A/N: Hello all, and welcome to another one of my depressing and sad fics! I hope this does not put you guys too deep in your feels, but then, you know how much clinical depression can be a double edged sword: the deepest depths ignite the brightest beacons of inspiration. I hope that doesn't sound to edgy. Lol. But without further adieu, I'mma let you guys be the judge.
Disclaimer: I dun own shxt other than Kiersey. Don't sue me, I'm broke and my credit is shot too.
.millennium to eternity
Marcus, what would moving on look like? His therapist asked.
His mother, his father, himself, they would pack everything in her room. They would take all of the boxes, newspaper reports, false leads, posters, and they would burn everything in a big bonfire. Then, they would cry, hold each other, fall asleep for a thousand years. Then, the following morning, the sun would be shining, his mother would cook breakfast, his father would say Get ready for class, kiddo! and smile. And everything would be okay again…
His therapist stared solemnly, face as blank as an unused stationery page.
Marcus wiped his eyes, a lone tear streaming down.
…Well, not okay, he amended, voice quiet. Perhaps as okay as it possibly could be. Emily's been gone for fifteen years… It'll never be okay. It'll never be over…
1. millennium
…It'll never be over.
And so it wasn't. Marcus felt like he hadn't slept in a thousand years. He felt the weariness in his head, his bones, his flesh, knowing what it feels like to have life drained from you every day of one's existence. His childhood stopped at age thirteen when Emily disappeared. He thought about it, how out of the three of them, he was the only person who knew she wasn't coming back. She disappeared during a family outing at the Mesa Grande Refuge and Park. Not only had he not slept in a millennium, he'd aged it as well. Meanwhile Emily, hadn't aged a day since, face and youth frozen in time as per all of the family photos, school pictures, and elementary school portraits.
…They finally accepted our proposal to post her picture on the holoboard near her bench in the park! Krystal said, as if excited, happy about the recent development.
Marcus stared at the various news article print-outs affixed to the brushed nickel refrigerator. FAMILY VOWS TO NEVER GIVE UP HOPE, one article read. Another article title, the page superimposed by an aged progressed photo of his sister (his dad said it haunted him because it looked so much like his own mother): Police Abandons Search For Missing Girl As Case Grows Cold.
Yeah, this is good! Krystal cheered. This is a good thing. Just another way to get the word out there! Oh… The ponytail…
Krystal picked up the photograph in question, from the myriad of others littering the dining table. Group family photos. Selfies. Holiday snapshots. Portraits. She gabbed on and on about which shot to use for the holoboard next to Emily's bench. The ponytail shot was overdone. Maybe we should ask Fox, he likes the headband portrait from when she was six. How about the Holiday portrait?
Marcus shook the bottle of psychotropic medication like a maraca and opened the cabinet to procure a glass. Twisting off the safety cap, he shook the bottle to dump out a few capsules, tipping the excess back into the orange container, before popping the dosage into his mouth. He ran the kitchen tap to fill the glass vessel nearly to the brim with water, the white noise pausing his mother's voice, though, behind him, her lips were still moving. While she said something or other about an overly-used black and white photo, another about reverting it back to color, Marcus tipped his head back and swallowed the glass of water to wash down the pills.
He shut off the tap, and his mother's voice was unpaused again.
Speaking directly to Marcus, she suggested that they should go with the age-progressed photo. She wanted to know from Marcus: what did he think about it?
Turning around, he leaned against the counter and smiled, fake enough to hide real tears. His answer to his mother: whichever she thought best.
2. overture
She eventually did decide whichever she thought was best.
I decided to go with the age progressed photo for the holoboard next to Emily's bench. What do you think?
~Mommy
Marcus stared at his mother's neat, cursive penmanship on the blue sticky note, occasionally blinking to moisten his eyes. He peeled the note off of the 5x4 glossy of the image that only guessed what Emily might look like in her early to mid twenties. His Dad always said his sister reminded him of Vixy, their grandmother. Marcus, of course, had never met his paternal grandmother, and wondered what she would be like, if she'd be proud of how her family turned out.
