phantom pain (summer was the season of you)

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/50076616.

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning: Major Character Death
Category: F/F
Fandom: BLACKPINK (Band)
Relationship: Jennie Kim/Kim Jisoo, Jennie Kim/Lalisa Manoban | Lisa
Character: Jennie Kim, Kim Jisoo (BLACKPINK), Lalisa Manoban | Lisa
Additional Tags: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Well kind of happy, Hurt/Comfort, I
Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Ghosts, read this at night, lowkey the
charles dickens christmas ghosts but like blackpink and sad
Language: English
Stats: Published: 2023-09-14 Words: 2,162 Chapters: 1/1

phantom pain (summer was the season of you)

by haegeum

Summary

lisa's ghost visits jennie three times.

alternatively: the passage of time, seasons, loves, and losses.

Notes

tw for death so be kind to yourselves <3

unedited apologies for any mistakes

See the end of the work for more notes

the past (alternatively, winter)

“You’re not her.”

That’s the first thing Jennie says, when she sees Lisa again.
But it’s not Lisa. Not really.

The Lisa she knew- the Lisa she loved, still loves, god, still loves - was warm and vibrant, tan
under the sun and with a laughing smile that she could practically hear when the memories were
being particularly cruel.

This Lisa is pale and cold, her smile as empty as her infinitely sad eyes.

Jennie thinks she could drown in them.

“I’m not. But I could be.”

Jennie is tired.

She’s tired from the funeral, because of course she had to take care of all those arrangements
herself, even though the funeral was weeks ago. She’s tired from the days before the funeral, such a
static-filled blur of tears and disbelief and gaping emptiness that her mind had imposed a numb,
translucent curtain over any thoughts of them. She’s tired from the day it happened, when she got
the call during work and screamed so loud she tore her throat out only to realize no noise was
actually coming out. She’s tired from the memories of everything before.

I’m not. But I could be.

What does that even mean , she thinks, but she’s exhausted, and Lisa is standing beside her, from
where she is slumped on the floor, an empty bottle of whiskey by her side, half-concealed under a
crumpled blanket, because she doesn’t sleep in the bedroom anymore.

She wouldn’t even sleep in the apartment anymore, if for the fact that she didn’t actually have
anywhere else to go, and she couldn’t handle moving, not on top of everything else.

But staying was worse.

Why did it have to be me that stayed?

“I don’t know,” Lisa- not Lisa , she reminds herself brutally- answers evenly, still just standing
there, and staring at her as if she had actually said it out loud. Maybe she had, or maybe not-Lisa
could read minds. There was definitely something wrong with her- something that made her not
entirely of this world.

What difference did it make, though?

“All I know is that you needed me.”

And Jennie wants to cry, she really fucking does, but there really isn’t much water left in her for it
anymore, not really much left there at all.

“You’re not her,” she repeats slowly, dully, and the whiskey bottle is empty so she swallows
nothing but bitter air instead when she brings it to her lips. “You’re not. She- her hair is shorter
than that. Than this.”

“It was,” the ghost of Lalisa Manoban said.

Because what else could she be.

Lisa doesn’t sit down, even though they’re having a conversation now, apparently. Maybe ghosts
can’t sit down.

“I need you,” Jennie says, the words cracking as they leave her, like everything else. “I- why aren’t
you here, Lisa? I need you-”

“I know,” Lisa says quietly, and her hand stretches out to try to smoothe Jennie’s hair out of her
eyes. It doesn't actually do anything, of course, except make her feel colder and lonelier than ever.
“I know.”

She pauses, then speaks, a little more purposefully.

“Remember winter, Jen? Three years ago?”

Jennie nods, slowly, wishing the ghost of Lisa (a younger Lisa, three years younger, it seems, back
when her hair was still long and she still had that stupid scarf that was somewhere buried in a closet
Jennie has been avoiding) was still touching her, even if it felt like frostbite.

“We went ice skating,” Lisa continues, softly, her eyes like the shiver of a snowflake. “It was so
cold.”

