She's too old to be doing things like this.
Yellow and orange and pinks are in her peripheral and there's the cracks in the pavement as a trail to follow. Her right knee is exploding with every sharp pound of the sidewalk, and beads of sweat fall down her forehead, sting her burning eyes. It's painful to breathe, the kind of running she's missed since Georgetown. She's missed this, and she hadn't even known it.
She once took a trekking class up at the local gym, when the kids were little.
It's nothing like the feeling of moving without thought, without looking down at a machine. Every nuance of the terrain, every heave of her chest.
She can feel him with her.
She knows, see, she knows anyone on the outside looking in would just see a forty three year old woman, fit and lithe in her black Nike pants. Unassuming, going about her daily business. On a Monday morning run. The river is there, beside her, and there's her form that she should be paying attention to- but it doesn't matter, because it's not like it would make her joints feel any younger.
But they don't see what she sees. Her eyes close periodically, and she can picture it as clear as the horizon, as clear as the skyscrapers of the windy city and all the terrible things the people inside them are doing will entail. Alicia closes her eyes and she feels him running beside her.
They did it twenty years ago, on midnights when they had an extra hour. Few and far between, and it wasn't anything permanent, but they'd take the time to lace up and go. Get it out of their systems. It wasn't sex, but sometimes shared exertion doesn't have to be intimacy to matter. Sometimes she'd fall into a battering step beside him, and sometimes it would feel like that was her place, swimming in her bloodstream, like two animals disappearing into the night. Instinctual.
Things always felt so right when she was with him and how could she not have known if he was removed from the equation, things would go to hell, and nothing would make sense, and she'd spin and spin until all she could do was run in time with her heartbeat.
She doesn't need music, because she swears she can hear him breathing. Panting.
Rewind three months, and he was alive. He was here. He was real. He is gone, but he was here. This was the path he drew for himself. His heart was beating. He was here. He was real.
She tells herself these things. This is the way she survives.
Alicia makes sure not to think of his body, of his muscles beginning to shrivel with the decomposition. Of his biceps, and his calves, and his abdominal line that she'd trace, once, not too long ago. She does not think of how he's not breathing anymore, how the sound of her sneakers hitting the ground could be gunshots, all destroying in the wake of her.
The sun is rising and warming the left side of her face, and it feels like his love.
She blows air between her lips and stops, leans down to rest her hands on her knees, hates how out of shape she's been these past few years. She imagines Will stopping too.
She imagines him laughing, telling her, "If you can't keep up, you're getting left at home next time."
She imagines stopping him, throwing her arms around his neck in all their sweaty expanse. She imagines kissing him hard and fast on the mouth, sharp from the toothpaste, on the side of the river. The sun keeps rising, and she's still alone, and she's staring at the bench in front of her and wondering if it's real wood. She imagines running past her apartment, running further, towards his apartment, but no-
She imagines running somewhere else. Going home with him. Their home.
They've never even lived together.
All of this is so silly.
None of this is making any sense.
Alicia sets off again, faster and rougher than ever before, wants to get her heart rate up until everything is explosions in her eardrums. Her legs stretch to accommodate a longer stride, quads taking the brunt. More. She needs more. She needs white noise.
She can't feel him next to her anymore. She's trying to catch up.
If she just runs a little faster, maybe she'll catch up, and even if he won't talk to her, even if all there is anymore- these little fantasies in her head, these little dreams of stolen kisses and broken memories. Before and after. Once upon a time. Imagining gunshots. She can't hear his breathing. All she hears is gunshots. All she hears is silence. All she sees is her own loneliness.
She's been praying, even if she doesn't believe in anything. Faith has always been a fallacy, but since her mother said what she said, she's been trying the hardest she can. She's been closing her eyes and whispering across her pillow, imagining him on the other side of the bed, beside her. Always beside her, and she was never under him. They were always equal, studied the same material, kissed with the same fervor. "Wait up," she's trying to say, and both her knees are crying out in pain.
"Please just slow down. Come back. Nothing makes sense and I wanted the world with you. I want to wake up with you and go for runs with you and die in your arms. I wanted to lie down in a grave next to you when we were white haired and ready. Please stop leaving me every time I wake up. Please stop dying every time I go to tell you what's on my mind."
