Face to Face by Linda FFF

[Reviews - 0]
Table of Contents [Report This]
Printer

- Text Size +

Face to Face, Part 6
by Linda

"Yale, I know the group came back. Where's my Mom?"

A child's voice disrupted the staring contest between Yale and Cynthia Adair. The wise cyborg immediately turned his attention to Uly. Cynthia looked at the child, her mouth ajar, unable to conceal her shock.

"Ulysses, your mother had some things she wanted to think about alone, so she decided to stay away from the group tonight," Yale said, his voice calm and comforting.

"But doesn't she know about True? We need her to help find True." The child looked confused.

"No, Uly. She accidentally left behind her gear, so we could not tell her. But we will find both your mom and True tomorrow, and we will all be together."

"True's lost." Uly looked at the gray-haired woman for the first time. "Is my Mom lost too? And who are you?"

"Ulysses, your mother is not lost, because I am sure she knows where she is and will come back to us. But we will send someone to catch up with her, so she comes back sooner," he paused, frowning as he looked at the boy's grandmother. "This is Cynthia. Say hello, and then I want you to go to the tent and get some sleep. Tomorrow may be a very long day."

"Hello." The curious boy analyzed the newcomer for a minute, then turned back to his tutor. "Can I sleep with Mr. Danziger since we're both alone tonight?"

"If he says it is all right, you may. But please remember that he is scared and worried about True." The tutor smiled as the youth gave him a good-night hug and then raced out of the com tent. Then he turned back to the woman. "Where were we?"

Cynthia sat down, as if the weight of the world were suddenly on her shoulders. "That's my grandson," she said, with a sense of wonder. "I never even knew I had one."

Across camp, Julia Heller stuck her head into the Danzigers' tent and saw the mechanic crying as he sat on his daughter's cot. She debated leaving, and then decided he needed a friend more than solitude. 'Too bad Devon didn't feel the same way,' she thought to herself, before entering the tent and sitting next to him on the cot.

"She's all alone out there in the storm." Danziger had one of True's sweaters in his large hands. His fury given way to sheer intolerable pain, the mechanic appeared to be holding onto it with all that was left in him, fingering the patches that he had painstakingly added to it each time his adventurous offspring ripped a new hole. "Why?"

Julia wished silently that she had answers but instead put her arms around her friend, leaning her head on his back. "I don't know, John. But I do know that we will find her." Julia silently wished for the man who had been threatening Yale's life minutes before. An angry John Danziger was a known quantity; she had never seen the man like this -- not even when the Grendler had True. But then she never pictured Devon Adair running away either.

"Why would she leave me? Why do they all leave?" John was too heartbroken and scared to put on a brave face for Julia.

"I don't know why True disappeared, but we will find her." Julia hoped her repetitive words were reassuring, although they sounded somewhat hollow to her. "And as for Devon, she had some things to deal with. But you and I both know Devon well enough to know that she'll be back. There's no way she would go anywhere for long without Uly." She paused, weighing her options, and finally decided to voice her beliefs. "Or you."

John Danziger looked her in the eye, wishing he could believe every word leaving her lips, terrified that they were false and that he would never see True or Devon again.

"Mr. Danziger...." Uly poked his head into the tent. "Can I stay with you tonight?"

Far away, yet nearby, another child watched as a handsome man with light brown hair glared at the thin, flame-haired, blue-eyed woman putting on her coat. "Where do you think you're going tonight?" A small child, clutching a doll dressed as if for a tea party, peered at them from her hiding place behind the apartment's stairwell. The man was a head taller than his mate, and therefore appeared to be looking down on her as he chastised her.

"I have important things to do."

"Nothing's as important as your family. We miss you. Hell, we love you."

"But I'm doing this for you." The woman glared a look of frustration. "I'm doing this because I love you and I love our daughter. I want a better life for her, where she has freedom."

"How much better will her life be without you in it?"

"That's not going to happen."

As the woman slammed out of the apartment with a loud bang, the man went and sat in a reclining armchair, picked up an antique book -- with the hard cover and real paper pages -- and stared at it without seeing. The child hidden in the stairwell never took her eyes off him, and two figures, within yet outside the apartment's scene, never wavered their glance from her.

"Mom, do you love me?" The child had suddenly grown a few years larger. She looked up at the flame-haired woman, whose face now boasted a batch of wrinkles and whose hair hinted of the subtle dyes used to retain its original brilliance. The beloved doll, no longer carried constantly, still lay not so very far away on the child's bed.

"Of course I do, sweetie. You and your dad are the most important things in my life."

"Promise me you're never going to leave me again." The child was remarkably serious for one still so young. She didn't know what it was that her mother did on her frequent business trips, but the child remained terrified she would not return. When asked, she couldn't state a reason, but the fear lurked in the back of her mind.

