Author's note: Hey everyone! This is my take on the ending of 4x05, with a little twist. Angst warning. Hope you enjoy it!
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The sand is warm under Robert's bare feet.
He can feel everything. The sound of the ocean as the tide washes over the shore. The breeze on the skin of his face and his bare arms, rising goosebumps, leaving a salty feeling in his mouth. He can see the sunlight glistening on the waves, making them sparkle, almost as if they glow with every color of the rainbow.
The scenario is almost too perfect to be real, but it is, it must be, because he can still feel his heart beating in his chest.
Robert reaches his hand toward her, trying to grab her palm and lace their fingers together as they indulge in the peaceful moment, in this little piece of heaven only they know.
He only turns his head around when his reached out hand meets with nothing but thin air.
She isn't there. His Andy.
And then things start to seem a little weird, as if his reality is suddenly blurry around the edges. He is not in Seattle anymore, it is clear from the way the sun warms his face and he wears nothing but a short sleeve shirt. This beach is too beautiful to belong to a state as gray as the one he spent most of his life in, and if he is honest with himself, it is too mesmerizing to belong anywhere in the world, other than maybe an exotic and far away destination he has never heard of, let alone visit.
She ought to be there, ought to spend this blissful moment with him, hugging him from behind and resting her head between his shoulder blades, telling him she loves him without using so many words.
Yet she is nowhere to be found as his eyes scan the length and width of the shore he stands on. He looks all the way into the horizon, but she isn't there. He can't remember how he got there either, to this place that seems too astounding to even exist. Robert knows that this is the time panic should rise in his chest, as he has no clue where he is and how to get back to her, but there is something about this place that pulls him with its peacefulness, almost as if it lulls him to sleep.
And suddenly, his eyelids feel heavy, and all Robert wants to do is close his eyes and let go.
"Hey Sully." He hears a familiar voice coming from behind him.
And it can't be him. It can't be him, because this voice belongs to a man who has been dead for two years now. His best friend, a man who Robert had to learn how to live life without him in the world, without him walking the same earth, always being in a distance of only one phone call away.
It can't be him, because Luke is dead, and Robert is still very much alive.
He is still alive, isn't he?
"Hey Rip." Robert greets, and then sits down on the sand, as if it is the most natural thing to do. As if nothing has changed in the past two years, nothing at all, and his best friend is about to uncap two cold beer bottles and tell him about the current ups and down in his love life.
Robert wants to do so many things at once. He wants to run to his best friend and hug him, he wants to punch him in the face for leaving him for so long, for not being by his side when he fell in love again and got married, when he was at his highest and his lowest in the past two years. He wants to scream, because this isn't right, he is seeing a person long gone, while he is still very much alive and breathing.
He needs to find a way out of this place that makes no sense, so much so that he thinks it might give him a headache, sooner rather than later.
Lucas finds a seat right beside him, close enough for Robert to be able to see the way he smiles warmly at him, yet far away, too far away for two best friends who had found their way back to each other two years ago, only to go each to his own direction once again.
