Title: Remedied
Summary: Looking out my window, wonder how it came to be.
Character(s): Jet, Smellerbee, Longshot
Notes: I missed this fandom. Summary and following quote from Flow by Cage the Elephant. Title from alleged Chinese proverb, "The remedy for dirt is soap and water. The remedy for dying is living" because, well, that wasn't really the case for Jet.
Short story is short but I have an epic Smellerbee and Longshot fic that's been untouched for like three years. Maybe I'll go back and finish that.
Trying to find a hiding place,
climb up to the tree tops,
watch it all just drift away
Way too long, hold on, hold on,
dead and gone, so long, hold on
You do not go out in a blaze of glory but in a sickening crunch, the slow crush of your own blood, drowning on air that you so desperately want, need.
She's crying, next to you, clinging to your hands. Her paint smears; she looks younger than ever, despite being nearly fifteen already. You remember the grubby faced ten-year-old girl with the too-big eyes and burnt hair. She is here, next to you, crying over your mortality. You want to cry with her.
Not that it would make a difference. Not like you have the strength.
He stands over the two of you, meanwhile, gaze never leaving the door, arrow drawn back, spine straight. It's hard to find that trace of childhood in him, in any of you really, but you strain to see the eleven-year old you'd found two years after your own town had been destroyed. His arms will never match the rest of his skin but you've found beauty in all of your followers, these children you hope you've saved.
Maybe the others will forget you easily, maybe you don't matter in the grand scheme of things, but you have helped the only one capable of winning this war and for that reason only you regret nothing. It hurts, all of it, and not just physically.
This is how it goes, and this is how it ends:
You, her, and him, mourning already and prepared for the worst, darkness easily setting in as you lose those remaining threads of being.
Fini.
A/N: where are the Living!Jet AUs that I can just burrow into and live in forever?
Drop a line if you so wish :)