A/N: Here's a new one shot. This story has been in my head since like January and I just now got it on paper. Thanks to Lorraine for being my beta and doing a rewrite on this, you rock! And I posted it in the R board because of death and cuss words.
Discilamer: I do not own instant star or any of the music.
Jude Harrison spun around in the black chair that sat in Studio A, waiting for her temporary producer to finishing mixing her latest album. It was her first record since she had been back from London, and Tommy keeps on telling her it would be her best yet.
"There, I think it's done. See what you think," Kwest said as he hit the play button and her latest song came through the speakers.
"I think it's good." They were interrupted by Jude's cell phone ringing. She looked down and saw Tommy's picture.
"Hey baby," she said when she answered her phone. Kwest looked at Jude and rolled his eyes; he turned his chair back to the mixing board and went back to mixing. Tommy, Sadie, SME, Jamie, and Mason were on tour, and they were wrapping up the tour today.
"Hey, I was just calling to let you know that we're leaving tonight instead of tomorrow."
"Oh wow. That's cool. What time are you guys getting in?"
"I think Sadie said seven, but I'm not sure. I'll call you when we land. Hey babe, I have to go. I promise I'll call you the minute we land in Toronto. Okay? I love you, Jude."
"I love you too." Jude closed her phone, but when she did, she felt a strange feeling in her stomach; that feeling you get when something wasn't right. Jude thought for a moment about something that could happen, but she couldn't think of anything. She shook her head, thinking it couldn't be anything serious.
Jude left the studio and arrived at her house around 5PM. She took some leftovers from her fridge and went to the living room to watch some TV and wait for Tommy to call. She waited for the call, but it never came. Seven o'clock came around, and still no phone call. Before she knew it, it was ten o'clock. She was about to call Tommy to make sure everything was all right, but a knock at the door stopped her. She quickly got off the couch and answered the door. The moment she saw Darius and Kwest, she knew something was wrong.
"Hey guys what's up?" she asked.
"Can we come in?" Darius asked. Jude nodded her head and moved from the door so they can come in. Once they were all seated, Darius began to speak, and Jude knew whatever he was going to say, was going to be bad.
"Jude, I got a call about an hour ago; the G-Major plane crashed." The minute the words left Darius's mouth, Jude felt her heart stop.
"But…but everyone's okay, right?"
"Jude…there were no survivors."
"No…they were wrong…there has to be survivors," she said as she got up off the couch quickly, feeling the walls of the room trap her in.
"I'm sorry." A few minutes later Darius left, leaving Kwest and Jude sitting in her living room, trying really hard to comprehend what had just been told to them. Jude sat on the window seat and looked out. Her eyes fell on the two newly restored motorcycles that she and Tommy had just finished before the tour had started.
"Did you call my dad?" she asked quietly.
"I haven't talked to anyone. Right after Darius told me, we left to go to your house," Kwest said as he sat down on the window seat beside her. They sat in silence before Kwest broke it.
"How do we do this?"
"Do what?"
"Live without them."
"I don't know," Jude said as she felt the first tear fall, and soon, more tears followed. When she looked up, she saw Kwest and the tears that were falling from his eyes. They both just sat there holding each other, and grieving for everything they had lost.
Two days, later Jude sat on the bed that she used to share with Tommy; the last few days had been the worst days in her entire life. The press had been told the day before about the plane crash, so now there was a media firestorm outside of her house, waiting for her to come out and get bombarded with questions. She couldn't turn on her T.V. because every station she turned to was talking about the G-Major tragedy, so she just sat on the bed, wrapped in Tommy's leather jacket staring at the walls. But it made her even more depressed looking at the walls because it reminded Jude of the time she and Tommy had decorated the whole house together. Their bedroom had been extremely special to them, pretty much their baby, because it had taken them close to three months to get everything just right. She remembered the day they completed it, like it was yesterday.
Flashback"So what do you think?" Tommy asked as they stepped into the newly painted red room.
"I love it. But what are we going to put on the walls?"
"Well, we have the photos that you wanted to put on the wall, so we could put those up or, I was thinking we could put these on the wall," He said as he handed her four song journals.
"My journals? Have you lost your mind?"
"No, I was thinking we could take black paint, and write our favorite lyrics on the wall."
"That's actually not a bad idea," she said as she started to flip through her journals.
