FROM THE SAME DIRT ▹ seresin ✓

vii. sit with you in the trenches

Kade didn't know this — and she never would — but when he received the call, Iceman had locked himself into a bathroom where he vomited and sobbed for an hour straight. Then, when the hour was up, he packed their bags and his family was on the next flight to the military hospital in Germany where his eldest child, his only daughter, was dying.

On a ventilator, barely able to stay conscious, Kade remembered when they arrived. Her brothers cried. Her mother barely kept it together. It was her father's face she remembered the most. He was scared. Absolutely terrified. He crouched down at the side of her hospital bed, he held her limp hand, and for hours into the night, he asked her to stay alive.

She did. For him.

When she was transferred back stateside, Kade needed medications and surgeries and therapies. She was brimming with shame and guilt and absolute agony, and it all became too much. She had to leave it, separate herself from it, cut all ties of remembrance to it. She spent five weeks in the hospital and then she just... left. With nothing but the clothes she was wearing, she checked herself out and she never looked back.

For twenty—two months, Kade Kazansky went missing.

Gone without a trace, without a word. She didn't speak to her family at all during these months. She knew what they would say, and she didn't want to hear it. So, she kept running to Nevada to New Mexico to Texas to Florida. She made it impossible to track her down, to contact her, to know that she was at least alive somewhere. Weeks turned to months and months turned to years. The more time she was gone, the more it became impossible to ever come back.

Now, years later, Kade was far enough removed to regret this decision. It was selfish and cruel and unforgivable. Her parents didn't deserve it, nor did her siblings or godfather or friends or anyone else who loved her.

But the girl they loved was gone.

Still, they looked for her. Her family hired private investigators and Maverick put out missing persons reports and Tom even took months off to search for her himself, delaying his promotion to admiral for the sake of someone who did not want to be found. Who did not deserve it.

Birthdays passed, so did Thanksgivings and Fourth of July's.

Her family kept waiting and hoping for a call that never came.

Then, when she finally did go home, Kade went against her will.

She was arrested somewhere in the south, she barely remembered where. Drug possession charge. Third degree felony. My, how the mighty had fallen. It was only a matter of time, really, she got into all sorts of sh—t that she shouldn't have. Drug possession was almost tame compared to the rest. She started taking drugs for the pain in her body and then she started taking the drugs for the pain in her heart. She should've been slapped with a huge fine and five years in prison, but due to her familial connections, her a—s got shipped back to the west coast.

Buzzing from withdrawal, handcuffs on her wrists, Kade touched Californian soil and she saw her family waiting for her.

Her mother was endlessly forgiving, even after all the girl put them through. Sarah cradled her daughter in her arms and cried and cried, just grateful to have her daughter back. Her brothers, seeming so much older than she remembered, shed their own tears and crossed their arms and turned away. They were angry with her, so very angry. It was Tom that Kade couldn't look at, though she knew her father's gaze had frozen on her.

Kade knew Iceman pulled all sorts of strings for her. He made sure she wasn't designated AWOL, and she barely managed to scrape by with an honorable discharge. He made sure she didn't go to jail, instead going to court appointed rehab and then house arrest for three years.