‘ even if i thought you’d hopped on a spaceship to another planet, i’d come looking for you, and i wouldn’t stop till i found you. ’
faithful place. / accepting.
oh, jennifer realizes, her head still spinning even as marty holds her still and tight to his chest — so she really did disappear.
( somehow, the realization doesn’t feel as shocking as it probably should. if anything, it feels like the pieces are finally sliding into place. )
if she thinks hard enough about it, she can remember the feeling of her fingers beginning to disappear, tingling and painful-numb like a funhouse mirror reflection of a limb falling asleep, but after that? nothing. the fractured memory breaks apart from there, leaving a chasm in her memories and a haunting emptiness in her chest in its wake. even now, as she sits in marty’s arms, whole and alive and wrapped in a disorienting cocktail of confused and all too aware of what must have happened, she wonders if there’s a part of her still missing, or if this is just a side effect of briefly disappearing from existence that will eventually fade as the continuum rights itself once more. it’s not like there’s anyone she can ask about this.
she doesn’t realize she’s spoken ( ❛ you came back, ❜ she’d whispered, even though she knows the opposite is much closer to the truth ) until he’s responding to her, and the urgency in his voice almost takes her off guard before she remembers — right. while her own memories are trapped under a hazy veil, she supposes his must be uncomfortably crystal clear. she knows hers would be if their roles were reversed, if anything. she looks up at him, his hands settling on her cheeks with such surprising warmth that she wonders how she could’ve been sitting there corpse-cold without having noticed it, and she hopes he doesn’t feel it. jennifer looks up at her boyfriend, at his eyes blazing with relief and fear and something else she can’t quite place, and she decides that even if she doesn’t remember it, she missed him while she was gone.
❛ you know, ❜ she says, reaching up to cup his own cheeks ( relishing in the feeling of having feeling again ) and the smile on her face, dazed but still radiant, widens ever slightly. ❛ i think that might be easier than what you actually just did. ❜ something like a laugh tumbles from her before she pulls him closer, burying her face in the crook of his neck, and some of the tension slips from both of their shoulders.
❛ you’re incredible. ❜ she murmurs, voice muffled by the denim of his jacket in her way, but she knows he hears it anyway. she knows he hears the i love you mumbled right afterwards as well, so quiet it’s barely spoken, and the promise that she’d move time and space for him just as easily as he did her woven through the words.
