Hearing the Darkness Fall
Pairing: Fred Burkle
(Angel) / Martin Fitzgerald (Without a Trace)
Rating: PG
Word Count: 4,786
Spoilers: All background;
refers specifically to Friendly Skies and
Risen (Without a Trace)
Disclaimer: Not mine
Summary: You’re still
among the missing, and I’m still missing you
Notes: Written for The
Pairings That Ate Fandom Round 7. Title taken from the song Among the Missing by Michael McDonald
and Kathy Mattea.
Once, when he was feeling dissatisfied with his work, when it was the
first time since beginning work with the Missing Person's Unit that they hadn't
found the victim alive, he'd gone out for a drink with Danny. They'd talked
about Linda Schmidt and other cases, Danny telling Martin a number of stories about
the team, half of which Martin swore couldn't be true. He'd been nursing his
third beer, while Danny was sticking to water, when Danny asked a question that
had Martin freezing with his beer bottle halfway to his lips.
"Why'd you transfer here?" Martin's surprise must have shown
on his face, because Danny continued, "I mean, two years working white
collar, Dad's the assistant director, you could have had your pick of
assignments… why Missing Person's?"
Martin took a deep breath, considering his options, because the one
thing he couldn't tell Danny was the truth.
The real truth about why he was in
The real truth started and ended, like so many things often did, with a
girl.
Not just any girl though.
Her name was Winifred Burkle, Fred for short, and he met her, in all
places, at the university bookstore at UCLA. She was in the graduate physics
program, while he was just beginning his master's in psychology. He'd literally
walked right into her, his books and hers falling on the floor, both of them
sputtering apologies to one another as they tried to gather them back up again.
He'd thought that they'd done quite a good job of it, at least until he'd got
home to his one-room apartment (Dad might not have been happy that he'd moved
clear across the country, but he wasn't going to not foot the bill) and
realised that he had one of her notebooks in addition to his own.
Her name and number were neatly written inside the front cover, and
he'd flicked through a couple of pages as he waited for someone to answer the
phone, then waited for her to come to the phone after her room-mate called her.
Neat and all as she might have written her name, the notes ranged from that
same neat precise writing to a rangy scrawl, full of symbols and chemical
equations that he couldn't even begin to grasp. High school physics and
chemistry had been enough of a struggle for him; this was tantamount to
hieroglyphics, and he actually told her when she came on the line that that was
what he'd found a notebook of when he got home. She'd laughed somewhat
breathlessly, told him that she really needed that notebook back for the
following afternoon's class, so he'd arranged to meet her for lunch the next
day to give it back, surprising himself, and her as well, when he'd asked her
if he could buy her lunch, "To make up for the inconvenience."
"It's not any inconvenience…" she began, and he found himself
smiling down the line.
"Well then, can I buy you lunch away?"
She accepted with another laugh, and when he met her the next day, he
was surprised to discover that she was prettier than he remembered, long brown hair
tied up in a ponytail that swung from side to side as she talked, brown eyes
dancing with life and merriment. Her
"Can I call you?" he asked, and she looked at him with wide
eyes, the only thing wider being the smile that spread across her face.
"You've got my number," she told him as she ran off, and he
would have laughed at her had he not been staring after her, an equally wide
smile spreading across his face too.
That had been the start of them, the start of a relationship that
Martin still looks back on fondly, that still makes him smile. There had been
other women before Fred, a fact that used to worry her somewhat, sure that they
were prettier, more intelligent, more experienced than she was. He would laugh,
not unkindly, when she would say things like that to him, telling her, quite
truthfully, that her experience, or lack thereof, didn't bother him, and
besides, she was the prettiest girl he'd ever seen. Her smile from across the
room had the power to reduce him to speechlessness, and he loved how he could
discern her mood by just the briefest glance into her eyes. He especially had a
thing about her hair, falling to almost her waist and usually kept back in a
ponytail, just as it had been at their first meeting. He used to love to pull
out the tie that kept it up, letting it fall down around her shoulders, through
his fingers, and he loved more than that how she would turn to him, protesting
loudly that he shouldn't have done that. The look in her eyes would say different
though, would tell him loud and clear that she didn't mind that at all.