“You fell through,” Jennie murmurs, because she knows the story, of course she knows the story,
though it’s usually told around a dinner out with their friends (the same ones who had been
knocking at Jennie’s door for days, now, not that she had the energy to listen) where they can
laugh about how stupid Lisa had been, how much stupider Jennie had been to go after her.

“It was so cold,” Lisa repeats, nodding. “You saved me-”

“Stop,” Jennie pleads, because she didn’t save her, not enough, not this time, not when Lisa had
been driving back from their lunch date and didn’t see the patch of ice on the road-

“You saved me, Jen, and when you pulled me out of the water, my lips were blue-”

Stop.

“-but you kissed me anyway.”

Turns out she did have enough in her for one more tear, at least.

As if she hadn’t already given enough of herself up to the memories of it all anyways, playing like
a haunted, cruel slideshow in her mind, blurred only by alcohol but never quite fading: Lisa next to
her watching a movie, Lisa laughing as she did her makeup, Lisa running towards the ocean in
ecstasy, the look on her face as they danced on the ice, the first time they said I love you, and-

“Our first kiss.”

Lisa nods once, smiling that same incalculably sad smile, and bends down to press her lips against
Jennie’s.

It’s cold, and Jennie wonders if hers are turning blue, too, this time.

It would be a relief.

And I would see you again.

“Don’t come after me, this time,” Lisa whispers, before she’s gone, nothing but the shadows and
the moonlight left, cutting through the freezing winter air outside her window, and Jennie breaks
like ice against the hull of a ship, sinking down with another sob, because she still had more tears,
more heart-wrenching sorrow, more aching, soul-splitting pain, for Lisa.

But she doesn’t go after her, this time.

***

the present (alternatively, spring)

Jisoo is the one who gets her off the floor, eventually.

Who keeps her away from the bottle, who helps her move, who gets her outside and into the air
again, even as months pass and seasons change, and before Jennie knows it it’s spring again, and
she’s out having coffee with her.

Jisoo is the one who gives her her hand to keep her warm and guide her as they cross the street
together, gives her a scolding smile with a softness reserved just for her and goes to get her drink
order.

Jisoo knows it by heart.

She’s too good for Jennie, Jennie knows, but she’s the only friend she would let in.

They had been friends for forever, before memories, even before Lisa, and they had both lost Lisa,
and Jisoo had let Jennie break herself open nearly every night since on her shoulder, never
pushing, always with a comforting hand or word.

Jisoo’s lost love, before, too.

A girl named Rosie, with vivid hair just like her name and a wide smile that seemed to light up
Jisoo’s whole world before she left her, just like that. It wasn’t quite the same thing as death, but
misery wears a similar face when the world is devoid of the one you love, in one way or another.

It’s an odd sort of camaraderie, Jennie thinks, or tries not to, taking a sip of her drink as Jisoo goes
to the bathroom, pressing her shoulder softly as she goes as if to reassure her that she’ll come back,
she’ll stay, because they both do, always will.

It’s one of the many understandings between them, and there are so many more. Jennie doesn’t go
with her to see the cherry blossoms bloom, and Jisoo doesn’t take her to the sea even though it’s
finally getting warm enough for it. They have their lives pieced together, holding the fragments of
each other together and apart, taking turns being strong, even though Jennie knows she tends to
lean a little more on the other woman than is fair, though nothing about this has ever been fair.

She blinks, and Lisa’s in front of her.

She’s sitting down across from her, this time, so apparently ghosts can sit, after all, or at least exist
in a sitting position, and she looks-

God, it knocks the wind out of Jennie’s lungs.

She looks just like the day she lost her.

“You should get something to eat, too,” Lisa says softly, her hair a little shorter and her voice a
little harder to hear, the bustle and the daylight nearly drowning her out, though she has the same
haunting half-smile as last time.
We just had lunch, though, you and I, Jennie wants to say, but no words will pass through her lips.

Lisa looks to where Jisoo has disappeared to the bathroom.

