Always Waiting
She sat in her favourite chair. Perfectly placed it had a view of the street and the small park opposite the house; she would sit there for hours to watch the young families' picnic or play ball on Sunday afternoons. It was the most comfortable place for her to sit these days as her age began to take its toll, even as it was doing to her beloved husband. Sometimes it made her laugh to think of the pair of them staggering along between kitchen and lounge like a pair of decrepit old tortoises. Most times, though, she would consider the time they lost and the life they had missed having and swallow back tears as she glimpsed those 'could have been' moments – discoveries, experiences, homes, children.
Like what their son might have been. Although, if she was truthful, she had a family even though neither of those 'boys' were biologically hers. One was a fond smile when she thought of him, a warm hug when she saw him, a gentle chuckle when he came out with some obnoxious comment that somehow did nothing to cause upset. The other...well, he was entirely different; he was almost the son she never had. Whilst the two men could be considered brothers in a way, she only ever loved one as the child born of her passions, of her joys. He saw what she saw yet more deeply and more completely than she ever had. She could try to list every aspect of his personality that endeared him to her but she knew that if she tried she would never find all the words. So she had come to the conclusion that it was enough to love him as best as she could offer without bringing insult.
Ernest told her she was silly for not saying something; he figured that anyone who could think like that and bring great discoveries to life was worth telling, at least once, that someone cared. But he understood her fear as well. That's why she was sitting in this chair again, just like she did after receiving each note such as the one that was slowly slipping from her fingers to drift to the floor. If she was to await news a comfortable chair and a pleasant view were always the first things to bring some semblance of ease to a tense feeling. So Catharine would wait here, with a cup of tea brought to her by the sweet girl who helped in the house, until she gained a new note from the same sender. Praying for a matching name at the bottom rather than that of someone else. Hoping for good news to come and not to read of something that would bring her tears.
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He stared out the window upon the rain-blurred street. How she had managed it, he couldn't fathom, but the difference between the family members now was a subtle shift toward warm from the ice that had been there before. He still didn't approve of her occupation – damned armed forces – but he couldn't be so angry at the light of joy in her face. If she enjoyed her work, using her intelligence and her ingenuity, then what right had he to condemn her for becoming part of the organisation that ruined their lives? Especially now, after having found stable ground in the long tempestuous relationship he had shared with his father.
That if nothing else impressed upon him the changes in his sister. She was more confident than he remembered and far more determined – the way she had demanded he and their father spend some time together had made that very clear. She didn't, couldn't, tell him much about her work but what little she had spoken of had made him think better of the distances between them. These friends she mentioned seemed to be so important to her although when she spoke of one there was pain in her eyes; the same kind of pain he remembered seeing in his father's eyes once or twice when he talked of people he used to serve with. It wasn't for long and was soon replaced with joy and warmth but he wasn't completely blind. He wasn't blind to the flash of something more that skittered behind those sky-blue orbs either when she had mentioned someone else on her team or the deep respect for the third member. He just hoped that she was telling him the truth about deep space telemetry and radar.
Of course, thinking about it, he knew she wasn't. He knew his dad wasn't telling the truth about his new advisory-ambassadorial role either. But his dad was experienced in getting both in and out of complicated situations whereas the brotherly emotions in him were determined that his sister wasn't. He kept feeling like there was something going on and there was nothing he could do to stop it. Every time she called there was relief that she was there; that first word of hello made his entire body instantly relax from tension he didn't realise he was holding. The trouble was he always felt like he was waiting for the call to be from someone else, telling him something bad. Without his wife knowing, certainly without telling his sister, Mark would pray that each time he felt like something was wrong the phone would ring and he'd hear his sister on the other end of the line. Staring out the window every time, just waiting for the call.
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His wife would tell him to relax; enticing him back into the home he had built for them with soft words of comfort and reassurance, she would work at reliving the tension in his shoulders. There were moments when her gentle ministrations would serve their purpose and he would forget for a time but when his gut told him something was this wrong, well, it was all he could to ease himself with menial tasks. Chopping firewood gave him something physical to release his concerns into without fear of hurting anyone other than himself as slivers of wood flew from the axe, occasionally leaving a bloody trace on his bared arms. Yet even after hours of effort that left his arms pulsing in time with his pounding heart, sweat teasing over his skin, he still felt that insidious fear deep inside his spirit.
When he had been younger, less understanding of the galaxy beyond his world, it had been easy to believe that nothing could ever harm his father. A child's belief in their parent's invincibility that carries through the years until so brutally broken in the moment of seeing that parent in pain, just as he had seen his father in pain. His faith, however, always held; growing stronger every time he heard word that all was well. He was the son of a warrior from a race of warriors yet still he feared the day that he knew would eventually come.
Watching as the encampment began to wake, he idly noted that the same pattern was occurring now as every morning previously. Tent flaps twitching as faces peered out to check the area; shadows forming where none were before to coalesce into living beings; the smell of new struck fires drifting upon the air, reminding him that the morning meal would soon be ready. His wife slipped past him, her scent lifting his heart even as her hand trailed down over his arm leaving him feeling momentarily bereft as she walked away. The distraction of his love was not enough; staring out toward the Chappa'ai he waited for a message to come. It was the only message that Rya'c had waited to hear all his life, the only set of words he waited for every day…the only words he truly feared.
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She had thought her waiting days were over from the minute the divorce papers had dropped through the letterbox, thumping upon the floor in dark finality. She could never have guessed that a few years later the one incident that had precipitated the collapse of her marriage would lead to a reconciliation, of sorts. Certainly she had believed that she would never again be listening for the telephone to ring or for the knock at the door that would sound like a something being pounded through wood – the final nail in the coffin of her marriage. It had been buried, all of those feelings and fears, deep away in darkness. How odd that it would take an outside viewer, full of innocent need to help, to make her see that she would still worry despite the distance between them.
She was an Air Force wife. She had walked into the marriage with her eyes open, knowing that he would be placed in danger but proud of him for serving his country. The Middle East changed that pride - months of dull hope that slowly turned to grief and the cutting knowledge that she would have to explain to her son where his father had gone. After that she had thought it could never be as bad again…until that afternoon when the gun shot rang out. In the wake of that day she had felt everything fall away, even her marriage. Watching as an outsider as this man and this woman went from close partners to distant strangers in a matter of days, she had seen everything through a numbing haze.
But now...now that she knew what he was involved with, she couldn't help but wonder if he was all right. It crept up on her when she was reading the paper or washing dishes or weeding the flower beds. Persistent. Insidious. Nothing she could ignore as her eyes strayed toward the front door or the telephone, a spark of fear in case one or the other should make the sound she had dreaded so before. She should curse him for putting her in this position; there were no formal ties between them any more. She shouldn't care. Yet even as she tugged another straggly weed from the ground Sara knew she was waiting all over again.
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Waiting for news of the ones they loved, for the message that they hoped would never come. Always waiting.