A/N: This morning I had a weird writing spree on tumblr where I wrote a bunch of nonsense about April's character and it ended up spawning a request that really intrigued me. I've always had a theory that April deals with depression/self-esteem issues, and that's clear because I wrote a bunch of chapters under Cut talking about that, but I think this is totally feasible within the canon timeline and without the self-harm. So I took one of this anon's requests (namely, dealing with insecurity concerning Ann) and I had a little jaunt with it.
Remember that you can throw your requests at me on tumblr, or wherever I have an inbox that you know of!
Title is a lyric from My Dying Bride's "The Crown of Sympathy"
You're not worth it.
It's always been there, somewhere inside, and that feeling and its presence make April hate. Inside, she feels an innate distrust between her body and her mind like a feeling that's telling her she's a spit-take for humanity, and it makes her hate them all. She's not sure who, what, or even why it's inside of her every day but as far back as she can remember there hasn't been a day where the writhing tendrils didn't cover everything else. People ask her innocent questions, and all she wants to do is snap back. So she does, and they react like any sane person would. April thinks she's pleased with the results – that's what she tells herself all the time – but that feeling's always so fleeting. All that's left afterwards is an empty, flat impression.
It's not physical, she knows on some level that that isn't her problem, and it's barely even emotional but there's an intellectual misunderstanding going on between different aspects of herself. April can't link the part of her mind that's telling her that she's a person worthy of others' time and the part that's incessant about her failures. She just can't get them to meet and have it out plainly in front of her, where she can decide whether or not she's lying to herself, so April continues life accepting that she just can't fathom people being more than aesthetically interested in her as a human at best. She's less than that – she's an object.
Years, it's years like this.
She can't understand the feelings she has, and it's almost hilarious how teenaged she's become just in that one phrase, but then she slips idly into adulthood and they're still there. Almost like a phase that's never meant to be stuck to, that feeling sits in its ingrown root at the base of everything and shrieks whenever she tries to pull it out – that self-loathing is so harsh against her skin and yet so real. So April just goes on, like that's fine and a normal thing to have inside of her, and it's so much easier to eject people out of her life or just let them never get in at all. It's so much easier for her to just listen to the yells inside her mind, the persistence of their groaning disapproval, than to keep trying to root out the real issue.
Years of it, feeling like that, and April never questions any of it. It's just life and it's all she's ever known.
Something about Ann – something about the way she holds herself, or maybe she's just really annoying – bothers April. Here was a woman that had things seemingly put together, in some semblance of order and life falling into place for her, but April was stuck as just April.
Just April versus Ann.
That's what April thinks when she first figures out just who Andy is. Not that she's unaware that there's a shoeshine stand in City Hall all of a sudden, but that's not what she's worried about. There's something else, and she's afraid of it – so scared of what it means – that she tries to ignore it. When incredible Ann could throw him out like old garbage, what chance would April have in keeping his attentions, and that wasn't even considering matching up to what Ann could offer him, and there it is again.
You've got nothing on Ann.
Who are you in comparison?
She can feel them when he looks at her just then, those little black and red hands pulling at her chest and telling her she's not enough. But April wants to try, and even if she can't be good enough she wants to at least feel like she's tried. It's confusing at first, wanting to try so hard for this, but she manages to shrug off that violent grip for long enough to get him to stay with her while she's on hold. It's stupid, and she knows he's worrying about Ann and Mark the entire time, but she still asks the lady at the National Parks Service to keep her on hold. For whatever reason she obliges and April's met with the terrible music on the other end, but it feels right.
It also feels right to suck on Andy's neck, but that was completely beyond her otherwise stoic reasoning. It feels almost good that she's done something nice for a new friend of hers – a new friend that she finds oddly cool and was definitely okay – and April finds she likes that new sensation. There's something there that makes her feel like she's done something good for once, and Andy makes her feel worthwhile for a brief second. It's invigorating, like a drug, and she craves it.
Then later that night as she thinks she's done something right for her friend, or whatever he was supposed to be, the weight of the situation hits her. And it hits hard, because Andy couldn't have cared less that it was April he was using to make Ann jealous. That wasn't the point to him – the point was to make Ann jealous and whoever he used in the process was irrelevant. She feels used for a moment, but she remembers that it was her idea, and April can feel them take hold of her again – those hands. But this time they're a welcome sensation, like she's returning to a friendlier territory that she recognizes where she won't have to think about how little she mattered that day in the grand scheme of things.
