all the things we'll never know
Summary: "Was it really that bad?" he wonders. "Not anymore." She smiles. He wants to cry. Craig, on the road, and the events leading up to Ellie's death. One-shot. AU, obviously. Craig/Ellie (with some Craig/Manny on the side)
Disclaimer: lyrics are from "Carve Your Heart Out Yourself" & "The Brilliant Dance" by Dashboard Confessional
A/N: this is just an idea (one of many) that's been nagging at me for awhile; i am just SO glad to finally get it out of my head. enjoy. as always, all feedback is welcome :]
Hopelessness is your cell
Since you've drawn out these lines,
Are you protected from trying times?
Well, you'd like to think that you were invincible.
Yeah, well weren't we all once before we felt loss for the first time?
(Well this is the last time.)
Ellie shares with him, once, that she didn't think that it was their scars that they bonded over, but rather their skillful avoidance of they got them. (It's a brief enough conversation, shared between the two of them after a particular group therapy session where she was unusually closed off and uninvolved.)
Craig doesn't get what Ellie means at first, not really. Not until two weeks later, when he impulsively kisses her after he sees those stupid fucking photos of Ashley with her arms wrapped around Ali, the replacement boyfriend, as they stood proudly and stupidly smiling in front of the Westminster Abbey. He did it, in part out of some perverse form of retaliation and, really, just because he can - and then he reaches understanding when Ellie kisses him back after a particularly ugly and volatile argument with her mother leaves her shaking, staring unblinkingly at her old box cutter for over an hour.
Then he gets it.
Sometime after that Ellie tells him, lying naked and a little sweaty underneath the thin sheet covering his bed, that she kind of always thought that Sean would be her first.
Craig pretends that the brutally honest admission doesn't sting and rests his hand, palm flat, against the small of her naked back. She doesn't flinch or pull away like he thought she would and he can't help but feel a small bloom of hope, that starts somewhere deep in his stomach and then rises up to spread throughout his chest. (It's in the middle of July and the AC is on the fritz so it'd be easy to blame it on the heat, a moment of delirium or recklessness, but that's not what he wants.)
Masochistic curiosity forces him to ask her why it didn't happen with Sean, but she never gives an answer - never a completely truthful one, anyway - and so Craig decides that maybe he doesn't really want to know what made her choose him, instead, and so he drops it.
For the one brief moment that he does let his mind wonder, his thoughts get carried away with the idea that maybe she was using him in some way - not deliberately, of course, but as some sort of substitute for the razors she hasn't touched in over a year. It's another way to hurt herself - but in a way that won't leave a visible scar. And then, she's kissing him again, pulling him on top of her and he stops thinking.
Afterwards, they manage to hold onto the last vestiges of their friendship by doing what they do best: avoiding the issue. They don't talk about it or what it could have meant. And for a short while they are careful not to even be alone in the same room - because it's easier to lie to themselves that way, easier to keep up the pretense that it was nothing more than a slip-up. Keeping their friendship in tact is as important to him as he knows it is to her and that's always been easier.
Their relationship is different, though, afterwards, and there's no denying that even if the changes are subtle, gradual differences that only he notices. There are times when Craig finds himself lingering with a hand on her shoulder even though it's unnecessary and she never complains about his sudden need to tuck or pull her into his side when she sits next to him even though there is plenty of room on the other end of the couch. But, in spite of this new-found closeness, they don't sleep together again. He wonders, but never asks why. He can't push her on this, can't afford to lose her, can't afford to lose what she means to him.
He goes on the road on a quest for musical fame and recognition and stardom instead of sticking around for graduation. She goes to University both to prove her mother wrong and to contradict Jimmy ("So you're really going to, like, follow Craig around all summer?") and to let herself know that she can.
In a lonely hotel room in the Marriott Hotel on the outskirts of Alberta, he dreams of her. He wonders if he's supposed to feel bad or guilty or something about the fact that Manny is the one laying next to him, while Ellie occupies his thoughts - or even guilty that he doesn't feel guilty.
Craig's dreams are often haunted by real moments between them and what could have been if only they could have gotten out of their own way. (With them, it was always one step forward, twelve steps back.)
His first dream is eerily reminiscent of a hazy, summer memory: they're laying side by side on the hood of his red Camaro and the top is down and it's parked in the middle of a parking lot. He doesn't know how or why they got there but they're eating ice cream from cones and she's laughing about something when he brushes her hair behind her ear and he's still smiling when he wakes up and Manny asks, climbing onto his lap, if he was dreaming about her. (To avoid yet another argument, he lies and simply says yes.)
Somehow, in between playing gigs in Quebec and British Columbia and a brief stint in LA, they lose touch.
