Chapter 21: Such As It Ends

"I've been vacant for so long, but you were there.

You look so tired, now just please,

Love, let me take it on my shoulders,

And we might make it home."

Ava was leaning against Jonathan's car, smoking as they waited together.

"She has a ride, yes?" Jonathan asked distractedly, checking his watch. Ava nodded, watching the cigarette flinch away in ash as she inhaled.

"I just wanna make sure she hears the delightful story of Bruce Wayne's midlife crisis." She grinned, flicking her thumbnail against her cigarette. Jonathan nodded, an eyebrow raised in reflection

"That was…out of character, to say the least." He murmured thoughtfully. It had been. Bruce Wayne, the gracious host, had called out a crowd of wealthy strangers on their loitering. He'd made them think on their false friendship and urged them from his mansion in a blaze of condescension. It had made Ava laugh. And now, they stood outside in the cold as they waited for Naomi.

In the quiet of the wintry nighttime, a heavy, angry sigh came from the house's foundation. Ava frowned slightly, putting out her cigarette in a distracted motion.

"Was that the house?" She asked. Jonathan nodded vaguely, glancing over at the Wayne's mansion. "Houses don't make that sound." She muttered. From a high window, there was a flicker of light. Quick and jittery, a burst of color that crawled the window frame. Ava gently tugged on his sleeve, unable to move her eyes from the window.

"Is that…fire?" He asked. He frowned, unsure of what to do. Ava nodded slightly.

"I think…Naomi." She whispered, moving forward. The house shuddered, and the sound ran through her skin. It was heavy and harsh, grating as steel. She didn't slow down until Jonathan grabbed her hand, pulling her back to him.

"It's not safe there." He hissed, tightly clamping his hand around hers. "There's nothing you can do." He said. He was right. Through the sudden, fierce firelight in the windows came a silhouette. A shadow of a girl, coughing and lurching from the flame. It was hard to see as the smoke poured from the gaping hole in the frame. Glass fell to the ground in glittering shards, shining like stars as they bounced on the lawn. The silhouette didn't so much fall, but dropped. There was no grace period in which she steeled herself or crouched to leap. There was the moment where she was on the ledge, and there was the moment when she wasn't. And there was the moment when Ava recognized her sister.

It happened like a car crash. It didn't make any sense up until the exact moment that it did. And when that moment came, the force of the ground throwing itself at her little sister smashed into Ava, too. Had she searched every possibility, she would never have thought that it would end this way. She was supposed to die before Naomi. She was supposed to die stupid and violent, and young. There was something horribly, horribly wrong with someone like Naomi dying at sixteen. Ava would have thought all of these things if there'd been enough time from the second story window to the ground. She may have been imagining it, but she thought she heard the sick crunch of a bone.

It was second nature to run forward. She didn't realize she was until she realized she wasn't. That is, someone was stopping her. Jonathan's arms were around her waist as they fell to the ground, too dizzy, too horrified to stop as she squirmed, clawing at the ground. He pulled her back.

"You can't go over there." He said. He was trying to calm her, he was doing all he could. Unaware of herself, she landed scratches against his hands and forearms in her struggle to crawl to her sister.

"Fucking let me go!" She half-sobbed. She tried to turn to look at her sister. There was a frozen moment, the image of the little girl she loved so much. One moment, before the roof began to fall. Swarmed in hot flame, it crumbled, crashing, tumbling down in a blaze of embers and sound. Jonathan pulled her back against him, turning them both from the roar of the falling fire.

The wood fell. The shingles fell. The fire jumped from window to grass, finding kindling in the crumbling wood of the building, and Naomi's burning body. Ava fell silent, stricken by a sudden disgusting grief in her stomach. She felt unable to move, overcome by the shock in her bones. Under the grating white noise of the burning mansion, Ava couldn't hear herself. She was whispering, a steady stream of one word over and over again: no. She couldn't struggle any more, feeling nearly helpless as she watched the fire consume.

Jonathan felt like a true scarecrow. A bystander in a field, unable to move, unable to help other than in appearances. His arms around her waist, he felt her breathing as it slowed. He felt her chaotic scrambling as it fell to nothing. Moments passed in pained silence as she stared like a statue. He let his arms fall away from her waist, hesitant to speak or to touch her.

So much for psychologist.

Psychologist. Not a goddamn therapist. I don't know how to help her. I'm useless.

He watched her face, alight with the glow of the flames that devoured her sister with their crawling heat. Tears filled her eyes, freckled her lashes and streamed down her cheeks. Her face was still, staring, frozen in a new kind of horror. The illusion of movement in her eyes was temporary, caused by the dancing shadows of menacing flame.

I think she's in shock.

You're the expert.

Jonathan pulled off his jacket, sitting beside her to secure it over her shoulders. If not for the cold, then simply for the thought. She pulled it around her, her eyes relentlessly producing more tears as she pulled her eyes from the spectacle.

"She's dead." She said softly, her voice hoarse and cracking. Jonathan found himself, against all logic, wanting to deny it. It would surely make her feel better. But he nodded. Ava nodded back, trying to be quiet in the sob that she couldn't hide. She ducked her head, mentally urging herself to stop crying.

