(A note about the dates: I'm ignoring the whole "Ash is forever ten" thing and counting roughly one year for each league. Assuming Ash's journey started in 1997, when the first episode of the anime aired, this prologue is set in 2000, when he and Misty are thirteen years old. The rest of the story takes place one year later.

Another note: as you might know already, English is my second language. This is my first attempt at a lengthy story that isn't a translation of something I'd previously written in Italian. If you want to point out mistakes, please feel free to.

WARNING for violence and death.)

RETURNING HOME

PROLOGUE

(June 14th, 2000; somewhere near Mahogany Town, Johto)

There's no warning when he disappears.

There's no shiver running down her spine, no sudden chill in her bones. She doesn't wake up drenched in cold sweat, hair sticking to her forehead in clumps and heart hammering in her throat. Instead she sleeps like any other night, and wakes up into the first day of his absence without knowing it. Later she'll replay those last hours over and over in her head, wondering what she could have missed, how she could not have known; but now she just grumbles annoyed at a ray of sunlight shining directly on her face and snugs deeper into her sleeping bag.

She doesn't know how long it is until something nudges her shoulder repeatedly. Still half asleep, she turns to find Pikachu calling her and tugging at her shirt, ears and tail pricked up high.

"Pikachu-pi! Pikachu-pi!"

She rubs her hand over one eye. "Wha—Pikachu, what's it...?"

"Pikachu-pi! Pikapi!"

Hearing the few syllables of his name wakes her up a bit more. Her eyes instinctively shoot towards the sleeping bag at her left: it's empty. She doesn't know what time it is, but the sky is still pale enough to be close to dawn, and she can hear Brock almost-snoring somewhere behind her.

She sits up, running a hand through her hair to push it away from her face. "...Okay, I'm awake. What happened? Where's Ash?"

Pikachu shakes his head, his eyes wide. Frowning, she looks at his sleeping bag again, and now her stomach does crumple a little and her heart does run a bit faster. The rest of her is still somewhat sore from last evening's spat, though, and she's determined not to let go of her grudge so easily, so she purses her lips and tries to swallow down her concern. "Okay, um. He's gotta be around here somewhere. Let's take a look."

She checks on Togepi, who's still asleep, then crawls to her feet and looks around. Ash's backpack is next to his empty sleeping bag, the belt with his pokéballs lying on top of it. "Did you see him go somewhere, Pikachu?"

He shakes his head again. Misty looks back at his things. He does get up early in the morning sometimes, usually when he's impatient for something, but rarely this early and definitely never leaving behind Pikachu and the rest of his pokémon. Unsure, she lingers for another moment and then heads towards the line of trees in front of her, Pikachu following immediately after. There's a patch of tall grass there that looks squashed, like someone stepped on it; but the footprints—if that's what they are—don't seem to go any farther.

She bites her lip a little and delves deeper into the trees. "Ash?" she tries calling. "Are you there?"

There's no answer, nor sound of footsteps other than her own. The forest is quiet, the sorta-quiet forests always are on the surface, but that silence now unnerves her for some reason. "He's probably around here," she tells Pikachu again to fill it, then brings her hands around her mouth and raises her voice: "Ash! Can you hear me?"

Nothing. Her stomach crumples again. She obstinately clings to her irritation anyway and keeps going, stopping from time to time to call and listen. Silence still, save for the flapping of wings of a flock of Noctowl disturbed by her yelling.

She hastens her steps a little. "Ash! Come on, stop messing around! This isn't funny!"

"Pikapi!"

By the time she gets back to the clearing the still-too-quick run of her pulse has hiked to a throb in her temples despite her efforts to not be worried. His sleeping bag is still empty. She swallows and her nails dig into her palm. Don't be stupid she tells herself, he's probably just—

he's probably just...

but the sentence hangs unfinished in her mind.

In the other sleeping bag Brock is half-sitting up, rubbing his hand over his eyes. Her yells must have woken him. "What's going on?" he asks looking up at her, his voice still somewhat groggy.

She bites her lips again. "It's Ash. I don't know where he is."

Brock looks puzzled at her and then at the sleeping bag. "Pikachu woke me up to tell me he wasn't here," she explains, pushing away a strand of hair that fell back on her face. She forgot to put it up in a ponytail. "I don't know where he's gone."

Now that she's said it out loud his absence feels somewhat more urgent, somewhat more there, and the knot in her stomach tightens. Brock frowns and stands up.