It would be easy to place all the blame on his relationship with Manny. On some level, he knows that she's always been jealous of his friendship with Ellie and Craig reasons, that it's just better for the both of them, in order to actually make this work, if he doesn't make this any more difficult than it needs to be by pouring salt into what seems to be an always gaping wound. He knows he's given Manny enough reason to be doubtful, but that still doesn't erase the lingering question that always seems to exist between him and Ellie.
"...Well that's just a convenient excuse, isn't it?"
"What do you mean?" They're lying side by side on the couch in his "garage-turned-harem-slash-whorehouse" (her words, not his), their faces turned towards each other, the tips of their noses just barely touching.
They've been here before, in this room together, in a moment like this one, except that this conversation never actually happened, Craig realizes.
"You can't use Manny as a fallback excuse anytime you need to run away from something. ...Or someone."
"...I thought you were the one who was running away."
"Only from you." She smiles ruefully and leans toward him. Just as their lips meet (for the second time, he reminds himself wistfully) his eyes snap open and the dream is over and he awakes, unfulfilled.
Craig doesn't know what the dream is supposed to mean to him, what it's supposed to tell him and the feeling that he's missing... something stays with him for several days afterward.
Being on the road is harder than he thought it would be. Cliche, a voice that sounds eerily similar to Ellie hisses. He just thought he was ready, thought that he knew what he was getting himself into. He thought it'd be easier with Manny along. But it isn't. His music is starting to feel repetitive, uninspired and after the impression he made with Leo he's under a lot of pressure to make something happen; Manny doesn't trust him to be out of her sight for longer than two minutes (though, after incidents with a blond and a redhead, he doesn't exactly blame her); and Ellie... everything's changed with Ellie.
He's not proud of it, but he will admit to using Manny'sobliviousness and overall trusting nature a little to his advantage. She never questions him about the drugs or the other women that he can never seem to say no to. Craig can't help but remind himself that Ellie would question him, without a doubt.
"...I just think it's weird," Manny states abruptly as she fixes her makeup. They're back in Toronto, in another hotel, getting ready to go out to a late dinner. She tilts her chin upward, eyes wide as she applies her mascara and leans in closer to the mirror above the sink to examine her work. Craig is only half listening to what she's saying, his mind drifting as it so often does lately.
"...What is?"
"That suddenly you two don't talk anymore. No visits since your gig in Vancouver. Nothing." Manny looks at him, her gaze so directed and piercing that he needs to look away. He knows what she's really saying, "What happened between the two of you this time?"
He leans against the bathroom counter, trying to be casual. "It's nothing," he insists - lies. He can't count the number of times he's reached for the phone to call her before hanging up at the last second.
Two nights before he gets The Call from Marco, he dreams of her again. Although, as he recalls, it's more of a memory than a dream - not really.
Another show, another temporary home made out of a hotel room. Vancouver, this time. Manny and Marco are touring the town while Ellie politely declined, not moments before her cell phone rings and she locks herself in the bathroom.
"Ellie? You okay?"
"...Yeah."
"You don't sound-" The door opens before he can finish the sentence and, out of instinct it seems, his eyes immediately fall to her wrist, the spots of blood in the sink and the razor on the floor. "I thought you stopped doing that."
"I thought I locked the door," she snapped. "And I did stop." From the hardened edge in her voice and the glare she's shooting him he doubts she's telling the truth. He never thought he would be someone she'd lie to.
"What I'd meant to say was, I didn't know you'd started again."
"Why would you?" she snaps. "I mean, you let us come here to find you and Manny all cute and cozy, playing fucking house - with no warning, nothing - why would I tell you anything anymore?"
"Why are you yelling? What happened?"
"You! You happened!"
"You're not really mad at me-"
"Don't tell me how I feel, Craig-"
"What happened?" He steps toward her, inadvertently pinning her between him and the bathroom counter. This close he can see that her eyes are red, angry, and there are streaks of tears on her cheeks. He's never really seen her cry before. He's never seen her this angry before. It's unsettling; it's scary. "Ellie. What happened?"
"I-it's my dad. He's dead." Her face crumples the second she says the words out loud and for a moment, Craig hates himself for making her say it - but then again, by the look of her arm, she hasn't been doing too well with the whole denial thing. Craig pulls her into an embrace that he feels her resist at first, but then he wraps his arms tight around her waist and she finally lets go, allowing her arms to wrap around his middle.
"...This was Marco's idea, you know," Ellie tells him after a bit of silence.
"What was?"
"Coming to visit you..." He doesn't know why she thinks she needs to tell him this but he nods anyway. "I wasn't even going to come but I just..my mother started drinking again when we got the news about my dad. And I used to be able to handle it - handle her -"
"You shouldn't have to. It's not your job to-"
"I know it's not; I know that. I just feel like everyone else has their shit together and I'm...falling apart. I don't know what's wrong with me-"
"There's nothing wrong with you, Elle," he i insists, holding her tighter. If he were Ashley, he'd start researching depression and all the different forms of anti depressants (and probably try to use Ellie's misery as inspiration for a song). If he were Manny, he'd recommend getting a piercing or a tattoo or throwing a party to make herself feel better. But he isn't and he doesn't.
