Hey everyone!
I had this oneshot originally posted under the JONAS fandom, but I reworked it to fit Victorious. The quotes in italics are from the novel Gone with the Wind and the lines Scarlett and Ashley (he's a guy) are saying are some of my favorite in the whole book.
This is only my second Victorious, so please tell me what you think!
REVIEW! PLEASE DO NOT FAVORITE WITHOUT REVIEWING!
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"Then, what do you want?"
"I don't know, now. I knew once but I've half forgotten... Perhaps - I want the old days back again and they'll never come back, and I am haunted by the memory of them and of the world falling about my ears."
Scarlett O'Hara and Ashley Wilkes, Gone With The Wind
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She can remember being abandoned.
She recalls the morning she woke up alone, with a huge dent in the wall beside their bed and Beck's lamp in pieces behind it. There was a note, too - Babe, I'll be back in a while.
He didn't come back for two weeks, and when he finally stumbled in the door at 2 AM he smelled like Scotch and girl's perfume. . . .
But they never talk about it, even though he spent the night on the kitchen floor, passed out.
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Scarlett set her mouth obstinately. It was not that she did not know what he meant. The very tone of his voice called up other days as nothing else could, made her heart hurt suddenly, as she too remembered. But since the day she had lain sick and desolate in the garden at Twelve Oaks and said: "I won't look back," she had set her face against the past.
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She's not heartless. She feels guilty.
Incredibly guilty, in fact, and she would gladly tell that to anyone who asks, but he doesn't.
And she still has nightmares about that night - and she feels so incredibly guilty. . . .
They were in the car, the four of them, and she was driving and Jade was in the passenger seat. Andre was behind Jade, making them laugh and whispering things in Tori's ear. Jade and Beck had just gotten back from their honeymoon in the Bahamas and they were so happy Tori could feel it radiating off of them both when they were all together. They were going to meet Beck, going to have dinner together (like they used to double-date in the old days), and Tori was happy to have a reason to be happy, like them.
But then it all went horribly wrong. . . .
And Tori can still see the devastated look on Beck's face at the hospital, Oh, Beck, I'm so sorry, it's all my fault, and now they're de-
She jerks up, in her bed, alone, sweating, and Beck is gone again.
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"Ah, Scarlett, what a poor liar you are! Yes, life has a glitter now - of a sort. That's what's wrong with it. The old days had no glitter but they had a charm, a beauty, a slow-paced glamour..."
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She looks in the mirror, observing the lines near her eyes, her mouth, on her forehead, and thinks, When did I get so old?
This isn't how she pictured her life going. She wanted to grow old, with Andre, together (the four of them) happy and full of joy. She wants to be able to see the lines on her face and know they mean something, a sign of getting older but after living a full life.
Instead, she sees a woman who grew up too early and too alone. She sees a woman whose husband has forgotten how to love her, who's forgotten how to love anything. She wonders if he can remember how to feel at all, wonders if she imagined the man he was before his face became a mask. She wonders if, up in heaven, Jade and Andre remember her at all.
She looks at her wedding ring, too, and wonders if it even means anything to either of them now.
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At night, as they lay under the covers, he sings her songs of heartbroken smiles, empty promises, and forgettable forevers - but at least he still sings.
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"Do you remember," he said - and a warning bell in her mind rang: Don't look back! Don't look back!
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She wishes she could just talk to him, like they used to, when they were just best friends and not lovers (what are they now?).
But she doesn't know how to talk to him - the only way he was ever good at expressing his emotions was through acting, but he doesn't do that anymore. When she asks him about it, he says he can't find it in him to become someone else.
Sometimes, she wishes she could be like him - maybe she would understand him more. But she also knows his way of living (unhappy with the present, scared of the future - so he looks to the past) would make her even more depressed.
She knows the only way to keep moving forward is to look forward, and he can't look forward - the past is the only thing he'll ever know.
(Oh, Beck, I'm so sorry, it's all my fault -)
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"Do you remember," he said and under the spell of his voice the bare walls of the little office faded and the years rolled aside and they were riding country bridle paths together in a long-gone spring. As he spoke, his light grip tightened on her hand and in his voice was the sad magic of old half-forgotten songs... There was music in his voice, the music of fiddles and banjos to which they had danced in the white house that was no more... And old friends came trooping back, laughing as though they had not been dead these many years... Over it all rested a sense of security, a knowledge that tomorrow could only bring the same happiness today had brought...
