Disclaimers all around.
A/N: I come up with the randomest sh*t when it comes to fanfic ideas. But hey—some people like random, don't they? I mean, I do, and I don't have a problem with it—as long as I know what is going on. Alright, enjoy, good readers! I'll be sure to update more of my stories soon, just as soon as I'm done posting the one-shots I wrote this week (with no internet -_-).
And don't be shocked if this makes no sense what-so-effing-ever.
"Rain? Honey, are you alright?"
There is no reply. The woman in question can only stare straight ahead. Her are eyes locked on her mother's television screen. Her mouth is agape, and her eyes aren't blinking, and all she can do is simply stare and stare and stare, because she realizes that she knows the man on the screen—she bumped into him twice, only twice, but still, she knew him—knew him before he was dead, which he is now—and she has no idea how to feel about it.
Rain is trying to—frantically, silently—figure this odd reaction out as her mother sits next to her on the sofa—her sofa in Philly, seemingly so far away from Boston—and takes her hands in her own, trying to comfort her daughter, trying to ask her what's wrong—and all she can do is stare.
Rain is on vacation. This was supposed to be a nice, short visit, and then she would be back in Raccoon City again, to finish her commando training and become an expendable asset (the idea didn't seem too bad, though; she got paid to shoot things, which sounded pretty good) but it isn't turning out to be a nice visit anymore. She never expected to see anything like this on the news—not this, and certainly not that man—what were they calling him? James? James Coughlin?—the man from the flower shop, the man who'd been in the flower shop at the same time as she had been.
She would never have guessed that the dead man on the news she'd bumped into—spoken to, talked to, conversed with, but only twice—was a bank robber. She is shocked, and though she is numb, she doesn't know what to feel, and it's like she's suddenly forgotten how to feel, so her body feels nothing—her eyes sting, but her vision is clear and unobstructed. There are no tears, and she is willing herself not to cry, not to react the way her body wants her to.
Her mother is shaking her, trying to get her to look back at the weathered, aging face of the grey-haired woman, but Rain can only stare, and there is nothing she can do to make herself look away from the screen, away from the dead body on the news, away from the mug shot of him on the screen, from when he went to prison—for…what was it? Manslaughter?—and all she does is stare.
Afterwards—long after leaving the house she's in now—she would feel useless and be disgusted with herself for caring about someone's death—about a certain someone who she'd only caught glimpses of. But right now, she was having trouble breathing. Her vision was growing blurry, but she didn't—couldn't—cry. She could no longer see or hear the TV; her mother had switched it off, because she didn't know what was wrong with her daughter.
"Rain! Rain, it's okay! It's all the way in Boston," her mother is saying, but Rain doesn't even acknowledge that she's heard her. Her mother doesn't know that it doesn't matter that the two of them are not in Boston—it doesn't matter that they're in Philly. None of it truly matters, because she can barely think coherently at the moment. Her mind is still reeling and she feels sick to her stomach. She wants to be sick, and fears that she just might be.
She didn't even know his last name, but she remembers their short conversation, she remembers it as if she's just spoken to the man on the news—James Coughlin, was it?—no, no, he'd told her his name was Jem, just Jem—so he couldn't be the James on the screen she'd seen gunned down in front of thousands upon thousands of people on national television—but it is him, she knows it in her bones, and she can't understand why she doesn't want it to be him dead on the street, because she hardly knew him, and he wasn't a good man—no, he might even be a bad man—but that doesn't stop her from wishing it wasn't him, wishing it was someone else.
Somehow, Rain's mother finally gets through to her, and Rain is left to explain her reaction.
"I… I just didn't expect to see it." The lie slips out easily—she's been practicing, everywhere she goes, because it's in the job description. Why a commando needs the skill to lie as easily as one tells the truth, Rain doesn't know, but this lie—this heavy, ailing lie that leaves a bad taste in her mouth—is one of her first, and she's suddenly ashamed, because lying to her mother was never part of the plan.
But it wouldn't help her here if she tells her mother anything—especially if she knew the man on television, because then she might get some suspicion focused on her, and she doesn't need that, so she stands up quickly, wanting to get away from her mother, wanting to get away from the lie she just told—because she's never lied before, not to her mother, not ever, not until now.
