A/N: Wow. Angst. Also, keep in mind that I am a feedback whore.
Disclaimer: Not mine. :-(
This Is How It Ends
Two-thousand, one-hundred, and forty-three days have passed since their first kiss.
Four-hundred and twelve days have passed since their last.
No matter how hard she tries to push the dates and numbers from her head, they remained burned there, a constant reminder that the time between the beginning and the end was too short. It also pesters her to move on with each day added after the end.
Five years wasn't enough 'forever' with the man you love. She'd learned that the hard way and now had moments she wished she could take back. Maybe if she had stopped that first kiss, the others would never have followed. And maybe the end would still be to come. But would she ever have known love?
There are some days she can barely stand to be in the vast mansion left to her, and others still, when she doesn't want to leave. And then there is the family plot. Behind the main house, diagonal from the pond, and surround by a black iron rod fence. From the kitchen, the headstones are visible. The curtains in the kitchen are drawn under her orders. She has enough reminders.
Most days, she avoids the private cemetery like the plague, but today she's had the impulse to visit.
The wind whips Angela's hair and she draws her coat around her, shivering in the late fall breeze. Or maybe the location is what's giving her the chills. Either way, they have the same effect: leaving her feeling frozen and raw from flesh to bone.
When she closes her eyes, she can still see him. Jack stopping her swing; Jack grinning at her from the other side of the priest; Jack kissing her tenderly at every possible opportunity; Jack showing up at her hotel in the middle of the night, soaked from the rain and begging for forgiveness; Jack working; Jack laughing; Jack arguing; Jack loving; Jack being Jack. The mini-movie in her mind suddenly finds a new image location. A fire; a morgue; a funeral.
Just like the real thing, her memories pass too quickly. Time is against her.
Angela's eyes fly open and she finds herself staring at Jack's gravestone through a layer of tears.
This is how it ends.
He'd loved her for her life and energy, but then he'd died, and her energy had died along with him. He is a corpse and she is a shell. What a couple.
She stands over the grave for a long time, longer than she'd been brave enough to before. Some small part of her is hoping that time spent together after the end counted, even when logic tells her it doesn't work that way. Logic, a source of torment.
In the days and weeks following his death, neither the most rational scientist, nor the most concerned best friend could make the assurance that she would ever be loved like that again. Angela didn't even think she'd have believed Brennan if she'd been foolish enough to say it. Because it was impossible. Two men that love you was rare. Three didn't happen. The statistics are lined against her.
Finally, Angela crouches and, with a trembling hand, sets the white rose she's been holding at the base of the carved granite. Then she trails her figures over the engraved words, letting her hand stop on the word, 'beloved'.
"I'm just returning the gesture, Hodgins," she whispers to nothing.