Sean Patrick Callahan (ex_pog_mo_th408) wrote in the_colony, @ 2010-10-14 23:40:00 |
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Entry tags: | ^ week 21, meghan callahan, michael callahan, | meg and mike |
WEEK 21: WEDNESDAY
Characters: Mike and Meg
Location: The house
Summary: Mike finds out that Quinn has left the farm, and tells Meg.
Rating: PG-13 for swears
Mike sat at the kitchen table, looking numbly down at the unassuming piece of paper in front of him. It was a piece of notebook paper, weighted down with a salt shaker. He read it for what must have been the tenth time.
I’m taking off, mate. Not one for goodbyes. I don’t know where I fit, but this isn’t the place for me. Sorry about taking the car. Later. Quinn.
Below the writing was a rough pencil drawing of the two of them, smiling and laughing, sitting side by side in their getaway car.
Mike ran a hand through his sandy hair, feeling like he’d just touched a bare wire and gotten blown across the room.
“Jesus. Jesus fucking Christ,” he mumbled, touching the paper to make sure it was real.
After another minute or so of blank staring, Mike got up from the table. He carefully ripped the paper in half -- keeping the bottom half with the drawing on it, he left the part with the note on the table. It was easier than explaining to everyone what had happened. Just to be sure, he went up the stairs to check in the room Quinn had shared with Holly -- all his things were gone, the bed neatly made. Taking a cursory look outside, the car they'd driven here was also missing.
He made his way blankly over to the cellar door, hardly noticing where his feet were taking him.
“Meg?” He called down the cellar stairs, willing his voice not to crack. “Babe, you down there?”
“Freezin’ my tits off, but yeah.”
Meg was in the middle of counting canned goods in the cellar. It wasn’t glamorous work, and it was cold in the cellar, damp, smelled like feet... but necessary, especially now that the winter had really started to settle in. Sarge responded to his male human’s inquiry as well by showing his massive head and jowls at the stairs landing, as if to say ‘I’m here too’, before he turned to wander back to Meg’s side.
She was alone, which was a small mercy. He made his way down the stairs slowly, carefully, and when he reached the bottom, he gave Sarge a cursory head-scritch.
“Baby... I got some bad news,” he started slowly. Before she asked, he plowed ahead, the words like ash in his mouth. “Quinn left.”
Thin fingertips traipsing across the rows of small canned vegetables stopped--Meg lost count, automatically, but she welcomed the confusion that squinted her sightless eyes a lot more than the concern that dropped her stomach.
She was hoping she had heard him wrong.
“...whaddya mean, he left?” She kept her voice purposefully airy, trying to mask the fact that she had recognized the tightness in his.
“I mean he wrote a shitty note about how he didn’t fit here, got into our car, and got the fuck out of Dodge. That’s what I mean,” he replied, instantly regretting the cutting anger in his voice as soon as it came out. He looked for somewhere, anywhere to sit, and ended up thumping down on the stairs.
“Sorry, Meg. But... Jesus,” he ended, exhaling in his frustration and anger.
Meghan swallowed tightly. Quinn just up and vamoosed? What the hell... The concern in her gut mixed with the uncomfortable heat of anger and worry, both aimed at the quirky Brit. She didn’t know him very well--it didn’t seem anyone did. Except her husband.
That’s where the anger came from. She could hear the pain, and it twisted her insides. Meg dropped her chin to her chest and let out a slow breath, simultaneously tapping the side of her jeans to get Sarge’s attention. The dog lumbered up from his lazy lay and sided up to her: the lead under her hand. Not that she needed her beloved canine sidekick to take her to Mike--it was just as much an automatic need for comfort, something that had strengthened considerably in the year that she was without Michael.
The blind woman turned, Sarge at her side, closing the distance between herself and the stairs, where she’d heard him sit. Her free hand laid on the rail--eyes forward, like always, as she reached with the other away from the dog--waiting for Mike’s hand.
“I dunno, Babe...” Her voice was unconvinced. She didn’t know what to say. “Maybe he just needs a little time to himself?”
He took hold of the offered hand, squeezing it gently. “I don’t know either. He could be. Or he could be going straight back to the hellhole we crawled out of.” His voice sounded defeated as he admitted his fears to Meg. This was the first thought that had popped into his mind upon seeing the letter -- from what he knew of the other man, Quinn was most comfortable around order and rules, even if that meant having a man waving a gun in front of your face and telling you when you were allowed to take a piss.
“What I do know is he’s out there, on his own.” And it’s all my fault was left unsaid, but hung in the air between them nonetheless.
Hell hole... Those two words just wrapped a little more barbed wire around her heart. Meg crouched in front of him, setting both hands on his knees, both for balance and to know where he was--to feel him shift or move. She’d known him long enough to be able to detect the slightest change in his position when he was this close. The problem was, how to interpret them--with so much having fallen between the world they knew now, and the one left behind.
Like Tom said... Mike was a different man. And Quinn...and those two words... were a link to what she wasn’t sure she ever wanted to know.
She fought with words, nothing coming seemed right, or if it did, she was just too scared to say them. Instead, Meg slipped closer, balancing on her own knees between his. Her foggy stare aimed toward his voice, always just a little off center between the curtains of her hair.
