Homecoming - The Ghosts of You & Me
Title: Homecoming
Author(s): escapes
Artist: solostrightnow
Rating:NC-17 just in case
Disclaimer:I don't own them, just the order in which most of the words are strung together.
Characters/Pairings:Nuke
Word Count: 50, 000 plus
Warnings: You are going to have to trust me. Be warned that there is angst. i can't give you more without completely ruinding the story.
Spoilers: None.
Summary: Sometimes the hardest battle in the war is finding your way back home.
Author’s Notes: This is the Big Bang that I didn't know I'd be writing when the whole thing started. An writer driopped out and since I had an idea I'd been turning over in my head for a year now, I figured I'd give it a go. I think it's some of the best stuff I've writen. Hopefully you'll agree.
Thank you to noelleleithe for the betas that were numerous and short-notice. solostrightnow for the awesome fan mix and being kind enough to let me make suggestions on her awesomeness. Thank you!
Link to Art Master Post: Click, Listen, Be amazed at Yael's great taste in music!
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When Luke opens his eyes, the house is dark and quiet around him. Turning his head, he sees the alarm clock beside the bed reading just past three in the morning. For a second he doesn't remember why he's sleeping here at the farm. It only takes another second for the crushing weight of realization to settle back on him that Noah is dead. Rolling onto his side, he sees the empty chair still beside the bed and is glad that his dad has gone to sleep in a bed and not spent the night hunched over next to Luke. No need for two of them to be up at this stupid hour of the morning.
Throwing off the covers, Luke sits up and rubs a hand through his hair, yawning. Once he's made a trip to the bathroom and walked back to the bed, his brain has started whirling again with questions that he doesn't have answers for. Everything from what he's going to change into after sleeping in his swim trunks and what looks like his dad's t-shirt, to how long it's going to take for Noah's body to come here to Oakdale. In between those two questions a million more race through Luke's mind, until he's standing with his arms wrapped around himself, his brain paralyzed and overwhelmed at how many things have fallen on him to figure out, but his body restless and refusing to stay still.
His chest starts burning and Luke realizes he's gasping for air and shaking again. Standing very still, he forces himself to regulate his breathing, which eventually drags his racing heart with it.
Once he's calm enough to remember which floorboards creak and how the fifth and ninth stairs are to be avoided if you want to sneak anywhere, he silently makes his way down to the kitchen of the farm and slips something on his feet before going out the back door. Quietly, he slips into the barn, able to make his way by the one light that is always kept burning and walks to the stall of his favorite girl. Rosalind knows the sound of his gait across the floor or the barn and her head is poking out of her stall to greet him before he can even click his tongue to call for her.
Stepping up to the gate of her stall, Luke reaches up and wraps his arms around Rosalind's neck, feeling the bottom of her long muzzle resting on his back from his shoulder to the edge of his rib cage, the familiar weight and warmth instantly calming him down in a way that nothing else but Noah's arms around him could do. Leaning his head against her withers, the coarseness of her coat makes the nerves tingle on Luke's cheek and the muted thwup-thwup sound of her heartbeat through layers of bone and muscle has him closing his eyes and concentrating on that instead of the angry buzz of thoughts in his head.
"He's gone, Rosalind. Noah is dead." Saying it out loud makes it sound so final to Luke.
His only answer is a soft snort from Rosalind as she presses down on his shoulder a little more.
"What am I going to do, girl? I don't feel like he's gone. Shouldn't something inside of me have changed now that he's gone? Mom always says she knows when something happens to any of us, especially Dad. Noah is the most important person in the world to me. Shouldn't I have felt something that knew Noah was gone before those soldiers showed up?"
Luke can feel the anxiety rising in him again, the feeling like he's about to crawl out of his own skin. He knows that Rosalind can feel it too, her back legs moving restlessly as she keeps her muzzle holding Luke close to her. Giving her a good scratch down the sides of her withers and down the flat plane of her muzzle as he pulls away, he walks away just enough to pull an apple out of the treat bag and holds it out to her on a flat hand.
She chomps down on it like the greedy girl that she is and Luke gives her one last scratch, before walking back out of the barn and looking over the pasture fields and beyond them Snyder Pond, all of it washed in a silvery gray color from the moon.
Making his way back into the kitchen, he sees his wallet and keys beside his dad's on the sideboard in the kitchen. Picking them up, he heads back outside and starts walking in the direction of his parents house, hoping that the walk over will keep his mind occupied enough that it can't start whirling again and asking questions he doesn't have answers to.
By the time he gets to the house, he knows the attempt to quiet his mind has been a dismal failure. It's going a million rpms and his head is so full of thoughts and decisions he has to make that he just wants to crawl into his bed and never come back out. He knows that his family will never allow him to do that. They'll keep being there and talking to him and everything they should do in this kind of situation, but it's the last thing Luke wants them to do right now.
