Work Text:
"We can't have the happiness of yesterday without the pain of today. That's the deal."
(Shadowlands)
It feels like the world has been cut out from under her, this all too familiar pain of losing someone. It hits Djaq, as soon as she realizes what the guilt in Allan’s eyes is, and it stays with her, haunts her, so much that she cannot look back, not to all the times he’s saved her or smiled at her, given her his blanket when she was cold. She can close her eyes, and see the day before, like the sharpest image on her mind, as he helps her gather twigs and branches, teasing a silent and blushing Will, smiling at them as he declares that he’s not being funny, but he swears there’s a bug crawled into his pants.
It’s betrayal in its purest form, as his laughter turns harsher, his face twists and there’s nothing but greed in his eyes. Sometimes, when it’s a particular cold night or when the silence as they’re going around doing the mundane and tiring jobs at camp, she thinks that it would have been better if he had died. If he had been buried underground, where the memory of him could live with her in peace, like that of her father and brother. It only helps when, on the nights where her teeth clatter loud enough for all to hear and her lips turn blue, Will scoots over and wraps his arms around her. It makes Djaq want to cry when he does this, but she won’t let herself. She isn’t mourning Allan, even if – in the dark of night – she almost wishes he was dead and gone.
She scolds herself for it immediately afterwards – she’s not the type of person to condone people like that, and especially not people who are… who used to be her friends.
But Djaq cannot deny that, of all the people in the world to have left her, Allan feels like the most lost.