Title: Beautiful, Once
Author: all things holy
Rating: PG
Character: Patty-centric
Email: allthingsholy[at]yahoo[dot]com; feedback is grand
Disclaimer: Oh, if wishing made it so.
Summary: "It's better to burn out than fade away."
Spoilers: None
A/N: This was written for the TWoP Ficathon Challenge Season: Summer 2004 Theme Challenge, 'Things You Thought You Knew'. It is just one of many fantastic stories that can be found at geocities[dot]com[slash]ficathon2004 so check it out. Good stuff, all of it. (There, I go by Chiaroscuro. Yeah, I'm a bigwig.)
A/N 2: For Lula, who rocks so thoroughly. Thanks for the advice and the help and the hand-holding. Also, thanks for inserting the tiny bit of non-angst into the story. I'm your Wing(Wo)man.
There aren't very many things that she's sure of anymore. She says this like she's an old woman, and she supposes that by comparison to most she is, but she doesn't consider herself any older than the woman she was who danced onstage and slept with famous men and glowed so brightly. Still, the things she's been so sure of all her life have deserted her; she's lost what she thought was important, has had it replaced with new facts, new figures, new decisions to make. She's looked around her empty house and re-evaluated the decision to never have children, wondered how she could have justified being alone with a fear of losing her figure.
She sleeps in bed at night, alone, and wonders why she demanded so much from the men who loved her. She's easy to love, she knows it, but she also knows it's hard to hold her. She's wondered why she was always so sure that men had to love her most of all, above everything. She's wondered why she still settled for men who didn't exactly love her at all.
She thinks about the things she knew and knows that she's losing most of what she's had her whole life. She sees now that it all slipped away a long time ago.
Still, there's one thing that she's always known, will always know, that has never forsaken her.
She was beautiful, once.
She always knew she shone too brightly for this town, this little town that never changed, that never grew. She filled every inch of the space she was in so completely that she had to leave, had to find a place that wasn't too small for the beautiful woman she was. It wasn't that she hated the town; she's always had, will always have, a soft spot for the people and the eccentricities and the feel of Stars Hollow.
Growing up, she was adored by her parents, their friends, her teachers, her peers. They all wanted to be close to her, to borrow a little bit of her light for themselves; she's always been a giving creature. She saw the way they looked at her, the boys, the men. She knew what they wanted and she knew that she needed something in return, to be held, to be touched just so. As much as she wanted to be famous, to have all eyes upon her, as much as she wanted anything, she wanted to be loved.
By the time she left town, she'd made a reputation for herself. She was fast, they said, she was dirty. But they still couldn't deny that she was beautiful, that she was special. She had a voice like an angel's and legs like a pin-up model's and breasts that were perfect. She took all three assets with her on her way to California, and the last two got her farther than she'd expected. She was in Hollywood, finally, but it was harder than she thought it would be. She traded pieces of herself for small parts, little bits of fame; she danced in the background, she sang from behind. They were miniscule roles, not the glamorous leads she'd expected at all, but being on stage in front of an audience thrilled her more than anything she'd ever known. She loved the look of the lights in her eyes, the sounds of dance shoes against hard wood. In those moments, what she lost and what she gained were almost equal; then, it was almost worth it. But afterwards, backstage, coming down from the high, from the rush, the ache settled back in and she started to fade just a little.
When she met Sinjin, she'd lost part of her sparkle, part of the thing that made her so confident, so sure of herself. But he made her feel beautiful, made her feel like she was the only woman on earth. He was tall and dark and mysterious and adored her. It was a fast affair, then a faster decision to get married. They didn't have much, but the things they did have lasted them long enough; love, passion, youth. They spent full days in bed, full days just being together with no distractions. She'd never known anything like this, like the complete fulfillment of a person in someone else; she loved being in love. But he held on too tightly, didn't understand the things she had to do to get the places she wanted to go. She earned the names 'Queen of the Casting Couch' and 'First-Time Divorcee' in the same month. She blamed it all on him, blamed the dead marriage on the fact that he just didn't understand her, tried to cover the fact that she was heartbroken; she didn't quite succeed. The thing that hurt the most was the fact that she didn't doubt that he still loved her, but now she knew that that wasn't always enough.
She latched onto John in an effort to get Sinjin out of her mind. He was a plain man, unsure of why this still beautiful woman wanted to spend her nights with a man like him. She never gave him an opportunity to hurt her, never got more than vaguely attached. Still, he was rich and he loved her so she married him. It's not a time in her life she thinks of often, sharing a bed with a man who slept so soundly that he couldn't hear her cry herself to sleep. She thinks that maybe those tearful nights are when she lost so much of herself, when she started to grow duller, to fade so noticeably.
