Disclaimer: Ok, it's Hank's. This goes for the entire fic, that way I won't have to put in a disclaimer for every chapter...
Fic Rating: T
Pairing: erm... take a guess -g-
Something totally new. To sum it up in a few words: Jack, Sam, mid-season two. Which means no MS and definitely no Anne in sight. This entire fic is from Sam's point of view, but the casefile will definitely involve Jack. I'll try to update regularly, so you'll probably be hearing from me again soon…
Long story? You bet ; ) I guess there comes a point when one-shots aren't enough.
Mariel, what would I do without your expert eye? Thank you for your suggestions!
Daymares
Chapter 1 - Daymares
Day and night, she remembers. They're vivid memories of randomly spent time, of what people did, of who they used to be. Where they worked, who they knew, who they loved. She doesn't know how to refer to this. They're like nightmares, but she thinks of them more as daymares− which is worse, because you can't wake up from a bad dream if you're not asleep.
There's blood, and far too many faces. Sometimes they die, sometimes they simply vanish. She started this long ago, with a young man with unrealizable dreams. Then a man and his son went missing. Two days later, it was a housewife. A teacher. A policeman, a bank robber, a surgeon. All equally lost, all equally frightened, all waiting to be rescued, as if by some miracle found could be synonymous with saved.
The years have passed, and somehow she's ended up looking for the errant ghosts of an entire city. She can't escape them anymore, and where once stood a single silhouette now breathes a crowd, of men and women and children whose lives were in her hands. They stare at her from the white board, or from a file, but more often than not she meets with their memories in the streets, and sees them eating at a table outside that small restaurant near her apartment, talking and carrying out daily activities. They look real, except they're not, their lives have been carefully uncovered down to the last details, and their departing thoughts now reside solely in a box in a dusty archive room.
"He's young," she reflects when she's handed yet another picture, another life. He's young and missing and she can't detach her eyes from that innocent gaze.
"Do you know him?" Martin asks curiously, gathering his notes from their last team meeting.
No. Yes. Maybe. She might have caught a glimpse of him at the movie theatre, in a mall, aboard a subway. Or she might never have seen him at all, only he looks familiar because Jason, her first case, had the same light around him and the same desire to live inscribed on his face. She knows them all, even those who aren't missing yet. She sees them everywhere and asks herself who they are and where they're from, where they go shopping and what they do for a living. She wonders who would notify the police if they went missing, who would be worried.
She wonders who would miss them if they never came home.
She's paired up with Jack today. He doesn't look like himself lately. She doesn't know why. He's tired and agitated and she wishes she could look at him and not see it. That way she wouldn't wonder what's on his mind and whether he sleeps at night, and wouldn't think of ways in which, once, she could've helped.
"We're here," he says, pulling up in front of the high school Mathew attends. Jason, she remembers, used to go to a place like this, with the same parking lot and the same American flag floating in the chilly breeze. They've visited tens of companies and pizza joints and trendy nightclubs; they've paced through museums and houses and parks, and yet− yet there's something about this school that triggers recognition, that makes him turn to her. And it's written plainly across his face; he's thinking about another day, another case that brought them to a school similar to this one on an afternoon that wasn't so different.
Before he can say anything and before her expression betrays her thoughts, she steps out of the car. She doesn't want to talk about it, doesn't want those memories back, because Jason won't be here when she walks inside a classroom and she doesn't want his ghost to implore her for another chance, another life on this earth.
"Martin," Jack calls half an hour later as they're walking back to his car. "I want you to make sure Mathew wasn't with someone called Ty Ruckart last night. The school principal says Ruckart was kicked out last month for bringing in a firearm. Apparently he and Mathew were seen together a couple of times... yeah, Ruckart with a t. Thanks."
He slides behind the wheel and buckles his seatbelt, inserts a key, and sighs like he needs to clear his mind but can't quite figure out a way.
She tucks her hands in her pockets; takes them out, clumsily puts her notepad back inside her coat− she doesn't know what to do with her hands. Finally, she turns, feeling his gaze on her.
"We'll find him, Jack," she says in a whisper.
