silence.
tom/doug.
character death.
Disclaimer: I own nothing
Doug didn't normally enjoy the silence. There was always some kind of background noise in the environment, no matter where he was. Radio, television, the conversations of the people surrounding him. He liked to sit alone at home sometimes, tv on mute, opera music playing in the background. When he was a baby his mother used to play opera music to help him fall asleep. His mother had loved opera music. Doug had heard it every day of his life for the first five years. After that he had stopped listening to it as much, and only gotten back into the listening habit after joining Jump Street. Julia Penhall had never been to an actual opera, though. Doug wished she could have had the chance to.
There was silence now. Almost. Doug could hear the distant, faint cries of a bird calling out, the slight whistle of the wind. Not a lot of sound could be found out here where the dead were, it seemed.
Doug stood at the edge of a recently dug grave. Tom Hanson's recently dug grave. It was next to his father's. Everybody else had left hours before. Doug couldn't find it in him to leave. He didn't want to, not without Tom. He wanted to just wake up, to suddenly realize that all of this was a dream – a terrible nightmare, really, but a dream all the same – and when he awoke Tommy wouldn't be dead; Tommy wouldn't be lying underneath the mound of dirt only a few inches away from him.
TOM HANSON; DEDICATED POLICE OFFICER; LOVING SON...
Doug stared blankly at the words. He was more than that. Doug, of course, knew that they had limited space. At the funeral, Doug had had a speech prepared, ready to speak out to everybody gathered about Tom Hanson, how great he was as a person in general, not just as an officer or a son – although he was amazing in each of those roles in his own way – but he'd been unable to speak. He hadn't cried. He had just broke down without all of the theatrics and left the podium. Judy had gone up and spoken instead. Doug was glad. She had cried while she spoke, but she was able to generally get across all the points Doug had wanted to. Doug had cried afterwards. At the actual burial, when they had been lowering Tom's casket into the ground. The service had been open casket. Tom had been dressed in a black suit – it had been his father's. His mother had suggested it and nobody felt a need to argue. Tommy looked nice in the suit. And he had looked so peaceful lying – dead – in his casket.
Tom's uncle had been at the funeral. His mother's older brother. She had cried, a lot, and he was the one she had to go to for comfort. She'd lost her husband in the line of the duty; now she'd lost her son, her only child, to the same cause. She had seemed, happy, though, because 'her Tommy had dyed saving somebody.' Or so she thought. Doug knew Tom had been shot clean and through by their suspect and Tom had been unarmed when it had happened. But why tell his mother that? It didn't seem right.
At the burial, Doug had cried. He'd lost so many people now. He had loved Tom. Loved him so much that it hurt too much to watch him being lowered into the ground. But he still had. It seemed like not watching would be a disgrace to the younger man. Instead he watched with unfocused eyes – the tears stung and distorted his vision but he didn't wipe them away. And four hours later, he still stood, this time watching the ground Tommy now lay underneath, this time with clearer, better focused vision. The tears had stopped, but he wasn't sure if the pain ever would.