You told her you were gonna fuck things up.

She grasped Jonathan's hand, tightly, weaving her fingers through his like a tether to reality.

"I killed her." She gasped between empty, chaotic sobs, raking her free hand's fingers through her hair.

"No." He urged miserably.

How strange it is to feel helpless. I'm not used to this.

Yeah. And she's probably not used to having a dead sister. Things change.

He gently squeezed her palm, and from the fit of her despair, she glanced over at him.

"I fucked up so bad." She whispered, closing her eyes. The house shifted once more, the lower story's sloping roof getting ready to slide free. Jonathan looked up to it, feeling conflicted as his nature fought with his common sense. Gently, he eased a hand around her upper arm.

"We have to go." He whispered. "I know you want to sit here, and I would sit here with you for as long as you needed." He paused as she looked up at him. "But that roof is coming down soon, and you aren't going to be under it." He gently pulled her with him as he stood. She felt too numb to protest, standing with him and nearly tripping in her high heels. Jonathan wrapped an arm around her, leading her in the opposite direction. I it was imprinted again in her eyelids—her sister, beautiful and still and unnatural with her broken neck where she lay on the grass. Ava swallowed hard, opening her eyes to escape the image. Jonathan held open the passenger door to his car, following her with his concerned eyes as she numbly got inside.

How do you even deal with something like this? What is she feeling?

You don't know until someone you care about dies horribly, I guess. Good think you don't really care about anybody, huh?

I care about her.

He drove. He drove, but without thinking or minding or focusing. He drove because he couldn't think of any better solution than for the two of them to be somewhere else. And as he drove, he stole glances at her. He was afraid that if his eyes stayed away from her too long, something awful would happen. He worried that when he looked back, she would be a skeleton. He wished, for once, that he'd learned a little bit about grief counselling.

It must hurt, he thought. He had nothing to compare to. There were a lot of different kinds of pain, and many of them had wormed their way into his life. The past was a minefield of pain, a sampler of different kinds of grief. Though his various wounds had hurt, he'd never loved anyone enough to feel a loss like that. It occurred to him that until Naomi, Ava probably hadn't either.

Driving down the highway in the dead night, their headlights were the only thing lighting the way before them, giving some semblance of a path to the darkness. Though stars were speckled above, they were difficult to see, concealed by the roving clouds. Ava stared out the window at them as they crawled over her stars and moon. The beautiful nighttime, obscured. She closed her eyes, having a difficult time breathing.

"Can we stop?" She half whispered. Her head throbbed, her pulse becoming a ticking clock that urged pain through her temples. Jonathan nodded, almost immediately rolling the car onto the shoulder of the highway. The moment the wheels ceased to turn, Ava threw herself out of the door, gasping for air as her stomach turned. Her palms shook, cold sweat on her skin as she held on to the side of the car. The throbbing in her temples quickly became the rushing sound of blood past her ears. She had fallen to her knees in the most violent throes of her panic attack before Jonathan reached the other side of the car to kneel in front of her.

With gentle persistence, he placed his hands against her cheeks, cool on her skin to contrast her burning tears. Her eyes were opened wide, panicky and tearful, holding his gaze as she tried to slow her breathing. Her hands balled in fists around Jonathan's shirt collar. It was moments before she could breathe properly, moments before she didn't feel so violently nauseated. After those moments, she was still and pale, trembling. Tears continued to stream from her eyes, rolling down her face in dark streaks where they caught her makeup.

"Why can't I stop crying?" She whispered.

"You were having a panic attack." He whispered back, brushing her hair from her eyes.

"I feel like I'm half dead." She said softly, tears rolling down her cheeks.

"You're alive." He said more firmly.

"Did I let her die?" She asked, slightly incredulous, tears stinging her eyes as they mixed with mascara.

"No." He said, shaking his head. Trembling, she let go of his shirt and tried to wipe away the tears from her eyes as Jonathan took his hands from her face. A sob climbed through her, catching her in painful surprise.

What do I do?

Hug her?

He did. Jonathan wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her nearly onto his lap as he gently stroked his fingers through her hair.

Ava allowed herself a moment. A moment to feel small, and terrified, and hopeless. She felt buried, lost within the collapse of her mind. It was as she pulled herself from the despair she'd opened up that she realized she hadn't lost everything. Not the arms around her or the man connected to them. He was still there. She filled her lungs with freezing air as she wrapped her arms around him.

"I wish I could tell her I'm sorry." She whispered against his shoulder.

"If she heard you, she'd tell you not to." He whispered back.

A/N: "Such As It Ends" by Ludo. Sorry it's a bit short. (I keep saying that, don't I…) Happy holidays to everyone. I'll hopefully be updating regularly now, I got a new laptop for Christmas! I'm sorry for any emotional turmoil caused by this chapter. No I'm not. ;) Please review/thank you SO much for the kind reviews I've already received. You are a lovely bunch of people. X MikaMurha