Hello again. This has been on my mind ever since I read MissFenway's story "Lucy." It was absolutely beautifully written, and heartbreaking, and all of the things a story should be. So, I decided I'd write a sort of companion fic to it. I used the same idea, and some of the phrasing of things was taken from her fic, so as to make it "companion-esque," I guess. You don't necessarily have to read hers first, but you should read it anyway.
A/N: This was originally posted in Big Time Rush... but I feel like it's better suited for here. Het fic doesn't happen a lot in that fandom. :) The story didn't change in any way because there are no characters mentioned; I just moved it to here instead.
Disclaimer: I don't own Glee, I don't own the idea for this story, and some of the wording of things is not mine. All credit goes to MissFenway.
His hands traveled down the length of her naked body, fingertips skimming lightly across every inch of the porcelain skin that was exposed to him. She shivered under the touch as he caressed the flat planes of her stomach, then down to the gentle curve of her hips, and finally to the place she wanted them most. She let out a soft moan and arched her back as tiny jolts of pleasure shot through her veins, eyes closing gently as she tipped her head back onto the pillow of his bed.
Suddenly his voice cut through the haze of her blissful state, and she opened her eyes to see him looking at her worriedly. "You're sure you want to do this?"
"More sure than I've ever been of anything," she said with a soft, nervous smile.
"Alright, then. I love you," he said, tenderly brushing a piece of hair from her face before positioning himself over her.
"I love you too," she whispered, pulling him down for a kiss. He then gently pushed himself into her, trying not to hurt her as both of them lost their innocence in that moment. She cried out softly, but he gently kissed away the tears, and her pain soon ebbed into pleasure.
Shortly after, he had her crying out his name to the heavens as ecstasy washed over her in seemingly never-ending waves. He spilled his essence inside of her, continuing to ride out the bliss until nothing was left, and then he gently pulled out and rolled beside her. His arm immediately wrapped around her, holding her close to him and murmuring words of love and apology for hurting her in her ear. She lay in his arms, content, until both of them fell into a peaceful slumber.
That had been three months ago, and it had been the biggest mistake of her life. Not for the fact that she had slept with him, because she didn't regret that for a minute; she loved him with every ounce of her being. It was a mistake for the fact that both of them had, in the heat of the moment, conveniently forgotten everything they had ever learned about safe sex and therefore hadn't used protection.
That one stupid mistake had gotten her to where she was now – sitting on the floor of her bathroom, waiting for three minutes to pass by. It felt like an eternity before the timer on her phone went off, signaling the moment of truth. She reached up and grabbed the white stick off of the counter where it had been lying, and she closed her eyes and prayed quickly before looking down at the simple piece of plastic that would change her life forever.
Two pink lines. Two fucking pink lines. Two fucking pink lines that brought her world crashing down around her on the tile of the bathroom floor in barely a millisecond. She stared at the white plastic in her hands as the implications of those stupid lines sunk in, the bright pink that had just ruined her life staring back at her, mocking her. She angrily threw the test in the garbage can, hot tears immediately falling from her eyes and staining her shirt with mascara.
A million different things popped into her head in that instant. Her mind whirled as she attempted to sort through everything, but the one constant that resonated in every thought was you can't tell him yet. She honestly didn't have any idea what his reaction would even be – anger, or happiness, or indifference? Any one of a hundred different possibilities would mean something completely different for her, and there was no way she was going to just jump in headfirst and tell him without working through every single situation in her mind first.
Almost as if on cue, she heard a brief knock on the door followed by the creak of its opening and his voice calling her name. She quickly reached over and slammed the bathroom door shut, then stood and splashed cold water on her face, hoping it would clear up some of the redness around her eyes. His voice cut through the sound of the running water. "You okay?"
"Y-yeah, be out in a minute," she called, staring at herself in the mirror. She looked exactly the same, no different than five minutes ago, but she knew that everything, her whole life and who she was, had changed in three hundred seconds. You're pregnant. You're having his baby. The worst part is, you can't tell him. Thoughts were still running through her head almost faster than she could comprehend them, but one stuck out like a sore thumb, resounding over and over, almost taunting her: You can't do this.