"Now we just have to agree on the songs," he said as he led her to the bed that sat in the middle of the room.
"Okay. I know I want Love to Burn on the wall somewhere."
"Okay. Time to be your 21."
"Well that's a given."
"White Lines?" They spent the whole afternoon that way, and by the next morning their bedroom walls held lyrics from over 20 of their songs.
Jude got up, off the bed, and walked over to one of the pictures. She grabbed it off the wall, and walked back over to the bed, where she crawled up with it and cried. The picture was of her, Tommy, Sadie, Kwest, Jamie, Kyle, Wally, Spied, Karma, and Mason outside a concert hall in London. It had been her first performance in London, and everyone had surprised her by coming. She didn't understand why she had lost them. Wasn't it enough that she had lost Tommy? Why did she have to lose Sadie, Spied, Jamie, Kyle, Wally, and Mason too? She was taken out her thoughts by Kwest opening her door. She looked up from the picture as Kwest walked over to her and wiped her tears away. He sat beside her on the bed.
"Why did they have to leave Kwest? Why did they have to leave us behind?" She asked as she started crying again. He wrapped her in a hug as he too started to cry. After a few minutes, they had both stopped crying and where just sitting there.
"Where's Lila?" Jude asked, referring to Sadie and Kwest one year old daughter.
"She's downstairs with your dad and Georgia."
"I guess we should go down there. We need to put the funerals together."
"Actually D called me this morning, he wants to do a memorial at the beach, the same place we had Pasty's."
"That sounds good. When?"
"In a of couple days. He also wants you to come by today. He wouldn't tell me why though."
"Uhm, I'll go by later today." After spending a few hours with her dad and Georgia, she headed over to G-Major, the same place she had been kicked out of two years before. But then for some reason, D had welcomed her back with open arms a year later. She quickly pushed her way through the crowd of people standing at the door, with her head down; not wanting to get noticed or see the posters on the wall that she knew would make her break down. She quickly stepped into his office, and she knew something was up when he didn't yell at her for not knocking. Darius was turned away from the door with his chair facing the pictures that hung behind his desk.
"Darius, Kwest said you wanted to see me?" Darius slowly turned his chair around, and it was then that Jude saw the picture that was in his hands; it was a picture of Sadie.
"Have a seat. I just wanted to check in and see how you were doing," he said quietly.
"I'm coping. If this is about my album D, I don't know when I'm going to be able to finish it. I mean…"
"No Jude this isn't about your album, or this business; this is about family." Jude eyed him cautiously. It wasn't like Darius to have a heart, unless she was number one, which she was far from at the moment.
"Okay…"
"Jude I'm being honest. All I wanted to know was if you were okay. I know Tommy meant a lot to you."
"And Sadie meant a lot to you," she said looking at him. She was one of the only people that knew his and Sadie's secret.
"Yes I did, but I don't have the luxury of grieving for her."
"Yes you do. Just because your relationship with Sadie wasn't in the open, doesn't mean you can't grieve her death." Darius quickly changed the subject.
"Uhm, I was wondering if we could have the wake at the rehearsal space. I was thinking the beach, but it's suppose to rain for the next week or so."
"Yeah that's fine."
"I'll let Kwest and Karma know. How's Lila?"
"She's doing fine. I don't think she really understands what's going on right now though," Jude said as she walked out the door. On the way out, Jude glanced around the studio that had been her home for years. She couldn't help but be haunted by the memories that had happened in this place. The couch where she used to goof off with SME; the office that used to be Jamie's, and the desk that Sadie had practically lived behind. She then glanced at the studio where she and Tommy had spent so much time in; loving each other and making music together. She quickly made her way outside to her mustang. As soon as she shut the door, the tears over took her, so she just laid her head on the steering wheel and cried.
The next day, Jude walked into the rehearsal space. She hadn't been there in over a month. With SME being on tour, and Tommy away, she didn't have a reason to be there. She had a whole house to herself now. Something that she had once been happy about, she now dreaded. She ran her hand over the drum kit in the corner. When she did that, something caught her eye. It was Tommy's "love note" on the far wall. She remembered that day so clearly.
"Tommy, are you here?" Jude asked when walked into the rehearsal space.
She looked around the room, and noticed the rose petals on the floor. Then she finally spotted Tommy against the back wall, and she looked at the wall beside him and read the inscription.
You wanted to be my 21 now you are.
