Sea Change (new fanfic)

Title: Sea Change
Author: sadie kate
Pairing/Character: Duncan/Veronica
Word Count: 600ish
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Duncan is adrift.
Spoilers/Warnings: Spoilerific through the end of the finale, with slight speculation as to the end.
Notes: Verse included is from Shakespeare's "The Tempest".

Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made

Veronica is standing in the wreckage of their charmed and sordid lives. She looks like a broken thing, like one of those dolls you see sometimes on the highway. Her arm is dangling limply, and her face is smudged with blood and tears and dirt, and she has never looked more beautiful. And all Duncan can do is stand and watch idly as she fixes him with one more look before she climbs into the ambulance with her father.

Her real father. Who is not his father.

So much of this year for him has been treading water, trying to just keep breathing around the inexorable pull of the tide. One wave pushing him forward, another pushing him back. Inertia becomes a form of survival. Try to struggle too much, he reasons, and the sea change will take you over.

Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade

So he clings to a time before the storm, clutches memories like they are driftwood. He thinks they are all that keep him alive. He remembers standing on a shore, before the sea took him over. Four people walking along the sand, their arms linked like a chain. Veronica’s arms wrapped around him, her lips soft and inquisitive against his, Lilly’s laughter in the background like waves crashing in. The video camera records their perfect and unending happiness. Four of them, equal distances together and apart, like a perfect square, like the corners of a compass.

And then their north was lost, and they triangulated. They drifted apart unevenly, two going off in different directions, leaving him drifting. And then that night, with the balance between them all gone, he pulled her too close to him. He tries to remember the one event that changed him, the sister that was taken from him. He tries to forget the other event that changed him, the sister that he took.

But he can’t forget the feel of her skin, his fingers sinking in. Can’t forget her moans in his throat, her hair wrapped around his fingers like seaweed. And it sickens him that he let himself get swept away, but he can’t stop thinking about her. If he clings to his memories like driftwood, he wishes he could set this one on fire, like this house burning down around him as the wail of the sirens fades into the distance, carrying her farther from where he stands.

But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange

When he is home, alone, he feels oddly bereft, like has lost his sister again. He toys with a bottle of Jack Daniels – the real stuff, this time – and contemplates breaking it open. Getting in to that oblivion that he knows so well. But for the first time in a long time, he feels like he has something to gain. He walks for miles along a concrete road, and feels every step beneath his feet. It is after three when he arrives at her door. He knocks without hesitation.

“I was hoping it would be you.”

He kisses her gently, mindful of the bruises on her face. She surprises him by kissing him back, her tongue sliding past his lips, and he remembers kissing her before, and it was never like this. Her nails dig into his back, and he’s surprised to feel pain. When he looks at her, he sees that she is not a broken thing.

“It’s about time,” she says, as she takes him by the hand and leads him in.