Work Text:
Broken Hearts
by Pirate Turner
"Don't cry for me, Jack," she whispered hoarsely. "I'm finally getting the peace I've wanted."
"Don't talk that way, Andie," Jack pleaded, holding tightly yet not so tightly as to damage his fragile sister any more than she already was. "You're going to be okay."
"Jack, it's my time. Please try to understand," she whispered, struggling to find the right words. "I don't want to leave you, and I never will. I'll always be with you . . . in your heart . . . just like Mom and Tim. But I'm finally going to get to rest and be happy."
"I could make you happy."
She smiled sadly, tears misting over her faded blue eyes. "I know you would have done your best to. You're what's kept me going all these years, but nothing left on this planet can make me happy."
"He's not worth this." Jack fought to keep his own tears from falling though they sparkled in his anguished eyes.
"I never said he was." Her answer was so soft that it was barely audible.
He could feel her beginning to leave him, and the icy fingers of dread gripped his heart so tightly that his subconscious thought he might also have a heart attack. "Andie, please," he exclaimed, clearly projecting the panic that filled his very core, "you can't leave me! I need you! I love you, sis! You can't do this to me . . . to Lynn!" His terrified mind grasped blindly for any straw of an ideal that might make her hold on for even one second longer.
"Jack, please," she whispered, fighting desperately to stay conscious long enough to get her message across to her beloved brother and best friend, "don't be sad for me. Maybe this way . . . eventually . . . I'll finally get another chance to be happy . . . with him . . . If you see Pacey . . . let him know . . . I never stopped . . . loving him . . . please . . ."
The monitor was showing her fading heartbeat, and Jack looked desperately to the nearest doctor in that part of the Emergency Room. "Please," he begged, his eyes and voice filled with tears, "isn't there anything you can do?!"
Even as the doctor slowly shook his head and started to speak, Andie's weak voice brought Jack back to look at her. "Jack . . . remember . . . I love you . . . I'll never leave you . . ." The tears finally began to flow from both their eyes.
"Andie!"
". . . always be . . . with you . . . 'm sorry . . ." As she had been speaking these last words, her voice had been fading steadily until finally she could no longer make her words audible.
"Andie," Jack reached out a shaking hand to lovingly caress his sister's face, "you can fight this. It's not too late." Even he knew the last was a lie. Even as he rushed to get out one last "I love you", Andie's eyes rolled upwards, and in the next heartbeat, the machine's scream echoed through the corridor like a ghostly wail of sorrow as it announced the death.
"I want you to do one thing for me, Joe," he spoke in a hushed, weakened tone.
"Anything, Pace," she instantly answered, struggling desperately to hide the tears from her eyes.
"When you see Andie," he said, pausing to catch a long breath before continuing to force the words out, "tell her I never stopped loving her."
She wasn't surprised. She wished she could have been, but she had seen the way he had looked at Andie over the years. Whenever the blonde had not been looking, Pacey had gazed after Andie with as much tortured adoration as she herself had looked upon her fiance with since they had been kids.
" . . . stay with her, though . . . make sure she . . . doesn't do anything . . . don't know . . . how it'll . . . affect her, but . . . she deserves to know."
"I will," Joey promised, clinging to Pacey's hand with both of hers. For one moment that terrified Joey, Pacey closed his eyes, fighting against the pain. "Pace?" she asked, struggling to keep her voice from quivering.
She started to stand, simultaneously opening her mouth to scream for help, but his voice stopped her. "Joe," he pleaded quietly.
Inwardly, she sighed with enormous relief as she sank back onto her uncomfortable chair. Outwardly, however, she merely asked, "Yeah?"
"Tell Dawson . . . he better . . . take damn good care . . . of you . . ."
"You can tell him yourself," she said, "when he gets here."
Pacey was silent which scared Joey more than any words he could have spoken. "DOCTOR!" she yelled as she saw him begin to fade. "IN HERE! QUICK! PACEY, HOLD ON! JUST HOLD . . . !" Even before she could finish her last sentence, the machine announced him dead, its scream joining another wail in the corridor.