"Well, he can't be too far. Let's find him."

It sounds more reasonable in his voice, but still not quite enough to make the knot go away. She nods, though, and goes to pick up Togepi, who has woken up as well in the meantime and started calling her.

"It's okay," she tells it, and herself, burying a tiny flicker of hesitation under her words. "That idiot probably got himself into some trouble like always. But we're gonna find him. Right?"

Right?

—-

Later, when she dissects the memories of that night and morning in her mind like a slide under a microscope, she'll ask herself over and over: what if I'd done something differently? Could I still have stopped it? They gave them a window of hours; they couldn't determine the exact time it happened. It was probably too late already when she woke up to Pikachu calling her; but still. What if I'd heard or felt something, what if I'd woke up sooner?

How did I not know?

—-

By lunchtime the sky has turned a swollen gray and she's bitten her lip so hard that it started to bleed. They haven't found him yet. It's been hours and nothing—no footprints, not a trace; he's just gone, vanished into thin air.

Brock suggests they stop to eat something. She shakes her head.

"I'm not hungry."

He sets down his backpack anyway. Misty gives him a swift glance: "You eat if you want. I'll keep looking."

"You can do that in twenty minutes. You can't go the whole day on an empty stomach," he remarks. "Besides, maybe smelling food will make him turn up."

Her teeth sink again into her already-achy lip. She scans the forest around them for a handful of moments still, her heart a lump in her throat; then lets out a sigh and sits down on a tree stump. "Where do you think he is, Brock?"

He shrugs. He kept trying to reassure her, but his lips are pressed together tight in a bone white line as he kneels to light a fire. "I don't know. Maybe he couldn't sleep and went for a walk, and got lost."

Misty puts down Togepi and hugs her ankles, and tosses the next question back and forth in her mind without managing to get it out. Do you think he's okay?

The smell of the soup Brock is heating makes her want to throw up. She draws her knees closer to her chest and keeps looking around, her eyes going over every tree and bush surrounding the clearing two, three, four times; but the forest is still as quiet as before. She can't stand it. Her fingers itch with the urge to rip every last leaf and branch from the ground until she'll have torn that infuriating silence into pieces.

"I'm sure he's fine," Brock answers even if she didn't ask out loud, placing a bowl of soup under her nose. She winces and looks away.

"Then why haven't we found him yet?"

"Maybe we just haven't looked in the right place. Come on, eat something."

"I'm not hungry, Brock, I'm going to be sick."

"Give it a try at least," he insists. She sighs again and takes the bowl from his hands, but mostly just holds it on her knees, clinging to its warmth.

Next to the stump Pikachu is staring at the trees and not touching his food either. Nervous sparkles crackle around his cheek, matching the flickering clouds in the distance.

—-

It starts raining in the afternoon: lightning cracks the sky open and moments later it's pouring. She tucks Togepi in her bag and hurries her steps instead of stopping, ignoring her hair falling in her eyes and her shirt sticking to her shoulders and her back. "Ash! Can you hear me? Ash!"

Brock runs after her and closes a hand on her arm. "Misty, wait—we'd better get out of this rain and wait until the storm's over."

She pulls her wrist from his grasp: "I need to keep looking. Ash!"

The ground is wet and slippery under her shoes. She shoves the bushes out of her way, her pulse a drum in her neck, and thinks idiot, thinks come on and where are you and please. A branch snaps back to hit her, scraping a burning trail across her face. Lightning turns the forest white. Idiot, stupid idiot, where are you.

Something gives under her foot. She tries to hold on to something, misses; lands on her knees in the mud. And suddenly she doesn't know how to stand back up.

He's not there. They've been looking for—ten, eleven hours now? They should have found him. Even if for whatever reason he wandered away and got lost, even if he was stuck somewhere with a sprained ankle or a broken leg, they should have found him. But he's not there.

Brock reaches her again and takes off his jacket, holding it over her head to try and shield her from the rain. "Come on, there should be a pokémon center around here," he says. Misty shakes her head. The back of her eyes stings.

"We can't leave him here."

"We don't know where he is. He might be at the center already, maybe he thought we'd be there too."

"Or maybe he's hurt and he's out here somewhere!"

Thunder explodes above them, swallowing her last few syllables. She hears Togepi cry out from inside her bag. "We're not gonna find him if we get struck by lightning," Brock says, and wraps one arm around her waist to pull her to her feet. She's soaked to the bone and shivering, her hair plastered to her cheeks. "Come on. Pikachu, let's go."

