Summary: The real healing begins when he comes home. A series of vignettes set in the days after Logan's release from the hospital after his accident. Written for the Rory Ficathon, for standingstill (Missez Ventimiglia).

Or maybe
they saved you for me, forced open your eyes
and knew that somewhere was a girl who dreamt in that exact shade of blue/and would thank them silently and often.

- "Says the Miracle's Woman," by Eireann Corrigan

Run

Brown eyes closed, lids shadowed, dark circles under the eyes nearly the same color as the irises hidden beneath the lids. It still scares her; still reminds her of her own mortality; still strikes terror in her heart when she realizes how close… how close…

What would she have done?

Shudders race down her spine, and she reaches for a blanket to wrap herself in. Even the mere thought leaves her cold, and the dim light of the fading sun coming in through the window isn't enough anymore. She needs to see him, crisp and sharp, illuminated in daylight, without the shadows. (And she leans over to run a hand down his face, butterfly soft, to make sure he's still warm, still breathing, still there.) She needs to be reassured, again and again and again, because if he disappears, she thinks that she might just fade into a whisper of a shadow of a breeze; a shell too empty and dried up to do anything but blow away.

His skin is warm to the touch, and he stirs in his sleep, responding to the brush of her fingers across his cheeks as she caresses the bruises, willing a healing power out of her fingers and into his skin, through his blood, into his very being.

(And he knows she didn't really mean it when she pulled away and refused his kisses, right?)

Wishing for one superpower, and this is it. Wanting Lucy's magic cordial from the land of Narnia: a single drop between his lips, on his cuts, on his wounds, and everything is better. Susan can keep her horn to call for help; she doesn't want Peter's sword and shield of courage. She longs for the little girl's fireberry cordial, the alabaster vial hung around her neck, and wonders if she had been there--really been there--before, if she might have received that gift.

Instead, she feels like Edmund, off with the White Witch, selling her chance for the gift that might save him for a piece of Turkish Delight and a ride in a winter-white sleigh, and the non-existent sweet slides bitter down her throat.

Her hand slides down the covers, under the blankets, beneath his t-shirt, coming to rest over his heart, feeling it pulse. Strong, steady, rhythmic, and she wonders if the super healing powers could seep below his skin, beneath the bruises and the battered exterior and touch whatever's broken inside him that made him jump off a cliff drunk.

Broken body, broken heart, broken spirit--does it matter? She doesn't know which is worst.

Her eyes travel his body, up and down, up and down, memorizing each contour and muscle and mark, including the ones she's not yet familiar with--the new bumps, rounded on his face and shins, bruises under the surface pushing up skin shiny and dark; the new scars, skin stretched taut and pink over the jagged edges of the gashes, knit together in angry red; the new wounds that she can't even see.

What will these wounds do to him? Will his leg ache when the smell of rain fills the air? (And it strikes her as ironic that she grew up with her mother, who smells snow and revels in the beauty, anticipating the first fall all year.) Will the sound of air rushing past him, the rocks reaching up to him, haunt his nights? Will there be a tightness in his chest every time he's about to take a step into the unknown, eerily reminiscent of the straps holding him down during that frantic flight to the hospital? It's these--the things she can't touch--that she's most afraid of.

And deeper. Beyond that to the marks that frighten her more than even those--to the questions she's reluctant to think, will probably never ask. (What made him jump? Jump drunk, she means. She knows why he would jump. But what… what hurt so deeply? What wounds were inflicted so far beneath the surface that even he had learned to ignore them?)

The apartment has gotten dark as she's sat and watched him (begged, pleaded, argued, cried, all in the silent confines of her mind), their windows dark, high above the streetlights that dance and flicker over the roads, 12 stories below.

In, out. She times her breath to match his. In, out, in…

And his catches, shuddering in his throat (like a baby's whimper, ragged and soft, a sigh too deep and torturous for such a fragile body), and she holds hers, suspended until he exhales again. Her body sags as she breathes out, rejoining him in perfect unison, and she crumples like a rag doll on the edge of the bed, wanting nothing more than to crawl in and join him, but the scars still scare her. The broken bones and bruised tissue still hold her at a distance, unwilling to do anything (more) to hurt him.

So she slumps onto the chair, bent at the waist, her hand on his cheek as she rests her head on the edge of the bed beside him and falls asleep.

(And the tear that slides down the bridge of her nose goes unnoticed, falling onto the floor at her feet, tracing a trail across the hardwood floor and under the bed.)