Missing 2.0 - by with_apostrophe (Missing Persons Challenge)
Title: Missing 2.0
Author:
with_apostrophe
Rating: PG-ish
Genre: Gen
Spoilers: 'The Siege (Part III)' and 'Intruder'
Length: c900 words
Summary: What happens after the memories fade?
A/N: Thanks to
klostes for helping me see the bigger picture.
Missing 2.0
In January 2000 Lucy Sheridan disappeared. She was my best friend.
When her younger sister phoned in utter panic at some ungodly hour of the morning to tell me she was gone, I wasn’t concerned. It wasn’t like Lucy had never disappeared before. She had a condition, sickle-cell anemia, and a deficiency in self-worth. More than once she’d ended up in hospital on a morphine drip, at first in too much pain to be able to contact her friends, and, when she was able, not bothering because she didn’t think that we’d be worried.
This time, it was only after we’d called all her friends, and all the hospitals in the city twice, that we realized she really was gone. That night was one of the worst nights of my life.
After that came the questions. The detectives in my living room, asking me everything about her; the last time I saw her, her friends, her personality, her health, her mental state, her shoe size. And the calls. Us calling the detectives; the detectives calling us. The news that other young women had disappeared in that area of town, and yet they had nothing; no leads, no traces, no clues.
More questions, there were always more questions, but never any answers.
When two uniformed Marines appeared at my door a month ago, I thought this was the visit that no military family wants to imagine, but that all secretly dread.
I thought the worst.
I thought you were dead, Aiden.
They didn’t ask me questions. They informed me politely that Lt Aiden Ford was missing in action. They offered their sympathy while telling me none of the circumstances. I sent them away. I told our grandparents.
Three weeks later Lt Col John Sheppard came to visit. He was out of uniform and seemed crumpled somehow. I showed him into the living room and served him tea.
And there were questions. But this time they were my questions.
The words he offered were the same words those two Marines had spoken, the same words said by the military personnel at the end of the line the many times I’d called to get some answers. He wouldn’t tell me anything, other than that he believed you were alive. It didn’t help. It didn’t help, seeing the pain in his eyes, knowing that he missed you too. It didn’t help that he looked guilty. It certainly didn’t help that with every minute he sat in my living room I felt ever increasing assurance that he knew a substantial amount about your disappearance. It didn’t help at all.
After I closed the door behind him, I realized he had sat where the detectives had sat five years before, drinking tea as they had done, even wearing the same air of dishevelment as they had. For the first time in years I thought of Lucy, went over the details of her disappearance in my mind. Saw what I had not seen before.
We never mourned her. There was no funeral, no chance to say goodbye. I never sat in a room and talked and laughed and cried about her. There was always a glimmer of hope that she’d return. So instead she slowly faded from my life. Her sister and most of our friends moved away. Even the photo of us at graduation now resides in a drawer somewhere, its frame broken, the empty space on the shelf now occupied by grinning nieces and nephews. Memories slipping away. But now I am reminded, I once more find myself wondering where in the world she is; if she’s dead or alive; happy or sad; whether she still thinks about me or not. Wondering at what point in my life I stopped missing her.
I’m living it all over again with you, Aiden, but it’s harder to accept. There’s so much that I don’t know about what has happened to you. I struggle, because I know that information exists, but I hear “I’m not at liberty to inform you” and “that’s classified ma’am”, instead of the answers I crave. I don’t know what to tell our grandparents, because I wonder whether what has happened to you is more painful than death. I don’t want to think about that happening to you, I didn’t want to think about it happening to Lucy, and yet I do, for both of you. It hurts so much I can barely breathe.
All I have are the memories, the photo of you in your dress uniform, and the tape you sent us. You look so serious in that photo that I can’t help but think that you, my cheery cousin, were already slipping away from us. The taped message means so much and says so little.
There will be no articles in the paper, no missing persons posters, no spots on local TV news like with Lucy. There is nothing I can do. Nothing any of us can do to get you back, or feel any better, or get those answers, answers I dread almost as much as never knowing anything. I fear that one day I’ll wake up, and I won’t even realize it, but to me you’ll be like Lucy has been for these last few years. Not missing, just gone.
