Original: The Letter
Title: The Letter [ INDEX]
Author: Erin (erinm_4600)
Characters, Pairing: Dree and CJ (mention of -her- Wyatt, TJ, and rest of the Pennsylvania gang)
Rating: PG
Summary: She finally learns the truth about the day he walked away, and isn't at all what she imagined
Warning: ANGST. some time around What Was, What Is *Written for The Long Surprise at gameofcards. Prompts: 7. The character gets an unexpected gift. and 7. Loss, with a mix of 4. Isolation, 6. Justice, and 8. Love, on the side
Disclaimer: The original characters of The Wizard of Oz belong to L. Frank Baum and their respective actors. The current characters of Tin Man belong to Sci-Fi, the movie folks and their respective actors. The characters of Remember WENN belong to their respective actors and Rupert Holmes. The Disney characters belong to Disney, their authors, and their respective actors. The OCs are mine and bizarra's. And, now gatechic's, by default. Garrett Cain belongs to gatechic and is, as always, used and abused with love. ♥
The bar is empty, as it usually is, save for the one woman who has spent a large chunk of her very long life there. It isn't a bar that gets a lot of traffic, at least not in the mortal world. It was explained, once, as being similar to limbo - that place after the world, but before the next.
Sort of like Grand Central Station for the afterlife.
Today, she is over by the bank of booths along the wall - really, though, they aren't much more than a padded bench facing the bar, with a row of tables in front of each. The bench she's in front of has had the table pulled away, and she's on her hands and knees, one arm stretched under the seat.
"What are you doing?" comes a voice she knows well. It belongs to the man who tends the bar - an immortal, like herself - and she doesn't bother to face him.
"Runaway car," she says between breaths, then retracts her hand and presses her cheek to the floor, taking another look at her goal. The tiny toy truck is definitely under there - the object one of her sons' (in this current life) demands before his nap.
"Did you try moving the bench?" he asks, moving over to pull the table further back.
"Didn't budge," she replies, pushing herself up and giving him a look. "Figured you wouldn't appreciate me ripping the thing away from the wall." She adds a cheeky smirk and shrugs.
"You would be right," he replies dryly, and leans to get a look at how the large piece of furniture is docked. "If I remember correctly," he starts, running a hand behind the top edge of the seat cushion. A second later, his finger finds the catch and there's a pop, and the lower portion of the bench raises enough for him to pull the cushion toward them.
It's not much of a gap between the wall and the back of the bench, but it puts her closer to where the truck is. Managing to lean around the now-raised cushion, she sticks a hand down into the crevice and makes a face, reaching blindly in the area she knows the truck is parked. Making contact with something else, she pulls her hand free, producing a worn envelope. "Hold that," she says, holding the envelope up and not noticing that his eyes widen slightly as he takes it, recognizing the faded paper almost immediately.
A moment later, she cheers, and pulls her hand out again, this time with the toy truck in tow. "Got it! Remind me, will ya," she starts, pulling herself away from the bench and waiving the truck at him, "to put towels down, next time the kids are here, playing." She makes a quick motion to the gap under the benches and nods.
It's a wonder what else might be under some of these, after all the time the bar has been here.
"This is for you," he says a moment later, holding the envelope out. Her brows crease, and she moves to place the truck on the table behind her, with one hand, while the other reaches for the paper.
"Me?" she asks, making a face as she flips the envelope right-side up. Her breath catches a second later, not because the letter has her name - her real name - but because she knows the hand the scrawl belonged to. She glances up, giving her companion a questioning look, and makes quick work of opening the envelope. Before she even scans the first line, she sits on the now-lowered seat.
The letter is old, and even though it's been protected by its hiding place, the words are faded but readable.
She doesn't know her breath is held as she reads; if it wasn't for her eyes, following every stroke of every letter, one might think she was just a life-like statue, for as still as she's sitting. The letter starts with an acknowledgement that if he hasn't already died, he's there with her as she reads, which means he can be telling her the same story, himself, thereby making the letter unnecessary.
So, if she's reading the letter, he's clearly dead and things didn't go at all as he'd planned.
