Disclaimer: I don't own Degrassi or any of the related characters.
a/n: i'm back in the degrassi fandom again! i wanted to write something more challenging, but i ended up with this. and although it isn't doing much for my craft i do rather like it. i think it's obvious i like to write liberty a lot a lot :) and i reeeeally hope you liked this, or can offer me up some concrit. so, review if you read please? thank you!
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Winter Storms
In the winter they took walks together, from the park or to the corner store, bundled in scarves and gloves. JT would shuffle along, staring at the ground, kicking snow up with the toe of his scuffed shoe as he walked, thinking about being anywhere but there. Liberty liked the winter though, the frosty air and the big snowflakes. She clung to the quietness that came with the season, but he craved the loud buzz of happy chaos to the silence snowfall draped over a town.
Walking in the winter was mostly without benefits as far as he was concerned. The only joy he got out of their little strolls were the moments he and Liberty passed under the white treetops. While they were beneath them, he'd reach above and grab one of the low-lying branches and give it a tug, sending the snow that had been lying innocuously on the branch showering over them both.
They'd always laugh. They had fun together. It's what they did, even when the rest of the world took itself seriously. If it had been anyone other than JT Yorke, Liberty would've glared and offered up a few choice words. But it hadn't been.
He'd always been able to make her laugh and she thinks perhaps that had been what drew her to him even at such a young age. The happiness time with him promised could draw even the coldest of people. The boy spread laughter like wildfire.
But he was gone.
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He died and it turned her whole wide world upside down. It's a lot harder to return to the aloneness she'd become comfortable with as a little girl when she'd had a taste of the togetherness most people only dream of. Things she loved turned into things she avoided. Any longing for adventure she'd had within her burnt out. Worst of all though was the pretending she did (I'm fine thanks. Really).
It was a lot of bad weighing down on her as heavily as the snow sat on the branches of the old oak across the street.
Liberty used to crave the winter and its peace and quiet and now it's closing in on her. Every day the snow falls harder and every day it gets that much harder to see. It's the longest winter she's ever endured.
Her logic tells her that all the time she spends enveloped in this snowstorm of hers is time wasted. It's not her desire that drives her to move but her reason, something that was programmed in to her a long, long time ago. She's spent too much time waiting for him to come back, she tells herself, and it's time for her to get going before her heart turns to ice mid beat.
And so it begins.
It happens in steps, just like she'd read them from a book, a book that could teach her how to properly grieve. She'd never really learned.
She begins to do something more than just completing project after project and leading committee after committee. She walks through the snow at dusk and tries to bring herself to hum a tune along the way; she hikes in the woods with Danny at dawn. She maintains movement. Most of the time a little voice is telling her that she's only running from the past, but sometimes on bright days she can't quell the hope that something is waiting for her. And she realizes she's going toward something. Rarely does her heart win out over her logic (she wasn't built to rely on hope), but the simple idea of something better, how ever scarce the chance of it may feel, keeps her going.
She starts to get her laughter back and her smile proves more frequent than her frown. Patches of color show through a plainly white winter. It gets better, for a while.
One day she even builds up the courage to lie flowers on his gravesite. On a Sunday morning, she leaves her house early, early enough so her family won't realize that she's gone at all. She arrives and stands in front of his fresh, fresh tombstone only long enough to place the flowers carefully beside it, and then she turns and goes. She puts up walls in her mind to block out memories and she pretends that her quick heartbeat and the shaking of her hands and the empty space beside her aren't abnormal at all. She becomes the carefully programmed computer she's so often accused of being. It's easier that way.
Perhaps the whole gesture was pointless after all. She doesn't consider it.
There are mornings like this, when she awakens and may as well still be asleep. There are days she cannot bear to leave the safety of her numbers and her words -- a place where everything has to make sense. A place she hides. But there are also mornings when she feels that craving for adventure returning, she listens to the voice within herself saying well, maybe you should get up and do something. Maybe you're worth more than this. And there are some days yet that she ignores it.
Maintaining a steady pace is hard. But she keeps going. It's a thousand times better than standing still.
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The winter is heavy around her this year. The ice that coats the unforgiving black pavement makes it hard to stay on her own two feet. The chill bites at her ears. JT's absence is still looming beside her. Sometimes the sky is gray. Sometimes it's even closer to a murky black in her eyes. She keeps moving ahead though, for the winter holds one promise.
Spring is nearer and nearer every day.