Luke lets himself into the house and kicks off his shoes, going up to his closet, getting down the lockbox he'd bought himself after Noah's first letter had come to him. Setting it on his bed, he reaches into his bookcase and pulls out his hardcover edition of Catch-22 and flips it open, pulling out the key tucked inside and putting the book back on the shelf. Unlocking and opening the box, he takes out the first envelope and holds it in his hand, looking down at the Army issue envelope that has his name and address written on it with Noah's precise handwriting, like it wouldn't get to him if it wasn't printed perfectly.
Closing his eyes, he withdraws the contents inside the envelope out and opens his eyes again as the papers unfold with no resistance, having been read so many times the creases from the folds are almost worn through. Noah's words, the way each letter is neatly spaced in his words and yet connected to each other through the flowing lines of his cursive, so familiar and so Noah that he can almost hear the other man's voice in his head as his eyes catch on words like sorry, regret, how I feel, didn't want to hurt you but I know I did, forgive, and the way he closed every letter with 'same here, always.'
He sits down heavily on his bed, the springs groaning sharply in protest and tries to blink the haze from his eyes. He flips the letter over to what he knows is on the back of the last page. 'Luke, I know you don't want to think about this, but if something happens to me, I've given you control over what happens to me. I know my decision to enlist has hurt you. I'm sorry. I know that even if you hate me right now, if something happens to me, you'll do the right thing. I will do everything I can to make sure you never have to use this information, I promise you that.
I'm going to take a chance and hope the censors don't read this before sending it to you. I love you, Luke Snyder. Army or not, that is never going to change.'
Putting the letter back, Luke looks at the smaller pile of letters he'd written Noah and never sent. All of them full of details of life at the farm and at his parents’ house, of goings on in Oakdale, all the things everyone else was sending Noah in their letters and emails. Every time he tried to go beyond the banal, his words would dry up and the only ones that would make it to the page would be ones like, 'I hate you for doing this to us.' and 'three years doesn't seem like a long time to you because you're not the one being left behind to pick up the pieces of you leaving.' The thoughts that spilled on the pages were so shameful that he wouldn't even acknowledge them to himself until they stared up at him in ink. 'Sometimes I wish my kidney would give out or I'd get into a car accident and you'd get the call and be stuck over there, terrified and alone, and finally know how I feel.'
Luke wipes his hand under his eyes and uses his other hand to push the lid closed on the lockbox. He doesn't want to look at all of Noah's carefully ambiguous wording in each letter, always being careful to not give the military censors any reason to suspect Luke was anything more than a friend after that first letter. This sanitized version of Noah is not the one he wants to remember.
The feeling of wanting to crawl out of his skin is back. Luke looks over at his laptop. He'd been planning to search how long it takes the Army to ship a body home from Afghanistan, but he can't be still any longer. He has the feeling that if he stays still too long, what happened in his grandma's hallway will happen again and Luke has no idea if he'll be able to survive that blind panic again without his heart exploding.
Taking the lockbox by the handle and putting the key in his pocket, he makes his way downstairs and grabs the keys to his car.
It's a short drive to the parking lot behind Java and he walks up to the door of the coffee shop, the inside dark and still, and can't find anything of Noah anywhere in there. Only the ghost of the last time he'd been there, about a month after Noah had left and he'd gotten tired of the sympathetic looks from all the baristas as he sat at a table for one and tried to write, always failing. He'd found another shop across town soon after and had never gone back until this moment.
Walking away from Java, he makes his way towards the bench that he and Noah had talked at, fought at, kissed at, and made up at. He sits down and wills himself to feel some part of Noah here, but there's nothing but the humid July air pressing down on him.
He walks down the paths of Old Town, the light of Al's Diner being the only storefront lit up. He stops in front of it and like with every other place, memories rush at him, but no feeling of Noah's presence comes to him.
Janet meets his eyes, her morning shift usually starting about five. She holds up the coffee carafe and beckons him in with her other hand, but Luke shakes his head. Too much sympathy, too many memories.
Turning away, he walks back to his car and starts driving. Without Noah, there is nothing but ghosts here for him now.
* * * * *
"Luke? Honey, we've let you sleep in, but you can't hide the day away… HOLDEN! Luke's gone!"
* * * * *
It's a solemn ceremony at Ramstein Air Force Base under cloudy German skies as flag-draped metal boxes filled with fallen soldiers are packed in ice and given an honor guard. Eight uniformed men act as pallbearers. They walk their cargo into the open hold of the freight plane that is going to be the fallen soldiers’ transport to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. There they'll be cleaned and uniformed and their escorts will accompany them home for burial.
Once the hold is full with twelve identical boxes, one last check is done of the labels on the boxes, a soldier going through and reading off the names as another initials them as delivered into the plane. …Carter, Daphne P., Davis, Jeffery M., Mayer, Noah B., Rafferty, Joshua O….. Once the hold is full, they give clearance for their only living passenger, besides the pilots, to enter the hold.
Nick Davis walks through the parallel lines made by saluting soldiers that lead up to the plane's ramp and loads his bags into the area the pilot indicates, careful to make sure they're secured and will not move during the flight. Entering the cockpit, Nick looks out one of the side windows and sees two planes identical to this one in the process of loading their own holds full of fallen soldiers. He knows tomorrow they have a full schedule as well.
