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darklydeliciousdesires · 4 months ago

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Sky Full of Stars - Chapter Twenty.

Guys, thank you so, so much for your comments and reblogs, and apologies if I haven't gotten round to replying. I'm a bit mentally scattered at present. I'm going to be too busy to update on Friday, so here, you get your chapter early, besties! Enjoy :)

Previous chapters - One Two Three Four Five Six Seven Eight Nine Ten Eleven Twelve Thirteen Fourteen Fifteen Sixteen Seventeen Eighteen Nineteen

Tag list - In the comments

Words - 5,107

Warnings - 18+ content throughout. Minors DNI!

“Naw, girl. You ain’t staying here. Not your time yet.”

It was still black. Alone in the dark, she thought she recognised the male voice speaking to her, but it wasn’t possible. He was long gone. Everything felt cloudy, hanging low over her senses like a dense morning fog, her head pounding.

She could hear the chorus of the song Ramble On by Led Zeppelin playing before she opened her eyes and sat up with a jolt. Her surroundings were familiar, but what the hell she was doing in The Dungeon, a rock bar in the heart of Arlington, Texas, she didn’t have the faintest clue.

“Did you fuckin’ hear me? I said it ain’t your time yet.”

That voice again. Spinning around, her heart rocketed into her throat, for sitting there beside her was the man she’d missed since he was taken much too soon from the world eight years before, his curls just as wild and his beard still as bright pink.

“Dime?”

He held his arms wide. “The one and only, Burton. Oh, ‘cept you ain’t that any longer, are ya? Getting married an’ all that.”

“Dime, am I fucking dead?” she cried, reaching to grab his arm, watching him frown.

“Still don’t fuckin’ listen to me, do ya?” Sliding an empty shot glass over the smooth wood towards her, he filled it with Jack Daniels, nodding at it. “I said it ain’t your time yet! So no, shit head. You ain’t dead but fuck, you ain’t staying!”

There was a sudden burst of bright light, voices shouting all around, hands grasping at her, machines beeping, one beginning to drone. With a violent shake, she was back out of it, reaching for the glass and knocking it back in one gulp. “What the bloody hell was that?”

“The medical team working on ya,” he spoke, refilling her glass. “I’ll happen, that light’ll keep hitting on ya. Don’t fight it, no matter how much it hurts. I didn’t get it, man. Never came back for me.” He looked lamenting for a brief second, his face then breaking out in a smile. “Sure is good to see ya, JB.”

Her lip began to wobble, Dime shaking his head, pulling her into his arms. “Naw, none of this bull crap, little sister.”

“I miss you!” she sobbed, feeling him pat her back as he hugged her tight. Dimebag hugs always bent your bones the wrong way for as long as they lasted.

“And I miss you, too, bud. I miss you too.” Leaning away, he sank another shot, refilling hers, too. “Remember when I bought you here after the tour, when y’all didn’t wanna go home, so you guys came and crashed at my place for a month, and we got wasted every damned day?”

What a month that had been, Jade living with Dime and his longtime girlfriend, Rita, for four weeks of what was essentially an after tour afterparty, Jen and Jess with her, too.

She smiled, because of course she remembered that night, a gigantic storm hitting Arlington, lightning cracking the sky, the rain pelting down beyond imagination, and she and Dime dancing in it outside of the bar together. It was one of those moments she’d never forget for as long as she lived.

“Of course, I do.” She remembered it, her heart warm and soft while looking into his kind eyes. “So, if I’m not dead, why am I here?”

He shrugged, sinking his drink, Jade following suit. “Fucked if I know. I’m just keeping ya company while y’are.” The light hit her again then, the pain indescribable, the machine still droning a long noise. “Hey, stop fighting it, Skip!”

“I’m not, and don’t call me that! Only Jen gets away with it,” she protested, before once again she fell under the affliction of the light, this time a door crashing open across the room, the entire bar filled with its brilliance. “Dime, I’m scared.”

He jumped down off the barstool, taking her face in his hands. “Don’t be. It’s gonna be alright. You’ll see.” He pressed a long kiss against her forehead. “Go on. Go. Keep rockin’ it, Burton. Remember who the fuck you are, y’hear?”