Alicia whispers this to herself.
Her time is almost up. She has to go back to the world of kicking ass, of Finn and his smile, and life has to keep going. Nothing is stopping except Will's heart. Nothing is stopping except her own heart.
She thinks this, this exact thought, and then she makes a turn to cross the street.
Her father taught her to look both ways when she still wore her hair in pigtails, and Alicia Florrick is not suicidal. She values her own life because she still loves her children, still loves her child of a firm, and even if she did think it, just once, lying beneath sheets the day after Will's funeral, thought about going to Diane's husband and buying a gun, going to her father's cabin in the woods, making a pact-
Death will come to her, Alicia had decided.
She's always known this. Once, maybe fifteen years ago, just after 9/11, she'd been afraid of the happening. She'd been terrified of burning up in a building, or succumbing to natural causes, of having nothing. So she's not suicidal, just a realist. A cynical realist, and it had brought a twisted grin to her face, brittle around the edges, bathed in misery, to know that one day, she wouldn't have to stick the barrel of something that already scares her in her mouth. She'll wait.
Alicia is so good at waiting.
She'll wait, and death will come to her, and when it does, there will be nothing.
Or maybe, maybe Will will be there, waiting for her. Both are pleasant outcomes. One is for the naïve, and one is for those who believe in truth. Maybe they'll both find one another, in some fray of afterlife. They'll hold each other in heaven, fuck like animals in hell. Ha. Ha. Ha.
The man driving the car is a businessman, already late for work. He has a fresh coffee stain on the shirt his wife had starched for him yesterday. He's yelling into his phone, face a cherry, engine revved.
All it takes is a second, and he's looking down, trying to hang up.
All it takes is a second.
/
Alicia Florrick doesn't even flinch when the car hits her.
Her eyes fall closed, mere milliseconds before impact.
Almost as if she's waiting.
/
.
.
.
When she comes to consciousness, it greets her like the taste of honey. Sweet, slow. Drips from her eyelids, one pulse, two pulse. Alicia blinks awake, and thinks it was all a dream.
She was meaning to go for a run this morning, has her shoes and tank top laid out. Alicia sits up in bed, and looks down to find-
To find she's not what she went to bed in last night. It's getting warmer, so she'd gone to sleep in a tank top and a loose pair of sweat pants. She's in long sleeves, that mint green pullover that's warming. But there's a chill to the air. Her feet are cold, and she can hear the heater going full blast.
Alicia looks over to find her sneakers aren't on her dresser, where she knows she'd placed them.
Checks the clock- finds it's half past eight. She's going to be late going into the office.
There's no way there'd be time for a run, anyway.
It's as if she's an alien to her own skin. She reaches up to touch her face, to see if one physical, tangible thing will make the scene shatter. Nothing happens. Her skin is warm beneath her fingers, flushed. She must be half asleep, and she tries to stretch, moves to step onto the freezing hardwood.
It's so startlingly chilly, to the point that it doesn't feel like May at all.
Alicia moves toward her bedroom door, opens it and practically jumps ten feet in the air.
"Grace," Alicia admonishes her daughter, eyes wide as saucers. Her throat is still clogged with sleep. "You scared the crap out of me." Grace shrugs, and Alicia takes note of the fact she's already dressed for school.
"Was just coming to wake you up," Grace defends. "Need you to sign this." A piece of paper is thrust in front of Alicia's face. She takes it, glances at the words. Her stomach turns, the likes of confusion prickling across her scalp.
"What is this?"
Grace turns her back on her mother, moving to grab a morning shake from the fridge. "The Kensington Exhibit. We talked about it last night, remember?"
Alicia trudges forwards on lead legs, tries to feel for a bar stool to sit down on. She rubs her eyes, rereads the piece of paper again. Grace places a pen in front of her mother, expectant.
"Grace," Alicia says weakly, and the sixteen year old girl's eyebrows furrow in worry at the tone. At how green her mother looks.
"Mom, are you gonna be sick? Are you okay?"
