Chapter Text
Nora Whittaker was a beautiful woman, brilliantly intelligent and far too kind for a world that rarely rewarded any of those things. Robert met her when she was in college, commuting into the city with his childhood friend Nathan for a construction gig on an overcrowded train. When the train stopped suddenly, Nate caught her before she fell, their soul-marks changing from black to bursts of colour before they reached their stop.
After a freak accident took Nathan from them both, Robert and Nora moved in together to make ends meet. The olive-green handprint on her elbow slowly dulled in color, a constant reminder of Nate that she learned to hide beneath long sleeves and cardigans. Nora’s soul-mark faded to a lifeless grey over time, while Robert’s knuckles remained black.
They eventually stopped denying the queries from neighbours and parents, confused questions about whether they were dating or not. Robert never loved Nora Whittaker the way people expected him to, but he loved her fiercely all the same, and the tax benefits were nice.
Robert joined the military soon after they got married. It paid better money than construction and allowed Nora to continue with her law degree without having to work part-time to make ends meet. They even managed to move out of their run-down apartment and into an actual house. Training and deployments also allowed Nora to have over as many men as she pleased, neighbours under the impression they were fixing the fridge or unblocking pipes. Robert didn’t care, after all, it was the one aspect of husbandly duties he wasn’t able to participate with. It wasn’t for lack of trying; they had tried in the beginning, but he just wasn’t able. Nora was a beautiful woman — that had never been the problem. No woman had ever appealed to him in that way.
Robert loved Nora as his closest friend. And he needed her more than ever after he was medically discharged. His final deployment left Robert a shell of the man he had been, souvenirs from his time in Anchorage consisting of a stump for a leg and burn scars across his body.
The pregnancy announcement hadn’t been expected. He had been home barely a month when he found the positive test waiting on the sink in their bathroom. She claimed he was the father, even behind closed doors, telling him it was from his first week out of the hospital. There was a small chance it was his child; there had been one night that first week back he had been desperate to feel something despite the numb of painkillers. He could fuzzily remember laying beneath her, hands gripping her hips, jaw clenched and eyes shut to fight through the nauseous phantom limb sensation his medication couldn’t numb.
He felt in his gut that it wasn’t the truth, and when Shaun arrived barely eight months later, perfectly healthy, Robert knew it wasn’t his. But if Nora wanted so badly for the boy to be his, he would go along with the lie.
After all, he loved her. He always had.
Looking at her body now, he wished he had loved her more.
Through the frosted glass, Nora still looked beautiful, despite her face twisted with anger, anger that hadn’t turned to fear when her murderer aimed his revolver at her head. Her red lips were parted in a shout, deep brown eyes still frozen open, staring ahead into nothing. She had been so brave, even in her final moments, putting her own body between their baby and a gun. He slid her cold wedding ring onto the chain of his ID tags, warming the metal with a kiss, before whispering a goodbye to her corpse. Tucking the chain into his blue jumpsuit, Robert stumbled past the frozen coffins of his former neighbours.
He didn’t feel angry, or upset, just cold. Frozen like the pods surrounding him. He was alone again; everyone he loved likely gone the moment they saw the sky light up, let alone now after however long it had been. Determination flickered inside him; he would get Shaun back, not for him or for anyone else, but for Nora. For everything she had done for and sacrificed for him before and after they watched the bombs drop.
To find Shaun, he would let the world burn; Robert could promise her that.