Title: The Ashes Left Behind
Fandom: Dawson's Creek
Pairing: Pacey/Joey; secondary Pacey/Andie, Dawson/Joey, Bessie/Bodie; other incidentals
Rating: T/Light M (language, one scene of gore, mentions of child abuse)
Spoilers: Through 2x22, "Parental Discretion Advised." AU after that, but draws in a few things from later seasons. Also, spoilers of various magnitude for Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, T.H. White's Sword in the Stone, Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, Stephen King's The Shining, and Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth.
Summary: The fire spread. The roof collapsed. The aftermath awaits.
Disclaimer: Dawson's Creek belongs to Kevin Williamson and a lot of other wealthy people. I am not one of them.
Author's Note: So almost a year after starting this thing, it's finally finished. I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to Jaycie Victory for her wonderful beta work and encouragement in helping me stick this monster out to the end. All credit goes to her, all mistakes remaining are on me.
The Ashes Left Behind
Prologue
The fire blazed. Pacey held tightly to Joey's arms, forcibly restraining her from running back into the building.
"Come on, come on," he muttered. His eyes were glued to the open, smoke-filled doorway, a doorway which remained stubbornly empty no matter how much Pacey willed his father and his friend to appear.
A loud, unearthly crack made them both jump and was followed by the entire Ice House roof collapsing in a barrage of smoke and dust and flame.
"No!" Joey screamed and leapt toward the wreckage.
Pacey's strong grip pulled her back. "Jo, Jo, you can't go in there." She looked ready to shove him off and take her chances. Luckily, at that moment, they heard the first sirens. "They're on their way, Jo. They'll be here soon."
"But what if...what if..." Her beautiful face was distorted by panic and grief.
"We can't think like that." He pulled her suddenly passive body into a tight embrace. Her arms remained locked between them, but her fingers curled into his shirt. "We have to keep hoping."
"Hope?" Joey said the word like it was a foreign concept.
The first fire truck arrived. While two of the men hooked up the hose, the third approached the group of teenagers outside the devastation. "I'm gonna need you kids to back up now."
"My dad's still in there," Pacey said, without moving or letting go of Joey.
"Mine, too. And my...our friend, Dawson."
"We'll get them out, but I need you to move away."
Jack led a dazed Jen back all the way to the pier railing. Pacey followed behind, pulling Joey by the hand as she continued to look back at the inferno.
More fire trucks arrived, ambulances, police cars, including Dougie's. After speaking to some of the first responders, he walked over to the tense and silent foursome by the water.
"They haven't pulled anyone out yet," Joey said accusingly before Doug could say a word.
"They haven't found a way in yet. They're working on it, Joey. Trust me, we'll tell you when we know anything." Deputy Doug's professional detachment stretched thin tonight. Pacey could see his brother was worried. "In the meantime, I need to know how the fire started. All of you were inside at the time?"
"I wasn't. Pop and I were out front when I saw the fire. Pop called it in, and we went to help. Everyone was in the back. Flames everywhere. Mr. Potter was trapped in the office." Once Pacey started speaking, the words tumbled out of their own volition. "Jack pulled Jen outside. I grabbed Joey. Dawson stayed to help Mr. Potter. So did Pop. I should have come back. I should have—"
Doug rested a heavy hand on his shoulder. "Hey, Pacey, this is not your fault. You did the right thing, getting yourself and your friend to safety. If you had gone back, you'd be one more person for the firefighters to rescue." With one last squeeze, the pressure of Doug's hand was gone, along with another burden Pacey hadn't realized he was carrying. "What about the rest of you? Did you see anything?"
Joey shook her head, and Jen looked too numb to process the question, but Jack spoke up. "We were studying in the front, but we heard glass shattering—maybe a window?—and smelled the smoke right away. Maybe it's my imagination, but I thought, I thought I heard a car speeding away, too." He glanced apologetically at Joey.
She barely heard most of Jack's statement. She was craning her neck, standing on tiptoes, trying to see over the crowd to a disturbance at the front of the restaurant. Her fingers gripped Pacey's sleeve. "Have they got them? I think they've got them."
Doug glanced over his shoulder at the hubbub. "Keep her here. I'll check what's going on."
They watched Doug's progress through the crowd, felt hope flare briefly as a stretcher was pulled from one of the ambulances. But Pacey saw hands reach out to block Doug's path. With a sensation like plummeting off a mountain, feeling his stomach bottom out and still falling, he knew. Joey broke away from his weakened hold and ran forward. Pacey, in a daze, not thinking, not feeling, just reacting, took one slow step then another after her.
He passed Doug, who was retching behind a fire truck. He stopped to let two paramedics pull the stretcher past him. On it was a barely recognizable, charbroiled Mike Potter. They had hooked him up to an oxygen mask, so the thing he'd become was still breathing.
Joey followed the stretcher, wailing, sobbing, "He's my dad, please, please, he's my dad."
Pacey reached toward her, then dropped his useless hands and turned toward the center of the chaos, the two bodies for whom there was no hurry about the stretchers. He only knew one blackened set of remains was his father by the tarnished shine of his sheriff's badge. Dawson, on the other hand, had been spared burning across most of his upper body. The clear imprint of a rafter beam could be seen across his smashed-in skull.
For the first time he could remember, Pacey followed his older brother's example. He threw up.