Notes: Well, here we are at the end! Thank you all so, so much for reading, commenting, etc. I've really loved chatting to you guys and I really, really appreciate your support and encouragement! Thank you so much! :)
"Got it figured out yet?" Scotty asks, pointing the remote at the television.
Lilly barely glances up from the police report she's reading. "The brother did it."
Scotty thumbs the remote and puts an end to the crime drama he has been half-heartedly watching. "That's what I figured."
Lilly smirks. "Whatever."
Scotty sighs and tosses the remote aside, his feet up on Lilly's coffee table. "How about real crimes? Solved our case yet?"
Lilly shakes her head and looks up at him with half a grin. "Have you? I'm the one doing all the work over here."
"I clocked off at five, and I'm stayin' that way until Monday morning," Scotty says with a yawn.
Lilly looks back at the police report. It's from December 1969, and she's been finding it a relief to be back at work, escaping into crimes of the past and slowly bringing truths to light again. Work keeps her busy.
Still, she had promised Stillman she wouldn't overdo things, and if she's honest with herself, she's still a little afraid of burying herself in work again. She knows that exhaustion and stress is something she can't afford to fall into again.
She sets the folder aside and buries into the corner of the couch, the soles of her feet pressing up against Scotty's hip. "Put the TV back on," she says.
Lilly walks slowly, her heart pounding in her chest. She is reminded of a story from her childhood, where the heroine was referred to as bird-like and small. That is how Lilly feels now – like her bones are hollow and brittle, like a breath of wind could pick her up and destroy her with one fatal twist.
But if I were a bird, Lilly reminds herself, I would master the wind and fly with it, rather than let it destroy me.
She pushes the analogy from her mind after that. It reminds her too much of the differences between herself now and herself then, months ago. Before John Smith.
And try as she might, she can't quite get back to the Lilly of then.
She quickens her pace and lifts her chin, time and doubt weighing upon her shoulders. She reaches the end of the corridor and spins slowly, facing him through the bars.
He looks pleased. He stands and curls his fingers around the iron between them. "I was hoping you'd come," he says softly. "I asked for you."
Lilly swallows and wets her throat, determined to have a steady voice. "I know you did," she says, and she keeps her eyes level on his, determined to face him, determined to be brave and calm.
"So," John Smith says softly, "are you sleeping, detective? Or do the shadows keep you awake?"
Lilly stares back at him, and for a moment, she considers running.
"Tell me," John Smith says hungrily, peering at her between the bars. "Tell me – do you sleep? Or do you lie awake and remember me?"
Lilly stares at him and keeps close to the wall opposite, ensuring a distance of several feet between them. "Why'd you do it?" she asks softly. "Tell me why."
"You know why, surely?" John Smith asks, looking amused. "I know we discussed that, detective."
"You gave me some bullshit reason about lives with no meanings," Lilly says. "Hope and fear."
"You're going to want a better reason," John Smith sighs, and he looks pleased. His eyes take on a dreamy look as he gazes at her. "There is no better reason," he says. "I enjoyed it. I took women who thought they were happy and loved and strong, and I turned them to ruin before they died, and I liked it. That's why."
Lilly's teeth are clenched and she can feel bile rising up in her throat. She chants a silent mantra to herself, telling herself to not be afraid, to question him, to interrogate him, to get her answers.
"You think seeing me here like this will put your demons to rest," John Smith says. "It won't. Haven't you learned that by now, detective? You have so many demons, and you haven't beaten any of them. You were afraid of so many things before you were afraid of me..."
She can hear the mantra in her head changing – telling her to get away, before he unravels the fragile threads of healing and security she's managed to knit together.
She curses her own stubbornness.
"I wanted to see you," she says, and her voice is soft and shaky. "I wanted to tell you I know your real name, and I know where you're from, and I know where you're going next." She gives him a grim smile at that.
"Knowing all of that will not change the fact you don't know why, detective," he says quietly.
He smiles back at her, and she feels the little flare in her chest deflate and die. She lifts her chin, but her eyes are bright with tears.
"Go to Hell," she whispers.
"It was lovely to meet you, detective," he answers. "Truly lovely to meet you."