Deeming her face acceptable, she shut the water off and patted her face dry, then opened the door to see him standing there waiting for her. His expression changed from one of impatience to one of worry. "Oh, God, are you alright?"
"Yeah, just… feeling a little sick, I guess," she lied, shrugging. "It's probably nothing."
"But babe, you've been sick all week. Maybe you should see a doctor," he started, but she interrupted with a quick "No!"
He looked at her quizzically, and she immediately corrected herself, shaking her head. "I mean, no, I'm fine, it's probably just a bug that's going around. I'll be alright soon. Let's just… go to the pool." The thought briefly crossed her mind that soon she wouldn't be able to wear a bikini anymore, at least not without people staring at her, and she winced subtly at the mental image it conjured up.
"A-alright…" he said, raising an eyebrow in confusion. She took him by the arm and led him out of the apartment, away from the room that would never look the same again to her.
Two weeks passed. She still hadn't made a decision, and she still hadn't told him. During the day, she pretended things were normal and that she wasn't keeping the biggest secret of her life. But every night, she would lie in bed and wonder what to do, most nights crying herself to sleep while weighing each thought carefully.
You can't raise a baby. You're only sixteen. You're too busy to take care of the baby anyway. And it was true. She couldn't take care of it like it needed to be taken care of. She had her career to think about, and she wasn't about to give that up to raise a child. You're a role model to so many people, and so is he. How would this look for your image, for his image? She couldn't deal with the press, the scandal, the rumors, the stares. Becoming a statistic and being looked down on by society like all teen mothers would be too much. Plus, she didn't want bad publicity for him either. You don't want this child, even if it is his. She had someone – no, something – growing inside her that she didn't want, and it wasn't fair for her to bring it into the world when she couldn't even bring herself to care that it was her child. Everything, all the factors involved in this situation, pointed to one option and one option only.
She was terrified. She knew there was still time to change her mind, to get up and leave and keep the baby and tell him everything, but she couldn't bring herself to stop what was going to happen. "I'm making the right decision. It's what's best for both of us. Right?" she asked the nurse in the room with her while they were waiting for the doctor. The older woman simply shrugged in response, immune to the tears after years of seeing so many girls in here just like her.
The doctor told her it wouldn't hurt. He numbed her, gave her medicine to make things easier and keep her from bleeding too much, told her it'd all be over in less than half an hour. Truth was, she wanted it to hurt. She wanted to feel something, wanted to bleed to death right there in the doctor's office for what she was doing.
It was over faster than she thought it would be. There was no pain, just a slight discomfort. She looked up just in time to see the doctor carrying away a bowl covered in plastic that she knew contained a bloodied body. She heard him whisper, "A girl," to the nurse before he walked into the other room to dispose of the remains of what would have been her daughter.
Just like that, she wasn't pregnant anymore; the thing that had been living in her for four months was gone. She walked out of the clinic almost in a daze. She felt numb, empty, devoid of any emotion or feeling towards what had just happened. It was almost ironic, the way she felt nothing when she had just murdered something that didn't get a chance to feel anything either. She drove herself back to the Palmwoods, avoiding speaking to anyone in the lobby or outside as she mechanically made her way up to her room, where she lay down on her bed in complete darkness.
Finally, finally, it hit her what she had just done. She had killed her child, her baby – no, their baby. Guilt and sorrow racked her body as she realized that little girl wasn't ever coming back. She brought her knees to her chest, relishing in the pain shooting up from her lower abdomen as she did so, and cried harder than she ever had in her life. She wasn't a mother anymore; she was a cold-hearted, ruthless murderer.
