Yup. This will be a three-shot. Yay. :D
Disclaimer: I do not own The Shades of London.
Disconnected: Part II
The commanding officer was usually not one to be moved. Or, if he was, he hid it very well. He had hidden his emotions inside of him so often, and so well, that he tended to lose them for days until he finally reclaimed them before just shoving the feelings away again out of fear and disgust.
"This is heartbreaking," the girl finally stated after another round of listening to Rory's various voicemails.
"I thought you removed all of the ways she could contact us," Callum said dryly, cocking an eyebrow at him. "Not growing soft, are you?"
Stephen sighed. "How was I supposed to know that she kept the paper?" he took his phone from the center of the table and began to thumb through his contacts – which were few. RORY, however, was back in her place on the small list.
"You know what you have to do, don't you?" Boo looked at him with her arms crossed. "Call the supervisors and-"
"That'll take months," Stephen cut her off, but the man's name was already highlighted on the phone's screen. He just had to press the green button, and it would proceed to dial, and soon Rory would be a part of their Scotland Graveyard family once again.
It seemed so simple, because then Rory wouldn't be going mad anymore.
She was seeing them everywhere. She had – "Accidentally! I swear!" - terminated another ghost. The girl was peeling layer and layer of herself away until she would be completely raw to Stephen, to them. It was something that he couldn't help but feel a small bit of admiration towards her for.
His instincts told him to block the number, but they weren't contacting Rory, and neither was she contacting them, because he had not answered her calls.
Right?
His two fellow Shades were examining him with careful expressions. He shoved the mixed feelings down, down, down, and, before he knew what was happening, had pressed the dial button and was holding the phone up to his ear.
"Hello?"
She had limited herself to a call a day.
She acknlowedged the fact that she was sounding desperate, insane, sad – basically, an ex-girlfriend who had been dumped. But, she didn't care.
When you are going mad, you just don't.
Do you even know you're going mad if you are?
She never allowed herself to consider that maybe, just maybe, this had been the wrong number the entire time. Or any possibilities like that.
The Shades had thrown her a lifeline without even meaning to; she was going to cling to it. Clinging to it meant no doubt whatsoever.
"I'm sorry, but the call could not be completed as dialed-"
Her breath caught and her fingers fumbled as she attempted to redial.
"I'm sorry, but the call could not be completed as dialed-"
"No, no, no," she repeated to herself. She was dizzy; she was falling. Her vision was blurring. The policeman's number moved around in a circle as she tried one more time. Three was the charm, right? Or something?
She waited for the voicemail, because the third attempt in whatever you were attempting always worked.
"I'm sorry, but this number has been disconnected."
She couldn't breathe. It was simply too surreal. Her phone fell to her carpeted bedroom floor, and she sat on her bed; her breath came in hiccupping sobs and she became lightheaded. Only one thought made sense; only one thought her brain chose to completely process:
She was alone. Purely alone.
And when you're going mad, or already mad, that just makes it worse.
She hurried herself along the sidewalk, her eyes on focused on the ground, and barely managed to avoid lucky normal not crazy strangers; if there were any strangers at all. They were probably rushing inside now. It was raining, but then again, it was always raining.
Rory Deveaux was not exactly sure of where she was going. She had not allowed herself to trust what she was seeing, or what she was thinking, or what she was being told. The Shades – if they had even been the Shades in the first place; maybe they were absolute strangers who now knew her entire life story, and just got sick of her calling – had severed the lifeline with a sharp knife.
So, she simply meandered through her daily life, through the tedious therapist appointments, not dealing with the betrayal, and not allowing herself to ever consider that there might have been a different reason why the number had been disconnected. If she did, that thinking allowed hope; look at how well her hopes had worked for her before.
"Rory!"
She stared down at the water, watching the waves swirl and turn and merge with the falling rain. It was beautiful. What would it be like to swim down there? To watch her breaths form small bubbles before she came up for air? Or if she drowned…
"Rory!"
She glanced behind her, but the rain was gushing down in torrents, so she only saw a slim figure racing towards her. They're going to slip and fall. The observation nonchalantly crossed her mind before she turned back to watch the waves now crash against the side of the bridge.
She frowned as her fingers slipped from the railing. However, she finally got a firm grip on the slippery surface. She raised a foot.
How had she even gotten there in the first place?
"RORY GET DOWN FROM THERE."
She wanted to call back something, to yell that she could what she wanted when she wanted, but before she could do so, she misplaced some limb of hers and her arms flailed and she did not know which way was up and down for the slightest moment until she began to fall and she just couldn't breathe because the air was being whipped from her throat-
A thin, long-fingered hand reached out and grabbed hers. Their fingers grappled for a moment before the hand managed a grip on her wet wrist. A pale head that was attached to a drenched torso leaned over the edge; their facial features were contorted by a flurry of emotions as Rory Deveaux slowly swung back and forth.
It was almost cliche; what with the way it was raining and the way the stark raving mad girl had almost fallen to her early death, but was saved by the stark raving mad police officer. Not to mention the way they both stared at each other in absolute shock before the twenty years old came to his senses, and took her other wrist in his other hand.
"I need you to be still, Rory, okay?" Stephen Dene had to yell to be heard over the wind and pelting rain. His shook his head as black strands of hair got in his eyes. "Be calm!"
She wanted to nod, but then again, she also wanted to hug him and curse his soul. She decided on not replying, and could not help but realize that her mind was being quite rational. Not surpised at her fall, or by the sudden appearance of the Shade. She was thinking rationally. How was she thinking rationally when the waves could not reach her ankles? How was she thinking rationally when her heart was beating faster than a hummingbird's wings, or the speed of light?
Numb.
That was the only option.
Stephen's face twisted in the effort to bring her up, his sharp eyebrows pulled together, and it was actually sort of strange to see his expression something other than blank. She instead focused on the waters below, picking out the white foam among the darkness, but nausea overwhelmed her. Swallowing, she stared at the brick of the bridge as she was painstakingly pulled to the safety that was over the railing.
Yay for perfect-and-yet-to-be-explained-timing on Stephen's part. (And I apologize if they sound OOC. I wanted to see what would happen if Rory's stay in Bristol took a bad turn.) -MythScavenger