Two years on, Gemma is different but the same. Her brother claims he almost couldn't recognize her, though that's an exaggeration. He wonders almost dismissively if she's normal when, two weeks after the funeral, she's able to laugh again, to leaf through her papers from university, to apply a bit of color to her lips before walking out the door, free of a chaperone, ready for whatever awaits her on the next street over or in some other realm.
She's different, with her cosmetics and confident laugh and knowledge of literature and hope for the future, and yet her past cannot be altered and so she's very much the same.
xx
Two years on, Tom has changed to. He questions things more, as a man of science ought, and wonders if it would be wrong to not care what society thought. With a father just a few weeks dead, would it be acceptable to continue plans to ask for someone's hand in marriage? He loves her, so it has to be acceptable. Gemma's not even wearing black, after all.
But his father wouldn't like her to wear black. No, no, of course not.
Though he shouldn't worry about now. There's a patient whose file he must go over and a house call he should probably make and Clara wants him to go to some suffragette rally – because his sister went to university and women have rights too and did you know there are lady doctors now?
He's different, with his new concerns and a charming permanent wrinkle on his brow and a ring stowed away in a velvet box in a drawer, and yet in his primal worries – his desire to please society and even his dead father, his knowledge that Gemma was their father's favorite – Tom's very much the same.
xx
It's good to be Ann two years on. She can't remember what it's like to go a day without laughing, though then again she can't remember what it's like to not be tired. Her legs are always sore; her throat is always scratchy from singing. She's dropped a bit of weight, but not too much. Her figure always will be essentially the same.
Sometimes, she glances at her arms and curses the girl she used to be. It's not normal, what she did, but no one else has ever noticed the scars since her leaving Spence. No one but Charlie.
It's Charlie who sees her best. Perhaps his vision of her is biased, but when he grabs Ann's wrist and stares into her eyes he doesn't feel the bumps of misery and strangeness. He doesn't see a plain face with dull eyes. He sees the girl he loves, the girl who has blossomed over the years, the girl he'll marry one day when he can afford a ring and a house and when she stops worrying about not being able to afford a wedding and realizes that it's not about that to him. Ann just being is contribution enough.
She's different, with her beauty through Charlie's eyes and her slightly new figure and her constant smile, but in her past and her realization that she'll never be perfect, Ann's also the same.
xx
Felicity is happy two years on. It was hard to be happy in the beginning, with a dead first love and a constant desire to run far away. But two years on, she sees Gemma just days after her father's funeral and knows that they've both managed fine. Oh, she's seen Ann enough, with her sweet smiles for Charlie, but it's Gemma who really helps Felicity realize how happy she is.
Gemma can see that happiness in Felicity. She knows how it feels to lose a first love, but she doesn't know what it's like to gain a second one, something Felicity has done in Paris. This smile, this sharing of news – from Ann, first, who in her happiness couldn't keep someone else's joyful secret – helps give Gemma the hope she needs to realize that this could happen to her, too. Her life didn't end with Kartik's.
It's over a shared set of drinks that Gemma and Felicity realize how different Felicity is, with a smile that lights up her eyes and a positive outlook towards the world, but who, with her past scars and sadness, will always be the same.
xx
Two years on, Spence is not the place it used to be. The girls study philosophy after French, are offered advanced mathematics if they excel at arithmetic, and put on a play every year at Assembly Day. During etiquette lessons, they are told, "You will need these skills to win over a proper husband." During grammar lessons, they are told, "You will never be able to write an entrance essay for university without the proper knowledge of syntax!"
It's the same, with its cliques and aim of finishing its students, but Spence is also changing with the times.
xx
Two years on, Simon's sly smile and laugh are still there. An ex-fiancée who left him after hearing about some drunken carousing with a maid has perhaps made him a bit cynical, but he never loved Lucy. It's when he bumps into Gemma, Felicity, and their other little friend shortly after the passing of Gemma's father that he realized how much time has gone by.
There's Gemma with her winning yet still unsure smile, Felicity, who glances beyond him and then walks away, chasing after some ribbon or another in a shop window, and the other one, with her eyes on the sky rather than the ground where they usually always were.
"Hello," he says, and, "hello," Gemma says, and then she walks on, and he doesn't feel a spark or anything beyond a bit of wonder.
He's different, with his cynicism and his hard laugh and his stubble that he feels as he rubs his chin in confusion, but with his lack of desire for anything committed, for anything other than a simple brush of hands as Gemma passes, and then a backwards glance, Simon is very much the same.
A/N: First Gemma Doyle trilogy fic I've written in a long while. Please review!