title: though the truth may vary
fandom: the mara dyer trilogy
characters: mara dyer/noah shaw
information: canon | 1,390 words | oneshot
summary: mara dyer meets noah shaw, and together they live in a world of beautiful disasters.
( we live each day as if breathing was easy )
Mara Dyer is happy: she has a best friend, a boyfriend, and a friend that has attached on her best friend like a leech. Her grades aren't perfect, but she's content with her B average. Her family is stable, her parents are loving, and her brothers deserve an award.
She's sixteen, and if she pauses the clock, she could almost say she has it all.
-/-
She intertwines her fingers into Jude's and follows him into the dark shadows of the asylum. The ominous feeling in the pit of her stomach doesn't go away, not when dust lines nearly every surface and the floorboard creaks with every slight movement. She catches bursts of horror illuminated by Claire's video camera, a shaky and inconsistent light source in the dark.
Jude leads her away, squirreling the two of them away into the privacy of an old patient room.
He presses his mouth to hers and forces his tongue into hers; he traps her against a wall, hands skimming her waist. Something in her wants him to stop, wants to press the breaks and erase this night from her memory, but something about the person she calls a boyfriend paralyzes her.
His hands continue down to her jeans and her eyes are set with terror and revulsion. Something is pulsing in her body, not rage, but the kindling of a fire. She wants to burn the place down, burn Jude to charred bits of bone – and then she hears the elevator.
-/-
Mara is slowly lulled back into reality with a series of monotonous beeps. She opens one eye, then the other. She sees things, bits of color and shapes around her, but she doesn't know how to tell the difference between light and dark anymore.
Her family uproots their life in Rhode Island for her, together they make the trip down to Florida. It's a place for oranges and perpetual sunshine; nobody ever says a word about collapsed buildings and rubble.
She misses home, if she even knew where home is anymore. There's a new house, a new school, and everything from her pillow to her bedroom doorknob is new. Her life can't help but feel like a self-help pamphlet for new beginnings, a snapshot taken from a furniture catalogue pasted over a mountain of problems and instability.
-/-
Her first thought when she sees Noah Shaw is that he's beautiful.
Her first thought when she meets Noah Shaw is that he's an asscrown.
Her second thought after she talks to Noah Shaw is that his crown must be superglued.
She doesn't know what to expect when he offers to help her with Mabel. She's deadlocked between her sympathy for the poor dog and avoiding to have to breathe the same air as Noah Shaw. Noah takes Mabel in his arms and something in him changes, but all he lets Mara see is one of his signature half-smiles.
He kisses her, or she kisses him. She's not entirely sure of the details, because all Mara remembers is how quickly it ended after. She vaguely recalls his face, inches away from hers, and she wonders if it would really be that bad if it happened again.
Then he rescues her sketchbook and she's as good as gone.
-/-
Mara should have known Noah Shaw is filthy rich, because she sees as much when he drives her to his house in his Prius. It's not a house, really, more like someone threw money at a group of contractors and told them to build the largest mansion they could possibly imagine.
She tries to pay for lunch, because beneath Noah's pretentious taste in music and fluency in five different languages, he has very good judgment in food. He waves his black AmEx in his hand and she knows well enough not to argue.
Mara, believe it or not, thinks she might be enjoying herself. She tries to believe Noah will say the same when he picks her up off the gallery floor and into his car. She's not exactly mortified, but she comes pretty close when he admits he knows what happened to her before sketchbooks and green dresses and Florida became her life.
He takes her hand and doesn't think about letting go. She doesn't either, yet opens the car door anyway.
-/-
Mara has always hated her birthday, but seeing Noah Shaw on her front doorstep on a Sunday makes her happier about turning seventeen.
She never realized how well her hand fits into his or how closely her fingers are drawn to his. It's magnetic, it's compulsive, and it's what they need.
"You have a thing for animal crackers," Noah says, nodding to his bed.
Mara pulls in his sheets around her in a cocoon, letting the crackers cascade to the floor.
"Shut up, Noah."
"My pleasure."
His fingers trail the skin of her neck and tangle in her hair, and the taste of him is intoxicating and thrilling. Mara might not remember her name when his mouth is on hers, yet she definitely knows she wants more. She presses her body into his, eager to be closer.
Then, overwhelmingly, she experiences a stillness beneath her. Mara's blood runs cold and she begins screaming, although she's not quite sure about what. Her head begins spinning and god damn it, she needs Noah to be alive and breathing.
"That was the best dream I have ever had, although I'm probably going to have to spend an eternity in hell for it." Noah stirs awake, faintly aware of the stinging sensation in his cheek.
"You weren't breathing," Mara chokes out the words, nearly hysterical. "You were dying."
He shakes his head. "Don't be ridiculous, Mara."
-/-
She doesn't know what to make of Noah's confession. He heard her that night back in December and he has the ability to heal things, yet she can only try to hold back tears and hope the world returns to some degree of normalcy.
In this crazy fucking world, maybe she's not all alone.
-/-
Mara's hands are shaking, even when Noah drives away from the zoo and directs her into his room. She's a murderer, she comes to realize, and she hates herself for it. If there was anything she was more sure of, then it's waiting for Noah to turn his back and hate her too.
Noah tries to take a step closer to her and Mara quickly moves away. He steps forward anyway, ignoring her noise of protest, until he's close enough to touch.
Somehow, she believes it when he says he will fix her.
-/-
Sitting on the courts steps, they await the verdict to her father's trial. She wants vengeance, and she's prepared to face the consequences.
Her newfound sense of justice lands her father in the hospital, with a bullet wound she can claim responsibility for.
There are times when she can truthfully say she doesn't deserve Noah, but she can never say she doesn't need him. He's there as her one benchmark of stability, and it's what Mara clings onto while she carries her confession to the police precinct.
Instead of righting wrongs, she's faced with more faults. She sees Jude, and the world around her begins to fall apart in the periphery of her own darkness.
-/-
At seventeen, Mara Dyer could say she doesn't have much – she can't even vouch for her own sanity – but she has Noah Shaw, and it's enough for her.
(author's note: )
There is nearly not enough fic in this fandom, so I thought I'd attempt to contribute something worthwhile since this series devoured my winter break.
Apologies for the fact that this was basically The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer in summary, but I began this with a completely different mindset and sort of forgot where I was going with this mid-way and this is what it ended up as. I took some small liberties with the plot and even siphoned out some dialogue, so in effect, this really does read like a summation of the novel.
Also, this is in present tense, which I don't write in often.