Afterlife [3/?]
Title: Afterlife [3/?]
Pairing: Matt/Jimmy
Rating: PG-13 (language)
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters, and as far as I know, none of this really happened.
Summary:
A translucent haze. Endless dreaming.
Dreams. Memories. Aren’t they the same now?
Feels like it.
But they’re only memories...
Memories we can never make again.
Memories that feel so wonderful, so vivid, so real as they engulf my mind.
Then they leave me empty. In pain.
Alone.
I wish I could go back...
The ground rumbled and oscillated beneath my feet, causing my body to quiver with the simple effort of staying upright. A monstrous boulder shattered into pieces only inches to my right and threw me effortlessly into the rock wall opposite. An excruciating jolt of pain shot up the length of my arm. I cried out in agony, but impulsively my body continued to move forward through the ruins of the quake. Towards something. Something that I held an overpowering innate bond with, that I could sense was in danger.
Jimmy.
My slackened pace shifted into a sprint, the pain throughout my body instantly receding as it was replaced by anxiety for someone I cared much more about. He was visible in the distance; a black figure that disappeared every few seconds as other stone monoliths and masses of fragmented metal crashed down before him. I screamed his name until my throat burned in protest, and then I screamed more as I ran. He seemed oblivious to the devastation occurring around him.
He stood absolutely still, little tufts of hair being whipped up by the windy backlash of the wreckage, but otherwise undisturbed. With his back toward me, I couldn’t see his face, and I couldn’t detect any form of acknowledgement that he could hear me. He was as calm as if he were standing on the shoreline of an empty beach, with the waves lapping up around his feet instead of dust and ashes.
A block of cement from a parking structure crashed to the ground directly in front of me, hurling me for the second time onto my battered side. I felt the pain and I hardly cared. Wincing, I was back on my feet in seconds and trying to break through the immovable wall of stone. It was hopeless. I couldn’t get any closer, but I could still see him through a jagged rupture in the weakest portion of the wall. I screamed and screamed.
Time seemed to stand still as he turned, giving the first indication that he had heard anything at all. I was able to see just of the outline of his smooth face, the swivel of his foot, the slight disruption amongst the folds of his leather jacket. I was so entranced in watching him that I failed to notice the cracks snaking progressively through the supports of the structure directly above him, until the structure itself began to collapse upon him. Gravel falling, then rocks, then masses of stone like the one that had blocked my path to rescuing him. He was gone.
Ice cold water stung my face and suddenly I was on the floor of my bedroom, my hands in front of me clawing for some invisible form. I was covered with sweat and could hardly breathe. “You okay?” Brian asked, sounding panicked. He held out another glass of water for me to drink, but I was trembling too badly to have touched it without spilling the contents all over my lap. “You were screaming for Jimmy again...worse than usual, though.”
I covered my face with my hands, clinging to the moist, gaunt skin as an indicator of physical reality, and rubbing my eyes as if to wash out the horrible images that I had just experienced as I said them aloud. “H-He was c-crushed...an earthqu-” My voice cracked, and that was the end of my description. I refused to call the memory back again. I never wanted to think of it again.
“Was it the real Jimmy?” he asked, and for a moment I forgot how to breathe. It hadn’t occurred to me to think of the dream as anything more than a dream.
“Brian,” I croaked, lowering my hands to gaze at him with bloodshot, vacant eyes. “Get the pills...”
He pelted out of the room and was back in moments with an unopened bottle of Ambien, which he tore the cap off of and tossed two capsules into my shaking hands. We each swallowed a dose without hesitation and fell onto our backs, holding hands with white knuckles.
“Is it gonna work?” I asked, because I wanted comfort. I wanted to hear him say yes, whether it was true or not.
“If it doesn’t work, we’re done for,” he quoted, a hint of humor in his voice. I swallowed and accepted it as an optimistic answer, because if I hadn’t, I would have been overwhelmed with fear and likely entered a panic attack. “But honestly...after this one, we have to get back to work.”
“...What?”
“Promise me, Shadows. No matter what happens, when we wake up, it’s time to pick ourselves off our sorry asses and do what we’re meant to do. What Jimmy meant for us to do, even when he died. You know as well as I that this isn’t what he wanted. Not for any of us, and especially not for you.”
I swallowed, and there was a passionate tremor in his arm as he tried to convince me.
“Dammit, Matt, answer me! And don’t even think about saying no!”
“Okay!” I choked out, forcing myself to accept the notion I had been avoiding for the past several months. I thought that I couldn’t do it, that I didn’t have any passion left to contribute to my profession. Deep down I knew that there was plenty, some of it bred from my source of sorrow itself. I also knew that Brian was right. “Okay. I promise.”
That was all he needed. He was calm. The powerful agent knocked him out within minutes, while I lay trembling. Wondering if the same old trick would work again and again. If the perfect dreamland I had escaped to every night still existed. If the Jimmy I had just witnessed die again was the real one.