He's not sure if she believed him half the time when he told her those
things, but the one that she could never dispute was that she was, by far, the
cleverest woman that he'd ever dated. Her memory was nothing short of amazing,
something that he'd always found came in handy when they would spend lazy
Sunday mornings in bed, or lounging around his place, with him trying to do the
crossword. As for her intellect, well, not for nothing did her notes look like
hieroglyphics; he'd learned not too long after they started dating that she
left the rest of her class, and not a few of the professors, trailing in her
wake when it came to knowledge and applications of physics. For all that
though, she was still a bundle of nerves come exam time, even if her preferred
way of calming herself down was to chant the first four hundred and fifty two
digits of Pi. Martin used to smile to himself whenever he heard those familiar
first few digits, "Three point one four one nine five two six five three
five…" until he found himself doing the same thing one day. Unlike Fred
however, his memory petered out after the tenth decimal place. She was
consistently top of her class, and she told him once that that was something
that had scared a lot of guys away from her, that they didn't want to be with
someone who they thought was smarter than they were, that they were intimidated
by her.
He was never intimidated by her though. He was just proud of her.
Which is more than can be said for his father, who made it clear in no
uncertain terms that he didn't approve of the relationship, that he thought
Martin could do better. There were dozens of society girls in
There are a thousand things in his everyday life that remind him of
her, that make him smile. He remembers her love for Haagen-Dazs ice cream, how
she could literally never pass a taco stand. That being said, there weren't
many things that Fred wouldn't eat, and that includes his cooking, something
that's never been his forte. He thinks of her sometimes when he hears a country
song on the radio, especially if it's one that she liked, and when he wakes up
in the middle of the night and can't go back asleep, he misses her, misses how
he could wake her up, or she would wake him up, and they'd talk quietly, lying contentedly
in one another's arms until sleep claimed them both. That's especially true
during a thunderstorm, because Fred never liked those, and now, when Martin
stands at the window and looks out at them, he's very conscious of the absence
of a small body pressed against his. Even something as innocuous as an apple
makes him think of her, because he remembers the necklace that he gave to her
once, for no special reason, just because they were walking through a craft
fair together and he saw it and thought it would be perfect for her. He'd
bought it then and there, slipping it around her neck as he reminded her of the
story of Sir Isaac Newton and the apple, and she laughed, telling him that
there was no actual proof of that story. She was going to say something else
too, but whatever it was was lost when he kissed her, when she kissed him back.
"I love it," she told him when she pulled away from him, her fingers
leaving his back to finger the charm at the base of her throat. "I'll
never take it off."
She never had.
He remembers her wearing it the last time that he ever saw her. It was
a sunny Tuesday in May when they'd met for lunch at his place, which, more and
more, seemed like their place, because she spent far more time there than she
did in the apartment she shared with
He didn't say that to her, but she still shifted against him, eyes dark
and worried, and he could feel tension enter her body, knew that she knew the
state of his relationship with his father, blamed himself for it. "Maybe
you should consider it," she said quietly, her eyes moving from his face
to the fingers of his left hand, entwined with hers.
"We'll see," he said, changing the subject with a smile.
"We can't all know what we're destined to do with our lives…" Because
Fred, of course, had it all worked out. A research post at one of the labs on
campus was hers for the asking, Professor Seidel having promised that he would
do all he could for her. She was leaning towards staying in LA, he knew, though
she'd more than once dropped hints to him that if he wanted to go to
"Stop it," she laughed, swatting his chest ineffectually, and
he laughed, moving his right hand through her hair, shifting slightly so that
he could look down at her.
"Travelling all around the world, giving lectures, expounding on
the theories of life, the universe and everything, allowing us poor normal
people to bask in your brilliance…"
"You're terrible," she laughed, but there was something else in
her eyes too, a darkness that had him frowning.
"You mean that's not what you want with your life?" he asked,
and she shrugged with one shoulder.
"Well… not all I want…"
Her voice was equal parts wistful and hopeful as she looked up at him
through her eyelashes. "Like?" he prompted, and when there was still
no answer, he took a guess. "White
picket fence, couple of kids as well as the Nobel Prize?"
She grinned up at him, and the flush on her cheeks told him that he'd
guessed right. "And a dog," she told him. "A Golden Labrador
called Jasper…"
"Jasper?" he laughed and she narrowed her eyes.
"Jasper's a good name for a dog," she objected. "And I'd
actually like four kids, but two's a start… I always wanted twins… a boy and a
girl, and I'd called them Pierre and Marie…"
She was dead in earnest, even if her eyes were dancing with mischief, and he
shook his head, tickling her side, making her shriek and squirm against him.
"I'll give you Marie," he allowed. "But no way are we calling
one of our kids Pierre… what's wrong with Peter?"
"Peter's a nice name," she agreed. Then,
uncharacteristically, because the one thing that Fred could always do was talk,
she fell silent.
She was silent for more than a full minute, and he looked down at her,
frowning. "You ok?" he asked, and she looked up at him, gave him an
uncertain smile.
"I just can't believe we're talking about this…" she told him
quietly, and when he ran the conversation back through his mind, he knew just
where she was coming from.
"I know," he replied, leaning down and brushing his lips
quickly over hers. "But I like it."
