Chapter Text
The LA shows were always different.
Billie felt it the second she stepped onstage — the way the energy didn’t just hit her, it wrapped around her. Like the city knew her too well. Like it had grown up with her, watched her become something she never quite decided to be.
She stands alone at center stage, lights low, the opening notes humming through the floor. No band. No backup. Just her voice and the echo of fifty thousand people holding their breath with her.
It’s good.
Really good.
Her body knows this set by heart now. Muscle memory carries her through the first song, then the next. She moves without thinking, voice steady, controlled, warm. The crowd is loud but not overwhelming — present in the way that feels supportive instead of consuming.
For once, she isn’t tense.
She thinks, briefly, I could do this forever.
Between songs, she smiles — a real one. Talks a little. Jokes about LA traffic. About how weird it is to play a hometown crowd that feels this big and this small at the same time.
The laughter feels grounding.
She launches into the next track — one of her favorites off Hit Me Hard and Soft. The bass sinks deep into her chest, familiar and comforting. Her voice floats over it easily, stronger than it’s been in weeks.
She feels proud.
That thought surprises her.
The stage vibrates beneath her boots, but that’s normal — it always does. She barely notices at first. Her focus is on the lights, the sound, the way the chorus lands perfectly, the way the crowd sings it back to her like a promise.
This is why she does it.
This exact feeling.
The vibration comes again.
Stronger.
She falters half a step — barely noticeable — and adjusts, continuing the song without missing a beat. The music carries her forward, momentum unbroken.
But something in her stomach tightens.
The floor doesn’t feel musical anymore. It feels… unstable. Like standing on something hollow.
She finishes the line anyway.
Then the stage drops.
A sudden, violent lurch downward that steals the air from her lungs and turns her balance inside out.
She doesn’t scream.
She just falls.
The impact is brutal. Her side slams into the floor, pain blooming sharp and immediate, knocking the breath clean out of her. The lights above flicker wildly, then go dark.
The sound doesn’t stop, it distorts. Screams bleed into feedback. The bass cuts out mid-beat, leaving a hollow, ringing silence that makes her ears ache.
Something heavy crashes down near her.
Dust fills her mouth. Her nose. Her throat.
She tries to push herself up and can’t.
Her chest feels wrong. Tight. Pressed. Every breath is shallow, panicked, incomplete. She coughs hard, the sound tearing at her ribs, and realizes she’s trapped — pinned under part of the stage she was standing on seconds ago.
No. No, no, no.
Her hands shake as she presses them against the floor, trying to lift herself, but the pain spikes white-hot through her side and she collapses back down with a sharp, broken sound.
Her ears ring violently.
She can’t tell if the noise is inside her head or outside it.
The irony hits her suddenly, cruel and absurd:
The show was perfect.
Just minutes ago, she felt untouchable. Calm. Alive. Like she’d finally figured out how to carry all of this without it crushing her.
Now she can’t even sit up.
Her breathing turns ragged. Fast. Useless. Panic floods her system, drowning out everything else.
“I’m here,” she tries to say.
Her voice barely exists.
The weight on her chest shifts slightly and pain lances through her ribs so sharp she cries out despite herself. Tears spill down the side of her face, hot and involuntary.
She thinks of how alone she was on this tour.
How proud she’d been of that.
How she’d told herself she didn’t need anyone in the wings anymore.
The darkness presses in around her.
Her vision blurs.
She didn’t think it would end like this.
Her breaths grow shallower. Sloppier. She can’t get enough air no matter how hard she tries, her lungs burning like they’re folding in on themselves.
Her thoughts scatter.
Lyrics.
Stage lights.
The sound of the crowd singing her words back to her like they knew her better than she knew herself.
Her body starts to go cold.
The last thing she’s aware of is the bitter thought that it had been the best show of the tour.
_________________________________
The sound comes back before anything else does.
It’s not music anymore. It’s not even screaming — just noise, layered and indistinct, swelling and collapsing in uneven waves. The crowd is still there. She can feel it, even without seeing it. A living thing pressed up against the edges of the stage, restless and loud and wrong.
Billie blinks.
The world swims into partial focus and then slips away again.
Her cheek is against the floor. It’s cold. Gritty. Something sharp digs into her skin when she shifts slightly, and pain blooms through her side in response — bright, immediate, overwhelming.
She inhales.
