D is for Death
Pairing: Gretchen/Claire. Angst.
AN: This isn't humour. It gets put in because it got stuck in my head.
Claire opened her eyes.
There was pain.
Well, that was unexpected.
She relished it, though, after all those years she'd been unable to have that feeling. How long had it been... But there was pain.
There was a sickening sound as she raised her head. The last person to have the honour of killing her had been a hit-and-run driver, some idiot in a four-by-four who probably hadn't even stopped to see whether she was alright. It was a morgue, and by the looks of it, somebody had already started. She looked to the side, pushing a rib back into its proper position.
Ah.
And there was the offending stick that had, up until quite recently, been embedded in her skull.
Well, this brought back memories if nothing else did.
The door opened, and Claire swore mentally, eyes flicking across the room for a hiding place as she swung her legs off the table, prepared to sprint despite the ripped jeans and T-shirt.
She stared into a familiar face, who looked startled, and considerably older than she remembered.
"Gretchen?"
"Claire." The voice was hoarse. "I - I didn't expect to see you here."
"What're you doing?" Claire asked awkwardly.
"...I work here now. For the police. Moved to Forensics. You know?"
There was a pause.
"...I thought you might be gone. For good."
"I can't die. You'd have to destroy my brain completely."
"I know."
Claire averted her gaze. The woman standing in front of her wasn't the Gretchen she knew and remembered. Those days, with the road-trip, the carnival, that summer of hostels and a journey halfway across North America just for fun and games, before graduation had hit and they'd moved on together. Then moved apart, as Gretchen grew older and Claire never would.
"It wouldn't have worked out anyway," Gretchen stated clinically, matter-of-fact, like a forty-five-year-old giving consolation to her eighteen-year-old daughter after another heartbreak.
"I know." The words sticking in her throat.
Does that make it better?
"I'd better leave before somebody starts wondering why there's a missing corpse," she continued dryly.
"I'll sort out the paperwork. Do some shuffling. Nobody'll notice much."
Claire reached for a shirt, one that wasn't bloody, and a pair of trousers that aren't quite the right size but that would have to do.
"I hope I won't see you again." And there was that damn smile on her face again, awkward and still the same although nothing else is.
"Take care."