Jasper Lucas (sinsoftheson) wrote in shadows_rpg, @ 2018-05-21 21:10:00 |
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Entry tags: | #october 2017, jasper, jasper x ruby, ruby |
Who: Ruby and Jasper
When: Wednesday, Oct 25, afternoon post-school
Where: Ruby’s house
Status: Complete
A lot of people had been checking in with Jasper since Sunday. He only replied to a few of them, and told a couple others who he knew were only asking to be nosy to fuck off. Ruby had been one of them, and she’d gotten more friendly answers from him. As friendly as Jasper could be, at least. Ruby had confirmed that she hadn’t seen Amelia. Jasper hadn’t really thought she would, it had just been a possibility that crossed his mind since they’d all hung out recently and Amelia had really liked her. If he was a nine year old runaway, he might’ve gone to see some older kid he thought was cool too. But no. She was still gone.
Jasper wasn’t sure how to deal with any of this. He hadn’t been to work or back to school yet, and nobody had said anything about that. He wasn’t sure he ever would go back. How could he sit through classes when he knew his little sister was out there somewhere? He thought about her constantly, swinging between a crushing dark sadness and an almost manic compulsion to do something. That was usually when he ended up driving aimlessly around, calling her name out the window. He’d thought of a million and one awful scenarios that could’ve happened to her. It had been long enough now that he didn’t have a lot of hope that she was just hiding out somewhere. He thought they could still find her alive, if whoever or whatever had her would let her go, but that hope was rapidly dwindling too.
It was one of those manic moods that put him back in the car a while after school let out. He’d been driving for a while and he found himself in Ruby’s neighborhood. Impulsively, Jasper pulled up in front of her house and got out, hands in his pockets as he trudged up to the front door and knocked. The crazy thought that maybe Amelia had turned up here and they just hadn’t had a chance to call him yet buzzed in his brain. Those irrational ideas kept coming and going, placing her wherever he wasn’t, just out of his reach. Jasper felt like he was losing his fucking mind and he needed a friendly face.
The news that Amelia had gone missing hit Ruby harder than she thought it should, considering they weren’t related, but anytime someone she knew went missing it felt like a temporary blow to her sanity. There were flashbacks to the days after her mother disappeared, the cops asking questions, the eventual search parties, and the complete lack of evidence. And then there were the days after when people began to whisper about what might have happened, theorizing things that didn’t even make sense. Ruby had been through all of it, a recurring nightmare she couldn’t escape so long as people kept disappearing. She knew what Jasper was going through and knew how absolutely useless he had to feel. Even though he was older than she had been, coming back empty handed was always devastating.
She had tried her best to be there for him, yet still give him some space. She’d done everything she knew how to do to help--she’d participated in the searches and asked around. And, sadly, that was it. There was nothing else a high schooler could do to find a missing person, especially four days after they went missing. So she was home doing homework when Jasper dropped by, attempting normality when she knew that it would be a while before things felt normal again. “Hey,” she said, pushing the door open for him so he could come inside. “Come on in. How’re you holding up?”
Jasper couldn’t even smile for her when she opened the door, but a good thing about Ruby was she wouldn’t expect him to. She’d weathered plenty of his foul moods in the past and never complained, whether it was him bitching about his parents or some teacher or some asshole at school. Ruby never expected him to cheer up or anything, she was always there to listen. Jasper knew that Jules would be there for him too if he went for her -- she already had been -- but he didn’t want to dump on her too much. Plus, he wanted to let Ruby know that he knew she was probably hurting too. She’d lost her mom, for fuck’s sake. “Hey,” he answered as he stepped inside the familiar house. Jasper shrugged. “Not great.” He didn’t mind being honest about that. “You?”
Ruby hesitated for a moment, then gave Jasper a quick hug, not wanting to linger, and not entirely sure it was comforting, but if she let it linger she might get emotional, and it was odd to just lead him into her house without one with what he was going through. After she did lead the way to the living room, where she took a seat on the sofa, pulling her feet up on the couch with her. “Not great, but probably better than you. I’ve done this before.” Which wasn’t at all comforting either. “Have they found anything? Anything at all?”
Jasper didn’t mind the hug at all, squeezing Ruby briefly while she was there, then following her into the living room. He flopped onto the couch next to her, slouching low and leaning his head back against the cushion behind him. All of this was just so physically exhausting, he wasn’t used to feeling like he could drop at any second. He rubbed at his face before he crossed his arms over his stomach and looked over at her. “Not a thing,” he murmured. “Which ... on one hand, that’s good. On the other ... it fucking sucks.” Jasper didn’t know if he could handle it if the cops or somebody found Amelia’s corpse. He also didn’t know if he could handle it if they never found a trace of her. Basically he didn’t know if he could handle any of this at all.
Ruby nodded, able to appreciate that sentiment completely. “One gives you hope, but… But it’s hard to have closure when there’s still hope,” she said softly. “Not that you need closure yet, but you know what I mean. Not knowing is sometimes harder, in the long run.” She knew that right now it meant that they could still find her, that she could be saved, whatever that meant. But it also tended to mean that she was in danger, that she was scared or in pain, and for every day that she remained missing, she had to endure whatever was keeping her captive. At this point, no one really thought she was roaming around on her own, safe and sound.
