Author's Note: Hi! I'm back and honoring another request: Jack and Andy in the waiting room while Ripley died. :) It's somewhat canon compliant, minus Andy's feelings for Sullivan cause it just wouldn't work. So. Yeah. Canon compliant in that they aren't together-together. They're best friends/roommates that are very much toeing the line. :) You'll see. :P Side note - anybody else find Andy/Robert kind of bleh. She would have been so much better with someone else idk they always fight now and you an tell the fact that he's a probie bugs her (and him) and idk their love story always felt rushed and unfinished and the chemistry just...isn't really there for me all the time. Anyways, this one is called If We Have Each Other. Hope you enjoy! (my few loyal readers/reviewers! I do it for you. :)
When they found out that Ripley had died, or, more accurately, was going to die, and very, very, soon, it broke her heart. It did. It wasn't wholly for him, though death was a sad thing that she would never wish on anybody, it's just that, she didn't know him, as a person, a real, honest person, so she couldn't be sad in that way, the conventional way, maybe, but not in that way, that real, honest, way. Not for him.
For Vic. For Vic, she would cry a puddle of tears; for Vic, she would bring flowers, make food; for Vic, she would hug her loved ones extra tight tonight. Especially the one she has right beside her, right now. She hugged him, she squeezed him, she breathed him in, and it wasn't all for Vic, not this time. This time, it was more for her, more for her to come to terms with the fact that people leave, and people die, and that not even the best of us are exempt from being the victims of, and living in, such damn tragedy.
Vic was one of the best, and Ripley, he may have been one of them too, but now she would never know, and maybe one day, she'll ask Vic, maybe one day, Andy will ask her – was Lucas one of the best? – and maybe one day, Vic will be able to answer her without crying, but today was not that day.
That day would not be that day anytime soon, and she held on even tighter to Jack in realization of that – people leave, but sometimes people die, first, before they can - a realization that was cold, blanch, and stark, just like this damn hospital waiting room. Jack hugged her back with just as much left unsaid in the way his arms were wrapped around her, and she wants to sleep, she wants to sleep so bad – after a twenty-four hour shift – but she can't.
She can't, because it feels wrong and insensitive not only towards her colleagues, all gathered here now, but more importantly, towards Vic, who, tonight, just lost the one person who kept her whole world turning. Apparently. She'd had no idea Ripley had such magnitude in her life until mere hours ago, and now that she knows, she just, can't, sleep.
"I can't sleep," she whispered to him and he shushed her in that sweet way he seemed to be with her and ran his fingers through her hair.
He was coaxing her to lie back against his chest, to listen to the steady beat of his heart, to let that be the sound that lulls her to sleep, and not the din of this old place, with antiseptic sticking to every corner of the room. Just pretend. Pretend that we're at home, in bed, together, a place where everything is okay, everything is as it should be, where everything is fine.
She needs to imagine herself in a place where everything is fine. Where nothing hurts, not her, not him, not anybody. Where, in his arms, she feels thoroughly invincible, especially to the injustices of the world. She wants to feel this way now. Needs to, and he senses that, and so, he tries again, speaks to her in hushed, private tones. His voice is low, careful not to disrupt the grief surrounding them all like a fog, because again, like sleeping, that feels disrespectful, somehow.
"Try, Andy. Please. Just try."
She shifted on his lap to look at him, fixed him with a wondering gaze. "Why are you so concerned with whether or not I sleep? Especially when one of our own just died. And the love of Hughes' life, or so that seems to have been made clear here, tonight."
"Because I know how you get when you don't." He said back to her, simply using her own words against her, and as an example. "A bit more aggressive than passive."
She hit his chest. "Rude."
"See?" He gestured around for emphasis. "Physically aggressive, too!"
She laughed and then he smiled, and it's in that smile, when it reaches his eyes and makes them crinkle at the corners and small, impressionable dimples appear in the definition of his cheeks, where she feels like she's most at home.
She closes her eyes and rests her head on his chest, and as he cards his fingers through her hair, like he does every, single night, she's focused on the sound of her breathing evening out, and his heart beating, rhythmic and dependable.
Always dependable, and she loved him for that. It makes her feel better, knowing he's around, for her, even though Andrea Herrera needs no one, and she really doesn't need a guy, but she'll take one, if she can get one, and boy, did she get one, alright.
"I love you. Don't you ever leave me."
"I love you too, babe." Jack responded almost instantly, with only a couple second lapse. He didn't touch the second part, and on some level, she knew he wouldn't. Not yet. Not now. Not here. Even though here might just be the best place. And that is what might be the problem. It was too good. Too close.
"I'll wake you if there's any change. Okay?"
Suddenly, and frankly, expectedly, she didn't have the energy to even respond, but she knew that she didn't have to. That was the beauty of their relationship. Her and Jack, they could communicate without words. It was actually their speciality. Physical communication if you know what she's getting at.
