𝗗𝗜𝗚𝗜𝗧𝗔𝗟 𝗦𝗜𝗟𝗘𝗡𝗖𝗘

Dear Isabell/Heart in an Envelope

INTERVAL BETWEEN PARTS

Being under the ice is like being cocooned. James is fuzzy and cold, and he hears only his heartbeat.

Is-a-bell. Is-a-bell.

James' right-hand twitches.

And then, nothing more.

Almost a year later, he is out. He stands confused and afraid, faced with a room of doctors and beeping machines. Instinctively, he reaches for a hand that isn't there, a person halfway across the world.

He grasps at nothing.

"Isabell," He croaks, turning away from the doctors' stares. "Iz."

She does not come, and they pretend not to hear him. James is sat down carefully, hooked up to wires as they try to keep him calm. They do not know what sort of state he is in. Perhaps they think he'll hurt them.

Instead, he turns to look out of the wide glass window.

Where is she? His baby, his daughter, somewhere far away from his arms, and he cannot protect her. Will they bring her to him soon?

And then it strikes suddenly.

She does not want him. She never wants to talk to him again. She hates him.

When James doubles over, gasping and crying, the doctors put it down to immense amounts of stress; the shock of the whole situation. Once they're sure he isn't hostile, they leave him in peace. Door locked, lights turned down, he feels his heart melt down his throat like lava.

"Isabell. Fuck, Isabell."

But she is long gone.

Two months.

Two months, pacing and panicking and trying to figure out what to do. He waits for something that does not exist, somebody who is not coming. He is alone.

Every night, he dreams about what once was, and in the morning, he has nothing all over again. James is in agony. With nobody to talk to, no one to love, he spends most of his time wondering what's real. When it will feel better.

If it will feel better.

The little flicker of hope in his chest waits for a sign. A saving grace, a mess of dark hair and a sharp-toothed smile to come running through the door. Isabell.

In James' imagination, he pretends that she will be happy to see him, that she'll let him pick her up and he'll never have to let go.

But the moment never comes.

All he receives are small mercies. Promises from outside that she is OK, enough quiet to keep him from imploding, and finally, The File.

The file comes in early September, light in his hands but heavy with importance. He practically tears it open with his teeth, though careful to preserve the writing on the front.

The best I could get you. I'm sorry, Buck.

Love, Steve.

But the message barely seems to register in the storm of James' mind. He sheds the outside and scrambles greedily for the papers that fall from it, gathering them in his hands and sorting through.

A page of the official documentation, something about the insistence of privacy and various secret agencies, and then what he is looking for.

A picture of Isabell.