"Mom," she's saying as she grabs her leather jacket off of the arm of the sofa, slipping it around her unsteady form with fumbling fingers, "I need to go. It's nothing—I'll see you later."
Her mother doesn't believe her. Something is wrong—something has to be, if Rain is this upset, but she has the feeling that her daughter won't tell her anything, not now—maybe not ever, and she knows, since the younger Ocampo is now a grown woman, that she has to at least pretend to let this go, even though, in her gut, she knows something is wrong—something is very wrong, and it has something to do with the man they both saw on television getting shot.
But she doesn't say anything, she just smiles and nods as her daughter flies out the door without a goodbye—typical, really, but still, Mrs. Ocampo can't help but worry as she hurries out of the living room and to the front window, near the door to her small Philly home, watching her daughter rush out into the rain.
Rain is frantic as she fumbles with her car door—her mother can see that her hands are unsteady, but only continues to watch as she finally manages to unlock the door and gets into her door, closing it. She can hear the small sedan start up—the old thing is as noisy as ever—and she watches, with a frown, as her daughter drives away.
Rain, meanwhile, is shaking slightly. She doesn't feel well. She feels sick, she needs to lie down—she needs to stop overreacting to something that doesn't even have anything to do with her, but even as she pulls over to the side of the road once she is at least a few streets from her mother's house, she begins to have trouble breathing.
Putting the car in park, and turning off the engine, Rain claps her hands over eyes, waiting for the tears, waiting for the sobs as her stomach churns. Her hands are abnormally clammy, and her nerves are shot to hell.
She doesn't know why she's acting this way, and she has no idea how to control herself as she tried to focus on her breathing, but her memories are coming back to her—but their just glimpses. It's all she's allowing her mind to do—to give her glimpses of a man who is now dead and gone.
She knows she shouldn't care. She shouldn't even be fazed by his death—she didn't even know him, but this is the first time someone close to her has died. Realizing that no one else she's ever known has passed away, she begins feeling like there is a full ton of concrete pressing down on her chest cavity, and she starts counting to ten, over and over again, as she takes in uselessly large, slow gulps of air. Being a commando meant that she might lose her squad-mates; people died doing this kind of work, they died doing the job she so badly wanted.
But still, it shouldn't have hurt this much. Rain is panicking now. She knew she should have just told her about it—about him—about Jem—about James Coughlin—but she can't tell anyone, because no one would get it, because losing someone she hadn't even been close to shouldn't hurt this much.
But it does hurt her this much, and she is in pain, and Jem's—Jame's—death is making her physically ill, so she quickly rolls down her window, leans out, and empties the contents of her stomach—her mother's famous clam chowder—onto the pavement. Wiping her mouth with her jacket sleeve, she rolls her window up, her breath coming out now in short, gasping wisps.
She only talked to him twice—twice, and that only made them acquaintances!—but for some reason, this death—the first death she's ever had to deal with, because she's heard of people dying all the time, but no one that she's ever known has died, and she figures, as she starts the car with shaking hands and a dark scowl on her face—because she's angry at herself for acting like an idiot, for being so emotionally compromised over one man's death when she might be doing the killing in the near future—and she drives away, breathing in and out, slowly—trying to calm her erratic heartbeat.
Rain soon finds herself on an open road, a road she doesn't think she's walked before, or been on before, but she doesn't care. She's tired, and she still feels ill, and she can't really figure out why, although there are reasons—reasons that don't even make sense to her right now, because she'd only met him twice, and each time she had spoken to him—twice—those two times had only been glimpses.
They had been glimpses into a man's life, and Rain wasn't so sure she ever wanted to get close to anyone—ever—in order to prepare herself for her job. She needs to get over this, and fast, because one day, she knows she will forget him, forget this—forget everything, and she won't think about it in her last moments, because she doesn't want to be sappy and upset while she's dying, so she does her best to shove her emotions into a dark corner of her mind, where they would manifest into sarcasm and bitterness as time went on, and she squares her shoulders, her boot-clad food pressing down more heavily on the accelerator.
Rain promises then and there that she will not let this affect her any longer. No tears have spilled, and no sobs have broken out of her chest. But it's still hard to breathe, and all she can do is stare straight ahead into the dark.
Forget, forget, forget…