More than a year had passed now and since that night, nobody ever had heard or seen anything from Neil. He was vanished, as if he never had existed. His parents had started some half-hearted search operations, but they had given up quite early. They had filed a missing persons report, but didn't really care if their youngest was found or not. Thus life went on as usual.
Angela and Kurt sat in the lobby of a hotel in Vancouver. They had a new trace which let to some obscure actions of some scientists, linked to sentients and synthetics. Sarah had done a report in the news about it and had advised them to it. The Police had found several death teenagers in the age of sixteen to nineteen. It had seemed as if someone had experienced on them, what had let to their death. Nobody knew what they had done to them and why. Kurt and Angela had agreed to follow the trace Sarah had given them, while she was looking for further information. And now they sat there, no idea what to do, where to search for what. They sat there in silence. They had turned whole Vancouver upside down, but found nothing. It was late at night and both were visibly tiered, but they weren't ready to give up at this point.
Angela took a sip of her cognac and looked at Kurt. He had become thoughtful; no he always had been a thoughtful man. He had become mature. He had abandoned his playboy-attitude. Okay sometimes he suffered form a relapse, but he appeared to be more responsible and concerned about life, duties and the people around him. 'Stop this shit', she told herself. 'You can't fall in love with this man again. It would be too much of a risk.' It had been once, a second time she wouldn't be able to escape.
"Do you sometimes think of him?" she only wanted to break the silence to stop her thoughts playing tricks with her feelings.
"Whom? Neil?" he asked. They way he asked, his whole behaviour had become calmer as it had been, before his disappearance. She nodded.
"Sometimes." he only answered.
"I sometimes would like to know what he's doing." she went on. She needed to talk about it. After Neil had left, there had been a huge gap nobody before had thought of, he had filled. She had to talk about this, because she wondered about herself, having to think of this boy she only had thought of revival she had to get rid of. Now she got rid of him, but it felt strange, still felt strange.
Kurt didn't answer, just nodded, his sign for her, to go on. Another change. He let her do the talk and listened carefully. Before it had been him, talking and when she told him something just pretending to hear what she said, while he already had reached another topic in his mind.
"I mean it's strange, I never thought I would…" Yeah, what would she never have thought of? How to put it into words? He looked at her and realized her struggling for words.
"miss him?" he tried to complete her sentence.
"Yeah, I guess." he wasn't in the mood for talking about it, she saw it. She knew it hit him hard, when they had asked Chuck where Neil had been, and he only had indifferently answered that he had left a week ago.
"You take it to your heart, don't you?" she asked, but she already knew that she went too far with this question.
"Listen Darling, only why I don't appreciate that Chucky has a nice family vacation while we're sitting round here trying to clear up the mess junior had wreaked only because he's not enough of a man, having the courage to stay, it doesn't mean that I take his cowardly disappearance to my heart." With these words he finished his third whisky this night and went to his room, probably to get some more drinks. 'Yes, you take it to your heart', she thought inwardly. If he wouldn't care, he wouldn't have exploded, but let lose one of his indifferent aphorisms. It was a new experience for her to see that Kurt developed a feeling of care for other people aside from himself. This was what made her being attracted to him again. 'No, end of it, I'm not going to repeat my mistake. I have made a decision and it was the right one', she had to reprove herself. Maybe the idea she could get along with Kurt alone in an unknown city without any complicacy was wrong. The whole thing was going to be more complicated as she thought it would be.
He reached his room and let himself fell onto the bed. What the hell was Angela thinking? That he became one of these sensitive wimps that began to be depressed only because one of their friends left them behind without a word. No, he wasn't struck by Neil eff off. How could this boy be able to? He got up, got another whisky, his fourth? or fifth?. He slumped down on the couch and switched on the TV. But he didn't concentrate on what was running. Angela had looked clearly through him he was nothing more than a glassy façade for her. She had been right. It hit him, when he got to know that Neil had left. It was the first time he had the feeling that there was a person that understood him, despite Angela of course. These fluent exchanges of ideas and at long last there was a person that understood what he was talking about, when he mentioned the genetic fingerprint, gel electrophoresis or about the advantages of the DNA-library in a bacteriophage. A person who understood all this, without being one of this boring scientist's only alive for their microbial strain, but knowing how to live. Neil really had been a friend for him, not only understanding, but also criticising, in a constructive way. He missed their conversations and his way making fun of certain situation which in general weren't funny. When he had plaid Chucky for a sucker, without him to recognize: He's my commander and I try to forget that he's my Dad. Chuck didn't even recognize the smug undertone. His son also had been the only one standing to him. Unfortunately this hadn't been just a stupid game. It had been a real fight and Neil had thrown in the towel. While Kurt had to think about all these things he realized that Neil not only had been a friend. For him, he had been something like a protégé. He had helped him to use his skills, how to cope with it. The first time he realized, when he had talked to him about Holly and his problem whether being physical with her or not. This should have been a problem to discuss with your father, but not with a… what did he mean to him? Probably nothing, if he was able to leave like that. 'Damn it, I have had lots of friends which went off without sign and I didn't bother, why the fuck now?' Why did this boy, who only was looking for someone who let him be who he was, bother him that bad? It was this insecurity, not knowing whether he still was alive, whether he was happy now and it was frustration. Frustration because Chuck wasn't able to see what gift children were and how to enjoy their presence, their growth, their progress, but only behaved as if they were a burden. He would do everything to turn back the time and to make things better. Why hadn't he recognized that Angela had been expecting a baby and why hadn't he been able to keep her from putting her career in first place? He never would have allowed his son running away from his family that way, he also hadn't allowed his son feeling inferior not owning enough self-esteem to bear the burden of being individual. No, he had to stop thinking about this. Maybe he should talk about it to Angela? She had begun to trust him more than ever; maybe he should start doing the same? Maybe he could win her back, win back the opportunity of having an own family? Yes, he would go to her and talk. He needed to get rid of these thoughts and Angela was the perfect person for this kind of talk. He put his whisky onto the table and went through the corridor of the hotel. She had a room on the same level. All doors were white with golden numbers. This matched to the carpet, coloured in different green tones. 404, here it was. He wanted to knock, but hesitated. There was something what hindered him. He couldn't just knock on her door and waiting for her to open. He couldn't go into this room, sitting down somewhere and talk to her about his inside. He never had done so. He wasn't able to do so. However this had been one of the reasons why they had broke up with each other. No, he had to go in there and begin to tell her, what he felt. He had to start showing her that he wasn't a childish jerk anymore, showing her that he had grown up.
'No, I can't. She would laugh about me, about my behaviour. She would see it as a joke.' He would lay himself open to an attack. He hadn't realized that he was on his way out of the hotel. When he had reached the street, he was aware that he had left the hotel and wasn't standing in front of her door anymore. 'Well done Mr. Mendel, you've lost one of the best chances you could have gotten. Idiot!' Why wasn't he able to muster up enough courage to talk to the woman he wanted to have a family with? You're such a fucking idiot he bitched about himself. He got into his car and drove through the streets of Vancouver. He could easily drive home and ran away from this situation. No, he couldn't. He wasn't able to leave Angela alone here.