Turning away, he finds the seat in the back of the cockpit that he's been given clearance to sit in and buckles in as the pilots start their pre-flight checks.
* * * * *
"Lily? I've checked the house. He was here. His car is gone. I tried his cell, but it rang inside the house. I'm going to call Margo and see if there is anything we can do through her."
* * * * *
Once the plane is in the air, Nick leaves the cockpit and makes his way back into the hold, stopping at his bags and pulling out a binder before walking with measured steps to where his brother’s and Mayer's bodies are. He'd requested they be placed side by side and in the first line loaded. The soldiers at Ramstein had been as efficient and respectful as his own Reaper units, even though they were just as overwhelmed as his units. They were fighting against the clock in getting all of the soldiers to Dover where they could be properly prepared. Their main goal reduced to getting all of the soldiers iced, and boxed, and in the air on the way to Dover as quickly as possible, and then do the same thing all over again as the next group from the camp is flown in.
Sitting down facing the boxes containing his brother and Mayer, Nick opens his binder, flipping to the back where he keeps a pad of blue ruled note paper and takes the pen from its place on the arm of his jacket, clicking it open. He stares at the label with his brother's name and memories wash over him, from stupid childhood pranks, to childish fights, to seeing his brother in uniform at the end of Basic finally looking more man than boy. He remembers teasing Jeff about finally growing out of his baby face a little. Now he'd be stuck that way, forever young, while the rest of his family keeps moving forward in time until, one by one, they all join him.
As he puts the tip of the pen to the paper, Nick’s hand shakes, and he blames the rumble of the plane's engines. Picking one of the memories running through his head to concentrate on, he starts writing his brother's eulogy.
* * * * *
"Holden, I understand that you're worried. I am too, but legally I can't report Luke missing until he's been gone 48 hours. He's an adult in the eyes of the law and able to go wherever, whenever he likes. He wouldn't be the first person to get news like that and just take off to put their head back on straight."
Margo pinches the bridge of her nose and reaches for a bottle of aspirin she keeps in her desk drawer. "I know he's devastated and not thinking clearly, Holden. I was there when he received the news, remember?" She sighs and cracks open the bottle of water on her desk. "Here's what I'm going to do. I can't officially report him missing, but I am going to give my officers and the state police the information about Luke and his car and that they're to report in if they see it or him. That's what I can do for now and if he doesn't call someone or come back home by tomorrow night, I want you to call me, okay?"
Pausing while Holden speaks, she swallows down the aspirin with a mouthful of water. "Yes, call me if he comes home. Between Luke and Casey, it's a miracle we all aren't completely gray haired and on anxiety medication. I'll call you if I have any news."
* * * * *
When the plane lands at Dover Air Force Base, Nick Davis joins the soldiers lining the path from the ramp of the plane to the transport vehicle that will move the bodies from the tarmac to the mortuary building.
Standing at attention, he bows his head as the chaplain recites a prayer and joins the murmured amen as the first group of eight soldiers moves in to lift the first box from the deck of the hold.
He stands at attention and gives a slow salute as the first box is carried past and loaded into the gray transport vehicle. Again and again he goes through the same honor for each fallen soldier. When his brother has been loaded in alongside Mayer in the last vehicle, he nods at the lower-ranked soldier who retrieved his bags from the plane and follows him to the car waiting to bring him to his lodging for the night.
* * * * *
"Janet told me she saw Luke at about five this morning standing outside of Al's. She tried to get him to come in, but he'd walked away before she could go outside to get him," Jack Snyder says as he sits down across from Margo Hughes in her office.
Margo nods and absorbs that news. "Think maybe he's just taking some time to absorb things?"
Holding out his hand when Margo raises her bottle of aspirin, he shrugs. "I think he's so far into shock that he probably doesn't realize that he didn't tell anyone where he's going. From what Holden told me he was like when he found Luke upstairs last night, it sounds like the poor kid is completely overwhelmed."
Margo pulls up the notice she'd been about to send out and amends the information about the last time Luke had been seen. "Has someone told the two Notification Officers that Luke is missing?"
Jack blows out a long, frustrated breath. "I don't think so. I'll go over to notify them now." He accepts the bottle of water that Margo hands him and swallows the pills. "You think he's going to come back on his own?"
Margo contemplates the question and finally nods. "Yes. If nothing else, he'll make sure that Noah is given the send off that poor kid deserves."
* * * * *
"Welcome to Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Major McLane. I understand you're interested in seeing Private First Class Samuel Hendricks. He's not regained consciousness yet, but he's showing signs of coming around."
Gerard McLane nods and follows the doctor down the corridor of the Army hospital that all of the injured from the incident at the camp had been transferred to. "Was he conscious at all when he was at the hospital in Germany? We're interested in finding out what had happened to his unit. He's the only one that managed to survive."
The doctor continues walking towards the room. "I've read the brief on what happened. I've heard from Rammstein and Dover that they're nearly overrun with so many casualties coming in at once."
