Chapter 4: Time to say goodbye.

Present Day

After the conversation with his father, Tom felt like an idiot. He had spent weeks successfully evading and running away from the well-meaning conversations and his father could make him shout after only a few sentences.

After her death, he did not want to feel, think and especially talk about it. He just wanted to forget. He did not see the accident, but his imagination provided him with every detail in vivid technicolor.

The nightmares began soon after, they were so bad that he was afraid to sleep, began working himself to exhaustion, and then working even more. It was effective, being to tried and busy to even think. Tom ignored the advice of doctors who said he should slow down, that he had undergone surgery and nearly died.

Not for the first time he wondered why her death caused him so much pain. They didn't have a relationship. They had not been lovers. Because you were a coward. The voice of his conscience provided.

Maybe that was exactly the reason for his pain. With his wife, with Darien, he had memories, children, a story to put on the shelf of his memory. With her...with Rachel, the name both bitter and sweet, he could only imagine what a life with her would have been like. How he would have hugged her, kissed her without subterfuge, made love to her for the first time. By imagining that beautiful future, the loss of it became all the more painful.

Four weeks, and it was still hard to believe she was gone. He pretended not to notice the worried looks his friends sent his way. Mike, Jeter and Tex were the only ones brave enough to attempt to talk to him.

On the outside he looked fine, the perfect soldier, efficient and in control. Inside there was a war raging between the fire of wrath and the protective ice that numbed his heart. Tom feared loosing the reins of his emotions, because the volcano inside him could blow up and destroy everything in its path.

Now his family was here with him again, his children needed him, he knew it was time to say goodbye to Rachel. Even has his soul rebelled against the thought, his being reverberating in familiar pain.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out the letter he had carried since that tragic day, but had never had the courage to read. He had hurriedly and unwittingly opened it back on that frightful night, his fear at the time that it was her deliberate goodbye letter to him.

Back then he had failed to see what it really was, what had been hiding in the stack of scientific papers that had caused him to write off the entire contents of the envelope as unimportant to his search. And in truth in had been unimportant to his search at that time.

The personal letter that he later found amongst the papers that had hidden it was not her deliberate goodbye letter to him, it was her accidental goodbye letter to him …whatever it actually said.

When he had first discovered it so soon after learning of her death he had not been able to prevent himself from looking away. Hot tears appearing in his eyes as he read her first words to him from the grave. Just that first sentence enough to have him bawling like a child, thankfully he had been alone on that occasion when he has completely failed to control his then fresh grief.

And in all the time since he had not been able to bring himself to return to reading that letter, and yet he had not being able to let it go either, he carried it everywhere with him.

His curiosity and desire to read her last words to him, regardless if they carried anything from affection to infuriation, even though he truly didn't know which would be worse at this point, was no match for his fear of reading them…or rather them having been read. Past tense.

That state that would exist after he read her last word, the state that would be his entire future, the state where Rachel Scott would never have another word left to say to him so long as he lived. While her last words were unread, it was like she was still alive waiting for them to be realized, but after, even that last whisper of her consciousness would be gone forever.

Irrationally he believing that reading the letter was the same as accepting her death, and facts be damned he just couldn't seem to bring himself to do that. She didn't feel dead, even though the hole in his empty soul seemed to disagree.

But with his children return to him he realized that he could not continue to live as the ghost he had been, for their sake. He had to force himself to action, to the first steps of healing. And he knew innately that reading the self forbidden letter in his hand was the first stage of that. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, opened the already torn envelope and with both reverence and will power, began to read.

Tom

I decided to call you so because firstly, I consider you a friend. You believed in me, protected me from some very dangeroussituations, and in doing so realized how stubborn I am.

I never liked to depend on anyone emotionally because it scares me, but with you it happened so naturally.

We made a good team, you and me, without your support and encouragement, (Offering me a Bengal tiger! You sure know how to make a girl feel special.) there would be no cure. We disagreed sometimes, but I think that is more because we are so alike in temperaments, as opposed to too different.

I admire you, Tom, I really do. So I tried to live up to your expectations, but it got me to stretch my limits, to push boundaries, to make wrong decisions. I am not blaming you; I made the decision to kill Niels, my desire for revenge was part of it I admit, but mainly it was the guilt that I carry overthe deaths of so many that made me take that drastic action. The families the crew… your wife…

It hurt, hurt a lot, more than I could have imagined. The contempt and disappointment in your eyes when I admitted to killing Niels. I tried to tell myself it did not matter, but I was lying.

