Series: iPod Shuffle Challenge
Fandom: Hannah Montana
Character / Pairing Focus: Jake Ryan x Miley Stewart
Rating: K Plus / PG / All Ages
Notes: Set shortly after the Achey Jakey Heart eps.
Disclaimer: Hannah Montana and all respective properties are © Disney Inc. Megan D. (Veritas Found) does not, has never, nor will ever own Hannah Montana.
White Horse (performed by Taylor Swift)
Maybe I was naïve
Got lost in your eyes and never really had a chance
I had so many dreams about you and me
Happy endings, now I know…
I'm not a princess – this ain't a fairytale
I'm not the one you'll sweep off her feet, lead her up the stairwell
This ain't Hollywood – this is a small town
I was a dreamer before you went and let me down
Now it's too late for you and your white horse to come around
The rose had immediately been placed on her bedside table, right next to the silver frame that held one of her few pictures – real pictures, not tabloid pictures – of them together. In the frame, placed so it wouldn't really block much of them, was the little card. Both meant worlds to her, but right now her mind wasn't really focusing on the relief of his promise to keep her secret. Right now, all she could really think on was how – and why – everything had gone so horribly wrong.
They were perfect together. They just fit; there was a connection there, something she hadn't felt with a guy before. Something she had fought so hard against, but something that – now that it was gone – she missed terribly. Something…something that was so wonderfully Jake, and he just had to go and ruin it all. He had to…
It hurt, thinking that the Jake she loved wasn't the Jake he really was. Or maybe it was that the Jake she loved had been too long suppressed by the Jake the world loved, and somewhere along the line he'd just disappeared. It meant something that he was going to try – for her – to be normal. It really did, but…
There's an innocence, a kind of wistful charm you lose after your first heartbreak. That's what she'd been told, and now she believed it all too well. And it hurt; it hurt to think that she had been too stupid to see through him, to see that whatever was between them was doomed from the start. That all those dreams, all those whims they had talked about so hopefully just a few days before could be so easily dashed into impossibilities. That…
Her phone went off, "If We Were A Movie" tinkling out cheerily against the black cloud of her depression. She shrank back from the phone, the tune slicing through her like blades. She had set it back when Jake…and then now…
She sighed, dropping her head in her hands as she curled in on herself. They weren't a movie, because in real life, the movies never come true – and the ones who play in the movies are nothing but self-centered egotistical jerks. Who may or may not have moments where they could be really, really sweet. Who may or may not be able to make you fall for them, to make you believe in happy endings and fairy tales, but…what they don't tell you, she's learned the hard way, is that the happy ending is always followed by an after. And the after? Never what you think – want – it to be. Their after was the stuff of monsters, of…Dr. Jekyll. Dr. Jekyll was their fairytale, in a twisted sort of way. In a Dr. Leslie, Mr. Jake sort of way, and now...
Maybe she was too optimistic, but there was a small part of her that just couldn't stop believing in him – in them. As she glanced over at the rose laying on her nightstand, that little part of her hoped that maybe, someday, Dr. Leslie would come back into her life. And then…maybe.
She had to have hope.
