'cause you never loved me anyway. (au & rw)
An hour after Sadie disappeared - just fucking disappeared, went back into the room to grab her jacket and never came out again - Hendrix's cell phone started to vibrate in his coat pocket. He almost didn't hear it at first, he was so single-mindedly focused on thinking of other places she might be, other places he might still be able to find her. He'd been everywhere already, he knew that, but it wasn't like he was just going to give up and resign himself to having lost his sister. By the time he'd heard that insistent buzz, recognized it for what it was, and fumbled the phone out of his pocket, it was already too late to answer the call. One missed call, the display screen read. One new voicemail. Oh god, what if it was his mother? What if it was Bruce? He pressed the button with a sinking sense of dread. Call from: SADIEBOT.

"Surprise! Oh my god, Henrietta, I had you going for a minute, didn't I?" For a second, he actually stopped breathing. Before he'd even had a chance to process what he was hearing, Sadie's recorded voice had finished laughing at her own joke and gone on. "Relax, I'm fine. Like this thing could actually take me. I'd kick it's ass." The shock of hearing her voice was starting to wear off, and he was starting to smile now - a big, stupid smile that bordered on giddy, one she'd mock the hell out of him for if she could see him. Hendrix might get pissed at her later, for fucking with his head and scaring the crap out of him, but right now he was just so damn relieved to hear from her that he didn't really give a shit. If this message didn't tell him where she was in a hurry, he was going to hang up on it and call her himself, who cared if she made fun of him for it.

"I'm on a train, dumbass." His eyes narrowed in confusion, and over the recording she still sounded like she was laughing. "I'm like a hundred miles away by now, and I feel so fucking free, it's incredible. You know, I never even realized how much you were dragging me down until I actually went and did it. Jesus, I should have done this sooner." She was still joking, right? She had to be, didn't she? She was still laughing, she still sounded happy, but he knew what she sounded like when she joked around with him and this wasn't it. And she wasn't done. "Close your mouth, Hendrix, you look like an idiot. Like even more of an idiot than you already did, following me around like some ugly little stray puppy, Jesus Christ. Do you have any idea how annoying that is? I just couldn't take it anymore, and this was the perfect excuse to get away."

She'd left. She'd left him. She hadn't disappeared, she hadn't been taken, she'd left him. And she was laughing about it, on a train out of the state somewhere, she was probably telling her seatmate all about her stupid little stepbrother who'd really though she liked having him around. It couldn't be real, it just couldn't, but deep down he knew that it was. Hendrix honestly wasn't sure which emotion was winning right now, sadness or sheer humiliation, but they both fucking sucked. And she wasn't even finished, over the recording Sadie's laughing voice was still talking.

"I'm throwing this phone away now. You'll get over it. Or you wont, I don't really care." A startled, delighted laugh, and then the message was finally over.

He woke up then, but it didn't really help.

(NARRATIVE)