You wanted white lines to bring you home, and they did.
You wanted me to make a choice and I did.
The question is will you say yes?
Jude Harrison will you marry me?
"Yes," she said as he slid the ring on her hand and kissed her.
Jude quickly ran out the door. She just couldn't handle looking at the wall and remembering all of the happy memories that had happened there. It reminded her too much of what she had lost. She went back to her house and went to bed, getting ready for the next day's event.
The next day, Jude stood on the railing that overlooked the alley way, and she saw the black limos pull up. The funeral had been too much for her, and halfway through it, she had bolted from the church, and wounded up in the rehearsal space again. She heard people coming up the stairs, so she used the fire escape so they wouldn't see her. She looked at the place that she had ended up, and it was the Chrome Cat. She walked in, leaving the door open, not sure if the lock was ever fixed. She sat on the couch for what seemed like hours letting the memories that had happened in the place wash over her. This place had been the site of the turnaround of her and Tommy's relationship. She was broken out of her walk down memory lane, by Darius walking in.
"This is the Chrome Cat, right?" he asked.
"Yeah, I own the building. It was Tommy's dream to reopen this place. We were going to start working on it after the wedding."
"Everyone's asking where you are."
"I'm sorry I ran off. It's just…I don't know how to deal with all of this."
"No one does Jude. This is a tragedy."
"I know what it is Darius. Let's just get this over with." For the next four hours Jude was stuck in the rehearsal space, listening to numerous people tell her how sorry they were for her lost. Finally the last person left, and the only people left were Jude, Karma, Kwest, and Darius. Jude sat down by the piano and glanced at the picture that Tommy had taped there. It was a picture from her first performance at the Vinyl Palace. They sat in silence until Karma spoke.
"I'm pregnant."
"That's great," Kwest said getting up from his spot on the couch, and went to hug her.
"Did Spied know?" Jude asked.
"No, I was going to wait until he came back from tour. We never talked about kids; hell we never talked about marriage." Jude got up and hugged Karma as she cried. As they comforted each other, Darius walked over to the piano and began to play a song; one that Jude knew very well.
"How do you know that song?" Kwest asked pulling away from Karma.
"I wrote it." Jude watched as Kwest put the pieces together in his head, and he started to get angry. He started to charge Darius, but Jude stood in between them.
"Kwest, don't!"
"That's Lila's Lullaby! Why did he write it? Sadie said you and Tommy wrote it!"
"Uhm well." Jude stumbled over her words, not ready to give up her dead sister's secret.
"Lila's not mine is she?" Kwest asked as he ran his hand over her face.
"No," Jude said quietly.
"She's mine, by blood, but Sadie chose you to be her father," Darius said.
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"Sadie told me she was pregnant, and then she disappeared for a month, just to come back to married you."
"I never knew," Kwest said as Darius left the space.
"I'm sorry, kwest."
"You were being true to your sister. I can't expect any thing less," Kwest said as he walked away too, leaving Karma and Jude alone in the rehearsal space.
"Things will never be the same, will it?" Karma asked not looking up from the floor.
"I don't know, Karma. I don't know."
Over the next few months, the four people that were left behind struggled to find a reason to live in the world. Daruis threw himself into G-Major. Kwest had slowly gotten over his anger, and he let Lila see Darius once a week. He also began to help Karma, who was nearing the five month mark, with her pregnancy. All of them had returned to the studio but Jude. She had tried to go, but she just couldn't bring herself to do it.
One day, everyone was in the studio wondering where Jude was. No one had seen her in over a week, and they were getting worried about her. After 20 unanswered calls, the three others decided to go to Jude's house. When they pulled up to the house, all of the lights were off. Kwest used his key and lead them in. As they walked into the foyer, they could faintly hear something playing upstairs. Once they reached the top of the stairs, they saw a faint light coming from the bedroom. The room was pitch black and they could hear Jude's CD, My Return, playing. The bathroom light was on, and all three of them were shocked at what they saw; Jude was on her bathroom floor in her wedding gown surrounded by her blood. Darius quickly called 911 as Kwest and Karma pushed towels against the cuts on her wrists. An hour later they were sitting in the waiting room of the hospital, waiting to hear about Jude's condition.
"Why would she do this?" Karma asked, still in shock from what she saw.
"Oh my God, today was supposed to be her wedding."
"Shit. How did we forget that?" Kwest asked.
