death is no parenthesis [The River]
Title: death is no parenthesis
Characters/Pairings: Lena/Jonas
Rating: PG-13
Summary: This wasn't the plan. A meditation on the events of the finale and what could (never) have happened after.
Spoilers/Warnings: Up to 1x08; references to character death.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N: This fic includes events from the finale but also plays with canon. Admittedly, it also focuses on Lena and Jonas' friendship/flirtation pre-finale, and conveniently downplays Lena/Lincoln from the last few episodes. Title from the e.e. cummings poem.
This wasn't the plan.
(He wasn't part of the plan.)
----
The trail's rough and barely maintained, rocks slipping under her worn-in hiking boots and roots tripping her up every few steps, and she's about half a second away from telling Jonas they should give up and head to the hostel when he stops, throws a grin back at her, camera resting against the crook of his shoulder.
Almost there, Len, he says, and her heart seems to skip a little at that, that he's taken her name and made it his. It's been four months since they got out of the Bouina and though Jonas' first instinct was to get as far away as possible (somewhere freezing, he'd joked, how'd you feel about Canada?) somehow they'd ended up through most of South America, lingering in Sao Paulo for the last few weeks.
There's a shitty minimum-wage job and no father and a family that thinks he's dead waiting for them back in the States. Tess and Emmet and Lincoln and the rest hopped the first plane; she and Jonas take their payment from Clark and buy backpacks and supplies in the first town they find.
Jonas takes her hand for the last part of the trail, extending his arm in exaggerated chivalry, and her cheek bumps his shoulder as they make their way up, the cotton of his shirt soft against her skin (it's been weeks of separate beds and muted looks and careful spaces between them, and not for the first time Lena's grateful, or frustrated, or relieved to have a friend first). When they get to the top he makes her close her eyes for the final few steps, her hand still anchored on his arm. She feels, through the blackness of her eyelids, Jonas shift behind her, the familiar whirring of his camera coming to life.
Okay, he murmurs, open.
Then it's like the jungle's alive in front of her, glowing and pulsing pinpricks of green against the blanket of night. So much life it almost takes her breath away, like it could fill her veins, this beauty, this magic.
Jonas hovers at her back. Photuris lucicrescens -- fireflies -- right? I know you mentioned the bug thing, and I heard it was crazy up here, so I figured --
She shoves the camera away, grasps his face in both hands and kisses him, and swears it's the first time since the Bouina that she's felt like she's still living.
----
This wasn't the plan.
She's holding onto his body, the sheet (she'd been left to cover him -- nobody else bothered; killer, Clark had sneered) bunching at his throat, sagging and heavy and red with blood. The rest of him's as pale as when they found him the first time, the ashy skin and dark, sunken eyes and flat, placid gaze that said death, and he's gone, gone for real this time, not balancing some thin, strange line between that and living, and maybe he wasn't ever real at all, she thinks, just a jungle-fevered figment of her imagination.
Not real at all, and she strokes the fringe of hair away from his forehead, pretends it's sweat and not blood slicked there.
She should hate him, this almost-stranger who stumbled into and out of her mess of a life.
She should hate him for trying to kill Emmet, for shooting Lincoln instead, for letting Kurt take the fall --
-- there are a thousand reasons why the man she's holding gathered in her arms, huddled in a grimy corner of the hallway outside the galley while Lincoln screams and screams and screams and one of the cameras clicks into position above her, is a monster. A million more why she should have killed him herself.
She should hate him.
But she doesn't.
----
Get up, Len, he whispers into her ear, and his voice tastes like cigarellos and toothpaste and last night's rum, feels like the softest rustle of a breeze across water, I promise there's coffee.
The sun's already slanting through the window, Sao Paulo's heat sticking to her in ways she should be used to after so many years on the river and Jonas makes it worse, the curve of his jaw settled against her neck, all stubble and sweat and skin that's still warm from a days-old sunburn. She feels the play of muscles as he fumbles for the bedside table, hears him thumb his password into his phone and she cracks her eyes open to his teasing grin and the phone suspended above their heads.
She protests but Jonas wins, keeps the camera recording as he musses her hair and kisses her good morning (professional quirk, he says, committing everything to memory, the kind that always lasts). The sheets twist around them, sun catching on all the corners of the room, and she feels so good -- even after her father and Lincoln and everything on the river -- it's like it almost can't be true, can't be real.
Jonas kisses her again, his smile twitching against her lips and the heat of him surrounding her, surrounding her with so much, so much life --
----
This was never the plan.
