It's been a year. One long, hard, painfully emotional year. One that left everyone a little bit more messed up than they had been the year before
It had all started on the night after New Year's. No one had noticed anything until it was too late to do anything. He disappeared without a single trace. Left everything except for his gun and a picture of the Mason family taken before the Skitters attacked and turned their lives into a living hell on Earth.
What shocked everyone the most was who it was that disappeared. Out of everyone they had never expected this to happen. Not him. He was too loyal; too stubborn; too close to his family. He was just always there fighting for the cause, for his family.
When others went to retreat he was the one who steam rolled in, like an idiot (a respected idiot), but ultimately saving the day. It was the curve-ball that they had never expected. Or even thought to expect.
It was Hal.
He was just gone only leaving a note with two simple words. "I'm sorry." He left it someplace where everyone would see it if they bothered to look, but no one did. They all thought he had gone on an unannounced scavenge trip for supplies. But then a routine day trip turned into two days then three days. On the fourth day everyone started panicking. Tom tore Hal's room apart looking for something, anything, to give him a hint as to where his eldest son had gone.
He only found those two simple words on a small piece of paper held under an army knife that Tom had given Hal after everything had started.
There was no reason anyone could see, no tell tale signs that said he was thinking of leaving that anyone could think of, nothing. He didn't say anything at all about wanting to leave to his brothers or Maggie.
No one wanted to believe it, but it was undeniable. His things were there, his family was there, everything was just there except for one thing. Him.
Everyone expected him to just walk through the door with a smirk on his face laughing telling them all it was just a big prank. They waited and waited and waited. Days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months and those moths turned into a year. But they kept their waiting.
They went about their everyday business, the Skitters where still out there, but they would always look up when they heard a door open hoping it would be Hal. It never happened.
The Mason family got hit with the impact of Hal's disappearance the worst, obviously they were family. But Maggie was in a close second. She would sit in her room, her room that she shared with Hal, just staring at his things. His boots, his knife, his blanket, everything. Just stare at it sadly allowing the tears to fall freely from her eyes; that is until Ben or Matt would come in and tell her that it was time to go on another scavenge trip or it was time to eat.
Matt didn't really understand what was going on. He didn't know why his brother hadn't returned like he always did. He didn't understand why he dad was no way more protective of his sons now than before. He didn't understand why Maggie wouldn't come out of the room she shared with Hal anymore. Whenever he asked when Hal was coming back Ben would wrap him in a hug and say a very unbelievable "Soon, Mattie." He just wanted his brother back. Correction he wanted his brothers back. Ben had become way surlier than before and would often train on his own away from everyone not letting anyone near him.
Everyone was suffering, some more open than others but they were still suffering. Hal was important to all of them, and they clung to the hope that he would come back even though the evidence was stacked against that hope.
But it was one year, on the anniversary of Hal's disappearance, when Tom, Matt, Ben, and Maggie had gone out on a scouting mission when their prayers get answered, if only in the slightest way.