She nodded, a huge lump swelling in her throat. If only she could take him with her. “I will. I promise. Love you, mate.”

He rested his forehead to hers, blue eyes shining brightly. “Love you too, girl.” The scent of Jack Daniels, weed and Axe body spray lingered in her nose, the smells she associated with him for a few moments before she opened her eyes again, the white light burning, nothing around her, nothing at all.

While to her, sitting in The Dungeon had felt like a trip of mere minutes, in reality three weeks had passed, Jade rushed in for emergency treatment at a hospital close to home before being flown down to New York Presbyterian via helicopter once she was stable enough to be moved. Her father had organised it, wanting his daughter under the care of a team he knew, the best team she could be cared for by, in his opinion.

Three stab wounds, two to her lung and one narrowly missing her kidney and significant trauma to her head after she’d collapsed and hit it upon the driveway. She’d haemorrhaged massively, flatlined twice in surgery, been moved to Manhattan and operated on again to fix the persistent internal bleeding that continued to cause issues before being placed in a medically induced coma to allow her brain the vital time it needed to heal.

Throughout it all, after leaving Italy earlier than scheduled in blind panic once he’d had the heart stopping news relayed to him, one man had refused to leave her side for more than a few minutes at a time.

“There has been an incident at home. It’s your wife, Mr. Brody. She has been stabbed.”

Those words had played in his head more times that he’d cared to count in the three weeks between, and they sent his bloody glacially cold every single time. He’d never known fear like it, nor the rage that had followed, how a dangerous lunatic had been on the run from her care facility for two days, and nobody had thought to notify the people she would likely run straight in the direction of. Well, person, as it was, since he hadn’t been home. The truth was, though, she had found her intended target, somehow believing in her broken mind that if Jade was dead, it left the path clear for her and him to be together.

The care facility had felt every single last drop of his furious outrage when he had called them to speak to the director, wanting to know how the hell they could have failed their duty of care so badly that a patient had not only escaped, but almost succeeded in murdering his wife.

He was given some bullshit, textbook response, Adrien weighing up whether to take them to court over it. Jade wouldn’t want him to, he knew that, and he did still swing between bringing a private suit against them, even though the police handling the case had said they were currently under investigation for gross negligence because of what had happened.

Serena was shortly to be brought behind the kind of bars she couldn’t escape, once she herself had been discharged from hospital. It was the only thing that made the whole nightmare even slightly manageable, the fact that his wife had literally beaten her to a pulp in defending herself. A broken cheekbone and nose, a dislocated jaw and a fractured skull. She had, as Katie had coined it, fucked her up good.

He smiled as he thought of that, never usually the type to take pleasure in somebody else’s pain, but in that instance making an exception. Stretching, he circled his neck a few times, his current sleeping arrangement not doing that or his back much good. Because of who he was, but even more so, because of who his father-in-law happened to be, the staff had allowed him to sleep on a cot at night beside her bed, his refusal to leave her so great.

Reaching for her hand again, he stroked the soft skin covering her knuckles. “Got your car fixed. Well, Katie did. She took it in a couple of days ago. She’s staying up at the house, looking after everything while we’re down here.

“You scared the shit out of her, you know. She heard all the commotion, thought there was an issue with the Amazon driver she was waiting in for after hearing all the sirens wailing. Thought he’d crashed or something. She said it was messed up that she was one of the first people to see the aftermath of both you and Jen nearly dying over a space of almost three years and that you could both, and I quote, fucking go to hell for scaring her like that. Cops had to pull her back from kicking the shit out of Serena, even though you did a very good job of that yourself.”

Her hand twitched on his, and it sent his heart into flutter. There’d been a few little reactions here and there in the twelve hours since she’d been slowly brought around from the medically induced coma, her eyes opening a few times, too. He was told it would be a gradual process, though, her regaining full consciousness. All he cared was that she eventually would. Her prognosis was good, her healing in line with the expectations of her doctors, although she had a long road ahead of her.

