fic: Dead and Gone
It's Jericho Day! Again! But never again...*sobs*
In honor of our last day, here is some angsty fic.
Title: Dead and Gone
Fandom: Jericho...duh.
Rating: PG, should be rated A for angst
Characters: Jake, Emily, brief mentions of others
Word Count: almost 500
Spoilers: Takes place during "Four Horsemen," references to "Pilot" and "The Day Before" and "Vox Populi" and Jake's time working for J&R. Lines in italics taken directly from episodes.
Disclaimer: Not mine, but it's not really anyone's after tonight so...
Summary: Jake, thinking about Emily. Angst.
Emily was angry, and grieving, and Jake knew it, but he went to her anyway. He used to be the one she turned to, he used to be a lot of things to her. Not anymore.
“He’s gone, and I’m here with you. You were supposed to be the one that was dead. Not him.”
He let the words wash over him and settle on his shoulders, in his skin. She wasn’t just talking about Roger. She was talking about her brother. And she was right. He agreed with her. He’d gone to Afghanistan, and to Iraq, and anywhere else that would have him, trying to forget it all. But it hadn’t worked, and in a lot of ways, it’d only gotten worse. He had more reasons than Emily now to wish that he was the one who hadn’t made it.
At the top of that list was a little girl, staring back at him from a black memory. Another mistake in a seemingly endless line of mistakes. Another one of those things he couldn’t take back, no matter how hard he tried. When he looked into Emily’s eyes some days, he saw other eyes staring back at him, full of accusations and blame. Tragedies he had caused, irreparable sorrow and grief.
And even in San Diego, when he’d hid out in a small apartment and tried to leave it all behind him, it’d always come back around.
“…there’s no way I can hire you if you are unable to clear this up.”
Telling interviewers he couldn’t talk about it for confidentiality reasons was one thing, but not the real thing holding him back. He couldn’t talk about it. At all.
Going back to Jericho had been an exercise in torture. All the people he’d known wanted to know. Stanley, Eric, his father, the woman he’d loved once and still did, couldn’t help but love...
“Seriously, where have you been?”
It was easier to lie to them than to risk them ever finding out.
But he was different now, changed in ways indescribable. Deep gashes in his soul that left a visible mark on the outside. Everyone who looked could see it. His mother stared and couldn’t look away, his brother couldn’t figure out what he was looking at, his father waited to see what would come of it, and Emily…
Emily couldn’t see. Wouldn’t see. In some ways, he was glad.
Later, he would find Roger for her in a distorted line of sound on a tape, lost in a field outside of Kansas City but still alive, and she would look past him like he wasn’t even there. Despite that, she would be in his arms, for a dance to a song he remembered intensely. How could he possibly forget? And afterwards, she would run into another man’s arms, into Roger’s arms, and when he melted away she wouldn’t even notice.