Author - Sunnycouger
Rating - PG
Disclaimer - the characters sadly don't belong to me or else Adam and Joan would be away living in perfect bliss already. They belong to their creator and I am making no money from this so don't sue. It's not worth it - I own nothing apart from my laptop and you wouldn't want that.
Summary - Set during 'St Joan' and how Joan reacted when Adam called her Joan for the first time.
Authors Notes - A season 1 fic that I wrote after my season 1 fest. It's set after 'St Joan', so it's old in the timeline, so everything up until that happened. Hopefully it fits in okay with the timeline. Consider it a missing scene if it works okay. :)
She never thought there would be a day when she would hate her own name. She'd always liked it, it was short, and simple and sounded nice. It was a nice name, one she loved. She had no reason to dislike it.
He had never been able to get it right though and for a while she thought he really did think her name was Jane - but he didn't. He knew what her name was all along, possibly right from the start. He just didn't call her it. To him she was Jane, and she liked that. She liked that he thought to give her a nickname, or a pet name or whatever you could call it. She liked that he thought of her.
She liked being Jane for him.
She sat down on the steps of the school and let the tears fall down her face freely. She wasn't sure what she had imagined, but it wasn't this. The first time he called her Joan was supposed to be different - like, at the end of a wonderful night out, or...or after he took her home from a date, or...after he said that he loved her (not that she thought of him like that), or maybe after he complimented her, or thanked her for something, anything. That was when he was supposed to call her Joan for the first time. He was supposed to say it when she wasn't expecting it and only to say something nice. She didn't want him to say it any other time, just once, when things were good.
He wasn't supposed to say it now. He wasn't supposed to say it when he was angry, and hurt. He was supposed to wait until they were happy so that it meant something. The trouble was, it meant something now and it wasn't something good.
She felt a sob escape as she slid down to sit on the steps of the school and leant her head down against her knees. It would have hurt less if he had slapped her she was sure. If he had yelled at her and called her horrible names - but he hadn't. He hadn't even raised his voice. He just looked at her, said what he said quietly and walked away. She couldn't even remember what he said - she could just see his eyes, so cold, so hurt as he looked at her. She could hear the tone of his voice, quiet, pained and angry, even though she couldn't remember the exact words. She could hear him say 'Joan' so clearly. So pronounced as though he made a deliberate effort to make sure she heard it. It shouldn't have hurt - she was sure he didn't mean it to hurt. She was sure he just meant it as a way to prove that their relationship had changed. She was sure he didn't mean to hurt her like that...
He probably had no idea how much she had grown to love being Jane for him. She hadn't even realised it herself until just then. This hadn't been something she had wanted - she hadn't wanted to hurt him so much that he would hate her. He was so...gentle and quiet and...nice, had she really made him hate her? Him of all people. She could handle other people hating her, but not him, never him.
She sniffed back tears as she wiped her eyes. It was stupid - why was it even bothering her? It wasn't like they had known each other that long. It wasn't like they had a big history between them. It wasn't like they were anything other than friends...although, she wasn't sure if that was true. There was...something...between them that stopped them being just friends. She wasn't sure what it was - some sort of...understanding, a bond or something. A 'thing' that she didn't have the words to describe. But it was gone now, whatever it was. Whatever it could have become. Why couldn't she just take it back? Zap back a few weeks to before she smashed his statue, to before he hated her. To before she became 'Joan' to him. Why couldn't she take it back?
"Consequences."
She looked up and saw a boy standing in front of her, dressed in a brown jacket. She rolled her eyes as she groaned loudly through her tears. She didn't need another lecture from God just now. "Excuse me?"
"You can't take it back because you have to learn to deal with the consequences of your actions."
She laughed as she wiped her eyes. "Well, thanks for the pep-talk but I am dealing with the consequences. Have a look around me - I'm consequence girl! Grace hates me for getting her suspended, the rest of the school hates me for getting them suspended. Add to that the little insignificant fact that Adam, you know, ADAM, really, really, really, really hates me. If there was a way to hate that was stronger than hate? He would totally have it for me. So there ya go - a whole load of consequences that I'm dealing with. Happy?"
God smirked a little as he looked at her. She wiped her eyes defiantly as he spoke. "Grace doesn't hate you and your classmates don't hate you - on the grand scheme of things you're pretty insignificant to them. They hate Gavin Price far more than they hate you."
"Great - I'm only the second most hated person here! Why was I ever worried?" Joan shook her head. Why was she even bothering - God was clueless about this sort of stuff. Like he knew about relationships...
She looked up and saw God raise an eyebrow. "I suppose a 16 year old girl has a greater insight?"
She blushed as she looked down. "Jeez - do you have to keep doing the whole mind-reading thing? Privacy is a good thing!"
