She was lost.
The whole world didn’t matter anymore; there was no normal life to go home to. Slowly, Dean had turned everything she had into a neverending fight against an ever-encroaching apocalypse – and then he’d stripped her of that purpose along with himself in one cruel flash she hadn’t even made it there in time to see. Even the angel had gone.
They’d gone, and Lisa had nothing. Nothing but the car Dean had always loved a little more than her. It was a living monument to his dead brother, his home, and she had only ever been just a woman.
A woman who’d barely even had a chance to drive the damn machine much before now, but now she was driving it alone, driving and –
And she hit a dog.
And suddenly there was a woman shouting at her, a woman with a brittle voice but kind eyes that seemed tired. Numbly, Lisa let herself listen. And then she let herself stay.
*
“You lost someone like that, didn’t you?”
“My…” Boyfriend felt inaccurate. Partner sounded ridiculous, though probably the most accurate. Husband… That was not a subject they’d ever broached together, so she didn’t have that concrete word to use for Amelia as she lay there tangled in her warm limbs, kissing the dark curls of her hair.
“I should be looking for him,” Lisa said one night, one more night of ignoring her sister’s calls.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Amelia told her, and Lisa wanted to scream, because this most understanding of women didn’t understand…
But she did.
Amelia knew exactly what it meant to be left behind, to always be the secondary consideration next to a mighty calling – the good, endless fight.
It had been killing her, Lisa began to realise. Dean had loved her, she’d never needed to hear him say it to know that. But that man had so much love in him, and when he’d shown up on her doorstep again that night two years ago, mourning his brother, abandoned by his angel, he had been desperate to find someone to love, to fight for: to latch onto.
Was that all Lisa was doing now?
No, she told herself every day as she contemplated running, because Amelia’s embraces were about more than just healing her wounds, they were making her feel real again, making her feel like she was giving Amelia something too, and not just sapping her of everything she had been.
But Lisa still worried, and she still thought about driving away again.
“I love you, I love you, I love you.” Lisa whispered into her lover’s hair some nights, when she wasn’t sure whether the other woman was awake or asleep. Sometime Amelia would squeeze her back, tightly, and Lisa wondered if they’d be able to stay like that forever, clinging to each other, anchoring themselves to something at last – not having to be someone else’s anchor anymore.