This standalone piece was written for a birthday challenge over at livejournal; the prompt I chose was the song "Paint It, Black" by the Rolling Stones. The setting is the summer of 1966.
He walks back in to the fraternity house dead on his feet, and at first he doesn't hear it because the silence presses hard, roaring in his ears. Sunday afternoon, she has been missing for forty-eight hours and the cops have been looking for at least half that, but there are no more stones left to turn and no more leads left to follow.
Despite himself he hears it fluttering in the back of his head, in a sullen whisper, that maybe this time she won't be coming back, she won't be coming home, and when he was in the passenger seat with another nameless thin-lipped search volunteer driving, the window rolled down and his elbow slicing through the wind, when he closed his eyes against the bright heat and his control began to slip, he saw a waterlogged body at the edge of the river, facedown, a tangle of curls gone deep red and dripping over a pale face, and he put his hand on the shoulder to turn, but never actually made it so far as that.
Nancy.
He takes each step with a deliberate pound of his foot and when he's on the landing on the first floor he hears the impossible. Some brother who has made it through what he heard was an amazing party the night before has his radio on, and it's so loud in the utter stillness of the house, and Ned stops there with his palm resting against the wall to hold him upright, because he is so tired that it makes sense to do this instead of finding his bed and staring at his ceiling until he lapses into a coma that involves the words why didn't I do more, why didn't I find her, why didn't I, why couldn't I revolving around and around in his aching head.
It's the new Rolling Stones song, the one that sounds like he's crying at the end of it, and Ned hears the word black, black over and over, and he sinks to the floor with his face in his hands and waits to feel something other than this hollow desperation.
--
"Here."
Her eyes are bright blue even though her cheekbones have gone hollow, dark with exhaustion, and her wrists are rubbed a raw pink. She drank the last of the water five miles before and he can see in her face that she's still thirsty, but she won't let him stop anywhere else.
"You sure you don't want me to take you to a doctor, something?"
She shakes her head, and the name she gave him over a handshake and a wince was "Nancy," and she's perched on the edge of the seat with her palms curled around the edge, leaning forward, peering through the windshield. "Here," she repeats. "I'm sorry, I just... if he's here, I'll be fine, he'll take care of me."
He nods and twists the wheel, although when he picked her up from the side of the road he thought that some man had already taken care of her, with her hair tangled and matted, the faint mark on her cheeks, the way she kept almost touching her wrists. She had only lost the haunted look when she was safe in his truck and they were a mile away.
In front of a fraternity house, he almost doesn't want to leave her there and he tries to press a five dollar bill into her hand even though he has three children peering at her from the tailgate with silent dust-streaked faces, but she refuses with a smile just as the announcer's voice fades into another song.
I see a red door and I want it painted black
"Thank you so much, thank you so much," she says, and he blushes and looks down at the steering wheel because her eyes are too much.
"Take care of yourself."
She only smiles, and then slams the door, and for a moment she is gathering herself, before she runs for the house with her red-gold hair streaming behind her and her shoes pounding on the pavement, and with one last wave she's gone, but her eyes already were.
--
"Ned?"
The voice is feminine and it pitches up at the end, wavering, and he hears the front door slam and he's dreaming, it's finally gotten to him, two days without sleep. All he wanted was to hear her voice and now he is, oh God.
But he lifts his head anyway because he can't stop himself, because he wants so much for it to be her, and...
oh God, it is.
"Nancy?"
Somehow he finds his legs underneath him, he takes the stairs two at a time, and when they meet she's in his arms and their collision was so hard that he may have cracked a rib, but he doesn't care. He can feel her breathing against his neck, her eyelashes brushing his skin, and his voice is shaking but he's chanting her name, like it's the only thing keeping her from evaporating into a mist.
"Where were you," he manages, finally, his face against her hair. "We looked everywhere..."
She shakes her head and he can feel her chest rising and falling with his and he will be damned if he goes another day in his life without it.
"It was all black," she murmurs, and Mick Jagger is crying, and his heart finally starts beating again.