Living Forward – Chapter 2/7

By Midnight Caller

Rated: PG-13

See chapter 1 for disclaimers and summaries...

*****

I met her six years ago as I was putting together a new team for the FBI's missing persons unit.  Well, filling a vacancy is more like it.  Danny had been with me for a year or two, Vivian a little longer, and we had too much work for the three of us to do.  The Bureau suggested that we take on another member, so I started interviewing applicants. 

It's amazing how few I received, actually.  None of the recruits think there's anything exciting in searching for missing people; all the action is in counter-terrorism or drug enforcement, where every day you're pulling your gun, racing into a bust, your heart pounding, adrenaline pumping.  If the army taught me one thing, though, it was that I didn't need to have my hands wrapped around the handle of a firearm every day to feel satisfied.  After the excitement wears off, you start looking for other ways to get it back, and I always worried how far I'd be willing to go for that rush. 

So I would watch the faces of the ones who did end up in my office, after I explained what we do and how we do it, and I could see the disappointment, the lack of comprehension, how they just didn't get it.  They would all just politely say they would consider joining, but I knew they wouldn't, and I'd have yet another name to cross off my list. 

Her name was fifteenth.   

It's not like my whole world turned upside down the moment she walked into my office.  That didn't happen until a long time after that day. 

I won't lie, I found her attractive, but that's just human nature.  I was immediately drawn to her lips, pouty and full, lips that somehow seemed at odds with the way her eyes appeared to smile at me.  Then when her mouth would smile, the sadness would travel to her eyes, a strange sort of give and take that never seemed to even itself out. 

Her hair was longer then, and she had it pulled back into a ponytail, shorter strands falling down behind her ears.  She had something to prove; I could tell by the way she spoke, the determination behind each word.  She probably had to work harder in the academy to throw off the 'pretty, stupid and useless' stereotype, and I could sense the chip it had left on her shoulder.  But I always imagined it went back farther than Quantico; I think Samantha Spade has been trying to prove something her whole life. Maybe it's just to show she's more than what she appears to be, or to keep what happened to her from happening to others... I'm not sure I'll ever know, or if she'll ever tell me. 

But as she sat across the desk from me, I asked her why she wanted to join the Missing Persons Unit.  She hardly blinked before replying, "I just don't think anyone deserves to be lost."  Deserves.  No one deserves most of what happens to them, I told her, but she was quick to respond, "Well that's where we come in, isn't it."  For a brief second, her mouth and her eyes both seemed to smile.   

She ended up working with me a lot in those first few months, mostly because I wanted to see how she did, how she interrogated and observed, how her brow wrinkled when she was putting together the pieces.  And the more I worked with her, the less I realized how much I was becoming drawn to her.  If our hands collided reaching for coffee, or I brushed against her while walking down the street, I can't say that it was always an accident. 

Sometimes I would catch myself staring at her when she was mulling over something at her desk, watching her mouth twist around and her eyes narrow, her hand coming up to absently finger a strand of hair.  I told myself there was nothing wrong with what I was doing; I hid my guilt behind the justification that I was simply keeping an eye on the newest member of my unit.  But more than once she caught me watching her, and more than once I chose not to look away immediately.  I should have known then that it was already becoming dangerous.       

She fit in nicely with the rest of the team.  The always-unflappable Vivian liked her attitude, the way she wouldn't put up with any bullshit from anyone.  Viv said Samantha added "a kind of wild spirit" to our group.  Danny had only been a Special Agent a short time, and you can still see the short fuse and enthusiasm that he had in spades back then.  Samantha handled her anger differently.  As each day passed, I could see the tension build in her shoulders, or hear it in the subtle inflection of a curt reply.  I would leave at night, hoping she had some way to release it all before it took its toll.  

One night, a few months after Sam had been with us, I stayed late, trying to finish a field report that was due early the next morning.  It hadn't been the best day; our missing toddler was found at the bottom of a riverbed in Albany after being abducted by her uncle, who had also gone missing.  When we raided his house to arrest him, he shot two police officers before turning the gun on himself.  We'd lost four people in one day. 

When I came out of my office to leave, I saw Samantha sitting in her chair, bent over her desk, her head in her hands.  I approached her slowly, not knowing if she was just sleeping or what.  But as I got closer, I could hear the faintest of sobs, and my heart just sank.  I wondered briefly if maybe the stress of the day had gotten to her, if this was her body's way of dealing with the strain, but then something just told me it was something else.  Samantha had been with the divers when they pulled that little girl ashore.  Everyone deserves to be found, right?

