I don't usually write angst, but I was inspired by a character death on another show. No characters are specified, so it can be whomever you want. Enjoy.
It wasn't supposed to be like this. She was supposed to always be here. She was…she was. Past tense. Why was it so easy to refer to her in the past tense? She wasn't even gone – not technically. Her body was being kept alive, if you can call it living, by those… machines. How did this happen?
It wasn't supposed to be like this. She was supposed to go out fighting, not slowly fading away in a hospital bed, succumbed to some nameless alien disease. All the bad things that happened since arriving at Atlantis, all those times she faced death, head on, she never gave up. She had stared into the barrel of a gun and survived. Why was this the one thing she couldn't fight?
It wasn't supposed to be like this. She was supposed to be here to help us through times like these. She was the friend we could all turn to. Why is it that the moment we need her most is the first moment in which she is truly helpless?
It wasn't supposed to be like this. He sits by her side. He looks like crap, and that's putting it nicely. He hasn't slept in who knows how long. He holds her hand; it's the only thing he can do as he sits by and watches the woman he loves slip away from him. He will feel this loss the most. How is it that he doesn't realize just how much she means to him until it's too late?
She is gone. They turn off the machines, call the time of death. We all hover over her bedside, even the strongest of us in tears. In a few days there'll be a funeral. The soldiers will be outfitted in dress uniforms and civilians in black mourning clothes. We will stand side by side, trying to console each other. Collectively we will be mourning the same loss, but individually we will each be crumbling inside, alone, trying to hold on to our own image of her, our favorite memories. I look around at the people who stayed by her side through it all. For us there is one source of comfort, however small it may be. At least she didn't have to die alone.
It wasn't supposed to be like this.