Title: Ashes
Summary: Stand alone post "Fire From The Sky." Bug, Nigel, Jordan and Woody are all at the Pouge after the plane crash, talking about Devan and how she died Spoilers
Disclaimer: I do not own Crossing Jordan nor do I own "Boston" by Patti Griffin
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No one spoke; no one needed to... the stark silence that fell over the group seemed uncomfortable and nervous. Everyone seemed spaced and awkward. Bug and Nigel shared an unoccupied Autopsy table while Jordan sat on a stool in the middle of the room, isolated from everyone else. Woody sat on the floor, his back against the wall, trembling hands resting on his jean clad knees. Jordan looked down, not meeting anyone's eyes. She knew Devan's death was not her fault, after all who could predict that a healthy, beautiful woman like her could die so suddenly, or the ill fated path of a airplane.
Jordan had been so consumed in jealousy that she had failed to give her a chance, at anything. The ambitious blonde had caught Woody's attention, and that scared Jordan, he had been her cushion for so long, she failed to know what to do without him. In the dim light she looked at each ragged face, how haggard Bug and Nigel looked, Woody looked downright colorless, all had unshaven faces and deep circles under their eyes like they hadn't slept in months.
"Maybe we should go for a pint?" Nigel said flatly, drumming his fingers on the cold metal autopsy table he rested on. Everyone nodded but made no attempt to move. Everywhere the looked seemed to have a reminder of her, something she did or saw or learned. If she wasn't well liked in the end, she would be well remembered.
"It feels like last week she was busting my ass on the O'Malley case." Bug remembered with a sad chortle.
"That was last week mate." Nigel quipped unenthusiastically patting Bug on the back.
"I wish..." Bug started, but was interrupted by a indelicate snort on Jordan's part as she snapped.
"We get it Bug, we all wished we could have done more!" she yelped in frustration, Bug looked down at the floor apologetically. "I'm sorry Bug," she amended "I just feel kind of overwhelmed tonight." He nodded.
"I think we all do, we all kind of treated her like an outcast... well except Woody." Woody didn't look up at the sound of his name, he just nodded morosely and stared methodically at the floor.
They all knew what he was thinking, feeling, he didn't speak and they didn't speak to him.
"What was she doing in DC?" Nigel asked, rubbing his hand threw his hair nervously.
"Who knows." Jordan said flatly, sighing loudly, the sigh soon exploded into tears. "I treated her so bad... I don't even know why!" her chin quivered in a very feminine way, Nigel caught her, bringing her to his bony shoulder.
"I know that you feel bad Love, but, I think she knew that you didn't mean it love. She was a smart bird." He consoled, rubbing warm, methodical circles in her back. Jordan knew she wasn't at fault for Devan's death, she knew that her words hadn't come from her heart, they were thoughtless and angry, she was overwrought and tired, Devan was her friend, and Jordan shot her down. Out of what? Jealousy, it was amazing what it could do to people, make them think things, do things, say things that they never really believed at all.
For all her annoying qualities, Devan wasn't a bad person, from the little that Jordan could gather in her thoughts she knew that Devan loved the Patriots, Marshmallow pies and her favorite flower was a pink carnation. But that was it, all that was Devan, all she loved, knew, believed, burned into mere ashes.
Woody's face was unreadable, he was silent, staring at the floor, his blue eyes searching for things that they would never find. He knew that she was gone, but somehow it seemed impossible, she was his friend.
His friend. That was it, Jordan had assumed it was more, automatically, she had dug into him about the preppy blonde, "Hey Wood, have fun with your cheerleader last night?" was her remark the day after they had cleared Louis Jefferies of any wrong doing. He had laughed it off as Jordan being Jordan, he still did, she loved to tease him.
He had told Devan things he could never tell Jordan, things like his parents, how he was alone, Annie, he could talk about these things with her and not have to worry about severing any precious ties like he had with Jordan. He could never tell Jordan that his mother had cancer, he couldn't tell her that the only memories he had of her was wires and medicine, he couldn't tell her that in truth he was just as driven as she was, only in a different manner. He couldn't tell her he knew what it was like to see a parents body on the ground like that. He rubbed a sweaty hand against his pant leg in a desperate attempt to calm the shaking that was becoming more and more violent with each breath.