What follows is an account of what he's been doing, where he's been... why he left. He knows that these simple words don't change the pain she must have felt for all those annuals, every time their paths crossed and he gave her that look or ignored that question. She had already been through so much, and it was all he could do to stop the quest for revenge and go back to her. She was his entire world and he needed her to know that. He needed to do for her; for their friends; for their God-daughter, what he hadn't done all those annuals before, when the army came and took her and their son away from him.
Her arm is shaking as she reads, an old injury that flares up when she holds her arm in that position for too long. Letting go of one side of the letter, she gives her hand and arm a good, snapping, shake, while eyes never leave the page.
The tale continues, as he tells her about the process he had to undertake to find the man responsible for taking their friends' lives; for making their God-daughter an orphan; for what ultimately had happened to her - dying with their friends in the attack is how they learned that she couldn't stay dead, how they learned she would always wake up.
So much lying, to her, to others - all with the intention of retribution. He needed them to believe he was on their side, bitter and angry for the events that had transpired before the attack; that he agreed their friend was killed justifiably for her actions. The depths he had to go to, to convince them he belonged - this was a mission he needed to do alone. Only two people knew where his allegiance really stood, which side of the fence he was truly on.
She couldn't be one of those people, because she was being watched. They didn't know she had died that day, and he wasn't about to let anyone know her secret. She wasn't even ready to accept the truth, and was safer being kept in the dark.
There were repeated sentences stating how much he hated himself for this undertaking, and how much he loved her. He would find the men responsible and make them suffer, make them pay. He didn't care that his former oath called for justice and a fair trial - there was no fairness in the city, these days.
All she knew about the night he died was that he had been found alongside the man who had pulled the trigger that afternoon. He had the upper hand, but the assassin was hiding a knife. Everyone assumed the two men had gotten into a drunken fight, and no one knew that the other man had been the one in the theater's lobby that day.
He did, though. And he had taken every precaution to get a confession out of the man before taking his life. He wanted to hear the man say the words, and he had heard them - though, none of this information was in the letter. But the man behind the bar, the one now at her side, had been told the day he wandered in for the last time.
The need for air reminds her that she hasn't taken a breath, and before she can even get the breath in, her hand has gone to her mouth and tears are streaming down her cheeks. She had always believed his words, that morning; she had always blamed herself for pushing him away, for not trying to stop him. She was so busy caring for their God-daughter and grieving her friends, she didn't have time to worry about herself.
The only thing that mattered was an eleven-year-old girl who didn't understand what happened.
And, now, after all this time, she had just learned that he was going to come back to her. He was coming back.
But, he hadn't.
Another friend - also affected by that day - was missing, that night, and she was in a panic to find him. No one had seen him anywhere, so she checked the hospital and the jail. When neither of those options had yielded a result, she had fought back the bile and gone to the only other place she expected to find the friend.
Instead, she found her husband.
Their son arrived later, expecting something terrible to have happened when he learned the kind of company his father had taken up with - he had been one of the two people to know the truth - but he hadn't been expecting to find his mother there.
She wanted nothing more, that night, than to join her beloved husband, but the now-twelve-year-old still needed her. Blaming herself for all of it, she locked all the emotions up in a box and walked out, back toward home, and so began the process of shutting people out, save those closest to her.
The missing friend was never found; her own children had their own lives and, as the years went by, as each person she knew and cared for grew older and passed on, she made less friends, She grew harder and colder... she became the person he had accused her of being all those years ago, standing in that doorway.
Hundreds of years later, her life had changed so many times, for good and bad, and she was currently in a good place. She had a family, again, and while things were difficult and complicated, she was back to being the kind of person she had been long before that war that started all of them on a path of destruction.
Everything she knew, everything that pushed her forward...
Where would she be if she had known the truth? If he had come home?
Hearing a call from the magical doorway that connects her new life to this place, she remembers that there's a toddler who needs his truck and a nap. She keeps a death grip on the letter, and reaches for the truck with her free hand. Using the back of that hand, she wipes at her cheeks and sucks in a deep breath. The time to dwell on the words isn't now - she has eternity for that.