She didn't know how long she'd been lying there when she heard the knock. It could've been a few minutes or a few hours. His voice reached her ears through the deafening silence in the apartment, calling for her, wondering where she was, since he hadn't seen her all day. Her door opened slowly, the light from her living room piercing through the darkness and almost blinding her. "Hey, are you okay?" he asked, immediately reaching to flip the light switch.
"No, don't. M-migraine," she lied, her voice hoarse and foreign to her own ears. Then, almost as an afterthought, since it was the truth, "And cramps." Honestly, she couldn't look at him right now, not without the cycle of tears starting all over again.
"Oh, baby," he said, his silhouette moving towards her and sitting on the bed beside her. Without having to look up, she knew his beautiful features would be the picture of concern. "Can I get you anything?"
"No," she said softly, his worry making her sick to her stomach with guilt. After what she had just done, she didn't deserve anyone's sympathy. "I just wanna sleep."
"Okay. If you need anything, call me. I love you," he said, placing a hand on her shoulder and leaning down to kiss her forehead. She was grateful for the darkness in the room now; if the lights had been on, he would have seen her wince and a single tear slip down her cheek.
"L-love you too," she whispered, biting her lip to keep the approaching sob from escaping. As soon as she heard the outside door shut again, she broke down, crying and then dry heaving into her pillow until she didn't have the energy anymore, and sleep overtook her against her will.
Weeks passed. She wasn't sure how long it'd been. She was hardly sleeping at all, her nights plagued by visions of doctors, forceps, blood, and the helpless screams of "Mommy!" as her little girl was dragged away from her, again and again, night after night. But after the first week, she knew she couldn't hide in her room anymore. The sickness excuse only went so far, and she knew he would drag her to a doctor if she continued to say she didn't feel well. He had already asked her several times what was wrong with her, and she refused to tell him, opting for silently dealing with her pain alone.
She went through her days mechanically, socializing with everyone just enough to pass as normal, and attempting to act like she wasn't completely and utterly broken. Everyone noticed something wasn't the same with her, especially him. They all saw the dark circles under her eyes, the sickly pale cast to her skin, the way she stopped eating and got thin enough that they could count her ribs, and the haunted, distant look that never seemed to go away, but no one said a word.
She knew that by now she would've been showing, unable to wear her bathing suit without getting the condescending glances and awkward stares, and that seemed to be all she could think about. Every now and then, she would look down at the still flat plane of her stomach and it would hit her that there was nothing there anymore, and she would start to tear up and have to excuse herself from wherever she was so that she could once again cry over her daughter in the privacy of her own room. She prayed for numbness, for a loss of emotion, anything but the sharp pain of loss she felt every time that little girl's face appeared in her mind.
She couldn't even look at him anymore. Being around him and seeing his face was like looking into the face of the unborn child that he would never know. She knew she would've looked just like him, with his eyes and his smile. She would've been Daddy's little girl, wrapping him around her finger from the day she was born; the worst part was that he didn't even know that she had so selfishly ripped that happiness away from him.
She was down at the pool sitting next to him on a lounge chair, in a huge circle of his friends but feeling so alone. She hadn't said a word the entire time she'd been there. "Are you okay?" he asked her softly, reaching up and running a hand through her hair.
"Yeah, fine," she whispered automatically, no emotion in her voice whatsoever. He sighed, knowing she was lying but not wanting to push her into talking, and instead settled for leaning over and kissing her cheek. The simple, sweet gesture had tears coming to her eyes in an instant; she didn't deserve this man at all. She tried to stop herself from crying, but a lone tear slipped down her cheek.
"Hey, whoa, babe," he said, and she silently cursed. She'd hoped he wouldn't see. He reached over and wiped the tear away, turning her face to look at him. "What's wrong? Please. Tell me."
"N-nothing. I… I gotta go," she said, standing and running back up to her apartment without another word to anyone else. This time, however, instead of letting her go and deal with whatever this was on her own like he had been doing so patiently for the last few weeks, he ran after her, determined to find out what was wrong once and for all.
