But Its Very Briefly Mentioned - Tumblr Posts
“Don’t die.”
The sidekick’s hands pressed into the hero’s wound, and the hero blinked dizzily.
“What?”
“I said, don’t die.”
“I’m sorry, wait, who are you?”
The sidekick’s gaze had an intensity the hero didn’t know existed. Then, they grinned, and it was like sunshine.
“Your new sidekick. And I can’t be your sidekick if you have the audacity to die on my very first day, so don’t die.”
The hero blinked once more.
“Nice to meet you?”
“I’ll say nice to meet you when you stop bleeding out.”
—————————
“Don’t die,” the sidekick reminded the hero, half laughing, half serious.
The hero rolled their eyes with affection.
“Have I ever?”
—————————
“Don’t die.”
The hero glanced up.
“Relax, it’s just a graze. No bullet holes, see?”
They held their arms away from their body, twisting to show the lack of harm.
The sidekick sighed with something close to relief.
—————————
“Don’t-“
“Die, yes, I know,” the hero finished. The sidekick’s eyes narrowed.
The hero’s heart twisted.
“I won’t, I promise.”
The sidekick nodded, once.
—————————
“Don’t die.”
The hero sneezed, eyes bleary.
“It’s just a cold.”
“Yeah, and people die from those.”
The hero laughed, voice nasally.
“The agency would be thrilled to have cause of death ‘common cold’ written in my file, I’m sure of it.”
The sidekick threw a pillow at them, and brought them soup.
—————————
“Be careful, okay?”
The hero snapped their head up.
The sidekick blinked at the sudden movement, mouth still half open.
“What?”
The sidekick cleared their throat.
“I said be careful,” they gestured awkwardly with one hand. “It’s Supervillain. They don’t pull punches.”
The hero’s mouth was dry.
“Right. Yes.”
They strapped their last piece of gear on, and turned to leave.
“Oh, and hero,” the sidekick tried for nonchalance, smiling slightly. “Don’t die.”
The hero smiled back.
—————————
“You idiot,” the hero hissed, hands frantic. They didn’t know where to press, which wound to try and stop first. The sidekick coughed weakly.
“I had it handled,” the hero’s voice broke.
The sidekick managed a pained wheeze that might have been a laugh.
“Mhm. Yeah.”
“It’s Supervillain, why—“ the hero tipped their head upwards, tears slipping from their eyes.
The sidekick whimpered, slightly. “You could have gotten hurt.”
The hero pressed their hands onto the chest wound.
“And you getting hurt is okay?”
The sidekick didn’t answer. When the hero looked up, their eyes were closed.
“Hey, no no nonono don’t do this to me, sidekick, hey,” the hero scrambled, fingers slick with blood, heart pounding. “Don’t die.”
A curse, an oath, a command, a prayer.
Don’t die.
The sidekick, just barely, smiled, tugging the hero down to whisper into their ear. Just two words. The two words.
The hero sobbed, shaking their head, pushing back to find a pulse—
And found the silence of a waiting grave.
—————————
“Don’t die,” the hero said to themselves quietly, pressing a piece of gauze to their side.
The medic watched them intently, eyes soft, but didn’t say anything.
They knew. The whole goddamn base knew.
And that was the only thing that would come out of the hero’s mouth.
“Don’t. Die.”
The medic’s mouth pressed into a thin line, eyes watering, and they vanished out the door.
The hero realized, then, that their cheeks were wet.
Two words.
An oath. A prayer. A command.
“Don’t die,” They whispered, and for a moment, just a moment, they could pretend it was sidekick saying it.
The very first words they had said to the hero.
And their very last ones, too, pained hushed whispers in the hero’s ear, a final breath.
“Don’t die.”
The hero started sobbing, then.
And they didn’t stop.
Don’t.
Die
A sapphic detective who gets too close to the truth of a case and gets confronted by her girlfriend for being too obsessed?
“You need to stop.”
The detective didn’t jerk up at the sound of her voice—just quietly stirred, rustling papers as she shifted upright to meet her eyes.
“I didn’t hear you come in,” the detective said slowly, eyes scanning over her. She watched her gaze catch on the water dripping from the ends of her hair, the mascara smudging itself down her cheeks.
“It’s date night,” she said, and even to her own ears her voice sounded tired. Dead. Rotting roses and dirty dishes in the sink.
The detective blinked once, then shifted through her papers until she found a scribbled in calendar. It was stuck on the wrong month.
“I forgot,” the detective murmured. It wasn’t an apology, and neither of them were pretending that it was. She could tell, even now, with her girlfriend pathetic and dripping water onto the hardwood floor in front of her, that the detective wanted nothing more than to go back to her evidence.
“Yeah,” she croaked. “Funny how it’s never the case you forget.”
The detective jerked, slightly, like she hadn’t expected the barbs in her girlfriend’s voice.
In the hallway, there was a drooping bouquet of flowers she hadn’t been able to bear bringing into the apartment.
“You know how important this is,” the detective implored, and it made her want to break things. Burn the papers, shatter the fancy glasses in the cabinet, spill wine across the carpets.
What about me, she wanted to scream. Am I not important to you anymore?
Instead, she said again, “You need to stop.”
“Stop?”
“The case. You need to stop.”
“I can’t just stop,” the detective laughed slightly, as if she thought it would convey how inconceivable the idea of stopping was.
“Yes, you can. Give it to someone else. There’s a whole precinct just waiting for you to put this file into their hands.”
