Bridge To Terabithia: "Soulmates Never Die" (Jess/Leslie)
Title: Soulmates Never Die
Fandom: Bridge To Terabithia
Characters/Pairings: Jess/Leslie, Jesse Aarons, Leslie Burke, Mr & Mrs Burke
Rating: PG
Narrative: Jesse's POV, third person
Genre: Angst, Romance, Hurt/Comfort
Length: One-shot
Warnings: None
Spoilers: The ending of the book/film
Disclaimer: I do not own Bridge To Terabithia
Author's Note: Based on both the book and the film. Not sure if I like this piece of not.
Summary: Jesse gets to see Leslie’s body before she is taken away to be cremated. He tries to come to terms with her death, and how he felt about her.
“We’re having her cremated.”
The words barely reached Jesse’s ears. He felt Mr. Burke walk away after a while, as if he’d been expecting something, anything, and had given up. Jesse couldn’t find it in him to care. He’d barely even tried, in reality. It was difficult for his thoughts to stray any further from what was in front of his eyes.
She looked like a mistake. Without the vibrancy, the imagination, the joy… she was wrong. Jesse had not expected her to look so… dead. He wasn’t sure what exactly he had expected, maybe for her to just look asleep. Yet, without everything that made the body before him into ‘Leslie’… she was not. He was not standing over his best friend. He was standing over a cold emptiness, nothing but a reminder.
He could not bring himself to touch her. He mused that maybe it was because, in life, he had rarely been able to touch her. He hadn’t been sure why, but touching Leslie had always seemed like some sort of forbidden act. He’d never really been the ‘touchy-feely’ type, as his sister May Belle put it, but if he ever had to touch his sisters, to hold their hands across the street, he’d had no problem. In fact, Leslie did not seem to have a problem with touching him. She seemed to do it rather often, now that he thought about it. She would grab his wrist when she wanted to show him something, playfully push his shoulder when challenging him to a race, and that day she’d hugged him. Jesse thought that she’d felt it then, too, by the way she had pulled away. Whatever ‘it’ was.
Now she was dead, he still couldn’t do it. Maybe it was because part of him expected her to jump up, squealing “Got you, Jess! How did you like the ‘death-of-the-queen’ game? Let’s go to Terabithia!” He would never paint again if it meant that Leslie would do that. Or maybe he should paint all the time for her. He wasn’t sure how to play this game, so he did not know which Leslie would think to be more “regal” and “poetic”.
However, Jesse knew this was different. No other game the two of them had ever played involved her parents. The look on Mr. Burke’s face when he had led Jesse to the body had told him everything he had needed to know. It was time to stop pretending.
Jesse had always thought of Leslie as being constant. She wasn’t something that could do something as vulnerable and mindless as ‘die’, she was just Leslie. His best friend. The only friend he’d ever really had. Leslie had mentioned “soulmates” once in one of her stories. He guessed that’s what she would have called the two of them. He knew for certain that she was essential, she was his other half. How could half a soul live by itself? Leslie had taught him that your imagination was as vast as you made it, yet he couldn’t imagine not seeing her again. He knew that he wasn’t being given a choice, though. He had to use the lessons that Leslie had taught him, to “keep his mind wide open”, and to keeping living. Alone. Again.
“She looks beautiful, doesn’t she?” Jesse hadn’t heard the footsteps, but he didn’t jump. Leslie’s mother rested her hand on his shoulder while weeping quietly. Jesse wouldn’t say so, but he did not agree with her. Leslie was anything but beautiful. Jesse studied the shell before him with disdain. Her body was wearing the blue dress that Leslie had worn to his Church that day, and was wearing shoes that Jesse had never imagined that she owned. This was not his best friend. His best friend was like a shooting star. An emblem of hope, a shining joyous beauty. The most vibrant voice in any room. She wouldn’t wear anything that made sense. This body before him was none of those things, quiet, still, dressed all prim and proper. She certainly was not an emblem of hope now, rather an acceptance of tragic fate.