Alicia finally looks up. "You went on this field trip weeks ago. Are you going again?"
Grace feels something ebb at her, utterly baffled. She shakes her head. "No, Mom. I've never been to the exhibit before. Are you okay? What's wrong? Do you not want me to go? I've got to hurry and get to school before-
"Grace," Alicia asks, and her words are all out of alignment when she speaks them. They are like holding atom bombs in her mouth, because the connotation that maybe. That maybe-
That maybe it really is in black in white ink, laid out in front of her. This can't be real. She asks her daughter what the date is, all falling apart, in pieces. She can't afford to hope, so she doesn't. She just waits.
"It's March twentieth. Why?"
Alicia's hands begin to shake. And then her torso, then her jaw. Then her everything.
Grace is saying things in her ear, touching her hair, but all Alicia can do is stare while her eyes fill with tears. Because. Because.
"Are you sure?" Alicia mumbles under her breath. She thinks she might hurl from the hurricane in her stomach. She's crying, and she's shaking, and it can't be today. It's impossible. But Grace is throwing out things left in right, and it isn't until Alicia vaguely hears her daughter threaten to call her father that Alicia snaps out of it, reaches up to wipe her face.
"No," she cuts her off. "No, Grace. It's fine. I just. I had a really bad dream, I think. Here."
Alicia's signature looks like shit, but Grace has gone quiet, and that's enough.
"Mom, you really don't look okay. What's wrong? Seriously."
Alicia tries to keep the constricting sobs from overtaking her once again. It's not that she's crying because she's sad, or happy, or anything like that. Her emotion is not definite, it's just present. It's consuming. It's relief. Or fear. Or-
"Grace, I'm okay," Alicia interrupts, monotone, concealing. She carries herself on barely mobile legs, to the bathroom- to take a shower. To do something else but stare at the clock or stare at the calendar on the wall. "Get to school," she calls over her shoulder, terse. "You're gonna be late."
/
She turns on the shower as hot as she can get it, until it leaves her skin in blotches of red and white. Under the spray, she takes a good ten minutes just thinking. Just remembering.
Because it had to have been real.
She didn't just imagine the funeral. She didn't just imagine Will's casket, how the wood was sleek and lid closed. The smell of flowers, permeating her nostrils. Diane rocking her in her arms, the birds. The call. Kalinda's call. The fight. She and Peter had fought, and then tried to be cordial, and-
Finn.
Finn's running for State's Attorney, and Eli is going to turn him into a hero.
It's all so muddled, like her head is underwater. She wonders if it's like that movie with Sandra Bullock, like some premonition. It's not real, though.
None of it was real, and she needs to go to work.
She's still wearing her wedding ring, and even if a part of her is ripping apart at the idea that she can change things now, that she can go to William Paul Gardner and tell him everything she had longed to say, curled up in an empty bed, beneath sheets of white. Beneath tons and tons of unimaginable grief.
This is reality.
She needs to go to work.
/
When Alicia opens up her closet, she finds a cream colored blazer that she'd planned to wear to the depo, and then a black skirt suit for the Chicago Correspondent's Club luncheon.
And-
She stops, eyes brimming with tears again. Tears that she stubbornly pushes back, because-
Because this is reality. This is reality, and nothing bad ever happened today. It was just a dream.
/
Nelson Dubeck walks in with his head held high, some sly smirk marring his face.
He sits down and begins to depose her.
Gets to the second question, and it's like she's heard it all before.
(She has.)
She also knows exactly what he has. Knows that all he's got is Will's testimony, and even if the charges are there, she handles it differently than she did last time. Won't even give him the time of day to start taunting her. "Mr. Dubeck," she cuts him off. "Don't try and make this personal. I know how you're going to play this, and I'm telling you to, respectfully-
Alicia purses her lips, glances at Cary. "Fuck off. Now, are there any other questions?"
He hadn't even gotten to the lovers part yet, she muses mentally, drums her nails across the tabletop, and stands.
Still, there's a bitter swill in her mouth.
Tastes like apprehension.
