A/N: If this doesn't make you sad or wanna cry, I haven't done my job. Regardless, I am incredibly proud of this story. Very long meta/author's notes at the end - read if you're interested in my thoughts re: this fic.
The first year after, he goes every chance he gets, which is at least once a week. Sometimes twice if he can manage it. By the end of the year, the final tally is around a few hundred something trips. The visits accumulate into the quadruple digits with every bouquet of flowers he brings.
Sometimes, Bickerduff accompanies him. He brings his own homegrown flowers though. Magenta dahlias glisten in the sunlight, fresh drops of water dangling off the fragile petals, the long stems trimmed, all prim and proper and pretty - just like how she would want them.
The fourth month they awkwardly bump into one another. She with an armful of plain, precious daisies and he with an elaborate set of glitter-splattered and paint-dipped roses. He thinks he should brush up on the language of flowers as they wave at each other with hesitant smiles and go their separate ways.
Each heart weighs just as heavily as the other - a thousand tons into the ground and consciences profound with hurt and guilt and frustration. When they leave, their faces are streaked with glimmering tears and anguish – as raw as the day they both lost.
The sixth month is when she starts to come with him.
To their family and friends (and, in her case, significant other), they go the same way anyway so why not? Despite their considerable history, neither of them thinks anything more of it. They've both felt something no one else can understand - a crippling agony that drains you whole until there is only numbness and haunting whispers of what ifs. So excuses about the environment and saving gas and carpooling spill forward, messy and clumsy; lies. They just understand each other. At this point, they don't know why. It just kind of becomes an unspoken agreement.
She picks up the flowers from a local florist and he provides the car.
Every visit, he relives a memory from their childhood. The first visit was about the first time he made his baby sister laugh. The second is when he first made her cry. The third is when they learn about their legacy. The fourth is the day his father brought him into the delivery room to meet his new sister. The fifth is how he imagined it would be like to walk her down the aisle.
And so it goes on.
During the tenth month, their visit ends with lunch at a local diner. She usually eats at home before they meet, but she had stumbled into the kitchen half-awake and skipped breakfast when he arrived early as usual. She drags him in, despite his lengthy protests and cautious looks brimming with uncertainty.
In classic American tradition, the fries are freshly made, crinkly and soft to oily, fried perfection and that's the sight that makes his stomach swing into knots. The burgers are piled high with layers of lettuce, tomatoes, onions, and a hamburger patty that nearly makes him turn green because do you know what goes into your ground beef? On pain of hunger, he scoffs - arms crossed in stubborn refusal.
But she's the one who has the last laugh when the apple pie and ice cream come around, courtesy of a silver-tongued waitress who's determined to make the foreigner lose, and so he does. He buckles under the weight of the mouth-watering smell and the flaky, buttery crunch that spreads warmth from head to toe after just one bite. Topped with ice cream, the dessert is even more delectable than he imagined and he tricks her out of the last bite.
But if she's honest, she let him have it just to see the bliss on his face again.
Their dialogue is shaky at first because he doesn't really want to talk about anything and prefers the silence in the car ride, the diner, and anywhere else they're alone together. His clipped and sometimes one-worded responses easily shut down every attempt. The quiet drives her crazy and a hundred different of topics dangle on the edge of her tongue, ready to overflow the back compartment of the limo. How are you? and Nice weather today aren't nearly satisfying as he seems to think.
Not too long ago, they used to fiercely debate over philosophy, literature, and history. Nowadays the most she can wrangle out of him is which kind of pie they should get and which ice cream flavor they should top it off with. Sometimes she wishes they could go back to that because deep down, she doesn't want to admit it. She's afraid that he's sinking. That he won't swim anymore.
Her conversations revolve around schoolwork. After a year and they're sort of more comfortable around each other, he merely arches an elegant brow when he overhears her once. Even though it seems like a trivial thing, he understands this is her way of coping so he doesn't say anything. And she's grateful.
Some days, she brings her homework and talks to him as if he's still there. As if everything is normal. As if she didn't cost him his life by letting him be a part of hers. Other days, she brings a book to read aloud and she can imagine him smiling at her, all encouraging and thoughtful and kind. The books range from literary classics like Pride and Prejudice and To Kill a Mockingbird to her personal favorites like Harry Potter and The Book Thief.
Liquid trickles down her pale cheeks and drips onto the pages, but she continues on, undaunted. She reads until either he grips her delicate shoulder or until her voice goes hoarse with exhaustion.
This is how they survive.