In the background, he heard his colleague rummaging through the detritus of papers and notes on her messy desk in the adjacent cubicle. She muttered something, flopping her handbag onto her work surface to rummage through it. Her voice spoke his name, breaking Marcus out of his trance, causing him to look up. Kiersey's purse was slung over her shoulder, and she'd changed out of her scrubs. Marcus had forgotten that she had a dentist appointment. It was only 3:00 p.m.
Kiersey announced her departure: she's heading out for the day.
He smiled politely to her, verbally acknowledging and bidding her farewell.
As she began to walk towards the exit, she stopped to tell him something else.
Looking back up from the photo, he again gave her eye contact and an affirmative that he was listening.
She told him that Demarchelier wants to do the recent active Jane Doe tomorrow morning, and asked Marcus if he minded prepping her.
Marcus nodded. It was no problem.
And before she finally walked towards the door, Kiersey wanted to ask Marcus one final thing. She and her roommate were going to be throwing a little bash tomorrow night. Somewhat of, like, a post-dissertation, throw-your-computer-in-the-dumpster celebration sort of thing. Maybe Marcus could stop by…
–Though he might be in study hall tomorrow night, he thanked her for the offer.
…Perhaps he could come afterwards?
Marcus won't rule it out. He'll definitely consider it.
Kiersey smiled, purse-lipped, jingling her keys and looking to the floor for a moment. She then bid him farewell also, advising him not to work too hard.
3. cope
What made it hard, especially in the beginning, was his (any person's, if completely honest) incline to give life to the deceased.
The body lab is a rite of passage in medical school. For those few months early on when he dissected someone's body, it was grotesque: peeling skin back, separating muscle and sinew, sawing through bones. It's emotionally jarring to the point that young doctors in training have to compartmentalize the experience, and the object before them, a vessel of bones and organs simply to dissect in the relentless pursuit of knowledge. Marcus, like most medical residents in the infancy of their careers, knew nothing about them. They didn't know their families or their names. They just knew they donated their bodies to science.
Thinking it was a coping mechanism, Marcus, also like most medical residents in the infancy of their careers, made up the corpses' entire lives on the hints of scars, color of nail polishes, so that the body before them stayed alive in some way. Again, it was a coping mechanism, and act of empathy, complicated, because it would later serve to hurt him.
While in medical school, he worked as a mental health technician in a behavioral hospital. There was a "frequent flier" with whom Marcus had become acquainted due to the patient's frequent admissions. During Marcus' medical residency he came across the acquaintance during his first week in the body lab. Other than her name, Marcus only knew that she was homeless and suffered from chronic and poor mental health issues
As far as Marcus knew, the woman was all alone, and her being egregiously mentally ill made it nearly impossible for her to communicate her needs. Her death was as violent as it was shocking, as efforts to revive people often are. Marcus scrambled to find meaning in the woman's death.
She has no one, Marcus said, then asked his classmates: could they take a moment for her?
As he'd done in medical school, Marcus created a narrative. He thought his patient was invisible. Unloved, even. That ended up being as far from the truth as possible, as his reality was by far more heartbreaking than what Marcus imagined.
Through the marvel of social work, Marcus was able to track down her family and they rushed to the hospital to be with the mother, daughter, and sister they'd long ago lost to mental illness. Even though she detached from her family, they never stopped looking for her. Her estranged ex husband would drive around and wait outside homeless shelters for a glimpse of her, to know that, even for a moment, she was alive.
They never stopped loving her, she wasn't alone, and they cared for her the only way they could.
Losing that patient had to be the most traumatic experience of his educational and professional career, and aside from losing his sister to a big what if and why, his life as well. But the way he chose to cope - creating a life for a stranger, asking his colleagues to remember him as her as he thought she was - made Marcus realize that his good intentions only served to placate himself.
