The Goodbye Girl

Title: The Goodbye Girl
Author: BehrBeMine
Disclaimer: Very much not mine. Any of it.
Summary: Shattered glass and overturned cars drive her to dredge up questions she'd long since left behind.
Pairing: Rory/Dean
Note: ggfic100 prompt #55: Spirit. tamingthemuse prompt #38: Abacus.
Warnings: Darkness, character death. Also, I feel the need to label this story AU, though much of the canon past remains the same.
Rating: R
Beta: Hasn't been properly beta'd this time. I've been sick, and things didn't fall into place all to plan. All mistakes are my own -- hope things turn out okay.
Note: All lyrics belong to Matchbox Twenty. Spoilers for 'Sphere' by Michael Crichton ahead (it's an older work).
Author's Note: Seriously, this story is like the darkest 'Gilmore' project I've ever tried to claim. When I see these scenarios in my head, I want to see them brought to life by the 'Gilmore Girls' characters. I guess I'm hoping other people can see beauty in the same thing. Be warned, this is dark.

Chapter 2: The Ghost Of You

- -
I think I've already lost you
I think you're already gone
I think I'm finally scared now
You think I'm weak
I think you're wrong

I bet you're hard to get over
I bet the room just won't shine
I bet my hands I can stay here
I bet you need more than you mind

There's a little bit of something me
In everything in you

-- Matchbox 20, 'If You're Gone'

--

Saturday night arrived, along with obligations and the big Gilmore grandparents' bash. Lorelai stood in Rory's old bedroom doorway, sighing and leaning her weight heavily on the door frame. "Three coats of eyeliner -- really? Has my daughter gone Goth?"

"I'm in mourning," Rory muttered, lowering her eyelashes that were gloriously pumped with body and curl.

"And you choose to mourn in devil make-up?"

Rory waved a moody, frustrated hand in a swinging motion towards her mother, as if willing her away with a front of air. As long as she looked the part of a teenager, she might as well keep her acting up to snuff.

"You're hiding," Lorelai said in the same creepy know-it-all voice she kept finding at Rory's door. "Behind 'suicidal clown' face, no less."

"So let me hide," Rory told her, and lowered her chin onto her folded arms as she swung her legs impatiently from her spot on her stomach atop the bed.

"I don't get you lately." Lorelai's eyes held the horror of seeing the past week scoot by, ever so slowly.

Rory pursed her lips. "I know." She beat her heavy, socked feet together behind her back, folding them gently, rocking them back and forth in the air.

Lorelai stood up straight now, uncomfortable with the stale air. "You know you can't go to the party tonight looking like that. My mother will have a heart attack. As entertaining as the look on her face would be, I'm not looking forward to the party ending at the hospital tonight. I think your face alone can show how much drama we don't need at this point."

"Okay."

"So you'll fix your face?"

Rory sighed and pushed her way off of the bed, headed for her closet. "A bit more Cinderella and a little less Manson?" she guessed.

"Think 'older'. Until you get to Barbara Walters, and then backtrack a few decades."

"I know how old I am."

"And Paul Anka knows it isn't really a monster that makes his refillable water dish give that burp of bubbles. But sometimes he still needs a reminder."

"Poor Paul Anka," Rory said, her voice and mind distracted for a moment over thoughts of a dog that ran from water dishes. "I don't think about it often, but he really goes through a lot, for a dog."

Lorelai looked meaningfully at her daughter, watching her rifle through the good dresses that still hung in this closet she used to live out of. "Yeah. He really does," she said.

Fingering the fabric of a dress with blue sequins that each housed a different memory, Rory was silent with her thoughts for a few minutes. She shook her head to rid her vision of the piece of bang that had slipped into her eyes, escaped from the lazy half ponytail combined in the back of her hair. Her voice faltered like it hit a bad note as she turned suddenly and said, "Mom?"

But the doorway was empty, Lorelai already gone to get ready for the party herself.

Rory turned back to the dress, letting the material fall through her fingers like silk. She smiled sadly at it, pained by its silence, and then turned from it and left the room.

