Jazz was the first to find her.
He remembers it clearly - the way her eyes were closed, the way her hands were white and colorless and folded across her chest. The way the blood looked against her skin, thick and congealed and already drying around the edges to a rusty brown. He remembers the roughness of the wooden floor as he sank down onto his knees.
She was dead.
He doesn't remember crying, exactly, but the heat of tears against his face; the taste of them, like blood or seawater, on his lips. His throat was tight with words he'd meant to say and ones he'd always wished he could take back - I love you, you're beautiful, you're a goddamn fool. He wished, inanely, for one last kiss, as if one last kiss could ease the pain of losing what little he'd ever loved. He wished he could hear her voice again.
He remembers screaming, quietly at first and then louder, banging his fists against the floor. He screamed at her for leaving, at God for taking her, at himself for letting Claves get involved, for letting her close enough to fall in love. He screamed, hoarsely, wordlessly, because she was never coming back.
And eventually, on his knees in the dust with his once-lover lying dead beside him, the screams gave way to tears again, and the tears apace way to a deeper, greater pain. She was dead. She was dead and he had loved her and she was never coming back, and that - that knowledge - was what would heal him again someday.
He had loved her.
He had risked everything, every fragment of his broken heart, to love her. He had let her touch the parts of him he had kept hidden for so long, the pieces he wasn't proud of, the darkness he carried inside. He had taken the greatest of gambles, the opening of himself to another, the understanding of the depth of human brokenness in exchange for a shard of soul. He had given her the most deeply guarded parts of himself and she had given him the only thing she could in exchange: a new heart, mended just enough to break again.
(A/N: I lost someone I loved early this morning. This was written at two AM, for her.)