Title: "November"
Author: Kurukami
Feedback: Definitely wanted.
Category: Drama/angst.
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 save the stringing together of words my brain meshes together. Don't sue me; I'm broke enough as it is.

A/N: Spoilers up through "Friday Night" (2.08). Adam Rove's reactions to what happened that Friday night, and why he couldn't stay in that hospital room. Adam's mom, Elizabeth Rove, died on Saturday, Nov. 11, 2000.

"This has been, like, the best night… of my entire life, Adam," she murmured.

Adam Rove just stood there, taking in the way Joan glowed under the porch light. Her pale skin shone under that beautiful fall of dark hair, brown eyes gazing at him with emotion that always made him feel like he was floating. His throat was filled with feelings he couldn't find the words to express, and as he looked back at her with an uncontrollable smile all he could manage was, "Yeah."

"Um. Well. I – I know you're going to come inside, but… do you think maybe we could do the good-night kiss thing out here first?" She dimpled, ducking her chin just a bit, nervous, almost hesitant. But then she looked back up at him with those eyes, filled with trust… and suddenly everything that usually seemed fractured and out of place in the world for him became solid and whole again, like she was the cement that could hold him together despite everything life had to throw at him. The connection that had been so tenuous between the two of them for far too long washed back over him, making him feel complete again. They leaned towards each other, and with the kiss he lost himself in her, able to put aside all the uncertainties and worries and stress that had gnawed away inside him for these past months and simply feel.

Her touch on his shoulder, light as a dove; the softness of her neck and cheek under the work-roughened tips of his fingers; the strawberry scent of her hair wafting in the cool evening breeze; the feeling of her hand sliding along the line of his jaw and tangling around his in a soft grip that promised that she'd always stick with him, regardless of the ups and downs that life sent their way.

He sent a silent, wordless thanks out to whatever angel had brought Joan into his life. I'll remember this moment forever.

She opened the door and led him inside. "Mom! The place was so good, I stole a roll for you." Adam could hardly take his eyes off her, still enraptured by the energy that had flowed between them in that kiss. She looked up, seeing Mrs. Girardi standing there in the room alone, and happily chirped, "Hey!"

Sudden stillness. Adam looked at Joan's mom, seeing the pain in the older woman's expression, the bowing of shoulders weighed down by the burden of something gone horribly wrong. Joan didn't see it at first; he could tell from the confusion in her profile, the way she inquired, "What?"

"Honey…"

"Oh God… is it, is it Dad?" She stared at her mother, anxiety filling up her face like ink dropped into water.

"No. He's fine, it's… it's Judith." Jane glanced towards Adam, not understanding the pain in her mother's stance, looking for a moment at though she wanted to silently apologize for whatever Judith had done. As though it was just another immature antic, some prank gone haywire. But Adam knew it had to be something else, something terrible, even before Mrs. G. said softly, "It's serious."

Hospitals always made him nervous, setting his stomach fluttering with anxiety and leaving his shoulders wound tighter than guitar strings. The worst memories of his life were in places like this. Breaking his arm when he was seven, after the fall from the sycamore in the park. The delirium and queasiness of fever just before his eleventh birthday, burning inside him while the rest of the world seemed cold and faraway. Waiting in the coroner's office, thirteen years old, trying to find some explanation within himself for how and why his mom could have ever died like that. Sitting in the waiting room last May, wracked with uncertainty and doubts and worry, after Joan's collapse on the field beside Price.

Adam stood by silently as Joan and Mrs. Girardi spoke to Judith's mother, wrapping his arms around himself to still the trembling in his hands. He tried to fix his expression in neutrality and stand there ready to support Joan, when all he wanted to do was go somewhere private and bang his head against the wall until the numbness allowed the world to make some kind of sense again.

The voice he'd thought stilled since last year muttered in the back of his head, and dizziness tried to tip him over. Everything bad happens in November. Everything…

The doctor, Asian, female, came out of nowhere, appearing beside him with an abruptness that made him flinch aside. He scarcely heard her sentences, just disconnected words in a sequence he couldn't comprehend. How could everything that had been so complete, so right, have suddenly fallen into discord and chaos? He saw Joan raise her hand, saying "Me" so quietly he could barely hear, saw her turn back towards the other two women and then rise up from the seat and reach out towards him. Desperate need filled her features. He couldn't leave her, despite all the uncontrolled ragged emotion that twisted inside him and tightened his throat until he felt like he was choking. She had always stuck by him, even when things were at their worst. How could he do anything less and expect her to still respect him?

He could barely feel her hand in his as they walked together down the sterile hall. All around, people dressed in blue or white or red bustled past energetically despite the late hour, giving the scene of Judith laying in her bed a sense of the unreal.

She was so still. His memories of Judith were always dynamic – she was always in motion, always doing something, even if it was just nervously tapping a pencil. He almost froze in the doorway, then forced himself to take a pair of steps closer as Joan leaned over the bed and took Judith's hand in hers. Judith's eyes fluttered open, and suddenly the anxiety swelled inside of him. His gaze skittered away from her slender form underneath the bedsheets, trying to look anywhere, do anything but stand and look at what was right in front of him.

Joan was speaking, and Judith was replying, her voice soft and quiet, but he couldn't make himself focus on their words. Just syllables, strung together, fluttering against him like moths against a window, but his mind wasn't able to sort them out. It was so much like that morning, disconnection from reality echoing back to what he'd felt the morning his mother died. Experience boiled up from inside him; feelings and images he'd kept buried for years climbed into his thoughts and shouted to be recalled. Seeing Judith lying motionless on the bed summoned memories of seeing his mother lying motionless on the gurney, and emotions and words melted into one another in bitter recipe until they spilled from his mouth like bile.

