Changed
Author's Note: This is after the Fisher job and it's assuming everything went peachy keen at the end, which in my mind it did. This is hopefully a one shot.
"So the Mark will come through the park to the restroom we placed here…." Ariadne said quietly as she and Arthur walked through the small park as children played on the park equipment.
"Be careful Gregory!" She heard someone call out. She froze and turned to locate the familiar voice. Arthur noticed she stopped and turned to look at her, she was pale as a ghost and looking an older brunette woman sitting on a park bench.
"Are you okay" He asked.
"Yeah, I'm fine," She replied, not taking her eyes off of her. "I'll just be a minute." She said before walking over to the woman.
Vanessa Loring was watching her six-year-old son play on the swing sets. This vacation was just what they needed. She looked up to see a very familiar young woman.
"Juno!" She said with a smile as she stood up and immediately wrapped her in a hug which she returned after a moment. "It's good to see you again, I tried to get in touch with you after I heard about…" She said, trailing off. Ariadne gently detached herself from her and gave her a sad smile.
"Actually I changed my name to Ariadne, every time I heard someone say Juno I heard him saying it." She said, not able to hide the sadness in her eyes. "How are you two doing now?"
"We're doing great, the jobs going good and Greg's going into school soon.
"That's totally awesome." Ariadne gushes, Vanessa smiles, seeing a little bit of the Juno she used to know peeking out for a minute.
All of a sudden a little boy runs up to them and takes a drink out of the juice box beside Vanessa. He had his mother's brown eyes and his fathers curly light brown hair.
"Greg, this is Ariadne, she's an old friend of mine." She says to him as he unwittingly looks up into his birth mother's smiling eyes.
"Hi there." She says, unable to find anything else to say.
"Hi," He says after he drains the juice box. "nice to meet you, I'm going to go play on the swings now, bye." He says before running off.
"I should go to." She says. "Someone's waiting for me." She says, gesturing towards Arthur with her head. Vanessa tilts her head and looks at him.
"Is he your boyfriend?" She asked with a smile. Ariadne opens her mouth, unable to come up with an answer for a second before shaking her head.
"No, we're just friends."
"Oh, you should be, you two would look cute together and… he seems nice." She says, not saying what she was thinking, that it's been a long time she read in the paper about Paulie Bleakers death in a car accident. When she had read about and saw the picture of Juno at the accident seen crying and the picture of him before his death and how much he resembled her son it wasn't hard to connect the dots. She had tried to contact Juno but was told she wasn't speaking to anyone, or at all.
"Yeah," Ariadne nodded. "I know." The look on her face said that she knew what she was going to say, and that she was glad she didn't. After Paulie's death she didn't know what to do. He had died in her arms, whispering her name over and over again, asking is she was okay. Anytime anyone said her name his face came to mind, so her father let her change it. And when she decided to move to Paris to study architecture her parents let her, provided she called them once a week. She knew they hoped one day she would call and be their cheery unusual Juno again, but she didn't know if that could ever happen again, she still couldn't look at orange tic tacs without feeling a ping in her chest.
"It was good seeing you again." Vanessa said, then handed her a card. "If you ever want to talk…" Ariadne took the card and slipped it into her pocket, her fingers brushing her copper bishop.
"I'll call, it was good to see you again. Bye" She said with a small wave that she retuned before walking away.
When she walked back to Arthur he had a quizzical look on his face.
"Who was that?" he asks.
"Just someone I used to know." She says before hearing Vanessa scream.
"Gregory don't!" She turned around whip fast to the swings as she saw him jumping from the high flying swing. Then he landed on his feet and threw his arms into the air.
"TADA!" He yells before Vanessa scoops him up into a tight hug demanding he never do that again. She turned around trying to catch her breath as the tears form in her eyes as the image of her high school boyfriends dead body filled her mind.
"Ariadne? Are you okay? Who are they? How do you know them?" He asked as he wrapped an arm around her shoulders, trying to calm her down.
"Do you really want know?" She asked, wondering if she should share her story with him. He nodded solemnly, worry for her entering his eyes.
"Yes I do." He said, his heart clenched with worry for her.
"Well, it all began with a chair…."
Author Notes: Well and there we go, if you want me to make it into a twofer just let me know.
