Summary: On the end, and what happens afterward. Yves and Jimmy after JTS.

Title: Out of the Blue
Author: Vicinity
Email: akavicinity@yahoo.com
Category: Angst/Romance
Rating: Implied R. Based on past experience, I'm overly cautious about these things.
Summary: On the end, and what happens afterward.
Spoilers: Jump the Shark
Disclaimer: Not mine, not mine.



She stands alone in front of the glass window as if she is sacrificing herself to whatever may be there. The sky is black, illuminated with few lights and neon, and the room behind her is no worse. She does not see what is in front of her, because her mind is in a light tiled room overlooking the ocean a continent away. It is on the figures in the room, the place where she spent so much of her childhood, and where she watched whatever was left of that life burn.

She had felt his presence on hers, then, as he reached out gnarled fingers and touched the back of her hand. He smiled and he said that he had been expecting this. She wondered, then, if there was some pride in that, if her father was proud that he had raised a daughter able to defeat even him. She felt his breath on hers, and she knew that she was breathing for him then. She felt him surrounding her and then she did not understand. She watched him, afterward, and when she knew that he was gone, she went to the water.

Once upon a time, yesterday and ages ago, she walked along a beach during the sunset. The sand was golden and the water was scarlet, and she was a black shadow dividing the two. She felt the wind on her face, carrying traces of the ocean, and she felt the clear water caressing her ankles, and she knew that she had succeeded, as much as she could have expected to. She stood in the surf until the sun set beneath the blood waves, and then she turned back to the house, a dark silhouette against the darker sky, both glittering with lights, thousands of unseen ghosts. Finally knowing her place, she understood, and she let the flames begin.

It was closure, then, and as she walked away, she wondered what she was going to do next. She had dedicated her life to revenge, and so little had been accomplished. She watched her father die, a brittle, tired man, and she realized then that his death was not what she had wanted. She had wanted the end of evil, and when she knew she could not have that, she wondered what else there was.

She returned to her home, then, and she let herself into the darkened rooms. He was there, and it did not surprise her. She wondered how he knew, and then she knew that it did not matter. There was nothing that she could do, and it would be alright.

She remembers being told once that life is full of choices; one walks only the path that they have chosen. It sounded so simple and so trite, and she has to wonder what value her mother placed in it. How did she use it to justify her life, and did she repeat it with faith or guilt? Maybe, after all, it was nothing more than the usual sentiment that the woman would share with her daughter in an attempt to somehow make up for the loss of the life she could have known. There are so many questions that she will never have answered, and now she will have to add to them. She wonders how many of the answers she could have, if she really wanted them.

She remembers the way he found her, and she remembers the way he looked when she told him that she would not come home. When she saw him again, with the others - she remembers that, too. She remembers the way he looked, as well, when they were watching their best friends die. She wishes that she had not witnessed that, had not learned what it was like to watch innocence fade so quickly in the eyes of another.

She has so many wishes and so many regrets, and by now she has learned that there is nothing to be done about them. Perhaps in the blood and flames of the night before, she was able to absolve herself, to free herself from whatever was left of the past. She wonders if in destroying that she was able to avenge the deaths of the others, of her friends. She wonders if it is fair to count one life for three, and she wonders if it is fair to count lives at all.

She thought about dying, then. She thought about finishing what had been started so many years before, and she thought about both the fire and the sea. She is not sure why she did not choose one of them, but she has decided that it does not matter. She has accomplished what she set out to do, and she is left to wonder if the heroine has returned in glory. What is to be her reward for slaying the visible demons? She wonders if innocence can be restored, replaced, and she wonders if she would really like to be innocent again.

She tenses slightly when she feels him come up behind her, and she curls her shadowed hands against her sides as she realizes how simple it would be to turn to him and to take his hands and force her mouth onto his. She wonders, now, why she should not. Everything that she had worried about in the past, everything that she had feared, is either gone or no longer mattered. She can see that now.

She turns to him, and he gently takes the damp glass from her pale grip. She touches his face, then, and then she is against him and she thinks that this would be right, this is what should happen now. She closes her eyes as they move back, and she does not notice when the empty glass hits the floor. Solace, she thinks, and the end.


She opens her eyes later to a pale dawn and gray light strewn across the room. She stretches and she wonders if she is beginning a new life or if she is simply ending an old one. He is warm beside her, and sometime when she is staring out the window at the empty sky, he awakens. She turns to him again, calm and at peace, and his eyes are crystal blue and she thinks again that this is right.

END