-----
Pairing: Matt/Jimmy
Rating: PG-13 (language)
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters, and as far as I know, none of this really happened.
Summary:
A translucent haze. Endless dreaming.
Dreams. Memories. Aren’t they the same now?
Feels like it.
But they’re only memories...
Memories we can never make again.
Memories that feel so wonderful, so vivid, so real as they engulf my mind.
Then they leave me empty. In pain.
Alone.
I wish I could go back...
The ground rumbled and oscillated beneath my feet, causing my body to quiver with the simple effort of staying upright. A monstrous boulder shattered into pieces only inches to my right and threw me effortlessly into the rock wall opposite. An excruciating jolt of pain shot up the length of my arm. I cried out in agony, but impulsively my body continued to move forward through the ruins of the quake. Towards something. Something that I held an overpowering innate bond with, that I could sense was in danger.
Jimmy.
My slackened pace shifted into a sprint, the pain throughout my body instantly receding as it was replaced by anxiety for someone I cared much more about. He was visible in the distance; a black figure that disappeared every few seconds as other stone monoliths and masses of fragmented metal crashed down before him. I screamed his name until my throat burned in protest, and then I screamed more as I ran. He seemed oblivious to the devastation occurring around him.
He stood absolutely still, little tufts of hair being whipped up by the windy backlash of the wreckage, but otherwise undisturbed. With his back toward me, I couldn’t see his face, and I couldn’t detect any form of acknowledgement that he could hear me. He was as calm as if he were standing on the shoreline of an empty beach, with the waves lapping up around his feet instead of dust and ashes.
A block of cement from a parking structure crashed to the ground directly in front of me, hurling me for the second time onto my battered side. I felt the pain and I hardly cared. Wincing, I was back on my feet in seconds and trying to break through the immovable wall of stone. It was hopeless. I couldn’t get any closer, but I could still see him through a jagged rupture in the weakest portion of the wall. I screamed and screamed.
Time seemed to stand still as he turned, giving the first indication that he had heard anything at all. I was able to see just of the outline of his smooth face, the swivel of his foot, the slight disruption amongst the folds of his leather jacket. I was so entranced in watching him that I failed to notice the cracks snaking progressively through the supports of the structure directly above him, until the structure itself began to collapse upon him. Gravel falling, then rocks, then masses of stone like the one that had blocked my path to rescuing him. He was gone.
Ice cold water stung my face and suddenly I was on the floor of my bedroom, my hands in front of me clawing for some invisible form. I was covered with sweat and could hardly breathe. “You okay?” Brian asked, sounding panicked. He held out another glass of water for me to drink, but I was trembling too badly to have touched it without spilling the contents all over my lap. “You were screaming for Jimmy again...worse than usual, though.”
I covered my face with my hands, clinging to the moist, gaunt skin as an indicator of physical reality, and rubbing my eyes as if to wash out the horrible images that I had just experienced as I said them aloud. “H-He was c-crushed...an earthqu-” My voice cracked, and that was the end of my description. I refused to call the memory back again. I never wanted to think of it again.
“Was it the real Jimmy?” he asked, and for a moment I forgot how to breathe. It hadn’t occurred to me to think of the dream as anything more than a dream.
“Brian,” I croaked, lowering my hands to gaze at him with bloodshot, vacant eyes. “Get the pills...”
He pelted out of the room and was back in moments with an unopened bottle of Ambien, which he tore the cap off of and tossed two capsules into my shaking hands. We each swallowed a dose without hesitation and fell onto our backs, holding hands with white knuckles.
“Is it gonna work?” I asked, because I wanted comfort. I wanted to hear him say yes, whether it was true or not.
“If it doesn’t work, we’re done for,” he quoted, a hint of humor in his voice. I swallowed and accepted it as an optimistic answer, because if I hadn’t, I would have been overwhelmed with fear and likely entered a panic attack. “But honestly...after this one, we have to get back to work.”
“...What?”
“Promise me, Shadows. No matter what happens, when we wake up, it’s time to pick ourselves off our sorry asses and do what we’re meant to do. What Jimmy meant for us to do, even when he died. You know as well as I that this isn’t what he wanted. Not for any of us, and especially not for you.”
I swallowed, and there was a passionate tremor in his arm as he tried to convince me.
“Dammit, Matt, answer me! And don’t even think about saying no!”
“Okay!” I choked out, forcing myself to accept the notion I had been avoiding for the past several months. I thought that I couldn’t do it, that I didn’t have any passion left to contribute to my profession. Deep down I knew that there was plenty, some of it bred from my source of sorrow itself. I also knew that Brian was right. “Okay. I promise.”
That was all he needed. He was calm. The powerful agent knocked him out within minutes, while I lay trembling. Wondering if the same old trick would work again and again. If the perfect dreamland I had escaped to every night still existed. If the Jimmy I had just witnessed die again was the real one.
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