Title: God Put a Smile upon Your Face
A/N: this story is dedicated to Depudor, a fellow fanfiction author on this site, who (tragically) only wrote one Joan of Arcadia story, but was the best one I've ever read: 'Things They Can't See When They Look at Him'. Read it and cry like a baby that Joan and Adam's own creators (the writers, not God) managed to make their unforgettable connection ordinary in the second season. Depudor brought me back to Season one and abruptly interrupted my little obsession with post-Trial & Error stories: let's go back to Eden, when the bad guys were only occasional guest stars. Bad stuff does happen in this story though, so ye be warned: adult situation that is fairly unpleasant but not explicit and of course, Iris is around and that's enough to stick a warning on anything.
Basking in the yellowy morning light, Joan leaned her head sleepily against the car window. She mutely admired the way a thin icing of fresh snow had transformed ugly Arcadia into a city fit to be miniaturized and stuck in a snow globe.
It managed to look both wintry and inviting—but maybe that was just the prospect of seeing Adam adding extra beauty to her outlook.
Adam: his eyes were the first thing that came to mind at the thought of him. Eyes that could express so many different things, contradicting things: devotion and anger, love and frustration. Eyes she'd seen filled with tears and blank with coldness and lit up with joy. Maybe his mouth next…soft, delicate: a sensitive smile, a mischievous curve of his lip, or lips parting in disbelief and wonder. Nose: long and arch, a nose that gave his face something vaguely noble, something to add courage to his other, more humble and loving features.
She remembered his arm slung casually through hers and his sweet, warm breath against her neck as he spoke, when they were so excited about the White Stripes tickets--
The scratchy radio that needed to be fixed had begun to play a Coldplay song Joan (not usually being into them) didn't recognize. But it struck a chord in her chest: "I've gotta say, I wasted all your time, oh honey, honey…"
In one bleak moment her light-headed unreasonable joy flipped over into despair and regret from one moaned line from one sad song.
She had wasted his time. By kissing him and rejecting him and telling him she was 'okay' with him and Iris. Okay with it? She was many things about him and Iris but 'okay' sure as hell wasn't one of them. The next lines drifted through to her:
"Where do I go to fall from grace?
God put a smile upon your face, yeah"
"Shut up," Joan snapped at the radio. How typical: God just had to put his two cents in and interrupt her happy Adam daydreams with reality: all this, the state of things, were a direct result of (yeah, you guessed it) her own choices! Free will, got it.
And if there was one thing Joan really hated, it was having no one but herself to blame.
"Um, are you talking to the radio?" Luke asked sarcastically, eyebrows raised as he turned to look at her from the front seat, "and more importantly, are you telling Coldplay to shut up?"
His deep disapproval of this was evident.
"I'm telling you to shut up," Joan replied distractedly and predictably, "right now."
Luke, shrugging in the passenger seat of Kevin's rinky-dink 'new' used car, retreated back into his chemistry book: he knew some things were a matter of probability, and the chances of him actually getting an answer out of his confusing, evasive and crazy sister were pretty slim.
"Both of you shut up," Kevin commanded with some amusement, "I'm driving you geeks to school, how about some gratitude?"
Luke buried his head deeper into the thick textbook and Joan banged her head against the window in imitation of Adam.
"Or not," Kevin concluded with a weary but still comical shake of the head.
The car slowed to a stop in front of Arcadia High and Joan, with her cheek against the cold of the window, spotted the boy she'd been bitterly obsessing over.
Or, to put it in another way, the boy she was in love with.
Adam held Iris' hand and their arms swung slowly back and forth as they climbed the steps up to the school, both smiling happily. A bright, frighteningly-patterned collar stuck out of his grey hoody. Iris, leaning forward with a giggle and saying something Joan couldn't make out, pushed it neatly back under.
Joan felt physically sick with jealousy.
"Your guess is as good as mine
It's as good as mine
It's as good as mine
It's as good as mine…"
"Joan?" said Kevin obliviously from the driver's seat, peering at her through the rear-view mirror, "you gonna get out of the car anytime soon?"
Luke was long gone. Joan sat unmoving, unable to take her eyes off Adam as he leaned his head slightly down to be at eye-level with Baby Voice and said something, his mouth inches from hers: his breath came out in a white cloud. Joan could almost taste it.