The first visit of the second year has him smiling on her front porch. His normally well-kept hands are smudged with clusters of dirt, specks of brown litter the skin underneath his nails, but she only notices these details after the fact. All she actually sees is the unusually gleeful smile that's practically splitting his face in half. There's so much pride and happiness that it draws a grin out of her as well, though those come much easier to her so than to him.
In his hands are a newly born bundle of calla lilies, haphazardly tied with a shiny lavender ribbon.
Eventually, silence evolves into small conversations about frivolous things and Cahill business - meeting with the Holts next week, how were your winter finals, did you hear about that-? Then they ease into a normal routine and suddenly, they're friends again. Well, as friendly as one can be between a Kabra heir with parental issues and a pretty normal girl can be. Though he has this habit of rolling his eyes every time she calls herself so. He humors her anyway.
Over time, the visits dwindle as the holes in their hearts ache less and less. Some days hurt more than the rest. For her, the pain is tenfold when she remembers the first Tuesday in October when she was assigned as his English partner. For him, it's the fifteen of every month when he receives the credit card statement and it's less than what it used to be. The little things still feel like knives. They still burn like wildfires across willowy fields of grass and sunlight.
Except they both know they'll never find peace again.
Every visit begins at her front door and ends on the retro red leather seats of the diner. Sometimes, they see each other every month, other times a few times a month. As they gather their broken parts and try to continue their own stories once more, their chats move on as well.
Even though the significant other goes unnamed, she knows that he knows exactly whom she's referring to every time they pretend not to. Sometimes, she talks about a date, a gift, or other times, their problems. Her paradise is starting to fall through the cracks and he recognizes her fear. He's a Lucian. He knows what fear looks like – regardless of shape or type.
He can pinpoint where the hairline fractures start to form. The way the skin around her eyes used to crinkle with smiles and the apples of her cheeks deepened with laughter. She's afraid that he wants too much and she doesn't have anything left because he's already seen everything. She's afraid that what happened to the last him in her life will repeat. Most of all, she's afraid that deep down, she doesn't feel what she did all those months ago anymore. And it terrifies her.
Love isn't supposed to do that, she whispers to him one chilly Thursday in the middle of winter as Jack Frost's winds whisper and hurtle around the tiny building, slamming into the windows with an impressive gait. It's not supposed to just leave, she says, staring into her mug of hot chocolate, over the whistling teakettle in the kitchen, her heart is unraveling at the seams.
He doesn't say anything.
In June of their fourth year, she doesn't answer him. At all. Neither by phone, text, messenger, email, cups on a string, letter carrier, or otherwise. And according to several other Cahills, it seems as if their leader has dropped off the face of the earth. The more-guardian-than-au-pair and her brother turn away all her visitors - friends, relatives, anyone who comes looking because she won't even step foot outside her room.
Weeks pass, returned letters become a pile of regretful ashes in his fireplace, but eventually a sliver of news finds its way to London. She's heartbroken.
He never finds out if it was mutual, if she ended it, or if he had finally had enough. And he never asks except to try one last time. The cunning, proud leader of the Lucians at their front door with his knees on the smooth concrete steps and his favorite peonies in hand. In all of history, gold has never looked so pure.
As the tears pour from her heart and she drowns in her grief, the pieces of her heart lay shattered around them in the aftermath of a hurricane of despair. The jagged edges signal the million ways she's fallen apart and how far gone she is. So he lets her bare her body and soul to him until she's nothing, but an empty shell.
Days turn into weeks and months roll by, but every day, his only goal is pull her back to the surface.
Slowly, but surely, ivory returns to her flesh and she's almost looking like how she used to. A little hollow around the jade of her mother's eyes and more haggard than anyone around her would like, but she's alive and she's breathing again.
Their tradition resumes again by the fifth year. Having run out of memories, he begins to talk about himself. He's letting Natalie back into his life, his heart. Time has run its course and he's trying to fill up the hole she left behind. The damage will never fully quite heal because he won't allow it to because he needs the harsh sting to remember, but to new beginnings in a new year, it's something.
For months, her conversations ring around an endless supply of apologies. Sorry that she didn't come back. Sorry that she forgot to visit. Sorry that Evan died for her. Sorry that he will never see a faceless woman underneath a veil of snow white. Sorry that he will never live to see tiny measurement marks on a wooden doorway. She's sorry for a lot of things and she's never going to stop being so.
