Fic: A Sparrow's Fall

Title: A Sparrow's Fall
Fandom: Murder Call
Characters: Tessa/Steve, OC
Prompt: 030. Death
Word Count: 856 (Mac Word)
Rating: PG
Summary: The loss is sometimes too great for words.
Author's Notes: Title adapted from a Norwegian funeral song: "Ikke en spurv faller til jorden uten at Gud det vet" (Not a sparrow falls to the ground without God knowing).
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters. They belong to Jennifer Rowe, Hal McElroy and Southern Star. I make no profit out of this.

**

There was no stopping the pain shooting through her chest as the casket was lowered into the ground. A small pristinely white thing carrying a piece of her heart to eternal resting: it was unfair. It should have been her. But the powers that be had not listened to her. It had all been for naught. A second was all it took – a sliver of their millions of seconds that would never be regained. Gone and lost forever.

He returned from lowering the casket, his hand clenched as if still gripping the rope. She leaned into his side, seeking comfort that was slow coming. No more tears ran down her cheeks; she had run empty. His arms tucked around her shoulders and she could hear his heart beat quickly beneath his heavy jacket, the slight trembles alerting her to the cries he held back.

Time passed so slowly. Even with the cold weather, the sun shone. She could not help but think it was treacherous, at the same time overcome by the rays falling on the colourful flowers and making the scene so beautiful. Such a stark opposite to the last time she had been forced to see someone she loved buried in the cold winter ground.

A sob escaped her lips, but she had no more tears to offer, and her throat was sore. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. They had been so happy, so overjoyed by the turn of events. The possibility of losing it before it began had not even crossed their minds.

His arm tightened around her and his cheek leaned on the top of her head. She drew her arms around him, hugging him tightly, finally drawing her eyes away from the flowers to drown in the dark fabric of his jacket. It hurt so much. The wound had been ripped open today instead of mending. She didn’t know how she would bear it.

He dropped a kiss on her hair and she remembered her father, who used to do the same thing when she was upset, and she managed to squeeze out a few more wet trails into the heavy material. Her throat hurt, her chest hurt, and her belly felt empty. She had not been ready for this. It had taken her completely off guard. She gripped the material of his jacket in her hands, uttering a guttural sound in her half-sob.

Not a care for watching eyes did she feel. All she wanted was to bury herself in their bed in their dark bedroom, only him and her, and lie there forever. She was sick of condolences, of concerned conversations and the ever-pitying looks. She was tired of being sick of it. It was a circle that never ended.

A sudden hiccup from the chest against her face alerted her to his distress, and she hugged him closer, nearly choking him as silent sobs took hold of him. A moment of weakness, it made her aware there was something more to him than a secure rock in the stream. He was hurting too.

For long moments, she simply gripped him tight, long past listening to their surroundings, finding her own sobs escaping silently with his until they both calmed down. Another kiss on her hair and she finally drew back, gazing up into his eyes and seeing the ghostly trails of tears down his cheeks. She wiped it off as he did with her, and she nearly came undone again with the pain mirrored in his eyes. It was as if he had aged ten years in the past two weeks. He was wearied, thin, drawn. But there was something else there as well: a small glimmer that nearly drowned in the darkness as he cast a look down beside her.

She followed his gaze to the small blue eyes peering up at them, the quivering lip, and the small hands fisted in her skirt and his pants. Neither of them had noticed and didn’t know how long the boy had stood there.

“Mama?”

Her heart soared even as a stab of pain jolted through her. She looked up to the side and met their friends’ mournful faces standing several metres away, sympathy written all over them, and the elder woman who had been unofficial aunt looked apologetic. Tessa simply gave her a look and then leaned down to pick Jonas up in her tired arms.

“Don’t be sad,” Jonas told her and ran his chubby hand clumsily over her cheeks, mimicking his father’s previous gesture. He then twisted in her arms and reached up to his father to do the same.

A ghost of a smile crossed Steve’s features and he caught the boy’s hand to kiss it softly as Tessa shifted the boy in her arms. “We’ll try,” he promised, meeting her eyes after ruffling the boy’s hair. She cleared her throat, but was too emotional to speak. Her eyes burned.

And as she silently passed her son to Steve, who reached the other arm around her and drew her close, she found she didn’t need to speak at all.

END