/
Eli is picking her up at eleven thirty, and it's only eleven. She's changed and touched up her make up, but she's still too restless from the weight of wondering to sit at her desk and do paperwork like she should be, like she's in the habit of doing. She could walk across the street, get a cup of coffee. It's the best course of things, she decides.
Alicia is sipping at the hot beverage, seated casually at a table, when she feels her phone buzzing by her leg. It's not in the side pocket of her purse, so she has to hunt for it, and by the time she finds it, the person is already leaving a voicemail.
Alicia's blood freezes in her veins.
It's like her whole being comes to a screeching halt.
Carefully, nimble fingers flying, she unlocks her phone.
She raises the cellular device to her ear, and listens to the short voicemail.
She listens, and she stands, and she almost knocks people down, with the way she runs to her car.
/
Eli calls her as her car speeds down the road, and she prays she won't get pulled over.
She prays, puts it on speakerphone.
"Alicia, where the hell are-
"Eli, I'm not going to be there. Do not ask me why. I'm just not going to be there, okay?"
It must be something in her voice. Something in her desperation. Even now, there's tears in her eyes, heart in her throat. She doesn't have much time.
Will doesn't have much time.
"Is everything okay, Alicia?"
"I don't know. I- I'll call you back, okay? I'll call you back."
/
She calls Will back twice, but his phone goes to voicemail both times.
She doesn't leave messages.
/
William Paul Gardner's official time of death was twelve twenty six, when paramedics attempted to revive him for the third time, inside the ambulance.
At two minutes til noon, Alicia parallel parks outside of Cook County Criminal Court.
/
She slips inside, and she sees the back of his head. Kalinda had brushed her on Alicia's way in, and she'd stared at her friend. This is real. This is all real, and not a dream. He is real, and she watches him talk to Jeffrey, and her legs feel foreign entities when she finds a seat because she hears the bailiff talking, and her heart is beating so fast, and he's alive.
He's alive.
Alicia clutches at her purse strap, and he, and Will is-
"-like to request a sidebar."
His voice. His voice, and-
Alicia watches in horror. Finn and Will approach, and she watches them talk, sways and blinks hard.
She looks at Jeffrey. Alicia focuses on Jeffrey, and she knows what's coming by the way he begins to look around. Jeffrey's swaying too, head darting. How could nobody have seen it, seen the kid like a skittish animal, and the way his hand reaches out to grab-
Alicia screams.
It's loud to her own ears, and her purse goes flying when she lurches forward, moves, and Jeffrey already has the gun, is already pointing it at-
A shot fires.
Alicia wrenches away from the sound, can hear Grace's laughter in the back of her mind, but she still sees Will, and he's turned, and there's blood on the tile, the witness, and-
Jeffrey raises the gun, and no. No.
She's possessed when she shrieks again, shrieks the boy's name. He turns in her direction instead of Will's and Alicia is only looking at Will, and he can't die like this, he can't when there isn't any blood yet, and-
The gun points in her direction, and Jeffrey pulls the trigger, even if he was just turning to see who was calling his name, with all his trembling in self persevering fear. But Alicia is reckless with all her weaving body, and she's trying to get to Will, and Will looks so scared, so terrified, but he's still moving towards the gun, and-
"Will! Will!" Alicia screams, throat hoarse, half a sob caught, and she feels so cold.
And then Will tackles Jeffrey.
The kid's got so much adrenaline pumping through him, but Will's got rage. Will's got fear, got protection, too. Primal.
(See, he just watched Alicia get shot, body flailing, and even if a part of him needs to go to Alicia, there's another matter at hand. Alicia. Alicia, Alicia, Alicia. And instead of the coldness one would look at a wild animal, because in another life it was just the witness- the intended victim was Alicia, this time. This stupid kid could kill Alicia, and that drives him more than any fathomable force. It's instinctual. It's enough.)
The gun goes off again, split through a bench, and then it's out of Jeffrey's hands.