--

Rory washed her make-up off in the shower, watching the mascara streaks as they left her chin to dabble down along her stomach, decorating the flatness of it like black tiny tears. She went through the routine of shampooing her hair twice, then letting conditioner set while she soaped up her body, wiping away absolutely any speck of dirt. It was like she was trying to coax the repercussions of his death from her cells and wash it out of existence with the soap that ran past it.

When finally, after forty minutes, she stepped out of the shower stall and wrapped a butterfly towel around her body, hot steam engulfed the entire room. Rory knew it probably had fogged up the mirror above the sink, but she looked toward it just in case -- and got a chill when she saw the message written in the steam: Tuesday.

The damp towel around her body felt like it was soaked in cold sweat as she brought a hand to her forehead and wiped it dry. "Mom?" she shouted boldly, feeling paralyzed in the legs.

She heard footsteps on the other side of the door. "Yeah, hun?"

"Did you write something in the mirror while I was taking a shower?"

"Uh, if I did, you know that it would have the same fabulous signature I sign all of my notes with."

"Seriously, this wasn't from you?" Rory's voice had a quake in it; she shivered and hugged the towel to her body.

Lorelai opened the door and stepped into the bathroom, touching Rory's shoulder to make sure she was okay. Rory snapped her face to her mother, her expression resembling that of a baby animal upon seeing a pal shot right in front of its eyes. Lorelai looked at the mirror and frowned.

--

"Oh my God, I'm being haunted!" Rory shouted as she emerged from her room in an elegant red summer dress, toweling her damp hair.

"What? You're crazy," Lorelai offered, "and you so need to calm down."

"It's a message. From Dean. He wrote me that!" Rory's eyes were wild with fright at the idea.

Lorelai tried not to roll her own eyes too obviously. "Well, thank God you're being rational about all this."

"Mom! Seriously. When do I freak out like this? I'm telling you, that was in his handwriting."

"I'm so wishing I carried a tape recorder in my pocket right now..."

"He died on Tuesday," Rory stated flatly.

Lorelai blinked toward the ceiling, trying to keep this conversation on the ground. "Remember your first Michael Crichton, when you were eleven?"

"'Sphere'? Of course. Why are you changing the subject?"

"Oh, believe me, I'm not. Remember how you were afraid of water for a whole week while you read that book? How you were sure a giant squid was going to materialize the second you sat in the bath tub?"

Rory was shaking her head. "I'm not seeing giant squid in my dreams, Mom. I'm seeing something that's really there."

"What's really there? Someone writing 'Tuesday' on the bathroom mirror a few days ago, and forgetting to wipe it off before the next steam-up?"

"Nobody wrote 'Tuesday'. Why would somebody write 'Tuesday'? Except if they died on one."

"What if," Lorelai supposed, "you're rushing the gun just a little bit? I mean, come on. If you were going to reach back from the great beyond, wouldn't you at least write something interesting, like, 'The next winning lottery number will be...'"

"You're not even trying to believe me. You're mocking me."

"Of course I am. Honey, you're letting your head go nuts. Squirrels are going to start fighting over you. You need to calm down." Lorelai gripped Rory's shoulders gently, meeting her daughter's eyes. "And think about what you're saying."

Sighing, Rory nodded, then shook her head as if trying to rid it of its insanity. "Okay. You're right. I'll rationalize better. His death has just gotten to me, and I feel like it's been all wrapped around me."

"Well, time to unwrap. Find Rational Rory. I know she's somewhere inside of you. I miss her. It's no fun being the sane one all the time." Lorelai chucked Rory lightly on the cheek, and gave her a dazzling smile.

Rory tentatively smiled back. "I can see why that would be hard on you." She bit her bottom lip and looked toward the bathroom. "I'd better get my hair dried. If I go outside with it wet, I might catch a... cool breeze."

"Oh. Yeah. That would be bad." Lorelai hurried away to finish getting ready herself as Rory wandered to the scene of the crime. When she turned on the bathroom light, she found that luckily the steam had flown from the room out the open door, and she could see nothing but her reflection in the mirror.