"We were so caught up in our damn lives that we forgot." A few minutes later a doctor came out.
"Are you here for Jude Harrison?"
"Yes we are."
"She's going to make it. But I have her on a suicide watch for the next twenty-four hours, and I have a person from Psych coming to talk to her. Do you have any clue as to why she had done this?"
"Today was supposed to be her wedding day. She lost her fiancée a few months ago in a plane accident," Karma said quietly.
"Can we go and see her?" Darius asked.
"Yes you can. Her room is down the hall, to the right." They walked in and saw Jude lying in bed staring out the window.
"Jude," Karma said as they got closer to bed.
"You shouldn't have brought me here. I wanted to die."
"Jude you don't mean that," Kwest said.
"Yes I do. Tommy's gone; my music's gone. I have nothing left to live for," she said with a haunted look in her eyes.
"Jude, your music's not gone."
"Yeah it is! Tommy was my music!" she said before she turned away from them.
"Jude, we're still here. There's still something to live for." Daruis was met with silence.
"My baby needs her Aunt Jude," Karma said.
"And Lila needs you. D and I are going to screw her up without your help."
"We all need you, Jude. Tommy wouldn't want you to give up." D said. Jude just laid there thinking about what they said.
A few hours later, Karma and Kwest had left, leaving only Jude and Darius in the room.
"Why did you do it?" he asked as he sat beside her bed.
"I told you Darius, he's gone; my reason for living is gone," she said as the first tears, since those first few days, fell down her face. Darius wrapped her in a hug, and held her as she cried.
"I was sitting there today, and there was a knock on the door, so I answered it. There was a flower man at the door with a bouquet of white roses. He handed them to me and left. I read the card. Th…they were from Tommy. It was something he had arranged months ago. There was a note; it was him talking about how much he couldn't wait to be my husband. He must have done it before the tour because he knew how busy he would have been when he came home. Just seeing that note made everything I pushed away since the accident, come back: all of the pain and loneliness that had haunted me the first few weeks of the accident came back. I decided I wanted to wear my wedding dress one last time, so I put it on. It was to…too hard to look at it, so I went to change and on my way to my bathroom I knocked over a picture; it was a picture from before the accident. Tommy, Sadie, Jamie, Spied…Everything I had lost was staring back up at me, and I just couldn't deal with it. So I decided I didn't want to live anymore; not without them." At that point her sobs became too much for her, and she just laid there and cried.
"How do you do it, Darius? How do you live without Sadie?"
"I lost Sadie a long time ago, Jude. You know that."
"I know, but how do you deal with the fact that she's not in your life anymore, at all?"
"I live."
"How?! How do you live again?! Most days, it feels like I can't breathe." Jude hadn't realized that Karma and Kwest had come back into the room.
"I felt like that for the first few weeks, but then I felt the baby kick. I realized I had to keep breathing; I had to keep living, because if I didn't, then spied and everyone else died in vain," Karma said stepping into the room. Darius let go of Jude as she sit up in the bed.
"We all feel that way Jude. I lost my wife, my best friend, and some very good friends. You don't think that it hurts to look at Lila, and see Sadie? Or to look at my wedding picture, and know I'm never going to see her again?" Kwest said.
"I'm alone. I have no one to live for," she said as she wiped away more tears. Karma climbed onto the bed with her, and wrapped her arms around her.
"You have us, Jude; we're a reason to keep living. Lila and this baby are a reason to live, and their memories are a reason to live."
"Jude, will you promise that you will never do this again? Promise us, that if you feel like killing yourself, or feel like there's no reason to live anymore, that you will come to us."
"I promise," Jude whispered.
Six years had passed since that day, and today was the day Jude Harrison was returning to the stage. After her suicide attempt, Karma and Kwest had both moved in with her because she didn't want to leave her and Tommy's house behind. It had been exactly what Jude had needed, and over the years, she helped raise Lila and baby Vin. It was only when Lila found Jude's old CD that Jude even thought about returning to the stage. Music had been the thing that had brought her and Tommy together. Could she sing it without him? Would she be strong enough to sing without him? After four months of thinking, she decided to talk to D. He had set her up with some studio time, and when she walked in, she was surprised to see Darius, Karma, and Kwest behind the glass. When she began to strum the guitar, her heart broke; in that moment, sitting on that stool, she realized that she had to move on. She could move on, and that meant playing music without Tommy. She began to play an old song of Tommy's that he had written about Angie.
