Reflections or mirages
Chapter 9. Funereal keening

Author's note:

Before I go any further, please, please, do not fail to read April Heather's wonderful one-shot, "One Last Time". It's just so perfect, it's canon to me. I'm serious; we should have had that in the series. This chapter of "Reflections or Mirages" is not just a missing scene from the series. It is, in fact, a continuation. It's as well a tribute to April Heather's magnificent work, which has inspired me so much, and I hope it can be considered somehow also part of that story, just as I consider "One Last Time" part of this one. I urge you to read it (or re-read it if you already did) before reading this chapter.

Look it up, please: "One Last Time" by April Heather.

Acknowledgments:

Thanks to misswritingobsessed, gem and J.R.S. for their comments encouraging me to continue these lost scenes, and for the last kudos from the guest users.

My most sincere and effusive thanks to ingrid_isobel for helping me with some parts, and to Isobel_Maggie_Wanda24 and Gogo_25 for their ideas and support in writing this chapter.

=After FBI S04E14 "Ambition", FBI Most Wanted S03E14 "Shattered" and"One Last Time" by April Heather=

The shroud of cold mist brought by the twilight slowly but inexorably enveloped the city, giving it an unreal, phantasmagoric appearance.

Isobel sensed Jubal even before she looked away from the horizon for a moment to see him. It couldn't be anyone else. They had just buried the only other person who would have come looking for her up there.

The tribute ceremony for Supervisory Special Agent Jess LaCroix had been a grand event with media coverage: escorted motorcade, 21-gun salute, and bagpipe serenade, eulogies written by Isobel and Jess' team read by the agency's top brass...

However, for the most intimate wake after the funeral, only for those closest, Isobel had offered her own home. After hours of mourning and grieving, of looking after attendees and comforting friends, parents, widow and orphan, Isobel could not help but desperately need that moment of peace on the rooftop of her building.

The last time she had really spoken to Jubal, it had been two days earlier, after the Tasker case. He had come to her office and proposed recommending Maggie for a commendation for the courage she had shown two weeks ago, when she had driven a pickup truck full of explosives about to go off for six blocks to get it away from a populated area. Isobel had agreed wholeheartedly and had told him that OA had just backed up Tiffany against the cops who had gone too far with one of the suspects. Silently, Jubal and Isobel had then shared a serene, proud of their people, smile. It was the first time she had seen him smile in many weeks. Since before Rina was shot. She had missed his smile.

Isobel had wanted to tell him much more but her ASAC had said goodbye until the next morning and had slipped away, as he always did recently.

He left before she could ask him how Abby's thing had gone. His daughter had presented a project at her school's science fair. Jubal, exceptionally, had taken a few hours off work that morning to be there when Abby made her presentation, so he could show her his full support. Isobel had covered for him at the JOC in the meantime.

Also before she could congratulate him on the excellent undercover work Jubal had done that afternoon, even when the situation got really tense inside that bar.

And before she could dare to reproach him, "You no longer look me in the eye; you barely look me in the face..."

Less than one hour later, had Isobel received the terrible call from Sheryl.

Since then, she had at most exchanged a few dozen words with him, all concerning matters that had to be taken care of for the ceremony or the burial.

At the beginning of the funeral service, Jubal had taken off his gloves despite the cold, and had taken her hand; both had lost a brother two days earlier. He had not let go of until they had gotten into the cars to leave the cemetery, heading to Isobel's house.

For the rest of the afternoon and evening they had only glanced at each other occasionally from across the room full of mourners.

His footsteps approached slowly, almost apprehensive. She did not turn around. Her composure weakened until it had become the most fragile glass.

Jubal had felt so deeply ashamed of having let Isobel see him cry like a child over Rina, that he had in fact been avoiding her ever since. How absurd and petty his own behavior now felt.

He walked over to her and draped her coat over her shoulders. He had taken it from the coat rack before going upstairs, when Maggie had slyly approached him and, concerned, had drawn his attention to the fact that Isobel had disappeared. It was too cold for just a blouse and an austere tailored skirt.

A bit of icy breeze ruffled Isobel's dark hair, and she snuggled into the garment without saying anything, staring without seeing into the distance. Loosening the black tie that had been suffocating him for hours, Jubal studied Isobel's face out of the corner of his eye. She was still carefully wearing the mask of solemn serenity that he had seen her bear all day. He had only glimpsed her tears briefly as they received the coffin at the airport in the early hours of the morning the day before.