--

"Will you watch Paul Anka for a minute?" Lorelai asked at the bedroom door as Rory finished putting in her second hoop earring. "I need to use the curling iron, and he always has a bad reaction to it."

"You have the weirdest dog," Rory deadpanned.

"Shh. He can hear you." Lorelai ushered Paul Anka into the room and shut the door behind her as she left. "Ten minutes and we're gone!" she sang through the wood.

Hair straightened, earrings dangling, dress clinging, eyes all shadowed, Rory took a seat on her neatly made bed, trying not to act as though Paul Anka's silence made her wary. Lorelai always insisted he could pick up on bad vibes in anyone. Not one to spend much time with Paul Anka, Rory eyed him carefully, finding it odd how he just sat with such good posture right beside the door.

"Paul Anka, you can come on in further," Rory said to him. When he didn't make a move in response, she brought her fingers to her forehead, feeling a bit of a headache coming on.

When she closed her eyes, the world rushed away, and she was in the front seat of a car, as a dark green jeep sped the wrong way down the highway. She could hear a soft voice whispering in her ears, saying, You hide inside till your voice collides with the death of sound. And the jeep collided with the car she sat in, sending large splinters of glass from the windshield flying in toward her face --

-- Rory started, opening her eyes and breathing shallowly, a sense of dread gripping her even in wakefulness. When she looked down to her knees that sat along the left side of her bed, she saw that Paul Anka was nearer to her now, his nose in the air, as he sniffed at it, sensing... something.

As she blinked, the world fell into blackness around her, in giant puzzle pieces. And she could hear the roar of traffic from beside her as she stared up into the blinding sun, her head smashed down on pavement, a splitting headache at the forefront of her face. Someone turned off the waterfalls because they were leaking, was what she heard, and a roar, as if from thunder, rumbled the sky --

-- Paul Anka was barking as Rory came to, steadying her body as it still sat upon her childhood bed, atop the bedspread with the fluffy pillows. What he was barking at wasn't clear, as Rory could see nothing in the room around her. But she could sense that she and Paul Anka's voice were not the only things in that room.

--

"Hello! Welcome," said the maid at the impressive Gilmore entrance. Her blonde hair was held back in such a severe bun that her eyes looked almost cat-like in their almond shape. She took Lorelai and Rory's coats, and led them into the party room, where Rory's graduation celebration was in full swing, as was the tasteful band on stage at the front of the room.

"Lorelai, Rory," Emily welcomed, giving her granddaughter a quick hug. "You two are so late. Really, I thought that soon I would have to make the speech, in place of the guest of honor."

"Sorry, Grandma," Rory said to her, smoothing down her dress that sparkled the color of punch. "The dog went a little crazy, and we had to make sure he was okay."

"The dog?" Emily asked. "Oh, yes. That shaggy old thing with the name of that singer."

"Rory has convinced him she's being haunted," Lorelai said, so helpfully, giving her family a patronizing smile.

"Ha!" Emily laughed softly to herself. "You're all going insane."

"Yeah, we really are." With that, Lorelai headed out to mingle, leaving Rory to deal with Emily's penetrating gaze.

"What's all this about?" Emily asked conspiratorially.

"A friend of mine died on the highway this past week," Rory said, working at keeping her voice level and calm, and more than anything, mature. "It's... been hard dealing with it."

"Oh, dear. Well. Best to think about good things at a time like this. It's your party, Rory. Enjoy it. We're so proud."

"Indeed we are," said Richard, walking up to his two favorite women, a cocktail in his hand. "To think, a granddaughter of mine, graduating at the top of her class from Yale, a year ago, yet. Very satisfying."

"Thanks, Grandpa." Rory tried her best to smile. She let her grandparents engage her in talk of her job at the New York Times, her new apartment that Emily was dying to see, and her "dating life".

"Oh. Well, not dating anyone right now," Rory said uncomfortably, practically squirming under her grandmother's scrutiny. "Not since Logan."