At the thought of it, the thought of giving up this case, the hunt, the chase, pain flashed across the detective’s face.
“You don’t understand.”
“I do,” she replied. She had to shift her gaze to the dead plant on the corner of her partner’s desk, dirt dry and leaves brittle. “How could I not?”
“So then how could you ask me to do that? To give it all up? Why now?”
She had so many answers to that. So many moments that cut into her hands like a mosaic of memories. The bed empty beside her through the entire night. Cancelled reservations, one seat alone at the dinner table, laughs that died in her ribs. Friends, well meaning, who asked where the detective was, and the painful smiles she forced through the explanations. Work, and work, and work. Crime scene photos on the coffee table. The loneliness that seemed to care about her more than her girlfriend did.
There were so many times when she almost said something. Almost said enough. But she hadn’t, and now they were here, as she dripped a puddle onto the floor, and the detective looked at her like she had never seen her before.
When she tried to say that, any of that, it caught in her throat.
The detective took her silence for an inability to answer. A lack of evidence. Like she was throwing this tantrum for no reason, a little kid in the toy aisle of the store.
The detective sighed, rubbing a hand over her forehead. The other was already fanning through the papers once more. Her voice turned into something that begged to be understood.
“I’m so close—“
“To losing me.” She swallowed, painfully. “You’re losing me.”
“That’s not fair.”
“This isn’t fair,” her voice broke as she gestured between the two of them. “What you’re doing to me isn’t fair.”
“I’m not doing anything—“
“Exactly.” It was louder than she meant it to be. They both flinched.
“I’ll have it solved in a week, I promise.” She wasn’t sure who the detective was promising to.
“No.”
The detective blinked.
“No?”
“You heard me the first time.”
“I heard you, but I’m not sure what you’re saying ‘no’ to.”
If she had the energy to be slightly meaner, she would have told her to figure it out. Told her that she was a detective, this should be easy for her.
“I’m not giving you a week.” She took a deep breath. “And you’re not going to solve it.”
The detective’s looked at her like she didn’t recognize the person on the other side of the desk.
Finally, she understood what it felt like to face her girlfriend from the other side of an interrogation table.
Her girlfriend’s face was cold, and closed off. Her jaw was grinding into itself. She was staring at her like she couldn’t decide whether or not to consider her a suspect. As if the only reason she could fathom her girlfriend saying something like that was if she was actively sabotaging her.
She was cold, and her coat was wet, and this place no longer felt like home.
“You won’t solve this case.”
She was pretty sure there wasn’t anything crueler she could have said.
“You don’t know anything.” It was dripping with venom, and fear, and frustration. The fear the detective really wouldn’t solve it. The frustration that it still wasn’t solved.
“Do you really think you’re that special?” By now, it was too far gone for her to stop. There was no pretty way out of this. “You aren’t. This isn’t a TV show. You aren’t the main character who swoops in where no one else has before. It’s been decades of the same bullshit—taunting and evidence trails, and nobody has solved it. Don’t you think if it was solvable, it would have been by now?”
“There’s new evidence, and I’m not them—“
“What part of ‘you aren’t special’ don’t you understand,” she hissed, and the detective shifted away from her. “You aren’t the miracle detective who solves this. They’re going to keep on killing, and driving the people who try and find them crazy, and you’re letting them do it to you.”
“I’m not letting them do anything.”
“But you are,” she countered. “You have been for months. They’re messing with you. They’re everything to you, and you’re a game to them, and I’m nothing on the sidelines.”
“Babe, that’s not true,” The detective tried, voice softening. As if she had just realized something between them was wrong. That her girlfriend was hurting—had been, for a while.
She swallowed the tears rising in her throat.
“Do I need to become a crime scene for you to finally care about me again?” She slammed her hand down on the papers. Pretended the wince on the detectives face was concern for her, and not the papers she crumpled. “Will you look at me, love me again, if I’m a bloody photograph in this folder?”
“I do love you.”
“When someone loves someone else, they don’t leave them alone in the rain, waiting to be picked up. They don’t cancel to go dig through old archives on their loved one’s birthday. They don’t leave them in the middle of the night and let the blankets beside them get cold. People who love someone don’t live their life without a concern for the person they’re putting below everything else.”
“You’re making this really hard.”
“Good,” she snapped. “Because you’ve been making it hard to love you for months, and I’m glad you finally know how it feels.”
The detective paused, at that. Swallowed, eyes flitting around the room as if she would find the perfect thing to say in the remnants of the life they had built together.
“I love you,” The detective managed. Somehow, it was the worst thing she could have said.
“Good. Prove it.” She thought maybe dying would have hurt less than this.
“Prove it?”
“Prove it. Me, or the case.”
The detective froze.
“You don’t mean that,” she said, and it sounded like a plea. Don’t make me choose.
“Look at me and try and tell me I’m joking.” When the detective said nothing, she pushed further. “Go on. Do it. Choose.”
“I can’t do that—“ the detective choked. “This isn’t fair, you know that. I’m so close.”
Somehow, she had expected it to hurt less.
“Don’t make me choose,” the detective, her girlfriend, the love of her life finally said, voice breaking.
She had thought it would feel like dying.
It felt like nothing.
“You just did,” she said. The tears refused to be held, this time. The pain ran rampant through every word.
She knew her girlfriend could hear it.
“I love you,” the detective whispered. A final, desperate prayer for her to stay. But she was no god, and her girlfriend was no believer. And it would never be enough.
She let the door slam on the way out.
The detective never did solve that case.