Set in the alternative universe of episode 2x07 (Out of Time). It's really, really tragic. Hope you'll like it anyway!
And you smile
You had never noticed how long the crack ripping the window's glass is. Now you realize that it's big enough to let the rain in. A thin and weak thread of water beating unstoppably on the worn-out moquette dirty with blood and medicines.
You find yourself thinking about how easy it would be to be a raindrop. To be born from a cloud and die on a moquette, without asking yourself if your life really has been worth something.
The hands locked around your stomach tremble. They're pale and skinnier than ever, crapped and covered with scabs. You lean the head to the chest that quivers behind you. It raises and lowers irregularly, accompanied by a sort of confused wheeze. Because this is what his breath has become.
You can't even distinguish the moments he sleeps from when he's awake. Quite as you can't distinguish the ambulance's siren from the police's one. You remember that as a child you were able.
Maybe you deserve it. Maybe everybody did something to deserve it.
And it's that, isn't it, your mistake? The whole world considers it a fault, nobody cares a damn if that love so sick has been the only thing to keep you alive in the midst of death.
If you close your eyes you still can see her. Angela. Her inscrutable look. She tells you that it has happened also to him. That also Peter is sick. That also Peter will die like everyone. And that she would really like to thank you sincerely for having made him pass the last months of his life dipped in a torrid and insane relationship with his niece. You know that she thought this, that she still does.
Maybe you're dreaming it, or he's really holding you closer. You want to turn round and take him in your arms like a child, but the last coherent sentence you heard him saying was the plea to stay like this forever. Leaned to him, in his arms in that way.
You ask yourself how much time has to pass before your turn. Your father once taught you that no one should ever hope to die, that it's an offence to God and to who really has to die. But you just can't look at the moment when also your face will lose its color, it will get covered with scabs and will become more hollow than a skull, when also your hair will smell like ammonia and sweat… without feeling relieved. Because it's the only end that all this can have. Maybe tragic, but it's an end.
You insulted him – destiny – and a lot, but you can be thankful to him for depriving Peter of the pain of losing you. Because it will be the opposite, and you'll feel bad as a dog, but it's okay. Because you've both been feeling much worse than two dogs, and for a long time.
Sometimes you can almost sense the virus taking possession of your brain and shouting in your ears from inside the head that he's there, he has arrived. Weren't you waiting for me?
He's got a shrilling and hateful voice, like the one of the cartoons that once scared you.
The lips that didn't lose their irregular shape caress your hair. With every probability it's not a kiss, he simply moved his head in that semi-unconsciousness state that is slowly degrading him. But you pretend that it was. You pretend to be able to turn round and tell him that he's beautiful without making him feel mocked. Because he really is, for you. Yet. He could never stop to be beautiful.
You can almost hear him. He's saying that it gets better. Life after high school, it gets lots better. Now instead he's asking you if you're the one that has to be saved to save the world. He tells you that he jumped without knowing he would survive. That he's been a part of something since when he met you.
You don't notice the heart that stops beating behind your head.
You just can see his crooked smile and his sweet eyes, the forelock that covers them and his funny way to raise the eyebrow.
And you smile.