He starts the car with a small smile.
It's raining today, not snowing, but it's still cold, and droplets of rain splash on the windshield. She thinks about them− the droplets. How they fall too. How they fall from the sky and run down the glass and leave watery trails and how they'll end up down the sewer. Then they'll evaporate and they'll hang in the air and then, one day, they'll fall again.
They always fall.
o o § o o
The building in front of them is dark, the street empty, and the two combined remind her of another night and another stakeout. Awkward tones replaced by lighter ones, a case-related conversation turning more personal; and there was something about witnessing your supervisor trying to eat a hotdog properly that took the stress off a rookie's shoulders.
Don't laugh, Samantha, you haven't eaten yours yet.
They'd talked and grown closer that night, and it's now that she questions all those hours they spent together; if perhaps she should have seen it coming, if she could have prevented it. It feels like a game of hide-and-seek these days; or a game of chess that draws to the end. It's like waiting for the last straw, the last blow.
Checkmate.
"It bothers you, doesn't it?"
She can't see his face completely, but he sounds cautious, like he knows he's walking on egg shells.
"What bothers me, Danny?"
He takes his time before answering, idly fidgeting with a button on his sleeve; a button she supposes is blue but that looks as dark as the rest of the car. "That he no longer talks to you."
A sigh. "Yes. Yes, it does."
She only talks because she knows he understands.
He observes his other sleeve. "Maybe he doesn't know how to do it."
She wishes it were that simple. But Jack knows how to talk to her and she knows how to talk to him. Maybe they just have nothing left to say, nothing left to share. And that's why she wants to run; because it's easier to hide in that semblance of paradise you've built to be unreachable; easier to leave and ask yourself later if for once, you shouldn't have.
"You know what's so cruel, Danny?"
"I know, Sam," he says slowly. "The fact that he's here and at the same time… he's not."
"Sometimes I think about quitting."
Danny abandons his sleeve to look at her. "But you stay," he tells her quietly. "We all do."
She stays, but she's blind. She's blind since she met Jack. Since they deliberately overlooked what should have been obvious from the beginning, all those signs they should've learned how to read. Perhaps it was fate, that one day they would end up doing more than just hold each other's gaze for too long. Perhaps she was destined to meet Jack, he was destined to meet her, they were both destined to find each other and fall together.
There's a half-open folder on the dashboard with information about their suspect, but it's too dark to read the words, to make sense of this case. Look for a person, find a person− or not− then fill in the paperwork, and then−
"I wish I could file it away. File him away."
Like words on reports, reports in binders, binders in drawers. File him away with a period and a signature and just one last look, one last glance into those dark eyes.
"No you don't."
She smiles bitterly, and reaches out for the folder. Mathew's picture is there along with their suspect's, and she doesn't need light to see his features, the twinkle in his eyes. This was a happy moment− and this is why she hates pictures. They capture an instant and make it eternal, but forget the life behind it. She wants more than a face; more than a frozen expression. She wants the sounds behind and the smell in the air and the movements of the photographer.
You can't sum up a day in a word and can't convey all your feelings in a keepsake and a two-by-three inches snapshot can't possibly mean as much as an entire life.
"Samantha? Do you want something to eat?"
She wants a hot dog. With a lot of mustard and ketchup and she wants Jack to be the one eating it with her. But he's not here and the vendor's closed and the only thing Danny can offer her is something from the vending machine across the street, so she shakes her head. She doesn't eat anymore; not much at least.
For a fleeting instant she imagines pizzas with pepperoni and green peppers and chocolate donuts with frosting− all the things she used to love. She craves something else now; craves a night with him or the taste of his lips, the angles of his face, the feel of his fingers on her skin; she craves the way his hand would brush against her cheek on a cold night like this one.
She thinks about him too much. She thinks too much, period. Of the white board that will never be white again; of guns and blood, Barry Mashburn and Anwar Samir and Annie Miller and those no one could save. The nightmares come back, and she's trapped, she can't escape the images, the visions, the memories. It's dark but she can't rest, she can't sleep.
She's awake and they're daymares.