Summary: Thoughts during the long search. JTS, All About Yves, Yves/Jimmy.

Title: Perfect Daylight
Author: Vicinity
Email: akavicinity@yahoo.com
Category: Gen/Het
Rating: G
Summary: Thoughts during the long search.
Spoilers: Jump the Shark, All About Yves
Disclaimer: Not mine, not mine.



The sun is warm and hot, but in the shade it is deliciously cool. They sit together at one of the small metal tables, not speaking and not needing to, sharing something more than words. The air smells of fruit blossoms, an everlasting summer, and his fingers are gentle on her smooth wrist. She is dressed in white for the first time in forever, and her dark hair falls free around her shoulders. She is smiling and she is beautiful and above all she is happy. It is something that he dreams regularly, and as always, he awakens now.

Reality is a harsh contrast to his dreams, icy white sheets lying in shadows and bare light streaming in from the streetlights and the neon outside. He shivers slightly, both from the chill of the late night rain and the cold sense of isolation. It is another nameless cheap hotel in yet another anonymous city, and he knows that it will not be the last one he sees. He has been gone for so long, for months, and all he has are vague rumors and dark photos. Still, they are evidence, proof that she exists somewhere and that he is getting closer to finding her.

He sighs, remembering the last time that he saw her, when he said that he would take her place and she went anyway. The guys said that they saw her afterwards, that she was in handcuffs but not obviously hurt, and then they got the call. He got it, actually, because the others had left him at home again while they went to meet a source. He knew it was her as soon as he picked up the phone, and long after she was gone, he still held the receiver to his ear, knowing that it was irrational but feeling like it was the only link he had. She had said that she was out, and then she had said goodbye. He wonders how much she risked to tell them that, to let them know, and he knows that she trusts them. She knows that they care about her, because otherwise she would not have called.

Sometimes, though, on these nights when he wakes up cold and lonely, he almost wants to give up, to return to the guys and the lair and his old life. But he would always wonder, and he knows that she would never give up on him. She would never give up on any of them. He wonders if she knows that he is looking for her, and if the traces that she leaves behind are maybe on purpose. Each time he talks to someone, each time he finds her face in a photo, he wonders if she knew he would be there later, retracing her steps.

He wonders what he will do when he finds her. He does not think he has to worry about convincing her to come with him, because despite everything that she said to him before she left, he knows that she does not want to be alone. In his mind he has lived that moment, the moment when he finds her and she stops running, so many times, and it always works out. Later, though, he never remembers exactly what he said, what he did, and he thinks that maybe it doesn't matter, anyway.

He will find her, and when he does, he will know exactly what to say. Now, though, he will close his eyes and hope to return to the dream, to unreality and happiness and the future.

And maybe across the world, she will have the same dream.

END