Through darkness, you help me find the way
"Are you sure you're all right, Sue Ellen? I really wish you'd stay here tonight." Ann's kind, open face is solemn as she reaches out to lightly rest a hand on her forearm. Her eyes are tired and red and Sue Ellen knows the pain she sees in them is the mirror image of her own. There had been no love lost between Ann and J.R., but when her family hurts, she hurts too. "I don't know where the boys got off to, but I'm sure Bobby wants you here too. You shouldn't be alone."
Shaking her head, she pats her friend's hand before taking a step backward towards the door. Ann's arm falls away. "No. I need to go, Ann. If I stay here, I'm likely to end up passed out in his bed again, and let's face it: I've done that often enough for several lifetimes." She tries to laugh, but the sad and broken sound that emerges reassures no one, least of all herself. "The sooner I get back to my normal routine, the better."
Ann looks doubtful, but doesn't argue further. She's tired. They're all just so tired. The search for J.R. followed by the devastating news of his murder has taken its toll on all of them. She feels every one of her years today. Even Bobby, the eternal younger brother, looks old to her now.
"I'll call you in the morning," she promises, hoping to reassure. "If you see John Ross…" She hasn't seen her son since he'd arrived back at the ranch from the gravesite with Christopher. Her plan had been to ask him to stay with her tonight, but the passing hours have changed her mind. As much as she loves her son, she needs some solitude, some time to remember. And then, some time to forget.
She expects it won't be pretty.
Ann is looking at her questioningly, a reminder that she hasn't finished her thought. "Nothing. Never mind. Good night, Ann."
As she turns and reaches for the doorknob, her shoulder bag shifts forward and the glass of the bottle inside collides with the framed wedding photograph she'd stolen from J.R.'s room. Cringing, but not pausing, she turns the knob, pulls the door open and walks through it.
"Sue Ellen." Ann's voice is hesitant, weighing her words. She stops just outside the door without turning around as the other woman continues. "God knows, J.R. and I didn't have much to say to each other, but even I couldn't miss how proud he was of you. I'm sure the last thing he would want now is for his death to be the reason you lose everything you've accomplished."
She nods and, not trusting her voice, continues on her way.
The bourbon coursing through her blood dulls her fine motor skills and makes inserting her key into the lock more of an ordeal than it should be. Or maybe it's the tears blurring her vision that are causing the problem. They come upon her at random times; she often doesn't notice them until they fall from her cheeks and splash on the surface in front of her. Blinking and steadying her shaking hand, she tries again and the key finally slides home. Twisting the knob, she turns to wave away the limo driver. Thank you, Ann, she thinks as he drives away.
Stumbling a bit in the dark, she bypasses the light switch, kicks her heels off in the entryway, and pads barefoot to the living room, taking her heavy shoulder bag with her. Pausing to flick on the stereo, she lets her bag slide down her arm and off her hand, where it lands on the floor with a clunk and the alarming sound of glass scraping against glass.
Mournful country music emanates from her sound system and she sways in place for a moment, listening as Dolly Parton sings about love and bittersweet memories. She rarely listens to the music of her youth anymore, but the problems of other women and the men they loved and lost have been something of a comfort during this last, difficult week. Dolly, Loretta Lynn, Tammy Wynette, they understand her.
She turns around, intending to go to her bedroom and change her clothes, but the sight she finds in front of her stops her in her tracks.
In the dim light of the living room, she can just make out an imposing figure in a business suit stretched out full length on her beige sofa. His face is covered with a Stetson and his boots are hanging off the end of the too-short piece of furniture.
John Ross, her confused mind suggests, despite the fact that this man is both taller and broader than her son. And even in the semi-darkness, she can tell that the charcoal gray suit this man is wearing is not John Ross's suit.
It's impossible.
She knows that suit, that hat, those boots. But it can't be.
"J.R.?" she whispers.
Her voice is barely audible, but somehow it awakens the man on the couch anyway. He stirs, and one hand rises to slide the hat up and away from his face, revealing a familiar, sleepy grin.
"Hello darlin'," he says.
She screams.
He brings her a glass of water from the kitchen and as she gulps it back with shaking hands, she wishes fervently that the cold, clear liquid was vodka instead of plain tap water.
Taking the glass from her when she's finished, he sets it on the coffee table.