Sunny
days seem to hurt the most.
I wear the pain like a heavy coat.
I
feel you everywhere I go.
I see your smile, I see your face,
I
hear you laughin' in the rain.
I still can't believe you're gone.
It ain't fair: you died too young,
Like the story that
had just begun,
But death tore the pages all away.
God knows
how I miss you,
All the hell I've been through,
Just knowin'
no-one could take your place.
An' sometimes I wonder,
Who'd
you be today?
Would you see the world? Would you chase your
dreams?
Settle down with a family,
I wonder what would you
name your babies?
Some days the sky's so blue,
I feel like I
can talk to you,
An' I know it might sound crazy.
It
ain't fair: you died too young,
Like the story that had just
begun,
But death tore the pages all away.
God knows how I
miss you,
All the hell I've been through,
Just knowin' no-one
could take your place.
An' sometimes I wonder,
Who you'd be
today?
Today, today, today.
Today, today, today.
Instrumental Break
Sunny days seem to hurt the most.
I wear the pain like a heavy coat.
The only thing that gives
me hope,
Is I know I'll see you again some day.
Some day, some day, some day.
When she was done singing, she wiped a tear away. She realized she could do this; she could make music again. Over the next year, Jude recorded a new album and unexpectedly found a new love, Jason. He was the producer Darius set her up with, and the first few times, Jude had to leave the studio because it was too hard to see somebody beside Tommy sitting behind the mixing board. The relationship they had was different then what she and Tommy had. But somehow she had fallen in love with him. He was great; he had understood why she wanted to take it slow. She knew that she could never love someone like she loved Tommy, but she had a feeling Jason would come in a close second. She took the mic from his out stretched hand.
"You ready for this?" he asked.
"Yeah." She kissed him lightly on his lips before she walked out onto the stage. She glanced behind her and saw Lila standing there with her "two dads" Darius and Kwest, who had Karma's five year old son in his arms. She then looked straight ahead, and saw Karma coming out from the other side. They came to stand together in the middle of the stage.
"Six years ago, our lives changed forever," Karma said.
"We lost seven members of our family. They were all very special to us."
"But Jude and I wrote this song for two special people. Vincent Spiderman."
"And Tommy Quincy," Jude said as the first notes of the song began to play.
Got a
date a week from Friday with a preacher's son
Everybody says he's
crazy
I'll have to wait and see
I finally moved to Jackson
when the summer came
I won't have to pay that boy to rake my
leaves
I'm probably going on and on
It seems I'm doing more
of that these days
CHORUS 1:
I probably wouldn't be this
way
I probably wouldn't hurt so bad
I never pictured every
minute without you in it
Oh You left so fast
Sometimes I see
you standing there
Sometimes it's like I'm losing touch
Sometimes
I feel like I'm so lucky to have had the chance to love this much
God
gave me a moment's grace
'Cause if I'd never seen your face
I
probably wouldn't be this way
Mama says that I just shouldn't
speak to you
Susan says that I should just move on
You
oughta see the way these people look at me
When they see me 'round
here talking to this stone
Everybody thinks I've lost my
mind
But I just take it day by day
CHORUS 2:
I probably
wouldn't be this way
I probably wouldn't hurt so bad
I never
pictured every minute without you in it
Oh You left so
fast
Sometimes I see you standing there
Sometimes I feel an
angel's touch
Sometimes I feel like I'm so lucky to have had the
chance to love this much
God gave me a moment's grace
'Cause if
I'd never seen your face
I probably wouldn't be this way
Probably wouldn't be this way
Got A Date a week from Friday with a
preacher's son
Everybody says I'm crazy
I'll have to wait and
see
The last note drifted away, and Jude looked around her. She saw Karma, looking at her with encouraging eyes; Darius who looked at her with pride, and Kwest with caring eyes. He had lost the love of his life, just like she did, but somehow, they both made it. These were the three people who shared her pain; they helped each other get through everything. Somehow, some way, they had learned to live again, and right there on the stage she realized that the ones they had lost wouldn't have wanted it any other way.
A/N#2: I hope you enjoyed it. Review and let me know what you think!
Here
is three youtube videos: The
promo: A
video that i made that was inspired by the story (song also used in
the story): Leann
rimes song that is used in the
story: