Chapter Text
It was hot. The kind of blazing heat that was expected in the ass-crack of Huston. Except, they weren’t in Huston. They were as far away from the mothership as Dane could hope. Actually, that was a lie. A proper knees-on-the-ground prayer would have him in a mansion in the woods, with the wispy form of an honest-to-god lady on his lap.
Instead, he was going to have to stand on the roof of a collapsing skyscraper that housed the apartments of the richest people alive. All of them were bodies, swallowed by rising water and the panic on the streets. Eventually, the water would take them too. If the Witch’s pets didn’t chew him up to bits, or rip Rosa in two, or-
Rosa’s fingers brushed against the back of his hand, warm from the sweltering heat. She should have been burning, dressed for a gala in the remnants of fine black silk. It was torn, the hem chewed up by a rough dive down Niagara Falls hours before.
The wind is whipping through her hair, white strands rising in the wind like a hellstorm but he can’t hear it. He can’t hear anything anymore but the way her dark lips are moving, mouthing out words that he knew by heart.
For some reason, he can’t piece it together. Something is fundamentally wrong with the script, and he wants the clapperboard to come down with a thud. Where’s his assistant, he should be coming through with an over-expensive latte and reassuring Mr. Strider that they’d get it right this time, they only need one more take.
Rosa is staring at him now, a glint in her eyes that wasn’t there before. It’s not the sad frustration she should have had. He can’t even place what it is, thrown so far out of the loop that he’s grasping at the line to be reeled back in. Before he can ask, Rosa is gone. She has her needles swinging with a precision of a surgeon, determined to take a horn off the monster of a woman that’s going to kill them. That wasn’t the depression talking, it was a fact they knew since the beginning.
The rest of it becomes a clinical reproduction of a flawed dance.
His sword comes out, joining her just as quickly. When Rosa is pushed right, he swings left. When his sword gets caught in the trident, she has yarn wrapped around the alien’s wrist and squeezing to try and force it off. It’s choreographed perfectly, and in ten short, terrible minutes, Rosa is on the ground next to him. Three trident holes through her expensive dress, the gloss of red pooling around her body. Dane tilts his head to the side, shades cracked and skewed while he watches her lips move again.
But there was no sound.
--
Rose makes it a habit of finding places to sit that keep him within her eyesight. He picks it up quickly, the habit of comparing two identical yet not people impossible to halt. She isn’t Rosa. That much is clear by the orange dresses she sometimes wears and the impish smile on her dark lips. Rose still has universal habits, maybe it’s a signature of all Lalondes. She takes her coffee pitch black, bitter and strong and holds onto it even as it grows colder and colder. She’ll still twist a pen in her hand, tucking it behind one ear when she thinks no one is looking her way.
But unlike Rosa, who would grab her laptop and waltz into one of the fifty rooms tucked in her mansion to work in peace and quiet, Rose stayed.
It didn’t matter if he was fiddling with the remote to watch reruns of shows he could just barely remember or was idly tapping the tip of his blade against the table, Rose would keep herself curled on a couch or settled in a seat by the table. Dane knew he wasn’t quiet, he just couldn’t sit still. There was no offered complaints, no languished sighs from Rose.
Just a presence that refused to leave.
Not that he was against it. Rose had been the one to rip him from an endless cycle in what she called the Dream Bubbles .
( "Funny, feels more like a nightmare.")
–
He was more receptive to the situation than she had thought. Rose expected the panic, the anguish of death to leave him in shell-shock. Instead, he simply asked for a cigarette and let out a puff with shaky hands.
He looked at her, past her , into the overwhelming woods that surrounded her dream mansion.
She tried to be gentle, her voice quiet as Death and Immortality and Peace were repeated to him, just as she had done to Dave’s before.
What she didn’t expect was his hands to catch the railing on either side of her, his forehead on her shoulder as he slumped.
Rose was stiff, trying to balance a defeated man while her back was against the rooftop railing. One slippered-foot stepped back, reaching up to curl her fingers through his ruffled hair and stroking it back as he sighed.
He was likely envisioning a taller woman, with years and memories that Rose would never have. He was likely thinking of where she was, just as Rose wondered where her friends were.
Rose couldn’t read his expression when he finally lifted his head, a grim apology on his lips. Just as she strained to the tips of her toes and kissed him.
Her stomach twisted with sickly satisfaction when he dropped his cigarette, froze in surprise. There was hesitation, Rose could feel him weighing out a moral and ethical dilemma in the manner of seconds.
And then he kissed her back.
For that moment, she was all he had.
–
Dane should have felt revulsion. Ageless ghost or not, he was more than twice her age. Lalonde or not, she was discreetly vulnerable.
It wasn’t obvious at first. He thought they were just nursing matching wounds. He was trying to place her in heels that were two sizes too big, and she was trying to squeeze him into a teenager’s suit.
It started to click when he began to smell the sea salt in the air.
There were small things that unnerved Rose. When he swore the inky blackness of the woods around her mansion shifted to rainbow tinged sand, Rose would be standing by the window, glaring until it vanished with a blink.
Once, when his mouth was pressed to her throat to leave another dark, dark mark on her skin, her throaty groan was swallowed by the crashing of waves. It was her nails, leaving red streaks against his back that stopped him from looking up.
It was in the way she couldn’t stop shivering in his arms; he couldn’t bring himself to ask her what it meant.
–
They were content.
Rose provided him with stability, a home that would never fluctuate no matter how many times he swore he could see that woman in the shadows. She knew how to distract his mind, to prod and push to find out about a life she could never live. He was even beginning to recreate meals, memories and moments to show her.
They went to the first premiere of his movie together, wine on her lips and pearl earrings that dropped to her slender throat. The cameras flashed, from people that were long dead and desperate to see the woman on his arm.
He bought her popcorn, bleeding with butter and sticky to their fingers as the trailers began.
It was halfway through that he asked.
Dane had thought about what he gave her. Probably company, a familiar face and a lost sheep to care for.
But when he asked her about where her Dave was, while her empty eyes were reflecting the screen in front of them, it seemed to click .
Rose didn’t reply, only staring ahead as he felt it.
The water that began to gently lap at her heels, at his polished shoes.