped.
Do you understand that? Not being able to walk five feet without seeing him in someone's face, in their eyes, the cut of their hair, their suit and tie? Hearing half a note of a song and wanting to cry because in that half a note there were ten musical reminders of the way he used to be?
She knew all about that. Because when she drove home, she'd sometimes make a detour and park outside of a little house that he loved so much in theory, that he hadn't been in in months but was now in the house, with his family, for good. She'd sit in her car in the dark and stare at the lights in the windows, look for the little metal container that held him and berate him in silence for not leaving her any place to mourn, sitting and hurting until the curtains were drawn and the lights went out.
The car chased him away as often as it brought her to him. She knew Long Island only as flashes of green and hints of buildings caught up in a hundred miles an hour of sorrow and rehearsed excuses for the Nassau County police. She tried to outrun him on deserted roads, slamming her way back into his memories when she ran out of road. Nothing says forgetting to forget like sudden braking.
It's jarring. Seeing him, hearing him. Catching a hint of his smell in his old chair even though I've been sitting in it for three weeks. Noticing all of the things in his office that are enrobed in him. Knowing one of these days he will no longer be here. I don't know what I'll do when I walk into this office and can't find him.
Sam stares at the cursor blinking, lets it stare back. Misses Jack. Every time the cursor fades into the background, she feels him slip away. A little bit more of him glances its way into the past with every passing second. Of course, there are the little things he forgot to take with him when he left, like his glasses and a black umbrella. His signature on dozens of files, reports, memos. Fibers from his overcoat on the coat rack.
Me.
She thinks it again. He forgot to take me when he left.
No, he forgot to stay.
Danny pokes his head in the door, says, "Hey, boss, we got a call about the Galena kid. You coming?"
'Boss' resonates in her ears, invoking a spectrum of Jack she cannot stop and would not if she could. His shattering insistence that they "can't be doing this, Sam, don't be stupid." His final sweet, "Hey, you." Telling her half-jokingly that he only has twenty bucks left and with the price of subway tokens these days—
"Samantha?"
—The light pressure of his lips on hers, the slide of his fingers on her cheek, should've kissed him one more time, should've made him stay, shouldn't have gone to sleep with a smile, should be able to finish this letter—
He's never coming back, he's never going to be here again, he's already slipping away from this office, Sam. He's gone.
He's never gone.
"I'll be there in a minute."