A/N Posted across from my tumblr account. This may be taken down in future for personal reasons, but for now here it is. Well. These past few nights have really kicked my ass. And I felt like writing. As usual this started out sweet, then got effed over by all my awful feelings. So yeah… Figured I'd post. I was listening to Iris when I wrote this, but it isn't necessary to do so, got a decent title out of it. Not edited/proofread, just needed to get it out.

Sooner Or Later It's Over ~ Foxxay

'Where are we?' Her voice was but a whisper, a rasp among the stillness. The world had fallen away from them, given way to darkness like a shroud drawn above their heads. Just the two of them remained. Opposite one another, they stood merely a hair's breadth apart. Even that distance seemed much too far.

'Somewhere safe….If only for a little while.' The other blonde replied with a quiet calm as the shorter of the two closed the space between them and her arms encompassed her counterpart as though they were pieces of a puzzle that were finally found to fit together to such an impossible degree.

'How long…?' Doe-eyes closed against the inevitable answer as she murmured into the material draped over the younger woman's shoulder. She inhaled the familiar scent, the way it tickled her nose and spread the warmth that filled her chest with the recognition. Hands drifted through her hair, such a gentle touch. Funny that she should be the one buried in comfort.

'Shh…' She felt the brush of breath atop her head as the other voice soothed her. So real. It was all so very real. The touch of cloth beneath her fingertips, the warmth that rose from the flesh wrapped within her arms as she was in hers, the rise and fall of the chest upon which her head rested.

'Not long enough…' She shook her head, buried further into the crook of the taller blonde's neck with denial. All the time in the world would not satisfy. But time was one thing she had no control over. Something no power or payment could change, no matter how great.

'Never.' Blonde curls drifted by her reopened peripheral vision as the other agreed. She pulled back from the embrace, although her hands remained on the woman's waist. Eyes black as night stared into those of a storm at sea.

'Can I stay?' She asked; three little words riddled with the hope rivalled only by that of a child so damned desperate. She didn't care how pitiful it seemed, for there was no-one around to see. At least not then. But all she received in return was a sad smile.

'No.'

'But you're here.' It was a pathetic protest. Her hands raised to the woman's shoulders; material gripped so tightly in the vice-like grip of her curled fists as though she refused to let go. The sad smile remained the same.

'And that's why.' She shook her head with denial at the benign response. How could her love be so calm, so very calm, when the world would return to them within a moment and with it would come all they did not wish to recall. Sooner or later it would be over.

'But I need you to stay. I want to stay.' Her knuckles were as white as bleached bone. Her fingers ached; how very tightly they clenched the fabric of her lover, although she longed for it to be skin she felt beneath her nails instead of cotton.

'You can't.' Once more she was shot down. Unexpected fear raced through her veins as one arm was drawn away from her, although she relaxed somewhat when she felt the other remained in place, the warm touch of a hand just below her ribcage.

'I can feel you here.' She keened, as though her pleas needed some sort of explanation before one could be granted. Stray wisps of her own straight blonde hair were brushed aside, tucked behind her ear with such care that she was almost distracted from the words that followed.

'Don't make this any harder than it has to be.' The hand at her ear fell to her cheek with such a tender caress that her knees felt weak beneath her.

'Your hands…' She soon realised that the fingertips that touched were colder than she remembered, as if they bore no blood at all. Her own hand pulled away from the woman's shoulders and reached blindly for the one held at her side. Drawn into her grasp, she felt the chill between her own fingers as though the familiar flesh and bone had been neither at all. 'They're so cold…' It felt foolish to say so aloud. Her fear of foolishness was soon forgotten in the devastating wake of a fear of a different kind. A terror. A horror as the hand held in her own fell away between her fingers. Grey mist ungraspable between her fingertips. Her own face lost all colour as she reached out but found no human purchase. She shouldn't have let go. She should never have let go.

'I'm sorry…' The voice was so quiet then, so uncharacteristically quiet. It sounded as though those two words alone were such an effort to be spoken.

'No…' She mouthed as the figure deteriorated before her eyes. Her own words fell from her lips with a shrill scream she had no control over. Again and again she clawed at the air as what once was her everything turned to agony and ashes. And the slow motion of the moment was so much worse. 'No. No, don't go. No, no, no. Don't leave me. Not now, it's too soon. Please. Don't leave me again…' Each and every part of her fell away like sand through that abhorred hourglass she had smashed in such a rage. Her hands reached for the woman's face; too late. But those eyes, those blue eyes that reminded her so of the sea, the sky on a clear day never turned away. That look remained. Even until the end when those eyes of hers turned a greater shade of grey, until they drifted away completely into an ashen nothingness. Misty…

She awoke alone with the tattered remains of her scream in the dark, silent as her lungs were left breathless, with watery eyes, and with the worn scarf of stars and stripes wrapped around her wrist so tightly her hand had turned numb and cold.