My Happiness
Acepilot

AN - No.41 in the Road series - this fic is massively reliant on the song, which is such a beautiful and stirringly emotional piece that I don't think you can really get it across with just words. But what it touched in me produced this. I hope you all enjoy it. If you're wondering what the hell is going on, try reading "Missing Days", no.28 in the Road series. It might fill in some of the blanks. Please review.

Disclaimer - the characters contained within from AGU are property of KlaskyCsupo Animation and absolutely not my property. If you're reading at Luke's, then the lyrics contained within are written by Powderfinger and remain their sole property.

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I try to bring myself to sign the papers.

It must have been...what, a week now since I got them? Every day since then, since I went down to the courthouse and picked them up, I've sat here and stared at them, and I'm not sure if I'm trying to talk myself into signing them, or talk myself out of signing them. I don't know which one is more right.

On the first day, James kind of watched me staring at them for a while. He knew what they were. He's not stupid. On the contrary. He's very bright. And he knew. But he didn't say anything. Perhaps he sensed it wasn't his place, or that I just didn't want to talk about it. Either way, I'm not fussed. Though I must admit I'm surprised at how well he's handling it.

Maybe he's just better emotionally equipped to deal with it. Or maybe he was smart enough to see this as an inevitability.

On the second day, Andy asked me what I was doing. Just a plain, casual, "Hey Mom, what are those papers?" And it tore me up inside. How can I do this to Andy? To James, to Cassie? How can I put them through this sort of thing.

But then a voice comes to me in my mind and lets me remember that it's really no worse than what he's doing to them already.

On the third day, I started filling in the details. Thinking about the little things that would need to be taken care of. The custody issues, how I would support the four of us on a single wage - though a psychologist's paycheck is pretty healthy, it's still not something I'd really had to worry about up until now. But I'm becoming aware that I'm going to have to start thinking about it. And it's frightening me a little bit.

Because, for perhaps the first time in my life, things aren't quite going to plan, and it's in a bad way. Sure, I didn't plan to elope with Tommy the night he proposed to me, and I guess we didn't really plan to have James, either, but at least those deviations from the layout were wonderful mistakes. Things that happened that we didn't expect but that went oh-so-well. I can't remember being happier in my life than that night at the hotel, or as the sun rose on James' birthday.

This is a deviation from the plan that I never wanted to have happen. But now it is happening.

On the fourth day I sat by the phone and thought about calling Phil a million times. I wanted to call him while he was at work and tell him what was going on, tell him that I was going to leave Tommy, tell him that I was falling apart inside. I wanted to get him over here so he could...I don't really know what I wanted him to do. To help me sign the papers? To, for once and for all, convince me that this was a bad idea? I don't know. All I knew was that I needed someone here who could take the pressure off me, for once in this whole mess, so I could know if what I was doing was right or wrong.

Phil was the only one who came to mind. He's the only one I would trust with something like this. The only other person I would ever confide in would be Tommy, and here, that just wasn't an option.

On the fifth day, it was Saturday, and we were at the park - but my brain was back on the kitchen table with those papers. As I watched Andy tear around the baseball field, having fun, a wonderful display of the innocence of youth, I envied him. I envied him in that he didn't know anything about what was going on. Had not a clue. He was happy, running around, playing on the swings, living his life how he wanted to live it. Not worried about money or about supporting a family or whether he still loved the person that he had sworn to be with until his dying day.

Which was the first time that I had ever doubted my love for Tommy, or his love for me.

I couldn't believe what I'd thought, at first. The fact that Tommy loved me had, for so long, been one of the constants of my life, something that, like breathing, was just taken for granted. As sure as the sun rose and set, and gravity kept me pinned to the earth, Tommy Pickles loved me. It was something I'd always known, even every time we'd fought when we were younger, and then every time we'd fought recently - blazing rows that he was never here, often punctuated by the fact that they were held over trans-Atlantic phone calls. But even during the most powerful of screaming matches with my husband, never had I doubted that he loved me, or that I loved him.

But as I sat here watching my son play, I realized I was questioning that very thing.

