***This chapter is inspired by Nickelback's "I'd Come For You."
"So if you're ever lost and find yourself all alone, I'd search forever just to bring you home." ~Nickelback
Jenny's P.O.V.
"Hey, look who's back," Sarah grinned as James and I walked into the ARC a week later.
"Yes, while we would have preferred staying in Paris, we knew we had to come home and play Buffy The Dinosaur Slayer," James said.
"Well it's good to have you back," Sarah said, giving me a quick hug.
"Great. If it isn't Daddy and his new sidekick," James The Second said as he walked in, staring at his father with contempt.
"She is not my sidekick. She is my wife," James corrected.
"Who cares?" his son retorted.
"While watching this profoundly strange version of father-son bonding is quite entertaining, I should probably inform you guys that we have an anomaly due to open in three hours," Joseph said withou sarcasm, walking into the main room holding his beloved book.
"Oh yay. More prehistoric friends to get my suit dirty," James complained.
"Hi Jenny," Abby said as she and Connor walked in.
"Hey you guys. Anything interesting happen while we were gone?" I asked.
"Actually, it's been pretty boring. Sometimes I think I miss having to chase the creatures around, it made life so much more interesting," she sighed.
"Oh yes, because dinosaur chasing is such a terribly productive hobby," James said sarcastically.
Abby opened her mouth to retort, but James's mobile started ringing. He picked it up, and as the person on the other end started talking, the blood drained from his face, and a look of pure fear masked his eyes. His hand trembled slightly as he held the phone, and he muttered an almost inaudible "yes, thank you, goodbye," before hanging up.
"James darling what's wrong?" I asked immediately.
"It's Elizabeth. She's gone missing," he said shakily, and I slid his phone from his hand before he dropped it.
"How long has she been missing for?" I asked.
"That was Sarah Marie that called. She was over at my brother's house with Elizabeth, and Liz said she was just going for a walk. That was three hours ago, and Sarah Marie can't find her anywhere," he explained, taking deep breaths to calm himself down.
"Don't worry, we'll find her. I promise," I said, sliding his phone back into his pocket.
"Ah, Lester?" Connor said, staring at one of the screens of the A.D.D. as the alarm started shrieking.
"What?" he demanded sharply, but I could tell under the cold demeanor how frayed his nerves were.
"I just pulled this up to check, just in case, to make sure there weren't any anomalies near your house that this somehow hadn't picked up on, and we have a problem," he said, eyes still fixed on the screen.
"Which is?" James sad impatiently.
"We sealed an anomaly there three days ago, and it says here that it's reopened somehow, which is why the alarm is going off" Connor explained nervously, currently looking quite afraid of James. If I didn't know him well enough to know that under the fury he was terrified, I would've been afraid too.
"How is that possible? Is your little sealer thing not working?" he demanded, looking between Connor and the screen.
"It's the strength of the anomaly. It's the biggest one we've ever seen before. The power of the sealer wasn't quite enough to hold it closed apparently," he explained.
"Well round up the team and let's go!" James yelled, making Connor wince.
While Connor, Abby, Sarah, and James The Second went off the gather up the rest of the field team, I turned to James and took his hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze. He didn't say anything, but I could tell how rigid he was and how absolutely scared he was. His daughter was missing, for god's sake.
"Let's go," Becker nodded as he walked in with Stephen and James The Second flanking him.
Lester's P.O.V.
As we drove out to my brother's house, my thoughts drifted away from me on their own accord. My mind played out painful memories, ones that made me realize just how much I had failed Elizabeth. Had I been around more, I could have protected her, could have warned her never to go through an anomaly. Because of my negligence, she could be seriously wounded or even dead. I was not an emotional person, nor was I a sentimental one, but she was my daughter. She was one of the only four people in the world that could make me vulnerable. The other three being James, Sarah Marie, and Jenny.
I closed my eyes to try to block out the painful onslaught of memories, but they only started coming faster. Suddenly, I felt as if it was twelve years ago again, and I was standing in a hospital room with my wife and my third child. My breathing hitched slightly as the flashback consumed me.
"She doesn't bite, James," my wife had laughed as I tried awkwardly to hold Elizabeth. I had already been through holding Sarah Marie and James after they had been born, but I hadn't gotten any better at doing it right. I was always so scared of dropping one of them.
"Hello Elizabeth," I had whispered softly to the small, crying baby I held. She looked just like me, with greenish brown eyes and the tiniest bit of brown hair.
Then the memories started progressing, and then it was months after she had been born, and I was remembering her first word being "daddy." I saw her on her first day of school, clinging to my leg and begging me not to leave her. I saw her at nine years old when her cat had died, and I'd had to stay with her until she fell asleep.
As the car came to a halt, it jolted me out of my reverie. I broke away from the memories and returned to reality, but my thoughts were still broken and fragmented as we started down the old walking trail behind my brother's house, the one leading to the anomaly.