4. frozen
…And he no longer needed to.
The fluorescent lights in the exam room made the room look and feel sterile of both life and emotion. The body bag lay upon the exam table, the black, plastic cylinder suddenly lit up by the exam lights when Marcus flipped the switch. He procured tools and instruments, evidence envelopes, proper PPE. He unzipped the bag.
The smell of death is composed of over eight hundred chemical compounds. Aptly-named cadaverine and putrescine being the two main ones released after rigor mortis, as well as solid and liquid waste when the body relieves itself after death. And as well, he worked in a space where he cut up meat, so to speak, so it did have the wet, cold smell of blood, making it have the olfactory undertones of a butcher shop or delicatessen ready to fail its health inspection.
When he unzipped the bag, the smell of formaldehyde hit him in the face, but didn't faze Marcus.
There were seven steps to prepping a cadaver as a forensic pathologist.
The first assessment was to physically examine the appearance.
The woman's vulpine face and body was covered with dried blood, dirt, and grime, hair caked with mud, torso littered with fatal injuries. She adorned no clothing; nude. Her dead, green eyes staring aimlessly, and her mouth frozen in an indefinite yawn from when she exhaled for the last time.
In her last moments, Marcus surmised that the woman tried to fight off the assault; he placed a sheet of parchment paper under her, cold, rubbery left hand to use the paper to catch the offscourings when he would scrape beneath her fingernails: he noted the deep gashes on her palms and forearms. Once he finished scraping the dirt and blood from beneath her nails onto the paper, he dumped the evidence into a small manilla folder for later testing.
He began performing the same process on her right hand. When he inadvertently parted the woman's fingers, something caught his eye. A patch of white fur, swirled into the honey-red fur complexion near the crotch of her ring finger. Marcus froze.
He looked at the cadaver's face, studying it, personalizing it.
Setting down the exam tools, Marcus took off his latex gloves as he rushed out of the prep room. In the adjacent office, he sat down at a workstation and opened the files of recent submissions, tapping his foot impatiently as he waited for the screen to populate. He began clicking and scrolling through the data. After a minute or so of clicking through the catalog of deceased strangers, he came across the dossier for the Jane Doe he was working on moments ago.
Name: Unknown
Age: Possible early to mid twenties
Species: vulpine
- patch of fur on right hand between ring and middle finger
- NO KNOWN NEXT OF KIN
He remembered the photo that his mother gave to him that morning. Standing from his seat, he dug into the pocket of his scrubs as he went back into the exam room to again study the woman's face, then the age-progressed photo of his sister, whom no one has seen or heard from in fifteen years.
5. verify
Hasn't Emily been gone a really long time? Fifteen years? Demarchelier asked Marcus as they sat on opposite side of the desk. Demarchelier in his swivel office chair, backed by a bureau of medical literature and widgets, and Marcus in one of the two Chesterfield chairs, behind him an open door and a busy hospital hallway,
Marcus explained that Emily was taken from a conservation park less than ten miles from where this girl's body was found, pointing at the printouts in his superior's hands.
Looking away from the documents, as well as the age-progressed photo that Marcus' mother gave him, Demarchelier gave Marcus complete eye contact. He began to explain that age-progressed photography is a guess…
–Which Marcus understood. However, the recent Jane Doe in the morgue has a distinctive patch of fur on her ring finger. Just like Emily.
There was a beat of silence between the two.
Then, Marcus asked that Linnea be the one who does the dentals and DNA analysis.
Sighing and almost reluctant, Demarchelier agreed.
6. break
But did his mother agree?
Krystal stared at the photo of the Jane Doe that night at the dining table, while Fox stood over her to get a good look at it himself. Looking up at her son's unreadable expression, she asked him, who is this?
Marcus explained to her that it's a woman in the morgue, a possible match for Emily.
Looking back at the photo to make sure, then back at Marcus, she shook her head. No. Emily has darker eyes.