She curled up on the couch in her living room and started to sob, the pain still as fresh as it had been weeks ago. A few seconds later, he burst in the door after her and immediately ran to her side. "Baby, look, this has gone on long enough. You've got to tell me what's going on. I want to help you. Please, just let me."
"No I… I can't!" she cried, curling farther into the arm of the couch.
"Why not? Honey, please. I'm begging you. You haven't been okay for months now. You don't laugh anymore; hell, you hardly talk anymore at all. You used to be so happy, and your smile used to brighten up my day. Now you're just so withdrawn and sad all the time, and I can't just sit back and watch anymore. It's breaking my heart. I've been trying to let you deal with it on your own, because I thought you'd tell me when you were ready, but baby, I'm worried about you," he said softly, begging her to tell him.
She looked up at him and shook her head. "I'm alright."
He gasped when he saw her face. He had gotten used to the emptiness in her eyes in the months that had passed, but she just looked… broken. He hadn't realized before, but the circles under her eyes were dark and angry now, and her skin was so pale he felt like he could almost see through her. "Oh my… baby, you don't look… you're not alright. I know you don't eat anymore, I've seen it. Have you even been sleeping at all?"
"I… yeah," she said, hiding her face from him again. "Just… leave it alone."
He wrapped an arm around her shoulders as best he could due to their position and whispered, "Please. Whatever you're dealing with, I want to be part of it. You're my girlfriend, and you're my whole world. I love you, and I can't stand to see you hurting like this anymore."
She shrugged his affection off, scooting away from him. "No. Just stop, okay? I'm abso-fucking-lutely fine. I don't want to talk about it."
His voice got a little louder, hurt evident in his tone. "What have I done to you? You flinch when I touch you, you won't let me kiss you… what is it? I want to fix it."
"Nothing. You can't fix it. You just… I can't," she said, standing up to run to her room and lock the door, like she had so many times before.
He grabbed her wrist before she could leave, standing up in front of her and blocking her path. "I'm not leaving until you tell me what I've done wrong and why you won't even look at me anymore."
"Because every time I look at you, all I can see is her!" she cried, clapping her hand over her mouth as she realized what she'd done. He stood there in confusion as she turned around and fled to her room, throwing herself on the bed and hiding her face in her pillow as the tears came yet again.
He quickly followed her, sitting down on the bed and waiting for her explanation. After a moment, when none came, he prompted it himself. "Baby… her who?"
"Her nobody," came the muffled reply. She was irritated with herself for letting it slip; there was no way he was going to drop it now. "Just… just let it go."
"I told you, I'm not leaving until you tell me what this is about," he said, now more determined than ever to know what was going on with her. "What are you talking about? Who is this 'her'?"
She looked up at him pathetically, whispering so softly that he almost didn't hear, "Our daughter."
He blinked in shock and confusion, thinking he had misheard her whisper. "I'm sorry. What?"
"Our daughter. I can't look at you because I can only see our daughter," she said again, knowing now that she was in too deep now to get out of telling him.
"Our… daughter?" he repeated. "What… I don't understand. We don't… we don't have one."
"We would have," she said, a sob coming from the back of her throat and interrupting her sentence. "I killed her."
He could hardly believe what he was hearing; he wanted to pinch himself to make sure he wasn't dreaming, because the words coming out of her mouth seemed almost unreal. "You… you what?"
"I was pregnant. We forgot to use protection the first time, and I got pregnant," she said, her voice soft as she finally told him what had been killing her for the past few months. "And I had an abortion."
"You had…" he stammered, her words hitting him like a freight train.
"I'm so sorry," she said, her voice breaking on the last syllable. "I'm so, so sorry."
He didn't say anything, just looked at her in disbelief as he let her words sink in, so she continued, "I was scared. I didn't know what else to do. I couldn't have a baby, I just couldn't, we couldn't. I thought it was the only way out. I'm so sorry." She repeated the words like they could fix everything between them, even though she knew that she had changed things irreparably.
"You… you didn't even tell me," he whispered, confusion and hurt masking his normally perfect features.