"Why'd you go there, Judith? Didn't you know how stupid that was?"

She stared up at him, confusion warring with hurt on her face. Joan said something, and his gaze flickered towards her, but he barely heard what she said, so focused was he on Judith's reply. Judith's lip trembled as she looked back at him, and her voice was broken and uncertain and haunted. "I … didn't really think about it."

"You should have thought about it. You should have." He bit off the words, trying to stay in control of himself. He wanted to shake her by the shoulders, get her to explain how she could just throw her life away like so much trash when there were people that cared about her here, friends and potential friends, Joan, Grace, Luke, her parents, even Friedman for God's sake, and still she was capable of just leaving, abandoning them all to try to live in the confused wake of her actions, just like she had before when she'd swallowed all those pills and gone to sleep forever and oh God –

He fisted his hands, trying to still their tremors, felt the nails digging painfully into his palms and shoved them into his coat's pockets to hide his weakness. Judith looked like she was about to cry, mouth drawn up in a pained grimace, lips thin and brow furrowed with emotion, but somehow she nodded at him. His stomach churned, and his throat felt even tighter than it had before as he pushed down all the other words that wanted to pour out.

Joan looked back down at Judith and said softly, "You're going to be fine."

Adam looked aside, feeling the emotion surging in him like waves whipped by a storm. He had to go, had to leave, get away, see anything but this room, this place. If he stayed here any longer he wouldn't be able to bring himself together, he'd fracture back into all the pieces he'd spent the last year trying to unite. From far away, he heard his voice say, "I don't think there should be this many people in the room." Joan looked at him, hurt, confusion spilling into the enormous gulf that stretched across the five feet separating them, but the words rolled out of his mouth regardless. "I'll be outside."

He turned and walked away before he could see her reaction, pace quickening as he rounded the corner, and his stomach twisted and roiled more with each step until by the time he reached the bathroom he was nearly running. He almost made it to the toilet before the bread and salad and filet mignon came spilling back over his lips and left a pitiful trail across the clean white tiles.

He hadn't been able to force himself to go back inside the hospital; each time he tried his limbs froze and dizziness rushed over him again. The shame he felt at the way he'd acted ate away at him, and he walked circles around the hospital time and time again, trying to work up the nerve to enter. He'd been standing at the other end of the parking lot when he saw Joan and her mother come out in the bleak early hours of Saturday, seen the weight in Joan's steps and posture even from that distance, and known without words that Judith had died.

The two of them had sought out their car while he stood, so far away, unable to move. They'd driven away, and only then would his body shift from where it stood, paralyzed by the shame he felt at turning away from Joan when she most needed his support. He'd walked back from the hospital in silence, feeling the gravity of loss weighing him down as the miles passed away, until his feet finally came to Euclid Avenue and turned him towards Joan's house. They were all there. He could see them, sitting on the brick steps that fronted the Girardi home. Luke. Grace. Friedman. Joan. All of them, nearly motionless, blanketed by the sudden enormity of what had happened. Panic and anxiety rasped at his empty stomach again, wanting to send him away, but he forced himself forwards, determined that this time at least he would step past his own fears.

Joan saw him walking across the lawn towards them, and shoved herself to her feet, moving quickly to intercept him. He opened his mouth to apologize, to say something that would bridge the gap that lay between them because of his inaction, but her hands slammed against his chest in a rush, shoving him away as she shouted at him hysterically. "How could you? How could you just leave me?"

He tried to apologize again, tried to speak softly, make her understand the weakness in him, but she overrode him, fists beating at his shoulders until he caught them with his own and raised his voice to match hers. "I tried, OK?" Her face was awash with tears, and he wanted to brush them away, but his hands were still tangled in hers. She pulled one away to brush her hair from her eyes, then let it fall limply beside the other in his. Voice breaking, he continued in a softer tone, "I couldn't do it. Not after my mother. I couldn't … I just couldn't see someone throw their life away like that. Not again." The last words slipped out in a whisper.

Joan stared at him in disbelief, the sorrow overflowing her eyes, and her hands twisted inside the cage of his own. "She didn't…" Her voice nearly broke with emotion, falling silent for a moment before she could force herself to continue. "She didn't… kill herself."

"Some people do it all at once… and some people do it a little bit every day." He knew that from bitter experience, seeing only after the act how his mother had slipped away more and more in the months before November. He remembering how near he'd been to that despair himself last January, how only Joan's intervention had broken him free of it.

Joan's entire body trembled, hands shaking in his and shoulders trying to shrug away the weight of the grief that bore her down. Overtaken by emotion, she tried to form words to express the anguish he knew had to be cutting her to pieces inside, and her voice stumbled over the simplest of declarations. "I… I loved her."

"I know," he murmured quietly, matching his gaze to hers. "And I don't know why that doesn't matter."

She regarded him with such despondency in her eyes, pain and sorrow and hurt all mixed together in a chaotic tumble of feelings, and her hands slipped free from his. Please, understand, he willed silently. Please. I've been where you are, and I wasn't strong enough to confront it head-on, alone. She stood apart from him for a brief, eternal moment, searching his face for answers he didn't know, before her shoulders shook and she reached out to him with silent need, eyes shut as they pulled each other close.

This time, he thought. This time I have to be strong for her.

Rove
Elizabeth
Beloved wife of Carl,
Mother of Adam
November 8, 1952
November 11, 2000


At rest
Judith Montgomery
Beloved daughter
March 9, 1988
November 12, 2004