Disclaimer: I own nothing! Don't sue! All you will get is a shoelace!
A/N: I wrote season 3 based upon the events of Joan of Arc. At the end of each chapter I'll tell you how I referenced Joan to Joan. Actually, I might not, because I think I lost the paper where I wrote all of that down…
Joan sighed as she glanced outside. Rays of sun shown through her windows and she was vaguely aware of the sounds of mosquitoes invading her thoughts. The summer had been long, boring, and quite uneventful. God hadn't been around, which was surprising and disturbing at the same time, since Ryan Hunter had made more and more progress everyday. She wondered if she should have been doing something to stop him from becoming part of the school board, newspaper, and police force. The only three adults in my family are working with the devil. Joan thought bitterly to herself. Suddenly her cell phone rang, pulling her from her thoughts. She looked at the screen. God.
"Hello?"
"I know you where thinking about me, Joan."
"Way to stick around." She said. Then bluntly mumbled, "Shows how reliable you are."
"I thought I'd give you some time off." He stated simply.
"Yeah, okay, but now Ryan is even MORE ahead of the game, so in order to keep the devil from taking over Maryland I should-"
"Go with Grace."
Joan paused stupidly. "What?" She asked, exhausted.
"Go with-"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, I heard you", She told him impatiently. "Go where?"
God laughed. "Asking me questions? Maybe it has been to long…"
"It's a thousand degrees! I have no idea where Grace is! And if I don't find my bedroom floor my mom is gonna kill me…"
"She won't kill you, Joan."
"Why are you making me do this again?" She said with a breath of annoyance.
"I'm not making you do anything. Goodbye, Joan."
"Yeah, like I can ignore God!" She replied with angry sarcasm before hanging up her cell phone and throwing it across the room.
"You want to go where?"
"To that meeting you said you where going to."
"You want to go to an anarchist meeting." Grace said, not really asking, just presenting what she believed to be a stupid and untrue statement.
"…Yeah." Joan answered. "…Sounds cool."
"You do know they'll be protesting police and governmental propaganda being enforced on every rising citizen of the United States despite belief and personal reference of maturation?"
Joan threw her hands in the air. "Whoa-no idea what you just said."
Grace sighed. "Do you want to listen to a bunch of people bitch about the government for an hour?"
Joan paused. "Okay."
Grace nodded awkwardly. "Okay."
Will opened the back door with a sigh, knowing that work was taking away from his family. As he turned the corner he set eyes on a comforting and familiar sight: Helen cooking dinner. She turned away from the pot she was stirring to look at her husband, smiling.
"Hi, honey." He said with a lopsided smile before walking over and kissing her on the cheek.
"Hello stranger!" She said with a bit of fake sincerity, but cheerful to see him all the same.
"I'm sorry, Helen, really. Work has been a little crazy this week."
"A little? You got in at one AM this morning." He reached for a piece of macaroni and cheese and took it from the pot Helen was stirring. "Stop that, you can wait." She told him, laughing.
"Well, I'm very sorry and I miss you and I'll make it up to you tonight." He told her suggestively. He wrapped his arms around her waist as she turned around and smiled before kissing him.
"Son in the room." Kevin warned, wheeling into the kitchen.
Will moved to the table and sat down. "Oh", Helen put some macaroni and cheese on a plate. "Here you go, hope you're hungry."
Kevin put an apologetic expression on and said carefully, "I've….gotta work."
Helen's face fell. "Okay. Never mind."
Joan walked in and pulled her sneakers on, just as Luke walked down the stairs and stood there for a minuet. "Working on string theory, need food."
"Okay, sit." Will told him, as Kevin wheeled out the back door.
"Goodbye all!" He said enthusiastically.
Luke paused. "Need food…upstairs."
"And where are you going?" Helen asked Joan.
"Anarchist meeting with Grace."
"I went to one of those once. They made me burn my shoes." Luke said calmly.
"You're not eating?" Helen asked Joan.
"I'll eat. Upstairs." Luke said eagerly.
"Nah, I'll grab something on the way."