"They're expecting it to hit the press any time now. Thankfully almost all of the next of kin have been notified. Is this the room?"
The doctor nods and opens the door, ushering Gerard inside.
* * * * *
The warning buzzer sounds in the room as the x-ray machine hums to life and scans the body under its crosshairs. Instead of looking for injuries and broken bones, it sees through the black body bag and underneath skin and bone to check for explosives that have buried themselves inside of flesh and have not gone off.
When the whir fades and the image loads onto the screen in front of the technician, he scans the image and finds it clear of anything that could harm anyone preparing the body and completes the form clearing the body for further processing. Adding the clearance to the steadily growing paperwork, the technician signals for a porter to bring P.F.C. Mayer to the next department.
* * * * *
Aaron flops down on the couch, exhausted. The entire family has been out searching every corner of Oakdale and now that the sun is going down and they've searched every street, every alley, the hospital, the Lakeview, every friend of Luke's they can think of, even the campus and dorms of the university… it's like Luke has just disappeared into thin air.
Aaron can understand why the kid ran. He wouldn't want to grieve losing the love of his life with the entire town watching either. While everyone is freaking out, Aaron knows that Luke will come back in time for Noah's body to arrive. Even though every second of it will kill Luke, he'll make sure that Noah is taken care of and then the big fall apart will happen. Right now they just have to give him a day or two to get his head together enough to make it through burying Noah.
Flicking through the channels, he attempts to find something to watch that will let him turn his mind off for a while. Maybe that sitcom with those people that do that thing in that place. He furrows his brows as he tries to remember what they actually do but yammer away, trying to be funnier than the others and drink coffee, but never pay for it. Going past the past the news channels, he pauses in his channel surfing and mutes the sound as Lily and his dad come back in to the living room. "Any news from Margo?"
Only receiving two heads shaking in response, he turns back around to the television to see a large graphic on the screen announcing that breaking news is about to come on. When he hits the mute button, the sound leaps out of the speakers again and just as he is about to thumb the remote to start skimming through the channels again, he hesitates.
"We have breaking news coming in from Afghanistan and the ongoing War on Terror. The Department of Defense has released the details of an attack at one of their base camps in the area outlying Moqor, which is situated halfway between Kandahar and the capital city of Kabul.
The report states that insurgents from several factions worked together to attack the camp during a windstorm that was blowing sand and debris in gusts over 75 miles per hour, reducing visibility to nearly zero and causing great difficulty for the surveillance equipment outside of the camp. While there were some initial reports that the camp had been taken by the insurgents, the Department of Defense confirmed today that the camp is still under their control and the insurgents had been suppressed.
The Department of Defense has confirmed there has been a heavy casualty count, but are delaying the listing of the fallen in an effort to notify all next of kin.
In an exclusive to this network, we have a firsthand account of the camp as it was found following the attack. The person reports seeing casualties spread out all over the camp, some places where the fighting was most intense, casualties had to be moved to clear a path to the wounded. The Department of Defense has declined to confirm this information, but did confirm reports that the helicopter units that had come to help with clearing the wounded had to land outside of the camp’s barriers, as reported by our source.
The full casualty listing is expected to be the longest in the War on Terror thus far. The Department of Defense internal communication network has calls for soldiers to act as Notification Officers and others to act as Escorts for the fallen soldiers and these requests cover nearly every state in the union.
We'll have more details on this unfolding story as they come."
Aaron feels the remote slip through his hands and fall to his lap as he sees the grainy aerial shots of the camp as the news anchor speaks. He knows this is without a doubt where Noah had been killed.
"Turn it off." Lily's voice is soft, but there is no mistaking the order in it.
* * * * *
Once the body of P.F.C. Noah Mayer has been rolled into the identification and bar coding department, the technician takes the file that has been started and pulls up the corresponding documentation on the computer. Unzipping the bag, she reaches in and pulls out his arm just enough to get access to his hand. Dipping a sponge into soapy water, she holds his hand up so that she can run the sponge over the pads of his fingers. Once they are clean enough for her purposes, she puts down the sponge and brings up a folded piece of cloth, blotting the wetness dry. Rolling the scanning equipment over, she places his hand on the surface, making sure the fingertips line up with the guidelines and starts the machine.
While the scanner lights up and the mechanism makes a slow rolling noise as it moves downwards, she turns back to the computer screen and starts the process of issuing a bar code that will be scanned the rest of the way through the process of getting P.F.C. Mayer ready to go home for burial.
She's nearly done with issuing the barcode when the scanner beeps and she switches back to the monitor attached to the scanning equipment. Her system won't let her issue the bar code until the scanner is done. Pulling up the results, she frowns at the screen. Rolling back over to the scanner, she moves the hand off of it and opens the body bag further, pulling the dog tags out and comparing them to the screen.
* * * * *
Gerard McLane walks toward the bed of Samuel Hendricks and finds his steps faltering as he takes in the injuries to the other man and then sweeping his eyes towards Sam's face. Gerard comes to a full stop, his eyes widening. "Doctor, we have a problem here. This man is not Samuel Hendricks.”
