Je Serai Toujours Avec Toi

Participants:

jaiden_icon.gif

Scene Title Je Serai Toujours Avec Toi
Synopsis Saying goodbye is never easy.
Date May 20, 2018

Streets of Elmhurst


Remi never called or texted, and never came home last night. It was the uniformed police officer’s sharp rap on the door that stirred Jaiden from his slumber after he had fallen asleep in his recliner.

"Mr. Mortlock, there's been an accident. You need to come with us right now."

It’s a horrifying sentence for anyone to hear. It’s even worse when those words come on the tail of a spouse gone missing. The hired help that Remi insisted on gladly takes care of the girls, getting them ready and off to school, while Jaiden went with the police officers.

The scene upon arrival is even more horrifying than the words that came out of the officer’s mouth. The Land Rover, Remi and the girls’ favorite vehicle, is…mangled, destroyed. Gone is the shiny black and teal paint that the telepath loved so much, gone is the wood trim inside that Remi positively squealed about when they got the SUV, gone are the screens that amused the girls on the long trips to and from Minnesota…

And gone is the woman who loved to drive that damned car.

What’s left is a mangled and twisted mess of metal, barely recognizable as a car any more. Rescue workers are struggling, trying to pull Remi’s lifeless form from the mess, and having a difficult time from the looks of it.

Jaiden arrived with the officers a little after Remi’s body was pulled from the wreck, the traffic parting around the squad car as they weaved through traffic, towards the Raytech building. Instead of taking the left, like they always did, they slow to a stop, the road blocked by fire engines and an ambulance parked close to the wreckage of Remi’s Land Rover. Thankfully Jaiden missed the removal of her body - only the somber placement of her on the gurney, the black rubberized body bag slowly drawn around her still form laid on the gurney. Even from the distance he was standing, behind the police tape, he could see that she wasn’t…good. Jaiden had seen things like this through his entire time with the resistance, with during the war, but never to someone that he was so close to, the mother of his children, the woman he held every night before they fell asleep.

The second love of his life, lost in a senseless explosion.

A land mine, is what the rumors were, and as he stood and watched, it was all he could do to not run to her, to take her into his arms, to plead for her to wake up, to come back to him, to not leave him. That would taint the scene, it would make it harder for the men and women here to do their jobs to work. So he stands quietly and watches, numb, barely able to contemplate what he’s seeing.

As he stands there, resisting his baser urges to show those emotions rolling beneath the surface, there’s…something that happens to his hand. And then, Remi is standing there next to him, watching the scene before her with a sad look on her face, with her hand resting over his, insomuch as a psychic projection of a dead woman can touch someone’s hand. Tears glisten in her eyes as she looks upon the body bag that contains her remains.

Tears pour down her cheeks, the projection of a mother who didn’t get to kiss her daughters good night one last time, the projection of a wife who didn’t get to touch her husband’s face one last time. The ghost of Remi turns, lifting her other hand and gently “touching” Jaiden’s cheek.

For a moment, just a moment, she isn’t over there on the gurney, waiting to be taken to the morgue and autopsied. For just a moment, she’s still here, and it’s just her and her husband.

The featherlight touch would normally go completely unnoticed - after all, these hands work, lift young girls to pluck things from high shelves, build things for doting mothers, brush affectionately through a wife’s long, soft hair. Busy hands. Deft, careful hands that can touch and caress in the most gentle of ways. And it was always was his left hand that she held. His right was always busy with his cane that he needed to stay mobile and upright. A hand that he thought he’d hold in his until the end of his days.

“Ah, Remi, love..” he murmurs softly, glancing to his left, his eyes closing at the ghostly touch on his cheek. “What’re we going to do now?”

There are no words, for a moment, as the crying ghost caresses her husband’s cheek. There’s not much of her left to talk to him like this. But he came, and she’s here with him right now, and hopefully this will help him, even if just a little bit.

“Ça va aller, mon amour.” Her words come in an airy whisper, as light as the breeze that blows on this lovely, horrible morning. Her hand moves from his cheek to his chest, over his heart. “Je serai toujours avec toi.”

Then, she’s floating, and she’s planting one final kiss on his lips, tears streaming down her cheeks. “I love you.” She pulls away, blue eyes meeting his once more…

And then, just like that, she’s gone, her ghostly form dispersed into the air and blowing away with the breeze.