Their waitress immediately pounces the instant she spots them from the ceiling high windows, wrapping her into a motherly hug that smells like spicy cinnamon and sweet blueberry muffins. And on contact, she breaks into the tears that she thought she had done away with a long time ago. They rush back, stronger and faster, as if they never left and she can't make them stop.
Would you like your usual, sweetheart? The familiar words caress her with a fondness that makes her long for days of old and she responds with an affectionate squeeze around the woman's waist. Over her shoulders, she hears the grumpy cook sound kinder than he ever has when he whistles the order in, then they settle into their regular booth.
Halfway through year five, she's finally a college graduate with two degrees to her name. Before she opens her mouth to address her professors and classmates, her eyes scan for him. He's seated in the front with her family and friends, on cheap plastic, between her brother and her best friend. When he notices her attention, he flashes an encouraging wink to which her brother elbows him in the side for. She imagines the exchange that follows and isn't surprised when he flicks him in the forehead. Then she clears her throat into the microphone and even from fifty feet away, both of the men in her life obey.
On the first day of the sixth year, she finds herself signing a lease for a flat in Paris. She's been picked for an internship at a local museum and someday, her dream is to be part of the Louvre's history. But she hasn't forgotten. As soon as she finds out the news, she arranges for the same florist to deliver an arrangement of daisies every month until her return. Every card is a countdown until she comes home.
Sometime during her first month in France, she drunkenly kisses a stranger in a poorly lit bar down the street from work. When she moves to Europe, he goes back home for the first time in years, faithful manservant in tow and all. It's a bit dusty, a little wild, but the Kabra family home has been in their bloodline for generations, the standing monument of their power and leadership; their kingdom. So he vows to restore it to its former glory, in memory of her and in honor of everything the Lucians stand for. The snakes will rise again.
When he meets up with her after a branch meeting for the first time since she left the states, he doesn't reveal that he saw. He doesn't confess how much the picture hurt. He doesn't even let it linger; it's buried so deep in the backroom of his mind so that he can keep going. Out of sight, out of mind becomes his mantra. If he faces the memory, he doesn't think he'll overcome it because it will mean something more and he's not ready for that.
Truth takes time.
One rainy evening in December, she shows up out of the blue at the villa of a family friend where he was temporarily staying for a summit. Soaking auburn strands cling to her icy skin and her breaths form harsh puffs of frost and her trench coat is drenched as she lets the stormy air in. He tries to convince her to enter, but she refuses and forest eyes are darkened with something he can't quite identify.
Suddenly, she leaps forward and her clammy fingers bury themselves in his inky hair as she crushes his lips to hers. And he's responding in kind, just as eager and demanding and fierce if not more so as he gathers her in his arms and pulls them inside where she backs him against the wall. Electricity crackles between their bodies as they're pressed against each other; her cold against his heat and he's teasing languid kisses until she chases after him, all passion in prose, navigating out of unadulterated desire and instinct.
Lightning strikes in the distance of the Grand Palais and as if it struck her directly, coursing through her skin, she jerks back with eyes wide and he can trace the shock along the open 'o' of her mouth. Trembling fingers lift up to swollen lips and his feet stay imprisoned where he is because she's vulnerable, because he has no regrets, but she's foreshadowing a cat looking for an escape route. After all this time, his feelings overwhelm him with such a startling clarity that he thinks he can finally see again. Things he hasn't felt in a near decade wash over him with waves, of memories and emotions and realizations.
Her tiny figure is stumbling backward; apologies line the creases of her eyes and his hand flies out for her. Except a hesitant shake of her head causes him to retract, hurt and disappointed and scorned and he's left to watch her shadow scamper across the courtyard with sad eyes and wandering thoughts if this is the last time he'll ever see her again.
Sometime during the seventh year of what used to be theirs, he returns to the states. Every month, he still goes as if nothing's changed even though everything is different now. He accepts their waitress's teasing with a strained smile – how can you decide on anything without her? That girl always knew what was best for you. Just wait until she comes back from finding herself. She thinks she's just traveling. He doesn't bother to correct her.
He doesn't order dessert anymore either.
Six months later, he discovers through an Ekat who found out from a Tomas who heard from a Madrigal who spoke to her brother – she's home. He doesn't know which hurts more. The bitterness that tingles under his skin because she didn't tell him herself after everything or the torment he'll endure when he has to see her at Cahill briefings and the image of her running away is tattooed into his retinas. Some nights, he replays the scene over and over and over until an empty bottle of wine explodes against his cherry wood door.