It was harder now, getting the parts she'd had when she was younger. She'd lost much of her charm, much of her shine, and there were girls now, younger and more beautiful, willing to do the things she was to get where they wanted to go. She had to try harder, had to put more effort into it, and she began to hate this business she'd been so sure she was destined to dominate.
Sergio came next, after John. She was older now, more desperate. He wasn't good to her the way that Sinjin and even John had been. He drank too much and cursed too much and liked her too little. He was rough and he hit and she had to quit auditioning because of the bruises. She's never told anyone too much about her marriage to Sergio, about the years she misplaced her pride. She still needed to be loved, needed to be told that she was beautiful. But her eyes, once so bright, were lackluster and dull. She hates that she didn't even get to end the marriage on her own terms; Sergio owed too much and earned too little and didn't see eye to eye with the people he borrowed from. So she was a 32-year-old widower and two-time divorcee. The dullness in her eyes had changed to something darker, something more rigid; she was bitter now and older and fading away.
She stayed in Hollywood, though parts had almost completely dried up; having rediscovered her pride, she decided that she couldn't go back to Stars Hollow so completely pathetic. She worked and she worked hard, as a waitress and a maid, saving up money, trying to reclaim some of what had made her so stunning. She still auditioned occasionally for small parts, rarely getting them; her dreams had faded, replaced with a harsher reality. She hardly resembled the woman she'd once been.
She ran into Sinjin completely by accident, more than a decade since she'd last seen him. She'd changed far more than he had, but a few things remained the same; the tenderness with which he held her hand as she cried, the feel of his hands in her hair, the look of love in his eyes. Time hadn't diminished the feelings between them, but they were more wary now. They didn't rush into marriage like they had the first time; to an outsider it might've resembled a proper courtship. She could tell that he was waiting for the other shoe to drop, for something horrible to intrude on the beauty they'd managed to rebuild. It was a slow process, the gaining of trust on both sides; that she wouldn't leave him and that he'd always be with her. They understood then the different ways there were to abandon the person you love.
They remarried, a small civil ceremony. She'd managed to get parts of herself back, to find a bit of the light she'd lost. She started to see, much later, how dramatically Sinjin had changed. He was sharper, rougher around the edges. He loved her, she was sure of that much, but never quite trusted her. As much as she tried to hold him, and as much as she tried to reassure him, he couldn't help thinking that she was cheating on him; he got even in his own way, coming home late at night and smelling of strange perfume. She tried to turn a blind eye at first, tried to tell herself that it was only a phase, that he still loved her most of all. Even now, she's fairly certain that he's never loved anyone as much as he loved her.
It was hard, having to relearn the things you thought you'd be done with. Their love still wasn't enough. He couldn't trust her and she couldn't make him see that he was wrong. He left her a second time and she lost all the parts of herself she'd been able to rebuild; there was darkness now in the places she'd shone so brilliantly. She had to start over again and it broke her. She didn't even know how visibly he'd managed to damage her.
It took her too many years and too much strength to rebuild herself. Finally, she was able to stand up straight, to look at her reflection without seeing how much of herself she'd lost. She headed back to Stars Hollow, expected to be hailed as a failure and ridiculed and pitied. She wasn't entirely sure that she could take it.
But the things she'd always hated about Stars Hollow saved her; its unchanging nature, its unconditional love. She found solace in the town, in the people that she'd known when she was younger. She immersed herself in the things that were familiar, in the festivals and the town meetings and the gossip. She bought and opened the dance studio because there were still some things she knew how to do. She would always miss performing, always miss the sweat and the rush and cheers of the crowd. But looking back, she saw that it wasn't worth what she had sacrificed; for as much as she gave, she didn't get near enough in return.
It'd changed her, shaped her into a different person, that much anyone could see. She was calmer now, less restless, more eager to stand still. She kept to her students and her friends and her town. She meddled in an endearing way, but there was a purpose behind it. She'd had such a bright future and kept her eye out now for ways she could help others with destinies bigger than themselves.
Now, she teaches beautiful girls to stand straight, shoulders back, chest out. She never quite made it, was never quite a star, but one of these little girls will be, she's sure of it. One will have enough beauty, enough strength, enough of the things she was missing and couldn't ever make up for.
She'll tell anyone who'll listen the stories of her youth. No one's quite discerned that they're really all that she has left; she tries to pull everyone into the past with her so that she's not there alone, faded into the background. Over the years, she's lost her faith, her looks, her innocence. She's grown unsure of many things, but there's one thing she's still certain of, balanced now by something she's spent a lifetime learning was a mistake.
She knows that she was beautiful, once.
She used to know that would be enough. Now she knows how wrong she was.