Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Work, barely eat, barely sleep, repeat.

Stevie’s wasting away.

She isn’t living – she’s barely even existing.

No life to speak of; nothing that she’s built for herself.

She’s here on her CV alone. No already existing connections, nothing that she’s building either.

Her job, that she can do and she does it well. She’s respected but while she doesn’t think she’s quite hated, she’s not exactly liked either and she’s fine with it. Building connections would be too much like building a life and she’s not allowed to do that.

“But Stevie… I don’t think I can do this without you.”

“I’m sorry, Faith, I really am. But I can’t do this. I can’t be here anymore.”

She would have stayed, she would have helped Faith through the pain, she would have buried her own guilt deep but she’d know she was just a reminder of what had happened and she couldn’t be that anymore, she couldn’t cause Faith any more suffering than she has already.

Because Iain is dead. And it’s her fault.

Up on that cliff… He’d died trying to save her. And she knows that every time Faith looks at her, she sees the worthless person that he’d given up his life for.

His funeral… dozens of people coming forwards with little stories of his kindness, his compassion. A cup of coffee here, a well-placed dad joke there, a warm smile, a much-needed word of advice.

He’d impacted so many lives for the better and Stevie? She was just the person he’d died to save.

That might be the most ‘good’ part about her – in that maybe the universe can see the way a person like that had touched her life, tainting her dark soul with gold.

It’s also the worst part about her – the fact that his impact on her life is her only redeeming quality.

She ruins everything she touches.

And so, she’d left. Cut ties entirely, moved to the other side of the country. New job that she finds no joy in, new apartment that has no personality, new people that she holds at arm’s length.

Work, barely eat, barely sleep, repeat.

She’s wasting away.

It isn’t living – it’s barely even existing. But it’s all she deserves.

They’re both gone.

Iain and Stevie. Connections severed like they were only ever a figment of Faith’s imagination and yet everywhere she turns to expects to see them, finds reminders of them, sees the little holes they’ve left all over her life.

Some days, she resents them both. She resents Iain and his saviour complex that had found him at the bottom of that cliff. She resents that Stevie had left anyway, leaving her without either of the people she loves and relies on the most in the world.

Some days, she is thankful for them both. She’s thankful for Iain saving Stevie. She’s thankful for Stevie’s help in the immediate aftermath, of the nights she’d spent holding her and the days she’d spent coaxing her to eat.

Some days, she’s feels for them both. Because Iain, his driving force had always been a need to help, to fix, that had been at his very core, fused there in his childhood and she’d know that one day, somehow, it would kill him. And Stevie, she’s always been her own worst enemy, running and running and running away, retreating into herself and suffering, always suffering.

So, they’re both gone. And some days she hates them both for it but some days she understands.

Life goes on? Not in the way that she’s living it but in the way that it’s happening all around her and she’s done with fighting. She’s just going through the motions, lying in bed wondering if Iain is looking down on her or if Stevie, wherever she is, is also staring sleeplessly at her ceiling.

She doesn’t have the energy to smile anymore but she doesn’t have the energy to grieve for them either.

There’s just this colossal emptiness, the gaps that they’ve left in her life and the parts of her they’d taken when they left.

Because they’re both gone.

Chapter Text

Talk to Siobhan. I’m sorry.

The words stare up at Faith. A single message from Stevie that’s just nonsensical and yet she knows it means that something is wrong, that something has happened or maybe is still happening.

In a daze, she stumbles through to Siobhan’s office, finding herself stood in front of the desk where she’s sat wading through piles of paperwork.

“Siobhan.” She chokes a little on the name and Siobhan sends her that look – the one that keeps being directed at her because Iain is gone.

Iain is gone and she’s the woman who can’t keep a partner alive.

Iain is gone and she’s spent the last two months barely functioning.

“Why is Stevie telling me to talk to you? Why is she apologising? Wasn’t she just on shift?” Her voices raises slightly with every question, aided by the panic that’s been simmering just beneath the surface since she first got the news about Iain.

The panic that that she’s only now realising is an anxiety about something happening to another member of her family.

“She handed in her notice.”

Somewhere deep in her stomach, the twisting pain that’s been tearing up her insides for months drops, leaving a quickly hollowing pit that’s growing and expanding and threatening to consume her entirely.

“She what? Today?”

Siobahn is entirely too calm, too casual when she replies, “No. A few weeks ago, today was her last shift.”

Faith hasn’t had the energy to be angry about Siobhan’s treatment of Stevie in the last few months, how she’s been carrying on as she’s been through nothing and isn’t carrying the guilt of Iain’s death.

Because Faith knows she’s carrying around that guilt (she knows Stevie, there’s no way she isn’t blaming herself for it all) but she hasn’t known how to bring it up. It’s a fight she hasn’t had the energy to have.

And now…

She can’t be gone. Stevie can’t leave her too.

They can’t both be alone, living their separate lives when they could be going through this together.

“Where’s she going?”

“She didn’t say.” Siobhan frowns, like she hadn’t even considered that she was supposed to ask.

And still, Faith doesn’t have the energy to be angry at her. She knows she should be, that she would be at any other time – ordinarily she would go in immediate defence of Stevie who has so much self-righteous anger and yet lets herself take hits that should never even be aimed at her like she deserves them. Like she has this fundamental belief that she deserves to bleed.

Maybe the person she should be angry at is Stevie, for being her own worst enemy.

For letting the guilt drown her.

Already stumbling out of the room, her legs barely holding her up, she hears herself say, “I- I have to go after her.”

She doesn’t wait for a response. It isn’t a request – she’s going.