Lilly doesn't jerk awake from her nightmares anymore. She emerges slowly, struggling from the heavy weight of sleep, her breathing loud in her ears and sweat damp on her skin.
A lot of the time, Scotty sleeps through her discomfort.
She breathes out slowly, her eyes shifting from the moonlit window to the familiar shadows of the furniture in her bedroom. She rolls over and puts one hand out on Scotty's chest, feeling his warmth and the even rhythm of his breathing.
A few times, they've tried to separate, because Lilly has tried to stand adamant in her belief that it's not a good idea; that it's not normal for him to be there with her.
Neither of them can stick with it. He always ends up back at her door in the small hours of the morning, awake and worried, and she's always waiting for him.
She watches him sleep and she grows frustrated with herself for not being able to move over this hurdle alone. She feels embarrassed about needing him there, like it makes her weak and vulnerable and not herself.
And whenever she mentions this to him, he lists everything she has overcome alone, and he reminds her that it's okay to trip occasionally, and that John Smith is a hurdle all right to falter upon.
Lilly hasn't marked the date on any calendar, but it's still burned into her mind, and as it draws nearer, she wonders if an actual meeting with John Smith would be like her dreams.
"Do you think he'd tell me why?" she asks Scotty one morning, looking at him over her coffee.
"No," Scotty answers, and a little part of Lilly hates him for telling her the truth instead of encouraging her hopes for real answers.
"Maybe he would," she insists.
Scotty looks at her and she can see frustration and worry on his face. "Don't," he says softly. "He'll just undo it all, Lil. He'll put us back at square one."
And in the end she agrees not to go and visit John Smith, because Scotty says 'us' instead of 'you', and she doesn't want to drag him down with her.
Lilly hears, down the grapevine, that John Smith requested to see her before he was given the needle. She's not sure it's true – nobody sought her out to see if she'd be willing to fulfil his wish.
"They could have asked me," she mumbles one night, her voice half-lost in her pillow. "If he wanted to see me, they could have asked me if I'd do it."
"I'm glad they didn't," Scotty says, and his arm comes heavy over her waist. "He's dead, Lil."
"I know," she answers, but deep down there are still stirrings of fear and memories of the dark.
She wonders how long she'll be trapped with it.
Sometimes she does see him. Sometimes her dreams are so real, she wonders about the afterlife, and if it's possible for him to somehow actually reach her. She's always hurt when her mother fails to turn up in her dreams.
"You and I are very alike, you know," John Smith tells her one night.
Lilly rolls over and shares a pillow with Scotty, his warm breath sweeping across her hair. She closes her eyes and wills her heartbeat to slow down again.
"You're dead," she tells John Smith, and the words in her mind are loud and firm.
"Yes," he agrees quietly. "But I'm still here, aren't I?"
Sometimes she breaks.
"I can't do it," she sobs one morning, and it looks like she's falling apart over burnt toast and cold coffee, instead of the deeper current of worry that's always pulling at her.
Scotty never knows what to do when this happens. He wraps his arms around her and he feels her shaking and trembling and he wonders what force on Earth is possibly strong enough to sweep the fear away from her.
He blames John Smith and he blames Dr. Laura, because John Smith started it and Dr. Laura was supposed to finish it.
"You've got a session today," he reminds Lilly, murmuring his voice into her shaking shoulder.
"Oh, great," Lilly sniffs, her voice sarcastic. "More rhetoric and head tilting."
Scotty laughs with relief, because she is in there somewhere, Old Lil, and he wishes she found it easier to emerge.
"I'll tell 'em you're sick," he says, squeezing her slightly.
"Tell Dr. Laura, too."
"No deal," he answers, and his voice is firm. "Make sure you go." He kisses her ear and he leaves for work alone, feeling strangely off-balance and disoriented without Lilly beside him.
"We're too close, now," Scotty admits to Kat. She watches him quietly from across the table in the break room, her coffee going cold.
"There are all these blurred lines," Scotty says, and then he stops, because he's confused and because he doesn't know exactly how to explain his relationship with Lil. Everything changed when he pulled her up out of the bunker, and neither of them know how to go back.
"You know," Kat says quietly, "people do some fucked up things trying to find their way back to normal. What you and Lil have isn't fucked up or blurred or wrong. It's just a coping mechanism."