"I feel really, really not-good-enough-to-go-school all of a sudden," she told Kevin as she met his eyes in the rear-view mirror with a desperate look.
"You have the use of two working legs;" Kevin replied staunchly, "don't mess with me."
"Got it," Joan sighed and opened the car door with a feeling of intense dread.
"Jane!" said an excited, wonderfully low and melodic voice.
Ah, the source of her dread.
She got out and smiled wanly at Adam as he approached with Iris not far behind him. Kevin was stayed beside her with his engine running. Joan smacked the car twice, like it was a cab and taking the hint, her brother drove off obediently. She'd probably pay for that later.
"Hey, Adam," she greeted him hollowly and then even more reluctantly: "Iris."
Iris had inevitable appeared at 'A''s side, a goofy I'm-in-serious-crush smile on her face and squeaked: "Hi, Jane!"
Joan felt as if Iris had just single-handedly reached into her body, cut her heart out and thrown it on the curb like a useless piece of junk, where it lay between her and Adam, bloody and beating in a very obvious way.
Adam's cheerful look faded instantly. He turned to Iris, his gorgeous eyes turning lighter with pain and quiet anger: he corrected her in silence: Joan, not Jane, not to her.
But Joan was too angry to leave it up to Adam: "Don't even think that's gonna fly," she challenged the smaller girl with a sneer.
Iris glowered back for a moment, but Adam said: "Iris, I should talk to Jane alone," and her face turned troubled, anxious.
"But, A…" she murmured in that grating, girlish way that just made Joan want to strangle her till she lost the ability to speak. It would definitely be an improvement.
"Iris." Adam gave her a gentle but firm and slightly impatient look and she scooted away.
"Wow," Joan remarked sarcastically, "you've got her trained and everything."
Adam said nothing but looked down at his feet in a distinctly unhappy way.
"Sorry," Joan mumbled, regretting the remark a split second after it left her mouth. Sighing, and suddenly noticing the cold and the fact that she had no gloves with her, rubbed her hands together absently.
He looked up, his eyes meeting hers with silent joy, "I made a sale."
Joan's mouth fell open and she forgot the cold: excitement and true satisfaction were hot in her chest and whirling in her stomach. "Oh My God!" she stage-whispered, "that's so awesome!"
Adam nodded, smiling, his shining eyes never leaving hers. "It was such a fluke."
Joan rubbed her hands together again, now in excitement. "Tell me everything!"
Adam opened his mouth, as if about to speak but then his eyes lowered and he looked worried. He stepped much closer, till her soft wistful sigh blew a wisp of white cloud into his face. Wordlessly, he took off his cheap-looking woolen mittens and fit them over her red hands. He didn't meet her eyes. Joan stared at his face, speechless with the sweetness of the gesture.
He looked up somewhat sheepishly and seeing her bright-eyed, tender expression, he mumbled: "your hands looked cold."
Joan nodded furiously, willing the unexpected tears to retreat back behind her eyes. "But now your hands are cold," she murmured back, her voice filled with meaning.
Adam shook his head, indicating it didn't matter. "Anyway…" he whispered, starting to back away from her but keeping his eyes focused on her face as if wishing—
"Wait," Joan cut in with a sudden thought, "don't I get to see it?"
"See what? Oh." He swallowed, his eyes now escaping her gaze nervously, "Uh, it's not really…"
"Oh, come on," Joan whispered playfully, closing the distance between them and catching Adam's reluctant eye. "I don't know art but I could tell you how beautiful I think it is."
Adam smiled and let out a quiet laugh, his eyes seeming to search hers as he gazed upon her, "You haven't seen it yet." Then, quietly: "you might hate it."
Joan touched his arm where it was crossed across his chest, just like she'd done months ago after the cheerleading try-out, before everything went kerflooey. Adam looked down at her hand just like he'd done then, a look of reverence passing over his features, as if her hand was something strange but perfect.
"Everything you make is beautiful," Joan choked out quietly.
Adam's eyes went from her hand to her face, widening and softening at the same time with those contradicting emotions again: shock, love, confusion, worship… He came close again and they were much, much too close but not nearly close enough and his lips were close to hers and his whole body seemed to radiate his longing to kiss—
"A, we're gonna be late for Art!" chirped a voice Joan unfortunately recognized.
