Title: vanish up the shore
Author: Melanie-Anne
Rating: K+
Summary: There are tears in her eyes and a knife at his throat.
Disclaimer: Not my characters, alas.
A/N: For the alias500 challenge anticipation.
Blame us because we are who we are.
Hate us because you'll never get that far.
And who'd suppose you would go?
I've already learned enough to know.
"At the Stars" – Better than Ezra
He tells himself he hates her. Tells himself that she never loved him, never loved Sydney. She's not Laura – there never was a Laura. He doesn't love her. He never loved her. (And as he stops in front of the glass, she looks up and smiles, and for a moment he forgets why he's supposed to hate her. But just for a moment.)
Time passes.
He waits at a café in Paris. He's been waiting forever by the time she arrives. And each day that follows is another wait: to be caught, to find Sydney, to discover Sydney's dead, to be betrayed again.
Things go back to normal. Almost.
The betrayal he was expecting leaves him with no other choice. (He can't understand, after everything, after fighting so hard to find their daughter, she would want to kill her.) As he watches her approach him, he feels nauseous. The feeling remains, through dancing and kissing and a bullet between her eyes. Afterwards, alone in his hotel room, he kneels in front of the toilet and empties his stomach.
He weeps.
The end of the world. Again.
He leans against the jeep and stares into the jungle. He wants to laugh and cry and throw up. The refrain beats in his head: alive, alive, alive.
She walks out of the jungle flanked by her daughters. He should fall at her feet. He should take her in his arms and never let her go. He should hand her his gun and let her pull the trigger.
He says her name, and it's like a prayer.
And when the world doesn't end and she walks away, he tells himself it doesn't hurt.
He wakes up one night unsurprised at her presence. There are tears in her eyes and a knife at his throat. (He's faced death countless times before. How odd he'll end up dying in his bed.)
The knife nicks his throat as she discards it, and instead of a fatal cut, she's pressing her lips to his. And she's tugging at his clothes and suddenly he can't wait any longer.
Afterwards, they lie chest to chest, skin sticky with sweat, their breath mingling. He traces patterns on her back and can feel the scars under his fingertips.
(And maybe this is what he has been waiting for all these years: one more chance to say I love you.)
He kisses her.