“ His name is Noah Mayer."
Author(s): escapes
Artist: solostrightnow
Rating:NC-17 just in case
Disclaimer:I don't own them, just the order in which most of the words are strung together.
Characters/Pairings:Nuke
Word Count: 50, 000 plus
Warnings: You are going to have to trust me. Be warned that there is angst. i can't give you more without completely ruinding the story.
Spoilers: None.
Summary: Sometimes the hardest battle in the war is finding your way back home.
Author’s Notes: This is the Big Bang that I didn't know I'd be writing when the whole thing started. An writer driopped out and since I had an idea I'd been turning over in my head for a year now, I figured I'd give it a go. I think it's some of the best stuff I've writen. Hopefully you'll agree.
Thank you to noelleleithe for the betas that were numerous and short-notice. solostrightnow for the awesome fan mix and being kind enough to let me make suggestions on her awesomeness. Thank you!
Link to Art Master Post: Click, Listen, Be amazed at Yael's great taste in music!
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When Luke opens his eyes, the house is dark and quiet around him. Turning his head, he sees the alarm clock beside the bed reading just past three in the morning. For a second he doesn't remember why he's sleeping here at the farm. It only takes another second for the crushing weight of realization to settle back on him that Noah is dead. Rolling onto his side, he sees the empty chair still beside the bed and is glad that his dad has gone to sleep in a bed and not spent the night hunched over next to Luke. No need for two of them to be up at this stupid hour of the morning.
Throwing off the covers, Luke sits up and rubs a hand through his hair, yawning. Once he's made a trip to the bathroom and walked back to the bed, his brain has started whirling again with questions that he doesn't have answers for. Everything from what he's going to change into after sleeping in his swim trunks and what looks like his dad's t-shirt, to how long it's going to take for Noah's body to come here to Oakdale. In between those two questions a million more race through Luke's mind, until he's standing with his arms wrapped around himself, his brain paralyzed and overwhelmed at how many things have fallen on him to figure out, but his body restless and refusing to stay still.
His chest starts burning and Luke realizes he's gasping for air and shaking again. Standing very still, he forces himself to regulate his breathing, which eventually drags his racing heart with it.
Once he's calm enough to remember which floorboards creak and how the fifth and ninth stairs are to be avoided if you want to sneak anywhere, he silently makes his way down to the kitchen of the farm and slips something on his feet before going out the back door. Quietly, he slips into the barn, able to make his way by the one light that is always kept burning and walks to the stall of his favorite girl. Rosalind knows the sound of his gait across the floor or the barn and her head is poking out of her stall to greet him before he can even click his tongue to call for her.
Stepping up to the gate of her stall, Luke reaches up and wraps his arms around Rosalind's neck, feeling the bottom of her long muzzle resting on his back from his shoulder to the edge of his rib cage, the familiar weight and warmth instantly calming him down in a way that nothing else but Noah's arms around him could do. Leaning his head against her withers, the coarseness of her coat makes the nerves tingle on Luke's cheek and the muted thwup-thwup sound of her heartbeat through layers of bone and muscle has him closing his eyes and concentrating on that instead of the angry buzz of thoughts in his head.
"He's gone, Rosalind. Noah is dead." Saying it out loud makes it sound so final to Luke.
His only answer is a soft snort from Rosalind as she presses down on his shoulder a little more.
"What am I going to do, girl? I don't feel like he's gone. Shouldn't something inside of me have changed now that he's gone? Mom always says she knows when something happens to any of us, especially Dad. Noah is the most important person in the world to me. Shouldn't I have felt something that knew Noah was gone before those soldiers showed up?"
Luke can feel the anxiety rising in him again, the feeling like he's about to crawl out of his own skin. He knows that Rosalind can feel it too, her back legs moving restlessly as she keeps her muzzle holding Luke close to her. Giving her a good scratch down the sides of her withers and down the flat plane of her muzzle as he pulls away, he walks away just enough to pull an apple out of the treat bag and holds it out to her on a flat hand.
She chomps down on it like the greedy girl that she is and Luke gives her one last scratch, before walking back out of the barn and looking over the pasture fields and beyond them Snyder Pond, all of it washed in a silvery gray color from the moon.
Making his way back into the kitchen, he sees his wallet and keys beside his dad's on the sideboard in the kitchen. Picking them up, he heads back outside and starts walking in the direction of his parents house, hoping that the walk over will keep his mind occupied enough that it can't start whirling again and asking questions he doesn't have answers to.
By the time he gets to the house, he knows the attempt to quiet his mind has been a dismal failure. It's going a million rpms and his head is so full of thoughts and decisions he has to make that he just wants to crawl into his bed and never come back out. He knows that his family will never allow him to do that. They'll keep being there and talking to him and everything they should do in this kind of situation, but it's the last thing Luke wants them to do right now.
