Work Text:
but you were everything to me
i was begging you, "please don't go,"
— love story, ts
It’s almost immediate, the way the realisation hits. Jamie, waking — Jamie, reaching out. Jamie, finding nothing. An empty bed. The optimist in her, though fragile, struck again and again with the weight of losing a brother, a father, a mother, a life — the optimist prevails. Might be up making coffee. Dani, who always leaves hot beverages to Jamie. Who doesn’t make coffee anymore.
Still, though, as she stretches past the blank canvas that Dani has left beside her, she tries to hope, mouth almost open to call out her wife’s name until — oh. A note. A post-it, barely, torn so hurriedly from its stack that the sticky edge has been ripped off. A post-it, startlingly yellow and hideously bright, folded on the bedside table.
Jamie doesn’t want to move as fast as she does — wants to pause time entirely, set a stop to any tragedy yet occurring — but she shifts anyway, hands set slightly trembling as she parses open the note.
Gone to get breakfast, she wants to read.
Back soon, and her vision aches for it.
Instead, though.
I love you with every piece of me LEFT .
The world blurs, a little bit.
Jamie’s on the plane before she remembers to breathe.
Worst part is — probably not the worst part, really, but the part that Jamie’s mind will not let go of, even now — the water’s still rippling when she arrives. Not just lapping, not going through the motions of an ordinary lake on an ordinary day, but quaking at the surface, bubbles shattering the sheet of glass it appears to have set itself out to be.
Not too late, she thinks, and the optimist resides still. She’s out of the cab before the driver can call after her for a fare — knows he won’t follow her in, that’s for sure — and sprinting, tripping, soaring across these grounds she used to know so well. Not too late. Not too late. Not too late. It’s a mantra in her head, a battle cry for a war she hasn’t yet waged, and the words would be far more powerful if only she wasn’t crashing head-first into a lake. The water’s not quite cold enough to distract, not quite dark enough to scare, not quite shallow enough to allow for much chance of surviving.
This isn’t about surviving, though. Not to Jamie. It’s about living — always has been, ever since she got drawn into this delicate dance with life and its very mortality. Ever since Dani. Dani, and the word’s more of a shock than the water that she’s leaping over, long strides which eventually tip her forwards into the depths before she can even suck in some air, Dani, Dani, Dani, until she’s screaming it underwater, until it’s the only thing left in her head.
Dani, as she thrashes against the current.
Dani, as she pries her eyes open through the grit.
Dani, as she looks, and looks, and sees.
Oh, god.
The water pressure claws at her head as she swims down, blindingly loud in its intensity, arms pushing through the darkness, legs kicking away from the light.
Jamie doesn’t quite know what she was expecting — wasn’t completely sure if Dani would be here at all — but this is what takes her by the heart and burns.
The love of her life, suspended between lakebed and air, ethereal even in this, a red dress pooling around her body tinged almost black by the absence of the sun. The love of her life, eyes unblinking, an expression on her face which is so hauntingly blank that Jamie has to remind herself what she’s here for. The love, again, of her life, and it’s a promise they’ve made, till death do us part, a promise Jamie cannot let go of as she screams, angles her entire body downwards and howls her lover’s name.
At first, there’s resistance as she writhes. Some grip that holds her back, invisible though it may be, the weight of a thousand hands clutching at Jamie’s aching limbs until she cries out again, three words which shouldn’t work but do.
You.
Me.
Us.
And if Dani was well and truly gone, she knows this would fail, knows that her spirit would never put Jamie back in danger like this — but that single grasp of something akin to freedom is hope to Jamie, hope as she dives down, still screaming, still sobbing, still reaching and reaching and reaching until skin finds skin. Her hand, her fingers, closing around Dani’s, tugging until their bodies are pressed completely against each other, wrapping her arms around Dani’s shoulders and pushing up with all that she has left. Feet launching away from the lakebed, lungs calling out for air, two souls entirely intertwined.
Come on, and Jamie wills it against the entire world, one arm still wrapped around Dani as the other flails against the water. It’s slow going — slower than she can afford to be, she knows, they’re losing time — but there’s movement, enough that they’re at least getting somewhere, enough that with another dozen kicks of her legs they’re strewn against mud, and she’s dragging Dani ashore, and someone’s weeping and it has to be her because Dani still isn’t blinking, isn’t moving at all.
Dead.
No.
(Dead?)
CPR as best Jamie knows it, blowing the last of her breath into Dani, oxygen that Jamie herself has been starved of to the extent that she knows the risk she’s already at of passing out and losing everything. A voice in her head tells her not to over-exert at the same time as a voice in her heart tells her to give it her all, pumping against Dani’s chest with a force that should be working but isn’t, isn’t, isn’t, and she’s screaming, screaming until rhythmic compressions become desperate punches, until all of the strength has been drained from Jamie and the only thing she can do is hold her hands out as she collapses. Falls, and falls, and falls, and aches.