"Well how do you change it from a coping mechanism to actually coping?" Scotty asks. "None of it is getting better."
Kat grins at him and shakes her head. "It's getting better," she assures him. "It's just not happening fast enough for either of you."
Scotty's shoulders slump and he drums his fingers on the table. "Neither of us is particularly patient," he agrees, and Kat grins again.
Scotty tells himself to stop looking too far ahead; to just take each day as it comes, and relish the accomplishments that he and Lilly have achieved.
He never admits to her that it feels like he's taking advantage. Like he's wormed his way into a situation he doesn't rightfully belong to exist in.
He tries to avoid curling around her at night, because Old Lilly always wanted her space, and normal doesn't mean a New Lilly, it means Old Lilly, back again, and he wants to encourage it by treating their relationship like it used to be.
Only it doesn't work, because of George, because of Romeo, because of John Smith. Both Lilly and Scotty have shifted and cowered and bruised so many times, it feels like Old Lilly is lost forever.
And sometimes Scotty doesn't care, he just wants New Lilly to feel okay, and he wants her close and warm and alive, so he slides across the mattress and he curls himself around her and hugs her until he falls asleep, calm and okay.
Calm and okay.
"I regret it, you know," Lilly whispers to him one morning, not even sure if Scotty's awake. "Not going to see him, at the end."
"I know you do."
"I wanted to say things to him. I wanted him to say things to me."
"You're obsessing over the what ifs, Lil."
"Maybe."
Scotty closes his eyes again, still drowsy, Lilly wrapped in his arms and her breath bleeding through the thin cotton of his t-shirt. Her lashes fleet against his throat.
"Do you think I'm weak?" she asks after a moment.
"No."
"I mean it; answer truthfully."
"I mean it, Lil. Now come on, it's Sunday. I want to sleep in."
"It's my bed. I make the rules."
He grins.
"Cops aren't meant to let things like this get to them."
"People are, Lil. People are meant to be afraid of fucked-up creatures like John Smith. You're a person, not a cop. Take it as a compliment."
She huffs an impatient sigh against his neck. "You're missing the point."
"You're tryin' to make a point where there ain't one to make," he warns her. "Cops aren't meant to do that, either. Rely on the evidence, Lil, not the conjecture."
"Well, the evidence says I'm weak," she says, and she sounds oddly fierce, like he's somehow just proved her right without meaning to. "I can't sleep without you here; I'm scared of the dark; I have nightmares."
"Being scared of the dark and havin' nightmares ain't equal to strength or weakness," Scotty says sharply, suddenly wide awake. "Quit it."
There's a beat of silence before he grins again and squeezes her a little tighter. "And as for not sleepin' without me here, plenty of women have fallen victim to the same –"
She punches his shoulder and rolls away, and he laughs, delighted to see her grinning back at him.
Old Lilly's still there. Still there, somewhere.
Lilly and Scotty solve cases.
She finds herself reading the expressions on his face far better than she used to, and she knows it's because she's seen them in shadowy moonlight in bed and in yellow sunlight at the breakfast table. Thoughtful, worried, focused.
They put clues together and when they interview suspects, they finish each other's sentences and flow seamlessly together like one person.
One whole, new person.
Everyone notices, but nobody says anything. There are smiles though. Secret smiles.
Scotty's good at giving them, and Lilly's good at spotting them.
"You know what I've been doing wrong?" Lilly asks one night, curled up beside Scotty on the sofa.
"That's a loaded question," he mutters, thumbing through channels on the television.
Lilly ignores him. "I've been looking back too much."
"That's our job," Scotty answers. "We've spent all week readin' up on a case from 1993."
"Don't be a smart ass," she says, taking the remote from him. "I mean looking back on the person I was a few years ago. Before George. He's the one that started it. John Smith just took advantage of all the other stuff I'd already been through."
Scotty watches her, feeling wary of this conversation and where it's heading.
"I'm never, ever going to be the same person I was before all of that," Lilly says, and her voice is strangely awed and sad. "That person is gone."
"Not completely," Scotty says. "Now and then she pokes her head up to kick my ass about somethin'. Give me that." He takes the remote back and nudges her with a grin. "It ain't all black and white, Lil. You're not gonna be the same person you were, but you ain't gonna be a completely new one, either."