(She knows that now.)
Characters/Pairings: Lena/Jonas
Rating: PG-13
Summary: This wasn't the plan. A meditation on the events of the finale and what could (never) have happened after.
Spoilers/Warnings: Up to 1x08; references to character death.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N: This fic includes events from the finale but also plays with canon. Admittedly, it also focuses on Lena and Jonas' friendship/flirtation pre-finale, and conveniently downplays Lena/Lincoln from the last few episodes. Title from the e.e. cummings poem.
This wasn't the plan.
(He wasn't part of the plan.)
----
The trail's rough and barely maintained, rocks slipping under her worn-in hiking boots and roots tripping her up every few steps, and she's about half a second away from telling Jonas they should give up and head to the hostel when he stops, throws a grin back at her, camera resting against the crook of his shoulder.
Almost there, Len, he says, and her heart seems to skip a little at that, that he's taken her name and made it his. It's been four months since they got out of the Bouina and though Jonas' first instinct was to get as far away as possible (somewhere freezing, he'd joked, how'd you feel about Canada?) somehow they'd ended up through most of South America, lingering in Sao Paulo for the last few weeks.
There's a shitty minimum-wage job and no father and a family that thinks he's dead waiting for them back in the States. Tess and Emmet and Lincoln and the rest hopped the first plane; she and Jonas take their payment from Clark and buy backpacks and supplies in the first town they find.
Jonas takes her hand for the last part of the trail, extending his arm in exaggerated chivalry, and her cheek bumps his shoulder as they make their way up, the cotton of his shirt soft against her skin (it's been weeks of separate beds and muted looks and careful spaces between them, and not for the first time Lena's grateful, or frustrated, or relieved to have a friend first). When they get to the top he makes her close her eyes for the final few steps, her hand still anchored on his arm. She feels, through the blackness of her eyelids, Jonas shift behind her, the familiar whirring of his camera coming to life.
Okay, he murmurs, open.
Then it's like the jungle's alive in front of her, glowing and pulsing pinpricks of green against the blanket of night. So much life it almost takes her breath away, like it could fill her veins, this beauty, this magic.
Jonas hovers at her back. Photuris lucicrescens -- fireflies -- right? I know you mentioned the bug thing, and I heard it was crazy up here, so I figured --
She shoves the camera away, grasps his face in both hands and kisses him, and swears it's the first time since the Bouina that she's felt like she's still living.
----
This wasn't the plan.
She's holding onto his body, the sheet (she'd been left to cover him -- nobody else bothered; killer, Clark had sneered) bunching at his throat, sagging and heavy and red with blood. The rest of him's as pale as when they found him the first time, the ashy skin and dark, sunken eyes and flat, placid gaze that said death, and he's gone, gone for real this time, not balancing some thin, strange line between that and living, and maybe he wasn't ever real at all, she thinks, just a jungle-fevered figment of her imagination.
Not real at all, and she strokes the fringe of hair away from his forehead, pretends it's sweat and not blood slicked there.
She should hate him, this almost-stranger who stumbled into and out of her mess of a life.
She should hate him for trying to kill Emmet, for shooting Lincoln instead, for letting Kurt take the fall --
-- there are a thousand reasons why the man she's holding gathered in her arms, huddled in a grimy corner of the hallway outside the galley while Lincoln screams and screams and screams and one of the cameras clicks into position above her, is a monster. A million more why she should have killed him herself.
She should hate him.
But she doesn't.
----
Get up, Len, he whispers into her ear, and his voice tastes like cigarellos and toothpaste and last night's rum, feels like the softest rustle of a breeze across water, I promise there's coffee.
The sun's already slanting through the window, Sao Paulo's heat sticking to her in ways she should be used to after so many years on the river and Jonas makes it worse, the curve of his jaw settled against her neck, all stubble and sweat and skin that's still warm from a days-old sunburn. She feels the play of muscles as he fumbles for the bedside table, hears him thumb his password into his phone and she cracks her eyes open to his teasing grin and the phone suspended above their heads.
She protests but Jonas wins, keeps the camera recording as he musses her hair and kisses her good morning (professional quirk, he says, committing everything to memory, the kind that always lasts). The sheets twist around them, sun catching on all the corners of the room, and she feels so good -- even after her father and Lincoln and everything on the river -- it's like it almost can't be true, can't be real.
Jonas kisses her again, his smile twitching against her lips and the heat of him surrounding her, surrounding her with so much, so much life --
----
This was never the plan.
(She knows that now.)