Chapter Text
Jack gazed at the clock mounted to the wall over the drawer he kept the movies in. Eleven PM. Yet another lonely night. If John hadn’t fallen asleep by now he would show up next to him in a few minutes, ask for a movie and hot chocolate, fall asleep in the first few minutes of the movie and leave his father to dwell on much more pressing matters
His eyes wandered to the coffee table spilling over with newspaper articles, unpaid bills and DVD cases. One more day and it would be three weeks. Three weeks without a single word of his wife. No call, not even a mail. Her car hadn’t been found yet. None of her belongings turned up anywhere. It was as if she had just disappeared without a single trace. But Jack knew very well that such cases always had a string of very dark and messed up conspiracies attached. He couldn’t help but wonder if someone got rid of her. People didn’t simply disappear without a single trace. Let alone an adult woman like Rose of all people.
Anger washed over him when he gripped the couch cushion, wanted to fire it across the room and yell, scream out all the rage he had built up. Just earlier he had gotten a call of the police department. They had given up on the search and started investigating neighbors. He was not to leave town as he was suspected to have something to do with it as well and further investigations had to be made.
“Fuck you.” He hissed at the cell phone lying on top of the case of a Disney movie. The police suspecting him was likely the least of all the problems that just kept piling up. Child welfare wanted yet another word with him. Discussing ‘urgent matters’ as they called it. He glared at the letter next to an empty glass.
“All you want to do is find that one reason why I can’t raise a kid.” He hissed at the letter, then scoffed. “Dig deep enough and you might even find something.” With a shake of his head he sighed and buried his face in his hand for a moment.
John refused to go to school for almost a week now. He had never seen the boy put up such fights before. He screamed, kicked, cursed. The boy even spat into his face at some point. Jack had barely managed to keep himself from slapping his son and still hated himself for it. Even considering hitting the boy was enough to make him feel guilty for the rest of his days. He was so easily riled up lately, even faster than usual and he never considered himself to be the most patient person. He knew he had a short fuse but never when it came to John.
Rose’s disappearance had taken a toll on him and John. The whole neighborhood was talking and he knew for a fact that most of them weren’t on his side. He suspected one particular couple to have given the child welfare people hints about the situation. They couldn’t find anything the first time they had been there. They wouldn’t find anything now. But that didn’t mean it didn’t make him nervous. Being a cyborg was enough to make people suspicious and now everyone was even more wary of him.
John’s best friend stopped by once a day to drop off homework. Jack had no idea if John actually did it or not. The past few days he had spent on the phone, calling in favors of people he hadn’t talked to in years. Some of them weren’t eager to hear from him and in cases like Meryl they were so surprised the hung up on him.
He hadn’t dared to call Meryl a second time, too ashamed of having to call her in the first place and too frightened to hear her response on what he wanted to ask her. Sunny had been eager to help in finding Rose, but even though she was the first person he had called after he was sure that something must’ve happened to his wife, the girl came up with nothing. She had babbled something about her and Wolf going through thousands of hours of security footage and being unable to locate her anywhere. Otacon seemed to help her with that, and Jack didn’t really want her to feel guilty for not finding any clues.
He turned back to the TV screen that kept looping the menu screen of The godfather for at least an hour now. He didn’t particularly remember anything of the movie, his mind too occupied with worrying about John and Rose.
The boy didn’t take it lightly that his mother was not there. It didn’t only show in his behavior but also his actions and how unmotivated he seemed lately. Jack didn’t blame him, let him be. He wasn’t good at dealing with things like this. The boy’s teacher called a few days ago, asked how the boy was doing and Jack felt like he had to explain what was going on to her. She needed to know in order to act accordingly. John wasn’t skipping school because he had better things to do. The reasons were much more urgent and important.
The teacher seemed quite understanding and had even offered to research some material and addressed so John could get some help with his current situation. Jack wasn’t sure if any of this would be worth the effort, but refusing her seemed wrong. And yesterday said teacher had showed up with a small box filled with books and addresses, for them to use. John had hidden away from her, afraid to be scolded for missing school. The teacher went well about how she told him that she wasn’t happy about him skipping school, but also told him that she would make an exception and not mark it in his file if he went back to school at the start of next week. John still had four days left until then, but Jack had doubts that the boy would go.
When John hadn’t shown up in the living room at half past eleven Jack decided to head to bed. Who knew if he was able to actually get some sleep, but sitting in the living room all night and brooding over things he couldn’t change wouldn’t make his mood any better either. Somehow daily life had to go on. The house looked like a mess already. The kitchen desperately needed to be cleaned up, the laundry was piling up too and the floors collected dust. He added washing the car to the mental list he had just made and knew he wouldn’t follow it through anyway.
