Chapter Text
The parties had stopped three days ago. The lights were off. The house was quiet—eerily so, as if it were holding its breath with him. Gatsby wandered its halls like a ghost, wearing his white suit like a shroud. The champagne had gone flat. The music had long since faded. Even the staff, uncertain of their future, moved like shadows around him, careful not to speak his name.
Daisy hadn’t called.
She wasn’t going to.
He’d known it from the moment she got into that car with Tom. The way she wouldn’t look back. The way she flinched when he touched her hand. And still—he had waited. Just in case. Just in case the version of her he’d built in his mind was real. Just in case love could rewrite the past.
But love was never enough. Not for her. Not for this world.
He found himself in the garden, staring at the pool.
He hadn’t used it all summer.
The irony made him laugh—a dry, humorless sound that cracked in his throat. So much of his life was like that: built, decorated, glittering on the surface, but untouched. Unlived.
He sat on the edge and removed his shoes carefully, placing them beside him as if he meant to return. He rolled his sleeves. The water glinted pale blue under the morning light. Peaceful. Still.
The gun was in his hand.
He wasn’t even sure when he’d picked it up. It had been in a drawer for months, something left over from the early days—when connections were dangerous and trust was scarce. He'd kept it more as a symbol than a tool.
But now it felt like the only honest thing he owned.
He closed his eyes and listened.
Not to birds, or the wind. But to the silence inside him. The hollow ache that echoed with every beat of his heart.
“I did everything,” he whispered. “Everything. For her.”
He wasn’t crying.
There were no tears left.
“I don’t know who I am anymore.”
And that, more than anything, was the truth.
James Gatz had clawed his way into the world with bloodied hands and empty pockets. He’d killed himself long ago. Drowned him in champagne and silk suits and illusion. Gatsby had risen in his place—perfect, polished, admired.
But Gatsby was a lie, too.
What was left now?
He stood, gun held loosely at his side.
The edge of the pool shimmered in the sunlight. Somewhere far away, a phone was ringing.
It sounded like a memory.
He stepped into the water.
The cold made him gasp, but he didn’t stop. Step by step until he was waist-deep, then chest-deep, then floating. The gun still in his hand.
He didn’t lift it.
He didn’t want it to be violent.
He just wanted to disappear.
A soft sound behind him—shoes crunching on gravel.
“Mr. Gatsby?”
Nick.
He should’ve locked the gate.
Gatsby turned his head slightly, but said nothing. The water lapped against his shoulders.
Nick’s voice was tight with panic. “What are you doing?”
“I’m tired,” Gatsby said softly.
“Get out of the pool.”
“I just… wanted to feel something.” He looked at the gun in his hand. “But I don’t think I even know how.”
Nick was coming closer now, shoes abandoned, pants soaking as he waded into the water.
“Jay,” he said. Not Gatsby. Jay. The name cut deeper than the cold.
Nick reached for him.
And Gatsby sank.
Just for a moment. Just to see if he could.
The world went quiet beneath the surface. Blue and muffled and still. It was like sleeping. Like falling. Like forgetting.
But hands pulled him back up—rough, urgent.
“Don’t you dare,” Nick was yelling, dragging him to the edge. “You don’t get to do this. You don’t get to leave.”
Gatsby coughed, the gun slipping from his fingers and sinking into the deep end. His chest heaved. Water poured from his lungs.
“I didn’t think anyone would come,” he rasped.
Nick held his face. “I’m here.”
And for the first time in days, Gatsby believed it.
---
He didn’t die.
Nick stayed with him that night, sitting on the floor beside his bed while Gatsby stared at the ceiling in silence. They didn’t talk much.
There wasn’t much to say.
But Nick didn’t leave.
And that mattered more than Gatsby expected.
---
Weeks later, Gatsby walked alone along the shoreline. The house was still, the parties forgotten. But the water no longer felt like an invitation.
The green light blinked faintly in the distance.
He didn’t reach for it.
Just watched.
And breathed.
One more day.
One more.