Adam concealed whatever reaction he had to the sound by bowing his head and shielding his face from both their view. Then, looking back up, he smiled gently at Jane, not to be rushed: "I'll see you later, okay?"
"Um, yeah, okay," Joan said helplessly as he walked to Iris and followed her as she huffily climbed the steps. How could he just walk away after an almost kiss-moment like that?
Arcadia's snow sparkled around her like a Christmas ornament. Joan stood, confused and longing for a moment, and then the bell rang. She was late.
Six periods and one hour-long detention for being late later, Joan went looking for Adam in the art room. Opening the door, she was it was empty in a glance, but went in anyway, looking for the artwork he was going to sell.
But she didn't see anything Adam-like: the classroom was filled with ordinary, teenage attempts at angst-filled sloppy paintings and wobbly, uncertain clay sculptures. One thing did grab her attention: a sketch. A drawing of Joan herself, in fact.
Confusion and horror reeling inside of her, she picked up the piece of paper and stared at what was depicted on it. It wasn't Adam's usual style at all—more cartoonist—but she dimly recognized the way the eyes were drawn as signature of Adam, and the attention and detail to the smaller, less important features.
It was a cruel exaggeration of Joan's face when she freaked out: she had a double chin; her mouth was in a grotesque pout, her eyes enormous and shiny and two rivers of tears streaming down her cheeks. Her skinny cartoon-character's arms were raised up above its head, holding a folding chair.
Okay, she guessed she deserved it at the time but… She turned the paper over, where the date had been scribbled. Her mouth fell open for the second time that day in response to something Adam said or did. This had been drawn just a couple days ago: she closed her eyes.
Hadn't he forgiven her, then? Ever after his mother's note and—and everything else, all those little almost moments? Had they all been in her head? Those emotions in his eyes, maybe they weren't really there. What made her think he wasn't stupid about Iris now? They were together.
She suddenly wondered if Adam hadn't wanted her to see the piece he was going to sell because it too was some horrible expression of his anger toward her. She remembered his words: you might hate it. Well, hadn't she shown him how sorry she was? Weren't they okay now, months later? Apparently not.
"Okay," she said aloud, in a cool voice, and it wasn't till a tear splattered down onto the cartoon's hideous face that she realized she was crying again.
Joan lay awake that night. Her head couldn't stop spinning into ever-growing confusion, panic, fear and pain over Adam. It didn't help that the only appearance God had made that day was in the form of a Coldplay song. It wasn't like him not to pop up at least once. Maybe he'd end up knocking on her bedroom window or something.
Her bedroom window… Joan turned her head, regarding it thoughtfully. She could open it (risking the sound of it waking her light-sleeping Dad on a quiet night like this) go down the drainpipe and brave walking from safe suburbia to Adam's questionable neighborhood, confront him, have a minor emotional breakdown, possibly make him hate her forever (if he didn't already, since he obviously hadn't forgiven her for smashing his art) and be back in time for six solid hours of sleep before her math test tomorrow morning.
She got up soundlessly, throwing a cute jean jacket over her pink flannel pj's and putting Adam's mittens on with a wince of remembrance.
Pausing every five seconds to listen for a sound from her parents' bedroom, Joan safely escaped. Climbing down her drainpipe with some difficulty and walking quickly out into the night, she reflected: she wouldn't have gone to sleep that night anyway.
The Coldplay song was still stuck in Joan's head as she started down the street where Adam lived:
"Now, when you work it out I'm worse than you
Yeah, when you work it out I want it too
Now, when you work out where to draw the line
Your guess is as good as mine…"
Suddenly she realized the song wasn't coming from her head: it was outside it, coming from the real world. A car parked to her right had turned on suddenly, softly playing the song just where it had left off in her head, barely audible under the rap music blasting from one of Adam's neighboring houses.
Suspicious that God might be making appearance after all, Joan took a step toward it, to catch a glimpse of anyone 'familiar' in the car.
As she moved suddenly to the side, she narrowly missed a man suddenly coming up behind her. She turned to stare at him, too shocked by his sudden appearance to scream.
By avoiding him, he'd fallen to the curb, obviously drunk.
