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If You Close Your Eyes

Summary:

And the walls kept tumbling down
In the city that we love
Great clouds roll over the hills
Bringing darkness from above

But if you close your eyes,
Does it almost feel like
Nothing changed at all?

 

Post Ethan's death. Based on lyrics from Pompeii by Bastille.

Work Text:

Ethan?

I’m here, L.

I’m scared.

I know, but you have me.

Promise?

 

 

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As the peaceful darkness drifted away, tears filled gold and green eyes.  For those few seconds, it had seemed so real.  That she was Kelting with Ethan again.  That he wasn’t dead.  That his death was just part of a bad nightmare and she would wake up to an Ethan that was alive and well.  The Duchannes was still clinging to that hope before the emptiness in her head and the ache in her heart let her know that this sorrow was the reality.  The happiness was the dream.

 

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A soft knock on her bedroom door entered into her brain, but not her conscious.  It was only when Reece told her to come down to the dining room that Lena realized she was no longer alone.  She nodded and followed her cousin without really realizing that she was doing so.  The Natural had been in a state of mostly silent shock since her boyfriend, Ethan Wate, had died.  Breakfast ws a silent affair- no one wanted to upset Lena by talking about the event, but no one wanted to make light of it by talking of something else.  Even Reece was unusually quiet which meant something was \wrong.  Really wrong.

 

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Macon was dressed casually, at least as casual as Macon would dress.  He was in a suitcoat, but not a suit, per se.  Lena looked down at her shorts and Ethan’s oversized shirt that she wore for pajamas and bare feet, deciding she would have to change before Link came over as he did everyday since.  To see Ridley, but to also spend time with Ethan’s grave.  They had been best friends since childhood, he had done everything he could to save Ethan just like the rest of them, the Ravenwoods could hardly begrudge him that.  Although one wouldn’t think it, he was also a comfort to Lena.  Only those two and Amma could truly understand what the others were going through.  Only they loved Ethan as the others did.

 

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As she re-entered her bedroom after breakfast her mis-matched eyes glanced around the blank walls.  Lena’s mind mentally added lines of poetry across the five surfaces and her fingers reached for one of the Sharpies.  Tears threatened to reappear as she stopped herself.  How could she write as if nothing was wrong?  As if the person she would die for wasn’t dead?  As if she herself wasn’t dead on the inside?

 

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But even as she slipped on her shoes and went down to meet the now Incubus Link at Ethan’s grave, she knew that if she closed her eyes, if Link closed his eyes, if Amma closed hers, it was almost like nothing had changed.  Like he was still there.  Like he would come down the stairs at Wate’s Landing for a piece of Amma’s pie and a glass of chocolate milk.  Like he would get picked up in the Beater and roll his eyes at Link’s blasting the new Holy Roller’s song.  Like he and Lena would lay out under the lemon trees like they used to, to smell the smoke and lemons, to hold hands and never want to let go, even though they were burning, to want to hold onto that burning feeling for as long as possible, even after releasing their grip. 

 

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Fate, alas, is a cruel mistress, and no longer how much they closed their eyes, or hung onto the hope that they had made a mistake, that Ethan wasn’t really dead, they knew there was no mistake.  They knew that Ethan Wate was truly gone.  And the truth was the worst part.  The truth was why their lives would never be the same.  The truth was what was going to make them cry in the days and weeks ahead.

 

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GreenandgoldTruthequalspainClosemyeyesNothing’schanged. is what ran through Lena’s head.  Is what her fingers itched to hold a Sharpie and write.  What she didn’t write on her bedroom wall.  What she didn’t write on her arm.