She has a patch of fur on her right ring finger, just like Emily, Marcus stated.
Krystal would not accept any part of this. No. It's not Emily.
Marcus said that he checked the report. They could not find any family.
Krystal's voice was starting to rise, saying: those are not Emily's eyes!
It's her, Marcus told her.
He watched as his mother crumbled, face breaking into tears, lamenting that this couldn't be. His father embraced mother, letting her sob into his chest.
Maybe now they can finally heal.
7. over
It was like a museum. Such a commitment to memory it was, Emily's room.
While life continued on for the world outside of her bedroom window, the world within her pink paisley walls became locked in an eternal time capsule, entombed in the annals of history. The only mark of time's passage within these walls of pink paisley wallpaper was the occasional accretion of dust, which was usually and promptly dealt with by Krystal with a disposable duster and furniture polish. It was as if she was waiting for Emily to come back and pick up where she left off with them.
Marcus walked around the chamber taking it all in.
It was actually the first time he'd been in her room in a long time. He couldn't remember the last time he went in there. Maybe months.
He had his own unique memories attached to Emily's effects, such as the stuffed animal amongst her bed pillows he'd won for her at the fair. She wanted to be an artist, so the easel in the corner of the bedroom next to the vanity sported a canvas that depicted an unfinished fingerpainting. The papier mache mobile above her bed was made by Emily and Marcus, and stars, butterflies, rainbows, and flowers hung as marionettes. The bookshelf was home to her My Friend The Unicorn collection, each doll a character from her favorite show. Though he thought it was for babies and kids, he'd still used to watch it with her…
When Marcus turned around to look at a new memory, he stopped. And smiled.
Their father was standing in the doorway, smiling also. Happily, sadly, neither of them knew.
Fox admitted that it was hard to believe it's finally over.
Marcus voiced an affirmative to that sentiment.
8. free
He agreed to that sentiment exactly, because he was free now.
Marcus and a friend got checked in by the doorman, and boarded an elevator after walking through a lobby decorated with minimalism and calla lilies, before disappearing behind sliding doors of brushed champagne steel. The doors opened to the penthouse, and they walked into a rush of body heat, pounding music, and expensive booze. It was like a fraternity get-together intersecting with a nightlife venue.
A congregation of partygoers group together around a buffet where all of the alcohol is being distributed, tipping more wine and fruit-flavored vodka into their glasses as if all too wary of the fact of how little there is to go around. Marcus squeezes in, aiming his glass like a busker, gets a clatter of ice, and then a splash of sparkling wine from a ginger-colored Felid girl with her underbust corset layered over her VG Comix graphic tee.
A deadly-looking bottle of cherry-flavored vodka, the host's ironic purchase, will soon be everyone's fate unless someone decides they want to make a booze run, but that does not seem likely. Everyone felt as though they made the run last time, and everyone is still beer-pissed from the last college party, lethargic and annoyed at the same time. A party where people drink excessively, pick cleverly-worded fights, and blow marijuana smoke out of the window when they host said to do all the smoking outside.
The guy Marcus arrived with, he lost him to the host, Kiersey's roommate, and they were having a passionate discussion in the kitchen's casual dining nook, their shoulders hunched over and their faces towards one another in the shape of a heart. Good. No need for Marcus to babysit. He thinks about eating something to preoccupy himself rather than stand around and smile like the newbie freshman on campus. But just about everything is gone. There were tortilla chip crumbs in a bowl. A charcuterie board replete with stale crackers, greasy salame pieces, congealed cheese cubes, and a slimy-looking cranberry chutney dip sat upon the coffee table, with cigarette butts littering it gratuitously like extra veggie sticks.
Marcus is happy, noticeably so, and it should be considered to be a crime to be this happy. He wanted to do that thing, that impulse thing: what if he jumps off the mezzanine into the pool right now? What if he made out with the homeless man begging for change on the street corner? What if he sat on the living room floor and consumed the charcuterie board right here and now, cigarette butts and all?