"Where do we go, nobody knows
don't ever say you're on your way down…"
It gave her an advantage: she saw his weakness (smelled it, too) and the song (…where do we go…) reminded her that she was just a few houses away from the shelter of Adam's house. Not hesitating any longer, she jumped over the man's crumpled body, to run there as fast as she could, but he grabbed hold of her ankle.
Toppling over, she screamed the first word that came to mind: "Adam!"
As if the sound of her voice held some magical hold over him, she heard the wooden door of his shed slam open. She'd slammed it often enough herself to recognize the sound. "Adam!" she cried out again but through her tears, it came out very softly from where she lay writhing beside the car. She kicked back against her attacker's face: hard.
The drunken man somehow climbed over her, his stench—sweat and alcohol—enveloping her and causing Joan to gag in fear and nausea. He managed to roll them onto the road, almost completely concealed by the car that had saved Joan from his first attack a moment ago. His one hand covered her mouth and his other went down between their struggling bodies to his belt buckle. She heard Adam's hurried footsteps and then his voice, calling out her name.
But she could make no noise. And though she bit his sweaty hand fiercely, he kept it covering her mouth, tightening still more. She felt vomit rise to her throat.
Quite suddenly, the Coldplay song kicked up and gained extreme volume: the rap music was completely overshadowed by the incredible loudness of the song as it seemed to scream across the street to Adam in a way that defied stereos:
"WHERE DO WE GO, NOBODY KNOWS
DON'T EVER SAY YOU'RE ON YOUR WAY DOWN
WHEN GOD GAVE YOU STYLE AND GAVE YOU GRACE
GOD PUT A SMILE UPON YOUR FACE"
Adam ran to the source of the sound and all Joan could do was listen to his feet pound against the sidewalk and his labored breathing as he defied the laws of physics in speed: her eyes saw nothing, her attacker had pressed her face down, where she was vomiting uncontrollably as he started hastily pulling down her flannel pajama pants.
Then the man was being lifted off her and she heard a yell of rage as someone was pounded against the car. She couldn't help but struggle slightly as she tried to make her shaking body get up into a standing position but she needed to help poor Adam.
But to her amazement, turning, she saw it was her large attacker and not Adam who was shoved against the car: Adam pinned him to it, his face contorted with pain and anger as he rhythmically pounded the bastard's head against it.
Even in her confused state and from the depths of despair and pain and fear, Joan knew she needed to make Adam stop or he would kill the man for trying to—
A part of her, a dark, evil part wanted to remain still and watch him beat the shit out of the man, even kill him, watch as the man felt the same sickening fear she herself was feeling: a part of her thought murder might be justified after feeling him nearly rape her body, the way another man had raped her mother in college.
But a much larger part knew that his punishment was not Adam's to dish out, or even hers. Most of her knew this and most of her knew Adam would end up in much more trouble than the man himself and she, in reality, hesitated less than a split second before shouting breathlessly: "Adam, stop! He's—he's out, we need to, to call the police." She slowly sunk down into a seated position on her knees, unable to stay standing on her shaking legs.
And maybe Adam answered to the same voice of reason inside his soul, or maybe his instinct was to listen to Joan, but he stopped, breathing hard.
He let go of the man, let him drop to the street. He turned to Joan, eyes wide and shining with tears in the darkness of street: "Jane…God, Jane," he mumbled and fell to his knees in front of her, taking her into his arms and holding her, rocking her back and forth in her arms like a child as he whispered into her hair that still smelled of vomit, like a prayer: "Jane, you're okay, you're okay." He willed himself to believe it.
She said nothing, only held onto him for dear life, eyes wide. The radio had turned itself off, she realized dimly.
"Do you—" he paused, pulling away to look at her face, but she wouldn't let him: she clung tightly to his lean, muscled body, inhaled his fresh, smoky scent—she didn't cry, only gasped quietly for air, as if drowning. She felt a thousand different emotions hurtling toward her from a short distance, but she couldn't do anything now but revel in her safety, in her love for Adam.
She barely noticed the throbbing, incessant pain in her head or the strange blur in front of her eyes. She held him, feeling those emotions come closer, sending daggers of revulsion into her stomach.