"...I'm getting blood on your shirt." She shakes her head, tries to pull away but he doesn't let her.
"Who cares?"
"I'm sorry."
If he were thinking straight he would have asked what she was sorry for.
He didn't.
He doesn't know what time the phone rings but he knows that it's late, and the first time it goes off he doesn't answer. By the second and third time, Manny's awake and groaning her resistance - hungover, he knows - reaching blindly over to the nightstand to answer his cell. "Ugh, hello?"
He must have fallen asleep for no more than a few seconds, but suddenly Manny's shaking him, hard enough that he feels it in his bones. Her wide brown eyes are filled with unshed tears that immediately cause his heart to constrict with panic. "It's Marco. He's saying...there was some kind of accident. He wants - he's saying -"
Craig takes the phone before she can finish. "Marco? What happened?"
Craig doesn't think he's ever heard so much grief expressed in one word; he can barely understand Marco over the sounds of his sobs. "Ellie..."
And everything changes.
"...You're an idiot," she tsks.
Ellie is sitting on the edge of his bathroom counter top, wearing a thin white dress that comes to a stop above her knees, while her feet are bare. He's never seen her in white; now he wishes he had. She is beautiful, a stark contrast to the sad state of his pitiful counter top, which is practically covered in pills, bottles, and fine white powder. "Are you trying to OD?"
"I'm unwell, didn't you know that?"
"You're fine. An idiot," Ellie insists, "but fine."
"No I'm not. I'm-"
"Manageable. Completely and totally manageable. You just choose not to be."
"What does that even mean?"
"It means you can actually have moments where it doesn't hurt."
"...Was it really that bad?"
"Not anymore." She smiles. He wants to cry.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Honestly, I don't know if it would have made a difference." She tilts her head to the side, watching him, her hair a smooth shiny red curtain. How had he not noticed how beautiful she was before? "You noticed," she affirms.
"I miss you. I've missed you for awhile."
"You haven't spoken to me in almost two years. What's the difference now?"
Good point. "I didn't think I'd never get the chance to again."
"Don't do this to yourself, Craig," she tells him softly. She gestures to the pills, the drugs.
"I'm mourning."
"Don't be stupid. I'm not worth it."
Without thinking, he leans forward, pressing his forehead against hers, surprised that she doesn't just disappear or he doesn't wake up at the contact. "You always thought that. It's never been true."
He's arguing with a ghost. The realization of that is what gets him, and chokes him up.
"I can't be the reason you self-destruct. I don't want to be." Even in death, she's putting him first.
"I've been doing that for a while," he admits quietly. Her hand comes up to rest against his cheek and he closes his eyes; it's cold.
"Just tell me... Was it really an accident?" She shrugs, a small smile on her lips, legs swinging back and forth. Her feet bump against the cabinet but don't make a sound.
"Elle..." Her cool forehead presses lightly, softly, against his. "I-"
"I know." She leans forward, her cool lips falling on the corner of his mouth. "Me, too."
He comes to, laying flat on his back on the bathroom floor, the sound of Manny's shouts and fists banging against the door coming into his hearing.
"Craig!"
"...I'm here," he replies meekly, though he knows she probably can't hear him. "I'm okay." Another lie.
While Manny's trying to pick the lock, he pulls himself upright, leaning his upper body against the bathroom counter. The pills and cocaine are still where he left them, though he didn't manage to take as many as he was planning to. He remembers the dream - his last vision of Ellie - remembers her telling him she didn't want to be the reason behind his self-destruction. It makes him angry, because he's thinking of honoring a promise he didn't even make to a ghost, and she won't even be around to hear about it. He understands why she may have felt helpless: her father killed as a consequence of war; her mother's fall from sobriety and third stumble into rehab; Marco's not-so-subtle hints that she was on the verge of failing out of school. But god-dammit why did she have to go and do this?
"Just tell me... Was it really an accident?"
He never got his answer, but all he has to do is think over the last time he saw her, really saw her; and that moment in a hotel bathroom in Vancouver, and he knows that it wasn't.
Manny bursts through the door in a mess of tears and exclamations. "Craig, oh-my-god! Baby, what happened? Are you okay?"
She hugs him close, tight enough to nearly constrict his breathing. "Yeah," he insists. "Yeah I'll be fine."
But Manny shakes her head, her eyes on the finely cut lines of cocaine near the sink. The tears finally fall from her big, brown eyes when she looks at him, and they land on his shirt. "...Liar."
review?