"Well. There will be others, dear, there's no worry about that," Emily said, with a secure pat on the back and a smile she kept as pleased as possible at all times in the midst of a crowd. "Someone will be waiting there when you're ready. You know who I saw the other day was Bruce and Kendall's son, Jeffrey..."

Rory zoned out on the words, knowing it was another potential set-up from this woman who never rested on her participation with society. She felt a sort of throbbing beginning at her temples, blurring her sight until it swirled together as though it were water spiraling down a drain.

You forget how horrible pain is until you're in it, came the whisper in her head, and suddenly she was surrounded by darkness, but this time she wasn't alone. Dean stood a few feet from her, his image short-circuiting as though he were being broadcast from a television screen. She covered her mouth, horrified that he was standing in front of her, and yet incredibly relieved to see him all the same.

Her voice came from more than just her lips, reminiscent of a dream, as she asked him, "How did it feel?" Her mind raced back to the crash into the windshield, the glass shards, Paul Anka's high pitched bark.

She tried not to scream, out of disbelief and gratitude, when his lips began moving along with the words, his image more steady now, with no short-circuiting, as if he was really there. "It's like when you're falling, and you know you can't stop; so you just stop trying," he told her, the story more in his blue-green eyes that stared with such honesty into hers. She drank him in, with large gulps of air, steadying the flurry of her heartbeat as her eyes filled with tears.

"How are you here?" she asked him, and she reached out to touch his hand --

"--though God knows when he'll graduate, with that social life of his," Emily continued, as Rory refocused her eyes on her grandparents standing before her, her grandfather nodding at whatever was still flowing from her grandmother's mouth. And she wondered if they had noticed her fade in and out, or if she'd never truly left this state of consciousness at all. Was she imagining things? Was she in a dream? Would she ever wake up from this nightmare?

--

Rory, sent off to mingle herself, was quite flustered as she tried to smooth talk her way through the large crowd that had gathered in this house in celebration of her. Truly, she would have been awed by the idea, like she had been at her sixteenth birthday party, when first people had come together as if she were important enough to focus on. But there was so much nagging at her every thought, so much confusion and pain bubbling up inside of her that she took every friendly face for granted, as she waited for the next time he would take her and show her something else that no sane person could see.

She wanted to grab him next time; feel if he was solid, and real. She wanted to try to tear him from wherever he was being held, and bring him back into the light of the world he'd left not long ago. Her mind struggled to find reason, her intelligence groping the questions about essence and ghosts and other such intangible things. But her heart longed to be yanked into that world that scared her again -- that world where there was Dean, and he was all alone without her.

So much rationalization told her that this manifestation didn't make sense, that he wouldn't come to her, of all people. Surely there had to be someone else he was closer to in life. Someone he had seen in the last half a decade? She couldn't have been this important. She couldn't deserve all his attention when he was between here and gone.

"Hi, Rory," said Paris as she approached, the long stem of a champagne glass in her hand. She downed half the liquid in one gulp, looking intently at her old college roommate from behind pink tinted eyeshadow. "You're looking pale. How are things?"

In no way did Rory intend to share her recent lack of sanity with someone with whom her relationship was so ambiguous. She conjured up a smile. "Time to hit the tanning beds, I guess," she said as lightly as possible.

"Rory, you're not serious," Paris let herself assume. "You lived with the upcoming MD in me for how many years? Have you forgotten about the dangers of UVB radiation?"

Sighing, Rory was quick to add, "No, no. Haven't forgotten about all those fun discussions. It was just something to say."

"Tanning beds equal skin cancer, Rory," Paris said pointedly, sipping at her champagne, her eyes fixed on Rory's face. "I should almost charge people for all this free medical advice I hand out so selflessly," she said thoughtfully to herself. "Doyle's always saying I give too much of myself to everyone else -- himself not included, of course. He's always got to whine. I'm always doing something wrong.

"Do you agree or are you just being quiet?" she asked when Rory merely stood there, taking things in.