In the first few days he had thought he would get used to it, and that Rose would show up sooner or later with a good excuse, but with each passing day that hope was crushed a little more. By now he was just clinging to a tiny shred of hope and he really wished for some words of advice.
He was halfway up the stairs when he saw John walking towards him. The boy had his pillow clutched in his hands and didn’t say a word when he hugged his father. Jack didn’t bother questioning what he did there, he only picked him up and held him tightly. The cold tears that dripped into his shirt made him grimace in sympathy. John barely talked about what he thought lately, was very quiet and often lost in thoughts.
Nights like these happened every other night now and Jack feared that this had long term effects on the boy. He figured it would’ve been nice to make some happy memories even without Rose, but who knew if that was actually going to work at all. Maybe a surprise would cheer the boy up at least long enough to fall back asleep. He had planned to tell him in the morning, but now seemed a better time.
“Wanna hear some tiny good news?” He whispered when he made his way into the bed room. He didn’t bother to switch the lights on and just sat down on Rose’s side of the bed. John only nodded, his soft hair brushing against his father’s cheek
“I got a job.”
John pulled away for a moment, then hugged him again. “Really?” he asked silently, sounded defeated and very tired.
“Mhm.” The man smiled and cuddled him. The boy gripped his shirt, his hands like tiny claws as if something was trying to pull him away from his father. “Is it overseas?” he mumbled into the man’s shirt.
Jack sighed and grabbed the woolen blanket discarded on the bed just hours ago and wrapped it around the boy. “Nope.” He said silently. “Just a bit into town. And only on the weekend.”
John nodded once more, his hands unclenching the shirt and he pulled the blanket a bit higher up. “…That’s bad, right?”
“How is that bad?”
John grumbled. “It pays less.”
Jack was about to argue but closed his mouth. The boy was right. Sometimes he was amazed by how much the boy knew, but that probably came naturally with a mother like his. And again Jack was thinking about Rose.
“…but it’s also good.” John then continued. “You got a job even though people say horrible things.”
“Maybe I can get a second.”
John played with a corner of the pillow he was still holding. “Not overseas.” he insisted.
Jack wrapped his arms around the boy and shook his head. Only now he slowly began to realize how much the boy was suffering, nut just now but before that. He had only ever seen the happiness when he returned from work, never been around for long enough to see the underlying pain. John must’ve been scared that he’d leave him alone too. Like he had done for years. Unintentional in the beginning, and then willingly for the sake of money. Maybe even to be himself. But was that really what mattered? Wasn’t his family more important than that?
“Not overseas.” He whispered as he held the boy tighter.
John had fallen asleep again at that point, left his father to dwell on his own guilt. He should have never assumed that his family was safe here, should have never been so trusting. Rose could stand her ground in most cases, but what if someone had physically attacked her? She was no fighter. What if she was lying in a ditch hoping for someone to find her.
The sensation of clenching insides was entirely artificial, but it felt so real it made him shiver. He had long since stopped wondering how this all worked and stopped caring. It was almost nice to feel things like that, even if the cause wasn’t pleasant at all.
What if Rose had died?
He bit his lip at that thought. The thought had been ghosting around in his mind for weeks, but he had forced it away before he could consciously think about it. Now it was there, hanging over him like a guillotine waiting to snap his neck. It took effort to force the thought back to where it came from and he knew it would resurface. His mind worked like that. Always teasing him when he least needed it, always on edge, always at the brink of insanity.
He had to keep it together for John’s sake.
Gently he put the boy to bed, didn’t bother to carry him into his own room. Sooner or later the boy would have crawled into his parent’s bed anyway.
When he pulled the blanket over the boy his gaze lingered on the sleeping figure of his son. The room was dark, but the streetlights illuminated a small portion of the carpet and the bed. Even while sleeping John didn’t seem relaxed at all, brows knitted together and a vice-like grip on the pillow clutched in his arms. Jack lowered his gaze to the ground, closed his eyes for a moment. He had to find Rose. In whatever state she was in, he had to find her. Everything else could come later. But where was he to start?
He had absolutely no clue. Rose had left work that evening, never to return home. It hadn’t taken him long to notice something was wrong. Rose was always punctually. If she had to work overtime she called, even when it was just ten minutes. Jack had waited two hours, then had called her. She had never picked up her phone.
At eleven in the evening he had been sure that something had happened to her and called the police. They told him to wait, to waste time. Rose could’ve been anywhere at that point, dead, kidnapped, lost. So he waited a day. When he called the police yet again, he was accused of being impatient and not giving his wife enough freedom.
That had sparked the thought of Rose leaving him because she wanted to, because she had enough of him. Jack knew that a similar thought had also crossed John’s mind when he had asked his father if he had done something to drive his mother away.
