Disclaimer: The TV show Dark Angel, all of the characters that appeared on it (Max, Zack, Jondy, etc.) and everything else that has to do with the show belong to their respective owners, not to me. No money is being made off of this fic.

Notes: Slight spoiler-ish stuff for “…And Jesus Brought A Casserole.” Takes place soon after the end of that episode. This is first-person P.O.V. from Jondy’s perspective.

I was actually in a good mood as I got back to my apartment after work. The big morons who came in the bar with their buddies were actually well behaved and it was a gorgeous night outside. Well, it was a gorgeous night and now it’s a gorgeous sunrise. Snow everywhere and it was cold, but the sky was just looked so pretty. If it stayed like this for the next few weeks before it would start to warm up then I’d be a happy camper. Then again, Zack would probably be moving me within the next week or so.

I sighed as I threw my parka and my purse onto the couch and walked into my kitchen to make some hot chocolate. Zack would be calling in half an hour and tell me either to wait for him or to meet him somewhere, usually the first one. It’s only the second one if he’s busy helping one of the others. Well, I guess that’s what he’s doing because he never tells me. I still wish that he would sometimes, but Zack is one of the most stubborn people ever known to man.

The tea kettle whistled and I turned the burner off and I poured the water into my mug of hot chocolate mix. I wish I wasn’t going to have to leave, but I’d been preparing myself for it for the last month. I’d been here in Denver for the past three months and Zack had told me when he’d called me last month to check in with me that he was going to relocate me the following month after touching base with me. No big deal. Three months wasn’t the longest I’d lived in one place after escaping from Manticore all those years ago, but it wasn’t the shortest. Hey, I haven’t left a place because I’ve gotten in trouble since the first city I’ve settled in! I’ve been doing pretty good the past eleven years.

I took my mug of hot chocolate into the living room and sat down on the couch and turned on the TV. Nothing like a mug of hot chocolate after getting in from the cold to cheer you up. I rolled my eyes at a talk show recap show that was on cable. “I can’t believe that she couldn’t figure out. I would have seen that one coming a mile away.” I snorted. “Some people.”

I took my regular cell phone out of my jeans pocket and tossed it down on the couch on top of my parka. I took my Zack phone out of my other pocket and put it down on the coffee table in front of me. I laughed to myself a little. I swear, you can set a watch to when Zack calls me every month to check up on me. When he said exactly six in the morning my local time he meant it. One time he was fifteen seconds late and I didn’t stop teasing Zack about it for two full months. I’m pretty sure he was thinking about killing me or at least causing massive internal damage.

“I hope he’s in a good mood today,” I said out loud to myself as I finished my hot chocolate. I stood up and went back into the kitchen to put my mug into the sink and to get some breakfast. I opened up the refrigerator and looked inside and made a face. “Great, I’m going to have to go grocery shopping again. Looks like it’s just strawberry jelly on toast for breakfast for me this morning.” I took out the bread and jelly and put two pieces in the toaster. “Thank you toaster for saving my ass for breakfast yet again this morning.” I waited patiently for the bread to finish toasting before I took it out and spread the jelly on it and put the sandwich together and put the leftover bread and jelly away and took my sandwich back with me into the living room and sat back down on the couch.

My regular telephone rang and I jumped a little bit and shook my head. I knew it wasn’t Zack. Zack never called me on that line, though he knew the number and it was still a few minutes before he was supposed to call me. I decided to let my answering machine pick it up. I groaned when I heard some dumbass salesperson chatter on and on about some amazing laundry scrubber something-or-other that I absolutely had to try because it gets the worst stains out of my clothes without damaging the fabric or dulling the colors. Yeah, right. I’ll stick with my spring breeze-scented bleach and laundry detergent and the Laundromat down the street.

I quickly ate my sandwich and looked at the clock that was on my dual deck VCR/DVD player. 5:59…6:00. My eyes immediately went to my Zack phone, but it didn’t ring. Wow. I snickered. “The bastard’s a few seconds late. I wonder if he’s going to beat his record tonight or if he’s going to come up short. Let’s see…yep, fifteen seconds have passed! He’s gonna set a new record tonight.”

I continued to wait. Wow, thirty seconds. This is gonna have to mean that I’m going to have to tease him until at least September. Well, until the novelty of the idea wears off at any rate. One full minute. I wonder if he’s doing this in retaliation of something I said to annoy him, whether on purpose or by accident. Heck, maybe Rena and Max or the guys have been giving him a ton of grief and he’s just taking it out on everybody like this.

I took another look at the clock. It said 6:05. I started to get nervous. This was not like Zack. I could kind of see him making us wait for no more than a minute or two just to make us nervous and to teach us a lesson about pissing him off but even that was stretching it a little bit. Zack was always so punctual and not just with calling us or coming by to check up on us. Something was off. Something was definitely off here.

I stood up and went into the kitchen to put my plate away, ready to race back into the living room to answer that phone the second that it would start to ring, but it never rang. I rinsed the plate off and walked back into the living room and once again, sat back down on the couch. What was going on here? Calm down, it’s only been…seven minutes. He’s only seven minutes late. He could be on the highway on his motorcycle and…no, Zack would always pull over to call us. He could…he could…

I kept sitting there, staring at the phone and almost willing it to ring, but it never did. Time continued to pass by and Zack didn’t call me. Minutes passed. Hours passed. With every second, I was more and more convinced that something was seriously wrong with Zack. I barely moved on the couch and I only got up off of it once when I finally had to use the bathroom. I was terrified. Was something wrong with my oldest brother?

I kept on staring at the phone. Zack, you’ve got to call me. You’ve got to let me know that you’re okay. Call me, big brother. Call me. I bit my lip and I tried not to let the whimper escape my lips. Jondy, you’re a big girl. Don’t you dare cry. There has to be some explanation. There’s always an explanation for Zack. He has a reason for every single thing that he does. Remember that, Jondy. Remember that. Yeah, I remember that but I was still getting more scared by the minute. Where the hell was Zack?

Finally, I started to get tired. I hadn’t gotten any sleep in about eight days and it was catching up with me. I shook my head to try to get the sleepiness out of it. I had to stay awake. I could make coffee—damn, I ran out of coffee yesterday morning. That’s one of the things I need to get when I go grocery shopping. That’s going to wait until I finally hear back from Zack. I’m not going to do a damn thing until I hear from him. Not a damn thing…

I blinked sleepily and suddenly sat up. Damn, I fell asleep on the couch! I looked up at the clock. It was 5:44 in the afternoon. Shit, I’d slept for just over two hours. I usually sleep two hours or so in a night when I eventually do sleep, but I couldn’t fall asleep today. I couldn’t. Frantically, I grabbed the Zack phone and stared at it, hoping like hell to see that I’d had at least one message or missed call. My heart sank and my eyes widened when I saw that I’d had none of either of them.

“Zack,” I whispered. I knew something was very wrong. He wouldn’t let almost fourteen hours go by like this. Either he’d been re-captured by Manticore or…he was…I turned and fell back onto the couch and buried my face in a pillow and sobbed.