"Privacy doesn't have a lot of meaning to me - being omniscient kinda does that to you."
"Whatever," Joan muttered. "So, Grace doesn't hate me and the class doesn't hate me. I noticed the omission of Adam's name in that list. So, omniscient One, I guess he hates me? Great...well, thanks for making me feel a whole lot better." She took a deep breath and shook her head. This sucked. She almost voiced this out loud before she had a brain wave. She looked up at God as she began to speak again. "You know - this whole mess is your fault! Why don't you fix it? You could... I don't know, maybe take me back a few weeks, let me do the whole thing again? Or you could go and tell Adam that I was on a mission from God? Or you could maybe give me some talent so I could fix the statue for him? Oooh, or maybe...you could just tell him to like me again? Maybe even demand he likes me again - you know, go all...biblical on him - fire, brimstone, Charlton Heston like voice and then just give a Godly command for him to forgive me and like me again. Please?"
He just looked at her for a second, his head cocked in a 'you are kidding, right?' expression. "Joan, firstly - you know that's not going to happen. Secondly, you know that no one made you take a chair to the statue and thirdly, things like this happen for a reason - if you could just click your fingers and fix things you've done wrong with Divine Intervention then there wouldn't be any point of the whole 'free will' thing, would there? If I just demanded Adam forgave you - wouldn't it bother you that he wasn't doing it because he wanted to, but because I told him to?"
"Ah, but you could make him think he really wanted 't you?" She gave a hopeful smile, hoping to charm him into action. It couldn't hurt. "I mean, who would know? I wouldn't tell anyone, ever and you...you're not exactly going to go tell the world. It could be a secret. I won't tell. Promise. So, go fix things."
"It's never going to happen," God said sternly.
Joan dropped her head to her knees again. "But he hates me! I want him to like me again...I'd do anything to make it up to him. I just don't want him to hate me anymore..."
God sat down beside her. "Hate is a strong word, Joan. Very few people hate anyone."
She shook her head. "Yeah well, he's one of the very few people then. Hate is hate. He hates me."
"He's hurt," God said as he stood up again. "Hate is just an emotion that has a very close relationship with another strong emotion, one that is very different from it. One is hate, the other is...?"
"Like..." She lifted her head abruptly. "Love?"
The boy smirked and tilted his head to the side. "It takes a lot of energy to hate something - so you have to care about it. Some people would say that hate is just a negative expression of love."
Her eyes widened. "So...wa...wait a minute. Are you giving me," she leaned close and winked, "an insiders guide to this? I mean do you think...I mean, you think he could love me eventually? Or something?"
"No, you think so, which is why it hurts you so much that he's not talking to you," God said as he turned away. "Just remember Joan - only the people who really matter can really hurt you."
As he retreated Joan lifted her head. "So, are you saying I really matter to him and that's why he's hurt so much?"
"No, I was actually talking about what he means to you," he said with a wave of his hand. "Hence why you're sitting there, crying and in pain because he won't speak to you."
She rolled her eyes as she shook her head. "No! Hey...hey!" she shouted loudly at the departing figure. "You are so wrong. He doesn't matter to me in that way! He's just a...a friend! Hey!"
As God disappeared she groaned as she banged her head against her knees. "Yeah, he's going to believe that, Joan. 'I'm omniscient, I know what you're thinking.' Stupid...being."
She sighed and kept her head against her knees, God's words echoing in her ears. Was it possible that she did have feelings for him? She shook her head. No way. She was not interested in guy's like that - he was, afterall, weird. If she was in a relationship with anyone then she wanted it to be one that made her look less weird, not compound it and Adam would definitely compound it. It wasn't like there was anything wrong with him though - people just didn't know him. If they knew what he was like, how much he had going for him, how creative he was and how smart he was they wouldn't think he was weird. If they knew all that they wouldn't make fun of him or call him weird.
She opened her eyes and gazed out towards the front at the people walking past. A girl walked along, hand in hand with her perfect, tall, football player of a boyfriend. See, she said to herself, that was the type of guy she was attracted to. She liked men who were...tall and athletic, not guys who were short, weird, quiet and intense. She wasn't even sure she liked dark hair. No, she decided, she definitely didn't think the guy she would end up with would have dark hair. See, God was so wrong - she liked tall, fair haired athletes and Adam most definitely wasn't that.
But...sometimes, only occasionally, she thought maybe, one day...
She felt herself smile as she reached down into her bag and pulled out the small cheerleader she had started carrying recently. Sometimes it was so easy to think that maybe, just maybe Adam could be her type. That maybe the thing between them would get stronger. She had felt it sometimes - like when he came to see her when she was making the boat. Like when she nearly told him about talking to God. Like when he gave her the cheerleader. Like when he said he would give her his statue...
