2. Don't Worry. I Got You

Characters/Pairings: Jake/Rose

Rating: T

Content warnings: suicide/suicide attempt; drug overdose; swearing

Don't forget that you can find me on tumblr: we - are - all - of - legend - now and that my ao3 account is wearealloflegendnow (even though I haven't posted there yet)!

~TLL~

Dear Jake,

By the time you get this text, I'll probably dead. I'll hopefully be dead. I know it's really shitty of me to do this over a text but if I wrote a note, you'd probably never see it. And I need you to see this. I need you to know everything about everything and I want you to understand. Right now, I know you're confused and you're thinking that you're starting to get scared and that you're starting to think about coming to get me and that you don't have the patience to understand. That's okay. I'm past saving.

My name is Rose. It's not Huntsgirl. I know you know this and it's one of the things that I first loved about you. You didn't think of us as the same person. You knew who I truly was and who I truly wanted to be and that was the greatest gift you could have ever given. We were just two people in love. If it weren't for the circumstances of fate, we'd still just be two people in love. We'd probably die of old age as just two people in love. We're only seventeen but I think we'd grow old together. That's some honesty that will probably hurt for a while but I hope you can find the comfort in it. Someday. I know you loved me as much as I loved you. At least as much. And I think I love you more than anyone's ever loved anything before.

You're going to want a reason. You're going to want to understand. You're going to think you could have stopped it or changed it or you're going to find a way to blame yourself for it. You're always the hero, Jake, and you were my hero for as long as I've known you. Don't put this on your shoulders. This is the way that is best for me. You're not going to agree because you're stubborn and you want things that you can't have. I want things I can't have too. But the difference is, you get to move on and I am stuck in hell. I am bonded to hell. I cannot leave hell. I can never dream of being free. This is all I have. This is my only way. You tried. Fu tried. Lao Shi tried. Haley tried. Veronica tried. Sara and Kara tried. Trixie tried. Spud tried. You even blackmailed Nigel into trying. The curse of the Aztec skulls is unbreakable. Even if that's not true, my heart and my soul are breakable and I can't exist like this any longer. As far as I know, there's not a single hope for a cure, a counter-spell, or a breath of relief. If someday this turns out not to be true, please don't feel bad. I go knowing that my circumstances *could* change but I have no evidence of it. This is all I have left.

I think about homecoming all the time. How if we were faster, smarter, stronger we might have wished the whole Huntsclan away with those skulls. It would have been wonderful because then we could have just been together. I know you have the same regrets. We talk about it all the time, in the seconds I can get away, in the moments where my hands touch yours in the middle of the fight, in the dreams we've built in our heads. They're just for our heads. It's never going to be real. Not the running away or the home together or the babies. It's over. I'm sorry I'm making you sad with all this ranting but I need you to accept that it's over. By the time you read this, my life – and I guess our life – is over. Yours is not. Live where I can't, love how I wasn't able to. Don't live your life subject to a ghost, okay?

I don't know what else to say. I feel I've talked myself in circles. And, yet, I want to keep talking to you. It seems counter productive to you, I'm sure. I can hear you now "Rose, if you want to keep talking to me, you'd be alive!". That's still missing the point. It's not about you. I love you. If I knew of a way to wish the world away and just have you and me curled around each other like snakes in a warm bed while the rain poured outside, I would choose that option. Always and forever, without question. We don't have that and I need to be free and you need to be free.

I love you, I love you, I love you.

Live for me.

Love,

Rose

PS Don't come find me. Send someone else. I don't want you to see.

(-.-)

By the time Jake Long woke up at 6:30 AM for school, the text on his phone screen was already an hour old.

That fact didn't stop him from screaming, from scrambling out his bedroom window with no mind to the fact that his parents didn't know where he was going and he was only wearing boxer shorts. None of it mattered because if there was a chance that Rose was still alive, Jake had to move and he had to move now. He knew where she was; he didn't even have to think about it. He transformed into a dragon mid-drop not caring if a single one of the neighbours noticed what was going on. He winged his way toward the one place that Rose swore she would never go back to: the site of Homecoming. The Huntsclan and the dragons had been in a fight back then, trying to gain control of the Aztec skulls, which granted wishes but only once and only when they were together at a specific time and a specific place. Jake had been so close to winning; Rose had been so close to winning. The Huntsclan had scooped it all out from under them.

Jake had failed her then. He wasn't going to fail her now.

Jake hit the rooftop in a dead run, his cell phone to his ear, 911 already on the line as he rattled off the address. God, how could twenty feet feel so far?

"It's an overdose," Jake blurted to the operator. "She's got a heartbeat!"

Rose looked like a wax person or a mannequin, lying on her back in pink jeans and a white sweater, her hair long and spread out around her head like a halo. The exact opposite of how the Huntsgirl would look.

Jake barely spared a moment to look at her. He grabbed at one of the pill bottles, reading the label off to the 911 operator before he turned Rose onto her side, praying that she vomited and that there wasn't so much in her system that she was going to die. Jake let the phone drop when he heard the sirens in the distance, transforming from a dragon into a skinny boy in boxer shorts.

"Don't worry, baby," he whispered to Rose. "I got you. I know what you were thinking. I know why you thought it but I got you. You're safe. I love you too and I'm going to keep you safe, okay? Believe that. Never stop believing that. This isn't the way!"

It went against every instinct that Jake had but when the EMTs appeared on the roof, he stepped away from Rose. He let them do their job.

He prayed that today their job was saving her life.

(-.-)

"Get out."

"Rose –"

"GET THE FUCK OUT!"

Maybe if she got loud enough, nurses would come and remove him. The nurses that were actually Huntsclan members in disguise in their day jobs. She was an asset and not just anyone was allowed access to her.

Asset.

Not a person, not a loved one. Just a thing to be bought and traded and treated however someone else chose. Rose had one act of agency left in the life of slavery the Aztec skulls had sentenced her to. One true moment. Not stolen seconds with Jake where she was in too much pain to appreciate it. Real, true, agency. Her death. That had been stolen from her. By the one person that she trusted the most. The one person who was supposed to understand her.

Jake stared at her helplessly and it made Rose want to kill him. She wasn't supposed to feel this way and she knew it. She loved Jake, more than anything but, now, she could feel something bigger, building in her breastbone. Resentment.

"I did it because I love you."

"You did it for you," she spat. "If you loved me, I'd be ashes in the wind by now. No. You chose yourself this time and I hate you for it."

"We love each other," Jake said with the conviction of someone who knew he was right. He stepped closer to her hospital bed. "You don't hate me."

"It's a thin line between love and hate." Rose snarled the familiar line. "You've destroyed me."

"I saved you! Because I love you and I want you to live!"

"Want," Rose said blandly. "I needed to die."

"Rose, please." Jake touched her hand and Rose wanted, so badly, to give in. If they had any other life, she would have. "I love you."

Rose withdrew her hand from his. "Next time we meet, I will fight to the death. I hope you do the same."

"Rose, please," Jake begged, staring into her eyes.

"From now on," she declared, "we are sworn enemies. The way they wanted us to be all along."

Jake looked away first. Jake walked away first.

Rose looked forward to making him pay for his sins.