A familiar voice humorously advised that he didn't want to eat that, the speaker adding that she herself would not touch it with a ten foot pole. She could make Marcus a ham sandwich. Just ham though, no cheese or mayonnaise. No cheese or mayonnaise. It's a line that is only a little funny, but it also already had the manner of an in-joke, one that will be funnier with anciency and nostalgia.
Admittedly, Marcus was smiling because Kiersey was gorgeous. Distractingly so, the kind that makes one's eyes go wide and state it obvious and address the elephant in the room - You know you are gorgeous, right? - and move on with the conversation. Marcus knew that Kiersey, like her mother, was not afraid of going after what she wanted, wearing that confidence like her spandex cocktail dress, and it fit her nicely. They are both raging nerds, so there are a series of awful pins, video game references, internet memes. She offers to refill his drink, ferreting out the last glass of the good stuff.
Why tonight? Kiersey asked, once they found a quiet spot. Marcus sat on the master bath's counter, while Kiersey stood next to him, watching her reflection as she freshened her eye makeup. She chuckled, adding that she's been inviting him to her parties since freshman year.
Has she? Marcus wondered.
Maybe it's just a "Kiersey" thing, but every now and again she does like to be around people who aren't dead.
Marcus chortled at that joke.
After a beat, Kiersey asked how it was going with him so far.
Marcus shrugged, saying that its going good. He added that Kiersey's a lot more talkative.
Right.
Marcus blurted out that he's on antidepressants. He used to spend most of his time in bed.
That could be nice, Kiersey offered.
Though it could be kind of depressing.
That was fair, Kiersey said. It's good to get out of bed every now and again.
Marcus spoke the truth when he said it's hard to make friends in bed. Then added with an innuendo that it depends sometimes, however.
Kiersey laughed and rolled her eyes. Marcus was such a guy.
They decided to ditch the party early and take a rideshare back to Marcus' place. The streetlights made woozy shadows as their car sped like they were being chased. Out of nowhere came one or Corneria City's unexplained late-night traffic jams, and they climbed out of the back of the Velox Culpeo into the humidity and the great What Next? And they began walking with Marcus's hand on the small of Kiersey's back. Marcus looked at her, and her face sparkled with dew from the heat, looking like wet sugar crystals in the moonlight.
They stop. Kiersey asks him, curiously, what is he looking at?
He doesn't hesitate. He pulls her close to taste her.
9. respite
But the savour did not last.
At work the next day, Demarchelier pulled Marcus aside for a moment; he needed to talk.
Did Linnea get the stuff? Marcus asked.
She did, Demarchelier told him; it was not a match.
But wait. That's impossible. Did she check the films?
They were negative for a match. It's not her. Demarchelier got a call that morning from a Detective Greigh, telling him that the young woman's mother had driven down from Awapaho to identify the body.
But… That was wrong. It had to be… Its–
The young woman's name was Kristen Kutchever, and her mother's name was Clare Kutchever. She faxed a copy of the young woman's birth records, as well as photos from her childhood. Demarchelier was sorry to tell him.
The next day, Marcus stared at the CCTV feed of the exam room, his grave countenance reflecting off the glass of the monitor as he observed Mrs. Kutchever weeping over her deceased child. Marcus watched as Kristen's mother caressed her daughter's face, wondering if she felt the same iciness when he was prepping her, or whether the touch was warm with raw emotion.
In the light of the sun, he no longer felt any heat. And wouldn't for the next eternity
Having had enough, Marcus turned and walked away, exiting the office and walking down the hallway towards the exit.
10. voicemail
But now, there was no way out.
Hey! It's Marcus! I can't come to the phone right now. But if you leave a message, I'll get back to you as soon as possible.
Hey, Marcus… It's Kiersey. Are you okay? Are you alive? Uh… Just trying to… Get in touch with you, to see if you are okay. Just… Call me back. Even if to tell me to leave you alone…
11. surrender
In a crowded restaurant full of patrons, Marcus had never felt so alone.