Paris' facial features began to melt as if they were lit candle wax, and the scene before Rory slumped down and out of her vision until she was met with the blackness again. The darkness of a summer night without any stars in the sky, and no crickets chirping to signify that there was life nearby.

Suddenly, Dean's old house was conjured up, the one he lived in for the short time he was married. Dean followed his wife out of the front door, his shirt as rumpled and slept in as his un-brushed hair. "Lindsay, I'm sorry. I couldn't hide the way I felt any longer. Neither of us could."

"I see things perfectly," Lindsay spat, spinning around to face Dean halfway down their driveway. She pushed soft strands of blonde hair away from her cheeks that were just waiting for the tears that would spill. "You always wanted her. It was never about me. About us."

"Lindsay, that's not -- "

"Go to hell!" she told him, venom in her voice and burning like fire from her eyes. "It's not a long journey. It's where I am."

Rory's bedroom furniture rose up to cover the landscape before her, and suddenly she was in Dean's arms, his fingers teasing their way along her bra strap. She could feel his whiskers as he kissed her, waking up her skin, making her feel alive and wanted. She smiled and fingered the unshaven bits on his lower face.

Dean held her gaze in his eyes, and instantly understood. "Lindsay wanted me to shave them off," he told her, his voice soft, and the touch of his wandering hand softer.

"Then don't," Rory whispered, and took his lips in hers once again. She closed her eyes and pushed herself up against the exposed skin of his chest, where there weren't as many whiskers --

-- "worst conversation we've possibly ever had," Paris was saying, seeming upset. "First, you bail on Logan just because he's not an everyday presence in your life. Now, it's like you're doing the same thing to me. You're spacey, you're not all there when I talk to you. It makes me want to knock on your skull until I find some brain activity. Rory. Space Cadet Gilmore, is there life on your planet?"

As the world rushed back to Rory, cramming itself into her headache, she hurried to grasp onto the conversation she'd disappeared from. "Paris, Paris, calm down. I'm just... not myself lately. Do you remember the guy who took me to my first Chilton formal?"

"Of course. He called Tristan an idiot, and they both wanted you. Big surprise." No, Paris wasn't bitter. Or drunk. Or anything.

"He died last week," Rory squeaked out, reaching for her own glass of champagne from the dish of a server who walked past her. She took a swig, and attempted to get a handle on the brain waves that were moshing in her skull. "So if I seem a little distracted... I am."

"Were you two seeing each other again?" Paris guessed, not knowing a delicate way of continuing a conversation. "Is that what the whole dropping Logan thing was about?"

"What? No. Logan left almost a year ago. I haven't seen Dean since... I was first at Yale."

"Sorry." Paris tiptoed around her words awkwardly. "That's got to be... well, I wouldn't know. I haven't known anyone who died since my Aunt Silva when I was four. Even then, I didn't know her well. She was a lot like my mother, who I guess no one like me will ever know."

"Yeah, well." Rory sipped more champagne. "I knew him, very well at one point. We... were close."

"You know, if you ever need to talk... I could recommend half a dozen decent therapists within the New York area..."

Rory tried to make her smile genuine. Good old Paris. "Thanks. But, I think I'll be okay. We should catch up more often, you and me. I... barely know what you and Doyle are up to these days."

"Yes. We'll do that. Call me. You have all my numbers: home, cell, beeper."

"Yes." Rory nodded, and pointed to her empty glass before stepping away. "I'm going to go take this back to the kitchen. Save the servers a trip." She nearly stumbled over her own feet as she headed away from the crowd and into the empty parts of the big house.

--

Rory stood in her mother's old bedroom that had been remodeled for her. She stared at the *NSync poster she'd never wanted but had never taken down, then wandered further into the room to eye the perfectly made bed, the walls that had surely been repainted not long ago. This room that was so well maintained, and saw so little company, it saddened her. Or maybe she was already sad enough, and it just washed over her body again in a wave like from an ocean full of giant squid.