"Silly...." The woman gathered the child into the comfort of her arms. "I only go away for a few days at a time. I am back before you know it."

"But what if you don't come back?"

"What would ever make you think a ridiculous thing like that? I'm not going anywhere. At least not for more than a couple days," she paused. "You know you really worry too much. Who do you think you are, my mother?" She began to tickle the child in her arms, eliciting a rare burst of genuine laughter.

"Stop, please stop." The child tried to catch her breath.

"Only if you tell me all about your lessons with Yale. What did you do while I was gone?"

The girl's smile turned upside down. "I hate lessons."

"Why would you do a silly thing like that, my pumpkin? Lessons are how you are going to get all the skills you need to do anything you want." The woman hugged her daughter close. "I always want you to remember that you can do anything you want, be anything you want. You have no limitations. You are the best and the brightest and the spunkiest...."

The girl's frown metamorphosed into a smile, which seemed to brighten with each of her mother's words. Then, as the figures watched, the smile turned to tears as the child aged once again.

"Sweetheart, I wish I could tell you something else. But there's no way your mother could have survived the explosion."

"You're wrong." The girl bristled at her father's words. "She's going to be here. She promised me she would never leave. You heard her."

"I know she didn't want to." The man tried to hide his own grief to help his child. "But even your mother couldn't control the hand of death. Knowing your mom, she probably tried. But no one has that power."

"She told me she would help me with my speech." The girl's tears began to fall as she thought of the graduation ceremony that was to come. Her mother had always told her she could do it, had encouraged her to enter college early after studying hard to finish her lessons with Yale. Now the woman wouldn't be there to see her daughter's triumph over her loneliness to achieve the university's highest academic honor at the young age of 18.

As the teenager slumped on her bed and cried, she clutched the doll her mother had once given her, now slightly ragged and worn from too much childhood devotion, and vowed that she would never forgive her mother for leaving her behind. And she vowed that she would never make the same mistake with those she loved. She would never leave them behind. And the two figures watched.

And then there was one. Rising up from the ground, it watched the child, older once again. It watched as the child slept fitfully on the ground, tears from the pain in her mind rushing down her face and falling eventually to the ground, where they would at some point mix with the raindrops falling from the sky and with the tears of another hurt child dreaming different dreams, nightmares fostered by the venom in both her mind and her body.

"Mom."

Another figure watched her as the petite young girl in practical coveralls watched.

Meanwhile, two chubby five-year-olds ran across the town's central square to their mother. One child was a girl, with ringlets of reddish-blond curls. Dressed in a frilly dress, she embodied the old Earth saying that little girls were sugar and spice and everything nice. Her brother looked like he had just jumped out from underneath a Transrover, covered with grease with a scratch on his left arm. His hair was a darker shade of red than his sister's, and he had a carefree smile that would begin to charm the girls as soon as he realized that females had more appeal than Grendlers.

Devon Adair, a few years older and wiser than the first watcher remembered her, gathered the twins in her arms, mindless of the mess her son was leaving on her attire. "You look like you've been having a busy day? Lose your Dad on the way back?"

"He's coming."

As her son informed her, Devon spotted John Danziger coming toward her across the square, a beautiful red flower in his hand.

"I saw this and I couldn't help but think of you." Danziger took his wife in his arms and kissed her passionately. "Happy anniversary."

"I love you so much, John. I'm so glad we've had these years together, the five of us."

"Where is Uly, by the way?"

"He's meeting us at home. He said he's planning a family surprise."

"Then don't you want to include me?" The watcher stepped forward, no longer able to hold herself back. This was her father, too, and she wasn't going to let him forget it.

"Who are you?" Danziger turned and stared at her blankly.

"True, your daughter, remember?" The words came out in a rush.

"Oh yeah. I don't need you any more. I have a real family now." As Danziger hoisted one twin over each shoulder, the little girl squealing that the boys could see her underwear, he headed off towards home.

Devon hung behind, waiting 'til her husband was out of earshot. "I told you it was you or me, True. There was only room for one of us in your Dad's heart. If I were you, I'd just get lost. Find some other family to bug." She turned and left the young girl standing in the middle of the square, another watcher watching as she fought a battle against her tears.

Lying on the ground, the young girl lost the battle, the drops of saltwater falling down her face as she twisted and turned and tried unsuccessfully to wake herself from the feverish dream. One lone being rose from the ground and held watch.

Thus, as two children slept, two tales of tears were carried through the ground, tracing roundabout trails through the minds of many which were simultaneously the mind of one. Emotions that provoked disruption and confusion through each single mind of the unified many continued to pass through the tribe as the Terrians tried to process the images witnessed during the storm. As the night passed, a decision was made and the sentinels held watch over two asleep yet restless children until morning dawned.

You must login (register) to review.