When he had gone with Sheryl to the FBI airfield to pick up Byron, Sarah, Tali, and her grandparents to take them to the ceremony, Jubal was wearing the same suit he had worn at Rina's memorial just a couple of weeks ago. It was a bit wrinkled; he hadn't even had the chance to take it to the dry cleaning yet. In his heart, however, Jubal wore a different shade of mourning. One tinged with somber numbness and suffocating loneliness.

Jess's daughter, in stark black, accepted the hug he had given her but didn't even greet him, her gaze lost in a void from which she did not seem to be able to return.

"She hasn't said a single word since..." Angelyne's mother had murmured sorrowfully to Jubal.

Hugging her father-in-law Byron, Sarah wept inconsolably the entire time during the ceremony and burial. She only managed to pull herself together a little by the time the Director handed her the neatly folded flag. Tali, on the other hand, remained impassive, sitting next to her grandparents, present in body but absent in spirit.

A small group of storks flew overhead as the coffin descended into the interior of Mother Earth, the bright white of their majestic wings silhouetted against the pale blue of the winter sky.

It wasn't until after the burial that the girl seemed to come slightly out of her trance when she saw that Tyler had come as well. Sam and Allan had done Jubal the favor of bringing him and Abby, who clung to her mother and sobbed silently for her 'Uncle Jess'. Tyler didn't offer his condolences to Tali; he simply took her hands. Jubal saw the girl look at her son, really look at him. The boy hugged her, as he had done just over five years ago, at Angelyne's funeral. Tali burst into tears at last. The adults around them shielded them from the media.

It tore Jubal's heart to see now that same distant void of Tali's eyes in Isobel's, an abyss that made her unreachable.

"Is Tali okay?" asked Isobel.

"Tyler is still with her."

Their words puffs of mist floating in the chilling air.

"Sarah?"

"With Sheryl."

Isobel nodded absently.

"The last time I saw Jess, he came looking for me on the roof of 26 Fed," she said almost to herself.

Jubal swallowed. The last time he had seen Jess they had been talking about her. Not exactly, but actually… yeah.

The sense of loss within Jubal grew so huge inside of him that it almost swallowed him up. He focused desperately on Isobel before it could fully happen.

She hugged her body with one hand, while with the other she incessantly ran two fingers along the infinity-shaped pendant she wore around her neck, caressing the two birthstones that adorned it. Jubal remembered that it was a gift from her mother, and knew that Isobel was returning again and again to the other loved ones she had lost. He was doing so as well.

"Oh, my God... Jess..." she murmured. "Why did this have to happen? Why?"

Jubal hesitated but slipped his arm around her shoulders. He noticed that Isobel was trembling. He drew her to his side gently.

"There is no reason, Isobel," he replied in a quiet voice. "Not one that we mortals can figure out. We can only decide what we are going to do with it."

Breathing heavily, Isobel did not answer. Then she turned sharply and grabbed him by the lapels of his suit jacket.

"I'm furious, Jubal," she growled through clenched teeth, not looking him in the face; a savage demon was trying to claw and bite its way in her chest. "So furious. I just want to scream."

"Then do it."

Isobel looked up indignantly, wondering if he was mocking. The absolute seriousness of Jubal's features was answer enough. Closing her eyes tightly, Isobel buried her face in his chest, still clinging to his jacket. He hesitated only a second before wrapping her in his arms around her, pulling her close.

Between choked gasps, Isobel struggled against that demon.

Mountains of paperwork had kept her from seeing Jess more often, but she knew that wasn't an excuse. She should have seen him more, spent more time with him and Tali. How she wanted to go back to the day before he left on that damn mission. She wouldn't have needed words, just to hug his friend tightly one last time. After enduring the whole day, the images of Tali's youthful, pale face full of sadness, the bright colors of the flag over the mahogany coffin, the vivid memory of Jess' ever-dazzling smile, of his unconditional affection, all of it intertwined, lingering in her mind, mingling and coming at her like a raging tide, she couldn't take it anymore...

And she screamed.

Not just with her mouth, but with her whole body, her whole soul. It sounded muffled within the safety of his embrace, but it was an inarticulate wail of anger and pain such as Jubal had never heard before. It emptied Isobel's lungs and tore at her throat. It tore from her eyes the tears she thought she no longer had for anyone.

Overwhelmed, Jubal held her and let out those he had been restraining for days.

Together, concealed by the fog, they allowed themselves to mourn the unjust, arbitrary, tragic death of their brother.

~.~.~.~