Jasper had gone through so many scenarios in his head in the past few days. He hadn’t wanted to, but he’d been picturing his sweet little sister getting snatched off the street by faceless, evil men. Beaten, raped, killed in horrible ways. They could’ve just weighed her down and thrown her in the ocean where she would never be found. They could’ve been keeping her in an attic or something, freezing and at their disposal. He’d seen a lot of movies and serial killer documentaries and shit, Jasper’s imagination had run away with him so many times. And all that was just the threat from normal people. He couldn’t even fathom all the supernatural options. It all made him feel like his chest was being slowly crushed. “What if she’s dead,” he said, the words not really coming out as a question. They were as flat as his stare as he gazed into the middle distance somewhere past Ruby.
Ruby took a slow, deep breath, then leaned across the couch to take Jasper’s hand in her own. “Then she’s no longer in pain,” she said, giving his hand a squeeze. She knew the inverse of that made things difficult, that if she was alive, then she was in pain, but they just couldn’t know. It reminded her of Schrodinger's Cat. Amelia was both dead and alive right now, and would remain both dead and alive until someone could prove which one she was. And chances were, they would never know. It allowed the mind to concoct the worst possible outcomes. “At some point, you get to decide what you want to believe. But you’re not there yet, Jay. It’s still early.”
He looked down at where Ruby was touching his hand and it took an extra couple of seconds for Jasper to curl his fingers around hers. It was still early. He had to keep reminding himself of that. Some kids were gone for a long time and then they came back, right? She was too old to forget them, no matter how far away a kidnapper tried to take her. And Amelia was a fighter. She was a Lucas, she was strong-willed and smart and ... fuck, he wished he’d taught her to fight. To gouge eyes and kick crotches and scream until someone came to help her. Jasper didn’t want her to be in pain, but he didn’t want her to be dead either. He just wanted her safe at home again. Belatedly, not sure what else to say, Jasper nodded a little. “Still early,” he echoed in a mutter.
Ruby was quiet, not sure what to say, pretty sure there was little she could do to help. She knew about the hole in his heart, the feelings of despair and helplessness. And she knew only time would heal those, or Amelia’s return. She wanted to hope, but Point Pleasant didn’t have a very good track record. It had a weird one, too bizarre for explanation. “You know… It’s going to sound weird, but some of the kids here, they go missing for a year or two, then they show up again. And they’re fine. So… anything’s possible.” She didn’t know any of those kids themselves, but she’d read about them a long time ago, when she was still hoping for her mother’s return. Her mother hadn’t come back, but other people had. It still happened with no explanation.
Jasper had heard about those kids too, but that it hadn’t happened in a long time, so he didn’t know if that could apply here. He would take Amelia back in any form or fashion, at any time, but all the waiting and not knowing ... Jasper saw a long hellish road in front of him. In front of all of them. Hadn’t their family been through enough shit? Not that this should’ve happened to anybody, but why did it have to happen to them? He gave a slow nod, still staring into space for a beat before he looked over at Ruby again. He was tempted to ask her if it ever got easier, but he felt like he already knew the answer was no. “I’m just gonna ... keep hoping, I guess,” he murmured. “Keep looking. I dunno what else to do.”
Ruby couldn’t tell him to stop hoping, not when she still found herself doing the same, even after all these years. She didn’t know what kind of explanation she would accept if her mother showed up suddenly, but it would be better than her being dead. At least, that’s what she thought. And Amelia had just gone missing. She knew four days was a long time for a child, but anything was possible at this point. “You do what you need to do,” she nodded. “But also remember to take care of yourself. Have you eaten?”
Jasper just didn’t know what else to do. It was keep hoping or give up, and he sure as shit wasn’t going to give up on his little sister, especially not this quickly. He blinked at Ruby like he’d forgotten what that word meant, his brow furrowing. “Uh ... not in a while,” he answered. He hadn’t felt hungry, his stomach all tied up in nervous knots, so he just hadn’t really thought of it that day. He knew that answer would make Ruby want to feed him, and he gave her a little frown. “Don’t go to any trouble though.”
In the days after her mother had gone missing, Ruby remembered her life being thrown into chaos. One of the things that still stood out to her was the nights without dinner, where her father would still come home and expect it to be made, but her mother wasn’t around to make it anymore. In all the crazy, it wouldn’t have surprised her if Jasper forgot to eat. It would be the last thing on his mind. And it was something she could help with. “Let me heat you up some leftovers,” she said, rising from the couch. “It’s no trouble. It makes me feel useful.”
It was awful that Ruby had lost her mom. But now that this had happened, Jasper had wondered a few times why it couldn’t have been his mom instead of his sister. That probably made him a shitty person, but he’d come by that shittiness genetically, and he would’ve traded one of his shitty parents for Amelia any day. All he wanted was for her to come back home and live with him and Gavin so they could take care of her properly. He didn’t completely blame his mother for the disappearance, but he blamed her enough. “Thanks Rubes,” he murmured as Ruby got up. Jasper didn’t even care what the leftovers were, as long as they were hot and would give him energy to keep going.
“No problem, Jay,” Ruby said, giving him a little smile. She wasn’t much of a cook, but maybe she’d put something together for him and his dad, just to make sure they were eating. It was more productive than sitting at home and worrying, that was for sure. She knew there was still a chance that Amelia would show up, but that it was getting more and more unlikely every day. At some point he’d have to make the decision to let her go or just keep hoping forever. She couldn’t tell him which was better, even ten years after the fact. It never felt right to give up on her mom, and it would probably be even harder with Amelia.