Xavier Van Der Belt (My Killer Romance) Angst one-shot
Sometimes, she swears that she can see him. When she’s at work, she sees him standing in the lobby. At night, when she’s getting ready to go to sleep, she sees something next to her in the darkness, and she knows it’s him. And when she’s visiting the Collector’s, she goes into the room that was once his, breathes in the scent of him that still lingers on his pillow, and she sees him on the balcony watching her.
Maybe she’s going crazy. No, she’s definitely going crazy. Xavier had passed on already. He was gone. So yeah, she was losing her mind. But, that was ok, because if it meant she got to see him, she was all for it.
It’s been three months since he died. Life goes on, but her heart doesn’t. Sometimes, she has good dreams of him. Other times, she has nightmares that cause her to wake up screaming his name, tears pouring down her face like a waterfall. She doesn’t cry every night before she goes to sleep anymore. Hallucinating Xavier-yes, she had to be hallucinating him-gave her some kind of comfort, like he had never really left her at all. Not completely. It’s going to have to stop at some point. She can’t go on like this, because it’ll kill her.
But letting him go will kill her, too.
One night, the one night she does cry, she suddenly feels someone’s presence, and someone sits down beside her.
Xavier.
"Still crying over me?" He says this softly, but there’s still the cocky edge in his tone.
She rolls over to face him, and she knows that somehow, he’s actually here with her. She isn’t sure how, but she isn’t going to waste whatever time she has with him to ask questions. “What do you want me to do?”
Xavier rolls his eyes. “You’re supposed to move on”
"It’s been three months, Xavier. I’m trying, but I don’t know how to. I love you too much."
She expects him to lecture her on how to move on from him, but instead his eyes suddenly become sad. “I know. You don’t know how much I miss you.”
It takes some squinting, but she manages to get a better look at him. His beautiful blue eyes are the same, but there is something off about them, like there’s no life behind them. His skin is pale, the color drained from his lips. He still wore the suit that he had been wearing the day he died, and she could make out a few bruises on him, a big one on his cheek from when he was thrown into the air from the explosion and had crashed down to floor, hard.
"Oh, God, Xavier" she choked out. She gets an extremely tight feeling in her chest and an ache in the pit of her stomach. Her lungs begin to burn.
He lays down beside her and pulls her close to him, wrapping her in his arms. She buries her face into the crook of his cold neck and breathes in his scent, tears running down her cheeks. He runs his fingers through her hair, his other hand around hers. She squeezes his hand tightly, as if it’ll prevent him of being taken away from her again.
As if reading her thoughts, he sighs and says “I have to move on to my next life, eventually.”
"How are you here now? I thought you had already moved on…"
"I refused to move on until you let me go"
"I don’t know how to let you go. I can’t." Her voice breaks at the end, and she begins to sob, clenching his hand and snuggling closer to him.
Xavier turns to face her and presses his forehead against hers. She closes her eyes, feeling his cold thumb brush across her cheek to wipe her tears away. “I love you so much”, he whispers.
"I love you, too. I love you. I love you." She repeats these words over and over, because she knows this’ll be her last chance to say them. "Please, don’t go again. Stay with me."
"I don’t have any other choice. I’d stay here with you forever if I could"
"Will you at least stay tonight?"
He smiles sadly, nods, and leans in to brush his cold lips against hers.
She leans into the kiss pulling him even closer, and for a while they just lay there kissing and holding one another.
Eventually, she falls asleep. When she wakes up, he is still there and is still holding her. She closes her eyes, praying for him to stay with her. But, eventually, when he thinks she’s asleep, he kisses her gently, tells her how much he loves her, and a minute later she feels him leave. He’s gone for good.
The last thing she wants to do is to let him go, but she knows that she can’t let him linger for much longer. It’s time. And there’s only one way she knows how to do that.
She asks Blake to open the portal for her. When she’s at the castle where she hasn’t been since Xavier died, she feels her heart begin to race and her chest tightens again, but she knows she has to do this. So she goes to see Kieran, who is just as broken as her, if not more, and is relieved when he tells her he still hasn’t found anyone for him.
The King allows him to take the rest of the day to spend with her. They spend the day talking, laughing, sharing a few tears, and once she works up the nerve, she kisses him.
She lets Xavier go.
It takes a while, but she eventually does fall in love with Kieran. It’s definitely not the kind of love she felt for Xavier. She’ll never love anyone like she loved him. But she did love Kieran, and when he asks her to marry him, she feels happy and sad at the same time. She’s sad because she knows it should be Xavier asking her to marry him, not Kieran. But Xavier was gone and Kieran was here.
Yes, time did go on. She allowed her heart to go on. But she still dreams of him sometimes, and if she has a nightmare, Kieran is there to hold her and comfort her with words. He doesn’t get jealous or angry, because he understands, and she’s grateful for that.
And sometimes…sometimes, she swears that she still sees him.
