Extras

Atypical: Alone

\\tw: mentions of death, gore\\

//takes place around Chapter 50-51//

-

James is never by himself, but he is always alone.

Olivia dies every day. Goddess, the wounds don't seem to heal - they just pile up, saturating him in her blood, cutting a bit deeper with every fatality. A car crash. An earthquake. A man, cornering her in a narrow alley.

It's not like he's watching it. It's like he's killing her himself.

It's the most unbearable when she's afraid. When the death comes only after terror. He can feel the terror in the back of his throat and it tastes metallic and coppery as blood.

James cries too much.

It's impossible to stop. So many things are raging in his mind - so much anger and remorse and loss - that it feels like they will kill him if he holds them there. He wants to scream and tear the earth apart, tear himself apart. But he cannot do this.

So he cries.

It doesn't help.

There is a day when it hits him.

She will never wake up. This is - it. But it makes no sense. It makes no sense. How can that be? He can't - he can't even comprehend of a life without her. He can't imagine it. Not now that he's had it. It's - nonsense. Nothing. Impossible.

He is sitting beside her sleeping form, counting her breaths.

"You're gone," he says aloud, the words confused and meaningless.

And Olivia, of course, doesn't respond. No witty retort. No flirtation. Nothing. Nonsense. She does not look like herself. She looks inanimate. Dead.

It's his fault. It's his fault.

"I wish I had never met you," he cries, and he means it but he doesn't. He would take this awful, burning loss for the rest of his life if it means that he got to love Olivia for even a day. But he always knew he would kill her. From the moment she collapsed in that tiny cafe, he knew that he would be the most dangerous thing in her life. But he wanted to hold on to her and, oh, she made it so easy to be selfish.

His tears are dripping onto the back of Olivia's hand. With the pad of his thumb, he carefully smooths them away.

The nightmare begins again.

-

One time, when she wakes, James lets something slip.

She sees it in his eyes. Or in his stance. She could always know.

"Tell me what happened," she demands, voice croaky from disuse.

So James explains, condensed and quick and desperate.

She waits. When he finishes, she asks a simple question.

"How long?"

"It's been a few weeks," he rasps.

He can practically see the gears turning in Olivia's mind, quickly churning out a conclusion, but he's horribly shaken when she opens her mouth and says -

"You have to kill me."

Every atom in his body revolts. His entire being rejects this idea so violently that he feels like his stomach has migrated to his lungs, all topsy turvy and wrong.

"What?" he chokes out.

"Quentin did something that - it connected us, I think. I don't know - it's so loud - "