Jon was dead and Janey was mourning, and everyone told her that that was okay, that that was natural. And she knew that it was, and that she was allowed to feel the way she did, but something in her told her not to.
It was the same something that had nagged at her from the beginning, before the beginning, even. Before she had even met Jon, back when the boys in school who were brave enough to approach the brilliant Janey Slater would flirt, and she would tell herself not to blush or giggle or give in to their advances. She was serious about her career, after all, and she was going to be so much more than the average woman. If she let romance get in the way, if she let a man into her life, it would compromise so much of that, and she didn't.
So, with all her dedication, she made it far, and she was respected in her field, not just as a woman but as a scientist. Things were better for her than they had been for the women before her, and she was blazing a trail for those who would come after. Her choice to avoid romance proved to pay off, but then she met Jon and all of that changed so quickly she barely noticed.
At first, he was just somebody new and interesting, and if she noticed that he was handsome, she didn't let herself think that for long. He was someone to talk to, just another coworker who understood what she had to talk about. Sometimes he was someone to buy a drink for, just because she could, and he was someone who was not very good at hiding that he was attracted to her, but someone who never acted on it and always treated her like an equal.
She barely knew that she was falling in love with him, of course, or she might have done something to stop it a little sooner, but then they were in New Jersey, and then they were in bed, and then they were together and she did not look back. Perhaps she had been wrong, and it was not that she couldn't have any romance, but rather that she just had to wait for the right sort, the sort that could be trusted not to hinder her. The sort that she could make work with everything else.
And they did make things work, and rather well. Whatever they had didn't interfere with their work, and though they didn't make their relationship public, they didn't need to. Everyone had seen it coming for a while and no one had to ask why they suddenly spent just a little bit more time with each other.
But then Jon went back for her watch and Jon was killed, and her last memory of him was running away while he begged her not to leave. It wasn't her fault that she couldn't bear to watch; she hoped that he understood that in his last moments. She hoped that he hadn't died resenting her.
He was gone after that, and suddenly all the room she had made in her life for him was empty, and she had holes in her life for the very first time. Never before had her life been anything but full, but now Jon was gone and she had to fill in the gaps he had left behind.
So that was what mourning was for her, and she found her old doubts about love and romance resurfacing, saying 'I told you so' and urging her not to waste time being sad over him because she had never been out to fall in love in the first place. No use letting it hinder her now.
It all came together well, actually. She buried herself in work, because that was what the practical side of her had always done, that was what that part of her nagged her to do to prove that love had not changed her, and she buried herself in work because she needed something to make her life feel full again. And anything was better than the sympathetic look and the, "Oh, of course, dear," she would get if she requested any more time off.
Life went on without Jon, whether she wanted it to or not- and there were times when she did not know which were true- and the months went by. Janey worked and then she worked harder, and she never stopped remembering him when her guard was down and she always caught herself starting to tell him something only to remember that he was not there anymore.
All she had left of him was one photograph and more memories than she could handle on her bad nights, but she always got up and drug herself to work the next day. Always, she drug herself to work the next day, even if she spent the night sobbing over Jon's picture, even if she did not sleep at all, even if she could not shake the hollow feeling all around her because he was not by her side.
Jon was dead, and that hurt, but that was not going to change any time soon. When it had been six months, and she had allowed that side of her that had warned her from the start to win out, she could almost make it through a week without thinking about him too much. She could almost feel a bit less empty, and a bit more like herself, before she had allowed him to change everything.
There would always come a day when she would remember him, and that same ache would take hold of her, and one of the holes he had left would start to show again, but she would just have to fill it the best she could. The healing process would never really end, and she knew that, but if she could just get up and go to work the next day, then she could carry on.
She was mourning, and part of her told her not to even though she knew it was okay, but that part of her helped her to not mourn longer than was needed. That part of her helped her find her way to cope and helped her find her way out of the holes that Jon had left in her life, the holes that had been much easier to fall into than fill. And then she found her way to fill them, and she carried on. She didn't let herself fall again.
Every day, she got up and went to work, and she would keep getting up and going to work every day, because if she could just make it through another day, then she knew she could make it through the next, and then the next.