"You are my outstanding officer."
She could still hear it from time to time. Those same five words. They'd creep up on her every so often, jump into her consciousness when she was least expecting it, climbing from the shower, threading through the busy marketplace, sitting quietly in the morning with a coffee and the newspaper.
Ros Myers had heard of lot of things in her lifetime. Some things said to her, some at her, others not intended for her at all – but then, such had been the nature of her job. Yet for some reason those above all others were the ones she came back to.
It had taken her a long while to figure out just why that was, putting it at first down to the fact that it was normal to remember kindly words in a distressing situation. But it was more than that, and dismissing it as such was to ignore its importance. The old Ros did that daily, the new Ros had time to sit back and think, something which in itself had taken a great deal of practise. But in doing so she had been able to understand why the words refused to leave her alone.
They reminded her of the makeshift family she'd never actually asked for, the people who'd trusted her, and who in the end, she wished she'd been more like.
Harry for instance, speaker of the infamous words. He had spent easily twice as long in the security services, seen many worse sights than she had, such as, she mused wryly, her own death, but with it all he'd managed to remain human. As Ros and he had sat staring death in the face, his first instinct had been to comfort her, despite everything she'd put him through, despite her cold demeanour and turn-coat tendencies. His voice as he'd spoken conveyed no harshness, no falseness, just a desperation to tell her the truth and protect her as best he could in her last moments. The thing that had surprised her most of all however had been how she'd begged for his compassion. She'd always considered herself the sort of person who would have faced death defiantly, instead she'd turned into a small girl crying for her father-figure, which in the end, was what Harry was. To everyone on the grid. In fact, he'd proven to be a better father than her real one, certainly more genuine. Her real father had never told her how important she was to him, she doubted she was, but Harry had. She couldn't just forget that.
Whenever her thoughts began to drift along these lines, they inevitably floated back to Adam. She'd often wonder how things would have been if they'd met in a different world. If he had just been Adam Carter, business man and she had been Ros Myers housewife. She could almost picture him coming through the front door in his suit, being greeted by the children and sweeping them up into his arms and plastering them with kisses. It was here the daydreaming usually stopped, firstly because she generally hated girly 'what ifs' and secondly because she could never quite picture herself in the role of mother and wife. Perhaps it wasn't meant to be. Besides, Adam still deep down mourned the loss of a real wife who'd he'd loved completely. Ros was a rebound, plain and simple, she'd provided him something real in a rapidly unravelling world and then made the fatal mistake of falling for the illusion herself. It would never have worked she told herself.
She had to tell herself that – it kept her sane.
Truth be told she missed them all at different times. Connie, who she barely knew, a strange combination of go-getting rebel and motherly patience. Malcolm, whose seering intelligence and brain bending humour had grown on her so subtely that she'd been surprised to discover she actually missed it. He was a remarkable man. Not a brave, all out action man ruled by his emotions the same as Adam was, but pretty fantastic in his own way too. It was only now she could let herself feel guilty for her part in the death of his best friend Colin, only now that she could allow herself to make the connection between his loss and the poem by Kipling pinned to his monitor. He more than anyone had reason to hate her, yet he'd never given her cause for a moment's doubt.
Zaf. She often thought of Zaf. Wondered what became of him and felt the stab they'd all felt at his disappearance. In the time since she'd left they could have already found him, buried him and avenged him. The problem was, she'd never know.
She'd always been driven to find Zaf – she didn't know why. The fact he was a member of the team she'd told herself at the time, but now she had to admit it was friendship, not conventional maybe, but she'd liked him. Zaf was always fun to be around, a mixture of humour, business and flirtation. He'd livened up the grid and she couldn't bear it when he wasn't there. Someone had reached into their family and snatched him away.
She frowned. Their family?
She found herself thinking of Jo a lot too. Just some little raw recruit when she first arrived, like a wide-eyed puppy playing with the big dogs. God how far she'd come though, how much further she'd gone since…not that Ros would find out. Ros' first assumption of Jo was that she was going to be competition, but over time something else had grown, almost…almost the sort of relationship she would expect sisters to have. Ros cared for Jo, yes she also mixed concern with scorn and some ridicule, but Jo had potential, and so she had looked out for her.
She could see them all, sitting in the grid, at their desks, bustling round, someone cracking a joke and people stifling laughter, rolling eyes and smiling. But it wasn't a real image, it didn't represent reality. It was a memory, like looking up at the stars and seeing them how they were thousands of years ago. It saddened her to think they might all be gone.
She'd managed to move on with her life, picked somewhere hot and obscure, got by on her skill and expertise, some days she even felt happy, but she knew she'd carry the grid around with her forever, the image of her friends standing at her graveside weeping. Never before had people cared for her quite the way they had, and she'd thrown it all away – for what? It was almost too much to bear.
"You are my outstanding officer."
She smiled, they always had that effect on her. Slowly she folded the paper and let it rest on the table. The sun was streaming in through the balcony doors, a hot but delicate breeze ruffling the edge of the drapes. She sat back and let the light splash onto her face, the memories drifting through her mind.
No matter where she ended up, no matter who she met and what she came to believe, one thing was set in stone. She loved those people.
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Just something that was begging to be written really...well, for me anyway! This is working on the way this series has worked out however, of course, if she does end up coming back, I suppose it still works as a gap-filler or something! Lol! Merry Christmas all!