He buried his face in her neck, unthinkingly kissing her collarbone and the skin behind her ear: "Jane, you need a hospital." But he didn't pull away from her or loosen his grip: if anything, his arms tightened around her as he kept kissing the side of her neck, her hair, every place he his mouth could reach, thanking a merciful God for delivering them, a God he hadn't even known he believed in before this night.
Every kiss filled Joan with warmth, as if Adam's strength was transferable through his lips. She begged him inwardly to never stop, but the…man's…smell was still in her nostrils, her pajama pants were still around her knees, though neither of them had noticed.
"No, Adam, police," she said simply, and lowered her head onto his shoulder while he nodded adamantly against her hair.
"I think that's all, Miss Girardi," said a sympathetic female police officer, smiling at Joan who was nursing a hot cup of coffee in Adam's kitchen. Outside, she could see flashing red-and-blue lights and hear the other officers examining the scene of the crime. The man, her attacker, had been restrained when he came to and they were waiting for an ambulance to pick him up.
She'd just finished asking her a lot routine questions for which they'd sent Adam out of the room and now she leaned slightly toward her, asking her gently: "you plan to press charges against him, I assume?"
Joan nodded blankly, unsure of what she was agreeing to but wanting the man punished.
"I think," The policewoman added carefully, "you might consider talking to someone before you go to the hospital."
"My parents are gonna be here any second," said Joan quietly, "and I don't want a counselor or a hospital. He didn't get a chance to…" she paused, but forced herself to go on: "rape me, I told you that."
"I'm afraid a hospital examination is procedure in such cases," the policewoman replied apologetically but firmly. "Counseling is always recommended. People sometimes blame themselves for things that are in no way their fault. That's one of the reasons I suggest you speak to Adam when you go to the hospital with your parents, Joan."
Joan looked wearily at the policewoman, not having the energy to feel surprise. "I can't do an assignment right now."
God put Her hand over Joan's hand which lay, lifeless, on the kitchen table: she started at the unexpected contact. She didn't really want anyone but Adam to touch her.
"But you need it. A terrible thing happened to you tonight. You acted just as you should have, the best you could under the most awful circumstances, but you're still going to go home hating yourself and believing Adam doesn't truly love you."
Joan burst into tears and laid her head down on the table.
"I have given you," God murmured, her hand over Joan's head where it rested on the table, "the resources, both in your strong, resilient character and in your surroundings, to heal from this experience in time. But you need to reach out and use these resources. You need to allow yourself to be helped."
Joan looked at God, tears streaming down her face. "Why didn't you warn me?"
God sighed deeply, her face etched with sorrow. "I don't interfere in that way, for one thing, however much I may want to" she said and Joan snorted irritably, but continued simply: "and I can't predict the future. This event culminated from a series of events leading up to it. It could've gone another way. I could've told you not to go looking for Adam's piece in the art room. But if I had warned you and you didn't go to Adam's tonight, it would've resulted in another set of circumstances…worse than these."
Joan felt rage come over her in a wave: "Worse than this? Worse than being attacked? If I hadn't come over here tonight, I wouldn't have been a bad neighborhood, with a rapist in it! Things would have been fine!"
God looked doubtful.
"You mean…" Joan looked at her in confusion as her fury fell away: she didn't have the energy to support it and her sadness overwhelmed it anyway. "I would've been attacked anyway."
"There is a window to a world where you didn't find that drawing and you didn't go to Adam's," God said, her voice soft, gentle as she delivered the hard news: "In this world, you would get up tomorrow and go to school early because you needed the extra time to study for your math test. Your attacker, the rapist, would attack you in daylight: sober and at the height of his strength, with Adam nowhere nearby and your parents assuming you were at school, Luke not even having left home yet."
Joan's hands trembled and she cupped her face, as if feeling its shape, as if assuring herself she was in one piece apart from her bruises and bloody nose. "So it was a coincidence that I passed the neighborhood he was in? He—he was planning to come after me anyway?"
"There is no coincidence, Joan."
"Why was he coming after me?"
"You know I can't answer."
Joan sighed deeply: frustration, exhaustion, and pain, sick fear…all these things fought for a hold over her and drained the color from her face. "It was you, wasn't it? In the car, with the song. Adam heard it over that party going on and knew where to find me, the guy didn't get me the first time around so I had a chance to call out to him… You a fan of Coldplay or something?" Her sarcastic edge sounded bitterer than anything else right now.