Now, she needs to get her son his truck.
Author: Erin (erinm_4600)
Characters, Pairing: Dree and CJ (mention of -her- Wyatt, TJ, and rest of the Pennsylvania gang)
Rating: PG
Summary: She finally learns the truth about the day he walked away, and isn't at all what she imagined
Warning: ANGST. some time around What Was, What Is *Written for The Long Surprise at gameofcards. Prompts: 7. The character gets an unexpected gift. and 7. Loss, with a mix of 4. Isolation, 6. Justice, and 8. Love, on the side
Disclaimer: The original characters of The Wizard of Oz belong to L. Frank Baum and their respective actors. The current characters of Tin Man belong to Sci-Fi, the movie folks and their respective actors. The characters of Remember WENN belong to their respective actors and Rupert Holmes. The Disney characters belong to Disney, their authors, and their respective actors. The OCs are mine and bizarra's. And, now gatechic's, by default. Garrett Cain belongs to gatechic and is, as always, used and abused with love. ♥
The bar is empty, as it usually is, save for the one woman who has spent a large chunk of her very long life there. It isn't a bar that gets a lot of traffic, at least not in the mortal world. It was explained, once, as being similar to limbo - that place after the world, but before the next.
Sort of like Grand Central Station for the afterlife.
Today, she is over by the bank of booths along the wall - really, though, they aren't much more than a padded bench facing the bar, with a row of tables in front of each. The bench she's in front of has had the table pulled away, and she's on her hands and knees, one arm stretched under the seat.
"What are you doing?" comes a voice she knows well. It belongs to the man who tends the bar - an immortal, like herself - and she doesn't bother to face him.
"Runaway car," she says between breaths, then retracts her hand and presses her cheek to the floor, taking another look at her goal. The tiny toy truck is definitely under there - the object one of her sons' (in this current life) demands before his nap.
"Did you try moving the bench?" he asks, moving over to pull the table further back.
"Didn't budge," she replies, pushing herself up and giving him a look. "Figured you wouldn't appreciate me ripping the thing away from the wall." She adds a cheeky smirk and shrugs.
"You would be right," he replies dryly, and leans to get a look at how the large piece of furniture is docked. "If I remember correctly," he starts, running a hand behind the top edge of the seat cushion. A second later, his finger finds the catch and there's a pop, and the lower portion of the bench raises enough for him to pull the cushion toward them.
It's not much of a gap between the wall and the back of the bench, but it puts her closer to where the truck is. Managing to lean around the now-raised cushion, she sticks a hand down into the crevice and makes a face, reaching blindly in the area she knows the truck is parked. Making contact with something else, she pulls her hand free, producing a worn envelope. "Hold that," she says, holding the envelope up and not noticing that his eyes widen slightly as he takes it, recognizing the faded paper almost immediately.
A moment later, she cheers, and pulls her hand out again, this time with the toy truck in tow. "Got it! Remind me, will ya," she starts, pulling herself away from the bench and waiving the truck at him, "to put towels down, next time the kids are here, playing." She makes a quick motion to the gap under the benches and nods.
It's a wonder what else might be under some of these, after all the time the bar has been here.
"This is for you," he says a moment later, holding the envelope out. Her brows crease, and she moves to place the truck on the table behind her, with one hand, while the other reaches for the paper.
"Me?" she asks, making a face as she flips the envelope right-side up. Her breath catches a second later, not because the letter has her name - her real name - but because she knows the hand the scrawl belonged to. She glances up, giving her companion a questioning look, and makes quick work of opening the envelope. Before she even scans the first line, she sits on the now-lowered seat.
The letter is old, and even though it's been protected by its hiding place, the words are faded but readable.
She doesn't know her breath is held as she reads; if it wasn't for her eyes, following every stroke of every letter, one might think she was just a life-like statue, for as still as she's sitting. The letter starts with an acknowledgement that if he hasn't already died, he's there with her as she reads, which means he can be telling her the same story, himself, thereby making the letter unnecessary.
So, if she's reading the letter, he's clearly dead and things didn't go at all as he'd planned.