Or tries to.
The breath stutters halfway in, shallow and strained, like her chest won’t open all the way. Her lungs burn as she exhales, the sound coming out uneven and thin.
She doesn’t remember deciding to close her eyes again, but when she opens them, the lights have changed.
Emergency lighting casts the stage in a dull, flickering red. Shadows jump and stretch across broken equipment and collapsed sections of the floor. Dust hangs thick in the air, glowing faintly when the lights pulse.
The crowd is still screaming.
The sound rolls over her in heavy waves, muffled and distorted, like she’s hearing it through water. It rises suddenly, sharp and panicked, then dips again into a low, constant roar.
She tries to move her legs.
Pain answers immediately.
Her body jerks despite her, a broken sound tearing out of her throat as white-hot pressure flares through her ribs. Her vision goes spotty, dark dots blooming at the edges.
When it clears, she realizes why.
Part of the stage is on top of her.
Not crushing her completely — just enough to trap her, to press into her chest and steal space from her lungs. Her lower body is pinned awkwardly beneath splintered wood and twisted metal, her leg caught at an angle that makes her stomach churn.
Her fingers curl against the floor, shaking.
The crowd surges again. She hears it — the collective movement, the sound of bodies pressing and shifting all at once. The barricade rattles faintly in the distance, a hollow metallic groan that cuts through the noise.
The screaming spikes.
She blinks slowly, trying to stay focused, but the effort feels enormous. Everything is too loud and too dim at the same time. Her ears ring violently, the sound high and piercing, drowning out anything else that might be happening around her.
She coughs.
It hurts.
The movement sends another wave of pain through her side, sharp enough to make her gasp. The breath comes out wrong — wet, ragged — and she tastes something metallic at the back of her throat.
Blood.
Her head falls back against the floor.
For a moment, she’s not sure where she is.
Then the memory slams back into her all at once — the song, the lights, the sudden drop beneath her feet. Her heart stutters painfully in her chest, beating too fast, too hard.
The crowd keeps screaming.
She watches the lights flicker overhead, their glow pulsing unevenly, and feels strangely detached from her own body. Like she’s watching this happen to someone else. Like if she just stays still long enough, the pain might stop being hers.
Her chest tightens again.
Each breath is smaller than the last. Shallow. Ineffective. Her lungs burn with the effort, and panic creeps in anyway, uninvited and relentless.
The pressure on her chest shifts slightly.
She cries out before she can stop herself, the sound raw and torn, echoing weakly in the open space above her. Her vision tunnels again, darkness closing in from the edges.
She blinks hard.
The world fades.
_________________________________
She comes back to the sound of the crowd chanting her name.
It’s faint, distorted, like it’s coming from very far away. The rhythm is uneven, breaking apart as screams cut in and out, the sound dissolving into chaos again.
Her head feels heavy. Too heavy to lift.
She tries to focus on the chanting, on the idea that they’re still there — that the show hasn’t completely disappeared — but the noise melts into a dull roar, then into nothing at all.
Black.
___________________________________
Pain drags her back.
Sharp and sudden, radiating through her ribs and into her spine. She gasps reflexively, the breath catching painfully in her chest. Her body trembles, a cold shiver running through her despite the heat of the lights and the crowd.
She can’t feel her fingers properly.
They tingle unpleasantly, numb and distant, like they don’t quite belong to her anymore. She flexes them weakly against the floor, the movement slow and clumsy.
The dust in the air makes her eyes sting.
She blinks again, lashes sticking together, and the lights above blur into smeared streaks of red and white. Her hearing dips suddenly, the screaming muffled, then rushes back all at once, loud enough to make her flinch.
Her breathing is wrong.
She knows that much, even through the haze. Too fast. Too shallow. Every inhale feels like it stops short, like something is blocking it.
Her chest aches deeply now, a constant, crushing pressure layered beneath the sharper pain in her ribs.
The crowd shifts again.
She feels it through the floor — the vibration of thousands of feet, the restless energy rolling toward the stage in waves. It feels unreal, like the world keeps moving while she’s stuck here, pinned and fading.
Her thoughts scatter.
Images flash through her mind without warning — stage lights, faces blurred by brightness, the way the crowd had sounded earlier when they sang back to her in perfect sync.
The contrast makes her chest ache worse.
Her eyes slip closed again.
This time, she doesn’t fight it.