And she had ruined it all - any chance, any tiny hope she might have had that it would work out that way was gone. Now it was gone.
She felt her lip quiver slightly as she shoved the cheerleader back in her bag, away from prying eyes. What was she going to do? She couldn't stand the thought of that possibility, no matter how small, being taken away. She couldn't bear the idea of him not being in her life.
"Hey, Girardi. This is a record amount of time moping, even for you."
She looked up to see Grace standing behind her. "Grace, I thought you had gone home."
"They told me to go home," Grace said matter of factly. "It doesn't mean I was going to do it. You spoke to Rove then?"
Joan nodded her head as Grace sat down. "Yeah, listen - I know you're pissed at me but I really do not need you to make me feel any worse. Trust me - I feel bad enough."
Grace shook her head and gave a low whistle. "Rove did a number on you then? What did he say?"
"Nothing...much," Joan groaned.
"Hey, he'll tell me tonight anyway so you may as well save us both some time."
"I don't know - I kinda got stuck when he called me 'Joan'," Joan said with a sideways look at the blonde. "He never calls me Joan - he's supposed to call me Jane, I'm supposed to pretend that he should call me Joan but really he's supposed to know that means 'don't call me Joan'. Instead he really did call me Joan and now he hates me. I mean he hated me before but he really hates me now." She sighed dramatically as she dropped her head to her knees. "It's all messed up!"
Grace blinked. "So, you're upset because he called you your name?"
"Forget it," Joan muttered, "it's stupid. I just...he calls me Jane, always. Now I've hurt him so much that he can't do that. Jane is gone and now I'm stuck at being Joan - the girl who hurt him and totally messed up his life."
"But...you are Joan."
"But not to him," Joan said, finding it difficult to explain to Grace the whole complex situation. "
Grace was quiet for a minute before sighing. "You're screwed up, Girardi."
"Tell me about it."
"No, what I mean is - why are you sitting here torturing yourself?"
"Um - you guys got sent home from school because I was too proud to take the stupid test in the first place? Remember - the reason you hate me?"
"If I hated you every time you screwed up then I would never speak to you."
Joan smiled as Grace spoke - no one had a way with words like Grace.
"You messed up with Rove. He's...different from...normal people. He's on another planet most of the time. He dwells on the one thing because he feels like you betrayed him. It would be like dating him and cheating on him with his dad - betrayal of a whole new level."
Joan grimaced at the analogy. "Thanks for that disturbing mental image. It's just - how do I fix it?"
Grace stood up and shrugged her shoulders. "Who do I look like - some relationship guru? Listen - it's not like you're in love with him or anything so just let him come out of this mood he's in. He'll get over it eventually."
"What if he doesn't?"
"Then he doesn't - would it be that big a loss to you?"
Joan nodded her head, sadly. "Yes."
Grace looked at her for a minute and gave a small laugh. "He'll get over it, Girardi. He's only acting this way because he had you on this pedestal and now you've suddenly crashed down to mere mortal level. It's a reality check for him - that no one is perfect, and that you are a bit less perfect than most."
Joan shrugged her shoulders, not really able to argue with that. "I thought he would have realised that a while ago."
"Is there something going on with you two that I should know about?"
Joan's eyes widened at the abrupt change in tact. She wasn't sure how to answer that truthfully. There wasn't anything really going on but...there was as well, just not in the regular sense. "No, of course not. He's just, you know, a friend. I don't have that many friends and his friendship means a lot to me and I hurt him and I don't like knowing that he's in pain and it's because of me," Joan said quickly, hopefully preventing Grace from following up on whatever she was thinking. "We're just friends."
Grace raised one eyebrow. "He's only hurt because he likes you so much, you know."
Joan smiled, remembering what God had said earlier sadly. "Yeah - someone else said that as well. Doesn't help though."
"What would help?"
"Oh, I dunno - he could speak to me again, that might help. Other than that? I think I need to go home and eat something...gooey," Joan said as she stood up.
"You think junk food will take your mind of Rove?"
Joan sighed and shrugged her shoulders. "I can but hope. You wanna come?"
"Girardi - you just got me suspended!"
Joan squinted. "I guess..." she sighed as she looked at Grace. "I'm sorry?"
Grace rolled her eyes. "Whatever. Come on - just don't expect me to listen to you whine about Rove all night. I hear enough of it from him."
Joan smiled as she began walking away with Grace. "He whines about me? What does he say?"
Grace groaned. "Don't start, Girardi."
Joan nodded. She probably didn't want to know if it was bad. It wasn't like she didn't have enough to think about anyway - she just had to work out what her relationship with Adam was, and, more importantly, how she could become Jane again.
fin