shine a light & guide me home
notes: I'm on a huge Jiberty kick. Lots of fics in the making and I just had to get this out. Very AU - I imagine a scenario where Liberty has an impossible time moving on from JT's death. a lot of it takes place in a nondescript afterlife. It's a silly and melodramatic piece, because that's the way I like it. Also, I miss these two and, because of their tragic fate, I have a hard time placing them in the context of the Degrassi universe.
--
He looks a lot younger when she sees him - younger than she remembered - like maybe their love was all in her head and she was just a stupid high school girl who didn't have her priorities straight (she chastises herself, even as a grown woman, like she's thirteen again and failing math class and her parents tell her to get her act together because doesn't she know everything she does reflects on them and Van Zandt's do not accept failure) and that being here is a mistake and there is more for her out there than this boy she used to know when she was a kid.
0o0
She is freezing cold in her bed, lips painted purple and eyes sealed shut. She doesn't feel anything but the chill and her age, which makes her feel the heaviest. Maybe she will always be that stupid little girl.
0o0
He doesn't even seem to be surprised and that bothers her (because it's been so long - so painfully long that the years have blended into each other and some days she still wakes up like the morning after he died, with that sick feeling in her stomach that comes with the realization that the previous day wasn't just a dream) and it pleases her (because it gets to her and because she's dignified and mature and doesn't need a scene).
She can't think properly and she runs on instinct. Picks her feet up and she's moving so fast she can't feel herself go, like she's flying or floating or she's the electric current attracted to his magnetic field - and it is full-force and fast and with an urgency she hasn't known in the longest time and he is there, right in her grasp; she reaches out before him, before hesitating. He doesn't have any qualms or doubts; he just stands there smiling, like he's amused at her because she's afraid to touch him, afraid for him to disappear.
The first thing he says to her is, "They don't have cheesefries in Heaven."
And that is enough. She throws her arms around him and holds him tightly and it is everything she's been missing in those years without him - she can feel herself now coalescing with herself then, young and alive and back where she belongs. But none of it matters so much anymore, the coldness or heaviness or the time that's passed between them, because he is here and finally -
Finally, she is free.
0o0
She has a lot to show for her age. She graduates at the top of her class at Smithdale, just like everyone expected, and sometimes she doesn't think of him at all. She is climbing her way up the ladder of success at her law firm at twenty seven. She keeps her friends from high school (she's Emma's bridesmaid and then, eventually, Manny's). She is proposed to once, she meets her son in person twice.
She picks up smoking at nineteen, is on antidepressants at twenty. She says his name in bed, and her live-in boyfriend moves out the following weekend. She is overworked and refuses to see doctors. She spends too much time with her son and his parents ask that she not call anymore. She doesn't listen and they change the number two weeks later.
When she falls apart, nobody is there to pick up the pieces.
0o0
Her words are rushed and she's saying things so fast he can't even hear them. He hair is longer and undamaged by chemicals and overheated curling irons and straighteners, but he's the same, only whole and like it was before, right before she knew that it was over. Right before he left her; when she realized it was worth it, that he was worth it. Before they could've had a fighting chance.
But he's not thinking of these things. He's had enough time to get past that. He's been here while she's just been wasting her time, because if she had known that this was what was waiting for her, she would've just left the broken pieces on the floor instead of making those pathetic attempts to glue them back together.
"JT," she says and hurts like not being able to catch your breath because she hasn't said his name in years.
He smiles. "Liberty."
"What's happening?"
"I think," he says slowly, "I'm having deja vu."
She stares at him and he nods toward her dress. She feels the fabric through her fingers and when she looks down, she gasps. It's white with black print. The dress she wore the night she lost him.
"I think," she says finally, echoing him in faint disbelief, "I'm hallucinating."
And still, he is smiling. He reaches for her hand and it's warm. He is warm.
0o0
Emma, Manny and Liberty clear a day every year on the anniversary of his death. They talk to his headstone like he can hear them and they talk about their lives and talk about what he's missing. It's all very depressing and nobody says his name. Liberty walks away when she feels like crying and lights a cigarette.
"Do you think he'd be this much of a disaster had it been me?" she asks, exhaling a puff of smoke.
Manny places one hand on her shoulder. "Don't say that, Liberty. It never would've been you."
"But he's the one who left," she says bitterly. "We weren't even together and look at me."
"I am looking at you," Emma says, staring straight into her eyes. She adds with startling conviction, "You are a strong, educated woman who has been through more in your past than most people do in their lifetime. It's okay to fall apart sometimes."
"Yeah," Manny agrees and smiles. "Just as long as you always come back in one piece."