"I found the anomaly!" Connor called from ahead of us, and I immediately ran to him.
I looked up at the enormous anomaly, finding its size quite overwhelming. Without thinking twice, I took off through it, ignoring the calls behind me. I felt my feet touch the ground, and when I looked around I saw that I was in a field. I didn't know which era I was in, and quite frankly didn't care. I began calling out for Elizabeth, repeating her name loudly until I became hoarse. The rest of the field team came through behind me, and we began the search for my daughter.
Just hold on Lizzie. I'm coming for you, I thought as we began walking forward into a world that wasn't our own.
Elizabeth's P.O.V.
"Daddy," I choked, trying and failing to raise my voice. I had heard him calling my name, but I couldn't call back to him. My voice was too weak and too hoarse.
I looked down at my leg, at the gruesome gash there. Blood soaked my left pants leg and the ground below me. All of this because I had been stupid and curious. I had overheard Sarah Marie talking to Stephen on the phone about whatever "anomalies" were, and I'd figured out that they were talking about one being nearby. Determined to find out what everyone was so bent on keeping from me, I had left the house to search for anything out of the ordinary.
Once I had found the bright, glittering sphere, I had walked up to it, only to trip and stumble though. I had fallen into a strange, alien world, and I had then been chased by a young looking creature I was just about positive was a raptor of some sort. I'd read about different species of dinosaurs, and I was apparently in a completely different era from my own. And don't forget the fact you're on the verge of passing out from blood loss, I thought to myself.
"Elizabeth!" I heard my father's voice cry out again.
I'm so sorry Daddy. I'm sorry you had to follow me here. I'm sorry that I'll probably be dead by the time you find me. I'm so sorry… I thought, trailing off in my head as the world faded to black around me.
Lester's P.O.V.
As we walked through a thicket of woods, I was suddenly coughing from the strong stench of blood. I looked around, wondering what smaller creature had been victimized by a larger predator and was lying in the bushes dying right now. I thought I heard raspy, choked breathing, too loud to belong to a small animal.
Moving so fast I almost tripped several times, I took off through the woods, following the sound of raspy breathing. I heard it get louder and louder, and the smell of blood was so strong I almost gagged. When I finally reached the source of the sound, I felt my pulse start thumping erratically at what lay in front of me.
Elizabeth.
She was unconscious and laying on the ground, a fast stream of blood continuing to pool under her. She was stark white, and her breathing was getting fainter by the second. I scooped her up into my arms and looked down at her, unable to believe what I was seeing. I could barely process the sight before me.
"I found her!" I yelled as I walked back into the open field.
"We have to get her to a doctor," Becker said, leading us back through the anomaly.
"There's no time, she's lost too much blood," I said, shaking my head.
"Lay her down," Joseph instructed.
I gently laid her down on the ground and held tightly to her cold, limp hand as Joseph cut away her left pants leg with a pair of scissors from his pocket and then began cleaning her up. He pulled a needle and thread from the inner pocket of his lab coat, and I shuddered when I realized what had to be done. He would have to stitch her up with what he had, it was the only way to save her.
His eyes became intensely focused as he began trying to staunch the bleeding. James handed him the tank top he'd been wearing, without once tearing his gaze from his wounded baby sister. Joseph's fingers flew rapidly as he stitched the wound, and we all waited for something to happen.
"I have the bleeding stopped, the wound is closed. I always hate telling people this, but now we wait," Joseph said, staring down at my daughter.
"Come on baby, you have to wake up," I whispered, brushing her hair from her face. All of my years of building a mask of cool detachment had long since shattered, but that was the last thing I cared about. I laid my hand over her heart, trying not to scream in fear and frustration at its faint beating.
"Daddy?" whispered a faint, rusty voice.
I looked down to see her eyelashes fluttering, and I felt my erratic pulse finally slow as I pulled her against me and wrapped my arms around her. She buried her face in my shoulder, and I could feel her trembling in my arms. As I rested my face in her hair, I silently vowed to never allow any harm to come to her ever again.
"Here and now, this I vow. By now you know that I'd come for you, no one but you. Yes I'd come for you, but only if you told me to. I'd fight for you. I'd lie, it's true. Give my life for you." ~Nickelback
Author's Note:
Apologies for the overly sappy father/daughter fluff there. I was having writer's block when I wrote this, sorry for the positively awful chapter. The next two chapters are the conclusion to the fic, so if anyone has any ideas for a nice closing scene or any fluffy coupling scenes they would like in there, let me know. Also, I have started writing a Nick and Claudia fiction called Live Like You Were Dying if anyone would like to check it out. That is what I will be writing when I'm done writing this.
Enough of my babbling :-) Thank you to everyone that has read and reviewed!