She could feel her head begin to pound again, as though booming speakers were blaring hardcore rock from behind the walls of the room. The color black spilled in from the corners of her senses, overtaking everything she saw, spinning and spinning as though she was encased in a tornado which had an eventual destination she had no control over.

"...all of my teachers, fellow graduates. We find ourselves together, on this day, having completed a journey that fewer people are able to reach the end of the longer it is required." Rory could see herself, in the Yale graduation robe, up atop the giant stage constructed on the day she completed her education. As she heard her own voice, which didn't sound so small anymore as it carried more confidence than she'd ever dreamed, she looked around the scene for what she was really supposed to be viewing. This couldn't be about her -- she'd been here before.

All of a sudden, she narrowed her vision and was able to zoom in on the figure of a boy who stepped out from behind a tree beyond the seated audience, leaning against it with a satisfied smile. It was Dean, his hair as long as she remembered it, cascading in a healthy wave down to the tips of his earlobes. The smile that touched his lips but not his eyes was affixed to the face that had only grown more handsome with time.

You were here? she could hear herself thinking, wondering, needing to know. If only she had an Abacus with which she could chart all the times they'd had together that she had forgotten, or never known about.

Dean turned his attention from her body on stage to her gaze that existed beyond the portrayed image of her, and she soaked in his dark jeans and nice shirt. "I was," he told her. "Of course I had to come. I stayed in the shadows, so I wouldn't bother you."

"Oh, Dean," she cried, throwing her arms out and attempting to wrap them around his neck. She fell through him, as though his body took up no literal space at all, landing on the soft green grass behind him. She craned her neck to look back, and he stood before her, his eyes soft and aching for something more, the way that hers were as they scanned him in question. It was almost a frenzied determination she zeroed in on as she stood again and reached out a solemn hand to touch his shoulder.

The image of him shorted out momentarily, as if from that old TV screen once again, and she could feel no substance against the skin of her palm. She was seeing him, but it was like he wasn't really there at all.

"Dean?..." she asked uncertainly.

He looked down, eyelashes falling over his cheeks in solemn acceptance. "You know I'm not here anymore," he told her gently. Reminded her, as if anything else about this made sense. "I hated life without you." Rory lifted her head that had lowered, for he was talking again. "Turns out this life thing hates me right back."

"But I touched you before," she insisted. "I felt you."

Dean shook his head. "It was only a memory."

Rory's voice was clouding with the forecast of oncoming tears. "Give me another one. I want to remember more." She looked into his eyes that were the ocean, in all its vast misunderstood ways and its dangerous currents that could pull one under until they didn't breathe anymore.

In a blink, she was beside him, in her old bed once more, its sheets rumpled beneath the two of them as they laid together in their underwear.

"What's so wrong with role-playing?" he was asking her. "I think it could be sexy, to be someone you've never even come close to... To... make someone wonder when you're going to become yourself again."

"I need to get a grown-up bed," she said distractedly out loud, ignoring this conversation on purpose.

"I like the one you've got," he whispered impishly into her ear, tickling her lobe with his breathy exhale. "It keeps us close together."

"Seriously it does, because there's only room for one person."

"Rory. I like your bed. I like... everything about you."

Despite herself, she smiled as a blush covered her cheeks. And she thought back on what he'd been so interested in moments earlier. "Role-playing, huh?" she said to him. "I can't just be someone else. Otherwise why would Halloween be such a fun idea?"

When he drooped his bottom lip the way he did, her heart curled in on itself, sending a dizzying spell up to her brain to turn her limbs fuzzy and warm. Her toes began to fall asleep, and she reached deep within her for a "role" she'd never played.

She rolled her eyes and unfolded her arms, giving in. She crept up Dean's body with an air of trouble, and mischief in her eyes. She imagined herself as someone like Louise, free and open with a teenager's nature to rebel. "I've been so bad," she purred, straddling Dean and resting on her knees. Despite her earlier protests, she fell for the look in his eyes that hungered for her. An erotic chill rushed through her, ending in a shiver. She clamped her thighs more snugly around his chest, and felt herself come alive, as her panties started to become wet.