It took so much of her, in those final moments in the Land Rover, to cry out, to call for help, to say goodbye to the minds surrounding the crash site, that being able to simply do this is testament to the power she held in check for so many years. The control that she could exercise to keep from screaming to the world around her on a day-to-day basis, without negation.

So many things are left undone. Unsaid. Trips aren’t taken that were going to be at some time, now never. A summer in France with her mother at the chateau with the girls. Shopping trips to Paris and Milan. Trips to Australia to visit Jaiden’s parents. The fairytale life of her daughters is now even more a fairytale with the unexpected and unfortunate death of their mother.

“I’ll be fine, Remi, my love.” Jaiden whispers, big tears forming in the corners of his eyes, one or two actually escaping down his cheeks, the normally clean-shaven man sporting a little stubble from the day before. “We’ll be fine, I promise. Victoria and Lisette won’t grow up too fast. You don’t worry about them forgetting you..” And he turns to face her, his eyes glimmering with tears. A part of his heart has been taken away and dashed on the streets, senselessly. And somehow, their eyes meet - his living ones widening as the shimmering image of his wife fades into nothingness in the cool Spring morning, her ghostly words echoing quietly in his ears as she fades into the aether.


Later that Evening…


The night was quiet in the safe zone, the sun setting in the West a little more than an hour prior.

Graeme had been called and told to come home as soon as he could. That it was an emergency. That the girls needed him /now/. Jaiden couldn’t bring himself to tell Graeme over the phone that Remi was gone. And there was so much more to do.

Victoria had finished her ballet lessons and Lisette was busily coloring a picture of the scene that took place, her big sister in a garish pink tutu, on pointe, with a crowd of what looks like bears and foxes surrounding her, applauding. Dinner had been had, too - a simple meal of chicken and vegetables with a little homemade ketchup on the side to make it more palpable. Of course, Lisette ended up wearing most of it, but enough made it into her belly for Jaiden to consider it a successful dinner.

He had been trying to make it as normal as he could, even without Remi being there, and it was /hard./ Victoria had been asking for her mother, to see her, where she was, if she was okay, pretty much the instant that she was told. Lisette, thankfully, only cried for a little while for Remi before drifting off to a fitful sleep.

The nightgown Jaiden had laid out the night before had been taken and trimmed, one of the ladies who worked in the apartment sewing it into two pillows - one for each girl - to sleep with. Small sachets of Remi’s hair - plucked from her hairbrush - were placed inside the pillows, too, so there was a part of her with her daughters from then on.

“She’d be here if she could, poppet.” Jaiden said softly, sitting on the edge of Victoria’s bed, stroking his oldest daughter’s hair gently. “It was an accident and she’s….” he takes a breath, holding back the tears for a second.

“It’s okay to cry, Daddy.” Victoria whispers, getting up and curling in Jaiden’s lap. “I’m sad too.”

Those words, from his little girl, bring Jaiden figuratively to his knees, chopping them out from under him. Lisette toddles over from her bed to join the three and, amidst tears, Jaiden carries them all to the bed that he shared with Remi these past months, bundling them beneath the covers and caring for them until they fall asleep, their curls around their angelic faces, Jaiden stroking them tenderly.

The parts of Remi that he has left in his life sleep soundly next to him, and Jaiden falls into a fitful sleep of exhaustion.

As Jaiden falls into the fitful sleep of the grief-stricken, he could swear he can see one final glimpse of his wife, standing in the doorway with her hand resting on the doorframe, looking in on her daughters as she always did — but this time, tears stream down the ghost’s face as she lingers for just a moment longer.

As Jaiden’s eyes close, he could swear he can see her standing over the bed, resting her hands on the heads of her baby girls, who she loved with every fiber of her being. She was a good mother, she loved her daughters more than anything in the world — they were her sunshine, and they could put a smile on her face on even the hardest of days.

As unconsciousness finally takes hold, Jaiden could swear he sees one last glimpse of his wife, leaning down and kissing her babies good night, one last time.

“I love you, Mommy.” Victoria whispers, curling into the ghostly touch. Lisette coos quietly, too, something in her knowing that Mommy is there. She gives one of those little smiles that wrinkles her nose before she curls into Jaiden’s embrace.

And then, Soleil Remi Davignon is gone forever.


Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License