Robert was ready for work the day Sunny handed him a letter, and a file, and sent him home. He'd tried to argue, but he should have known better. If he was getting the day off, it was for a good reason.
So he'd opened the envelope first, because much like Christmas presents, good little boys always opened the card to see who it was from first. He read through it out loud, very slowly, very carefully. But two words in, he cheated and looked at the bottom to see who it was from.
He shouldn't have done that.
Big, wet tears plopped down on the page before he could stop himself. He let out a vicious growl and put the paper down where he couldn't ruin it with the floodgates that burst open from seeing that one, single word. That one name.
Clarice.
He wasn't ready to see that. He thought he would have been, but he wasn't. He slumped down on the wall and cried until there was nothing left, because if he didn't do it now, he'd never have the chance to read what she had to say. So he let it all out, right there on the floor of the quiet lab room he'd snuck into to read.
"Clarice." He whispered into the air, his voice interrupted by a choked sob. "Clarice. Clarice.
Please, Clarice."
He didn't know what he was begging her for, but the odds were that he just wanted her back, at all costs. He never wanted to believe she was gone. Seeing this kind of a letter tried to cement his loss in, but he was too stubborn. Too brutally stubborn to let her die.
When the tears finally stopped, and he'd cleaned up his messy face, he picked the paper up again and actually read it. He mouthed out the words, and slowly let them in, so that he could understand the message thoroughly. She had something she needed him to take care of; something she'd been taking care of for him. It was time to take responsibility for -
"Rene."
When he whispered the name out, it was a drastic difference to the way he'd whimpered Clarice's name. When he spoke now, a fire burned in his voice. Determination flared up inside of him, just as Clarice had predicted.
He didn't want Rene to become a hunter.
His mind started to whirl with attempts of ideas. Hide her? Impossible. What could keep her from being a hunter? Maybe he could make sure she got fat. He laughed at the idea, and let his imagination weave ridiculous visions of visiting Rene every day with cakes and cookies and feed her until she was unfit for duty. And the vision came to its inevitable conclusion, as she died of a heart attack or they took her anyway and forced her to slim down. Would a disability stop them? He tensed at the horrific realization of what he was thinking. He could never hurt Rene like that - it made him sick to even think -
"I hate that you're always right, Clarice." He muttered quietly into the dark, silent room. If she had to become a Hunter, he was going to be the one to recruit her. And he was going to be the one to make sure she lived until the end of time, maybe longer.
But the cat.
He couldn't save the cat.
Robert had opened up the file, and sifted through the pictures with an expression of bittersweet adoration; and the cat was in almost every single one of them. She needed that cat. That cat needed her.
It was just another goodbye waiting to happen.
He started reading her monthly progress reports. It was like watching her grow up, in fast forward. All of the school report cards. He could see exactly where her father disappeared just by looking at them. That dip in grades, the teachers notes. One confused little girl dealing with things she shouldn't have to deal with. But throughout every year, he saw similarities in some of the notes teachers left. They all said it in different ways, but in the end, it all boiled down to one comment.
Overactive imagination.
Robert chuckled, and the chuckle grew into laughter, and the laughter grew into loud bursts of happy cackling. It went on and on forever, until it finally ended in a bark, and "THAT'S MY GIRL."
But she wasn't. She was Barney's girl. And Robert, still suffering from the losses in his own life, was starting to let that reality slip from him. He was starting to let a lot of realities slip away. Every time he looked at another picture, he felt a swell of pride. It felt right. It felt like reality to him.
And that was enough.
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