"Bad. You?" he teased gently, giving a turned on grunt and bucking his hips gently below her.

She hunched down, rubbing herself against his cotton boxers through her Valentine pink underwear. Her breath was hot on his neck as she nipped it to bring those moans from his voice box and whispered, "Just let me tell you."

His hands ran down the length of her back to grip her closer at the waist. "Why don't you show me instead?" he dared her, and the breath of them both came out as shaky as distracted handwriting hurriedly scribbled on a love note.

She didn't know who she was except an empowered version of Rory as he took her passionately in her teenage bedroom, their bodies on the verge of twenty years, their loins now urgent to be rubbed and licked and loved by the other in this most perfect time to be together. To the outside world, they had the worst timing ever, having begun the affair with adultery, but something in Rory's body was telling her that it needed to be near him, and she couldn't say no to such a force that she couldn't outright control. The need turned her into the other woman, and kept her heart held hostage in the hours between every time he came to brush it again.

Afterward, bathed in her lover's sweat, Rory pulled Dean's arms around her from behind, allowing his body to spoon behind hers and hold her close as a secret. "I do love you," she promised, kissing the arm that held onto her so tightly.

Dean swallowed, as if hearing it for the first time and said in a husky voice, "I believe you."

His skin on hers that tasted of salt was the salve to her personal wounds, and at that moment, she couldn't imagine not having --

"--I remember, I remember..." she was saying, tears falling down her face as she stood in front of that poster in her grandparents' house, her body swaying gently from side to side in an effort to bring comfort that just wouldn't be coveted. The restricting dress that hugged her curves wasn't nearly as soft to the touch as his fingers that used to be there, to tickle, to tease.

Releasing the sobs held within her, she stood in absolute misery, and longed for him like air conditioning in the baking heat of summer...

"Why do you write me postcards now?" he asked her, crawling into the blackness with startling strength. "Now, after I'm gone?"

She couldn't tell him that somehow, it was easier to open up when she didn't expect an answer. Even though she was getting them, in this unconscious state.

"Never got to tell you..." She looked around, trying to find a way to keep the darkness up around her, to cover her eyes, so that she wouldn't open them, and leave him here, to dwell alone until her next blackout.

Rory looked up at him, and narrowed her eyes. Before he could react, she had pounced upon him, gripping his body in her vice-like fingers, searching for skin and not air matter. His form kept short-circuiting before her eyes that looked so closely into his face, as her grip kept tightening, willing him into existence.

"Rory, I want..." He inhaled and exhaled harshly, squinting his eyes as if he were holding up a building that had fallen on one side. "I..."

She pressed forward, placing her lips roughly on his, and suddenly she was met with the soft, pliable skin that he used to inhabit. She could feel his lips beneath hers as she opened her mouth slightly and re-trapped his mouth beneath hers. Noise bubbled up from within her, coming out like a sob, as she cupped his face with her hands, and felt a tear that wasn't her own.

"Stop. molesting. me," he whispered, attempting sarcasm and failing, from beneath her, and she could feel his breath land gently on her face. She opened her eyes that had been closed in delight.

"Make me. Make me stop," she answered, visibly shaken and being torn apart. "Hit rewind."

Gasping, he kissed her then, claimed her with his tongue and his lips that tugged at her, way down to her toes that were beginning to awaken from their slumber.

Something in me...
Everything in...
Something in me...
In you.

"Can I, can I really have you?" she asked when finally he pulled away to give them both air to breathe and warm their lungs from the lack of oxygen that was turning them blue.

"I can't stay," he said suddenly. "Rory, I can't -- "

And he was ripped away by the darkness surrounding, as if it had claws to wrap around him and pierce his skin until it tore away along with them. Until he was gone. And the poster on the wall of her mother's old room confronted Rory once again, along with the stillness of being alone.

"Wait!" she cried, to any part of the mysterious darkness that may be listening. "Wait!" (waitwaitwaitwait...)

- -
to be continued...