Title: The Nature of Hope
Author: Tote
Genre: angst
Rating: PG
A/N: although, as always, I express Adam's love for Joan in this story (it's just a part of his character) it's mostly an exploration of what I assume is his bittersweet relationship with God and experience with faith. I hope, despite its angst factor, it leaves you with the desire to leave a review: good, bad, ugly…it's all welcome, guys.
You always knew it would come to this. You always knew that one day you would fuck this up—because perfect things don't happen to most people, but they never happen to you. So as she looks at you with those beautiful, accusing eyes after the mock trial, you shouldn't feel surprised.
But maybe, maybe at some unguarded moment, you began to hope. Maybe, somewhere in between kissing her at the science fair and nearly making love to her in the camper, you stopped waiting for the ceiling to cave in like it always does.
Hope is such a dangerous thing. And you loved her all the more for it, when she began to give you some of hers. Didn't you?
Your heart rises in your throat—you can barely look at her. The sight of her crying and knowing that touching her, holding her, is out of the question…it makes it impossible. But if she is in the room, she calls out to be seen and your eyes gravitate to her face involuntarily. Cruelly, her unearthly prettiness seems to glow around her as she cries bitter tears that yes, you're done. It's over.
It's over.
The words reverberate in your head and the pain is sickening. She turns away and it comes back to you—this was always your destiny. You, weird and awkward and unworthy, you were always doomed to lose it all. You were fated to lose the most wonderful, innocent creature who, through strange circumstances, somehow managed to love you for a little while.
But you'd always thought that the end would come when she got wise to the way no one really 'got' you, not even loyal, protective Grace or your loving, worried father.
You always thought that some guy would realize that an idiot was walking around with the love of a girl worth risking everything for and she'd get taken away.
You figured that the universe would conspire against you; the planets would align—as they had done before, because hey, if there was a God, He hated you.
But in the end, it was you that ended it. You went to Bonnie. The universe, fate, God—no higher power had interrupted your perfect love. You pulled the trigger. You broke Jane's heart.
It's this knowledge that sends you hiking when the weather report said stay the hell home, into the night while the rain beats down on you and the winds howl. And you feel like the whole world is laughing at you and your misery and your foolish hope—every time you stumble and fall in those dark and dangerous woods, it's another reminder of what you deserve and who you've become.
The wind blows faster, harder: like an alien force it pulls at you and makes it impossible to move forward, it's so cold it seems to infiltrate your body, make your bones rattle. Darkness thickens amid the trees until you can't see the hand you hold up to shield your face against the rain and hail. You've never known such darkness.
Exhaustion tempts you to just stop fighting, to give up. But Jane is there in the back of your mind, you can't fail her, not again, not like this, not like Mom failed you and what about Grace? You've put her through enough too, putting her in the middle the way you did.
But then again, maybe they'd both rather see you dead than alive these days. You remember Jane's eyes in the bookstore and the distance between you. And her voice, like a death penalty: it's over.
That's what makes your body give out. You fall to your knees, you give up. You feel hot tears mix with icy rain and you rage inside. You sob outwardly, staring up into the heavens where they are no stars, where it's bracingly empty of anything but the rain. Lightning flashes and for a brief moment you think you see the moon and the red glow that surrounds it reminds you of blood. Your anger rises in you; your despair reaches its breaking point: you scream at God. You curse Him.
The lightning flashes again. "Did I ever have a chance?" you scream and your question is blasphemy, because Jane was your chance, Jane was your gift and you spit on her. You don't consider this though: this is between you and the universe, you and God, you and your fate to lose hope completely.
A roll of thunder sounds as if in warning, and then there is a hand on your arm and something pulling you up, or someone.
Days, weeks, years later, you won't know what made you say this: "God, please, help me in my hour of my need," because you've never been religious but somehow, you know the words to say and somehow, you've been heard.
You know it, because you hear her voice, not more than an hour later: "Adam!"
And you scream her name, you relish the sound of it and the feel of it on your tongue and when you come together in a soaking wet, desperate embrace at the edge of the woods, you feel nothing but gratitude to the forces beyond your control that you always resented.
Because you're back and if only for a moment, you have Jane again.