A/N: Because I refuse to believe in a world where Jennifer is actually dead. Set post-Lighthouse. One-shot.
Omnia Vincit Amor - Love Conquers All
Ovid, Amores I, 2
Thus it will be; slender arrows are lodged in my heart,
and Love vexes the chest that it has seized
Shall I surrender or stir up the sudden flame by fighting it?
I will surrender - a burden becomes light when it is carried willingly.
Jennifer.
He catches her as she crumples to the ground murmuring something about doors and mistakes but he's barely got time to worry about that before it all gets so much worse. Panic claws at him, clutching at his throat, ripping open something vital in chest because fuck, she's not breathing. She closed the door on that smug bastard and then dropped like a rag-doll that someone was done playing with and he knows right there and then that he'll do anything to bring her back. Screw fate, screw destiny, screw whatever higher power is pulling the strings, he'll find a way around this if he has to yank William out of that pit to heal her himself.
But maybe there's someone a little closer to hand. Even with eyes stinging and vision blurred, he finds the woman wearing Audrey's familiar face. "Save her," he snarls in a voice he barely recognizes. "Save Jennifer."
Mara smiles and the weight of malice behind it is almost a blow. "Who are you to command me, dead man?" she asks lightly. "Still, your need falls in with my own. A door-opener has her uses." She walks towards them and he moves instinctively between the two women until a coughing fit drives him to his knees. By the time he manages to drag himself back up, spitting out the metallic tang of blood, she's looming over Jennifer.
He scrambles to Jennifer's side and takes her still warm hand in his. She's pale and so very motionless propped up against the cold, stone wall and his girl is never fully at rest, not even in her sleep.
Mara looks down at him. "You should know by now that all my gifts come with a price, Duke Crocker. Are you going to be the one who pays this one?" she asks with a curve of her lip.
From a distance he hears Nathan, hears Dwight shouting something, warnings maybe, but he is so far past that. Something is already working in him, something that Audrey's double let loose with that black handprint and riding it is like trying to ride a hurricane. He's always been ready to play the odds, but that's not nearly good enough for him where Jennifer is concerned.
If this is a deal with the devil, so be it.
"Yes. I don't care. Do it. Bring her back," he demands hoarsely.
Mara places two fingers on Jennifer's forehead. There's a crackle and the smell of ozone in the air and suddenly he's on fire, burning up from the inside out, every cell in his body shrieking out against the abuse except...except for his hand, still cradling Jennifer's. There the heat is tolerable, pleasant even, as it pulses steadily from his fingers to hers. Mara's words come back to him and he thinks he understands the nature of the price. If this is his death for Jennifer's life, he's more than willing.
And yeah, she'll be pissed because he promised her, hell, he promised her so many things, more than she knew and isn't that a kick in the head now. But Nathan will know, will explain things to her, will help take care of her and he's so grateful that he got his head out of his ass in time. Audrey and Nathan. Jennifer. Friends, a lover, and a richer life than he probably deserved.
The fire beneath his skin starts to subside and instead there's a creeping grayness at the edges of his vision but he fights to keep his eyes on her and he thinks his heart might explode when he sees her take one gasping breath, then another. She's coming back and through the mist he feels her hand tighten in his when he calls her name.
"Duke?" she calls out, her eyes fluttering open.
"Right here, sweetheart, " he says, as he tries to smile reassuringly. Mara is still there and the rest of them too, hovering around the edges, but all he can see is Jennifer, the connection that has been there since the very beginning linking them, wrapping around them, warming, comforting, sustaining.
"Hold on," she whispers, or maybe she's just thinking it in this space they've carved out between them and then he inhales hard as heat flares up again, this time visibly: tiny golden flames licking along their intertwined hands. This is different though, the direction of the energy is sliding from her to him and it's a rush almost like troubled blood, only gentled.
"Jen, don't," he chokes out. He won't let her do this, won't let her sacrifice herself for him, but her grip tightens and he can't begin to figure out how to let her go.
"It's okay, I can do this. Hold on," she repeats, demands even, her eyes bright and fierce. The flames travel higher along his arm and to his chest where he can feel them engulfing the hand-print, consuming Mara's mark while leaving him untouched. Beside them, Mara drops to her knees with a shrill cry and he realizes that Jennifer isn't the source, she's the conduit. Somehow she's turned Mara's connection around on itself, forcing the woman to give where she would take.
"Audrey!" Nathan's voice bellows and turning with an effort, he sees what Nathan does, a flash of Audrey herself before Mara wrests back control. She tears her fingers away from Jennifer's forehead and whatever strange circuit existed between the three of them is broken. A rush of noise and light builds, a whirlwind centered around Mara throwing up dust, shattering the air and pulling her along with it, and his last conscious act is to pull Jennifer closer.
He's still gripping her tight when he wakes, her face tucked against his and the rise and fall of her steady breath is the sweetest sound he's ever heard, that and his name on her lips when she opens her eyes a few seconds later.
Even as he strokes her hair and presses a kiss to her temple he knows it won't last. Mara may be gone for the moment but Audrey is still in there, still fighting, and they need her back. The others are waking too and there are questions to ask and plans to make and troubled people to help. Haven still needs him to be on point. But right now, right this very moment, his living, breathing girl, his love, is in his arms and he is in hers.
"You saved me," she says, raising one trembling palm to his cheek.
He leans into it, lets the moment wash over him.
"You saved me back," he tells her.
For now, it's enough.