Afraid

Title: Afraid
Rating: I'm thinking G
Warnings: None
Characters/Pairings: Sheridan/Ethan friendship
Word Count: 1,102 (including title)
Summary: Harmony hardly felt like home to her, but Ethan was there.

She'd phoned Ethan from the Charles de Gaulle.

"Ethan...Ethan, if you're there, please pick up."

The connection, continents apart, wasn't the best, and her time was limited, so she settled for speaking to a machine. "Ethan," she sighed, and the weight of her troubles seemed to hit her all at once. "I'm coming home."

Details were given, the number of her flight, her arrival at Logan International, and when she pressed the disconnect button on her cell phone, she could only pray her message reached Ethan.

She was in desperate need of a friendly face.

Less than an hour later, thousands of feet in the air, she stared out the small window, her mind whirling over the past few days' events.

Jean-Luc, it seemed, like the men before him, was only using her for his own means; the discovery of his infidelity had been the last straw.

Sheridan Crane had had enough.

She'd found herself packing, tossing the entire contents of her closets into her suitcases and making arrangements to have what didn't fit into her luggage shipped to her later in Harmony.

Harmony.

Home.

Truthfully, Harmony hardly felt like home to her, but Ethan was there.

And that was close enough to home for her.

The flight had been agonizingly long.

It'd given her too much time to think.

About Jean-Luc.

And Mimi.

Julian and Ivy.

Loveless marriages.

Ethan, and the comfort she knew just seeing him would bring.

And how she really, really hated the taste of ginger-ale.

Clutching the small carry-on bag she'd departed the plane with, Sheridan searched the crowded airport for the one face that would convince her that maybe she hadn't been too hasty, that she'd done the right thing leaving Jean-Luc in the dust, that she'd finally screwed her head on straight and gotten some sense about her. Tired and uncertain and feeling just a little bit dizzy what with all the hubbub and activity whirling around her, she lifted a shaky hand to her mouth and by sheer force of will alone kept the tears that sprung unbidden to her blue eyes at bay as she sought Ethan's welcome figure. She was rethinking the rashness of her actions for the millionth time when a familiar voice put to rest her doubts, at least for the time being.

"Aunt Sheridan? I'm sorry I'm late. I didn't get your message until…"

Ethan's gentle, tentative grip on her elbow and the apologetic note in his voice had her collapsing into his arms in relief, and the tears spilled free of their own accord.

Bewildered, Ethan just wrapped his arms more tightly around her and motioned over her shoulder for the chauffeur to retrieve her bags.

Exhaustion won out, and she slept for much of the remainder of the trip home. When she awakened again, the Mansion loomed imposingly before her, and she sucked in a startled breath at the bits and pieces of memories that came flooding back with that first sighting, most of them decidedly not warm and fuzzy.

"Impressive, isn't it?" Ethan looked at her with a smile in his eyes. Fishing her compact out of her purse for her, he offered it to her with a cheeky grin. "Here. You might need this."

Scowling at him, she snatched the compact from his hand and opened it, giving her disheveled blond hair a few half-hearted pats before deciding it was more trouble than it was worth and tossing the compact back into the bottom of her purse. "Not a word," she said warningly when Ethan continued to grin at her. "Not one word."

Ethan held up his hands protectively.

"Let's get this over with."

Following Sheridan's escape from her father's hurtful words, his father's cool indifference, and his mother's distant compassion, Ethan let himself into the cottage, a forced smile on his face. "That went well."

One look from Sheridan had him changing his tune.

"It could have been worse." He came up behind her, settling his hands upon her shoulders and giving them a comforting squeeze. "I'm glad you're home."

"You're the only one," Sheridan sighed, accepting his kiss to her cheek and allowing him to lead her to the sofa. Lowering herself to its cushions, she kicked off her heels and tucked her aching feet beneath her, curling into Ethan's side and resting her weary blond head upon his shoulder. "Maybe I was wrong to come back," she murmured. "Ethan, I don't know what I'm doing here." Her fingers opened and closed over the small, rectangular box she hadn't had the courage to open yet, and when Ethan held his hand out, she deposited it into his waiting palm.

Turning the box over in his hand, Ethan read the instructions, a furrow of concentration forming between his brows. "It sounds simple enough."

"Almost too simple," she agreed softly. Somehow, she thought such life-changing news should be more complicated to discover, not this simple, and yet, it was the hardest thing she'd been faced with so far. Leaving Paris and Jean-Luc had been easy. Facing up to her future was proving to be more intimidating than she'd counted on. It didn't make a difference that she already suspected the truth; she didn't feel ready to know it as irrefutable fact. "What am I going to do, Ethan? I'm not equipped for this. It's hardly fair…" she trailed off, quieting when his hand slid into her own. With a self-depreciating laugh, she folded her fingers over the box he offered back to her and whispered, "My life's a mess right now."

Ethan quirked an eyebrow at her, coaxing a hard-fought smile from her lips with his rebuttal. "Why not make it a complete mess?"

Standing on shaky legs, Sheridan looked down at him with tears in her eyes. "Ethan, I'm…"

Like he had so many times over the years of their shared childhood, Ethan read her unspoken thought, and he was on his feet, his arms wrapped around her before the first tears could fall, his mouth brushing against her forehead as he said, "I know." Pulling back to smile at her, he teased, "You think you're scared. Think about me, the rest of us. I don't think the world is prepared for a mini-Sheridan. You are not teaching her to drive."

Laughing through her tears, Sheridan conceded his point, "I suppose I'll leave that to her uncle Ethan."

"Uncle Ethan," Ethan repeated, watching her disappear, knowing that once she returned to him, her life, one way or the other, would be irrevocably changed. "I like the sound of that."

This is actually the fic that ultimately gave me the idea for Pieces of My Heart.

I envisioned this as the first in a series of fics, alphabet fics, with various pairings. Some of the stories might pick up a story thread and continue it, but for the most part, they don't have to.

What do you think?

Do you want to see more ficlets like these?

Prompt me.

Give me a song title, a couple words (or, heck, even a sentence), a pairing that you'd like to read about, and I'll see what I can do.

I tend to write mostly Sheridan/Luis, but as you can probably see if you've read any of my fics before, I'm not completely against trying other characters.

Next up, the letter B.

Click on that review button and leave me a note about this ficlet and/or your ideas for future ficlets.

Thanks so much for reading!