Now I know that thinking you were dead was not the worst case scenario.
Author:
with_apostrophe
Rating: PG-ish
Genre: Gen
Spoilers: 'The Siege (Part III)' and 'Intruder'
Length: c900 words
Summary: What happens after the memories fade?
A/N: Thanks to
klostes for helping me see the bigger picture.
Missing 2.0
In January 2000 Lucy Sheridan disappeared. She was my best friend.
When her younger sister phoned in utter panic at some ungodly hour of the morning to tell me she was gone, I wasn’t concerned. It wasn’t like Lucy had never disappeared before. She had a condition, sickle-cell anemia, and a deficiency in self-worth. More than once she’d ended up in hospital on a morphine drip, at first in too much pain to be able to contact her friends, and, when she was able, not bothering because she didn’t think that we’d be worried.
This time, it was only after we’d called all her friends, and all the hospitals in the city twice, that we realized she really was gone. That night was one of the worst nights of my life.
After that came the questions. The detectives in my living room, asking me everything about her; the last time I saw her, her friends, her personality, her health, her mental state, her shoe size. And the calls. Us calling the detectives; the detectives calling us. The news that other young women had disappeared in that area of town, and yet they had nothing; no leads, no traces, no clues.
More questions, there were always more questions, but never any answers.
When two uniformed Marines appeared at my door a month ago, I thought this was the visit that no military family wants to imagine, but that all secretly dread.
I thought the worst.
I thought you were dead, Aiden.
They didn’t ask me questions. They informed me politely that Lt Aiden Ford was missing in action. They offered their sympathy while telling me none of the circumstances. I sent them away. I told our grandparents.
Three weeks later Lt Col John Sheppard came to visit. He was out of uniform and seemed crumpled somehow. I showed him into the living room and served him tea.
And there were questions. But this time they were my questions.
The words he offered were the same words those two Marines had spoken, the same words said by the military personnel at the end of the line the many times I’d called to get some answers. He wouldn’t tell me anything, other than that he believed you were alive. It didn’t help. It didn’t help, seeing the pain in his eyes, knowing that he missed you too. It didn’t help that he looked guilty. It certainly didn’t help that with every minute he sat in my living room I felt ever increasing assurance that he knew a substantial amount about your disappearance. It didn’t help at all.
After I closed the door behind him, I realized he had sat where the detectives had sat five years before, drinking tea as they had done, even wearing the same air of dishevelment as they had. For the first time in years I thought of Lucy, went over the details of her disappearance in my mind. Saw what I had not seen before.
We never mourned her. There was no funeral, no chance to say goodbye. I never sat in a room and talked and laughed and cried about her. There was always a glimmer of hope that she’d return. So instead she slowly faded from my life. Her sister and most of our friends moved away. Even the photo of us at graduation now resides in a drawer somewhere, its frame broken, the empty space on the shelf now occupied by grinning nieces and nephews. Memories slipping away. But now I am reminded, I once more find myself wondering where in the world she is; if she’s dead or alive; happy or sad; whether she still thinks about me or not. Wondering at what point in my life I stopped missing her.
I’m living it all over again with you, Aiden, but it’s harder to accept. There’s so much that I don’t know about what has happened to you. I struggle, because I know that information exists, but I hear “I’m not at liberty to inform you” and “that’s classified ma’am”, instead of the answers I crave. I don’t know what to tell our grandparents, because I wonder whether what has happened to you is more painful than death. I don’t want to think about that happening to you, I didn’t want to think about it happening to Lucy, and yet I do, for both of you. It hurts so much I can barely breathe.
All I have are the memories, the photo of you in your dress uniform, and the tape you sent us. You look so serious in that photo that I can’t help but think that you, my cheery cousin, were already slipping away from us. The taped message means so much and says so little.
There will be no articles in the paper, no missing persons posters, no spots on local TV news like with Lucy. There is nothing I can do. Nothing any of us can do to get you back, or feel any better, or get those answers, answers I dread almost as much as never knowing anything. I fear that one day I’ll wake up, and I won’t even realize it, but to me you’ll be like Lucy has been for these last few years. Not missing, just gone.
Now I know that thinking you were dead was not the worst case scenario.