It's a rainy day when he's standing at her grave again. A bouquet of his finest lilies settled on top of the tombstone. He leans against the cherry blossom tree that rises over them with its cascading blush petals, heralding the advent of spring on a warm day in April and gentle aroma that sweetens the moist air around him. It provides temporary reprieve from the light sprinkling and he idly thinks that he should probably move away from tall structures such as this one - except he can't bring himself to.
Its color the pink that bursts forth after Amy Cahill's fingertips trail over his heart, leaving behind a sentence that will never end.
He misses her.
On her twenty-first birthday, he doesn't leave the house. In a stiff leather armchair that looks entirely right at home with his furniture with its espresso brown sheen and rich tufted texture, he hates how uncomfortable it is because he clearly never thought about actually using it, but he sits in it anyway, staring into the vivacious red that crackles and simmers and yearns in his fireplace. He continues to, even as Bickerduff dutifully brings in breakfast, before returning two hours later to take away the untouched tray of food. Even when his manservant lets her in and she takes a seat in the accompanying armchair, no words are spoken.
He doesn't remark how it's been over a year since they last saw each other. He doesn't mention how their waitress and the grouchy cook are to be married (and consequently that he's lost the bet). He doesn't note how her hair is longer than he remembers; prettier even as it sways in the dusky twilight, bathed in violet and gold. No, he says nothing of the sort as they reminisce and simply get through the day.
At midnight, she reaches for Ian, slender fingers threading through his, pressing a single azure forget-me-not into his palm, and for the first time in years, a genuine smile lights up his face.
On the anniversary of their tradition in its tenth year, a diamond ring graces her hand.
A/N #2 (tl;dr): Since DoD came out, I wanted to write something post-book as I have done since TNO. But how do you try to fix or resolve something after an ending like that. I've only read one post-DoD fic that did Iamy friendship and whilst it was good, it wasn't what I wanted to see. This is death. It's probably the most substantial thing that can happen to a person. It's permanent, it destroys a person from the inside out. That's what I wanted to convey.
They've been through a lot of death, far too much for a couple of kids. DoD struck the closest to their hearts - for Ian, it's his last remaining family and that's not something that you ever get over - not when he's been abandoned so often. He's burning through money, he's drowning in himself and turns away from everyone. And she gets it. Her boyfriend was murdered for being part of her life. It is all on her. No one else brought in an outsider. That kind of guilt doesn't just go away. Not when he was only 16 and had his whole life ahead.
At the point of this book, they're mere acquaintances - there's nothing more than civility between them. But I like to think their bonds with death bring them together. She's always seen past his facade (been there for him, etc) and he will always be the one that understands her - her choices as a leader, etc. They don't judge each other and eventually their relationship rebuilds.
She brings him back to life, instead of withering away in the past and he's there for her - through the breakup, graduation, and a new future. I only used each name once in the fic. The reason is important - when he accepts Natalie's death, he's growing up. When he realizes that he's in love with Amy, she's named. When she can say his death aloud, it's Evan. When she realizes she loves him, she comes back to Ian.
I don't talk about the near year when they're separated because it's her journey. She needed time to figure out herself. After the death of the first one and the downfall of the second, she needed to be alone after using Ian as a crutch. That year isn't mentioned because she was also growing up. Does she love him like she thought she loved Jake? Why does she love him? She needs the why more than anything because timing and proximity (ie. with Jake) doesn't necessarily mean it's real.
Crushes can be small and irrelevant because they're from afar (referring to their mutual crush in the first series), but Amy and Ian have learned and seen everything about each other now. They know each other by the end. This is not a love story. This is a story about them (individually/together) and death.
Extras:
- If it isn't obvious (and good God, I hope it is), their tradition is to visit Natalie and Evan's graves. He talks to Natalie about their childhood and his life. She talks to Evan about school and reads him books.
- At first, he used to buy the flowers because it was natural and easy. But when he sees what his butler brings, he realizes that it shouldn't be easy. The roses I described are called Hong Kong roses – they're expensive and elaborate. It doesn't mean as much as it could/should. So he plants and grows his own because they're for his sister.
- Their considerable history – shout out to my friend, Katie!
- Jack Frost - I watched Rise of the Guardians this night.
- The flowers were chosen on purpose: Daisies (loyal love); Dahlias (elegance and dignity); Calla Lilies (magnificence, beauty, innocence); Forget-Me-Nots (true love); Cherry blossoms and peonies are my favorites.
- This fic takes place over a ten-year period. They're both 16 when it starts and 26 when it ends. There is a two-year gap between what was to be Natalie's 21st and the last sentence for their (love) story.