Will takes it and throws it. Not dissimilar to how he'd throw a baseball. Hard, fast enough to make his long forgotten shoulder injury twinge, and Jeffrey tries to throw a punch, tries to get the weapon back, but the weapon is already somewhere else, and Alicia is quivering, splayed out on the floor, at the men's feet. She's vulnerable to anything, and-
Finn is there, suddenly, trying to pull Alicia away because the other cops are there, trying to shoot their own deadly weapons, and-
"Will," Alicia moans, and when the first bullet hits Jeffrey, it's like watching a monster get it's coming. Jeffrey falls, and Will dives down to the floor, and she doesn't know if he's been hit or not but all she can seem to comprehend is how beautiful he is, how alive. Will is so alive, and it's overwhelming, it's-
She closes her eyes, strains against Finn's hold because she knows Will is in the line of fire, knows that he's not safe-
but nothing happens, no more shots fired, because like the sensation of falling just before hitting sleep, Alicia closes her eyes and they stay shut.
/
This time, when she wakes up, it hurts.
It hurts because she can hear Will's voice in her head, and she doesn't know if she's waking from a dream and he's dead again. She wonders if this is her hell. If the constant turmoil of Will Gardner's death is her own personal daemon. Hands are on her cheeks, brushing her hair back from her forehead, and she opens her eyes slowly, blinks against the blur of the outside world, and-
"Will," her breathing hitches, a whine. She's in his lap.
His smell. His smell is all around her, and she knows it's his aftershave he used this morning, and there's-
"Blood," she cries out, twisting. Will's brown eyes are tender for her, and she can hear Finn saying something, and she tries to focuses, to make the syllables out, and-
"It's just a through a through, I think," Finn says, trying to put pressure on her arm, but Alicia tries to twist away again, sees the red all over Will's shirt and tie, and tries to imagine this is how he looked when Diane and Kalinda found him, when-
"Will, you're hurt," she realizes, slurs. "Will, you're hurt, you-
"No," he assures her, and the sound of his voice, the silky smoothness, it makes her tear up. It makes her begin to garble.
"Will, I thought you were dead, you were dyi-
"Hey, hush," he leans in to whisper, hands in her hair moving faster, more jarring. He's trying to get her attention. "Alicia, you've been shot, but it's gonna be okay, alright? The paramedics are going to be here in a second, okay?"
She barely understands what's really happening-
That Jeffrey Grant is writhing in pain a few feet away, that Will isn't as calm as he is trying to express to her. That he's really shaking like a leaf, voice quick and cutting, and Finn has a hand on his arm, trying to reassure him with the fact it's only a graze, that it could be worse, but-
"Leesh," Will calls her, and Alicia is trying not to fall asleep again. She reaches her hand up to touch her jaw, feels how warm it is. She begins to cry in full, trying to pull herself closer. She doesn't have to attempt, because Will sees where she's going. He leans in further, jostles her to pull her further into him, told hold her as she cries. He thinks it's because she's in pain. Alicia must be in pain, but it's nothing.
It's nothing, apparently, in comparison to the pain she's been in, in the other world. She's so accustomed to walking around in agony that a bullet slicing through her arm is barely noticeable, and she inhales shakily, goes, "Will, I ne-ne-need you to te-tell me what your voicemail sa-sa-said."
She's not crying because of the bullet wound. She's crying because he's okay.
His expression is completely slack, his own eyes beginning to tear. "Nothing that can't wait a little bit, alright?"
Alicia shifts further, smearing blood further onto his clothing. It drips down her arm thickly, but the truth is, the metal didn't even tear through muscle. She buries her face in his neck, doesn't care if Finn is sitting right beside them. Everything is in stasis, but they have this moment.
She has so many moments she thought she'd never have.
She has them, and now she's using them.
Will rubs her back, presses a kiss to the crown of her head. "Please," Alicia pleads. "Tell me. Pl-please just—"
Will grinds his jaw against the onslaught of his own emotion. Eyes grown dim, he leans in to speak into her ear. The other man can't even hear the words he exchanges to Alicia, can't hear the low, low murmur of-
"I want to stop fighting, Alicia. I want to try again at what we had, because-
Will breaks off, and Alicia sniffs hard, turns her mouth to press against the side of his- not quiet on his lips in her delirium of nerve endings igniting, even if she doesn't understand her body's own reaction. He doesn't pull away, though, simply takes her jaw in his hands and adjusts so that he can mouth the words to her. Only for her.
