Rowan had been missing for three months. In that time period Willow had come to The Watch every day...every single day without fail. Were there any updates, had they found a body, had they found anything? The first few days she’d been greeted with sympathy and concern, they had humored her. After the second week they still humored her but she could see the strain in their faces, could hear their annoyance in their tones. The ritual of her arrival became so anticipated that she was normally given the go ahead to traipse right back to Jack’s office. She never came empty handed, always bringing along sweets from the bakery or a home cooked lunch for the watchers. It was her way of trying to say she didn’t blame them for not having answers, she didn’t show up every day because she wanted to stress them out or make them feel badly. It had just been the only thing she could do at the time to separate her brother’s face from all the others that had gone missing.
Those missing person posters had been taken down now, along with the others that hosted the faces of the returned. Willow hadn’t been by the watch in ages. Partially because she’d been overwhelmed with processing recent events, and partially because she had the feeling Jack would grill her about Rowan more than she’d like. He was protective, he was stubborn, he was dedicated to his beliefs and even though she vehemently disagreed with a lot of them, she tried to respect him always. She found herself rather missing the look on his face when she slid a still warm container of food across the table and she could tell it was probably the first time he’d stopped trying to save the world and take care of himself all day.
So here she was now, knuckles tap tapping against the doorway, a still warm container of pasta with meatballs in her hand. “Too busy for lunch?” she queried. She knew he was probably swamped….those whispers were everywhere now and you could feel them starting to give way to panic and discord. Was her brother a person or a thing. There were two impassioned sides, two emotional sides, and she was sure he was getting a plethora of frightened calls, having to break up fights in the street as folks argued over how this should be handled. “I bet you haven’t had something that wasn’t ripped from the vending machine in days, Jack.”