War has the ability to reveal the good that is in us, but it also brings out our darker sides. You have this strong moral compass, a deep desire to do right; it is an important part of who you are. You should never doubt your convictions, Tom.

Our relationship has been made of successes, failures, farewells and reunions.

In my heart, you will always have a special place, not only as a friend, but also perhaps as something else ... if you allow. However, I know you are not ready, yet. That does not stop me from loving you.

You are a good man, Thomas Chandler. You have features worthy of admiration, your ability to care for your crew, well beyond the relationship of Captain and soldier, your tenacity, your talent for command, and your love for your family.

I leave tomorrow. I am hoping that this is not goodbye.

Take care of yourself.

Rachel Scott.

Oh, God. Rachel!

..that doesn't stop me from loving you…

She loved me!

She wanted more…and now she was gone forever.

Tears fell freely for several long minutes, several loud anguished sobs also escaped. They could not be held within. When he had no more tears to shed, when he had let his grief at all that could have been but would never be overtake him, and run its course, he came out the other side with a very difficult decision made.

I do not feel like the good man you believed me to be, Rachel, but to honoryour memory I will try to be… and this is not a final goodbye.

LSLSLS

Jed was waiting for Tom when he got home, preoccupied; afraid he would not be able to help.

He watched his son sit as if carrying the world on his shoulders. He looked exhausted, and not just physically.

"The kids?" Tom questioned.

"They're asleep, your friend Tex tired them both out."

"I need to thank him for taking care of them. Caring for Sam and Ashley is my job." He stated sadly.

"I'm sorry for yelling at you earlier, Dad." He continued.

"Don't worry about it, Tom. I know you are still suffering over Rachel."

Tom paused for a long moment, drawing in and releasing a deep resigned breath, then he spoke…

"You're right, Dad." He admitted softly.

"I feel guilty for being in love with Rachel. It has only been a few months since I lost Darien, I feel like I am cheating on her. Though now I feel guilty for not acting on the feelings that I believed might have been returned, and now I have that confirmation that they were. I loved her, Dad. And she loved me…and now I've lost her too."

There was so much pain in his son's confession, that for a moment, Jed wished Tom was a child and that he could protect him from the world.

"The pain will subside with time, son."

"I know, Dad, but the pain seems excruciating, now. I have been denying her death for a month now. But she it is…dead…" The word still hurt to enunciate. "Denying it will not change the facts." He finished sadly.

"What made you change your mind?" Jed wondered aloud.

"You, the children ... and Rachel."

"Rachel?" Jed questioned, confused as to how the cause of his son's anguish could also be the solution to it.

"She left me a letter, Dad." He disclosed the secret that he had literally kept close to his breast for a month now.

"That must have been one hell of a letter!" Jed exclaimed.

Tom nodded. "Rachel says I'm a good man and tells me to keep my convictions. She believes in me. She is always able to tell me when I'm acting like a jerk."

Jed realized that Tom was referring to Rachel as if she were still alive.

"Tom, you keep referring to Rachel in the present tense."

Tom realized his father was right.

"I know, Dad. I can't seem to help it. In my head I know she's gone but in my heart I can't help feeling something very different. I guess I just need time, Dad. Even more time on that score."

"Just remember I'm here for, son." Was all Jed said after a pause. What else could he say?

"Thanks, Dad." Tom's gratitude was genuine. "It's late, Dad. We both need to get some sleep."

"Go ahead, I'm just going to get a glass of water."

Tom nodded. "Night, Dad."

"Night, son."

Jed watched Tom make his way up the stairs and sighed in relief. Thank God! Finally he felt like his son was going to be ok.

Not for the first time in the last month, Tom dreamed of Rachel, but this time was somehow different, she was different, she had shorter hair, like he had never seen her. She called to him…desperately.

"Find me, Tom!"

"Rachel!" Tom screamed her name as he awoke, answering her call in the darkness. The dream continued to greatly disturb him into his sleepless morning hours. It had felt so real, but aspects of it had been so conflictingly unfamiliar at the same time.

Still, even knowing it could only have been a dream, why could he not discard the notion that she had really called out to him?

That she was really still waiting for him to do what he had failed to do in the first place, rescue her. So large part of him longed for such an impossible second chance. But it was impossible, he reminded himself.

But his dream had been so real…she had been so real.

Find me, Tom…

The words continued to echo in his waking consciousness, and did not cease when sleep eventually returned to him barely before the dawn.

Find me, Tom…

TBC