_________________________________
When she surfaces again, the screaming has changed.
Lower. More frantic. Less rhythmic.
The lights flicker violently overhead, plunging everything into brief darkness before flaring back on again. The sudden brightness makes her head swim.
Her breath catches.
She exhales shakily, the sound barely audible even to herself.
The edges of her vision darken once more, the center narrowing until all she can see is the dull glow of the lights and the dust drifting lazily through the air.
Her body feels unbearably heavy now.
Cold seeps into her limbs, spreading slowly, numbing the pain just enough to make it feel distant. She’s dimly aware that this isn’t a good thing, but the thought slips away before it can fully form.
The crowd roars one last time — loud, overwhelming, distant.
Then it fades.
And Billie fades with it.
________________________________
The first thing that comes back is movement.
Not gentle — jarring. A constant, uneven rocking that pulls her body back and forth whether she wants it to or not. Billie’s head lolls slightly to the side as the stretcher rattles beneath her, each bump sending dull shocks of pain through her ribs.
Light burns behind her eyelids.
When she manages to open them, it’s too bright to make sense of. White overhead panels blur into each other, sliding in and out of focus as the ceiling shifts with the motion of the vehicle. Everything feels too close. Too contained.
The air smells sharp. Clean in a way that makes her stomach turn.
She tries to breathe.
Her chest resists immediately, the effort shallow and incomplete. A tight, crushing pain spreads through her ribs, forcing a broken sound out of her throat before she can stop it. The breath that follows stutters, dragged in by something other than her own lungs.
A mask is strapped over her face.
Cool air pushes in with every inhale, mechanical and relentless. Her body fights it instinctively, panic flaring hot and sudden, but she’s too weak to do anything about it. Her fingers twitch uselessly against the stretcher, numb and distant.
Sound rushes back in uneven bursts.
A high, rhythmic beeping cuts through the haze, too loud, too sharp. Voices overlap somewhere above her — quick, clipped, impossible to separate into words. The tones are controlled but tense, edged with urgency.
The ambulance swerves.
Pain detonates through her side as the stretcher shifts, white-hot and nauseating. Her vision darkens instantly, black bleeding in from the edges as her body seizes in response.
Her breathing turns erratic.
Each inhale stops short, her chest barely moving beneath the straps and wires. The air feels thin, insufficient, like it’s slipping right past her instead of staying where it’s supposed to.
Her eyes flutter.
The beeping slows.
Not noticeably at first — just enough to feel wrong. The space between each sound stretches, uneven and unfamiliar. Her hearing dips suddenly, the noise around her muffling as if someone has turned the world down too low.
Her body feels distant.
Heavy.
The ceiling blurs into nothing as her vision collapses inward. The light above her smears, then vanishes entirely, replaced by a deep, weightless quiet.
For a fraction of a second, there is nothing at all.
Then her body is slammed back into itself.
A violent jolt tears through her chest, lifting her torso off the stretcher despite the restraints. Pain explodes outward from her ribs, sharp and all-consuming, ripping a raw, involuntary sound from her throat.
Her back hits the stretcher hard.
Air floods her lungs in a harsh, ragged gasp, burning on the way in. Her heart kicks wildly against her chest, frantic and disorganized, as if trying to remember how to work.
The beeping returns suddenly — fast, insistent, overwhelming.
Light crashes back into her vision, too bright, too close. Shapes loom above her, blurred and frantic, hands moving quickly at the edges of her sight. The world feels wrong, tilted, like she’s been dropped back into it without warning.
Her body shakes uncontrollably.
Pain radiates everywhere now — ribs, chest, spine — layered and relentless. She tries to draw another breath and fails, the attempt collapsing into a thin, broken exhale around the mask.
Her eyes squeeze shut again, tears leaking from the corners despite the way her face barely moves.
The motion of the ambulance steadies.
The voices soften slightly, losing some of their edge. The pressure on her chest eases, though the ache remains deep and constant, a heavy reminder that something inside her is badly wrong.
Exhaustion crashes down over her all at once.
Her limbs go slack, the fight draining out of her body as quickly as it came. The world narrows again, not into nothing this time, but into a dull, distant fog.
The beeping settles into a steady rhythm.
Billie’s breathing evens out marginally, shallow but present, the machine continuing its quiet insistence at her face.
Her eyes slip closed.