Her smile was brighter than sunshine, her response in the form of an
enthusiastic kiss that lead to further amorous lunchtime activities, so much so
that neither of them actually had time to eat anything before they had to go
back for classes. They dressed quickly, each checking the other over in a
pointless effort to make it look like they hadn't been doing what they'd been
doing, and when he pulled her to him, kissed her goodbye, she'd told him that
she might be a little late home that day, that she was going to the library to
do some research, the better to add the finishing touches to her thesis.
So when he got home and she wasn't there, he wasn't unduly worried. Nor
was he worried as the hours ticked by, because this was Fred, and she had a
habit of losing track of time when she was absorbed in work - how many times
had he had to drag her out of the library, kicking and screaming?
Worry only kicked in when dinner time came and went, because usually
Fred could be relied upon to be there for meals.
And when it came to almost nine o'clock, and still no sign of her, he
went to the library to look for her.
He's never forgotten turning the corner to her usual seat, the one
hidden way at the back, the one no-one ever near, expecting to see her there,
back hunched over the seat, nose nearly touching the page she was writing on,
hand moving so quickly that he was surprised the paper didn't catch fire. He
was so sure that that's the sight that would await him that it actually took a
long moment for it to register that there was just an empty seat where Fred
should have been.
An empty seat, but not an empty desk. Fred's notes were there, spread
out all around, her familiar loping scrawl covering page after page. Her
backpack rested against the leg of the table, a bottle of water and half eaten
candy bar lying on the table beside three different colours of pen and the
watch that her parents had given her for her twenty-first birthday was propped
up on the desk, so that she could keep an eye on the time as she worked.
The only thing that was missing was Fred herself, and he walked the
length and breadth of the library looking for her.
When he couldn't find her, he went to the front desk, called security,
and had them searching for her too.
They searched every nook and cranny of the library, then searched the
surrounding area.
But they never found a trace of Fred.
Martin didn't go home that night, spent his time with friends of
theirs, roaming the city looking for her, for anyone who had seen her. When
morning dawned, he went to UCLA, in the hopes that she would turn up for one of
her classes; better yet, that one of her fellow students would have seen her,
that she would have spent the night with one of them, the two of them running
some elusive theory to ground.
Again, he had no luck.
When she was missing for twenty-four hours, he went to the police station,
filed a missing person's report, and made the hardest phone call that he'd ever
made in his life.
Roger and Trish Burkle arrived in the city in the wee small hours of
the morning, having got the first flight they could, and together, the three of
them made appeals in every media outlet they could, posted fliers all around
the campus, the area, anywhere where Fred might have gone, appealing for news.
All to no avail though, and as the days and weeks went by, Martin's
apartment, once a real home that rang to the sound of Fred's chatter, stayed
cold and gloomy, so quiet that he could almost hear the darkness fall every
evening. Lying in bed, praying that she would come back to him, he ran that
last day over and over in his mind, looking for some clue, something that would
tell him where she was.
And on Graduation Day, when he watched her friends march up to receive
their graduate diplomas, when he walked up to receive his, that was the first
time he entertained the notion that she might not come back. Because Fred had
worked too hard, for too long, to miss that.
That night, he went out with his friends, got well and truly
rip-roaringly drunk, and the next morning, when he woke up clutching a stuffed
rabbit called Feigenbaum, it was the first time that he allowed himself to cry
for her.
The next few months went by in a blur, missing Fred, getting a job,
missing Fred all over again. It was only when he went home at Christmas, saw
the worry in his mother's eyes, the frustration pursing his father's lips, the
same frustration that lined his voice when he told him to "Pull your damn
self together… you think that girl would want this for you?"
Not for the first time, Martin had wanted to punch his father, for not using
Fred's name, for daring to speak about her at all. But mostly for telling him
the truth.
That January, he'd enrolled at
He spent five years like that, existing, but not really living, and
then one late October day, he got a phone call.
Hearing from Trish and Roger was surprise enough, but when they told
him to sit down, his knees literally buckled. "They've found her?" he
asked. "Her body?"
He wanted, yet didn't want, to hear the news, and it took a moment to
assimilate Trish's words. "Martin… Fred's alive."
There were a thousand questions that he wanted to ask, but none of them
would come past the lump in his throat, past the tears in his eyes, streaming
down his cheeks. "Alive?" he finally managed.
"She's living in LA," Trish told him. "She wrote to us…
telling us she was alive, asking us not to get in contact with her… but we had
to see her…"
"Where?"
There was a long silence, then Roger spoke, using that same tone he'd
used all those years ago when warning Martin in not so many words that there
should be no nocturnal visits to Fred's bedroom. "Martin, she's alive, and
she's well… but son, she doesn't want you to see her."