"You were the one that decided I was trying to guilt trip you this morning with that song, from that obsessive need you have to make everything your fault. I knew you connected it to me, so I used it tonight to get your attention."
Joan nodded resignedly and said softly: "I can't talk to Adam tonight. I'm too tired."
"Well, it's what's recommended," God replied simply, "but of course it's your choice, Miss Girardi."
"What's recommended?" Will wanted to know, coming up from behind her, just as Joan was about to ask why God was addressing her so formally.
God turned to her father and said: "She needs to talk about the attack, at best with Adam Rove as well."
Will frowned at God in confusion. "Adam Rove? And why is that?"
God looked at Joan, eyes soft. "Adam witnessed part of the attack and may be able to get through to her as a third objective party."
"Are you qualified to dispense advice, officer?" Will wanted to know, looking for someone to take his rage out on, even unreasonably. Helen went to hug Joan tightly, ignoring both Will and God. Joan trembled at the contact and Helen, understanding, let her go.
God smiled calmly at him, Her eyes understanding. "Yes, you might say that. I've got to be going. Good luck to you, Joan," She looked over Her shoulder at her, "and I wish you and your family strength in this time of need."
Helen gave Will a pointed look but he already saw his mistake: this woman wasn't the source of this chaos. "Thank you, officer," he said genuinely but with difficulty, and then went to his daughter, as much as it pained him to see her in this state.
"We need you to tell us what happened," he told her quietly.
Joan looked up at him, her eyes red-rimmed and terrified. Will felt his heart break a little more.
"Please, Joan. It's important." Helen now grasped her hand, gripping it tightly, protectively. Dazed, her daughter looked down at her, some disbelief mingled with the pain in her eyes. Shouldn't her mother understand more than anyone?
But Helen looked consumed by her own demons, her fears swallowing her up. She needed Joan to tell her she had not been raped. She needed to know her child hadn't gone through the same as she had: she believed, truly believed that she was protecting her, making sure she was all right, but in reality, it was hell for her reliving the nightmare of the extreme violence done to her in college and the disgusting, horrific rape but it was still worse to think her daughter may have experienced anything remotely similar.
Joan felt strangely disconnected from her in that moment.
"No," said a voice firmly. It was Adam, coming into the kitchen from where he'd been waiting in the living room, his face grim but determined. He came and stood beside Joan, his hand hovering over his shoulder and then dropping to his side. "She needs a hospital. She told me her vision's blurry."
"Adam…" Joan murmured, shaking her head to contradict him and to warn him against disagreeing with her Dad—but the very movement made pain rise to her temples and she rubbed them absently, wincing in pain.
"Does your head hurt?" her Dad asked immediately, his eyes narrowing.
Joan shrugged: everything hurt, everything ached. "Yeah," she said finally. "Yeah, it hurts a little." A fresh wave of pain hit her. "A lot," she admitted.
After the doctor examined her and she'd gotten a CAT scan for her head, Joan lay still on the hospital cot. The room smelled of antiseptic and her own sweat and the combination was enough to bring fresh tears to her eyes. They ran down her face unheeded: there was no one there and somehow just wiping them away seemed too much of an action, too much movement.
The air was still and silent and she made herself as still and quiet as she could, almost holding breath: she didn't want to hear the sound of her own breathing.
She let no sob escape her. She bit her lip and tried to keep her mind from going back to the attack, to what God said in the kitchen—but it seemed inevitable. He'd said the rapist had gone after her on purpose. She felt sick with this knowledge: it festered inside her like a sickness.
It hadn't been random. It hadn't been terrible misfortune, it hadn't been coincidence: she was specifically chosen. Why? What had she done to deserve this? What was it, in her appearance, her personality, her life, that had made someone like that come after her?
Wild thoughts chased themselves across and around her mind till she felt the tightly-coiled knot of panic inside her begin to unravel and she had to shove her fist in her mouth to keep from screaming aloud.
A nurse came in, carrying Joan's clothes and seeing her wretched state; she gave her a deeply compassionate look. It was not pitying, only deeply sad and filled with empathy that was so evident, it felt tangible in the air: tangible enough for Joan to hold in her hands.