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Sometimes, when she thinks about it, she's just so fucking happy Jade West is dead. Jade would have killed her if she knew Tori had married Beck. Besides, she thinks, if they had never gotten in the car, she would have been happier with Andre - but she hates admitting that to herself (because Beck was all she ever wanted).
Jade wouldn't have been as caring or understanding, and she definitely would have left after hearing Beck sob into his pillow, night after night.
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She lays in her bed, barely moving, thinking about how a drunk driver running a red light can change people's lives forever. If only she had been in the backseat... If only she had looked to the right a split second sooner...
She's also selfish, because if she were dead, it would be someone else's job to clean up Beck's messes, to deal with his empty smiles and broken eyes, and to listen to his strangled screams at night.
She wishes she were dead.
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"Now I know why you can't be happy," she though sadly." I never understood before... But - why, we are talking like old people talk! Old people looking back fifty years... But we're not old!"
But when she looked at Ashley he was no longer young and shining...
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Sometimes she wishes she was living that night again.
The screaming, the blood, the loud sirens, a man either dead or passed out lying beside her on the ground. Jade and Andre's lifeless bodies, mangled beyond repair, being loaded into an ambulance. Being taken to the hospital, being completely overwhelmed by the feelings of guilt, hatred, confusion, injury, and she just wants to curl up and cry.
And then, seeing Beck's face - seeing the look of utter denial as she tells him what happened (Oh, Beck, I'm so sorry, it's all my fault, and now -) and then the devastation kicks in - his wife and his best friend, and hers too, are both gone and they'll never come back.
She doesn't want to relive any of the pain, but she sometimes wishes (in the corner of her mind) that maybe, seeing emotion on Beck's face for the last time would force her to act somehow, to change the watching and waiting that would come after, the wishing that she'd done something different.
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"I shouldn't have let him make me look back," she thought despairingly. "I was right when I said I'd never look back. It hurts too much, it drags at your heart till you can't ever do anything else except look back... This is what happens when you look back to happiness, this heartbreak, this discontent."
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Now and again, she thinks back to that time.
She doesn't like to, though, because it causes her too much pain, but sometimes she just can't help herself.
They were all so happy, she can't stand it. Didn't they realize that it would have to come to an end? Didn't they have any idea of what pain was? Didn't they know that life couldn't possibly exist of only happily-ever-afters?
Of course they didn't. They were young, whole, untouched and unbroken. In love with each other and themselves, and didn't have a care in the world.
Living in California, their summers by the pool, singing and dancing and having a ball. Kissing Andre for the first time, watching the sunset on the beach, hoping Beck and Jade would resolve their latest argument, never knowing what would come next and being fine with that. They were the rich and future famous and successful and attractive but they had each other, and that's all they needed.
Robbie always had jokes and Cat always had laughs ready for them. Jade, who would smile at her, Jade, her archenemy but one of her best friends. Andre, her true love, her other half, who always had looks of pure adoration ready for her...
She always knew her life was too good to be true.
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Beck lives in that time.
He can't let go, he can't and won't accept the present. Beck, Jade and Andre are dead and there's nothing we can do. . . .
She hasn't let go either, but at least she knows what's reality and what's dreaming.
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"We've come a long way since those days, Ashley," she said, trying to steady her voice... "We had fine notions then, didn't we?" And then, in a rush, "Oh, Ashley, nothing has turned out as we expected!"
"It never does," he said. "Life's under no obligation to give us what we expect. We take what we get and are thankful it's no worse than it is."
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She's not clueless.
She knows there will come a day when it will all just become too much, and Beck won't be able to handle putting on a show anymore. She knows that someday soon Beck will realize that he's missed Jade much more than he realized, and he can't go on, and Tori isn't good enough.
She knows. She's not clueless.
She knows one day Beck will stop singing his sad songs, and she'll wake up alone, and all that will be left is silence.
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"I like these days better," she said. But she did not meet his eyes as she spoke. "There's always something exciting happening now, parties and so on. Everything's got a glitter to it. The old days were so dull." (Oh, lazy days and warm still twilights! The high soft laughter coming from the quarters! The golden warmth life had then and the comforting knowledge of what all tomorrows would bring! How can I deny you?)
"I like these days better..."
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REVIEW. I've been working on this for a while!
PLEASE DO NOT FAVORITE WITHOUT REVIEWING!