Pikachu lags behind, looking at the trees still. Only after Brock calls him a few times over he finally turns around to follow.

They find the pokémon center, but not him. Nurse Joy shakes her head when she asks about a boy her age, her forehead slightly furrowed at the middle.

"I'm sorry, I haven't seen him."

"Are you sure?" she insists. Her hair drips on the counter as she leans forward. "He's—he's a bit shorter than me, with dark hair—"

"The two of you are the first to come here today. I'm really sorry."

Outside thunder roars again. She turns towards the window and meets Brock's eyes, and for a second she wants to throw her frustration and worry upon him and scream you said he might be here. She squeezes it out in a ragged breath instead, or at least tries, and slides her bag from her shoulder to take Togepi out.

A Chansey nudges Brock with a pile of blankets. He lays one on her shoulders, and she sits on one of the couches holding it tight around Togepi and herself. She looks at the rain hitting the window. The last words she said to him were sharp and angry on her tongue, purposefully shaped to cut.

Maybe I will.

Their steps left a trail of mud and puddles across the floor. Brock sits next to her, elbows resting on his knees, shoulders sagging forward a little. "Do you still think he's alright?" she asks after a bit. He lets out a sigh.

"I hope."

"What do we do? Just... sit here and wait?"

"Well there isn't much else we can do right now, is there?" As if on cue lightning crashes somewhere nearby, tracing the silhouettes of the trees in harsh black lines. "If he's out there I'm sure he's found somewhere to shelter from the rain. He can take care of himself for a bit."

Misty glances at him. "Are you sure?"

"Mostly." He attempts a smile, but it doesn't quite work. She looks at her mud-covered shoes and says nothing.

It rains all the way through the afternoon. Pikachu sits on the sill, not taking his eyes off the window even when Brock stands to make some dinner. She tries to eat something this time, but her stomach is still in knots.

In the end she curls up in a ball on the couch, leaning her head against the back and listening to the patter of the storm while Togepi sleeps in her arms. The clock on the wall strikes ten, then eleven. She bites her lip hard and waits, every tick of it sinking into her skin like nails.

—-

The hyper beam crashes against the ground raising a blast of smoke and dust and she can feel her heart miss a beat and then start hammering fast in her throat. Please, she mouths, and her lips are numb and her feet glued to the sidewalk; please, please, please.

When the dust clears he's lying with his face in the dirt, curled up and still around Pikachu, but he lifts his head after an interminable moment and props himself up on his elbows. Still shaking, she regains control of her legs and runs to him. He's sitting up, his clothes and hair covered in dust; and later she'll see that his shoulder and his ribs are bruised black and blue all the way down his waist, but he's not dead or dying or bleeding, no broken bones sticking out, no charred skin.

He's fine. She could hug him, dig her fingers into his shirt and hold him tight, instead she catches her breath leaning her hands against her knees and then yells "Idiot!" at the top of her lungs.

He gives her a surprised stare. She balls her fists and tries to ignore her heart still on the verge of exploding. "You could have gotten hurt!"

"Well, I didn't," he retorts. He notices a scrape on his elbow and promptly touches it, only to immediately take his fingers away with a wince. "Ow."

"Serves you well. Maybe that'll teach you to throw yourself in front of a freaking hyper beam!"

He puffs his cheeks: "But it was gonna hit Pikachu, what was I supposed to do?"

"Well not give me a heart attack, for a start!" She almost yells it, her nails digging marks into her palms. "Sooner or later you're gonna get yourself killed!"

And she doesn't say it out loud, but in her head she adds: sooner or later I'm going to lose you.

(But later he smiles and all the light in the room goes into his face, and she can't help but feel the ugly knot of her anger and hurt loosen a little—or maybe more than that.)

but sooner or later

I'm going to—

She realizes she's fallen asleep only when a hand shakes her shoulder gently. She jerks awake, sitting upright with a gasp, a jolt of pain shooting through her stiffened neck. Brock is standing in front of her. She blinks a couple times, her mind slightly tangled in her dream or memory, then raises a hand to rub her eyes.

"I fell asleep," she grumbles. "What time is it?"

"It's morning."

She swallows, delaying the next question and his answer for a moment still, a tiny flicker of hope flaring up at the back of her mind: maybe he found the pokémon center while I slept. "Ash?"