Part of me was immediately horrified at the very thought. Tommy loved me. He must. It was true, it really was...but then, another part of me was wondering if, maybe, that was just a childish dream. Maybe when we were 18 and young and crazy and stupid, we thought we loved each other. Maybe even when we were in our 20's and had a son who we loved very much, maybe we thought that love for him was also love for each other. But maybe it wasn't, really. Maybe it was just something so strong it could, for a little while, overcome the obstacle of our fading desire for each other.

We've always been kind of the...vanilla, couple, I guess. We're boring. We've been together since high school, with not a major drama to our name - just the minor problem of the fact that my husband's career has him globetrotting while I might as well already be a single mother. But try explaining that as a problem to a person standing on the street. No, we were never like anyone else. Not like Phil and Kimi's explosive break-up in the last year of high school, not like Chuckie and Angelica's endless little amusing arguments, and certainly nothing like the never-ending teen-angst scenario of Dil and Amanda. We were just...us. A few tiffs, but nothing serious.

But maybe that just goes to show that we just don't care enough, or something.

On the sixth day, I was about to sign the papers. I had them all ready. I'd not slept a wink the previous night, I had cried the night away, partly horrified at the thoughts that had been running through my head but partly in despair over the fact that they were probably true and I could do nothing about it.

So, as I sat there, pen at the ready, about to sign, I was stopped. By Cassie.

Not that she did anything, she just came into the room and made herself a glass of cordial.

Cassie's birth was one of the most harrowing experiences of my life. I was about six and half months pregnant when we went on our little road trip to Calgary to watch the Flames/Sharks decider in the Western Conference. We wouldn't have gone at all, but Amanda had won the tickets while in San Jose, and with Phil's love of the Flames, there was really little other option. We left the kids with their grandparents, hired a bus and drove up to Canada - to accommodate for me being unable to fly. The game was great, I'll admit. But at the end of the second overtime, I went into labour, a horrifying 10 weeks premature.

They couldn't stop the contractions at Calgary Public. So, they delivered a girl so tiny that I probably could have cradled her in my cupped hands. If I'd been able to move.

I was unconscious - or barely conscious - for ages. Unable to move for days. And the doctors weren't sure if I - or little Cassandra Marie Lulu Pickles - was going to make it. Neither of us had come out the other side of the birth in exceptional shape.

In the end I was lucky to be declared unable to ever give birth again. But that little, one-or-two-day road trip to Calgary had turned into an epic, month long stay.

And I could never forget that Tommy was by me the whole way.

I can't remember a time when he wasn't holding my hand. And Phil told me that every second I was asleep - and even every second that I just can't seem to recall - he was there, at my bedside, trying to make sure I was taken care of.

And it's that memory - a memory that isn't even entirely mine - that reassures me, in some strange way, that he loves me.

But even that, I know, isn't quite enough. I can't be forever second fiddle to a career.

So, now, on the seventh day, I sit here, pen in hand, papers before me, and finally put one to the other, my looping signature reading Lillian Pickles in a harsh black-on-white print.

It makes me want to be sick.

Which is when the door opens.

"Lil?"

I get up slowly, not quite believing it, not trusting it to be real. I walk into the hallway and find him there, bags in hand, sunken eyes, but a smile on his face.

I nod. "Hey, Tommy. I thought you weren't going to be back for another fortnight."

He looks me straight in the eye, pain in his face at my words. When he'd told me that - the day before I got the papers - we'd yelled and screamed. We'd fought over the phone and the only consolation was that I couldn't see his eyes when I told him I hated him.

"I quit," he tells me.

I blink, once, slowly.

"You quit?"

"I told them that I couldn't do any more work overseas. That I was only available for films here in LA."

I feel myself going slightly weak at the knees. "You quit."

He nods.

Part of me wants to lunge forward and hug him and kiss him and then drag him to our bedroom and never let him go again, but I'm so afraid that if I touch him, he'll disappear into nothingness.

He seems to sense my indecision, dropping his bags and rushing forward to gather me into his arms, kissing me and making me feel...whole, again.

"You're not leaving?" I ask, struggling for breath through my tears.

"I'm not leaving."

For the first time in what seems like years, I smile.

He looks over my shoulder and sees the divorce papers on the kitchen table, but can't tell what they are from this distance. "Council forms?"

I shake my head. "Just some things that I don't think I'll be needing any more."

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