"Hey Woody, are you okay?" Bug asked concern lacing his normally sullen voice. They all seemed different tonight; they would never be the same.
"Uh, I'm fine.... Really, I'm okay." He reassured, his voice betraying him with a childlike crack. He swallowed hard to prevent a gush of tears.
"Woody?" Jordan mumbled in a reluctant voice, he shook his head like a tiresome child.
"Jordan..." he said in barely a whisper. "I'm fine." He muttered sternly. She nodded and they all continued their blank and hallow silence.
Nigel saw how distanced that Jordan and Woody had become in the past few months, they had Devan to blame for that.
Her bright cheerfulness, and intuitiveness had struck the morgue by surprise. The truth was she was like Jordan, only on caffeine high. Cheerful and Bright, two words that didn't describe the brash Doctor Cavanaugh, but the driven and intuitive did. And after months of desperate measures and well laid plans by the gang, it looked like Jordan Cavanaugh and Woodrow Hoyt might have been moving a step closer.
Then Hurricane Devan hit, knocking down any hope that they had for anything to happen. Woody was drawn to her like a moth to a flame, and he got burnt down, again and again. However much fun it was to watch Woody get shot down playfully by the peppy blonde, Jordan was consistently fighting for Woody's affection, something that she had never had to do.
And tonight, Jordan snapped, the blonde could get away with a lot of things, but take her woody, was unforgivable. You've only been out for yourself. And what made you ever think we were friends. Statements that would forever linger on the edge of her reason, something that would ring in her head for the rest of her life.
Like a knife being driven into a heart, that's what it felt like when Garret had picked up that cell phone... his voice had been the last thing she had expected to hear. It was that confirmation that, she simply wasn't coming back, she was ashes, that was all that remained of a life that existed only for a short time. Her name would forever be etched into all of their memories, in granite and stone, everyone in that room had lost someone, they had all felt pain, and tonight, leaned on each other, because, in the end, its all they had.
"That pint sure does sound good Nige." Jordan said tiredly, "What do yah say we all go down to the Pouge and get really drunk?" she asked
They all stood, preparing to leave, gathering their jackets and scarves, mufflers and mittens. But as they all filed for the door, they noticed Woody still sitting by the doorway, backed against the wall like a caged animal.
"Hey Wood, you coming?" Jordan asked coaxingly.
He shook his head and smiled weakly, "Nah, you guys go... I'll catch up later." He mumbled tiredly, his eyes not looking into Jordan's hazelnut eyes. She nodded, and followed Nigel and Bug out of the Autopsy room.
Only when he heard the elevator door chime shut did he make an attempt to release the breath that he had been holding since he watched Jordan's thin frame retreat from his presence.
The morgue seemed uncommonly cold and empty for him. When he came to Boston, he had a box of memories and a wad of cash in his pocket, and with those two things, he had found a family. An odd, rather dysfunctional family, but a family all the same.
And he found a girl, so different from all the others he had ever met, raven hair and chocolate eyes, that only seemed to share a small bit of her. She was an enigma, a mystery he couldn't solve, a jigsaw puzzle with a missing piece somewhere. She held a past so much like his, when he first heard the stories of the stand offish doctor he had felt a deep understanding of the wound that cut her to the quick. He knew what it felt like to feel that alone. He never told her, he never told her anything about himself, hoping that if he buried it deep enough, it would never come back, just fester below the surface.
He was determined he would not win over Jordan Cavanaugh with pity, but with trust. He remained a cheerful, amiable , good tempered, he never fought with anyone, hardly ever raised his voice. Inside it was a very different story, the feeling of drowning came to mind.
That feeling of not being able to catch his breath, to be so close to safety and not being able to reach it. He saw a flicker in another room and looked out the door window, Lily was lighting candles in her office, until the dimly lighted room glowed in soft candlelight. After she was done, she leaned forward in her chair and laid her head against her desk.
He glanced over to Garrets office, he could see the lights, and a shadow but the blinds were closed, The joint office that Bug and Nigel shared was empty, the lights were off, but the computer screen flashed different screensavers. Bodies were packed away in the cold drawers, they all seemed so, powerless, it made him for the first time in his life, question himself, and ultimately God.