Wake up, she whispers, pulling herself up, pulling Dani with her.
Wake up, as she cradles Dani’s head in her lap, tracing lines across the curve of her lover’s jaw.
Wake up, as Dani coughs. Chokes, really, gurgles in a fashion that should be desperately worrying yet proves to be the most joyous sound that Jamie’s ever heard as she tilts Dani sideways, sobs through her delirium that she wasn’t too late at all.
She tilts Dani sideways through the coughing fit, watching as water spurts from her mouth, rubbing slow circles between her shoulder blades until finally, Dani stills.
“Jamie?”
Jamie grins, a watery smile shadowed by the promise of fresh tears.
“Hey, Poppins.”
It’s as if Jamie hadn’t just dragged Dani from the bottom of a lake, as if none of this had ever happened at all — two gazes held like twine between them.
Dani’s eyes, Jamie realises, breath catching in the back of her throat — Dani’s eyes, which are both blue.
Dani’s eyes, though — which are absent. Something changed other than just their colour, a look on her face which Jamie doesn’t feel particularly comfortable with. The look, she recognises, from pulling Dani away from the bathtub. The look which says this is the end.
“Dani?”
And Dani smiles back up at her, drawing a hand to cup the flat of Jamie’s cheek, a smile which is actually too much as if Jamie hasn’t just saved Dani’s life.
When she speaks, it’s weak. Fading.
(A smile which means Jamie hasn’t saved Dani’s life at all.)
“I loved you, you know.”
Loved. The word slams into Jamie, pinwheels of light shattering behind her eyes.
“Don’t have to talk in past tense anymore, Poppins. We’re right here.”
Dani’s expression softens. Even here, even with too much water in her lungs, even with the astounding pain that death tends to bring, she’s calm.
“Promise me you’ll keep going, Jamie. After this.”
After what, Jamie wants to cry — but something in her knows. The optimist? It tears itself to shreds.
“No. No, no, no — I saved you, Dani. You’re safe now. We’re gonna be okay—” the sentiment breaks as she does, head crashing down into Dani’s chest, sobbing ever-harder as Dani’s fingers reach to comb gently through her hair. They’re cold. Impossibly cold.
“Glad it could be like this,” she whispers, and it’s so quiet.
“Glad I got to say goodbye to you.”
Jamie thinks she’s going to burn the world down. Genuinely considers it, lighting it on fire, incinerating every inch of a place that would shatter something this beautiful.
“I was supposed to save you,” and the words are stapled to her, as if it could ever changed a thing.
“You did,” comes Dani’s broken promise, edged with the oncoming swell of too much water in her chest.
There’s a silence that arrives, then, one that Jamie doesn’t quite know what to do with, seconds slipping like sand through her fingers.
“Please don’t leave me,” and for this, Jamie hates herself — the last moments of Dani’s life, and all she can find it within herself to do is beg.
“Why would I leave you?” Words from someone too far gone to realise they’re dying. Teetering on the edge of reality, except Dani’s slipped off the precipice. All Jamie can do is hold on. Wrap her arms around Dani and pray to a god she’s too angry at to believe in. Burrow her head into Dani’s chest for the last time. There’s a heartbeat, but barely. Slowing. Slowing. Slowing.
“You’re my best friend.”
Jamie feels every single fibre of her being snap. All in the same instant, so simultaneous that it drags a breath from her, holding back the scream that claws so desperately at her chest she’s certain her lungs will have been ripped to shreds. This can’t be real. This kind of pain — this great physical thing looming above her with a fist set to strike — this has to be a dream, surely. She’ll wake up, and Dani’ll be beside her, and the moonlight in through their apartment window will remind her that agony this concentrated doesn’t exist in real life.
Except—
Except.
Except there’s no mistaking the echoing reality of the way the pulse she’s clinging onto — it stops. Shudders to a final beat, a final smile on Dani’s face that she carries with her into a life after this one. Gone. She’s so beautiful, even now, cradled in the arms of the woman who loved her the most.
“I love you,” Jamie whispers, and she doesn’t understand why Dani can’t just wake up and hear her. Hear this.
“I love you,” again, and again, and again, until she’s slurring the words into Dani’s chest, I love you until it becomes wake up, wake up, wake up, Poppins, hey, it’s me, you can wake up now, overlapping syllables which tear the sky to pieces. But the sky doesn’t listen.
We were supposed to have more time.
When Jamie presses a final kiss to Dani’s lips, one that tastes like regret in the shadows of trees and the light of an arsonist’s matchbox collection — it breaks her. Bomb-hit and sweet as the trees watch on, willow well and truly weeping in its loose bow before them.
There’s nothing poetic, about this. Dani, who bled in red and died in black. Dani, who broke poetry.
Jamie, who is still clutching Dani.
Jamie, who holds desperately on to the woman who saved her life.