Title: A Box

Author: lucy-starry-sky

Summary: There is a box in Julie Cooper's wardrobe. Post Season 3

Rating: K+? (references to (a) death)

A/N : A kind-of-drabble, belated post season 3 tag. Quiet, unassuming and hardly ground-breaking.

Imaginative title, I know ;) Spellchecked, but unbeta'd, therefore, I proudly declare that all mistakes and moments of poor quality are mine. If someone would like to beta it, or has any improvement ideas, drop me a line.

These characters aren't mine, no profits earned from this, etc.

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There is a box in Julie Cooper's wardrobe.

This is not an unusual thing. There, in fact, are dozens of boxes in her wardrobe – shoe boxes, hat boxes, boxes for dresses, accessories, all the necessities that an insecure, slave-to-fashion should possess.

But there is something unusual about this box. Not that you would think that by looking at it.

The box isn't too large, about the size and shape of a large shoe box. It's rather pretty, a sandy colour with white, blue and silver stripes all over, with a stripe of a very pale cream flower pattern. It's the kind of design that instantly makes you think of the beach, and beautiful weather, but there's something classy and different about it.

Even the contents are not immediately remarkable. Inside, there is a neatly folded pair of jeans, a white sleeveless tunic top, some very expensive but unassuming flat shoes, a gold necklace carefully wrapped in tissue paper and a creamy coloured knitted cardigan.

It's only when you look closely that you see why, in fact, this box, these clothes are something else. Why everyday Julie stares at this box, sometimes more than once, and every so often, she has to open it and look at the contents. Smell them. Trace every inch of them with a perfectly manicured fingernail as she remembers.

It's only when you look closely that you notice the yellowish stain on the shirt, that kind that can only come from blood drops that have been mercilessly scrubbed and scrubbed away until they aren't apparent on first sight. That you smell the subtle odour of …. fuel, that still lingers on the jeans, after they too have been washed and washed and washed.
Occasionally, you can see the mascara stains, that could only have from someone sobbing and sobbing their heart out, into these clothes, only to panic at leaving tell-tale marks of despair and demand that they be washed immediately.

These are the clothes that Julie's daughter died in. In this box, are the clothes that her beautiful, beautiful, beautiful baby girl chose to wear on her last day.

In these clothes, her daughter told her one final time that she loved her.

That her daughter had a terrifying car crash in.

Took her final ever breaths in.

She hadn't known originally what to do with them. There's no popular method for getting rid of your dead child's final outfit.

So she did what came naturally. She created perfection, on the surface. She had those clothes washed back nearly to state that they were when Marissa last put them on her lithe, long, flowing body, so that no-one could ever tell what had happened.

And then she put them away.

In a classy, different, pretty dress-box in her wardrobe.