This wasn't real. It couldn't be. She couldn't be gone. This was just a nightmare. He'd wake up any second now. The thoughts kept repeating over and over inside his head as he walked blindly toward the waiting room just outside the doors to the ER. He bumped into something and did not even slow until he heard a familiar voice exclaim his name. "Jack!"
He turned slowly, as if in a daze, and looked back at the place he had bumped into something only to find a familiar face haunted with grief and terrible sadness. "Joey," he asked, using his concern for his old friend as a frail mask to hide his own dying heart, "what's wrong?"
She walked slowly to him as she told him, speaking words that her mouth knew but that her ears could not hear, "It's Pacey. He's gone. You . . . ?"
"Andie," he whispered hoarsely.
"God, Jack, I'm so sorry!" He could only nod and mumble returned condolences. He hesitated for a second before reaching out and taking her hand in his. They turned to walk together, silently supporting one another before she broke the silence with a realization spoken aloud. "I'm not going to be able to fulfill his final wish."
"What?"
"Andie. He wanted me to tell her that he never stopped loving her."
"She wanted him to know the same," Jack spoke in a hushed voice, only barely aware of the words that tumbled from his lips. "If only they'd known . . . "
" . . . maybe they'd still be with us?" Joey finished his thought, and he nodded his agreement.
They agan fell silent as they thought of the two people who had meant so much to them through all the years of their lives but who they would never see again in this world. Pacey and Andie had never stopped loving one another, and yet each had thought that the other had moved on. Jack recalled his sister's words when she had commented that perhaps they would one day have better luck, and he hoped that they would indeed have better luck in love with one another in their next lives.
"I don't know how I'm going to tell him."
"Who?"
"Dawson," Joey clarified. "He was flying in to be with Pacey. We never wanted to think it would really happen, but we knew he was dying. They couldn't find the cure for the cancer, and removing it didn't work the second time. We both tried to get him to stop drinking, but he always said that that was the only way he could forget her and get rid of the pain." Jack gently and sympathetically squeezed Joey's hand. "Dawson's plane lands in thirty minutes. We knew he was getting worse, but we still thought there was enough time for Dawson to get here and get to him. Pacey was supposed to be the best man in our wedding this weekend; now he won't even be there. How do you tell the man you love that his best friend is dead?"
"I don't know," Jack slowly shook his head, "any more than I know how to tell a child that her aunt is gone."
Joey's head snapped up at the comment. "You had a baby? How?! I mean . . . with who?!"
"My wife."
"Wife?! But you're . . . "
"I only thought I was," Jack explained in a quiet whisper. "All those years that I tried to be straight, I was trying to be something I wasn't, and all those years I spent gay weren't me either. I'm bi, Joey. Most people are; at least, that's what Jen says. And he will be there in spirit." In his heart-shattered state, Jack was not even aware of what he was saying, and both were so sad that neither realized that they were rambling.
Finally, they stepped into the waiting room. Jack released Joey's hand and walked straight into the arms of the blonde woman that waited for him. They hugged tightly, and he buried his face in her long hair. His shoulders shook as he finally allowed himself to break down. Joey stared at the scene for a second, surprised both by the golden glints that the hospital lights caught on their ring fingers and Jen's round belly. She'd obviously missed out on a great deal in their lives. She'd have to call them when this was all over with and arrange for the four of them to meet and get caught up, but now she had to get to Dawson.
He knew what had happened the very second he laid eyes on her ashen face; she knew he knew by the shocked look on his face and the grief in his eyes. He dropped his forgotten bag, and they ran to one another even more for comfort and support than to be with their true loves again. Reaching each other, Dawson asked only, his voice a hushed whisper, "Pacey?"
Joey nodded, and his strong arms enveloped her. They hugged tightly to one another. She hid her face in his shoulder, and he buried his face in her hair. Their dams were shattered, and their tears began as they desperately clung to each other to keep from falling to the airport's floor in their grief.
The End