"I know, and I should have, and I'm s-"
"Sorry, yeah, I got it," he interrupted. His eyebrows were furrowed, tears were pricking his eyes, and his mouth was open slightly as everything seemed to finally sink in. "I just… our daughter… how could you?"
The look on his face as he said those last words absolutely broke her heart, and it set her off again. She buried her face in her pillow and sobbed until no more tears would come, even though she knew she didn't deserve to cry at all. She cried for herself, for the emptiness and loneliness that wouldn't go away, for the pain that ate away at her day after day. She cried for him, for lying to him for so long, for taking away the joy from him that he never even knew. But mostly, she cried for her unborn daughter, for selfishly taking the life of the little girl that she would never hold, never know, never kiss goodnight. And when she finally looked back up, after seconds or minutes or hours, he was gone.
She knelt, the wind blowing her hair back from her face as she laid the roses in front of her. She sighed, sitting back slightly and staring at the marble headstone before her. The name etched into it stared back at her. Lucille Ann.
"Lucille Ann," came the voice from behind her, and she knows who it is without looking. "That's a pretty name."
"I thought naming her… it was the least I could do," she whispered, still not turning to look at him. They haven't spoken in months, not since that day. She threw herself into her work, and he into his music, and their paths never seemed to cross again, luckily for the both of them. When asked about it, both of them simply stated it wasn't working out, which, in essence, was completely true. He couldn't have stayed with her knowing what she did, and she couldn't have continued to pretend things were fine when she was with him; it would have killed them both. "It would have been her birthday today."
"She would have been beautiful," he said, kneeling beside her, and she finally looks up at him. Surprisingly, it doesn't hurt as badly to see him as she had expected it to. Any pain she felt from losing him was overcome by the pain and regret of what she had done to Lucy.
"She would have looked like you," she agreed. "She would have loved having tea parties and coloring and dressing up as a princess, and she would have loved you so much. I'm sorry. I know I said it a hundred times that day, but I mean it." The tears started to well in her eyes again, and she brushed them away quickly. "I'm sorry for taking that away from you. I'd give anything if I could take it all back, to hold her, to see you with her, to love her like I know we could have if I'd have let it happen."
"I know," he said, wrapping an arm around her shoulders gently. She curled into his chest, breathing him in like she used to do so often, only this time, there were no feelings other than sorrow involved. She had changed everything between them, and no matter how badly she wanted to, she knew couldn't fix their relationship. "I forgive you."
"I don't deserve to be forgiven. But thank you," she said softly. Then she turned back to the grave in front of her. "And I don't deserve your forgiveness either. But just know that I love you, Lucy." She choked on the name as it came out of her mouth, feeling foreign on her tongue; saying it out loud for the first time both broke her heart and gave her some strange sense of relief. "I do, and what I did to you was a mistake, and I'm so, so sorry. You deserved a chance at life like everyone else, and I took that away from you, and I have to live with that forever. But I'm sorry. Know that I'm sorry, and if I could take it back, I would. I love you so, so much, baby." She buried her face in her hands and let the tears fall freely.
"Lucy," he whispered, his voice close to her ear. She could hear the slight crack as he succumbed to the tears as well. "I love you too, baby girl. I do. We would have been a perfect family, and you would have been beautiful, and you would have had everyone wrapped around your little finger from the day you were born. And I'm sorry, too."
They sat there for a while, talking to their little angel they would never know but that would be with them forever. She told both him and Lucy the reasoning behind her actions, and he told both of his girls that he was sorry for letting it come to this. Finally, she stood, her knees almost giving out from having knelt for so long, and whispered, "Goodbye, Lucy. I promise I'll be back."
"Me too," he said, standing and taking her hand in his. "Goodbye, baby girl." And as they left the cemetery, a warm spring breeze blew across their shoulders and the sun peeked out from where it had been hiding behind the clouds, almost as if Lucy was watching them, saying to them in the only way she could, I forgive you.