She doesn't have to think about it because she knows.
You're not worth it.
April doesn't even remember the meaning of that sentence when Andy's at her birthday party. She knows it's dumb, childish, and naïve that she can only think that maybe he'll be okay with her now that she's twenty-one, but it's still there. And she knows that, just like every other birthday party, she just wants to go drink alone and slum around her house in sweatpants but there's something different. Then, in high school through the few years afterwards, she had no reason to do anything else and she never knew anything that constituted a real reason.
And she knows that she's been taught to think of a man as anything but a reason to do something, but Andy makes her feel worth in her life.
And it's reaffirmed when she decides that she'll go to the stupid club and wear that absurd dress that her mother's been trying to force on her for more than a year now. It's so fucking incredible how silly it is to her, that moment when she has to tell Andy to look away out of obligation to herself. Then, he listens to her and it feels so strange not seeing his face lit up like that, so she breaks her resolve to distance herself from him.
But then, then there's Ann.
Incredible Ann, whose only opponent is Just April, and it's so easy isn't it?
Clearly he's picking her. It's the only thing that makes sense, but when he talks to her later it's almost like that scene from earlier wasn't anything. And when he walks away she feels disgusted with herself that she let the most annoying human being on the planet get anywhere near her. And then she realizes that's not why she's horrified with herself – she can't deal with the fact that she had a chance, and she threw it away. It was almost like she wasn't as good as Andy seemed to think, almost like she wasn't worth it to him and he was just avoiding unnecessary conflict. She wanted to believe otherwise, but nothing else made sense to her, and she feels those hands again and they're clapping and she can tell she's made a mistake but they're always right. They've always been right about her, and of course they'd be right now, so she can only sit at home in bed and think how selfish and stupid she was being for thinking she had found something – someone – that gave her something else in life.
April doesn't know what happened, she can barely even think, but she hears "Andy" and "hospital" and that's all it takes. The speed at which she's taken over by action is disarming – she can't drive there fast enough, and she's out of breath by the time she finds him and it's just a broken arm but it still seems like so much more to her. It's all been so stupid, thinking that Andy had anything but good intentions, and she just listens to him and remembers his excited face from just before when she admitted that she liked him.
It almost felt real, just like his lips, and for a second she was convinced that maybe – just maybe, in that singular moment – she could be worth it. That maybe, in spite of crawling doubt all over her body, she was good enough. April, barely visible April, could be worth it to someone, and someone could be Andy. Her breath is gone so fast after that moment, and she makes a weird noise in the back of her throat when she thinks about it, that she can barely keep her eyes on him. It's like maybe he'll vanish after that second, but he doesn't.
Then he tells her that Ann kissed him, and the breath is gone again but it's different. It's different, but she feels something all too familiar.
It makes too much sense for her to doubt, like it's the most obvious thing that she's ever heard.
Of course she did, and of course you're telling me this now.
But April's struggling in that moment to breathe, because she thought that for once she could feel okay about herself, and now she has to know that she was just a second choice. She was an option and nothing more to Andy, and it's crippling to hear him say it. April knows she's right – when has she ever been wrong about this – and now it feels like everything that she's told herself for years is coming back to spit in her face.
So she runs, and she has to leave him despite everything she hears from him in that room, and it hurts. It hurts so badly, so intensely, that she can't even begin to describe any relatable feeling. She just doesn't have the litmus for this sort of disappointment – disappointment in herself for believing for more than a moment that she could be worth it. April – just April – couldn't best Ann, the perfection that she hated. It kept reminding her, like scratching fingertips at the base of her skull, that she was a tool in Andy's quest for Ann and she was just an objective on his path to winning back someone who he deemed worthy.
Someone that wasn't April.
Not you, you're not worth it.
There's a distinct change inside of April over the next few days after the incident. Something feels wrong with those hands, and they're not so much clawing and grasping as they're pushing and urging her on, and all April can feel is a strange desire to get back at him. It doesn't make any sense if she thinks about it longer than a moment, but it feels so right – there's a catharsis there – when she tells Andy with a smug look on her face about the guy that she picked up at the airport just before the flight back to Pawnee. She kept the illusion up when he was looking, and she did like his recharged intent, but when she went home things changed.