He puts his arm around her. "Experiences are meant to change you," he says, and he turns up the volume, hoping to bring an end to her worries.
After a moment she leans against him, her eyes focused on another crime drama they'll both solve before the third commercial break. She doesn't seem unhappy or worried, and Scotty breathes a soft sigh of relief, wondering if this is all it's going to take to turn another corner.
"You know," Lilly says, pulling the blankets up to her shoulders, "I haven't had a nightmare for a while now."
"Yeah well, don't say that too loud," Scotty says, yawning. "They'll hear you and come back."
"Maybe I don't need you here anymore," Lilly says softly.
Scotty looks at her, wide awake. "You want me to go?"
She slides across the mattress and puts her head on his shoulder, and he can feel her heart hammering in her chest, her pulse rapid against him. Nervous.
"No," she whispers.
He puts his arm around her, and he's relieved, and slightly confused. "Good," he says after a moment, and they both relax, falling into something new and oddly comfortable.
Because they both know that everything is easier together, even if things aren't so difficult now. And they both know that everything is better together.
Like it's always been. Work. Life.
"Partners," Lilly breathes tiredly, and they both fall asleep, the word soft and warm in the air between them.
"People think we're sleeping together," Lilly tells Scotty one morning. She watches the rain run down the window pane.
Scotty stretches, still half-buried in pillows and the sheets. "Gee, how confusing," he mumbles. His fingers reach out and brush the small of her back. "Why would they think that?"
"Not like this," Lilly says, rolling her eyes at him. "They think we're... not sleeping."
Scotty grins into his pillow, and Lilly punches him as soon as she senses it. "It's not funny," she says.
"It's because you're feelin' better," Scotty says. "It's because everything is gettin' back to normal. People don't feel bad when it comes to spreadin' gossip about you now."
Lilly laces her hands over her chest and stares up at the ceiling. "I don't really care," she says softly.
Scotty reaches over and takes her hand without looking up from where he's snuggled into the pillows. He squeezes her fingers gently. "There are worse things to face," he agrees.
She looks over at him, at the line of him in her bed, his back rising and falling as he breathes. "Yeah," she says. "It could be worse."
Lilly remembers the way Scotty sent shivers up her spine the night they went to collect John Smith. She remembers telling herself she was exhausted, and that was why she felt the electric charge between them.
She's not so sure now, because it's still there. It's more frequent now, and she supposes it's because he's always there, and he's in her bed, of all places, and even though they haven't done what everyone else thinks they've done, the thought has occurred to her.
It's occurred to Scotty too, and he forces it back, because no matter how he felt when she was missing, it's not appropriate now.
But he lies awake sometimes and he remembers how much his throat ached and how sick his stomach felt when he thought Lil had been taken away from him forever, and he wonders if it's just the situation that's causing him to feel something deeper now, or if it's something that's always been there between them.
Scotty kisses Lilly one night when they're both near to sleep. He presses his mouth softly against hers and she shifts closer to him and hooks her finger under the collar of his t-shirt.
He whispers his secrets to her in the dark. "I'd never been so scared," he tells her. "Thought I'd lost you."
She clings to him and she tries not to fall back into the memories of fear and loneliness. She wants to forget the bunker and everything that comes with it.
Scotty is like an anchor, keeping her afloat in the same place. She can breathe.
"This is almost expected," she whispers, sliding her leg over his hip.
"Partners," he says, his voice soft and low in the dark. He kisses her again, his hands warm as they ride the soft material of her shirt up her skin. "Through all this, Lil, through all this shit, some things just ain't ever gonna change."
She puts her arms around him, and her heart is drumming because it's a big leap they're about to take together and she doesn't want to wake up with regrets and shifted perceptions. "Some things won't ever change," she whispers back in agreement.
Old Lilly felt the electrical pull to Scotty Valens. New Lilly feels it too, and she knows it was him that pulled her through the dark, that scattered the nightmares, that kept her anchored and afloat.
John Smith is still in her ear. Not silent yet. Still there, taunting. "I'm still here," he says.
Lilly closes her eyes and buries her face against Scotty's neck. I don't care, she thinks, because Scotty is still here as well.