"Feelin' better, darlin'?" he asks with a grin. He's turned on a couple of lamps and his blue eyes shine in the golden light of the room. He looks just the same as he did the last time she saw him, none the worse for wear for having been shot at close range. Part of her, the part that isn't staring at him in silent shock and disbelief, supposes this shouldn't be too much of a surprise.
"You going to say anything, honey, or are you just going to stare at me all night?" he asks, not unkindly.
Digging her nails into her palms, she closes her eyes tightly, counts to five, and reopens them.
He's still there, though he's starting look impatient. It's that look, so horribly, beautifully, familiar to her, that finally prompts her to speak.
"J.R., you're…you're dead. I…I saw you," she says at last.
The impatient look vanishes, replaced by one of supreme sadness. "I know. I'm sorry about that, darlin'. I don't know what those boys were thinking, letting you into that room."
"Like they could have stopped me," she mutters. In fact, Bobby had tried, but she had shaken his gentle hand from her shoulder, and pushed past him into that desolate little bloodstained room. She needed to see for herself, needed to see her love one last time. Or, at least, she thought it would be the last time.
"How?" she asks now. "What…? How? How are you here? You're alive?"
"No." He shakes his head sadly.
No. Well now, that should surprise her - she's not one to believe in ghosts - but somehow it doesn't. If anyone could manage to haunt her, it's this man.
"Then how?" she asks. "Why?"
"I don't know," he says, and the confused frustration in his voice breaks her heart. Even in death, J.R. should be the one holding all the cards. "It's complicated. Just…here is where I need to be."
She stares at him, stretches out a hand and touches his face. She half-expects him to be cold, or for her hand to pass right through him, but he's just as warm and real and solid as he's even been. Her fingers brush against his cheek, down his shoulder, and to his chest above his heart.
She can feel it beating under his shirt.
For half an instant, hope blossoms within her. She lifts her eyes to his, but he just shakes his head again.
It's an illusion, just like the breath she could feel on her hand when she touched his face. It's not real. He's not really here; he can't be.
He'll never be here again.
"You bastard!" she cries suddenly, feelings of loss and anger overwhelming her. "You left me! How the hell could you leave me? How could you leave our son?"
With no conscious thought, her hand flies to his cheek. Anticipating what even she hadn't, he catches her wrist, stopping the slap before it begins. She sags against him, gasping and gagging on sudden tears, and he pulls her tight to his chest. "You're not supposed to leave," she sobs, broken, against his shoulder.
She realised long ago how cruel the world could be, and this very man had been the author of so many of those hard learned lessons. How ironic that the greatest cruelty of her life was the loss of him, just when they were finally moving beyond the misery of the past.
He holds her, strokes her hair, and the soothing noises he makes are like nothing she's ever heard from him before. She breathes slowly and deeply and when the tears begin to subside, she reluctantly tries to pull away. His arms tighten around her, holding her in place.
"Stay," he says. She looks up to find unshed tears glistening in his own eyes. Can dead men cry? She nods once and curls back into him.
It's been a lifetime, in more ways than one, since the last time they were this close, but it feels just the same as she remembers: like coming home. She doesn't understand how this is happening, how he can be here, but she's grateful for the gift all the same.
"It's crazy, you know," she says after a while. "We've been divorced longer than we were ever married, but my identity is still so wrapped up in you, in hating you, in loving you, that I don't know who I am without you somewhere out there in the world."
He gently pushes her up until they are sitting facing each other and he's as serious as she's ever seen him.
"I'll tell you who you are, darlin'. You're a Ewing. You're Sue Ellen Ewing, and you're the strongest woman I've ever known, no thanks to me." He chuckles. "Well, maybe the wrong kind of thanks. And whether I'm by your side or not, that will never change. Don't you ever forget that." He pauses, then picks up her hand, squeezing it between his own. "There's trouble coming, Sue Ellen; the family's going to need you to keep on being strong."
She tries hard to not look at her purse on the floor in front of the stereo and thinks about the bottle of bourbon hidden away in the bottom of it. He couldn't possibly know about that though, could he? "Trouble? I don't understand," she says.
He looks to the bag himself, and then back to her. "Darlin', don't throw your life away, everything you've accomplished, over the likes of me. I'm not worth it. But more than that, our boy is going to need you clearheaded. Bobby will need you. All of you are in for a hell of a fight, and without me around, you're the best weapon this family's got."
Choosing not to acknowledge the first part of his speech, she instead focuses on the last. "J.R., I don't understand. What fight? What are you talking about?"
