Chapter Text
come on, sweetheart, let's adore one another
before there is no more of you and me.
- Rumi
V
7.04 a.m.
You jolt awake, panicked by the sound of explosions in the sky.
“It is just the fireworks,” you hear Carina gently reassuring you, her palm sweeping over your belly in a soothing gesture.
You lift your head off the pillow, frowning as you gaze up and out the window. The sun has fully risen by now so you can barely see the colors that the fireworks are making against the morning sky but still, they are loud and unavoidable and it's so stubbornly human, to leave the world as we all arrived.
You bring your gaze back to Carina’s face.
“How long has it been going now?” you ask, worried now about how much time you might have wasted.
“They only just started,” Carina answers, tenderly nudging her nose against your chin.
A sigh falls out of your lips, somewhat relieved and chastising yourself at the same time. “I must have dozed off.”
Carina hums, gentle and soothing. “Only for a little while.”
You decide to let it go, figuring that there's not much of a point in being mad at yourself for something you can't undo. You’re awake now and your gaze goes up to the wall, finding the clock.
Six minutes left now.
Six minutes until the world ends.
“What do you want to do?” you ask, nuzzling your nose into her hair before closing your eyes as you breathe her in.
“Let's go see the fireworks,” Carina answers, lifting her head off your chest to meet your stare.
You wonder if Carina got any sleep while you did. It doesn't seem like she did. But somehow you know that suggesting that she get at least a couple of minutes of rest won't go well with her.
There’s only five minutes left now anyway.
“Okay,” you eventually sigh.
7.08 a.m.
You’ve never been on the rooftop of Grey-Sloan and you find yourself wishing that you had gone before this.
You’ve never been so high up on a building when it didn't involve fire and rescuing others.
In the distance, you think you're imagining it when you hear singing but when you turn to ask, her face tells you that she hears it too.
It's only one voice projecting into the silence but then you start to hear a trickle of others joining in too. Where they’re all coming from, you can't really tell, too high up to really see anything from up here. Before today, all those voices would have been drowned out by the sounds of daily life but with two minutes left and the fireworks all starting to die down in the background, there was only quiet. Until now.
You can't really tell what it is they're singing but there's something about hearing an entire chorus of people against the emptiness of the apocalypse that twists something inside you. You’re all so spread far apart across the city but you're all coming together for this. The beauty of it all chokes you up.
You lick your lips as you move into her, curling your body into hers as close and as tightly as you can. Her arms wrap around you without a wasted second. You tip your head back so you can meet her infallible gaze. Your voice is thick and rough when you quietly ask her, “do you ever think, what would have happened if—”
“All the time,” she tenderly replies, knowing already where the rest of your question was heading. She knows you so well. Carina brushes your hair back from your face. “What do you see?”
What would have happened if you hadn't lost each other? What would have happened if you got back together and you tried harder to accept that you were worth the happiness being with her brought you? What would have happened if she had given you another chance to make her as happy as she made you then, to regain her trust and make sure you never lost it ever again?
“That I would’ve finally found peace,” you sigh, staring up into her brown eyes, warm and lit golden by the sun. “What about you?”
She looks into your eyes, her fingers trailing lightly over the side of your face. “I would have finally found home.”
A sharp breath catches in your chest and your hands tighten over her waist, as if this is something you've always known all along and she has just confirmed it. “Carina?”
Her thumb grazes along your jawline. “Yes, Maya?”
“I’m really glad that out of all the people in the world to see the end of it, you're the one here with me,” you quietly whisper, keeping your eyes on her as you do.
She smiles at you, wistful but somehow happy at the same time. “Me too.”
“I wish we had more time,” you selfishly lament, always wishing for more time with her especially now that you're like this. Her smile trembles and you don't need her to say that she wishes for the same thing too. “What do you think is going to happen?” you ask, not wanting to dwell further on time neither of you can get. “After this? Do you think a new world will be born?”
“Maybe,” she softly replies, shrugging. “Maybe the world will go right back to the beginning.”
You hum thoughtfully at her answer. “I like that. Do you think they’ll get it right this time?”
Carina shakes her head. “No, I don't think going back to the beginning is about living life the right way.”
A crease furrows slightly between your eyebrows. “What is it about then?”
She takes a deep breath, tearing her gaze away from you to stare off into the distance. “I think it's about making sure that when you're at the end of it, you know you lived fully.” She brings her tender gaze back to you, angling her head down as she quietly continues, “I think the world goes back to the beginning, to give everybody a chance to know what love is.”
“I like that,” you softly sigh, leaning up to press your forehead firmly against hers.
7.10 a.m.
You ponder further over her words and you wonder, did you live fully? Did you take your chance to know what love is?
Her mouth is lightly brushing over yours, her brown eyes the last thing you see before your entire world finally falls into darkness. Sirens begin to wail all around you but neither you nor Carina move or pull away from each other. As if each other's kiss—each other's breath—is the last thing both of you want to feel before the end.
You don’t think of all the months you and Carina spent without each other. You don't think about all the time that could have been better spent loving Carina to the best of your abilities. You don't think about any of your regrets.
Instead, you think about the times that you did get to love her. You think about the times when you made her laugh so hard that there were tears falling from the corners of her eyes. You think about all the times you've gotten to love every inch of her skin, and the gorgeous face she made every time she came with the sound of your name on her lips.
Maybe you didn't love her well. Maybe you didn't love her the way she deserved. You certainly didn’t love her for long enough. But you loved her all the same, fiercely, and with everything that you had.
You want to believe that she feels the same way too.
You think about how facing the end of the world with Carina's kiss on your lips and her hand on your heartbeat makes you think about the only truth that the entire universe has lived, and will now die, by.
Love.
Your love is the last thought you will ever have, the last beat your heart will ever make, the last word you will ever breathe.
“Carina.”
the end
And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.
- Raymond Carver (Late Fragment)