April feels sick to the stomach when she looks in the mirror, and wonders if this is what her worth is – if she can only get disappointment and betrayal right. In the mirror she sees the same physical appearance of the girl, but she still can't bear to look at this "April." She'd rather be just April than this incarnation, but she can't let Andy in again. He had done so much good, only to tear it all down in an instant, and she can't let him do that again or she just might break.
So she continues her strange show until even her tool is falling for Andy… and she can't blame him; he's pretty great.
He is pretty great.
But that doesn't stop her from receding, from taking everything she's collectively known and learned about him and sorting it all out as she sees fit. It's too clear, too obvious to her, that he has some ulterior motive in his crusade to get her to understand – to get her to realize he cares, in his own words – and it still feels like, somewhere, there's going to be some clause just after. It's going to say, loud and clear, Ann and April's not sure she can handle it again.
These thoughts, all of them, come flooding back to April one night while she lies on the folded out futon next to Andy. She can't fall asleep, partly because of the crazy heat of Burly's house and partly because of those thoughts, so she stays there on her small portion of the sofa staring away at nothing. It's eating away at her, even though she's partially naked underneath the covers and she can feel Andy next to her and she's known his enthusiasm firsthand, and she can't get those memories out of her head.
You're not worth it.
That's all she could hear in her mind, like she wasn't actually alive and awake in that moment. In the next she would wake up and find herself alone in her bed at her parents' house, and things would be right again. They would make sense.
"Andy," she whispers in the dark without turning around. "Andy, wake up."
She hopes that she's being loud enough, because she can barely make the sounds without feeling a cruel desire to find her clothes and leave him for a more sensible and real night by herself. It's sort of a blessing when she hears his breathing interrupt and a few grunts.
"Huh, wha-?" he starts and then there's a little movement from him but she still refuses to turn around.
Staring into the rest of the black room, she pictures what it would be like to not see these pitched shadows in every corner of every thought like a constant reminder. April wondered if she'd find something that brushed them away like cobwebs and showed light through, all the way through, and left her mind unclouded by doubt and worry.
"Hey, can we talk?" she asks him, still not moving.
"Sure, what's up?" his voice changes and she knows he's switching into listening mode.
"I'm… not sure," the words catch in her throat and she just wants them to come out. "I mean, I don't know I guess."
"Oh, okay," Andy says like it's the most natural thing and not a complete nonsequitur.
"Sorry for waking you up," she mumbles, already thinking about whether her keys were in her jeans or not. "Didn't really think about it."
"'s fine," he yawns.
Then, before she can figure out her plan of escape, he moves closer to her and his arm catches around her waist. His hand searches for hers and she lets him have it, and his grip feels odd – like there's something more there. Maybe it was just the hour, and she figured it was probably the lack of sleep, but the way he squeezed felt like more than she was expecting. It felt needy, his touch felt so wanting, and it catches her off guard.
"Andy," she says a little louder and she turns around this time.
"Yeah," he answers with closed eyes.
"Do you want me to be more like Ann?" she asks quietly.
His eyes open immediately and she wonders if she found something there, but his face switches from surprise to bewilderment almost instantly.
"No…?" he asks cautiously, his head moving backward slightly on the pillow. "Why would I?"
"Do you…" she starts and April knows she has to get the words out now or they'll never come, "y'know, if you had to do it over again would you still be here? Would you make the same mistakes and… end up with me?"
"Totally," he answers without a beat's difference between the two of them.
Something about the tone of his answer, like how he ignored that she called herself a mistake and didn't seem to think about it longer than the speed of the signal to his brain, felt right. Maybe it was because after that he sat up and she followed him, and maybe it was because he pulled her closer to him and April's instinct was to bury herself in his body heat. It was definitely something to do with the way his hand stroked her back and the time they stayed like that in the middle of the night. Something about that was oddly calming, and it felt comfortable despite the sweltering summer air, so she reveled in that emotion for a while before reconsidering what this all was.
Maybe it was because she felt worth it in those milliseconds of time between her question and his answer.