Fic: Lost and Found
He’s not the same man who disappeared on her eight years ago.
He’s older, though something in his eyes and the scars on his body tell her that age has nothing to do with years, and harder. Sadder. Whatever it was that took him away, and that’s kept him away, wasn’t pleasant, and hasn’t been easy on him.
And despite the questions that beat against her throat for release when they’re together, she’s fairly certain she doesn’t really want to know the answers.
At the same time, though, he’s less … lost. For so long, the Eliot she’d known before had been haunted by something, looking for something. Once upon a time, his life in the Army had given him what he needed - a purpose, a family, a sense of belonging. But somehow that had been taken from him. She had no idea what had happened - Eliot had never been a great one for sharing - but when he’d finally come back to her, discharged, disillusioned, shattered, she’d done what she could to help him pick up the pieces and make a new life here on Dad’s farm.
Except that more than a few of the pieces had been missing, never to be recovered.
He’d stayed at the farm for a while, healing in body and mind, but not entirely in spirit. He’d been restless, edgy, given to staring out at the horizon, as if whatever he sought might be found out there. Somewhere. And she’d known then she was losing him.
One morning, he’d slipped out of her arms, out of her bed, and out into the early morning. She’d followed, and he’d told her he had a line on a new job. She’d had questions, so many questions, but, in what would become a pattern for him, he had no answers. He’d kissed her, as only he had ever kissed her, gone back inside to pack, and then he was gone.
That, too, became a pattern.
Over the next few years, he’d drift in and out of her life like smoke on the wind, coming back just when she’d all but given up hope, staying just long enough to revive her dreams, then leaving again on the dawn after a night of slow and sweet lovemaking. No explanations, no promises, just the kiss that was his alone. Each time, the absences grew longer, the returns shorter. And more often than not, he returned hurt, or healing from some hurt, with new scars on his body and new shadows in his eyes. She wanted to ask, needed to ask, needed to know, but each time he’d only silence her with a kiss.
And all too soon he’d be gone again.
He sent short letters, postcards, gifts, some from exotic places she’d never even heard of. She kept a map in her room, marking the places he’d been with pins, and wondering what he found there that he couldn’t find in her arms. Wondering what she’d do when whatever was out there finally kept him from coming back here.
She’d found out eight years ago.
No cards, no letters, no calls … no Eliot. Just an aching emptiness where once he’d been and the haunting memory of his kiss, his touch, his love. She’d tried to rebuild her life, had met a man she’d thought she loved … and had watched him walk away, too.
I seem to have a weakness for men with one foot out the door.
Maybe she just had a weakness for men who reminded her of Eliot …
And then, when she’d finally stopped looking out at the horizon for him, when she’d finally stopped dreaming of his touch or licking her lips in memory of the taste of him there, he’d come back. Called back by Dad, who needed his help.
And why had Dad known how to find him?
She’d been angry at first, God, so angry. After all this time, after all the hurt and the tears and the questions sobbed and screamed into the night, after she’d finally learned how to live with this gaping, Eliot-shaped hole in her heart, after she’d given up every last, aching hope, here he was, standing before her, healthy, whole, smiling, real-
If she’d had a gun at hand, she would have shot him. If there’d been a bed at hand, she would have flung him down and fucked his brains out. And then shot him. As it was, neither had been handy, so she’d just turned her back and stormed away, promising herself she would not go down that road again.
Except that all her roads always seem to lead her back to him. Just as his seem to lead him back to her.
Only she knows they’ll inevitably lead him away again in time. They always have.
But, now, even as she knows he’s getting ready to leave again - she knows that look in his eyes by now, has seen him glancing at the horizon - she knows he’s not the man he was before. He’s finally found what he spent all those years away from her looking for.
And it’s these people.
She watches him with them, watches him relax, laugh, snap, growl and tease, watches the light that replaces the shadows in his eyes and the softening of the lines in his face, and sees the Eliot she once knew before life and time and the world beyond the horizon took him away. He’s at home with them in a way he never really was with her, at peace in a way he never found even in her arms, understood in a way she could never manage.
These people are criminals - and that answers at least one of her questions about him - but … they’re his family, in a way neither she nor Dad ever was. And, yes, that hurts, because she would have been that for him, had tried desperately to be that for him-
But it also eases a fear she hadn’t even known she still carried. Because he’s alive, he’s safe, and he’s got people in his life who seem more than capable of keeping him that way. They care about him, though she’s not sure he understands that yet, and they’re helping him find his way out of whatever darkness had stolen him from her. Even if they annoy the hell out of him in the process.
And that gives her the most hope. Because these people have gotten to Eliot, have reached past his guard and his scars and the distance in his eyes and have found him, the man she fell in love with so long ago and had lost a little bit at a time. The man he had lost somewhere out there.
She’s not foolish or naïve enough to believe he’ll ever be the boy he used to be again. But he’s not the man he was eight years ago, either.
I’m glad you found a family.
He kisses her again, as only he can, as only he ever has, and walks away, as he has so many times before. This time, though, he’s not going alone.
And maybe, just maybe, whatever he’s found with these people, and whatever they’ve found in him, will be enough to keep him on this side of the horizon.
The End