Archive of Our Own ^beta

Ava had never felt this exhausted before. She had been this exhausted, all the time, she had been. But she’d never felt it like this. Not when every muscle in her body had been seized up in pain at every moment. Not as everything tore apart and came back together, tearing, trembling. Sparking electricity that kept her white-hot alert at all times. The only real brief respite had been the chamber, and even that was nothing like this.

This. The pain had melted away, either to someplace else outside of her body, or to someplace so deep down inside that she couldn’t feel it anymore. Replaced by the golden light that had poured into her temples and flooded it all out.

This was what it felt like, to loosen. And with this loosening, the heavy fog of fatigue was free to waft over her, to cloud her. Thick grey skies with a softness she couldn’t help but welcome.

A sound floated into her awareness, vaguely. Bill opening the passenger door on her side. Then his expression, a flicker of amusement, when he saw hers. He helped her out of the car, and she leaned on him heavily, didn’t even make the decision to, just did.

“Yeah… it’s been a really long day for you, huh?” His voice, with all the richness and warmth of deep golden brass, was there beside her as he led her through a familiar set of double doors. “Long couple of days.”

Ava nodded unsteadily, hummed a response. Bill brought her over to the scratched-up leather couch, and her knees buckled, but her hand kept its grip halfway up his sleeve. He glanced at it, glanced back at her, and made the decision to sit down too.

Ava immediately leaned into him.

Perhaps she would have been embarrassed, if she’d been awake enough to care, by this neediness, this excruciatingly obvious craving for affection. Perhaps she would have denied it, buried it, ignored it. She did none of those things. She leaned her head right onto Dr. Foster’s chest, and, after a second, felt the creaking of the sofa. Felt an arm stretching around her, a hand caressing over her hair, holding her steady in place.

Gravity, pulling her down. She’d never thought of sinking as peaceful before.

Then, there with her cheek smushed against green cotton… a rhythm. Reverberating. A subtle reverberation through the side of her face as she lay. Perhaps, if it weren’t for the exhaustion, she would’ve managed to stifle it, but her breathing hitched in a way that might have been a sob.

A heartbeat, beneath her.

She could hear Bill murmuring something, could feel the rumble of his voice, but the words blurred together like milk into tea.

The gentle gradient of the sound. The dum-dum, dum-dum of the rhythm she lay on. The hand running lazily through her hair, the chin resting overtop her head.

Slow breaths. In, out. Had hers mirrored his, or had his mirrored hers?

A flicker of coherency. He must be exhausted too, mused the last logical corner of her mind that remained, that kept up its stubborn existence within the confines of her exhaustion, though it moved as if wading through molasses. Chasing after you all day, getting thrown across a lab…

But never mind all that. The rhythm. The warmth. The slow rise and fall.

Ava had closed her eyes at some point. Swirls behind her eyelids, ripples of light.

Arms holding her.

She was dreaming, surely, because no one could hold her.

Her father?

A dream, it had to be.

A heartbeat.

If it was, let her stay. Let her stay here. It was a nice dream.