Brock sighs. Sunlight shines through the window behind his back. "He's not here. Let's eat something and then go back to look for him, sounds like a plan?"

The flicker fizzles away between her fingers. "Yeah. Alright"

The storm has wiped off any trace they might have left yesterday. They send out his Noctowl and Brock's Crobat to look for him and find their way back to the clearing, calling his name over and over. The wind keeps pushing her hair on her face. There's still the circle of stones where Brock lit a fire to cook dinner, but everything else looks like no one's ever been there. She doesn't know what she expected—to find him just standing there like nothing ever happened?, but her stomach still drops at the sight of that empty space.

Brock lays a hand on her arm. "Let's keep looking," he says. They do.

The morning is halfway over when she hears a rustling between the bushes. She bolts in that direction without a moment of hesitation, scraping her shin against a tangle of roots and her palm on a thorny branch; but when she pushes the shrubs out of her way it's not Ash's eyes she meets.

Something inside her is set aflame. A second later she's holding James by the front of his shirt and shaking him, and it doesn't matter that he's at least one whole foot taller than she is.

"Where is he? What have you done with him?!"

He looks positively terrified. "Wha—done to who—?!"

She shakes him again: "Where. Is. He?!"

James blinks. There's silence for a second or two and her hands itch with the urge to shove him against the nearest hard surface until he'll spill the beans. "I think she's talking about the other twerp," says Jessie's voice then.

James stares at her and then at Brock, lifting his hands to count on his fingers. "Oh. Right. One's missing."

"Yeah, like you didn't know," she growls. Next to her Pikachu jumps forward, sparkles beginning to form on his cheeks. James quickly turns his palms towards her.

"Wait. Wait—wait—wait! We didn't! Honest! We haven't seen him!"

"Yeah, sorry to disappoint," adds Meowth. Misty glares at him.

"I don't believe you."

Jessie shrugs: "What would we even need him for? It's Pikachu we're after, not him."

"It's—" Misty bites the inside of her cheek, feeling her logic crumble a little. She clings to it anyway: "It's a plan. You kidnapped him so you could get to Pikachu!"

"Then why wouldn't we be trying to take Pikachu right now?"

She looks down at Pikachu, still by her side. "She's got a point," Brock chimes in. She turns.

"You trust them?"

He shrugs his shoulders with a sigh. "I don't. I just think what they're saying makes sense for once."

Misty turns back to James, her hands still clasping the fabric of his shirt. She shoves him away.

"If I find out you've hurt him I swear I'm going to kill you," she warns him, her fury still rattling up through her like a wave. James sits up, massaging his back.

"Yeah, taking your word on that. Listen, we ain't done anything this time, okay? We can even help you look if that'll convince you!"

"Yeah, like we don't have anything better to do," Jessie scoffs. He gives her a confused look.

"But, Jessie, we don't have anything better to do."

"We don't need your help!" she interrupts them, her fingers balled into fists. James crosses his arms.

"Fine, fine. Just trying to be nice, you know."

"Yeah, like you're capable of that!"

"For your information, we can be the nicest—"

"Who cares, stop making us waste our time!"

Her hands shake. Brock takes a step forward and touches her arm gently, but firm. "We're all wasting our time if we keep this up. Come on, let's just continue looking."

"I still don't trust them," she protests. He lets out a small sigh.

"I know, me neither. But we've got something more important to do than stand here bickering with them. Let's go."

She glares at James one more time, but does turn to leave afterwards, despite the tremble of her anger not having quieted at all. She takes a few steps before she hears Jessie's voice: "Hey, kid?"

She turns back. "What?"

"If—I mean, let it be clear, we've got nothing to do with all this, but if we do see your friend, we'll let him know you're looking for him, alright?"

Her voice softens at the end. Misty stares at her for a moment, her fists loosening a little.

"Thanks."

Jessie rolls her eyes and looks away in an attempt to reestablish that it's nothing but an annoyance to them. Something about the lines of her face though still looks somewhat less sharp and cold than before.

They go on looking. By midday Crobat and Noctowl are back with no news of him.

—-

Brock calls Delia that evening, when another day ends with him still not there. She sits on the couch across from him, staring at the floor and listening to the phonecall without really hearing it. Brock's words wash over her like a tide. There's tiny half-moon shaped marks on her palms, where she dug her nails into her skin.

They haven't found him.

Brock hangs up, sighs and looks at the wall for a bit, then turns to look at her. "She said to alert the police."

