Hi, I'm an emotionally compromised Stitchers fan and I'm still not over that finale and I probably never will be.
The title is from a quote I've included at the end of the story. This is unedited, so any mistakes are mine.
I don't own the characters of Stitchers or the show.
Side note: I'm not quite sure what Kirsten's mother's name was, but I found the one I used on the Stitchers Wiki, so I apologize if it's incorrect. I also assumed that Kirsten remembered things from after she woke up with Temporal Dysplasia, but not before that point.
Kirsten could count how many times she had cried in her life on one hand. Before stitching, she couldn't process many of her emotions and after, she just shoved most of what she felt deep inside.
Now, here, standing on the wet grass surrounded by gray stones, she felt tears prickling at the back of her eyes. The feeling was almost foreign to her, but the past few days had been an impossible rollercoaster of emotions that she had only felt once before, long ago.
Mom. That had been one of the times she cried, in the bathroom of the funeral home, quiet so her father couldn't hear her sobs. She couldn't quite understand why she was feeling such things, why everything felt so different now. Her mind felt strangely empty, but it soon filled with Dad's guilty eyes and his distant words when he spoke to her. She couldn't even remember her mother, but he had explained what happened—the car crash and how it changed her—how Mom was gone and how she couldn't ever come back. Kirsten had wiped away the tears, not sure why she was crying in the first place, walked out of the bathroom and it was like Jacqueline Stinger had always been dead.
Kirsten glanced at a few of the stones as she passed, taking note of the names and years on each. Living with Temporal Dysplasia made the engraved dates seem like they had already been there forever, at the same time, they were new information to her, making it seem like it had just happened. They were merely points of reference to Kirsten, something that turned into a math equation so she could understand that time had passed during the dash between the numbers.
"Kirsten?" Camille's soft voice brought her back into reality, and Kirsten realized that she had stopped and was staring at one of the stones, lost in her thoughts. She strode forward quickly, stepping past Camille and ignored her outstretched hand.
The people had gathered around a new hole in the ground, all dressed in black and holding damp umbrellas in their hands. She came to the edge of the crowd, careful to stay away from comforting touches and pitying glances. She thought back to her mother's funeral, and in a blink, it was like she was there again. In a few heartbeats she pulls her mind back into the present and realizes this part wasn't much different; all the black bodies pressed together and the pale hands reaching out in sympathy. She didn't like that as a little girl, and she liked it even less now.
Somebody started talking, but the words were muffled as if Kirsten had cotton balls stuffed in her ears. She let her eyes travel around in the crowd, only seeing a few familiar faces. A couple near the front gave her a pause, she could see Cameron in their features. She saw him in the way the man stood, in the shape of the woman's face. They stood there silently, their eyes locked on the casket in front of them. Her gaze moved on again, passing over those from work quickly, not wanting to make eye contact.
The prickling came back again, this time bringing with it a lump in her throat that made it difficult to swallow. It felt as if it were forcing its way up into her mouth, and if she were to open it, all the words she wished she could have said would come spilling out.
"I need to keep you safe." She was back, her fingers threading their way into his hair, and desperately shaking her head. "Do not…not do this." His eyes were burning into hers, and she could see the light going out of them. The lump in her throat was back, and this time it turned into a small noise. Kirsten was brought back to the graveyard by Camille's arm around her, pulling her close.
"Shhh, it's okay," she whispered into Kirsten's hair and for a second, only a second, that's what Kirsten thought it might be.
"For those that would like to, they may now come forward and say some last words," a clear voice said, cutting into her feeling of being okay and slicing it to pieces.
Slowly the crowd moved forward, each stopping by the casket. It felt like forever until it was just her, Camille, Linus, and Cameron's parents left. The pair was standing by the casket, the mother's hand resting on the wood. In a blink, she had turned and was walking towards the three. Her sharp eyes caught onto Linus and Camille's hands held tightly together and she directed her steps towards Kirsten.
"I spoke to Cameron not too long ago. I knew something was up as soon as he said hello, but I chose to ignore it, and now I wish that I would have told him to come home then. Maybe he would still be alive," her words pierced Kirsten to the bone and left her heart aching. "I asked him if it was worth it, working there, when he could have been at so many better places. He told me that it was, and now I can see that he meant you. Although I wasn't there for him much as a child, I still know…knew my son, and I could tell when he was talking about a girl. He must have loved you very much." With that, she turned and strode quickly away, grabbing her husband's arm when she came close to him and left with him at her side.
Kirsten stood, unmoving, processing Cameron's mother's words. He must have loved you very much.
Again she was back in the lab.
"I didn't know!"
"Know what, Kirsten?"
"I'm everywhere."
She could feel Cameron's love for her seeping into her thoughts and into her blood from the stitch. His thoughts were of her, and only of her. She could feel each and every fiery emotion that he had experienced, but overall, was the overwhelming feel of love, and the thought that he wanted to protect her, to save her from hurt, to hold her.
A tear slid down her cheek, and she was back standing on the squishy ground, the casket a few yards away from her. Camille and Linus had walked away some time ago, giving her a moment alone. She walked forward, slowly, and soon she could place her shaking hands on the smooth wood.
"Hey girlfriend," she whispered with a sad smile playing on her lips. "I..didn't know." She repeated her words from before, hoping that somewhere, anywhere, he could hear what she was saying.
"It's been a week since you…died. I don't have any more residual emotion from stitching into you, and I want you to know that so you don't think I'm confused when I say that I have feelings for you. It's taken me a while to sort through everything and realize that. At the lab, I said that I don't do upset, and I don't. But with you gone…it's like there is this emptiness inside me. It different than not processing emotions, it's like I can't feel anything now that you're gone. It's either that or I'm so angry, or sad, or broken that I don't know how to go on. And through all of this, I found my feelings for you." Kirsten paused, and her fingers moved of their own accord, tracing unknown patterns on the wood of the casket.
"I miss you. I miss your nicknames that you gave me. I miss you being a mother hen if it seems like I might even get a paper cut. I miss seeing you at work, smiling at me, ready with an obscure reference to a movie."
She stands there for how long, she doesn't know, but eventually Camille comes up and guides her towards the car. She looked out the window before they drove off, and saw some men lowering the casket into the ground. That made it seem real. That made her brain process that Cameron Goodkin had always been dead, and there was only a ghost of him in her memory.
"There are no happy endings. Endings are the saddest part, so just give me a happy middle and a very happy start." –Shel Silverstein