They never really knew her at all. He stood, walking in a large, lopsided circle, wondering what to do next. Some new feeling of restlessness came over him, like he hadn't walked in a year, he was seized by a longing to walk, or run, whatever cured the shakiness in his body. He jumped in place once, in an attempt to sooth the kinks in his legs. Moving around did no good, he felt as restless and nervous as he did before.
He noticed that someone had left Devan's office door ajar, he had to shut it, someone might go in there at night, he amended, walking down the hallway briskly. His hand paused on the doorknob, he was afraid of what he might find inside of that office door, he didn't know what was behind it, but he felt it, it gave him a large, seemingly tangible lump in his throat. But he swallowed it, and turned the doorknob.
He knew that Jordan had been in the office, he could smell her perfume, like wild flowers, but it mingled with the smell of vanilla which he had familiarized with Devan. It was a haunting reminder of the two girls he had lost, one alive, one dead. He tapped his fingers againstthe files that were neatly stacked on her desk, all of her cases she was juggling, her makeup sat discarded in one of the drawers. Woody noticed that Jordan had tried to jar open her desk drawer, the screwdriver was abandoned on the desktop, and the pea soup colored drawer had deep, white gashes in it.
He chuckled, and in one swift movement he had disarmed the drawer with the screwdriver, the drawer was released from its iron grip, and soon Woody found himself flipping threw her things... files, photographs, soon he had discovered the jewel of the crown, her diary.
As he thumbed through the pages and pages of feminine script, he found himself being sucked into Devan's world, how she looked at things, the way she saw the world. She talked of her father, whom she had never really knew, she talked of her mother and Paris, she spoke of Boston and its weather, but mostly she talked of the morgue. Today Bug taught me this... and Today I learned from Nigel and Jordan. She talked of life, death, love anything that struck her as odd or funny, she wrote down, lyrics to songs, poems, quotes, all packed into a small leather bound journal. As he thumbed through the pages one of the songs struck him, it seemed so soft, so muted, so real.
The title was simply stated as Boston
I went back to Boston
Back to the city you're lost in
I went back to the place without you, facing the stone
Walked around Harvard Square
The runaway kids are still hanging out there
And I took the red line all the way
Across the River Charles
Some things try and try
And they never fly
And they never fly
You reach up from the waves
And find that you're only waving goodbye
Went walking in Boston
Over a bridge I used to walk on
I was looking for my heart
That I'd flung into that sea of stone, stone
Boston said you need not apply
For your license to fly
Hey young lady don't be so surprised
You know you're not alone
Some things try and try
And they never fly
And they never fly
You reach up from the waves
And find that you're only waving goodbye
It was Memorial Day
I went to where you lay
There were thousands of people
Just like you in a giant graveyard
You came all that way
Looking for the sky
And got a slap in the face
You had a desperate need to be loved
You just got put in that place
You better know your place, boy
Some things try and try
And they never fly
And they never fly
You reach up from the waves
And find that you're only waving goodbye
Only waving
You're only waving
You're only waving goodbye
Goodbye
When he looked up, he found the window washed in rain, and got up on legs that felt like jello, looking up at the purple black night, he wondered if she got the easy deal... being ashes had to feel better than the pain he felt at that moment. Tracing his finger down a trail a rouge raindrop had left, he smiled, trying to fight back the tears that threatened to spill over. The entire morgue was silent, and he felt a odd feeling of... how small he really was, the heavens and skies seemed to be swallowed by darkness, they still felt so huge, and somehow, small at the same time. He rocked back on his heels like he used to do as a child, wondering if it was too late to catch up with Jordan, Bug and Nigel. He had held it all in for too long, they needed to have a long awaited disscussion.
Looking back at the window once more, as if he was trying to erase all that time had revealed, he walked away, away from the pain, the desperation, the grief... whatever it was, he would walk away, knowing the images of the ashes would never fade, remaining fresh in his mind until the day he died... but he could keep them at bay, keep them one step behind. As he walked by he turned the picture that sat on her desk over, so they couldn't see the happy face of the Blonde Medical exsaminer, that in the end was reduced to only ashes.
Fin