Title: Hidden Beauty (chapter 2 - Falling from Grace)
Author: Kurukami
Feedback: Very much wanted.
Category: Angst/romance.
Distribution: Please do not distribute or archive without permission.
Disclaimer: Barbara Hall is the creator of "Joan of Arcadia" and CBS owns it. I own nothing of importance in this matter. Please don't sue me; I'm broke enough as it is. : )

Author's note: Spoilers up through "The Election" (2.05).

It definitely wasn't the aftershave.

What was it with guys, anyways? Did they really think that clogging everyone's sense of smell with that kind of cloying stench made them that much more desirable? And the ridiculously corporatist ads the odor companies used to try and pimp their product – "Smells Like a Man!" They never bothered to mention which man – could be Slappy the Bait-Fish Guy for all anyone knew.

It was so not the aftershave.

But … what was it, then?

The light of the stars overhead was drowning in the streetlights' harsh, buzzing glare as Grace Polk hiked up the sloping suburban street in her steel-toed army boots. Her ears were filled with Nick Drake's Cello Song, her body was thrumming with nervous energy, and her mind was overflowing with random reactions and recollections -- would I even have noticed the stars if he hadn't mentioned it earlier? She tried to fix her thoughts on stillness, push all the mixed-up emotions away and just live in the moment like she usually did, but all the images and remembered sensations kept trickling back in. Trying to push them out of her mind was like trying to empty a lake by splashing in it.

Start at the beginning. If I can run through it all the way it happened, hows and whens and whys, organize it into neat little categories, maybe it'll somehow make more sense than the jumbled, chaotic mess it is now. Joy and despair and passion and fright and curiosity and anger and –

Enough. Start at the beginning.

That morning, in the wake of Joan's decision to go give herself to Rove, Grace had at first gently teased Girardi in her usual sardonic manner before noticing how pale and wobbly the other girl looked – as though a stiff breeze would make her topple over. Grace had eyed her more concernedly then, particularly after Rove had brushed past in the opposite direction. She saw Girardi's ashen features and her trembling hands as Rove beelined for the library and actually wondered for an instant if… no, no way. Rove would never do anything to cause something like this to her, it's just not in him. Not even after she smashed his art that one time. Besides, she looks more like she's got Bolivian death flu than a broken heart. But walking away from Friedman's piggish innuendoes, it felt like Joan had actually been leaning against her for support, as though the floor was going to slip out from under her at any moment. Her shoulders through the material of her shirt had felt noticeably hot against Grace's arm.

I thought I'd just keep an eye on her the rest of the day. Girardi looked so out of it, but I didn't think it was anything worse than a flu bug. Grace had stuck close to her throughout the remaining hours before the lunch festival, trying to be surreptitious and blasé about the whole situation but feeling more and more uneasy as Joan began looking worse and worse. The pair of them had bumped into Luke as they left the main office, where Grace had steered Joan after the morning charade of classes had let out. Girardi's mom was strangely AWOL, off on some unknown errand. Typical, how those running the system can get away with stunts like that while sticking us in here to be spoon-fed the "proper" version of education.

I remember thinking that maybe she'd feel better with some sunlight and fresh air. She'd led the two Girardis outside, made her usual deprecatory comments about the events of the festival, but her heart just wasn't in it. Joan's condition was starting to seriously spook her, what with obsessive scratching joining the flu-like symptoms that were all too plain in Joan's appearance. Price had ambushed them out on the front lawn, surprisingly mellow for all that his hair and face were drenched from hurled water balloons. Grace had scoffed at his invitation to take part in the spoon race out of habit, and only half-heard Luke's five-dollar-word response. She'd glanced at him briefly before turning back towards Joan and…

It was… like she wasn't even there for a second. Not the normal Girardi flakiness of not paying attention, but statue-still, looking at empty air, head cocked to one side like the dog in that old RCA-Victor logo. What was that called? "His Master's Voice"?