Luke lets himself into the house and kicks off his shoes, going up to his closet, getting down the lockbox he'd bought himself after Noah's first letter had come to him. Setting it on his bed, he reaches into his bookcase and pulls out his hardcover edition of Catch-22 and flips it open, pulling out the key tucked inside and putting the book back on the shelf. Unlocking and opening the box, he takes out the first envelope and holds it in his hand, looking down at the Army issue envelope that has his name and address written on it with Noah's precise handwriting, like it wouldn't get to him if it wasn't printed perfectly.
Closing his eyes, he withdraws the contents inside the envelope out and opens his eyes again as the papers unfold with no resistance, having been read so many times the creases from the folds are almost worn through. Noah's words, the way each letter is neatly spaced in his words and yet connected to each other through the flowing lines of his cursive, so familiar and so Noah that he can almost hear the other man's voice in his head as his eyes catch on words like sorry, regret, how I feel, didn't want to hurt you but I know I did, forgive, and the way he closed every letter with 'same here, always.'
He sits down heavily on his bed, the springs groaning sharply in protest and tries to blink the haze from his eyes. He flips the letter over to what he knows is on the back of the last page. 'Luke, I know you don't want to think about this, but if something happens to me, I've given you control over what happens to me. I know my decision to enlist has hurt you. I'm sorry. I know that even if you hate me right now, if something happens to me, you'll do the right thing. I will do everything I can to make sure you never have to use this information, I promise you that.
I'm going to take a chance and hope the censors don't read this before sending it to you. I love you, Luke Snyder. Army or not, that is never going to change.'
Putting the letter back, Luke looks at the smaller pile of letters he'd written Noah and never sent. All of them full of details of life at the farm and at his parents’ house, of goings on in Oakdale, all the things everyone else was sending Noah in their letters and emails. Every time he tried to go beyond the banal, his words would dry up and the only ones that would make it to the page would be ones like, 'I hate you for doing this to us.' and 'three years doesn't seem like a long time to you because you're not the one being left behind to pick up the pieces of you leaving.' The thoughts that spilled on the pages were so shameful that he wouldn't even acknowledge them to himself until they stared up at him in ink. 'Sometimes I wish my kidney would give out or I'd get into a car accident and you'd get the call and be stuck over there, terrified and alone, and finally know how I feel.'
Luke wipes his hand under his eyes and uses his other hand to push the lid closed on the lockbox. He doesn't want to look at all of Noah's carefully ambiguous wording in each letter, always being careful to not give the military censors any reason to suspect Luke was anything more than a friend after that first letter. This sanitized version of Noah is not the one he wants to remember.
The feeling of wanting to crawl out of his skin is back. Luke looks over at his laptop. He'd been planning to search how long it takes the Army to ship a body home from Afghanistan, but he can't be still any longer. He has the feeling that if he stays still too long, what happened in his grandma's hallway will happen again and Luke has no idea if he'll be able to survive that blind panic again without his heart exploding.
Taking the lockbox by the handle and putting the key in his pocket, he makes his way downstairs and grabs the keys to his car.
It's a short drive to the parking lot behind Java and he walks up to the door of the coffee shop, the inside dark and still, and can't find anything of Noah anywhere in there. Only the ghost of the last time he'd been there, about a month after Noah had left and he'd gotten tired of the sympathetic looks from all the baristas as he sat at a table for one and tried to write, always failing. He'd found another shop across town soon after and had never gone back until this moment.
Walking away from Java, he makes his way towards the bench that he and Noah had talked at, fought at, kissed at, and made up at. He sits down and wills himself to feel some part of Noah here, but there's nothing but the humid July air pressing down on him.
He walks down the paths of Old Town, the light of Al's Diner being the only storefront lit up. He stops in front of it and like with every other place, memories rush at him, but no feeling of Noah's presence comes to him.
Janet meets his eyes, her morning shift usually starting about five. She holds up the coffee carafe and beckons him in with her other hand, but Luke shakes his head. Too much sympathy, too many memories.
Turning away, he walks back to his car and starts driving. Without Noah, there is nothing but ghosts here for him now.
* * * * *
"Luke? Honey, we've let you sleep in, but you can't hide the day away… HOLDEN! Luke's gone!"
* * * * *
It's a solemn ceremony at Ramstein Air Force Base under cloudy German skies as flag-draped metal boxes filled with fallen soldiers are packed in ice and given an honor guard. Eight uniformed men act as pallbearers. They walk their cargo into the open hold of the freight plane that is going to be the fallen soldiers’ transport to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. There they'll be cleaned and uniformed and their escorts will accompany them home for burial.
Once the hold is full with twelve identical boxes, one last check is done of the labels on the boxes, a soldier going through and reading off the names as another initials them as delivered into the plane. …Carter, Daphne P., Davis, Jeffery M., Mayer, Noah B., Rafferty, Joshua O….. Once the hold is full, they give clearance for their only living passenger, besides the pilots, to enter the hold.
Nick Davis walks through the parallel lines made by saluting soldiers that lead up to the plane's ramp and loads his bags into the area the pilot indicates, careful to make sure they're secured and will not move during the flight. Entering the cockpit, Nick looks out one of the side windows and sees two planes identical to this one in the process of loading their own holds full of fallen soldiers. He knows tomorrow they have a full schedule as well.
