A/N: Warnings for implied/referenced self-harm, depression, family tragedy, and an inappropriate/manipulative relationship (nothing explicit).
"You are all that matters now," Darcy said to him, the day their parents died.
She didn't mean for it to be a burden.
.
George watches his life split neatly in half, the before and the after, both unreachable in cruel memory and crueler unknowns.
Darcy going to law school splits life again. George misses her half because he has to and half because he wants to; Darcy is the only one who has ever lasted, and now she's leaving.
She tells him that it isn't like that. She tells him she won't forget him. But she's exhausted, and purposeful, and if George was older he'd know that she was still very young.
.
Darcy has always been a constant. She didn't become solemn and stern as a teenager. She was just—that way, from his earliest memories.
Less so around him. If he and Fitz worked together they could even get her to laugh. George loves when she laughs. He loves when it's just the three of them, somewhere the world can't find them, somewhere there's music, without needing him to play it.
Somewhere that he doesn't have to remember his parents, unless he wants to. Sometimes he wants to, and sometimes he has to, and sometimes he can just let them go.
.
He's been composing since he was six. So, he's been composing since before. He remembers after, when his hands on the keys felt the same. Permanent and steady, even when he cried.
Even when Darcy cried.
Darcy at fifteen—younger than he is now. She'd seemed as invincible as ever, then. Except when he played, and she crumbled, and George didn't need to read the music, it was all in his head anyway, but he kept his eyes straight ahead.
It was the one thing he could do for her.
.
Three months in. Darcy is a ghost; George is something else.
He doesn't think of it as being suicidal.
He thinks of it as calm and space, and lines like piano keys crawling up and down his skin.
.
Gemma enters his life like a sunray, and where she touches him, he burns.
.
Darcy always calls when he's half-asleep. "I miss you," she says. Darcy's voice is always a little flat, a little careful, but George can hear the edges and the worry. He knows she doesn't mean it to be a burden.
.
"Do you love me?" Gemma asks, so close it feels like she will always be here, and he says yes, because he's been broken, and lonely, but he's never been told not to love.
Darcy stops calling—she says it's because she gets home too late, and she doesn't want to wake him.
.
Gemma's lips steal all the air from his lungs, and he knows she's lying, but he doesn't know about what.
Don't leave me.
Never, she says. Her breath is warm, her hands are soft. Never.
.
Afterwards, he tells Darcy every secret. Somehow, they seem to be the only things that never leave him.