Right then, another oneshot. As for this little bit, there's no real backstory and it doesn't happen during any specific season/episode. It's just something I did, experiment-like. AU, rated for... would you call it violence? Yeah, you'd call it violence.
Reviews fuel my muse, although I forgive you if you decide not to comment on this one.
~W
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KNOWING
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Gillian! He sees it coming. She begins to turn, toward him, wrong way, but he's already running.
[We knew it had to end.]
The first gunshot rings in his ears, eclipses the sound of his own roaring. Foster jumps, he can see her cry out, but not hit, not hit. There's still six more in the clip.
[We knew it would be dangerous.]
He reaches her beneath the streetlight, grabs hold of her, gets between her and the gun. Her face is terrified, confused; she cringes at the sound of the second shot. This one doesn't miss. Her hands clutch at his shirt without her knowing, she holds tight, for this time he is the rock.
[I knew it was worth the risk.]
The third shot flies high, shatters the streetlamp. An explosion of light and the sparks rain down. He slips, just a bit. Her eyes know it like he knows it. Her face tells him everything he ever needed to know.
[I knew I had to love you.]
Cal! She says when he crumples, Cal! She sobs when his head hits the pavement. Sparks fly and red-blue lights flash all around, but there are only they. She presses her hands to the blossoming velvet rose, but he's coughing now, there's blood at his lip. He reaches a hand and she catches it in her own, looks down, distraught, as he tries to speak. But he has no voice, it was the first part of him to die; he mouths the only three words that ever mattered.
[I'm sorry.]
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She trembles in the back of the ambulance, huddled in the tiny space beside the gurney. His eyes are closed, his face pale around the respirator; the clear plastic fogs with his breath. Still breathing, still breathing. The medic talks, she doesn't know what he says, and the siren blares as though from eons away. She wants with all her being for those blue eyes to open and look into her like they always did, reach into her and tell her soul he'd be okay.
(How could you?)
He flatlined, and she did too. There was no time to wonder what she was going to do without him, no space in her mind for thinking - no room for anything but terror. The medic had a defibrillator, 'Clear', calm and commanding, as though ordering him to come back. His battered body jerked, his head lolled like a rag doll's, the knowing monotone wail of the monitor seeped into her skull. 'Clear', calm, commanding. He seized again, then nothing.
(You knew this would happen, didn't you?)
Blip. Blip. He's motionless still, still bleeding, but back from the dead. Her heart unclenches just the tiniest bit, and something snaps within her.
(You know what you mean to me.)
Cal, you son of a bitch. Her voice is hard. She has his hand in hers already, but now she squeezes it hard, cruelly, without remorse. I know you can hear me, so listen up: stay here.
(You knew I had to love you.)
The ambulance stops moving; a flurry of action as the doors open and the two medics pull him from the keening box that would have been his crypt. She scrambles out behind them, grabs for his cold hand.
(You know everything.)
She's not crying anymore, not terrified, not drowning. She knows it now. Those words he whispered just minutes ago, the only three that mattered, those are the ones she says to him now.
(I won't let you go.)
She knows very soon he will open his eyes. She knows they'll be tired eyes, eyes in agony, eyes clouded, but she'll reach into them and touch his soul with hers.
[(We knew.)]
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I swear to God I'm not always this melodramatic...