"I'm…really hungry." Luke said uncertainly. Helen held a plate with macaroni out to him silently. He grabbed it and ran upstairs. "Thank you!"
Joan finished tying her shoe and stood up. "Bye guys!" And with that, the Girardi kitchen was suddenly quiet.
Helen looked at Will. "Hungry?"
"The government has power-they aren't worrying about us. They care about themselves and if their beliefs are turned into laws or not. Corporations don't worry or think about the people they're scamming, they simply scam."
"You agree with this stuff?" Joan asked Grace out of the corner of her mouth.
"I am here for one reason."
The young looking man in the middle of the room continued speaking. "Anyone wanna rant?"
More then half of the people in the room stood, but Grace was up first. The man smiled. "Grace."
Joan looked around, amused, as several people cheered Grace on. They obviously knew her.
She walked to the middle of the room and pulled something out of her pocket. It looked like a newspaper article. She held it up. "Anyone read this?" She asked loudly.
No one answered.
"'Arcadia In Need' an editorial by Ryan Hunter." Joan felt like her blood froze. Grace began to read.
"'Though the events of last May still ring in many of our citizens ears as horrible and inhuman, I believe we have all learned something from the destroyed church and burnt synagogue. While watching students of Arcadia High enter school each day, I noticed annoyance printed on many of these students faces as they were scanned for weapons. It seems to me that we should all be relying on each other at times of violence like these, not God. Bringing God into the picture only separates our community by belief. We don't need diversity now.'"
Many people in the room mumbled words of annoyance at the ignorant article. Joan was shocked at Ryan's obvious intentions.
"This guy is telling us to drop our own beliefs and take on his! My religion has never kept me from relying on anyone. I'm Jewish, my best friend and boyfriend are catholic, and another close friend is atheist. This guy says freedom is forming an atheist community. That's not freedom, that's turning everyone into the same person. Belief is a human right and is up to you alone. It's like he's in favor of destroying houses of worship!"
"I heard they can't rebuild the synagogue yet because of money and the church is running, but a ton of stuff is missing." A girl said from the floor.
"Yeah, and no one is helping these people rebuild the synagogue or the church!" Grace said angrily.
"Exactly!" A man said from the side lines. "The Arcadia governmental system doesn't care about our beliefs or wants or needs."
"…But if we burnt the Mayor's favorite restaurant down he'd have an aneurysm." Grace stated bluntly.
Joan laughed along with several other people. A bunch of people clapped and a couple let out loud cheers as Grace moved back to sit on the floor, a large smile planted on her face.
Joan wasn't really listening to the next girl's rant but instead directed her attention towards Grace. "Ryan Hunter really wrote that?"
"Yeah. Here." Grace said, as she handed Joan the newspaper cutout. "I'm gonna have to bug Rove about it later."
"…And no one cared that Ryan is just totally trash talking religion?"
"He's Ryan Hunter, Girardi. He's on the school bored, the newspaper, and the police team-no one's going to go after him alone."
Joan thought for a moment. "What if they weren't alone?"
Grace looked at her. "What?"
Joan stumbled for words. "What if…I mean-if an army went after Ryan and proved that he's-"
"An army?"
"I-I mean people need to see his whole….spectrum o-or the ripples might be bad!"
Grace paused, as if she was trying to make sense of what Joan just said.
"Okay…you've lost me, Girardi."
"Well, what if you, me and a bunch of people here confronted this?"
Grace thought for a moment. "Yeah, well, we'd definitely be heard."
"Yeah! Yeah, so lets do it!"
"Whoa, okay, you're way ahead of yourself."
"No-I mean…Okay, so we at least make accusations so people see what's really happening."
"That could work but I don't think we should get this many people involved if we don't really know what we're going to do."
Joan thought for a moment before she put the pieces together. "You, me, Luke, Adam, Glynis, and…Okay, Freidman."
"Excuse me?"
"There's our army." Joan stated simply with a smile.
Grace fought her oncoming grin the best she could, but it still shone through.
"You're really doing this, Girardi?"
Joan sighed cheerfully before turning her attention back to the anarchist meeting. "I am definitely doing this."