Black Widow

Small Steps

Jade's POV

Hospitals were too white. Too quiet for the kind of chaos we'd just crawled out of.

Everything smelled like bleach and sleep deprivation, as if someone within those walls was trying too hard to erase all the anguish and the scent of blood.

Liz was sitting beside me at first, her leg bouncing restlessly. She tried talking about anything that wasn't what we just went through, until her words started dissolving into sighs. When she mumbled something about getting coffee, I didn't stop her. I guess we both needed something to do with our hands, an excuse to fill this unbearable wait.

Jesse's mom had been pacing for hours, every sound in the hallway making her flinch. When I told her I'd stay the night, she just nodded, eyes glassy and tired. Eventually she drifted off in the waiting room, and it was just me — and him.

He looked wrong under hospital lights.

Too pale... too still.

Like the life in him had been replaced with something artificial and borrowed.

Machines hummed in the background, steady and mechanical — a rhythm that felt ironically and unfairly calm. My heartbeat didn't know how to match it.

I sank into the chair, knees drawn up, arms wrapped around myself. I tried not to think about the unsettling pool of blood, the sound of him falling, the way his hand had gone cold too fast... but it just kept playing over and over against my will.

On loop.

Somewhere between the clicks of the clock and the drag of the air vents, my mind wandered. To my dad. To all the times I told myself I didn't need anyone because needing people meant giving them power to leave.

But Jesse — he didn't let it consume him. He didn't let the bad parts make him mean.

And maybe that's what scared me most.

I leaned back, staring at the ceiling. My eyes burned from staying open too long. The sterile light above me buzzed, flickering like it couldn't decide if it wanted to keep shining. I knew the feeling. 

The room started blurring at the edges, and I let it.

Then my voice came out small, barely there. "I sometimes forget there are decent people in this world," I whispered, eyes on the unmoving figure in the bed. "Thank you for being one of them, Jessica."

Nothing.

Just the steady beep.

I closed my eyes, my throat tightening.

Beep.

"You're drooling on my bed, y'know."

My eyes snapped open so fast it hurt.

For a moment I thought I imagined it — a ghost, my brain's last-ditch coping mechanism. But then he did it again. The faintest twitch of a grin.

Relief hit like a punch to the ribs. "You almost died and that's the first thing you say?"

"Well," his voice was hoarse, cracked around the edges, "I like to make an entrance."

I huffed out a breath that was somewhere between a laugh and a sob. "You're impossible."

He gave a weak smirk. "And yet here I am. Miracles happen."

"Barely."

I stared at him, the corner of my mouth twitching. His eyes softened just slightly, like the world had slowed down to catch its breath. For one suspended second, neither of us spoke.

Then, predictably—

"Also, seriously?" he rasped, managing to sound offended even half-dead. "I almost die and you're still calling me Jessica?"

I blinked. "You almost die and that's what you're hung up on?"

"Well almost dying doesn't equal my consciousness just ceases to be," he muttered. "And you, lady, are still causing me name dysmorphia."

A shaky laugh broke through me before I could stop it. "Well, maybe next time you'll think twice before bleeding out all over my character arc."

He gave me a look that was equal parts pain and exasperation. "You just happen to have an answer to everything don't you? You're unbelievable."

"Persistent," I corrected.

"And you're annoying."

"And you're alive."

He went quiet, that smirk softening into something smaller, something real. "I guess we've both gotten what we wanted then."

I wasn't sure how much of that I deserved, but right now I could care less. All I could think about was keeping him here — annoying me for as long as I could hold it.

"You know, Jade," he said with the corner of his mouth still tugging upward, "I'm starting to suspect you and I are not the best at learning lessons."

"You don't say."

Jesse chuckled.

For a moment, neither of us spoke again. The silence between us wasn't awkward anymore. It was fragile, careful, as if we were both afraid to breathe too loud in case the moment shattered. When my eyes met his, this time with a softer undertone to them, I didn't bother switching to my usual, playfully hollow gaze.

"You should know by now," I murmured as I looked away, "that I don't really do the touchy-feely thing."

He closed his eyes, smiling faintly. "Could've fooled me."

And I almost laughed. Almost.

The steady rhythm of the monitors filled the gaps between us. He watched my eyes follow closely behind the green line as it jumped, each beep reassuring me that he was still here — that I hadn't lost him.

Not this time.

And that's when it hit me — the truth I'd been skirting around since the night we met.

He was never mine to keep, to test, to play with – but rather something I had broken once without really meaning to. Something I'd somehow been given back. A glass relic; cracked, glued together and shining in all the wrong places. And still, he was something I wanted to hold again. I didn't really know how to, I just knew I wanted to be careful with it this time, even if my hands didn't feel steady enough yet.

I reached out, brushing a stray thread from his blanket and fiddling around with it, just to have something to do. "You scared the hell out of me, you know," I said quietly.

He opened one eye. "I managed to scare the Jade Cross? I'll write that down in my autobiography."

"Shut up," I muttered, but it didn't have its usual bite. "Keep that up and you'll be publishing it sooner than you'd want to."

He smiled — soft this time, not teasing. "Thanks for  staying."

"Yeah, well," I said, sinking back into the chair, "someone's gotta make sure you don't make the nurses want to kill themselves over your jokes."

He chuckled weakly, using his almost unexistent energy to faintly wiggle his brows. 

"You love me," he sung.

I roles my eyes out of their orbits. "Delusional and dramatic." 

But my chest felt lighter, and my heartbeat finally started to sync unintentionally with the machine beeping beside him.

I stayed awake long after his eyes closed again. Watching the rise and fall of his chest, the green blip that meant still here. I didn't want to blink in case the world changed again while I wasn't looking. For the first time in a long time, I didn't feel like running.

Just holding on — to the broken, mended thing I didn't want to drop again.

***