Turning away, he finds the seat in the back of the cockpit that he's been given clearance to sit in and buckles in as the pilots start their pre-flight checks.
* * * * *
"Lily? I've checked the house. He was here. His car is gone. I tried his cell, but it rang inside the house. I'm going to call Margo and see if there is anything we can do through her."
* * * * *
Once the plane is in the air, Nick leaves the cockpit and makes his way back into the hold, stopping at his bags and pulling out a binder before walking with measured steps to where his brother’s and Mayer's bodies are. He'd requested they be placed side by side and in the first line loaded. The soldiers at Ramstein had been as efficient and respectful as his own Reaper units, even though they were just as overwhelmed as his units. They were fighting against the clock in getting all of the soldiers to Dover where they could be properly prepared. Their main goal reduced to getting all of the soldiers iced, and boxed, and in the air on the way to Dover as quickly as possible, and then do the same thing all over again as the next group from the camp is flown in.
Sitting down facing the boxes containing his brother and Mayer, Nick opens his binder, flipping to the back where he keeps a pad of blue ruled note paper and takes the pen from its place on the arm of his jacket, clicking it open. He stares at the label with his brother's name and memories wash over him, from stupid childhood pranks, to childish fights, to seeing his brother in uniform at the end of Basic finally looking more man than boy. He remembers teasing Jeff about finally growing out of his baby face a little. Now he'd be stuck that way, forever young, while the rest of his family keeps moving forward in time until, one by one, they all join him.
As he puts the tip of the pen to the paper, Nick’s hand shakes, and he blames the rumble of the plane's engines. Picking one of the memories running through his head to concentrate on, he starts writing his brother's eulogy.
* * * * *
"Holden, I understand that you're worried. I am too, but legally I can't report Luke missing until he's been gone 48 hours. He's an adult in the eyes of the law and able to go wherever, whenever he likes. He wouldn't be the first person to get news like that and just take off to put their head back on straight."
Margo pinches the bridge of her nose and reaches for a bottle of aspirin she keeps in her desk drawer. "I know he's devastated and not thinking clearly, Holden. I was there when he received the news, remember?" She sighs and cracks open the bottle of water on her desk. "Here's what I'm going to do. I can't officially report him missing, but I am going to give my officers and the state police the information about Luke and his car and that they're to report in if they see it or him. That's what I can do for now and if he doesn't call someone or come back home by tomorrow night, I want you to call me, okay?"
Pausing while Holden speaks, she swallows down the aspirin with a mouthful of water. "Yes, call me if he comes home. Between Luke and Casey, it's a miracle we all aren't completely gray haired and on anxiety medication. I'll call you if I have any news."
* * * * *
When the plane lands at Dover Air Force Base, Nick Davis joins the soldiers lining the path from the ramp of the plane to the transport vehicle that will move the bodies from the tarmac to the mortuary building.
Standing at attention, he bows his head as the chaplain recites a prayer and joins the murmured amen as the first group of eight soldiers moves in to lift the first box from the deck of the hold.
He stands at attention and gives a slow salute as the first box is carried past and loaded into the gray transport vehicle. Again and again he goes through the same honor for each fallen soldier. When his brother has been loaded in alongside Mayer in the last vehicle, he nods at the lower-ranked soldier who retrieved his bags from the plane and follows him to the car waiting to bring him to his lodging for the night.
* * * * *
"Janet told me she saw Luke at about five this morning standing outside of Al's. She tried to get him to come in, but he'd walked away before she could go outside to get him," Jack Snyder says as he sits down across from Margo Hughes in her office.
Margo nods and absorbs that news. "Think maybe he's just taking some time to absorb things?"
Holding out his hand when Margo raises her bottle of aspirin, he shrugs. "I think he's so far into shock that he probably doesn't realize that he didn't tell anyone where he's going. From what Holden told me he was like when he found Luke upstairs last night, it sounds like the poor kid is completely overwhelmed."
Margo pulls up the notice she'd been about to send out and amends the information about the last time Luke had been seen. "Has someone told the two Notification Officers that Luke is missing?"
Jack blows out a long, frustrated breath. "I don't think so. I'll go over to notify them now." He accepts the bottle of water that Margo hands him and swallows the pills. "You think he's going to come back on his own?"
Margo contemplates the question and finally nods. "Yes. If nothing else, he'll make sure that Noah is given the send off that poor kid deserves."
* * * * *
"Welcome to Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Major McLane. I understand you're interested in seeing Private First Class Samuel Hendricks. He's not regained consciousness yet, but he's showing signs of coming around."
Gerard McLane nods and follows the doctor down the corridor of the Army hospital that all of the injured from the incident at the camp had been transferred to. "Was he conscious at all when he was at the hospital in Germany? We're interested in finding out what had happened to his unit. He's the only one that managed to survive."
The doctor continues walking towards the room. "I've read the brief on what happened. I've heard from Rammstein and Dover that they're nearly overrun with so many casualties coming in at once."
"They're expecting it to hit the press any time now. Thankfully almost all of the next of kin have been notified. Is this the room?"
