I'm sorry for not updating 'Heart Shaped Wreckage' for forever, but I just started on my new thesis! I'll get back to it once holidays come in November. In the meantime, I heard Lea Michele's song for the Glee tribute episode to Cory Monteith, and I couldn't seem to resist writing this.
For the unfamiliar, Jasmine and Gregory are my OC's from my story 'Heart Shaped Wreckage', which can be found on my account with Chuck Hansen as its main character!
When the rain is blowing in your face, and the whole world is on your case.
Sometimes it was bright, sunny even. The sun shone in the clear blue sky, cars going downtown, birds singing and people going about their day. Those kind of days were manageable, the kind where she would manage to keep the emotions at bay, just pay the requisite visit, reminiscence and leave.
But sometimes, it was just as if God wanted to toy with her.
The waterproof windbreaker had been a necessity, that cold September morning. It had been raining since midnight, and none of the rain seemed to be letting up anytime soon. Gloomy, wet, cold and altogether disheartening, it was these kinds of days that led Jasmine Becket to linger in front of the tombstone, the graveyard deserted save for her presence. Her blue eyes never left the name carved in the granite block, positioned in front of the mound of earth, under which her best friend, her cousin, and her ex-co pilot for her Jaeger had been laid to rest for eternity.
I could offer you a warm embrace, to make you feel my love.
"Greg, I'm scared."
The tiny girl was all of twelve, black hair and blue eyes seemed to dominate her small face as she lay, pale and frail in the massive hospital bed. The machine beeping next to her was the only source of sound and light, save for the half ajar door, outside of which her mother was conferring with the doctor on the next steps to be taken with her daughter. She clinged to the only anchor she's known her life, ever since her brother's life.
Gregory, with his shock of dirty blonde hair and their similar blue eyes, never left her side, even if it was four in the morning. Hearing her words, his grip on her fingers tightened, whilst he leaned forward to adjust her breathing mask.
"I'm here. I won't leave, remember?"
"What if I have to leave?"
"You're going nowhere."
His firm tone faded in to nothing, Jasmine unable to bring herself to say anything. The bed creaked as Gregory climbed in as he was wont to do, and gathered his cousin's tiny form in to his arms. "Don't worry. There's nothing to be scared of."
When the evening shadows and the stars appear, and there is no one there to dry your tears. I could hold you for a million years, to make you feel my love.
"I miss you." her voice was soft, drowned out by the pitter patter of the rain even if no one else was there to hear her speak. It was cracked, rough and scratchy should anyone hear her, but filled to brim with all the emotion Jasmine rarely let herself feel.
It had been long, too long for it to be logical for her to still ache when she thought of her cousin. But Gregory had been a part of her. Drifting with him brought them even closer together, and Jasmine had admitted herself that no one, not even Chuck could ever fill or replace Gregory in her heart. She loved Chuck wholeheartedly, but there was a special place in her reserved just for Gregory, just for that one best friend and companion she would never be able to see again.
If he had been around, she liked to think he would've approved of Chuck. Sometimes, even after so long, she found herself thinking of what would Gregory think if he had been around. Would he have challenged Chuck? Would he have fought for her behalf, that one time she thought Chuck had been flirting with the new blonde recruit? He would've been there, his warm embrace ever familiar and ever comforting whenever she was reduced to tears when Chuck and her fought. With him, she always felt safe, she always felt comfort.
I'd go hungry I'd go black and blue. I'd go crawling down the avenue. You know there's nothing I wouldn't do, to make you feel my love.
Burning the midnight oil was a common thing for Gregory, since his aunt and uncle had to return home to put their house to rights and get some rest. It was on these nights that he found himself propped up next to the hospital bed, watching over the sleeping form of his cousin.
When he woke up in the middle of the night sometimes though, he would find a dim nightlight on, and Jasmine doing anything but sleeping.
"Which one is this now?"
Then again, he usually could guess what she was up to without much prompt. Automatically leaning over to perch on the edge of her bed, Gregory peeked on the sketchpad that Jasmine was furiously sketching away on, his eyes taking in the form of a new Jaeger Jasmine had dreamed up, probably while she was asleep even. "It's based on boxers!"
"I knew I shouldn't have let you watch the boxing show with me during dinner." he replied with a laugh, but noticed his cousin's addition of metal weights and heavier fists. "I don't think you're capable of piloting this though Jazzy. It's arms would be too heavy for you."
"You pilot it then!"
"What makes you think I want to be a Ranger?"
"Because I asked you too?" she cheekily asked, and Gregory could do nothing but laugh and ruffle her hair as she continued sketching. Because even if it was never said out loud, everyone knew Gregory would do murder, and all Jasmine had to do was ask.
The storms are raging on the rolling sea, and on the highway of regret. The winds of change are blowing wild and free, you ain't see nothing like me yet.
Why does it always seem to rain when the worst of things were happening? Or maybe it was the spray of the ocean. The salty tang made the water indistinguishable from being from the ocean or from her tears, but none of that registered in her head as Jasmine's throat ached, raw from all the crying, even through all the noise of the cleanup and rescue crew.
Their main priority was in making sure that none of the Kaiju blue would flood the main city, but Jasmine wanted to yell, wanted to rage, wanted to go off at someone to find him, find him and nothing else mattered more then finding her cousin because he couldn't be gone... he just couldn't.
But even if denial waged war with grief in her, some part deeper in Jasmine also recognized that he couldn't still be alive. Not after she had watched her precious pride, the Arctic Hellcat fall in the water, Conn - Pod destroyed and her white body beyond damaged.
And above all, she recognized the impossibility of Gregory still being alive, because she could still clearly recall his pain at being burnt, his mind being ripped as he ejected her from the Conn - Pod, mere minutes before the Hellcat fell.
There was nothing she could do, and perhaps that was the worst part of it all.
I could make you happy make your dreams come true, nothing that I wouldn't do. Go to the ends of the earth for you, to make you feel my love.
The tang of salt came as a surprise to Jasmine, and she hurriedly used the back of her hand to wipe the tears away, its track washed away as the rain fell harder. Looking up when the fall of raindrops suddenly stopped though, her eyes blinked in surprise when the familiar, almost dear face of her boyfriend appeared next to her shoulder, gentle and loving as he held the umbrella over her.
"You were gone too long."
His voice was soft, pulling her back to the reality, to the fact that Gregory had been gone for three years. That she no longer had to face life alone, as she thought she had to in the first few months of his death. She was more attached then most, and sometimes she wondered why Chuck didn't find her overbearing protectiveness and fear everytime they were deployed stifling.
But he understood, and he knew her fear of losing yet another.
And he gave in, again and again. Looking back at the tombstone, her eyes glanced at the carved 'Gregory Courtland' on the granite, before she took the upturned palm Chuck offered to her, lacing their fingers together and letting him lead her away. "I love you." his voice was soft as he looked over at her, and she met his warm eyes with her own slightly raw, but equally loving ones, sparkling with the cheeky gleam that Chuck would do anything in the world to keep there.
"I know." was all she said, but they both knew what was unsaid, yet clear and never changing. The fact that she would always think 'I love you too.'