She tries not to think about how she can’t get Iain’s help to find her (how Iain would have dropped everything to go after her).

Stevie has been there for her over the last few months, coaxing her into eating meals, making sure Luka is being looked after, sorting out her leave, taking the lead on funeral arrangements.

A funeral which had been… so full. Full of people, full of stories, even full of laughter. Just how he’d have wanted it to be.

Faith, usually so pragmatic, had been reduced to a barely functioning mess and Stevie had been there, through it all.

At least, physically.

Emotionally, she’d been distant. Retreating into herself, burying her own grief deep.

All there has been for the last two months, work, look after Faith, barely sleep, repeat.

Faith doesn’t remember the journey to Stevie’s flat. She’d driven on pure autopilot, only not getting into an accident by some miracle.

Even though her car isn’t parked outside, she still goes up to the door, still hammers on it, still lets herself in with her spare key when there’s no answer and searches every room.

Everything is how it has been, tidy but not packed up for a move.

Except, her suitcase is gone from under the bed and the toiletries are gone from the bathroom and… the photo of Emma is gone from the bedside table.

Before she fully processes what she’s doing, Faith is leaving the flat again, locking up and going back out to her car, turning on the engine and driving.

Driving to the only place that Stevie will be, if she hasn’t left yet. The only place she’d stop. The only person she’d say goodbye to. The only person she holds more guilt for than Iain.

Emma.

She knows where she’s buried, Stevie goes every week and Faith has been with her a few times over the last few years.

And sure enough, as Faith steps through the gate she catches sight of her. The only other person in the place, a tiny figure on her knees in the damp grass in front of Emma’s grave, head bowed as if in prayer.

The relief is immediate and almost as debilitating as her panic or her grief have been, until she sees how Stevie’s shoulders are shaking with sobs and forces herself to move forwards

“I have to go, Em-” the words are broken, trembling, coming from a voice and a person who’s already fracturing apart, who’s so close to crumbling down to nothing, “I’ve ruined everything that I had and I can’t face her every day. I can’t look at her knowing what I’ve taken from her.”

She takes a great, shuddering breath, her hands gripping each other instead of making any attempt to wipe the tears streaming down her face.

“You know I don’t blame you.”

Stevie jumps at her voice and scrambles away, swinging around to face her with wide eyes still full of tears.

For a long moment, there’s silence as Stevie simply stares at her like she’s a cornered animal trying to decide the best route of escape, then she admits, scarcely above a whisper, “I blame me.”

Some days Faith blames Iain. She blames his saviour complex that she’s always known she would never be able to compete with.

Other days she thanks him. She thanks him because he saved Stevie and she can’t stand the thought of having lost both of them.

“You can’t let guilt do this to you, Stevie,” she begs, begs.

But Stevie is already shaking her head, such wild desperation in her expression. “I’m drowning in it, Faith. I have to get out of here. I can’t, I ca-”

And Faith, she knows what that means. Move away, start again, cut herself out of this life she’s built entirely – cut herself out of Faith’s life entirely.

“Don’t do this, Stevie. Don’t make me lose my husband and my best friend. Please.”

She doesn’t know how she’s going to do this. But she does know that she wouldn’t have got through these last few months without Stevie and she knows it can’t keep on like it has been, she can’t rely so heavily on her best friend in her own guilt and grief and exhaustion.

But they can help each other, they can hold each other up. She knows they can, just like she knows they can’t either of them do this alone.

Alone is spirals. Alone is bad coping mechanisms. Alone is spending nights staring sleeplessly up at the ceiling and days working, working, working because it’s better than thinking.

Together can be soft words. Together can be a hand to hold. Together can be living for each other because it’s easier to find the energy to care about someone else than to live for yourself.

“There’s no winning, is there?” Stevie asks suddenly, brokenly.

Like all she’s ever known is pain. And the idea of that pain being the rest of their lives is just so exhausting.

Because how much more of this can they take?

“At life? No,” swallowing, she shakes her head, “I don’t think there’s winners at life. Just people who push through.”

They’ve seen to much suffering to think there are winners in life.

“But he’s dead, Faith,” she says plainly, like she needs reminding.

Humourlessly, she smiles. “I know he is, sweetheart.”

“He’s dead and I-“ she cuts herself off, squeezing her eyes closed and breathing like just the sight of Faith is sending her into a spiral and she can only imagine, she can only imagine what the voice in Stevie’s head has been telling her every time she looks at her.

Softly, she reminds her, “You didn’t kill him.”

“I took him from you.”

“No. Just, no. That’s not true,” she insists but Stevie’s expression doesn’t change and so desperately she pleads, “you have to know it’s not true.”

“How can I, when he’s gone and I…”

‘And I’m still here.’ ‘And I couldn’t save him.’ ‘And I should be in his place.’ Faith never finds out how the sentence was supposed to end because Stevie simply crumples to her knees in front of the grave once more like her own legs have given up on her.

Closing the distance between then, Faith kneels beside her, slowly taking her hands.

“And you’re still here. I’ve still got you, Stevie,” she begs, “please, please let me hold onto you.”

Again, Stevie crumples. This time into Faith’s arms, dissolving into heaving sobs, the kind that feel like they’re controlling you, limiting your oxygen and snatching your thoughts.

Faith can only hold onto her, tears beginning to slip silently down her own cheeks.

It feels like she’s spent much of the last few months crying but this is different somehow. It’s not grief, so much as… pain? Solidarity even?

Just too people who have lost so much, clinging onto each other.

Equal parts holding the other up and gripping on for their own life.