“He’ll be okay...” Again, she wasn’t convincing herself, but she kept her voice soft anyway. “I mean--you were okay, right?”
“We were okay. The two of us.” He shook his head, the drawing of the two of them in the car burning in his eyes. “I shoulda seen this coming, babe. I shoulda noticed how unhappy he was.” It’s my fault it’s my fault it’s my fault was looping through his thoughts like a broken record. Quinn was as good as dead, and he as good as killed him. He leaned forward, brushing his face against her shoulder. “I shoulda been there to stop him,” he continued, his voice muffled.
The sudden hollow feeling in her chest coincided with the forlorn tone that vibrated into the flannel shirt she wore: Meg wrapped her arms around his shoulders, squeezing him in with closed eyes and her cheek against his hair. God--what do I do... Her fingers twisted into his shirt, and she pulled tighter--as if she could actually pull him into herself. Mike leaned into her embrace, wrapping his arms around her in turn.
Meg just held him for a minute of uncertain and tight silence, until she could actually force her breath a little further than just the top of her throat.
“Whatever you wanna do, Babe...” She whispered into his hair, not knowing why she said it. What if he said he wanted to go look for Quinn? What if he didn’t come back? The thought stung her eyes, and pushed more words to cover it up. “Do you really think you could’a stopped him?”
He shook his head. It wasn’t that simple. His first impulse had been to hop in a car and chase the other man down, but reason and bitter logic had won the day -- he couldn’t risk his place in the group by taking a second vehicle to track Quinn down, and while he had a good idea where the he was headed, he had no idea how long ago Quinn had taken off, meaning he’d waste hours and precious fuel for what could ultimately be a useless trip. And when it came down to it, there was one overriding factor that rooted him firmly here, and it was right in front of him. He leaned back from Meg’s embrace, roughly running his hand over his face.
“No. It’s not whatever I wanna do. It’s what I have to do. And I have to stay right here. And he knows it.”
He paused, feeling a swirling mixture of guilt and anger churn his stomach. “He made his choice, dammit. And it’s the stupidest fucking choice in the history of choices. But he isn’t expecting me to chase him down and get him to change his mind. Otherwise, he’d have said goodbye to my face.”
His pulling away only deepened the hole in her chest, literally making it hard to breathe for a second, especially with those words. No choice...
She heard his voice muffle behind the palms of his hands, even as hers were made to slip back down to his knees when he drifted back. Her eyes were half-lidded, never focused, but usually expressive. Right now, they were just lost.
Finally, Meg just gave in to the fear and the silence that’d gripped them for weeks. She hung her head and squeezed his thighs lightly without realizing it. Her voice was barely a whisper.
“Where is he going?”
“If he’s going where I think he’s going, straight back to Idaho,” Mike replied woodenly. “If he’s lucky, and survives the trip, he’ll get a nice commemorative chain around his ankle, and maybe, just maybe, they won’t beat him to death.” He hated the words that were pouring out of his mouth, and hated seeing the look on Meg’s face as he said them, but he couldn’t stop them any more than he could stop the tears from rebelliously stinging his eyes.
“But hey, I don’t know. Maybe he decided to just do everyone a favor and drove off a cliff, because it’s not like he’s got anywhere else left to go, and I’d rather he did that then go back there any day.” He didn’t mean it, of course he didn’t mean it, but the thought that Quinn had left was bad enough. The thought that he just might go back to the place they’d fought to escape from was twenty times worse.
Meg’s face hurt to keep composure--just as Mike was most likely imagining all these horrible things happening to his friend again, her own imagination was taking his words and running wild. It was terrifying, because without the perception of sight, all she had to go on were tactile things--what a shackle would feel like. What their living conditions would smell like. ...what being beaten to a pulp would do.
It was too much.
“...Michael.” Her whisper was a pleading one, but for what, she wasn’t sure. There was nothing she could do, just like there was nothing he could do.
Mike grabbed his wife’s hand again, holding it tight. “I’m sorry, Meg,” he replied. “You didn’t deserve any of that.” He reached out with his other hand, brushing her hair away from her face with his fingers. “I just... for a while there, before we heard you on the radio, he was the only thing that kept me goin. I owed him. And now, I’ve let him down.”
She turned her cheek into his hand and finally let out the shaky breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding in. Eyes closed, fighting the sick feeling in her stomach that was refusing to go away--she could only imagine what he’d been feeling. It was different, but the thought passed her mind about what her life might’ve been like if something happened to Sarge while she and her husband were separated. She knew Mike didn’t rely on the Brit as she did the massive dog now curled by her feet, but he was her connection to everything.
“It wasn’t your fault...” First impulse, but she meant it. Even if she couldn’t defend the logic. Who the hell knew why Quinn just up and left--he was a weird guy: hard to read, at least in Meg’s point of view.
“That doesn’t change the fact he’s gone,” Mike replied quietly, touching his forehead to hers. Even though he knew it wasn’t true, it still made him feel better to hear it. Meg didn’t blame him. For now, it would have to do. He kissed her lightly, and wrapped his arms back around her narrow shoulders, pulling them back together in an embrace.