…He billed them five grand for a few internet searches, Krystal complained during brunch that following Sunday. She added that he couldn't do that. She'd gotten the contact information to another investigator, one who is more scrupulous.
Marcus stared at her smiling face while she used her fork and knife to cut into her veggie egg white omelet. He looked down at his own order of a cheeseburger, decorated with a hashbrown and over medium egg and side of pancakes, reacting somewhere between unappetized and downright disgusted. He looked over at his father: he nodded, approving, seemingly as happy as his wife about the recent development, as she cut into his breakfast steak, lifting the piece fork to mouth.
Marcus looked back at his mother. She said something about an investigator that the Carsons used.
He announced that he wanted to have a memorial service for Emily.
Krystal immediately looked at him as though he'd said something obscene. She asked him to repeat.
Marcus repeated that Emily is dead, and he wished to hold a memorial service for her.
His mother asked: why would he say such a thing?
His answer: because it is true.
Placing a tentative hand on his son's arm, Fox told Marcus softly, emphatically, that he doesn't know that.
But Marcus would not be deterred. Snatching his hand away, he continued speaking to his mother: Emily is dead. She did not run away. She was not raised in the woods with wolves, She didn't hit her head and forget her name and where she lived, and she is not living with a family of nice Gypsies.
Krystal couldn't help but stare at her son breathlessly as he delivered his monologue.
Some man took her, he continued, and did horrible things to her. And he hid her body so well that no one will ever find her. And it does not matter how many posters they hang, or how many investigators they hire, or how many pictures they put on the holoboard near Emily's bench, because no one will recognize her, because she is dead and she is never coming back.
Krystal would have no part of this nonsense, however.
If… Emily was dead, would Krystal not know it in her heart? Emily is alive. Emily is out there somewhere. And the only way they will ever see her again is if they don't stop looking. Someone out there knows Emily, they know her, they just don't know someone's looking for her…
Marcus closed his eyes, face starting to crumple. The denial was slowly killing him, and he couldn't stand it.
Krystal will never give up on Emily. Just like she would never give up on Marcus. Ever…
…Not realizing she gave up on Marcus the moment Emily disappeared.
At that moment, Krystal decided that she was done. With breakfast, with this conversation. Standing up, she grabbed her coat which was draped over the back of the chair and walked away. Marcus wept.
12. eternity
That night, Marcus shook the bottle of psychotropic medication like a maraca and opened the cabinet to procure a glass. Twisting off the safety cap, he shook the bottle to dump out a few capsules, tipping the excess back into the orange container, before popping the dosage into his mouth. He ran the kitchen tap to fill the glass vessel nearly to the brim with water, the white noise pausing the noise in his head, though, inside his head, his thoughts were still churning. He washed the pills down with a grateful gulp of water…
Setting the glass onto the counter, he turned around.
Marcus stared at the various news article print-outs affixed to the brushed nickel refrigerator. FAMILY VOWS TO NEVER GIVE UP HOPE, one article read. Another article title, the page superimposed by an aged progressed photo of his sister (his dad said it haunted him because it looked so much like his own mother): Police Abandons Search For Missing Girl As Case Grows Cold.
It was time.
One by one, Marcus began snatching down the newspaper cut-outs, articles, print-outs, crumpling them in his hands as he grabbed them. Lighting one of the eyes of the gas range, he lit fire to the memories, setting them in the kitchen skillet to let them reduce to ember and ash once and for all as he stared, detaching.
There was someone he needed to call. He took his phone out of his pocket, and rested against the refrigerator, sliding to the floor as she looked at the notification badges of numerous missed calls and unanswered texts…
"Oh, Marcus! Hey!"
Marcus closed his eyes, tears streaming, saddened and utterly relieved at the sound of her voice.
"Kiersey… I need help."