Catch the Light by Sherilynne
I don't own POI.
Summary:
On a rainy afternoon, John thinks of what could have been. Careese.
Joss.
She is the name on his tongue, the pang of grief in his chest, the tension in his trembling fists.
She is the sparkle in his eye, the lingering laughter, the silence, the cold.
The room is drafty, but John doesn't notice. The sky is grey and fitful, and a sideways wind pelts his face with the icy rain of early February.
John closes the window with a swift hand, but the rain leaks down his face like tears, and he wonders if he will cry again.
Joss, he says, and grabs at the air, the shadows.
He remembers the feel of her shoulders, the curve of her back and the silk swish of her hair against his cheek, and he bites his lip.
He holds back a sob; he longs to mourn, but he's spent so much time being angry, and then heartbroken and empty, and-
He isn't sure if he can do it again.
John knows that he'll pick up the pieces, but he isn't sure when or how, because there is no remedy, and Joss isn't coming back.
Her smiles are gone, and her soulful eyes, and that laugh- that laugh.
John calls her voicemail once in a while, but he knows that it will get taken down by the phone company eventually.
He has a text that she sent him: want to grab dinner?, and he wants to respond, but it sits in his inbox, forever unanswerable, undeliverable.
Joss will live on in pictures, and memories, but her touch is gone. Her office chair doesn't smell like her perfume any more, and they closed her tab at O'Donoghue's.
The world is crumbling, but John won't let her fade away.
He never thought that Joss would change him like this, but she did, and he knows that it was all worthwhile.
She floated into his life like an earthbound angel, and she drifted away like a shooting star.
John won't let her go. He'll catch onto her soft comet-tail light, and he'll follow her- across the expanses of space and time.
Joss was here, and she lived and loved, cried and laughed. John will hold onto that thought and smile.
The sky is clearing, and sunlight crosses the room again.
John reaches out to grab a sunbeam, and it bends around his hand and warms his heart.