waltzmatildah: (all i need)
waltzmatildah ([personal profile] waltzmatildah) wrote2010-03-23 07:45 pm

Fic: Echoes of angels that won't return... (Alex/Izzie)

Title: Echoes of angels that won't return...
Characters/Pairings: Alex/Izzie with a hint of Alex/Lexie.
Word Count: 550ish
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: From [livejournal.com profile] miss_blanche , Cause I’m fake at the seams, I’m lost in my dreams, And I want you to know, that I can’t let you go. And you're never coming home again, and you're never coming home again. From the song "Swans" by Unkle Bob.
Summary: A coda of sorts to Alex and Izzie's official (?) break-up at the end of 'I like you so much better when you're naked.'

I want you to go and be happy and not come back.

As the words dissolve, liquid thin in the air between them, he is the first to stand.

Maybe, he thinks, if he stays he'll wind his fingers through hers and lose himself completely in the watery corners of her sad, sad eyes. Never again let go.

He walks, shoulder pressed hard to the wall. Holding him up, bruising, in the absence of his own cracking, crumbling self resolve.

(Izzie, Izzie, Izzie...)

Decisions made and voiced.

Silently retracted, please.

She listens. He didn't think she would. She leaves. He doesn't think he really wants her to.

A foreign pounding takes up permanent residence in the space where his heart and lungs used to live. The world tilts on its axis. A little left of centre.

Never quite rights itself again.

Meredith's eyes betray her seething fury. It's on him now, he knows. This time it was his decision. One more fragmented piece chipped away from splitting seams. He'd thrown himself, unceremoniously, onto his own proverbial sword, wounded pride and all.

But the blade was blunted, and nothing good ever came from misguided martyrdom.

Nothing except loneliness and regret and a hundred other screaming realities that he can't bring himself to name.

He counts the days like they're sheep. Watches them pass him by from a distance, dissociated and blurry. He uses Lexie's body to warm the feet and inches of cold sheet at his back. She uses him, he's fairly sure, to prove an increasingly meaningless point. He just shrugs one shoulder and rolls over into the black of the night.

He's always half the distance through a closing door. On his way, he says, but going no where fast. Three, eight, seventeen steps behind and still losing.

Years melt and paint peels back in thick onion layers, until there is nothing real left underneath. Cynicism and self doubt become walls to hide behind, exhaustion his only means of escape and evade. It works well until it doesn't.

Then he drinks. Swirls of amber in a shallow glass, the colours all wrong but the images raw, vivid. Like yesterday. Like tomorrow. Like forever.

She moves on. He knows because he listens, not because he asks. I want you to go and be happy and not come back.

It's a fallacy he can never forgive himself for. A haunting soundtrack to his own echoing existence.

He falls, one shapeless cloud at a time.

End over end.

And he can't help but think that the one time she chose to listen to him was the one time he wished with a grim self loathing that she'd completely ignore him.

The one time he wished that she'd see through his white-knuckled attempt at self-preservation and stay anyway.

But they rarely stay anyway and she was to prove no exception.

I want you to go and be happy and never come back.

He shoulders away from the wall and stands alone, unsteady on numb feet and learning to swim amongst the reaches of an oppressive realisation that says she's not coming back.

She's never coming back.

[identity profile] ice-whisper.livejournal.com 2010-03-23 02:18 pm (UTC)(link)
Very nice. =) One little nit-pick, at the beginning. Izzie's eyes are brown, not blue. =)

[identity profile] waltzmatildah.livejournal.com 2010-03-23 11:18 pm (UTC)(link)
Thank you! I've ALWAYS thought that she had blue eyes (show's how much notice I take of anyone other than Alex!) and I've even written that in fic before. You are the first person to point it out and I really appreciate it!

[identity profile] ice-whisper.livejournal.com 2010-03-23 11:28 pm (UTC)(link)
Haha. No problem. I think the only reason I noticed it was because it wasn't the stereotypical blonde hair, blue eyes combo.

[identity profile] waltzmatildah.livejournal.com 2010-03-23 11:36 pm (UTC)(link)
That stereotype is probably exactly why I didassume... and we all know what assuming does to a person...!

[identity profile] ice-whisper.livejournal.com 2010-03-23 11:49 pm (UTC)(link)
Are you excited for Thursday? We're getting the promo for our Alex episode. =D

[identity profile] waltzmatildah.livejournal.com 2010-03-23 11:57 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh, really?! Hee!!! I'll have to youtube them...

[identity profile] slybrunette.livejournal.com 2010-03-23 04:53 pm (UTC)(link)
Seriously intense and totally fits with this character. Beautiful use of words, hun, as always.

[identity profile] waltzmatildah.livejournal.com 2010-03-23 11:19 pm (UTC)(link)
Thank you! Also, your icon always makes me think of that shot on the show. I'd always loved Alex but, I seriously think that that closing shot of him in the elevator upped my love x's about a gazillion! SO pretty!

[identity profile] badnews-blair.livejournal.com 2010-03-25 01:49 am (UTC)(link)
This is excellent and intense and ... just awesome. I love reading your stuff because I always find myself inspired to write (mind you, nothing nearly as awesome ever comes from it, but thanks for giving me that little extra kick in the butt from time to time) <3 . :)

[identity profile] waltzmatildah.livejournal.com 2010-03-28 04:45 am (UTC)(link)
Thank you! So glad that you liked it.

I really hope that it gave you a big enough kick to write something, 'cause I really wanna read something!

[identity profile] mammothluv.livejournal.com 2010-03-29 05:32 pm (UTC)(link)
This is absolutely heartbreaking but beautifully written. Poor Alex. I love this: He's always half the distance through a closing door. On his way, he says, but going no where fast.

[identity profile] waltzmatildah.livejournal.com 2010-04-05 11:20 pm (UTC)(link)
Thank you! So glad that you liked it.

I'm still in shock that Alex/Izzie will be no more, and, perhaps even more than that, that Izzie will be no more :(

I know she wasn't everyone's cup of tea but... she was definitely mine.

[identity profile] mammothluv.livejournal.com 2010-04-06 08:12 pm (UTC)(link)
I'm so sad that there will be no more Izzie too. She was one of those characters that snuck up on me. I thought she was fine at first but didn't pay to much attention and then somewhere along the line just BAM! I was in love. She's such an amazing character. And I dug Izzie/Alex too but the relationship I'll miss most is Izzie/Meredith. They just had such an amazing friendship and I hate that their last scene was so hurtful. I know the same could be said for Izzie/Alex. Okay, sorry for the rant all over your comments! I'm obviously still thrown.

[identity profile] waltzmatildah.livejournal.com 2010-04-07 06:34 am (UTC)(link)
I also loved the Mer/Izzie friendship. There was something so real and so opposite about them. I will miss it greatly :(

And yeah, it's such a shame there will be no closure for any of them, I think Bailey might have deserved some, too.

[identity profile] ovariesofsteel.livejournal.com 2010-04-06 08:14 pm (UTC)(link)
Gah, I miss my Alex/Izzie so much. HATE Shonda.

[identity profile] waltzmatildah.livejournal.com 2010-04-07 06:33 am (UTC)(link)
Me too :(