More angsty stuff for Jack and Audrey. Can't help it - they do it so well.
Summary: Audrey and Jack's thoughts post Season 4 and Season 5, respectively.
Disclaimer: The ownership of Jack and Audrey continues to elude me. So all I can do is toil away and write for them and hope that someday….The final blow is, of course, that I'm not even making any money off of it. (However, if you'd like to make a monetary donation, I'd be happy to provide you with my Swiss bank account number.)
Audrey, post-Season 4
The blue envelope falls and the papers scatter across the hall.
She slides down the wall a minute later until she's sitting on the floor, her legs completely unable to support her anymore. She has the distinct sensation that no part of her body is connected to any other.
Someone rushes over, she doesn't know who, and tries to help her up. But she cannot move. She stares at the woman blankly until she gives up and leaves her.
Her eyes look everywhere yet see nothing. She vaguely hears the bustle of a new shift coming in, the excited chatter about the previous night's events, office gossip to be told and retold over the next few days until everyone is satisfied they know all the details.
She is part of the details.
A few people glance at her as they walk by, but she neither notices nor cares. She has no energy to notice or care. It is all she can do to remain upright against the wall. It is all she can do to keep her thoughts from consuming her.
She does not think about her husband as she sits there. She feels his loss deeply, and she will certainly deal with it in the days to come. She will plan the memorial, the funeral, and she will mourn her fallen marriage and the man who made the ultimate sacrifice to save another.
But right now, he does not occupy her thoughts. Instead, she thinks about a different man. One who, in the space of a single day, changed the way she knew him.
She knew on this day what it was like to wake up next to him. To see his half-sleepy eyes peering at her, his lips trying to hide a smile as she prodded him awake.
She knew on this day what it was like to be saved by him. To be supported by his strength and calm even as terror threatened to overwhelm her.
She knew on this day what it was like to feel betrayed by him. To watch him rip out her heart when she had just given it to him for safekeeping.
And now on this day she knows what it is like to lose him. To know with certainty she will never see him again.
But even these thoughts do not stay with her for long. She finds that instead she is concerned about the things she doesn't know about him, the things she will now never know. They're not the things she expects to be concerned with at this moment – the how-could-hes and the why-did-hes. No, rather she worries that she will never know the mundane about him.
She has no idea, for instance, what his favorite color is. She doesn't know if there are any vegetables he can't stand, or if his parents ever forced him to play an instrument. She doesn't know the name of his first car or the first girl he kissed. She never thought to ask him if he was a baseball or a football man.
How is it possible, she wonders, to know a man intimately and yet hardly know him at all?
It is these thoughts that are running through her head when she becomes aware that someone is crouching beside her. She does not know how long she's been sitting there, and she turns her head slightly.
It is Tony. He takes her hand, but does not try to make her move, for which she is grateful. She barely knows him, yet somehow feels safe with him. His friend trusted him to save their lives, and for her that is enough.
Tony does not say anything, but sits with her. And strangely, she feels less like she is going to break into a million pieces than she did a few minutes ago.
Soon she sees a woman's legs pause next to them, and she knows that it is Michelle, though she does not have the strength to look up. And so she does not see the significant look that passes between the reconciled couple, the question in Tony's eyes, the slight shake of Michelle's head. And so she will not know in the coming weeks and months to doubt or question the story she's been told. The story that will haunt her for the next eighteen months.
Her story.