A/N: Based off a nurse's line soon after his introduction.
It all happened so quickly.
Boom. Crash.
…
Boom. Crash.
He could hear it from their apartment across the city, from the television perched above the breakfast table, from the subtle rattling in his spoon of frosted Mini-Wheats. Fire erupting from glass and metal, screeching in agony as debris fell to the streets below—this was all that registered. The peppy ding! of the toaster oven behind him? Never.
For the next two days, a flurry of ash and agony overtook his senses—a haze, grey and terrible, masked his vision even when the wind was blowing it out into the Hudson, and the chorus of murmurs floating around him would never cease…
Steve, I'm so sorry…
Mr. Emerson, I regret to inform you…
I don't know what to say…
…your wife, Hannah, she…
Is there anything we can do, Steve?
NO! he wants to shout, but words, what will they do?
…Hannah was killed. I'm so terribly sorry for your loss Steve. Counseling centers are available if…
They were only married for a month, the love of his life was only his, truly his, for barely thirty days.
And it was her first day of work…so proud to have gotten the job, rolling her eyes at how grad school must have paid off somehow…every day when they'd pass the looming structures after that interview, she'd say, "I can't believe I'm going to have an office with my name on it in there! Everyone in the world recognizes these buildings! Ask anyone from high school…'Hannah works in the Twin Towers? No way…' Yeah way!"
It made her green eyes glow and warm his heart; without that ember now, glaciers creep onto the lining of his composure, the "I'm managing" façade he forcefully plasters on his puffy face when he crawls to his own office, opens his own to-do list…
I could have taken her on a spontaneous trip to the zoo…she always loved stuff like that…
Who starts working on a Tuesday? I should have made her wait until Wednesday, next week, even…why the fuck a Tuesday?
I could have saved her. Taxis are fast. I know the subways. She was in the second tower, anyway. I could have done something, anything…yelled her name to let her know…
HANNAH, I love you! I'll wait for you forever!
And he can almost hear her almost-reply: Steve—then he loses it. But in a cubicle surrounded by the frenzy of fingers tapping away on keyboards, printers spitting out documents left and right, a muffled wail of despair is hardly decipherable or even uncommon. Especially these days, especially in this city.
At home, he tortures himself with grainy footage on the news sites—people flinging themselves into the abyss of the New York City skyline rather than plummet in a wave of fire, pseudo-sensible decisions in a realm of illogic and chaos. He zooms in to the pixilated men and women, staring silently at the freeze-frames, wondering—is that the scarf I gave her for her birthday? Isn't that her favorite skirt?
As the hours, days, months tick on, he becomes so sure: I could have saved her. I needed to save her.
She didn't want to be confined in the collapse.
She wanted freedom, if only for a moment.
He knows he could have given it to her, that he was supposed to catch her, to be there like he had babbled over and over in the throes of love, even the night before. He knows he could be the maestro of something bigger than himself.
No repeats. No failure.
For her, for Hannah. Your life.
And, all at once, staring at the blank computer screen, it comes to him—I can fly.