"I love you," he whispers. "I've loved you for a very long time, and even if I don't like some of the things you've done-
He says the words with a hint of sarcasm, and it's enough to pull a wobbly smile to her lips. Her makeup is smeared ten ways to Sunday, but the words are so powerful that none of it matters, not the gore or all the death. This is real.
This is real, and he goes, "I love you so much, Alicia."
He kisses her lips softly. She closes her eyes, fresh tears streaming down her cheeks, and her fingers grip the lapels of his ruined suit jacket, and-
She sighs into his mouth, begins to slump forward.
"Hey," Will growls, and Alicia's eyes flutter open at the timbre. "Stay awake, okay? Please stay awake."
"Okay," she says drowsily, cheeks twitching at the notion of falling asleep and leaving all of this. Even with the commotion, this is real, this is real, and Will loves her. And Peter was wrong. Ha. Ha. Ha.
Peter was wrong, and Will loves her, and they're going to start over, they're going to fix it, and-
"Love you too," she says, all of a sudden. It comes out clearer than anything else.
Her arm is starting to ache.
Will fixes her with this look, eyes still only for her, and even in all the shit she's currently going through, he doesn't think Alicia has ever looked so beautiful, so angelic. He thinks to himself, what if the bullet had hit her someplace she wouldn't recover from?
And Will thinks, if Alicia died, I don't know what I'd do.
The paramedics arrive at twelve twenty, and Alicia is in the ambulance five minutes later.
/
At twelve twenty six in the afternoon, Alicia's arm is wrapped sloppily in gauze, and her ear is rested against Will's breast, tucked into the confines of the ambulance. She'd insisted he ride with her, and she hears his heart beat steadily.
She's never heard something more pure.
/
Peter and Eli are at the hospital, waiting for her. The doctor wants to hook her up to machines, wants her to stay overnight for observation, but when he gives her the option of stitches and outpatient medication, she opts for that. Peter's called the kids, and Alicia is disgusted to think he's worried them, that he has a media circus just waiting outside because he didn't even think about the implication of-
Peter tells her he's called the kids, and Will tells her he's going to wait outside, and a part of her is straining in dislike at that, wants to be near him, wants to listen to his heart beat some more, and Alicia watches Peter look at Will, and-
Eli's in the room. Good, Alicia thinks.
"Peter," she tries to say as calmly as she can, tries to sound as sane as possible. God, her arm is starting to hurt. This annoying burn. "I want a divorce."
All hell promptly breaks loose.
/
Their second screaming match is different than the one in the other universe. This one is more passive aggressive trills, more looks of mock. More Peter telling her she's absolutely insane for making this kind of decision, reducing her words to the meds they're giving her for pain.
She informs him they haven't given her anything yet. When Eli speaks up, the ball starts rolling.
It doesn't stop until Peter pointedly walks out of the room, ten minutes later.
Will is still hovered there, and Alicia hisses when Peter roughly pushes past Will, Eli following quietly, but it's-
It's cold in her chest chased out by warmth when Will comes back in, sits beside her.
He holds her hand when the doctor sews her up, kisses her forehead each time she cringes and whimpers. He whispers to her and stares at her like he's almost lost his whole world, and she thinks it's funny, how in the other world, this is how she would've been too. This is what she's wanted, and it's like the immediate closeness isn't the result of trauma, or fear. It's the result of having all the other shit thrown to the wayside. Priorities. Perspective.
It's not gooey, not outwardly expressive public displays of affection, but it's comfortable. It comforting. He is here. He is real.
He is alive.
She tells herself this to keep her head above the tide of it all.
/
When Grace and Zach arrive, Grace is crying, and Zach's eyes are red, too. She opens one of her arms that's not hooked up to the IV and grins crookedly at them, shot full of pain medication and half delirious. Will says he'll step outside again but when she almost tells him to stay, he says he'll go get sodas. Asks Zach and Grace what they want, and it's-
It's weird, and it makes her happy, and it's quite hard to explain the particularities of why.
