A/N: This is so cool! I never get this many reviews. This story is making me feel special; plus, I am really enjoying writing it. It's so...different for me, because I normally write GG fanfiction, and I think that's what is making it so fun for me because I get to experiment/practice with the characterization of a whole cast of other characters.
Someone5 – Oh. My. God. I SO totally love you!
SassyAngel05 – Thanks for being so sweet. I love your reviews.
Here's 1) Chapter Four, and 2) Hoping You Enjoy.
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The church is so very white. It is a white unlike any other she has ever seen – fierce and ferocious, knowing white made only more incensed, more vividly void by the knowledge that there is death in its walls. So she looks up – but the only colors that meet her eyes are dark, empty...dead black, lacking anything real at all. White knows all and black is just empty space.
Dead space.
The memorial is long and her legs ache and the supposed heat from all of the flickering candles and her black pea coat does nothing to thaw her insides. And Will's eyes are red again, and so swollen, and she thinks this is slowly cutting into her heart because he is holding in her sorrow three-fold. And for all of the candles and jackets and frost-bitten, shell-shocked bodies...
There is no heat. And there is no light.
Every time her fingers touch together, every time she is supposed to be praying, she shocks herself, sends shivers jolting through her veins and exploding in her eyes. Every time they sing, Meg Pryor wants to laugh, and every time they pray, she wants to cry. And there are too many little red candles glowing unassumingly underneath Mother Mary tonight. They are all for him, and there are too many. Maybe she is seeing things and her eyes water, staring at the candles for far too long.
She hates herself for having to look at this light to make herself cry.
Outside, the bitter sky and wind wait for them. They file out first, a wavering, slow line...her father and mother, Beth, herself, and then her younger sister and brother. The door opens, creaking, and a knife of winter pounces on her. Her curls are stuck to her cheeks, and whipping at her face, and her fingers fumble with the three buttons. There are three goddamned buttons, and she cannot button them. And the weather is so...hard, and they are still walking, walking away from her as she struggles with those cursed buttons, and the sky is indigo, almost violet. They are opening the car doors and Patty is calling her. Meg still can't button her coat, her fingers turning bluish white. So she cries. Hard.
............
Nobody said anything when she broke the window. She remembers throwing a...something at her bedroom pane, and suddenly it was a mortal rainstorm. The little pieces glittered like water and they sparkled gracefully down into the snow, landing, bits of an angel on the colorless ground.
Of course they know. They had heard that splendid crashing noise, the smashing and the shattering, and perhaps they had seen it falling, falling, falling, ever so slowly and yet so quick, from her windowpane.
Meg wishes she had been punished.
............
It is like a cave in the church this night. It is so very white, and so very empty and open and...dead. Nobody here (is there anyone here?) is alive and he still feels as though he should step quietly. His hands are stuffed inside of his pockets as he makes his way down the center aisle, lined in red.
He doesn't remember ever being one of faith. He fights the impulse to blame that on his mother. He believes in God, of course, but he's never been to church and can't remember the last time he closed his eyes and prayed or wished for something ethereal.
Yet here he is, standing now in front of Mother Mary and a hundred ruby red candles. He knows that she wears a blue cloak and it makes him think of Meg Pryor's blue wool.
He takes a match, which is on fire before he even lights it, and watches as one stroke of red-to-red engulfs the tip of it in a white flame. He picks a candle and quickly finishes the deed.
Chris is not sure what that fire means. Mother Mary says it's hope, but somehow he feels like each breath of smoke and twirling wisp and the very tip of each flame is telling him that time is running out on (something) him and that hope is slowly drifting away.
He's never seen a candle burn down to the bottom though, and he really wishes that they never did.
He watches his candle's wick melt black and dead. It is hopelessness even more than pain that crushes the soul.
............
She has seen the whole thing and she stands, a part of the molding of the door, watching him in silence. The heat, the dead, still air, the remains of an atmosphere, hang afraid and every particle glows gray and yellow, which she doesn't think is possible. Gray is not glowing and yellow is a hopeful color.
She bites her lip so hard that she does taste blood and she is suddenly crying and the blood is salty and raw on her tongue and so she rubs it along her gums, crying more.
He turns.
She has her gaze fixed on her eyelids (because they are closed and she doesn't want to see him doing that). Her curls are damp because it is raining outside and they hang hopelessly, and he longs to see her eyes. Her cheeks are a ruddy scarlet, and her face is so wet and her body like a broken doll.
Something catches in his throat; the yearning to say something, or to choke on his own realization that he could cry, or something else. The yearning to see those candles melt down to the very bottom of their votives, to see hope finalized. Or perhaps to know that he is in pain. When he sees her, this pallid doll, eyes shut to the world, and feels the glow of candles on his back, he thinks he is watching the end of hope.
It is a very long time before she opens her eyes.
Her steps are slow, her breath stumbling in her throat, her neck quivering and her fingers numb and stiff from the bitter purple sky of the city. (Bitter).
She stands in front of Mother Mary like he was doing, and he is sitting on the back of a pew watching her. Lukewarm sunset haze, the only good that comes from burning, envelops her and he sees her drying flaxen locks like fiery skydust tingle in the shadows. A halo, an aura.
She blows. It is a simple, sharp, vicious move and suddenly the dead air in the church is damper and darker and she doesn't have a halo anymore. And her hair is suddenly the shape of no halo and he smells wax everywhere. And she turns.
"Why did you light that candle, Chris?" she screams. It is a wail. He's choking again.
"For you," he states.
She doesn't hesitate to let the tears flow over her face, her porcelain skin, her ruddy scarlet cheeks. It is hopelessness even more than pain that crushes the soul.
"Doesn't anyone get it?" she screams again. The sound reverberates throughout the very dead air. So dead. So morose. So grieving. So echoing. An echo. "He's dead! He's not coming back! No candle will ever change that!"
So she runs.
He doesn't follow because he can't remember how to use his feet. Never before has he ever seen grief. And now he thinks there is some sort of twisted love here, some distorted and inside-out way of affection, and he thinks that nothing takes time.
She is filling him up and he can't stop the flow and he stands, alone, in the center of that church, so dead and empty and ferociously white. It is dank and it is dark and he doesn't know love, not even love for his mother (that left some time ago) and he isn't sure what it is anymore. This is fast, this downpour of warped blue wool and flaxen curls and soft, warm
Capture-me
lips.
Nothing takes time but she doesn't know that and it makes him start choking on that something that yearns from his throat.
She is hopeless and he is in pain.
Even more than pain.
A/N: I don't know...am I going off on some sort of tangent? Help me. Please review and let me know what you think. Hugs and love are part of the deal! Thanks for reading. Chapter 5 up soon. –molly-