Title: Recollect
Summary: Sometimes people have to remember. Takes place seven years after 'Bringeth it On.' About a side character.
Warning: Mention of scenes of the episode, theoretical things that could have happened, minor angst.
Disclaimer: I don't own any characters of Joan of Arcadia, the franchise or the like. I make no money off of writing this.
How strange that Brianna Mathews would—years after such a horrible mistake on her part, her fault, her choice—find herself working for Safe Surrender and making a well-enough living after moving away from Arcadia and away from the past she didn't want to remember.
("It's gonna be okay.")
However, as much as she would like to forget the past, with all its burdens, it always finds a way to catch up to her in little ways. Thoughts popping into her head when she passes vending machines (a candy bar that features both caramel and toffee that the father of her child loved more than sports at times) or sees the news (a newsman from Arcadia had gained the ability to walk again after a disaster of a car crass left him in a wheelchair) or, odd as she didn't leave a forwarding address for it, mail for her delivered by a plump (bright eyed, smiling, middle aged and oddly cheery for delivery during the winter in New York) postal worker.
A renewal of the Year Book from (the high school she'd given birth in the girls bathroom during the pep rally) the high school she hadn't graduated from after transferring.
It had her name on the wrapping and postage on it, but she couldn't make out the return address or who had sent it to her. When she'd turned back to the postal worker the woman had gone and she was left holding the collective memories of a year she tried forever to forget.
She left it on her kitchen counter for a day while she did her job of paperwork and answering phones from frantic and hesitant women and girls ("…Go now.") that couldn't handle the responsibility of taking care of a baby and left the newborn for strangers to take to hospitals and parents that could take the best of care. She didn't even intend to open it when she got home that evening, she just kind of… had a lapse in judgment.
There was a picture of herself just before she'd found out she was pregnant with all the other girls in cheerleading posing for the camera, Max nearby drinking from a very large soda bottle (drops of liquid caught in still image before they would stain his shirt and she would wander over to tease him about it) and grinning over the rim at her. She wasn't even showing, but that week she recalled standing on the scale and being shocked at the added five pounds that hadn't been there the week before (she had gone without breakfast for another month before she finally figured out that gaining weight and not having her period only added up to one possibility).
Aggressively, Brianna had passed over all the rest of the pictures of the cheer squad until she spotted one with lyrics on it from the day after the police had questioned her and her father had decided she should change schools. In the center of the gym, with students in the bleachers watching and the more experienced of the cheerleaders lined up behind tables so they could judge the girls, was Joan Girardi. The brunette had a bitter look in her eyes and Brianna noticed that all the people in the background seemed to be holding their breath about something.
Then Brianna read the lyrics on the page attached and actually managed to laugh and cry in the same instant.
("Go Eagles, go Eagles! Go, go, go Eagles! We live to cheer, we're so sincere, unless you get in trouble—Then we're out of here…")