"I can't say any more than that, darlin'. There are some rules even I can't break." He sounds so incredulous at that, that she wants to laugh, despite the seriousness of their conversation.
Instead she kisses him.
It's hello and goodbye and I love you all rolled into one, and she puts everything she has into it, because she will be damned if she's missing another last opportunity to show him how she feels.
The room is uncomfortably warm as she awakens, and she squirms and kicks, trying to throw off some covers. It isn't long before she realises there are no covers to move. She's not in her bed.
Her eyes, sticky with ruined makeup and dried tears, are slow to open, but when they do, she blinks and squints at the sun streaming in her large front window from her spot on the couch. Shading her eyes, she tries to sit up, but her lurching stomach and the sudden pain in her head stop her. Her vision swims and she lies back against the cushions.
She seems to be alone in the room.
"J.R.?" she calls, her voice cracking and steeped in confusion. Pushing a hand through her tangled hair, she tries again to sit up. Where is he? Please, no, he can't have gone already. There's still so much to say. She's not ready for this to be over.
Her bleary, half-closed eyes sweep haphazardly around the room until suddenly, there he is. Relief floods her. He's still here. He looks so young, so handsome in his tuxedo, so happy.
They both look so happy.
She blinks, rubs her eyes with her fist, and abruptly her vision clears. Their wedding photo, stolen from J.R.'s bedroom at Southfork, sits tauntingly on the coffee table, an empty bottle of bourbon beside it. Young, happy Mr. and Mrs. Ewing, frozen in time, as two-dimensional as her life now without him. Just another illusion.
And she's alone. With a horrible, sinking, desolate feeling, it occurs to her that perhaps she always was.
A dream? Had it really all been a bizarre, alcohol-induced dream? It seemed so real. She lies back against the cushions and the tears find her again.
She doesn't know how long she stays that way, slipping between restless sleep and unwelcome wakefulness ruled by cruel, overwhelming grief. Her dream had been so vivid; she can still hear the words he said to her, feel his arms around her. She could swear she still smells his cologne on the couch cushions and in her hair. While in reality, nothing has changed since yesterday, she feels like she's lost him all over again.
By the time the sun moves to the other side of the house, she's run out of tears and there doesn't seem to be anything left to do but pull herself together. She has no plans for the remainder of the day, but if she doesn't get up now, she has the uneasy feeling that maybe she never will. If nothing else, she can't do that to John Ross. She's the only parent he has left.
Gingerly, she rises from the couch, gripping the end table as the dizzy spell she knew was coming sweeps past her, then picks up her wedding photo and continues on to her bedroom to shower and dress.
It's lying on her bed when she walks in the room: a charcoal gray Stetson set atop what would have been his pillow, had he ever joined her in this bed. She stops abruptly in the doorway, regarding it silently with her head tilted to one side, until a tentative smile spreads across her face. Walking into the room, she sets the wedding photo down on the nightstand and picks up the hat. Flicking some non-existent dust from its brim, she holds it out in front of her, turning it this way and that.
"You weren't here before," she addresses it, bemused. "Now, where could you possibly have come from?" She holds it up to her nose and inhales deeply.
And then she grins, because she knows.
She knows.
It really happened. Physically happened, or just happened in her mind, she doesn't know, and it doesn't even matter, because it happened. He was here; he came to say goodbye. He came to give her a message, and he came to try and save her from herself, to warn her, as best he could, of what is to come.
He came because he loves her.
Setting the hat on her head, she again picks up the picture frame. "I love you too, my darlin'," she tells the man in the wedding photo. "I get the message. And I intend to do you proud."
And she will.
There will be no more drinking. AA and the like are fine for some, but she's always stopped on her own, when she's found something more important to her than the bottle. What is more important than protecting her family? There's much to be done at Ewing Energies and she and John Ross have wasted too much time already with fighting Bobby and Christopher. They're family; they need to find a way to work together. They need to unite to prepare for what's coming. She doesn't know yet what it is, but she will. J.R. will have left some kind of clue and she intends to find it.
And when their enemies make themselves known, she'll make them wish it was only J.R. they had to deal with.
She's loved; she's lost. She'll never be the same without him, but she'll be okay.
After all, there's going to be a battle to fight and she's a Ewing.
It's what she does best.
A/N: This was already 90% complete when I found out who killed J.R., so I pretty much ignored the information. Make of that what you will. Thanks for reading. :)