With that in mind, he had gotten himself out of all work commitments and public engagements for the foreseeable, handing everything over to his people to extract him from, his duties as a husband coming first. Oh, she was going to be a nightmare, having to rest while she healed. Of course, he was in it for the nightmares as well as the good times, the fact she would be difficult and try to do too much too soon, the likely tantrums at having to do as she was told.

Smiling as he thought of her probable indignance, he rested his head down by her thigh, kissing her hand. “It’s way too quiet around here, you in a room and no noise,” he spoke softly. “Well, not that you’re particularly loud when you’re just relaxing at home anyway, but you get what I mean.” Tiredness washed over him in waves, not having slept too well that night, his eyes growing heavy again.

He fell into the void of restful slumber for a few hours before the door closing roused him, Adrien looking up to see his father-in-law approach, holding out one of the two cups of coffee he’d bought.

“You look tired, son,” he spoke softly, his eyes kind. Adrien’s utter devotion to his daughter and all-out refusal to leave her side had touched him beyond words. ‘That’s a damned good guy right there, our son-in-law' he’d told his wife as they’d watched through the window on Jade’s second night at his hospital, their precious first-born recovering from her surgery, her husband holding her hand to his face as he’d stroked her arm.

“I am, but I’m still not going home.”

Steven laughed softly through his nose. “I think we’re around ten days past me trying to get you to go and rest properly, so I shan’t continue flogging that particular dead horse.” Logging onto the hospital system on the iPad he carried under his arm, he picked out her most recently made notes, studying them before checking her over. When he came to test her pupil reactions to light, a frown creased her forehead, Jade making a soft noise of complaint. “Hey monkey, you back with us yet?”

“Hmmnrrgh.” Her eyes opened briefly, fluttering shut once more, her dad stroking her head.

“All in your own time. Lord knows, getting you to rest has been an uphill battle for the past thirty-four years. I suppose I shouldn’t complain that you’re finally doing it.” Turning to Adrien, he shook his head, pointing at his daughter. “As soon as she learned how to walk, when her feet hit the floor for the first time each morning, she would be on the go constantly. Naps? Forget it. I often thought about stapling her to a seat just to get her to rest, but she always had something to do.”

“Some things never change,” he spoke, knowing that was very much the person his wife was, moving through her life from one project to the next, her drive and determination to fulfil all of her ambitions just as huge as his own was. “I was just thinking to myself that she’ll be a complete nightmare while she’s recovering. Trying to get her to rest is, as you rightly worded it, always an uphill battle.”

“Get Groucho to lie on her lap. That’ll keep her still.”

Adrien laughed, thinking of his beautiful, slightly insane dog. “You know, he only does that with you, lying across a lap. He’ll sit next to us, lean on us, but he only does the full flop for you.”

“He loves his grandpa,” Steven chuckled. “Anyway, I’ve been in surgery for hours, so I’m going to the on-call room to get a little shut eye before I’m back down there this afternoon. I’ll call in this evening on my way home.”

“And it’s just me and you again, Moo,” he spoke once Steven had left, moving himself to sit on the edge of her bed, reaching for the bag containing all the miniatures of her skincare items, little things Jen knew she used and had gone out and bought. If Jade was a stickler for anything, it was taking good care of herself. “So, this is what I have to start with, after watching the noisy one do all of this for you. Tata Harper hydrating floral essence. Mmm, smells good.”

He decanted a little onto a cotton pad, moving her hair and gently sweeping it over her face. “I bet I’m doing this wrong, but I feel good husband points should be earned for trying.” He then followed it with her eye cream, something labelled at skin caviar, and finally, the face cream that he’d almost fainted when Jade had told him how much it cost. “I still can’t believe you spend seven hundred dollars on lotion. You’re fucking insane, Burtie. But you have no wrinkles, so it must be doing something. You’d still be a knockout if you had, though.”

He finished by dotting her lips with the same seven-dollar lip balm from The Body Shop that she’d worn since her teen years, thinking she wasn’t so bad in her skincare that she’d continue to use items that cost significantly less if she liked them. “There, all fresh again, with very kissable, mango flavoured lips.” Leaning down, he kissed them softly, the sensation of her not returning that kiss still somewhat odd to deal with. “Please wake up soon, baby love. You might be right here, but I miss you so much.”

He sat with her reading over scripts he’d been sent for projects way into the future for the rest of the afternoon, only leaving to head for a cigarette or grab a sandwich. He was fast tiring of them, so later that evening after he’d quickly been to take a shower, there was an extra reason he was happy to return to see Jen wedged in at Jade’s side, reading to her.

“You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what’s a life, anyway? We’re born, we live a little while, we die. A spider’s life can’t help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone’s life can stand a little of that.”

Charlotte’s Web. It had remained her favourite book since her childhood, Jen holding in her hands the first edition copy from nineteen fifty-two, a little gift for her when she finally woke up. He thought it was the sweetest thing, that she read to her, and had done since her arrival in Manhattan. She narrated anything from current affairs to the books she was reading herself, before a few days prior it had dawned on her that being read her favourite book when she visited would be a nice thing to do.

At her core, Jen was much more sentimental than she’d ever let on.

Looking up at he closed the door softly, she smiled, lifting her glasses to her head. “Homeslice! I was wondering where you’d gone,” she began, pointing to the cabinet beside Jade’s bed. “Gotcha dinner. Salmon, broccoli and noodles from that place down the block. I had the chicken version, and it was amazing! They don’t pile it in MSG so it still has that nice, fresh flavour, y’know?”

Greeting her with a kiss, he gave her a huge hug, very thankful to be looked after so well when she came to visit. It was daily when she could manage it, but at that precise moment in time she was busy working as a session drummer, filling in for Tommy Clufetos on Ozzy Osbourne’s next solo release, which would involve taking over for him for a small chunk of the eventual tour, too. “How’s the recording going?”

“Pretty good,” she nodded, moving to a seat at the beside instead, Adrien sitting down opposite from her to begin eating. “It’s all relatively simple. I go on there, record what I gotta, it gets sent to the studio on the West Coast and Ozzy either approves it or sends it back with notes on what he wants if he ain’t vibing with it. He’s so easy to work with, though. Such a down to earth guy, man.”

Adrien remembered that, meeting the legend himself at a music awards ceremony the previous year when he’d attended with Jade and the girls, Ozzy and his wife Sharon very, very nice people. They’d sent a gorgeous arrangement of deep red calla lilies for Jade to the hospital, along with a card wishing her a speedy recovering and sending their love.

The room was so full of flowers, in fact, that many of them had been taken to be dotted around the nurse’s station, too. Even Cher had sent her roses, beautiful, long stemmed white ones. God, Jade would be so pissed off to have missed out on that particular role, playing the legendary icon, the production’s second choice actress having to fill in at a moment’s notice after the incident that had rendered Jade incapable of fulfilling her obligation.

“And are you still pinching yourself?” he asked, popping open the takeout container and happily digging the chopsticks in. Ahhh, real food.

“I am,” she confessed, her smile widening. “It’s a total dream come true, getting to work with Ozzy himself. I still can’t believe it, that he called me personally to ask. Don’t matter that we as a band have been friends with him for years and toured with him before, it still fucking blew me away, y’know?”

He understood it well. Being sought out by directors he’d always admired still caused him the same amount of excited disbelief, Adrien thrilled for her that she was getting to work with one of her biggest musical influences.

“Has she moved at all, while I’ve been out?” he asked, gesturing towards his wife with a piece of broccoli he duly popped into his mouth.

“A few twitches,” she sniffed, “opened her eyes once but nothing other than that. They’re lowering her doses steadily though, aren’t they?”

He nodded in confirmation, swallowing the mouthful of food before replying. “They have been, yeah. It’s been twenty hours now, though, so she should be coming round more. For a woman who needs such little sleep, this is very uncharacteristic.”

“Mm, I like a nap, though.” Their eyes snapped to the bed after hearing those croaky, quietly muttered words, finally seeing their girl begin to truly come round more than she had over the past few days. “Hey.”

“Hey Skip!” Jen cried softly, her eyes filling with tears, pressing the button to the side of the bed to alert the nurse. “Where ya been, huh? We’ve been waiting, waiting, waiting while you’ve been fucking dozing. Lazy bastard.”

“Fuck you, Jennifer.”

Oh, she was back, alright.

Turning to where Adrien had moved to the other side of her bed, she reached out for his face. “Kisses, please.” He was only too happy to oblige.

“How’d you feel, baby love?”

“Ouch,” she whispered, grimacing slightly.

“Yeah, I can imagine.” He beamed, kissing her again. “It’s so good to see you awake.”

Her eyelids fluttered again, not looking a hundred percent with it. “Where am I? And why aren’t you in Italy?”

“Well, I was. Do you remember what happened?”

She nodded. “Serena. How bad did she get me? She had a bat; did she knock me out with it? My head feels like she did.” It was all very fuzzy, her memory patchy where what had happened to her was concerned, only able to remember little flashes. Her eyes then widened. “The babies!”

“They’re fine, honey. Katie is up at the house with them. They weren’t hurt, just mad as hell, according to the police who attended the scene,” he told her, watching as she visibly relaxed again. “And no, she didn’t. You had head trauma from hitting the driveway when you collapsed, that’s why you’ve been in a medical coma for three weeks. She stabbed you, though. Three times, twice in the lung, and the other just round to the side of your waist.”

“Three weeks? Shit.” She coughed a little, Jen pouring her a beaker of water, placing a straw in and holding it to her mouth. “Thanks, mate.” Taking a few sips, she felt instantly refreshed, the steady stream of oxygen fed in through the little tubes beneath her nose helping, her chest hurting as she tried to keep calm in the wake of hearing what had happened to her. “I don’t remember it all. I got out of the car, and the rest is a blur. A lot of pain, blacking out. Fuck, my chest hurts. How big was the knife she used?”

“Small, thankfully,” Adrien sighed, reaching to stroke her face, Jade resting her cheek into the cup of his hand, sniffing as tears began to roll down her cheeks. “Shhh, baby. It's okay, you’re safe.”

Her left lung ached, taking shallow breaths as she calmed down, gripping his hand hard, feeling Jen stroking her other arm. “Where is she?”

“St. Joseph’s in Syracuse,” he confirmed, “which is where you were, too. Your dad arranged for you to be transferred here, though. He wanted Lucy to oversee your care and operate on your again. You’ve had two, to fix the damage and then go back in and get a persistent internal bleed patched up.”

Lucy Cho. She was the best general surgeon in New York, one of Steven’s oldest friends and also Jade’s godmother. “Aunt Luce fixed me up?”

“Yeah, she did. She’s been in here yelling at me every few hours to go home and get some rest, too.”

That sounded very much true to Lucy’s form. “And what about Serena now?”

“Well, like I said, she’s still in the hospital. You banged her up pretty good, fractured her skull, dislocated her jaw and broke her cheekbone and nose. Smashed her head off the back of your Jeep, apparently.”

A flash of memory came back to her, remembering it, the taillight cracking as she rammed Serena’s head into it so hard, the lens shattered. “I remember that bit, now you mention it. What’s happening next, jail, or what?”

“She’s under arrest for attempted murder, police guarding her, cuffed to the bed and all that pending a psyche evaluation. If she’s deemed competent then she’ll stand trial. If not, a maximum-security unit for the criminally insane, so the police have told me will likely happen.”

That was reassuring, at least. Not that her ending up in hospital should have been the catalyst to it coming to that. “At least she can’t escape this time. I’m sure it’ll hit me at some point, the gravity of what happened, but I still feel so spaced out.”

“You need to rest, babe,” Jen told her, pressing the button again. “Where the hell is the damned nurse?”

“Which’ll be so easy for me, with you here throwing a fit,” she chuckled, turning to Adrien. “And you look like you’ve slept for about three minutes over the last three weeks. Go home. Go to sleep. That’s an order.”

“Can’t, don’t have the apartment keys on me.” Jade had never sold her place in the West Village, the abode useful for when they were visiting Manhattan for work commitments, having a place to stay right there.

“I’ve got your spare set at home, I can get a cab and drop ‘em here within an hour,” Jen spoke.

He shook his head. “No rush. Despite what the dictator here says, I’m not going anywhere just yet.” Jade opened her mouth to speak, Adrien pointing at her. “No. No arguing. I’m fine.”

The nurse arrived shortly after to check her over, a doctor ten minutes after that. She had her dressing changed, Jade having a little cry all over again to see the severe bruising and stitched up stab wounds, noticing that a chest drain had been fitted to her as well to prevent her lung from collapsing, as it had in the hours after her second surgery.

“Will this affect my ability to continue my musical career?” she asked the doctor, feeling tingly with nerves at what she might be told.

“Not long term, no. You’ll be out of action for at least six months, though. You’re making very good progress, and I’m happy for the drain to be removed tomorrow. I think tentatively, we could be looking at around another few days of hospital care. I want you to be scanned again tonight, so we’ll take you down shortly, but yes, Mrs. Brody. Everything looks good.”

What looked really good to her was the fact that the food at the hospital actually wasn’t bad at all, Jade choosing a chicken pot pie and fries for her dinner, but only managing half. That was to be expected, since she’d been fed through a tube for the last three weeks. After her scan, she was brought back up, finding Jen still there reading, and Adrien asleep in the chair.

“Oh yeah, Brody,” she spoke quietly, “sure, you’re fine.”

“He’s been on a cot every night since you got here at your bedside, refused to leave you. Your dad pulled a hell of a lot of strings for him to be able to stay,” Jen revealed, Jade smiling at her husband, her love swelling. She’d have been exactly the same, should their places be switched.

“He’s the best.” Turning to Jen, she reached for her hand, squeezing tightly. “Thanks for being here, too. I love you.”

“Love you too, babe. It’s what we do, y’know? Always gonna be here for my Skip,” she replied fondly.

She hesitated a moment, wanting to reveal what she’d experienced while unconscious. It was silly, though, she soon reasoned. However, if there was anyone in the world who likely wouldn’t brush it away, it was Jen. “Something happened while I was out, you know. I think... but I don’t know, it might’ve been a dream, but I think I went somewhere else for a while.”

“Yeah?” she spoke, leaning forward while gently massaging Jade’s hand for her. “Where’d you go?”

“I’m not sure, but Dime was there.” She felt stupid even speaking it aloud, waving her other hand dismissively. “It was probably a dream. They likely had me doped up with all kinds of crazy painkillers.”

“It might not have been, y’know?” Jen shrugged. “So, what happened?”

“I just suddenly woke up and I was in The Dungeon in Arlington with him. I dunno, if there’s some small chance it wasn’t a morphine addled dream, maybe I stumbled into his afterlife or something.” Pausing, she shrugged a little, the corner of her mouth twitching. “He told me that I wasn’t staying, that it wasn’t my time.”

She snorted a chuckle, lifting her hands expressively before dropping them to the bed, continuing her massaging. “And where else would that motherfucker be, eh? The Dungeon. Damn, I love that place.” Shaking her head, she reached for her hand. “Dream or afterlife, he was right. Wasn’t your time, Skip.” Rubbing between her fingers gently, she sighed, a little somber. “I bet it was awesome to see him again.”

Jade nodded, thumbing a tear from her eye. “Yeah. Yeah, it was. I hadn’t thought about him much over the last few years, with everything going on. Not until Serena showed up. After Sunni mentioned it, though, what happened to Dime, he’s been on my mind. Maybe that’s why I dreamed about him.”

“Or maybe, he knew you were floating somewhere between here and the other side, and he did what Dime would have done. Came and sat with you so you weren’t alone and afraid.” Finishing her massaging, Jen pointed at her, beginning to grin. “Stranger things have happened. But all that matters is that you did come back. See that man over there? He was fucking broken while you were out.”

Looking at her husband, Jade felt her heart thump out warm waves, smiling as he slept on. “If anything does ever happen to me in the future, promise me one thing? That you’ll look after him.”

“Sure will.” A pause followed. “If this is you giving me your permission to ever hop on him if you did croak, though, I gotta pass, man. Not that he ain’t cute as hell, and you tell me all the time he’s got hella dick game, but it’d be like fucking a razorblade. You know I like ‘em a little fuller figured.”

“I heard that.” One eye opened across the other side of the bed, Adrien closing it again as he raised his middle finger.

It hurt Jade like hell to laugh, but god, it felt good to do so.

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