For a split second, it was a comfort. For a moment, Joan thought she must be God to give her such a feeling of being understood and cared for. But when the woman gently set the clothes down and only said: "Can I get you anything at all, honey?" Joan knew it was simple human love that blanketed her itching nerves like new snow.
It was the connection between herself and this stranger, this woman who somehow knew her pain.
Joan stared at the woman through her tears. Her name-tag read: Maria. "Water, please?" she croaked.
Maria turned away and filled a plastic cup with cold tap water. Handing it to her, she said: "It'll get better, in time."
Joan met her gaze. "This happened to you too."
Maria smiled slightly, but it was such a sad expression that Joan felt it should have another name. "Yes. And I survived. You will, too." With a slight nod of her head, she started toward the door.
"Wait!" Joan whispered suddenly.
"Yes, honey?"
"Give me like, five minutes to get dressed and then could you, um, send in the boy waiting out there? He'd wearing a toque." Joan stared at her desperately, the sudden need for him seeming to dominate her so completely that her sorrow ebbed very slightly away, obscured.
When Joan was dressed in the jeans her mother had brought and a sweater, Adam walked in, his eyes finding hers faithfully. He came toward her, and then halted a hand's breadth away, as if unsure. "They told me not to come too close," he explained, seeing her confused expression and added, his voice deepening with gravity as though this were a pledge more than a promise: "I won't."
She found this oddly comforting. Though his arms had made her feel protected just a little while ago, she needed some distance between them now. "Okay."
"Okay," he agreed steadily and leaned against the wall opposite, his arms crossing in front of his chest: his hands trembled. He seemed to suck in a breath; his gaze flickered to the floor and then back up to her face as he whispered: "Tell me what to do to make it…tell me what to do."
Joan understood his quiet desperation: when Kevin had been with the doctor's, she'd thought nothing was worse than doing nothing, knowing he was in such pain. "Just be here. Nothing will…" she sighed and the sigh came from somewhere very deep inside her, "nothing's going to make it better but you make me feel like…like it might be, someday." She looked down at her bare feet where they dangled over the edge of the bed. "Does that make sense?"
"Yes," Adam said simply and his calm, earnest sincerity made her believe it, made it easy to believe. Then, inexplicably, he whispered: "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Jane."
She stared at him in confusion, feeling new tears rising in her eyes. The thought alone of him thinking this was his fault, the sick irony of that, the knowledge God had given her—it was all too much. "It's not your fault," she ground out, feeling a sudden anger that she had to reassure him. Why didn't he just—
"You say that like it's yours." Adam was staring at her, a pained mixture of disbelief and fear in his contradicting, expressive eyes, those eyes that could speak: she remembered why she'd wanted him there. She felt a tear run down her cheek. Adam, registering her silent confirmation that this was what she thought, made a quiet choking noise, shaking his head to deny this vehemently, looking at her all the while with eyes that could break your heart if it wasn't already broken: "Oh, God, no. No, Jane."
These words made her cry in earnest.
"No, Jane." Adam paused, then said: "Jane, if anyone is to blame, it's not you for being beautiful or young, and, and it's not me for not—" he struggled as his voice wavered, "not hearing you right away. It's this place. It's this world, where you, where someone like you—" and he broke off, crying with her now, though silently: "someone as innocent and perfect as you are has gone through this. No one deserves this but you, of all people…Jane. God. No."
She looked at him, at his eyes and the pain that was in them and mirrored in hers. "I don't think it was a coincidence. He came after me for a reason, Adam."
Adam stared at her, tears running down his face as he swallowed tightly. She opened her mouth to urge him to believe that she had this on good authority, when he cut her off, almost angrily: "Jane. Listen to me: no one, in their right mind, no one that deserves to live, would ever intentionally seek out to hurt you." He closed his eyes and opened them again, willing her to believe him as he met her gaze again: "He was evil. This was not your fault. Please believe that, Jane."
Joan nodded. She believed. He made it easier somehow, inevitable in a strange way. "Okay," she told him.
Adam nodded, closing his eyes and breathing deep with bittersweet relief.
"I love you," she whispered.
His eyes flew open. For a moment, he seemed unable to speak. Then, his voice hoarse: "I love you too, Jane."
The door opened and Will came in, his cop-frown marring his expression. "Let's go home, sweetheart."