"Modern Romance" by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. K+/T Rating for character death and angst. 995 words.
Tamsin knew it was going to happen. Not the exact situation, but the ending. The ending she always knew was going to happen. They both did. But the valkyrie was certain – in the foolish, naïve way that children and young lovers were certain – that she would have more time. Tamsin had never thought much about time before Lauren. What was the point in caring how you spent a year or twenty in the grand scheme of centuries and lives that were unfurling before her? But now, the ten years they'd been together – the last eight of which were spent married – seemed like the whole span of her life.
The last six months, Tamsin thought about time more than she ever had. Lauren had been so young, barely into her forty-fourth year. If she had been fae, she'd have still been practically a child. The valkyrie had made a million contingency plans since she had gotten involved with Lauren: she had plans for potential fae attacks tailored to different species, she had plans for human threats – muggers or kidnappers or buglers, she had plans for any serious wounds incurred in the various skirmishes their little group always seemed to get into, she even had plans for when Lauren was so old she might not even remember who Tamsin was. It seemed as though she had plans for everything except what had killed the human.
That day, that horrible day, Tamsin didn't actually recall much of since she had been running on autopilot the moment Lauren had collapsed to the floor without preamble while reaching for a glass in the kitchen cupboard. Tamsin didn't remember dialing 911, but she must have because she remembered the ambulance screaming to a stop outside their house, which prompted her to open the door and let the paramedics in. She didn't remember getting into the back of the ambulance with the medics and the gurney carrying the unconscious blonde, but she must have, because she remembered jogging after them through the emergency entrance to the hospital and nearly getting into a fistfight over being told to stay in the waiting room.
Even now, Tamsin couldn't conceptualize how long she'd sat in the over-bright room, staring blankly at the swinging doors she wasn't allowed through and mentally replaying the last week in as great detail as she could muster; searching for some sign that something had been off with her wife, some way she could have prevented whatever had happened. She couldn't remember the worn looking doctor exiting the swinging doors and bidding her to follow him to a quieter area, but he must have, because she remembered being in a smaller side room beyond the swinging doors with him, listening to dumbed down medical jargon delivered in a voice clearly intended to be soothing and sympathetic.
Tamsin had tried to listen intently, but his voice sounded incredibly far away. She very clearly heard the phrase "I'm so sorry," only vaguely registering "sudden cardiac arrest" and "no apparent cause at this time" after that. She dimly remembered dialing Kenzi and hollowly informing her of her location and that she needed to be picked up. She recalled the worry in her friend's questions for more information at her flat, almost emotionless tone but Tamsin was feeling too disconnected from everything to have any semblance of conversation. She may have even hung up on the small woman mid sentence. She didn't actually remember feeling anything at all since the moment Lauren had crumpled onto the kitchen tile until Bo pushed through the door with anxious queries and Kenzi in tow. Somehow, seeing her two friends and their worried expressions had snapped her out of her dissociative state and she immediately burst into tears.
Tamsin had been exceptionally close to Bo and Kenzi for over a decade and yet she could have counted on one hand the times they had seen her cry up till then, so they knew something was horrifically wrong. Tamsin didn't remember what she'd said or how she managed to form words through her hysterics, but she must have because she remembered them all crying and clinging to each other. She didn't know when they left that little room or when they got into Kenzi's car, but they must have because she recalled collapsing on Bo's living room couch and feeling guilty that she was grateful they hadn't taken her home. Tamsin hadn't asked to stay with the succubus but Bo seemed in no hurry to ask her to leave either so it was a full week before she stepped foot into her own house again. She made it as far as the end of foyer before sinking to her knees and crying tears she didn't know she had left to spill.
That had been six months ago and Tamsin thought a lot more about time than she used to. Even though she was on her last lifecycle, barring any accidents in the dangerous situations she had been throwing herself into with an almost gleeful reckless abandon, she still had hundreds of years left. Maybe more. The years sprawling out before her seemed endless now. They seemed cruel, as the only promise they offered was to move her further from that little decade she'd had with Lauren. That's how time was, of course. It was cruel to everyone; it stopped for those it shouldn't while soldiering on relentlessly for everyone that had to go on without them.
But nothing ever lasts, especially time and while the sharp bitter ache in her chest had dulled slightly over the months through her family supporting each other, Tamsin took a morbid sort of comfort that eventually time would give her up as well. Until then, she'd remember things as minute as the sound of Lauren sighing in her sleep and the precise spectrum of brown trapped within her irises long after most would have forgotten her name. It was only a matter of time.