She swallows. Her mouth is dry. Alert the police means that it's out of their hands. "Are you going to?"

He nods. His hand lingers on the phone for a few moments before he picks it up again. Misty watches him and thinks about how until now he was only gone, vanished for no discernible reason and maybe lost or hurt but maybe still somewhere nearby, maybe still somewhere where she could find him. By the time Brock's done talking to the police he will be missing and that's different somehow. She never thought a word could feel so much like emptiness, like being stuck midway through a fall and not knowing if you'll find something to hold on to or if you'll hit the floor and break your bones.

Brock sits next to her when he's done talking on the phone. "Think they'll find him?" she asks, her eyes still on the floor.

"They will. They're sending a search squad over here."

"And do you think he'll be—okay, when they do?"

It's not exactly what she wanted to ask, and Brock must have noticed that hitch in her voice because he turns to look at her. What she wanted to ask was do you think he'll be alive when they find him, because she's ran over every other option in her mind and that's starting to feel like it might be the only one left. But she can't say it out loud.

"Yeah," Brock says. "I told you, I'm sure he can take care of himself for a while."

"Really? Alone, without any of his pokémon or food or—"

"He'll be okay," he insists. But deep down it sounds like he doesn't believe it too much anymore, either.

—-

The searches go on for days. The word missing jabs deeper into her middle and she curls up around her hurt, hugging her knees on the couch while the clock ticks endlessly behind her. Officer Jenny speaks with her, asking about the details of his disappearance; she says that anything she remembers might be of help, and she feels useless when all she can say is that she woke up next to an empty sleeping bag. She mentions the patch of squashed grass, like footprints that didn't go anywhere. The officer writes something down on her notepad.

"Anything else?" she asks. Misty bites her lip.

"We—we had a fight the evening before," she answers, and the back of her eyes burns suddenly as she says it out loud. She swallows and tries not to blink. "It wasn't really weird, it happens a lot. But I thought—I thought maybe he might have walked away because of that and got lost, or maybe hurt."

Officer Jenny notes that down as well. "Is that how he would have acted normally?"

She shakes her head. "No, not really. I just—I'm trying to think of something."

"Just try to stick to facts right now. Any other details you can remember?"

She bites her lip harder and shakes her head again. "Uh-uh."

"Do you know of anyone who might have wanted to hurt your friend?"

For a moment she thinks of Jessie, James and Meowth, but she remembers the way Jessie's words and face softened when she said that she'd tell Ash they were looking for him. "I don't think. I'm sorry—I'm not helping much, am I?"

"Every bit of information you can give could help us find him," officer Jenny assures her, closing her notebook. She's not sure she believes it. "We'll keep you updated with our investigation. Let me know if you remember anything else."

She nods and watches as the officer walks away to question nurse Joy. After a bit she grows sick of sitting there with nothing better to do than continue driving her nails into her palms, and she tucks Togepi in her bag and stands to go back outside and continue looking, even if there's already helicopters flying over the forest. She can't shake the thought that they might miss something, that there might be something somewhere that she'd recognize as a trace he left and they wouldn't.

She calls until her throat hurts. She gets angry too, because anger is still better than that crushing emptiness and at least keeps her moving, and yells at the trees that he's an idiot and that when she finds him he'd better have a really good explanation for this. When the echo of her words fades the forest is silent again.

By sunset her voice is a croak and every bit of her aches. Brock wraps his jacket around her shoulders and brings her back to the pokémon center.

The next few days feel like they won't ever end. Delia gets there on the third day of searches, five days after he disappeared. She listens and nods as officer Jenny tells her that they're doing everything they can, composed but pale as a sheet, her hands grasping her purse so tight that her knuckles have turned white.

Misty can't look her in the eye. She thinks I should have stopped this, stopped him, I should have known; and Delia's worried but gentle gaze makes her want to curl up on herself and disappear.

She can't sleep. Her eyes feel like sandpaper and there's purple shadows around them, but she tosses and turns in her blankets until they're a tangle. When she does sleep there's usually nightmares awaiting.

She jolts awake from one one night, almost-seven days after he disappeared. She already can't remember what the nightmare was seconds after her eyes snap open, but her breath is still halfway caught in her throat and she lies with her hair sticking to her cheeks, listening to the pounding of her heart slowly going back to normal. When she stops shaking she sits up and pushes away her blankets, after making sure that she didn't wake up Togepi as well. For a while she just stares at the quiet of the room and at the empty bed across from her where only Pikachu is sleeping. Then runs a hand through her hair and stands.