"They're saying you're a hero, Mom," Zach is gruffly telling her. "Did you really try and get the gun away from gunman?"
Alicia strokes a hand through her daughter's pretty hair, shakes her head fondly. "No," she mutters, a somber edge in her voice. "Will is the one who tackled the client. He's the real hero."
Grace's eyes perk at that, taking in every detail, and Alicia may have been drugged up, but she could have sworn that when Will came back into the room and passed out the Diet Cokes- that they looked like they had more respect for Will than they'd had before. She knows that they'll get there.
They will.
/
Will steps out to talk with Diane on the phone, and when he comes back, Grace inquires, slightly off put, "Where's Dad?"
"At the press conference," Zach tells her, and Will nods in agreement.
"Your father thought it would be pertinent to get the press away from your mother," he says.
"Hmm," Alicia hums sadly, half impatient that the doctor still hasn't brought her chart back with her papers to sign. "Press will definitely be waiting for us at the apartment."
"We could stay with Dad tonight," Grace offers up, but Zach shakes his head.
"Mom probably doesn't want to drive an hour and a half, Grace."
"What I want is a purple heart and rest," Alicia tries to insert as jokingly as she can, but it falls flat. There's an awkward silence, because Alicia knows what she wants to do, knows what's going to happen. Life is all a matter of how the goal can be achieved, at this point. Maneuvering obstacles to get through, and even if her kids aren't an obstacle, the press certainly are. They've spent too long waiting for the knock.
"I think you both should stay with your Dad tonight," Alicia voices, fixing her gaze on Will. He clears his throat, smoothing a hand over the outline of his jaw. Before the kids had arrived, Kalinda had shown up with fresh clothing for Will, had said she was closely monitoring Jeffrey Grant's condition.
The kid was so sick in the head.
Kalinda had told her as much before leaning in to hug her, and whisper her thanks, which was strange. Discombobulating to Alicia, who had watched as Kalinda stepped outside to speak with Will. Alicia had thought, in that time she was alone, about the other day she'd spent. How she'd wandered around from place to place for the voicemail's meaning to come to light. How everything had been dark, and the world hadn't made sense anymore. How she'd felt dead inside, and how she's avoided all of this by making a different decision.
She wonders if, in the other life, she could have saved Will's life like she did today.
There's no time for bullshit.
Knowing the alternative has taught her this much.
"I think I'm going to stay with Will tonight, okay guys? I need to hang around Chicago in case the police need anything from us."
They look wary, but they can't not agree.
Will looks surprised by her forwardness, and she offers up a wry raise of her mouth.
She hasn't lied to them, in any case. Just omitted the truth of the matter.
I need to fall asleep next to him. I need to wake up and hear his heartbeat and know he's not cold as ice. I need to wake up like that every morning for the rest of my life, because I control my own fate. And I want a happy life.
/
Will's car is at the courthouse, still.
Zach drives the three of them to retrieve it when Alicia gets checked out, around five, and when Alicia gets out of the car she hugs Grace as hard as she can muster, despite the injury.
It hits her, quite suddenly, that she could have died today, too.
/
On the way back to his apartment, they pick up her medication at a drug store. She waits in the car, and he comes back with a white package. "I ordered pizza online while I was waiting in the checkout because you have to take the Percocet with-
She leans in and pulls his mouth down hard on hers. He gives into the kiss, strokes his thumb across her cheekbone and grunts at the taste. He's trying to be gentle with her, trying to give her a little bit of space, but then she just goes for it like that, and- "Leesh. It's okay. Hey. Hey."
"I know," she whispers throatily, all cried out. "I'm just so happy you're okay. That it wasn't…worse."
"I didn't even get a battle scar from today," Will tries to tease, but Alicia's face falls, something dark in her eyes.
Once, there was a bullet that tore through your throat and tore my world apart.