The third time he called them they finally believed him. Yet, when he actually went there they were hostile and distant. A cyborg murdering his wife seemed to be way more believable than a woman simply disappearing. He had to sit through hours of questions and soon enough they saw that he couldn’t prove that he hadn’t done anything to her. However, they also had no proof that he had done something, so they let him go.
John had thrown a fit that evening, yelled at him for being late, screamed and told him he was the worst for making him think that he had left too. The boy had never noticed the note he had left on the dining table.
Jack sighed, opened his eyes again and stood. Sleep seemed like a bad idea now and so he returned to the lower floor and started to clean up the kitchen. The plates, cups and bowls were piling up, John had cleaned some dishes, but soon gave up on it and only cleaned what he needed to use.
It took him about two hours to clean the mess, then moved on to the living room but once there he just slumped down on the couch, motivation and energy fading. What good did it do? What did it matter if the living room was cleaned up or not?
Who cared?
Rose had never been bothered by small messes, left them wherever she went. It reminded him of less dark days before all the shit had even started. Small messes told him Rose was there. And even now with her nowhere to be found, he still felt like she was there. If he turned just in the right moment he might catch a glimpse of her.
He hung his shoulders, scoffed at himself and his ridiculous thoughts. He’d lose it if he’d dwell on this any longer and so he started to clean the living room as well. When he piled the DVD cases onto the drawer to sort them in the pile toppled over. Cases landed on the ground, some slipped under the drawer and in frustration Jack just sat down on the ground, not in the mood to gather them all again. Who needed this many DVD’s anyway?
He figured he could sell them once the money got too tight. He had barely been able to scrape the rent together for the month. Soon enough that would become impossible. John needed food too. He leaned against the drawer, hard wood pressing into his head. He barely even noticed the unpleasant sensation when he fished for the cases that had slipped under the drawer.
Instead of catching the cases, his fingers caught a sheet of paper. Assuming it was one of John’s drawings he carefully pulled it out, only to notice that it was a letter. It was addressed at Rose, but held nothing unusual. Also, it was months old. It had probably slipped under the piece of furniture and was forgotten there.
The letter seemed to relate to her work. He couldn’t make sense of all the technical terms and abbreviations.
Slowly he got up again and set the letter to the pile of letters for his wife in the hallway, all still waiting to be opened. He had considered looking, but what would it gain him? Most of them were from her workplace, some of her friends. It amazed him that people still bothered to write letters in the age of digital media.
In an attempt to find an actual clue about her whereabouts he went against his principles and opened the letters. He left the ones from her work alone and focused on the three letters that had hand written addresses.
But even after skimming them and reading them carefully line for line, he was no closer to a clue than he had been before. He was getting desperate. She had to be somewhere. People and cars didn’t just vanish!
Would this turn out to be one of these cases where they found the corpse twenty years later? He didn’t want to think about it. Rose was somewhere. And she was alive. She had to be. She just needed to be found and that was the problem.
The police couldn’t track down her phone and Jack didn’t have anything else he could’ve provided to give them a clue about her location. He growled angrily, swiped all the letters to the floor in a fit of rage. This frustration was growing with each passing day. It consumed most of his thoughts over the day.
Where could she be? Why couldn’t anyone find her?
Still angered he picked up the letters and put them back to their place, then returned to the living room to finish what he started. It was then when his cell phone rang and he darted to the coffee table in a big leap, almost fell over the thing. The phone slipped off the table and landed on the ground. He needed two tries to grasp it and then finally was able to accept the call.
“Rose?!” he asked the caller in a fit of hope and desperation.
“Sunny.” The girl on the other end sighed.
Jack slumped down on the couch in disappointment. “Hey Sunny.” He didn’t bother to hide how heartbroken he felt.
“I found her car on a security cam, but the footage is two weeks old.”
“I don’t’ care! Where is it?!” He yelled into the phone.
“Jack-“
“Where?!” he repeated impatiently. His hands were shaking now, hope sparking up. Even if she wasn’t there anymore, someone might’ve seen where the car had gone.
“It’s about ten miles away from your house. I’ll give you the proper location by mail. The pictures are blurry and even enhancing them didn’t help much, but the license plate is definitely hers, Wolf confirmed that.” Sunny explained, sounding tired and defeated.
“Thank you.” Jack whispered, almost ashamed at how relieved he sounded now.
“Don’t do anything dumb.” Sunny told him. “Shouldn’t you be sleeping anyway? I was planning to leave a voicemail.”
“Doesn’t matter.” He just told her. “Thank you, Sunny.”
The girl was silent for a while before she eventually replied, “Hal said you shouldn’t blame yourself, and that you know what he means with that.”
“Yeah, I know.” He replied silently.
When he ended the call he wanted to get some rest, fired the phone onto the couch and buried himself into the cushions, exhaustion finally washing over him after two sleepless nights.