The doctor nods and opens the door, ushering Gerard inside.
* * * * *
The warning buzzer sounds in the room as the x-ray machine hums to life and scans the body under its crosshairs. Instead of looking for injuries and broken bones, it sees through the black body bag and underneath skin and bone to check for explosives that have buried themselves inside of flesh and have not gone off.
When the whir fades and the image loads onto the screen in front of the technician, he scans the image and finds it clear of anything that could harm anyone preparing the body and completes the form clearing the body for further processing. Adding the clearance to the steadily growing paperwork, the technician signals for a porter to bring P.F.C. Mayer to the next department.
* * * * *
Aaron flops down on the couch, exhausted. The entire family has been out searching every corner of Oakdale and now that the sun is going down and they've searched every street, every alley, the hospital, the Lakeview, every friend of Luke's they can think of, even the campus and dorms of the university… it's like Luke has just disappeared into thin air.
Aaron can understand why the kid ran. He wouldn't want to grieve losing the love of his life with the entire town watching either. While everyone is freaking out, Aaron knows that Luke will come back in time for Noah's body to arrive. Even though every second of it will kill Luke, he'll make sure that Noah is taken care of and then the big fall apart will happen. Right now they just have to give him a day or two to get his head together enough to make it through burying Noah.
Flicking through the channels, he attempts to find something to watch that will let him turn his mind off for a while. Maybe that sitcom with those people that do that thing in that place. He furrows his brows as he tries to remember what they actually do but yammer away, trying to be funnier than the others and drink coffee, but never pay for it. Going past the past the news channels, he pauses in his channel surfing and mutes the sound as Lily and his dad come back in to the living room. "Any news from Margo?"
Only receiving two heads shaking in response, he turns back around to the television to see a large graphic on the screen announcing that breaking news is about to come on. When he hits the mute button, the sound leaps out of the speakers again and just as he is about to thumb the remote to start skimming through the channels again, he hesitates.
"We have breaking news coming in from Afghanistan and the ongoing War on Terror. The Department of Defense has released the details of an attack at one of their base camps in the area outlying Moqor, which is situated halfway between Kandahar and the capital city of Kabul.
The report states that insurgents from several factions worked together to attack the camp during a windstorm that was blowing sand and debris in gusts over 75 miles per hour, reducing visibility to nearly zero and causing great difficulty for the surveillance equipment outside of the camp. While there were some initial reports that the camp had been taken by the insurgents, the Department of Defense confirmed today that the camp is still under their control and the insurgents had been suppressed.
The Department of Defense has confirmed there has been a heavy casualty count, but are delaying the listing of the fallen in an effort to notify all next of kin.
In an exclusive to this network, we have a firsthand account of the camp as it was found following the attack. The person reports seeing casualties spread out all over the camp, some places where the fighting was most intense, casualties had to be moved to clear a path to the wounded. The Department of Defense has declined to confirm this information, but did confirm reports that the helicopter units that had come to help with clearing the wounded had to land outside of the camp’s barriers, as reported by our source.
The full casualty listing is expected to be the longest in the War on Terror thus far. The Department of Defense internal communication network has calls for soldiers to act as Notification Officers and others to act as Escorts for the fallen soldiers and these requests cover nearly every state in the union.
We'll have more details on this unfolding story as they come."
Aaron feels the remote slip through his hands and fall to his lap as he sees the grainy aerial shots of the camp as the news anchor speaks. He knows this is without a doubt where Noah had been killed.
"Turn it off." Lily's voice is soft, but there is no mistaking the order in it.
* * * * *
Once the body of P.F.C. Noah Mayer has been rolled into the identification and bar coding department, the technician takes the file that has been started and pulls up the corresponding documentation on the computer. Unzipping the bag, she reaches in and pulls out his arm just enough to get access to his hand. Dipping a sponge into soapy water, she holds his hand up so that she can run the sponge over the pads of his fingers. Once they are clean enough for her purposes, she puts down the sponge and brings up a folded piece of cloth, blotting the wetness dry. Rolling the scanning equipment over, she places his hand on the surface, making sure the fingertips line up with the guidelines and starts the machine.
While the scanner lights up and the mechanism makes a slow rolling noise as it moves downwards, she turns back to the computer screen and starts the process of issuing a bar code that will be scanned the rest of the way through the process of getting P.F.C. Mayer ready to go home for burial.
She's nearly done with issuing the barcode when the scanner beeps and she switches back to the monitor attached to the scanning equipment. Her system won't let her issue the bar code until the scanner is done. Pulling up the results, she frowns at the screen. Rolling back over to the scanner, she moves the hand off of it and opens the body bag further, pulling the dog tags out and comparing them to the screen.
* * * * *
Gerard McLane walks toward the bed of Samuel Hendricks and finds his steps faltering as he takes in the injuries to the other man and then sweeping his eyes towards Sam's face. Gerard comes to a full stop, his eyes widening. "Doctor, we have a problem here. This man is not Samuel Hendricks.”
“ His name is Noah Mayer."