"Mhm."
"Andy.."
She awoke to Jack shaking her, soft, unobtrusively. She would have woken up at some point soon, regardless, consciousnesses forming slowly, but surely, around her.
Opening her eyes, she put the murmurings of voices, which were now becoming clear in her approaching wakeful state, to a name, and a face, and she shook the remnants of her grogginess off, running her hands through her hair as she sat up straight.
"Is it Ripley? What happened?" Andy asked him, shifting her position so that she could look at him straight on.
The look in his eyes was tough to process – the grief, the resignation, the acceptance, it was all there in striking clarity and it made her feel weak. She knew then. It was obvious. She hated that it was so obvious. Jack leaned towards her and touched their foreheads together, his eyes not leaving hers. It felt like this was a moment for the two of them as she blocked out the rest of the room, its noise, the shift in energy like its own, personal, sadness.
"He's dead, An."
"Is Vic – "
"Okay? No, but she will be. She's Vic." Jack said to her, leaving a kiss to her lips, then drawing back, slowly, from her.
"It could have been one of us," Andy mused, to him, to herself, to nobody in particular, and to every firefighter in this room. "Easily."
"I know," Jack sighed.
"I know," he murmured gravely, shaking his head, and closing his eyes.
He opened them and looked across the room at Vic, who made eye contact with her just as she too, looked over. Vic walked their way and stopped in front of the chair Jack was sitting in – Andy hadn't left his lap the entire time they'd been here.
And only for a minute, did she think about how insensitive it was, to feel this lucky, this safe, with the man she loved, the love of her own life, when this woman had none of that, and just lost it all, in one full, unforgiving, brutal, swoop.
"Don't take this for granted, Herrera," Vic said to her, gesturing to her and Jack with a nod of her head. "Don't waste any more time hiding, or keeping secrets, because you never know when that one day might be the last one you have with them. You just…never know."
Andy barely had time to say a word before Vic left them sitting there to process the gravity of her words just then. It all made her want to say a few words of her own.
"Jack?" she breathed out in almost a whisper.
"What's up, An? You okay? I know this is kind of a lot. And Hughes…she's kind of right you know and – "
"Marry me."
"What?"
He wasn't shocked. He wasn't confused. He wasn't anything, really. He seemed…numb. And she guessed she deserved that. She'd put him through a lot with the whole way she reacted to his proposal, to that ring, the first time.
There had been no second time, aside from that awkward conversation where she might have lied to him about the extent of her feelings, and what she really wanted. Okay, she had definetly lied to him. She hadn't bee ready then, she had been too nervous, and there was so much pressure to say the right thing, exactly the way he wanted, and so, she chose the wrong thing. It seemed easier. At the time.
With what happened with Ripley tonight, it wasn't all of why she chose to tell him now. She'd been thinking about it for awhile, what those words mean, and the type of commitment she would be setting herself up for, if she said them, and if he said yes. The difference between then and now, this last month, was that she was ready. These last few hours just made her realize that she couldn't waste another minute having not said those words to him. Not knowing what his answer would be.
"Did you just ask me to marry you?"
Andy nodded softly. Still, she couldn't read his reaction, and it was beginning to kind of scare her. But then, then, hr smiled. He smiled at her so big that she thought his cheeks might come apart and his lips might split in half.
"Seriously?"
"Yeah," she whispered, still not trusting the full use of her voice. Not yet.
"I love you, Jack. I'm in love with you. And I never told you that before, I said I care about you, like a little wuss. But the truth is I am more in love with you, Jack Gibson, than I have ever been, and doesn't scare me anymore, because I'm pretty sure you feel the same way for me."
He nodded now, too. Just as soft, his voice just as quiet. "I do. Still, I can't picture my life without you in it, and that's pretty crazy."
Now it was her turn to smile. It felt wrong, to be smiling right now, given everything that has brought them here, but she couldn't help it. She wasn't not going to enjoy this moment.
"So?"
Jack grabbed onto both of her hands, stared into her eyes, and she didn't have to fight with herself to avoid looking away. She didn't want to, not this time. She could stare into those eyes for the rest of her life, and she might get to, after all. The thought made her indescribably, unapologetically happy.
"I will marry you. On one condition."
She raised her eyebrow. Almost laughed. She had this feeling that he wasn't going to make her jump through many hoops. She couldn't be any happier.
"Which is?"
It looked like his happiness even rivaled her own, shown to her in those eyes that reminded her of a tempestuous stormy sky. They really were the source of all her butterflies.
"You marry me first."
"Deal."
Author's Note: Sorry it's so short - but I wanted to end it there and I didn't even realize how short it was - I guess it's supposed to be a little snippet/scene in time though so :) Hope you liked it! :) It's fic, we're allowed to be a little unrealistic.