Not always.   

I perched myself on her desk, and her head jerked up from her hands.  Her eyes were red, but she hadn't shed a lot of tears.  They seemed poised to burst at any moment, and I wanted to say something that would make it all go away, but words are often awkward and bulky, so I just let my eyes ask her if everything was okay. 

She took a deep breath and stood, bringing us to eye level, and then wiped her eyes with the tips of her fingers.  Laughing lightly, she rolled her eyes.  "I'm okay." 

I hadn't moved.  "Are you?"       

This time, her eyes didn't move, didn't try to hide the pain, they just stared right back at mine.  There was only a brief second before the moment arrived where she just couldn't take it any more.  Biting her lip, she shook her head and looked at the floor. 

My stomach started to twist around, and now my eyes threatened to spill, just from watching her shoulders slump and her hand come up to cover her eyes.  I stood, moved next to her, and put my hand on her shoulder.  At first she resisted my touch, and for a moment I thought she was going to pull away and run for the door.  Then, like a tree finally giving in to the wind and snapping in half, she grabbed my lapels and fell against my chest, shaking, burying her head in my neck.      

My other hand came up around to the back of her neck, resting on the soft skin as she released her pain through full-body shudders and long, heavy sighs. 

Even after her breathing slowed, I just held her, and for that instant I forgot where I was supposed to be, just wanting to be right where I was, there in that moment with her. 

Eventually, she pulled away, slowly, raising her head to look at me.  I could tell she was slightly embarrassed, so my lips formed a slight smile, which was soon returned by her.  I don't know why, but the hand that had been on her shoulder came around to her cheek, lightly brushing the skin to wipe away the streaks left by her tears.  It was then that our smiles faded and I realized how close she was, how beautiful her eyes were, how warm she felt under my touch, how easy it would be just to lean down and press my lips to hers...

Something made me stop.  Maybe it was knowing Maria and the girls were waiting for me at home, innocently carrying out their day believing that I was doing anything but what I was doing right now.  Maybe it was the image of Maria in that restaurant, reading back my order with a smile, or remembering the day Hanna was born. 

Whatever the reason, I dropped my hand from Samantha's cheek and cleared my throat to break the tension.  She seemed slightly relieved as well, and when she turned back to her desk, a long, troubled exhale escaped from my mouth.  I hoped she didn't notice. 

When she turned back to me, I smiled again, forcing it a little more this time.  "I have to get going."  She nodded.  "You going to be okay?"  Again, a nod.  But I could tell she'd be alright, at least for now.  As for me, I wasn't entirely sure.         

As the days became weeks and the weeks became months, however, I became more and more sure.  When I'd catch a whiff of her perfume and find myself wanting to smell more, I was sure.  When our arms would inadvertently brush against each other as we stood in the conference room pondering a timeline, I was sure.  I was sure when I'd look at her, when I'd watch her walk away, when she'd say exactly what I was thinking, when she'd smile with her eyes, and when I'd go home at night and not mind that I could still smell her on my clothes. 

Like I said, I can't remember when it started to fall apart for Maria and me.  I was so busy with everything else I can't even remember that she had started to look at me differently, too.  But I never asked, never brought it up.  I just buried it.  It was just this vicious cycle of denial, and I don't think either one of us was up for the task of actually doing something to stop it. 

And so I would distract myself with work, staying later and later, getting more and more involved in each case so that I began to forget that I had problems waiting for me when I got home.  Maybe I was hoping in some selfish way that I could substitute my own grief with someone else's, grief that seemed more real and more definitive and supposedly more painful than just an allegedly perfect marriage that was slowly being ripped apart by apathy.  But instead, I just absorbed every bit of pain that I was exposed to, and it began to eat away at me as slowly as the indifference rotting away my relationship.   

Thinking about the past was exhausting, constantly wondering what we could have, should have, might have done to foresee and stop what happened, whatever that was.  And so in my attempts to turn off my thoughts of Maria I'd turned off everything, all emotion.  But I couldn't afford to let it just dissolve away – if not for me, then for my job.  Apathy at home breeds a marriage gone sour; at work it costs people their lives.  Something needed to happen before I became completely numb, before I turned into a giant ball of hatred that didn't care about anything at all. 

...tbc...