Title: Ordinary World (Ghost of You)
Summary: After the death of his wife, Puck Goodfellow was never quite the same.
Rating: T
Warning: Character death, general angst.
Length: 2,213
Disclaimer: I don't own the Sisters Grimm or the band RED.
A/N: Another work that's been going on for quite some time now. It's based pretty heavily off the songOrdinary World, by RED, and it's actually one of my favorite songs, despite the incredible angst in the lyrics. And Puck's a bit OOC, too.
BETAby: the wonderful EclipseTheVampire
…
I turned on the lights the TV and the radio
But I can't escape the ghost of you
What is happening to me is crazy some would say
Where is the life I recognize, gone away
…
Some said Samuel Puckerman had been born crazy. Some said he merely pretended. Some said he had gone mad at the death of his perfect other half.
Whatever the case may have been, Samuel Puckerman was certainly cracked and broken. His green eyes were dull, and he shuffled through life with all the emotion of a robot, to use the overused cliché. Samuel Puckerman had once been a great man, but now he was a mere shell of his once-true self.
Thursdays were the worst for him—she had died on a Thursday. Her name was never mentioned anymore—his coworkers had never asked for it and he had never volunteered it. She was simply a ghost, a phantom who quite possibly never existed in any world.
One Thursday, Puck had come home—it had been raining, and the puddles on the avenue had been hard to dodge—and thought he had heard her speaking softly from just beyond his reach. He thought he heard her asking him why he hadn't saved her, asking him why he hadn't reached out at that exact moment and stopped it from happening.
His neighbors thought he really had gone crazy, as the man had screamed bloody murder and had thundered around his apartment, switching on lights, the TV, turning the volume on the radio up as high as it would go.
It hadn't helped. Her voice still whispered accusingly in the back of Puck's mind, and he had spent hours screaming and refusing to cry and huddling in the corner of his apartment with the radio up loud and the lights as bright as they would go, until the building supervisor had finally called his brother to calm Puck down.
It's quiet in the small apartment, an eerie silence in comparison to the screaming volume of a minute before, until Mustardseed speaks. "Brother, what has happened to you? Sa—"
"Don't say her name," Puck grates out, his voice raw from hours of tortured screaming. "Don't. Just. Don't, please."
"This isn't healthy, holding onto Sa—her, holding onto her like this. Puck, this is crazy, you staying here. You can't stay here."
Puck refuses to leave the apartment, determinedly clinging onto the last bit of independence he has left. There isn't a trace of the whimsical boy who danced when no one watched and pulled pranks and refused to grow up. This is a broken man who has forgotten magic and has enough heartbreak in his false-thirty year eyes. The life he had led for two thousand years was gone—nothing recognizable was left.
…
"Pride's going to kill both of us," she whispered quietly as she relaxed into Puck's arm. They were in Puck's room, lying on the trampoline he'd never gotten rid of.
"Mmm?" Puck mumbles, and he groggily opens his eyes. "Whassgoinon?"
"Just thinking." Her voice is calm, steady, and some note of emotion in her voice makes him curious.
"'bout what?"
She sighs and Puck can practically feel her rolling her eyes.
"Pride. Hubris. Deadly pride. We've both got heavy doses of it. Someday I'll get up on my high horse, and you'll be up on yours, and we'll fall."
"Well, we'll get through whatever it is. We can't butt heads forever, and Daphne and Red'll kick some sense into us."
"Yeah, I guess."
…
They hadn't talked about pride or hubris after that—not that night and not ever. Looking back, Puck wished they had—if they'd gotten over their stupid prideful mannerisms, they wouldn't have had that stupid fight and she wouldn't have died.
Puck never figured out why she brought it up—be it fate or coincidence, he had no idea. She thrived on the heavier topics, but she had never brought up pride ever again
Well, Puck thought wryly, pride's gone out the window, climbed the neighboring rooftops and run away, leaving Puck to flounder in the shame he wore like a cloak.
The next day, he returned to work, and pretended everything was fine. The whispers behind his back were worse—crazy man—such a shame—did you hear?—murdered wife—such a pity—best friends—why hasn't he moved on?—poor man—nothing they can do—family won't help him—depressed—poor man. Poor, crazy Samuel Puckerman. Poor, crazy, old Puck.
When the whispers got too much, he stepped into his cubicle and slid the door shut, fishing her battered locket out from under his shirt and opening it to her picture.
He mouths a prayer, not letting the words escape as sounds, but instead silently asking her where she'd gone.
…
MURDER IN FERRYPORT LANDING, the headline blared.
Ignoring the paper fluttering in the breeze by the roadside, Puck hurried on, hands buried in his pockets. He knew full well what the article said—after all, it was his wife whom the paper discussed. Moving quickly in the brisk November air, the man made his way to the fort where he had met her, seventeen years ago to the day.
Finding his old throne exactly as he had left it, Puck sank onto an old safe and sobbed.
It had been a hate crime against the Grimms, the murder of his wife. And it had been Puck's fault that she fell into the trap.
They'd been fighting, one of their infamous blistering fights, over some stupid thing. Puck had been too proud to back down, admit that he was wrong, and she was too proud to compromise. Angry, she'd run out into the night.
Half an hour later, Puck had cooled down enough to follow her—and he'd found several ex-Hand members torturing her. They'd cornered her on the cliffs by the river, and as Puck came sprinting up to help her, to stop them, they'd thrown her off the cliff.