“She’ll make sure you eat well, won’t she?”

Jennie only nods, her throat thick with shock and bile and memories.

“That’s good. That’s good,” Lisa says, even softer this time, with heartbreaking honesty as her
smile slips, just for a moment. “I’ve missed you, Jennie.”

Jennie wants to scream, all over again, just like she did in the office that day, the day Lisa died-

“I know you’ve missed me, too,” Lisa continues, her voice the only sound left in the world, now,
because hadn’t she taken everything else with her already, too?

“But I think you’ll be- you’ll be okay, you’ll be good, now.”

Lisa’s standing back up again, to leave too soon again , and Jennie has to say something, has to
fight through the choking sensation in her throat, like an allergic reaction to the spring pollen,
invisible yet corrosive in the air.

“Lisa- please, be careful- the road, the ice-”

“I know,” Lisa says again, her calm, sad smile back on again. “I know, Jen. It’s melting, now,
don’t worry.”

She might have kissed Jennie. It all happens in one moment, the way she moves forwards, the way
her lips seem to press against Jennie’s, even though Jennie barely feels it as she leaves, again ,
always .

“I’m back,” Jisoo announces, unnecessarily and yet necessarily, breaking Jennie out of her reverie
like a sprout through the hard, thawing winter frost, and Jennie blinks as she slides into the seat
beside her, not across from her, so not exactly where Lisa had been, but closer. She sets a muffin
down between them, splitting it in half carefully.

Jisoo turns to give her a smile, one that blooms across her face like the beginning of something.

“What’d I miss?”

***

the future (alternatively, fall)

Fall brings hot cider and brisk mornings and crunchy leaves and if this is what it looks like when
things die, why is it so beautiful?

Jisoo laughs when Jennie asks her, out on a picnic by the trees, huddled together for warmth in the
autumn breeze.

“I don’t know, Jendeuk,” she says affectionately, and that’s just another thing that’s wonderful
about Kim Jisoo, the way she calls Jennie so many different names, different but still her.

Jendeuk- a pun on the Hangul word for clingy, but it’s never spoken with malice, and Jennie only
presses herself closer to her chest, noticing how the tip of her nose is red.

“I don’t know, but I’m glad we can see it, together.”

Together.

“Don’t scream.”

Lisa’s voice comes in her ear, and Jennie doesn’t even stiffen, has almost been expecting it, lately,
the aftermath of the equinox.
Part of her wants to turn around. She can almost feel her presence- warm, yet tinged with the
promised chill like everything else dying in the earth, around them.

“I won’t stay long,” Lisa says, quiet even though she doesn’t have to be, and Jennie knows, even
though a small part of her still cries out for her to stay, for a long time, for as long as they had
always thought she would.

She wants to turn around.

To see what Lisa looks like, this time.

To perhaps see that familiar face lined with age, with wrinkles, with the smile-lines that they all
knew would come from how loudly and brightly Lisa had laughed and loved.

To see what it might have looked like if they had spent their lifetimes together.

“I just wanted to say-”

Stay.

“-can you tell me, before I go-”

Go.

“-one last time, Jen?”

Something in between.

Jennie breathes in the crisp air, lets it cut into her, full of broken stems and promises and new and
old things.
 Let it all rest, now.

Jennie feels it as Jisoo’s hand tucks a strand of her hair behind her ear, and when she says the
words, it’s Jisoo she’s looking at, because she doesn’t turn around.

“I love you.”

Jisoo’s eyes are living and dying, all at once.

“Thank you,” whispers the last of Lisa’s voice in her ear, a little scratchy with the passage of time
or maybe just the ache of the lingering piece of her leaving, finally, falling away from the world in
almost the way Jennie does as Jisoo looks back at her.

Thank you, for everything.

Jisoo catches her, as sure as gravity and as the seasons themselves, her lips warm and solid and
real, and they fall into one another.

“I love you, too.”

End Notes

sad hours :)
hope it made you feel something <3 thank you for reading

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