Don't own LTM.
The sun is just rising as the doorbell rings, cutting through the silence of my home. A silence that has been holding me in limbo since I left the voicemail on her cell. I know who it's going to be, long before I open the door and meet their grim faces. I've known they were going to be coming. I just didn't know when. Didn't know how long it would take them to find the people she wanted notified. Didn't know if I was even going to be one of those people.
I felt it happen. It sounds crazy. Sound unbelievable. Sounds like the rambling of a mad man. But then maybe that's what I am now. Maybe that's what her leaving has done to me. What her being gone has done to me. Stripped me of everything I was, everything she made me and left me with nothing but a madness that I will not be able to escape. I felt it. Not long after I left the voicemail. Not long after I tried to hold her, tried to comfort her with words that i'll never know if she heard. I felt it not long after I tried to get to her before it was too late. I felt the shift. Felt the way my life moved around me. Felt the way my world collapsed from under me. She may have been absent. May have walked away from me. May have tried to remove herself from the life we had together, but I still had her. We were connected in a way that she couldn't undo. So I could still sense her presence. Could still hear her, still feel her in everything I did. She may have left, but she wasn't gone. Not properly. Not like now.
So I don't need the men who are standing at my door. I don't need to hear their words. Don't need to read their faces. Don't need to see their expressions twist into ones of sadness, remorse, grief for a woman they didn't know. For a woman they will never know. A woman that no-one new will ever know. I don't need to hear the words that fall from their mouths to understand what has happened. Because I can feel it in my chest. In the way my heart is beating slower and faster all at once. In the way it's trying to do it's job with part of it missing. I can feel her absence, feel the way she is gone. Can feel her light missing from this world, in every part of who I am.
My mind is working over time, overtaking my body and flooding my senses with her. Everything and anything her. It gives me everything is has, every memory, every detail that it can find in the darkness that is already growing within me. I try and commit it all to a place I won't forget it. To a place inside me where it is safe from the twists of time. To a place inside me where she will be safe from the evil this world will try to replace her with. But even as I try to lock her away, lock away her smell, lock away the way her eyes told a million stories, the way her hair framed her face and moved with her, as I lock away the memory of her heart and how it was capable of a love like no other, I am painfully aware of how, there will come a time when I do not remember how she smelt, do not remember how her voice sounded. I am painfully aware of how, despite there being no-one in this world who could ever take her place, no-one in this world who will come close to holding a place within me like she does, there will come a time where I cannot picture her. Cannot conjour up her face without an image to help me. There will come a time where life twists and turns until it was like she never really existed. Like I never really knew her. Never shared with her all that I am. And the pain of it sits heavy on my chest. It winds it's way around my heart until it takes the little life I have left in me and has me choking on a grief so powerful I know I will never recover. A grief so poweful, so unlike anything i've ever felt that I know it will shape my every decision. A grief so intense, so consuming that I know every moment of my life from here on out will be defined by it.
I can't catch my breath, can barely remember how to breathe, can barely think of a reason to fight the pain, can barely focus on anything. It isn't until the heart wrenching scream rips through the living room that I remember I have to go on. I have a reason to go on. In all my panic, in all the grief that I had been wrapped up in since I left the voicemail, since I felt the shift, I had forgotten Emily was here. Forgotten that there was someone else in the house. Forgotten there was someone else, someone who would be listening to the worlds falling from the officers mouths. Someone that would be hanging on their every word as they spoke the most ugly of truth. As they reveal to her an end that she is completely unprepared for. An end she hadn't seen coming. And end, that even with all the hints, all the signs, I hadn't seen coming. Not until it was too late. Not until all there was left for me to do what leave a voicemail, and I hope it reached her in time. I turn and find her doubled over. Curling into herself. The loss ripping through her. Grief manifesting itself in a physical pain like nothing she has ever felt. Like nothing she will experience again. I stand watching her. Watching her as she tries to rip herself out of her own body, tries to remove herself from a mind that now holds the most heartbreaking of information.
I stand watching her, and I am utterly helpless. I'm at a complete loss at how to help her. How to fix what is breaking within her. How to sooth a wound so deep, I know it will leave scars within her that she will never be able to outgrow. How to stop the screams that are uncontrollably leaving her. And as I stand there watching her with tears pouring down my face, mirroring the tears that are marking hers, I realise that there is only one person who would know how to help. Who would know how to fix what is breaking before my eyes. Only one person who could find the answers to this impossible puzzle. Only one person I would call to help me piece my daughter back together. Only one person I would trust with mending something as valuable as Emily's heart.
But that person is gone. And I am lost.
Still finding this awful to write. I would say I hope you enjoyed, but somehow I don't think this fic is one that brings sunshine and rainbows. Hope you stick with me. Any reviews are truely appreciated (thankyou for those of you who have left me kind words)!