Jesse couldn’t reply to Leslie’s mother, and he thought she knew that, since she walked away swiftly as her tears multiplied.
If he could do it all again… he would have invited Leslie to the museum. She would have enjoyed it nearly as much as he had. Yet, he had been selfish, and had wanted to spend time alone with Miss Edmunds. He used to think she was so amazing… before everything had changed. Before he got here. Maybe, all of this, was his fault? If only he had invited her, she may still be alive. Perhaps she wouldn’t be. Jesse thought that possibly the only thing that would have changed would be that he would have seen her die instead. He wouldn’t have been able to bear that. Still, if somehow, he could’ve…
“Jess Aarons, you ain’t doing nobody any good thinkin’ like that!” He muttered to himself, mimicking what he thought Leslie would say if inside this shell before him.
He was struck by something his little sister had said to Leslie and himself on Easter Sunday. “If you don’t believe the Bible, God’ll damn you to hell when you die.” That was true, wasn’t it? It’s what Jesse had been taught in Church, so it had to be true… right? Leslie hadn’t believed, not really. She liked the idea, but did not really ‘believe’. Dammit Leslie, why couldn’t you have just accepted it? Jesse did not want to imagine… Leslie in hell… burning… NO. Jesse’s knuckles turned white as his fingernails dug into the palms of his hands. If that was the God he believed in, then he would believe no longer! What had Leslie said? “I don’t think God goes around damning people to hell.” Maybe she was right. She had been right when she had said, “It’s crazy, isn’t it? You have to believe it, but you hate it. I don’t have to believe it, and I think it’s beautiful.” She could have been right about hell too. It was also possible, Jesse mused, that despite all the sermons he had heard, and hours he had clocked reading the Bible, that Leslie knew more about God than he did. Perhaps God was gracious. Perhaps Leslie made it to heaven. Jesse could finally unclench his fist.
He reached out to her then. It was stupid to be scared of a body, if that’s all it was. He berated himself as his fingers got closer to her, then stopped. Where should he touch her? All the times he had avoided any contact with her, and now he had the chance… he did not know what to do. What would Leslie want? He thought about it for a moment, before moving his fingers down to her hand, and entwining himself with the body.
She was cold. He should have expected that, by the way she looked. Yet he still felt a stab of loss when his own fingers began to chill, and the body’s did not squeeze his back. The first time he had purposely touched her, and she did not even know. Jesse thought on wasted chances, long gone now. Yet, as he clenched the lifeless hand ever tighter, be started to see something else.
Leslie was smiling broadly at him, laughing as he blew out the candles on a birthday cake with his family. She took his hand, smile faltering, as they walked down a corridor of a new school. She was laughing as she played with one of Prince Terrien’s mate’s litter. Leslie was speeding toward him after winning an important race. She blushed after Jess had kissed her for the first time. She was wearing a tiara to prom, she didn’t have to win, she was the queen of Terabithia already - Jess’s queen. Gazing nervously at him before receiving her diploma. She was beaming as she signed copies of her first successful novel at the local bookstore. She gave him a tight hug as she looked around his first public art exhibition. She was walking toward him, dressed all in white. A child. Another. All Jesse could see was that smile. All Jesse cared about was that smile.
He let go of her hand after that, somewhat slowly. It was clear to him now, how much he truly loved her. How much she had loved him. He allowed a moment of sadness, one for a life lost. A life he now knew he would be able to see whenever he closed his eyes. A life he would always be able to see, yet never experience.
He shook his head, walking away from the body. Jesse had decided, then, that he would follow Leslie’s example. She was not dead, not to him. If he could see that life as clear as he could see the ground beneath him, then it existed. He would keep his mind open always, and let her in. Leslie could always be with him, then. He felt a certain peace in his mind when he took the chance to say it out loud to Miss Edmunds.
“Next time, we should invite Leslie. I think she’d like that.” He finally managed to smile as he raced down the path, towards a familiar place. He knew she would be waiting for him. Whatever happened, she would live on. She had even given him a place that he could keep her safe, her memory undamaged. They would always have Terabithia.