It's what they say to lighten the seriousness of the situation. To pretend that Liberty isn't disappearing before their eyes. To pretend that Emma isn't telling Manny behind her back how anti-feminist it is to throw her future away for a high school boyfriend and Manny isn't inching her way out of Liberty's life because the only reality she can handle is her own and doesn't know why Liberty won't just "get better already."
0o0
"I haven't been this happy in a long time," she tells him, smiling through her tears.
"Then why are you crying?" He reaches his hand to her face, wiping the tears away.
"Why couldn't I make it work?" she asks. "Why couldn't I make it without you?"
"Maybe we just weren't cut out for that world," he says and it sounds so ridiculous that she has to choke back a laugh.
"There we go." He smiles, almost proud of himself. "It's been a while since I've heard you laugh."
"Yeah. Me, too."
They hold onto each other for a long time, until she's cried all of her tears. It is familiar and she can't fathom the world she left anymore.
"So," she says, pulling apart, "there are no cheese fries here?"
Well, almost.
0o0
"I sat there," Liberty says to faceless, nameless therapist on an idle Thursday, "on the cold cement. It was dark and I couldn't see anything, but - and I don't care how stupid it sounds - I could feel him dying. His blood was on my clothes. My hands. And he had this scared look on his face. You could just see him, like he was pleading with God to spare him his life. I know it happened so fast, but that's what I remember."
"Did you ever get angry?" the therapist asks, and Liberty thinks that's a stupid and vague question.
"I guess so."
"Do you ever think about the person who stabbed JT?"
She winces at the sound of his name. "I don't see anger as a logical response."
"Why is that?"
"I couldn't control what he did."
"Going through that at such a young age, it can be very traumatic," she notes. "Especially being the one to find him."
"Yeah," Liberty agrees. "But I wasn't angry. I don't get that angry. The only time I've ever been angry like that is...at him. And for stupid things. Things that don't even matter anymore."
0o0
"Why does being here feel like such a relief?" she asks idly as they walk together, her hand in his. She feels light, like air.
"Maybe some people are just better off dead!" he says matter-of-factly, and she hits him but laughs despite herself.
"Hey, JT?"
"Hmm?"
"Why weren't we meant to be?"
0o0
"...please leave a message and we'll get back to you as soon as possible."
The familiar tone of the voicemail beeps. She clutches her baby's picture in her hands. Even then, he looked a lot like JT.
"Hi, this is Liberty again. I've left you about two voicemails and haven't heard from you. Please call me back. I want to see my son. You have to let me see my son one more time. Just once more and I'll never call again, I swear. Please."
The desperation in her voice makes her want to throw up because she knows they'll never call her back. She throws the phone against the wall.
0o0
"You have to stop asking questions," he tells her. "That's what the real world is for."
0o0
"I can't believe I'm going to go be thirty and I have yet to sustain a functional relationship," Liberty says over ice cream with Manny one evening. "Even you settled down."
"Maybe," Manny says hesitantly, "it's because no guy can compete with...you know."
Liberty sighs. "I know."
"I'm really worried about you," she says through a mouthful of rocky road. "You were doing so well, and now it's like you're completely stunted. Perpetually sixteen."
"I have made some accomplishments," she snaps.
Manny scoops out the last of the ice cream and gets up to take her bowl to the kitchen. She kisses the side of Liberty's mouth. "I know, babe." And then, from the kitchen, "Did you take your meds today?"
0o0
"Maybe we were too tragic for life," he says finally. "I mean, with my sharp, witty sense of humor and unbelievable popularity and you being a grade-grubbing know-it-all and everything...it was doomed from the start."
0o0
"I know you're there," she says, phone pressed against her ear, talking to an answering machine again. It's late; going on one o'clock in the morning. Starved for a connection, ignored, and another year older, she begins to yell. Through her tears, she screams as loud as she can into the phone.
0o0
"Life just came at us too fast."
"Life always gets in the way like that."
0o0
When her heart finally gives out, she looks peaceful. The monitor begins to beep and she can feel herself slipping, catching between two worlds, cold and alone and imagining her friends here and him there. She feels stuck on the precipice of life and the afterlife. Of her present, of her past.
She can almost see him there, waving at her.
She holds her breath and jumps.
0o0
"If I had lost you, I probably would've gone crazy way before you did," he says.
"Shut up." She rolls her eyes, but the smile renders it ineffective.
"You're way more braver than me," he insists.
"And way better at grammar." She nudges him with her knee.
A warm breeze brushes past them.
"I waited for you," he says. His honesty makes him look away.
She smiles this big, toothy smile and even giggles a little. "How the tables have turned! My stomach kind of hurts a little."
He kisses her then and they melt into it as everything turns to white.