And then, despite looking worse than some strung-out junkie three days past her last fix, Joan had immediately jumped in to accept Price's less-than-convincing recruitment spiel as though it was some kind of sacred duty she had to adhere to.

"This is alarming." I can't believe that's all I could manage to say. I should've… stopped her, maybe, somehow. Told Price that Girardi was feeling under the weather, made up some stupid, preposterous excuse. But she hadn't done anything. Maybe it was hope sneaking in, hope that Joan wasn't feeling as bad as she looked, that being outside was actually granting her a bit of a recovery. I should've known better. Grace had hesitated, promising herself that she'd step in if Joan's condition went south, and began working her way towards the race's sidelines. Luke trailed behind her, rambling off on some esoteric scientific tangent as she cut through the milling crowd, but she mostly ignored him – pushing what had been mildly intriguing just a few moments ago to the back of her mind.

Intent on getting to where she could keep an eye on what was going on, she'd had her neck craned over to one side in an attempt to spot Joan through the crowd and literally run into someone coming from the other direction. The side of her head banged hard against the other person's jawline, dizzying her, and instinctively she had almost shoved the person away, hard, before she recognized Rove.

"Hey, is that Jane? What's going—" he began, rubbing his jaw.

Grace had cut him off. "Later. Girardi looks like she caught anthrax or something. Come on." She'd spun to push through the crowd, chastising herself for the delay and her own clumsiness, when something half-noticed impinged on her train of thought. Wait a second… The expression on Luke's face as he stared at Rove had been nearly… furious? But that wasn't anything like him; he was almost always calm and collected. She had half-turned back toward them, then pushed her initial reaction down. Deal with the testosterone poisoning later. Joan comes first.

At the starting line, Price looked eager, vibrant, like a hound straining at a huntsman's leash, while Joan had clutched at the spoon with both hands, swaying visibly, with her dark hair hanging lank around her face like a funereal shroud. Grace remembered thinking, Fuck waiting. She looks like death warmed over; I'm pulling her out before she gets worse. But before she could intercede, the starting gun had sounded and the competitors surged forward.

Price had tried to lead the stumbling Joan across the broad green expanse of lawn towards the finish line. But halfway there Girardi glanced suddenly to her right, towards the line of spectators, seemingly confused, muttering words Grace couldn't quite make out and motioning frantically with one hand. When that had happened, Price had actually seemed concerned for once, slowing down and turning to query Joan with a sympathetic look on his face, and then she… she…

Grace forced herself to remember. Joan had whipped back around to stare at him, and her face was filled with confusion and fright. She'd tried to back away, panicking, gesturing at Price and all around, babbling about the devil and knowing he was bad and other, less coherent fragments. In her struggles, the ribbon binding her leg to Price's came undone, and she'd drunkenly wobbled a few steps away from him, trying to look everywhere at once, pale face clammy with sweat. She dropped the egg off the spoon she was still holding, and as the shell broke on the hard ground she'd turned towards me and Adam and Luke, her expression lost and terrified and pleading, and her eyes rolled up in her head as she fell over backwards and didn't move again.

And I was frozen in shock, unable to do anything.

It had been like a nightmare, like… her mind had flashed helplessly back to coming down the stairs with Becky after the sleepover, and finding her mother slumped in a pool of vomit on the kitchen floor next to an empty vodka bottle. Grace's limbs wouldn't move, transfixed by what was going on right in front of her, seeing Joan falling again and again, as Adam and Luke rushed forward, as they and Price huddled around Joan's crumpled form, as Price ordered Adam to call 911 and interrogated Luke as to where his mother was, as Price lifted Joan's limp body effortlessly in his arms, his face filled with concern as he ran with her towards the school, towards the nurse's office, while Grace had been unable to speak or move or even think straight.

