- Everything seemed to stand far too still while at the same time, curiously enough, the Earth's rotation seemed far too pronounced, and it felt to Elias as though he could feel the very shifting of the tectonic plates themselves. There was a beat of silence that elongated itself, making the moment seem like minutes. All the strange tricks your mind can play on you.
The silence ended and she laughed. Laughed. He wasn't entirely sure what else he was expecting. A slap in the face? Far too unlike Jane. He wasn't sure what he was hoping for either. All the times he'd thought about the home he'd left behind and the people he wished he could see again, not once had he actually played out a scenario in his head where he'd reunite with them. It seemed too unrealistic at the time. The world had a funny way of playing out. It half felt like fate, or destiny, or some other similarly ridiculous force was playing a nasty trick on him.
But he couldn't blame her at all. He almost felt like laughing himself. And he did, cracked a smile and a small chuckle. He could see where she was coming from. The whole thing was so terribly anticlimactic. All those months and somehow so little had really changed. He had walked into the house and over the threshold of the kitchen with such ease, as if there were no problem or strangeness about it. As if he belonged there. As if he had never left.
But that was nothing but a shimmering ghost of the past. The truth remained, hanging in the air like a stifling presence. There was a strangeness about it all. He didn't belong, and he had left. Nothing could change the facts.
Jane dropped from the counter she was perched on, and his vision, previously so laser-focused on Jane the rest of his surroundings blurred, cleared and focused. He heard her excuse herself, and in the moments before she gripped his arm, he took the opportunity to fully scan the faces he had barely noted before. He recognized two of them, the twins, who had been there when he still was. They were there the day he left too, and he could practically see the wariness in their eyes. He nearly laughed again. Of course they'd be reluctant to leave Jane alone with him; if he were in their place, he'd likely feel the same. The other two were new faces, but he'd been gone for quite a while, and he wasn't surprised to see some of the residents had changed.
She pulled him out of the room, and he didn't acknowledge the others in the kitchen before turning to follow her. He had more pressing matters than trying to make amends or new friends. Outside the air still held something of a chill, and he appreciated the sharp breeze that kept his mind clear. The door shut behind them, and there was another beat of silence. And then she asked him if he was okay. So many months from the fateful day he had slipped out of the house in the early hours of dawn like some kind of criminal (which he may very well have been), and the first words she said to him were "please tell me you're okay." He couldn't stop the sharp, bitter laugh that escaped his mouth.
"Christ," he said, running a hand through his hair. "That's so... That is just what you would say, isn't it?" He laughed again, just a breathy testament to how much she made him hate himself.
"Couldn't you just," he said, after a brief moment avoiding her gaze, "I don't know, call me a bastard or a son of a bitch or punch me in the face or, or something?" He failed to mask his frustration (less with her, more with himself), and his voice rose slightly. He took a deep breath, sighed, released the hand he'd unknowingly clenched into a fist. Maybe he should have talked to Owen or one of the others first. Someone more willing to greet him the way he probably deserved to be greeted. "Sorry," he said, placing a tentative hand on her shoulder. "Sorry."
He wanted to hug her, but things weren't the way they used to be, and something like that would carry so much more weight than it used to. If she accepted it, it would mean forgiveness, and god knew he sure as hell didn't deserve that. And if she pushed him away it would mean something so much worse.
He retracted his hand, dropping it awkwardly at his side. He didn't have time for his own stupid melodrama. There were far more pressing matters to attend to. "Jane, listen, I came back for a reason." He paused, looking for the proper way to phrase what he knew he had to tell her. He pulled in a breath. "I hope I'm wrong, but if I'm not, then you're missing someone from the house. Since this morning. And I know why." He paused again, knowing that sounded far too ominous and shady on his part, but being entirely unaware of how to correct it. So he just plowed on ahead. "I have a team following me. They'll be here in a few minutes, but I wanted the chance to tell you first. Face-to-face. There's a cell of Hunters in this area, Jane. And they're bigger than any I've seen before. They took one of my own, and I think they just grabbed one of yours too."
He finally stopped there. It was a lot of information to process, he knew that, but if he didn't get it all out at once, he wasn't sure how he'd be able to break the news to her at all.