She had managed to grab the edge of the cliff, but her fingers, bruised, broken and bloody, hadn't been able to keep a grip, and Puck just hadn't been fast enough to catch her, hadn't been able to open his wings in time. She had fallen to her death on the rocks below, and Puck, in a furious rage, had caught and killed three of the four Hand members. The last one was currently in prison for life after giving a full confession in exchange for Puck being kept away from him.
Puck had only barely agreed to the deal, but when Daphne had reminded him they were an Everafter, and therefore would live forever, he consented.
In his mind, forever wasn't long enough for them to be locked up in prison.
…
His prayer finished, his memory remembered, Puck wiped his watering eyes and set to work, computer keys clattering quietly as he typed.
Somehow, he made it through the rest of the day, determinedly ploughing his way through nearly a week's worth of work. He might be unpopular amongst his coworkers, but his boss would never fire him because of his work ethic.
Walking home, he paused to admire some window box flowers, unusually earthy and humble in the flash and bang of New York. They didn't quite fit and yet they did—kind of like Puck himself.
The flowers reminded him—when was the last time he'd brought some to her grave?
Too long, he decided, he'd go tomorrow.
He bought a newspaper and a bouquet of thirteen roses—four dark crimson, two yellow and seven red, with sprigs of baby's breath decorating them. It was cliché, but it made him feel better.
Scanning the paper, he saw an obituary for Relda Grimm, who had apparently died at 97 in a break in at her home.
Puck read the obituary as he walked the remaining block to his apartment—it was bullshit, a bunch of made up crap about how Relda had been declining in health (false, she'd been as healthy as ever), how everyone had loved her (if that was true, wouldn't she never have had her house broken into?) and that she'd married Tobias Clay sixteen years earlier (it was fourteen years, Puck had been a groomsman). It claimed that she was survived by her two sons, Jake and Henry and two granddaughters, Scarlett and Daphne (Sabrina and Basil James weren't even mentioned).
He passes a coffee shop on the last corner, and a rare New York breeze wafts the scent of coffee to him, and he's thrown back into another memory, although it isn't as unwelcome as the previous ones.
…
It's Daphne who comes and picks him up in Ferryport Landing this time. Sabrina's gone, gone, gone, and Daphne's taking him back to New York. They make half the drive before Daphne pulls into a Starbucks and they go in.
She orders a mocha for herself and a plain black coffee for him, and they're silent for a while.
"You can never stop loving someone," are the first words out of her mouth. "Either you'll always love them or you never did."
Puck turns away from her, looking out the window at the dirty grey snow swirling outside.
Daphne smiles softly to herself. "Brina loved you, so, so much, Puck. I can tell you loved her too."
When he finally does meet her eyes, she nods approvingly. "I'm glad you guys were married, and I know it's hard—I miss her too, you know—but everything will fit into place. It'll get better. You'll see."
Puck studies the woman before him, and it's never been more apparent to him that Daphne isn't the carefree little girl she once was. She's twenty years old—Sabrina had been twenty five—and while Daphne's style is still bright, it's been toned down and she's matured.
And he kind of realizes that if it hadn't been for Sabrina, he probably would have fallen in love with Daphne.
But he loves Sabrina, and Daphne's still Marshmallow, the little sister he never had, and four months ago, she became his sister-in-law.
"Thanks, Marshmallow," he says quietly, and reaches over to ruffle her hair. "I needed that."
They've grown up a lot, all of them.
Daphne still bubbles over with energy, but she's diplomatic and businesslike when necessary. Red still cringes at the sight of any kind of cat, but she's also smart as a whip, whizzing her way through med school. They're his sisters-in-law, and maybe with their help, he can get through this horrible time.
They're a family, a messed-up, traumatized family that spans two worlds, two species and helluva lotta arguments, but they're family in the way the Goodfellows never were.
It's an altogether nice feeling, having a family.
Even if they do drive him crazy sometimes.
xxx
As he reaches his apartment building, he takes the stairs, avoiding all his neighbors and remembering.
He hasn't spoken to the Grimms in four years, hasn't been a Grimm for eight.
He might be scared today, but he'll have forgotten tomorrow—Relda Grimm was kind to him but once he wasn't married to Sabrina anymore he never heard from her ever again. And besides, who is Relda Grimm to Samuel Puckerman?
No one, that's who.
Relda Grimm would be blown away in the wind, just like Sabrina Goodfellow, just like Puck Goodfellow.
Their deaths were sorrowed talk, nothing more. Lives lived and then forgotten, blown away on the wind.
Just like Sabrina's had been.
…
Puck refused to cry at the funeral.
Daphne bawled into Red's shoulder as tears slid down the shorter girl's face. Henry was only barely holding himself together as he supported Veronica, and Jake simply stared over the casket into the sky, blinking back tears.
"…she was a headstrong girl, proud and true to the end. She fought bravely in the Everafter War, and we know she has moved on to heaven…" Friar Tuck said, blinking back tears of his own.
Puck dug his fingernails into his callused palm, focusing on the pain to keep the tears away.
He wouldn't cry for something that had passed. Sabrina always lived for the future, never the past, and he would honor that. Even if it was hubris that brought him here, he would cling to hubris for dear life, because it was the only thing left of her he had.
He would live his life for the beautiful blonde girl who had changed his entire world. He would find his way to an ordinary human life, and he would die as a human.
Dust to dust, just like Sabrina.
He would learn to survive.
…
As he reached his bedroom, he collapsed onto his bed, face in his hands, and sobbed.
He still hadn't learned to survive without her.
But he would.
He would.
…
But I won't cry for yesterday
There's an ordinary world, somewhere I have to find.
As I try to make my way to the ordinary world,
I will learn to survive.
…
A/N: Read and Review?