1/1 ”That’s what I needed to tell you.” ”We sent missions through looking for you.””After three failed attempts, Sarah was getting restless. She wanted to help.”
The words weren’t good ones, but he refused to accept the obvious ending of the conversation. He longed for Becker to tell him that she’d become frustrated, that she’d quit because she couldn’t stand that she wasn’t able to do more. But even as the imagined words formed in his mind, he knew that it didn’t sound like her. Sarah didn’t stand down from a fight. She’d always fought with words and intellect, but if that hadn’t worked …
Sarah wasn’t a person that backed down.
”And I … let her.”
Those were the words that he’d expected to hear.
The pause he’d inserted frightened Danny, because it was a pause of significance and meant more than the four words he’d spoken, combined. Danny wanted to pause time and live in the seconds before the soldier’s next words were spoken, words that confirmed what the pause had already said in its half beat of silence.
”She didn’t make it.”
The words dropped like lead weights, words that Danny had fearfully anticipated but denied the existence of. Because Dr. Sarah Page couldn’t be dead, she’d been alive when he’d left and she had to be alive now. Denial ran circles in his head as he remembered the words he’d spoken to her when she’d begged to come with him. She hadn’t wanted to stay. He’d made her. He’d made her stay because he’d known it would be safer.
No one’s saying goodbye here. We’re all coming back. They’d made it back. It had taken a year but they’d made it back.
“No,” He choked, unable to believe it. “You’re wrong. Not … not Sarah.”
He was denying it at the same time as he was trying to accept it. Grief mixed with the denial and struck him square in the chest. He was tired, too tired to keep the tears from his eyes, and even though he refused to believe it …
Had it really been a goodbye? Had that really been one of the last times he’d seen her? He couldn’t believe it, he wouldn’t. A death like that was too terrible to conceive for anybody, let alone a woman who’d never intended to be a part of this in the first place. Danny remembered the rip of the future predator’s claws as it had torn into his neck. Subconsciously he reached up a hand to touch the faded scars that were the reminder of that day.
Visions of imagined last moments filled his head, even as he denied their existence. Visions of screaming, frantic seconds, gunfire, and he knew without a doubt that he wouldn’t be closing his eyes tonight, no matter how exhausted he was.
” It was my fault. I never should have let her go. I’m sorry.”
Those simple words changed everything. Something a lot like anger flashed in his blue eyes, but it wasn’t directed so much at the man himself as the words he’d said.
“Becker,” There was a warning in the name. It wasn’t conceivable for Becker to blame himself for this. He’d made a decision, nothing more or less, and one he hadn’t expected the outcome of. It hadn’t been his fault. If there was someone to throw the blame at, it was Danny himself. He’d made the first decision, he’d told her she couldn’t come with them, he’d taken the first step that had led to her death.
But he didn’t say any of that. He wouldn’t, not in front of Connor, because if he said that and the younger man saw it as a way to begin to blame himself … he wouldn’t allow that. Danny was alright with letting the blame settle on him, a burden he would carry alone.
“Were you going to try and order her to stay?” He questioned instead, forcing his voice to remain steady. “She’d have followed you through, you know that.”
Reaching out a cautious hand, he paused for just a moment before placing it down on Becker’s shoulder and giving it a squeeze. “She’d tell you the same thing.”