Price, who she'd always denigrated as being nothing but a rules-mongering fascist, who she'd always thought was intent only on enforcing order in his tidy little world. Price, who had acted to do the right thing while she stood by, paralyzed. It had shaken Grace deeply, seeing a side to him that she'd never thought existed. Only then, as Price had rushed towards the school's doors and Adam was shaking her, asking for her cell phone, had she finally been able to break free of her reverie.

Her memories of the afternoon after that point were blurred, just fragments of a whole that ran together into a mess of sensations and recollections. The siren of the ambulance blaring. The feverish heat of Joan's hand, limp in Grace's own, damp and sticky with sweat. Her eyes focusing on the rise and fall of Joan's chest, willing Girardi to keep breathing, praying to some entity she wasn't even sure she believed in. The terrible sight of Joan laid down across a gurney, being taken away through swinging doors as Grace's stomach tied itself in knots. Talking to some black doctor in blue scrubs with close-cropped dark hair, a goatee, and kindly eyes, listening to him ask questions about what had happened, and regaining some measure of emotional balance as she spoke. Seeing Adam come through the doors, looking like he was about to throw up, followed a few minutes later by Luke and his wheelchair-bound older brother. Hiding her emotions behind the familiar mask of sarcasm and sharp words. Attempting the unfamiliar task of mediating conflicts that had jumped into the foreground with Joan's collapse.

"Primates! We are here for Joan. A little restraint."

Girardi's parents were nowhere to be found. Hours dragged past with interminable sluggishness, with the uncomfortable silence occasionally broken by short discussions. More than once, Grace tried to put on her headphones and bury the emotions she felt beneath drumbeats and guitar chords. Each time she tried she found no solace in the notes and words. The worry that still gnawed at her left no room for the sanctuary she usually found in music.Around four-thirty, Girardi's mom and dad had finally arrived, and the female doctor in charge of the case had ventured out with the results of the blood tests and Joan's diagnosis. "Lyme disease, caused by a tick bite. It could have been lying dormant in her system for a long time. The rash on her leg gave it away…"

The rash. Of course. Why wasn't I paying attention? It was right there in front of me, staring me in the face, but I pushed my worries away. Lost in her self-recriminations, Grace had missed a few sentences as the medico went on. "… it manifests in subtle ways at first. Moodiness, extreme changes in behavior…"

Luke chipped in with a snide comment, and Grace favored him with a glare as the doctor continued. "… but later on it becomes more serious. Scattered thinking, lack of concentration, and eventually aural, even visual, hallucinations. Sometimes people are misdiagnosed as being mentally ill."

"This is clearing up a lot for me," Grace had said, thinking out loud. Girardi, always sort of flaky, had been even more so the past few months. More everything – more impulsive, more emotional, more likely to go off on some weird mission… who knew what she'd been trying to cope with, all this time? I should've seen it. I'm always bagging on her for having no radar, and then I miss what's right in front of me for months. Why didn't I see it?

Grace had shaken herself mentally, pushing down the negative emotions that wanted to boil up. No. I'm not a medical doctor. There was no way I could've known what those symptoms meant. It wasn't my fault. But despite that logic, Grace still felt as though she'd been hollowed out by the events of the day. What had happened had forced her to confront things she hadn't been willing to admit to herself – the depth of friendship and emotion that she'd found between herself and Joan, that Grace hadn't allowed herself to feel in years. She'd avoided that closeness for years by being confrontational and rebellious and "anti". Before today, she'd been virtually certain that it was what she wanted – if she let no one close, she didn't have to risk the pain and rejection and loneliness that she'd felt so acutely in the wake of Becky's abrupt departure. But my closest friend next to Rove could have died today. Suddenly nothing that was once certain feels that way anymore.

As the sun slowly slipped towards the horizon, each of them finally had the opportunity to look in on Joan. She had slipped into a doze, but to Grace's eyes she still looked exhausted and weakened. The energy that usually animated her, the passion and enthusiasm Grace had always seen in Joan's naïve yet optimistic nature, was strangely missing from her sleeping countenance. Joan seemed somehow smaller without it.