She doesn't quite know what to do with herself. She ends up walking to the hall of the pokémon center to keep her legs busy. She's not expecting to find anyone there, and she almost jumps when she recognizes the silhouette sitting on one of the couches. For a handful of moments she just freezes, wondering if she'd manage to turn away and go back unnoticed; then Delia looks up at her.

"Misty," she says. Her voice is kind. She looks down, kicking the floor a little.

"Mrs. Ketchum. I—I couldn't sleep."

"I guess that makes two of us," Delia says, then pats the couch next to her. "Come sit here with me, will you?"

Misty hesitates for another few seconds, then complies. She still can't look at her. The cushions sink under her weight and she feels like gelatin, like something in her is only barely holding together and could give at any moment. She hides her face in her hands.

"I don't know what happened." It comes tumbling out of her lips before she can stop it, even if she didn't know she was going to say anything. "I keep wondering what—what I could have missed and where he could be, and—I don't know. I just don't."

There's silence for a moment. "Oh, honey," Delia whispers then, and her fingers gently brush a strand of hair away from her forehead. "None of this is your fault. No one thinks it is."

But I do she thinks, and putting it into words, even if it's just to herself, cuts deep like the blade of a knife. Delia keeps stroking her hair.

"If there's someone I know cares for Ash as much as I do, it's you," she tells her. "I know you're worried. I'm worried too, terribly. But I know there's nothing you should blame yourself for."

Misty sniffles a little and presses for a moment her palms against her eyes, then takes her hands from her face. She finds nothing to say, and Delia doesn't add anything else either. They just sit next to each other for a bit, waiting for another night to pass.

—-

How does a person just disappear? How do they go from something you can touch—from bones and skin and warmth, from eager fingers grasping your wrist and sweaty clothes and smiles, from something you can hold to empty air over the span of one night? How do you keep that inexplicable emptiness from crushing you?

—-

"I hope you're satisfied."

Ash blinks, stopping midway through taking his backpack off. "What are you talking about?"

"If we'd followed the map like I said from the beginning we'd have reached Mahogany Town two days ago, instead it's a miracle if we aren't still lost!"

He puffs his cheeks, pouting, and drops the backpack at his feet. "Well, but we aren't lost anymore, are we? Besides, you don't need to act like it's all my fault."

"I'm acting like it's all your fault because it is," she points out, shooting him a glare. He crosses his arms.

"Well what about when you made us take that turn that got us even more lost?"

"I was trying to get us back to the path after you made us leave it to take your stupid shortcut!"

"Guys, come on," Brock tries to step in. "It's everyone's fault. What matters is that we did get back on track in the end."

"Not thanks to him," she retorts, in the same moment that he grumbles "not thanks to her". Brock sighs defeated as they continue glaring at each other. She could let it go—after all, it's not like this is the first time they get lost, and she did play her part about as much as he did—but she's dead tired and today was hot and sticky and she feels like she could kill to be in a freaking civilized place with showers and actual beds already, and hey, she wouldn't have played her part in getting them more lost if he hadn't gotten them lost in the first place; and the sum of everything grates on her nerves in an exceptional way. So she puts down Togepi and brings her hands to her hips.

"We couldn't just follow the map like any sane person would. No, because that would have made too much sense!"

"What's your problem today?" he groans, sitting down on a tree stump. She shrugs.

"I don't know, maybe the fact that we've been lost for nearly three days? Or the fact that I continue to listen to you even if I should know better by now!"

He pouts again. "Well why don't you just leave and go on your own journey if following me bothers you so much," he grumbles after a moment, looking away.

And she'll regret shaping her words to hurt him moments after they've left her lips, but for the rest of the evening she'll entrench herself into a stubborn silence anyway, stupidly refusing to let go of her petty grudge:

"Maybe I will."

—-

It's been nine days and half since he disappeared when Delia's cellphone rings.

From the other side of the room Misty watches her turn paler that she's ever been, watches her hands shake. Watches her nod almost mechanically at whatever the person on the other end is telling her, and something inside her twists and crumples until there's no air in the room and she can't breathe anymore.

Delia hangs up without speaking. She breathes in; her shoulders heave and tremble. She looks up at her and Misty thinks say it, just say it, because not knowing is almost worse than whatever might be coming next.

She watches as her lips part. For a moment no sound comes out.

"They found a body."