After a while the sobbing stopped—not because she had been able to make herself stop, but because her body had simply become too exhausted to do it anymore—and she drew deep breaths of the frigid, icy air, chilling a throat that had become too raw to form words.
After a while the pain lost its acute, blinding edge. It no longer felt like a knife, stabbing into her—instead, it was a poison. It didn't puncture. It seeped, like a deep, sinking blackness that spanned across her mind, engulfing everything that had once been light.
After a while Connor had gently lifted her into his arms and carried her across the snow, because her own legs had buckled beneath her. The legs that had borne her into countless battles, strong and sturdy, were suddenly weaker than a newborn's.
She focused on the simple things. The grief was too big to comprehend. The loss was too great to even begin to understand. So she made herself listen to the gentle hum of the engine as they flew back to base. She made herself look at the clouds passing past them, the ocean below, so deep it was black.
She didn't listen to M'gann's silent sobs, which she was trying to hide, or Connor's harsh breathing as he fought wildly with himself to retain his composure. She didn't look at Jaime's hands, which were covering his face, as if the armor that encased his body was no longer enough to shield him. She didn't look at Dick's face, which showed nothing. And she was happy he wore a mask. Because she couldn't look into eyes that were mirroring the pain in her own.
And after a while, she was starting to realize that she was still alive. She was still living, even though her heart had been torn in half. The broken, damaged little organ was still pumping somehow. She could feel it pulsing in her chest, hammering out a pathetic pattern as it clung to normalcy, even in its depleted state. Her muscles still moved. Her fingers still twitched when she commanded them. Her lungs still opened and filled with air. So she would still be able to live, then. Even with a heart that had lost its other half.
It answered a question she had asked herself before, just a few times, when she'd ever seriously considered losing him. And she hated the answer.
After a while, they had returned to headquarters. She stood, silent, and listened to the way Dick's voice broke as he told the others what happened. She watched the faces of her teammates as they struggled to understand. The sorrow that flashed across them as it sunk in. And then the shock, as they realized—some for the first time—that heroes could die.
Then it was over, and she walked towards the zeta tubes, disappearing into one before anyone could offer to come with her. And then she was walking up the steps to a front porch where she had stood on the day she'd first met his parents, and he'd beamed and gestured broadly at her the second the door had opened, as if he was presenting them with his greatest achievement. And his mother had smiled at her and sweetly remarked that it was wonderful to meet her and that she looked very pretty; his father had shook her hand and said pretty much the same and when he'd thought she wasn't looking, had snuck his son a thumbs up.
It all came back to her, rushing over her with the speed and force of a powerful gust of wind. It knocks the words she had prepared right out of her head, so the first thing that comes out, as the door opens and they look at her, are tears.
The warmth of their arms as they wrapped them around her shoulders didn't make it any easier to tell them that their son was dead. The child they'd raised, who they had watched with love as he saved lives and won science competitions and ate them out of house and home every Thanksgiving, who had loved them, and cherished them, and made them so proud—was never coming home.
They held on to her and cried, and she cried too, holding on to the people who were the closest connections she had to him now. She knew they would feel the same way about her.
But after a while, it was time for her to go. Because they deserved to mourn alone, alone with a different kind of grief that she couldn't understand. She didn't feel the warmth of the air as she slipped outside, didn't register the sound of her boots on the pavement.
She walked alone, not really sure where she was going…until she felt the rush of the zeta tube, and a gust of fresh, night air, carrying the scent of something sweet baking somewhere, and the sound of voices raised in a melodic swell. She saw the bright, flickering lights of a city that was alive, and joyous, celebrating its salvation from the brink of destruction. And above it all, a bright, brilliantly lit tower, shining like a beacon over all.
Fresh tears sprang to her eyes. But her legs were strong once again, as they carried her towards it across the crowded courtyard. Tears rolled down her cheeks as the elevator bore her to the top of the towering structure. But the hands she held had her sides were steady and unwavering.
After a while, she was at the top. The city stretched out before her, glittering with lights the way the stars glitter in the night sky. And he had been right. It was romantic. She closes her eyes and pictures them here, together, conjuring a dozen sweet images in mind. Strolling down the riverside, hand in hand. Touring the Louvre, where she'd pretend to care as he rattled off facts about the paintings he'd learned in his one art history course at Stanford. Sitting at a café, and finally learning how many croissants a person was physically capable of fitting in his mouth.
And then the images changed from fantasy and became memories. She saw him the way she saw him that first time, when he'd been sprawled on the ground with a ridiculous expression on his face and a huge streak of sunscreen on his nose. She saw him the way she'd started to see him after that, when his glances would make her blush and his challenging remarks would make her angry, and his actions would thrill her and piss her off, all at the same, dizzying, wonderful time.
She saw him the way he'd been when he'd first started to mature, when she'd first seen those brief, brilliant flashes of the man he'd one day grow to be in the boy he was. When he'd accepted her after she'd told her secrets, when he'd come back from his mission to save the young queen. Then there's the first time he'd kissed her, holding her in his arms the way he had so many times after that, when she'd seen in his eyes the first spark of what would turn into a flame.
And all the kisses after that: some quick, rushed pecks that he'd plant on her cheek as he blew past her on a mission. Some hot, frenzied, and deliciously desperate, that he would pepper all over her body between their ragged breaths as they came together. The ones that were slow and achingly sweet, that would turn her heart to a fluttering mess and made her question if she'd ever find a limit on how much she could love him.
She saw him as the hero he'd become, the hero who just today had saved this city, and the world. The hero she loved for his compassion, his bravery, his unwavering desire to do good. The hero she had grown up fighting beside, because they'd always fought the best when they'd been together. When they'd been partners.
He had been the love of her life. He still was.
As she opened her eyes with a sharp gasp, and the wind stung her tear-soaked cheeks, she felt the pain again, deep inside her, in the place where it had planted roots, a place she knew it would never wholly leave. She would never be the person she was before. Things would never be the same—for their friends, for their families, or for the whole world—now that he was gone. She knew she would never stop missing him: his smile, his voice, his hands, his smell. Her life would forever have an empty space where he was supposed to be. And the hole in her heart would never completely close.
But the wind was stirring again, this time soft and gentle, and as it brushed against her cheek, she could feel him there with her. She could still picture his smile. She could still hear his voice. She could still remember how his hands felt on her skin. She could still remember how he smelled.
Because even though the pain would never go away, it would fade. Life would go on, and it was okay that at that moment she couldn't imagine how. And after a while, even though she was still crying, she could feel a smile on her lips. She tilted her head back, and looked up into the inky sky, and let her words leave in an exhale that she knew somehow, some way, would reach him.
I love you, Wally.
She always would. And she knew that as long she had that love, then maybe one day...after a while...things would be okay.