/
They try to watch the news, but when their bellies are gorged on pizza and Alicia truly is high as a kite, they manage to find their way into his bedroom. The sheets are just as she remembered them, and standing the threshold of his room, she tries to kick back the lump in her throat. She can't get her arm wet, but she feels so unclean, and even if this is his room, she knows that in some other life there's an apartment just like this one up for sale, that Aubrey and Sarah had to clean it out, and it's just-
"Can we shower?" she murmurs, choked up. "Or-
"I'll run you a bath," Will inclines his head, runs a hand across the small of her back and nuzzles her throat.
/
They've done this before. Twice, actually. But it still makes something unfurl in her chest to see the bubbles, to smell the soaps. She had joked, years ago, that he was putting the Gardner moves on her, that he had the goodies for all the girls he wanted to make swoon, but this, staring at the sight of him testing the water with his hands before undressing her, it's different.
It's like watching the rest of her life play out before her eyes. Comfort. Peace. Love.
Happiness.
And it's so jarring to think that this could have all gone away. That this was stripped from her, in that other world. That in the dream she would never have this, only her loneliness. That something this whole, this beautiful, could have crumbled so easily. It's horrific.
But he helps her slide down into the tub, and she yearns.
She begs him to join her.
He does.
/
When she watches him stand before her, naked, she looks up at him, and even if she has to be conscientious of her arm, it still makes her mouth dry. Alicia is already half asleep, but she doesn't want to go just yet, and she studies the smattering of hair across his pubic bone, the hair on his legs, the clench of his biceps as he gets behind her, slides in along her back, and-
Alicia exhales, leans against him. He wraps his arms around her middle, the water hot and yielding all around them. "This is so much different than how I'd expected it," he informs her, hazy.
"Oh," Alicia murmurs. "How did you expect it?"
"Taking you against a desk. Angry."
He bites into her neck, that spot. The spot that's never ceased to make her toes curl, and she half moans. "Yeah."
"Yeah," he agrees. "But this is better, I think."
Will's long, deft fingers trace the curve of her inner thighs, find the apex of her body and begin to circle her clit. "So much better," he swallows thickly, and begins to work his hand.
Alicia splutters, gripping his thigh with her good hand, twisting her neck to delve her tongue into his mouth.
/
At midnight, she's still awake despite the barely there lull of consciousness. Her thoughts are unintelligible, but he's staying up with her until she falls asleep, and she just…won't.
"You have to be exhausted," he makes out, holds her and rocks her in his arms. It's intimate and real and she keeps having to remind herself that he's alive. It hits her constantly, that he's really hear.
These are his lungs. This is his heart. This is his skin.
"I think I had a dream you died," she slurs. "And it was the worst thing in the world."
"When I saw the gun go off and you were standing in the line of fire, I almost lost it," he admits, hoarse. He presses his lips to her temple, squeezes her tighter.
"Why'd you go for the gun?" Alicia asks softly. She has to repeat the question again before he realizes she actually wants an answer.
"Because I thought he was going to shoot you," he tells her, as if the line of questioning is obtuse.
"No," Alicia stops him. "In the other life."
He has no idea what she's talking about, thinks it must be the medication. "Because I thought he was going to shoot you," he tells her again.
Slowly, recognition forms in Alicia's mind, some strange sound parting her lips.
"Hey," he goes. "Shh. I'm right here. Go to sleep. I'm right here. I love you, Alicia."
She tries to tell him the same, but before she knows it, she's fallen asleep in his arms, his heart pulsing against her timid cheek.
They sleep like the dead.
.
.
.
fin.
/
A/N- Hey, y'all. So I thought I was going to sit down and write a little AU verse and then it turned into four in the morning and seven thousand words, and I feel like a rusty fork jotting down words, at this point. I'm super out of shape and it's only been a few weeks, but please bare with me because I liked the idea and went with it.
Also, I have this headcanon that Will went for Jeffrey Grant's gun because in the back of his mind he remembered how Alicia had been there, in court, the day before, and maybe, hey, I don't know, he thought if he went for the gun there was absolutely no chance of Alicia getting hurt. Also, I feel like when Will's lips moving but Finn didn't know what he was saying he was saying,
"Tell Leesh. Tell Leesh. Tell Leesh I love her. Tell Leesh it's okay. Tell Leesh I don't hate her. I love her."
Or I don't know. I don't know why I do these things to myself.