Note: Sentimental song, not a lot I could do to change that. Also, my one cheating-song: Far too short a song, so I let it play through twice.
10. Fire and Rain - James Taylor
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It's a month after they got back, and Laurie is holding him as he breaks apart again. Each time, it is harder than the last. She's desperate to find any comfort she can offer and she finally pulls out something she's been holding back on for a while now, hoping she wouldn't have to do it; but he's getting worse, not better. So: she looks past him and lies. Jon wasn't a killer by nature. It had to look the way it did, to fool Adrian. But they don't really know, do they? He could be anywhere, anywhen. Missing, but out there, somewhere. Maybe?
It's a hard sell, the red-and-white memories burning too fresh in his mind; it says something for how badly he wants to believe it that it seems to help at the moment, to calm the breakdown. But it is the wrong thing to say.
Because Dan checks every morning now, to see if he's missing any sugar. He checks every night for a broken lock. Every day for forty years, he finds nothing, and the gradual chipping away of hope is far worse than lack of it would have been. Years pass and Archie falls to pieces on the basement floor and Laurie goes on before him and that thread of hope grows dimmer and dimmer all the while. Then, suddenly it seems, he is an old old man, alone, dying in his bed–
(we never die in bed)
–days or hours left. It feels like he's had his eyes closed for a while when a voice cuts through the haze, rough and hoarse and familiar.
"…Daniel."
Eyes open on a face that shouldn't exist, just as he remembers it from blurry pictures on the television and his last real glimpse in the snow. Hallucination? Real? There's no way to tell and, he can sense, not enough time left for explanation.
Eyes like steel-blue rain regard him hollowly from under the fringe of red, then uncharacteristically soften. One hand settles awkwardly on his shoulder, and it feels real enough, stilted and uncertain but trying. An audible grunt, then with typical eloquence: "...doesn't hurt."
And no, it really doesn't.
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