Martin's stomach twisted, even as Trish moved in to smooth the waters.
"It's not that she doesn't want to," she said. "But she knows
that you've moved on with your life… and she doesn't want you to feel beholden
to her…"
"Beholden?" Martin echoed, his voice sounding harsh even to
his own ears. "I loved her… I still love her… how can she think-"
"She loves you too," Trish said, and if possible, that made
Martin feel even worse. "But the last five years have changed her… she's
not the same girl you knew."
"Changed her? How?" Images of torture and abuse ran rampant
through his head, and he felt himself growing cold all over. "What
happened to her?"
There was another long pause, and he could picture them looking at one
another, trying to figure out what to say to him. Then Trish sighed. "I
think we need to tell him the whole truth."
"I want to know."
It was Roger's turn to sigh. "Son, this might be hard to take
in…"
"It can't be any worse than what I've spent the last five years imagining…
Trish… Roger… I love your daughter. And I've spent five years wishing that
she'd walk in the door… I think I deserve to know the truth."
Scant minutes later, his head was spinning, and he was beginning to
wish that he'd never spoken. Tales of a mystical portal transporting the love
of his life to another dimension where she'd spent five years living in a cave,
in fear of her life, of her arriving back in LA, living in a hotel with a team
of people whose mission it was to help the helpless, who were lead by a vampire
with a soul, had him seriously wondering if years of missing Fred had seriously
driven her parents over the edge. But he knew them, knew they would never lie
to him so, hard as it was for him to accept, he knew he had to.
Just like he knew he had to see her.
"I won't go near her," he promised. "She won't even know
that I'm there… but I need to see her… to know she's all right."
It had taken some persuading, and more than one phone call, but they'd
finally told him the name of the detective agency - Angel Investigations - and
the address, and he'd flown to LA the next day, renting out a car and driving
straight there. Sitting across the street from the entrance, he'd waited
patiently, and finally, eventually, he'd seen her.
She was thinner than she had been five years ago, but that was the only
change in her appearance. Her hair was still just as long, curling down her
back, eyes still dancing with life, visible from clear across the street. She
was talking animatedly, as always, hands waving as she illustrated a point,
walking with two other people, another woman, pretty with dark hair that fell
to her shoulders, and a tall black man who was looking at Fred in a way that
was very familiar to Martin.
She looked good, looked happy.
She looked like his Fred.
Smiling, he turned the key in the ignition and drove away.
He tried to go back to the life he'd had before she came back, but
something had changed, and he wasn't sure what. He just knew that he needed
some kind of change in his life, that the work he was doing, investigating
white-collar crime, wasn't what he wanted to do anymore. Gradually, the more he
thought about it, the more he thought of Fred, and the years she'd been
missing, and the happiness he'd heard in Trish and Roger's voices when they
called him, told him that she was alive and well. The same joy that he'd felt
when he heard those words.
He wanted that feeling again, wanted to give it to other families, so
he'd put in a request to transfer to Missing Person's. It had taken almost a
year for a position to open up, clear across the country in
Despite some initial teething problems, he thinks he's settled in with
this team, thinks he's made friends. The worst day was the first time they
didn't find the person alive, when he knew that some family was going to have
to live through his worst nightmare.
Those days, though, are few and far between, the happy ending coming
more often than not, and with every family reunited, it's a little bit easier
to let go of Fred, to convince himself that the way he remembers her, on the
sidewalk that day in LA, is the best thing for her.
He tells himself that, but he only really believes it when he finds
himself in the car with Vivian one day, looking at Angie Novell, nee Jessica Raab,
a woman whose case was recently re-opened, a woman Viv's been searching for for
four years. She's alive and smiling, playing with a dog (possibly called
Jasper, his mind wonders?) and she looks happy. Viv gets out of the car, goes
to talk to her, but then a man comes up, kisses Jessica and slides his arm
around her as they walk down the street. Viv stands, watches them go, then gets
back in the car beside him, face thoughtful, pensive. "You didn't talk to
her," Martin notes.
"No," Viv says slowly. "I thought that by finding her,
I'd be helping her. But now that I have ... the best way to help is to leave
her alone… you know?"
Martin nods slowly, his mind two years in the past, in a car in LA,
watching three people walking along, talking and laughing, his memory
concentrating on the woman in the middle. A woman he loved, a woman for whom he
only wanted the best. A woman who was truly happy, even if it was without him.
"Yeah," he says softly. "I
know."
Something in his voice must tip Viv off, because she looks at him
curiously. "You do?" she asks, and he shrugs.
"Long story."
She lifts an eyebrow. "It's a long drive back to
Instead, what comes out of his mouth is this: "It all started with
a girl…"
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