What follows is an account of what he's been doing, where he's been... why he left. He knows that these simple words don't change the pain she must have felt for all those annuals, every time their paths crossed and he gave her that look or ignored that question. She had already been through so much, and it was all he could do to stop the quest for revenge and go back to her. She was his entire world and he needed her to know that. He needed to do for her; for their friends; for their God-daughter, what he hadn't done all those annuals before, when the army came and took her and their son away from him.
Her arm is shaking as she reads, an old injury that flares up when she holds her arm in that position for too long. Letting go of one side of the letter, she gives her hand and arm a good, snapping, shake, while eyes never leave the page.
The tale continues, as he tells her about the process he had to undertake to find the man responsible for taking their friends' lives; for making their God-daughter an orphan; for what ultimately had happened to her - dying with their friends in the attack is how they learned that she couldn't stay dead, how they learned she would always wake up.
So much lying, to her, to others - all with the intention of retribution. He needed them to believe he was on their side, bitter and angry for the events that had transpired before the attack; that he agreed their friend was killed justifiably for her actions. The depths he had to go to, to convince them he belonged - this was a mission he needed to do alone. Only two people knew where his allegiance really stood, which side of the fence he was truly on.
She couldn't be one of those people, because she was being watched. They didn't know she had died that day, and he wasn't about to let anyone know her secret. She wasn't even ready to accept the truth, and was safer being kept in the dark.
There were repeated sentences stating how much he hated himself for this undertaking, and how much he loved her. He would find the men responsible and make them suffer, make them pay. He didn't care that his former oath called for justice and a fair trial - there was no fairness in the city, these days.
All she knew about the night he died was that he had been found alongside the man who had pulled the trigger that afternoon. He had the upper hand, but the assassin was hiding a knife. Everyone assumed the two men had gotten into a drunken fight, and no one knew that the other man had been the one in the theater's lobby that day.
He did, though. And he had taken every precaution to get a confession out of the man before taking his life. He wanted to hear the man say the words, and he had heard them - though, none of this information was in the letter. But the man behind the bar, the one now at her side, had been told the day he wandered in for the last time.
The need for air reminds her that she hasn't taken a breath, and before she can even get the breath in, her hand has gone to her mouth and tears are streaming down her cheeks. She had always believed his words, that morning; she had always blamed herself for pushing him away, for not trying to stop him. She was so busy caring for their God-daughter and grieving her friends, she didn't have time to worry about herself.
The only thing that mattered was an eleven-year-old girl who didn't understand what happened.
And, now, after all this time, she had just learned that he was going to come back to her. He was coming back.
But, he hadn't.
Another friend - also affected by that day - was missing, that night, and she was in a panic to find him. No one had seen him anywhere, so she checked the hospital and the jail. When neither of those options had yielded a result, she had fought back the bile and gone to the only other place she expected to find the friend.
Instead, she found her husband.
Their son arrived later, expecting something terrible to have happened when he learned the kind of company his father had taken up with - he had been one of the two people to know the truth - but he hadn't been expecting to find his mother there.
She wanted nothing more, that night, than to join her beloved husband, but the now-twelve-year-old still needed her. Blaming herself for all of it, she locked all the emotions up in a box and walked out, back toward home, and so began the process of shutting people out, save those closest to her.
The missing friend was never found; her own children had their own lives and, as the years went by, as each person she knew and cared for grew older and passed on, she made less friends, She grew harder and colder... she became the person he had accused her of being all those years ago, standing in that doorway.
Hundreds of years later, her life had changed so many times, for good and bad, and she was currently in a good place. She had a family, again, and while things were difficult and complicated, she was back to being the kind of person she had been long before that war that started all of them on a path of destruction.
Everything she knew, everything that pushed her forward...
Where would she be if she had known the truth? If he had come home?
Hearing a call from the magical doorway that connects her new life to this place, she remembers that there's a toddler who needs his truck and a nap. She keeps a death grip on the letter, and reaches for the truck with her free hand. Using the back of that hand, she wipes at her cheeks and sucks in a deep breath. The time to dwell on the words isn't now - she has eternity for that.
Now, she needs to get her son his truck.