Title: Sweet Temptations, Bitter Ends

Author: hezziebob182

Rating: T

Disclaimer: I don't own Joan Of Arcadia. :( Pretty please don't sue me!

The second instalment. I usually hate stories like this because I can't stand pairing up people who just aren't meant to be together but this fic just came to me one day and I had to write it. So here it is.

"Adam?" Joan found her boyfriend sat on some steps in a nearby park, huddled up, knees pulled into his body. "Are you alright?"

It took Adam several minutes to reply. Joan waited. He shrugged. "You know, Judith. The baby."

"I know, it's so awful." She reached in to wrap her arms around him.

He froze for a few seconds. Joan's hair tickled his face, the sensation comfortingly familiar. For that moment he thought everything was going to be okay. Everything could be hugged better. A five-year-old Adam in the dead of the night, told by his mom that his nightmare wasn't real.

"Any idea who the father was?" Adam crashed painfully back to reality.

"Jane?"

"Um"

"I…"

I can't tell her. But… Jude's dead. She was having a baby. Possibly, no probably my baby. But isn't that enough damage? I can't do this to Jane.

He thought, as much as he tried not to, of that baby.

Had Judith known? Would she have kept it? Would it have been a boy or a girl? Would it have looked like me? Would I have left Jane… married Judith? Was it even mine?

Adam tried to reason with his conscience.

What good will telling her do?

He looked at Joan; all too aware of the pain she must feel already. That face he knew so well. He felt as though he had been staring at it his whole life.

I owe it to Judith. I owe it to the baby that might have been born. And I owe it to Jane. Some things aren't supposed to be forgotten.

Adam had to spit it out before the words could strangle him.

Some secrets are meant to be told.

"I slept with Judith."

Joan didn't react for a while. Eventually her expression changed as she registered what he had just said. Adam couldn't tell if she was distraught or just outraged or both. "What did you say?"

He was forced to choke out those painful few words. "I had sex with Judith."

"You did what?" She jumped back from him as if the contact between them was burning her. She was about to run. Adam sensed so.

"Jane, wait! There's… there's more."

"Oh god, no. Please don't say…" She begged desperately.

Say I've got it wrong. Please! Say that wasn't your baby.

Adam wanted, more than anything in the world at that second, to tell her she'd got it wrong. But he didn't know to tell her. "I don't even know Jane. But we… we didn't use anything." He knew, even now, how stupid it sounded. He couldn't believe how stupid he had been. If only he could take that afternoon back.

"Why the hell not?" Joan couldn't even think about the betrayal.

"I don't know. It's not like we planned it." He tried desperately to grasp any memory of that blurry afternoon two months ago. "It just… happened."

"I can't listen to this." She started to run.

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Joan sat on the cold, hard and filthy curb with her head in her hands. Hot, scalding tears forced their way out of her eyes and down her face and hands, leaving angry red marks.

Adam. Judith.

She thought of the tears, the act of crying deemed so beautiful and human by countless poems and stories and movies. She didn't feel beautiful or human. Her head throbbed violently, her eyes red and unbearably sore. She had dropped, unwillingly, to the curb as her legs had buckled under her own weight. Her ears hummed with excruciating silence, the animal-like screaming only she could hear. She rocked determinedly back and forth, trying in vain to sooth herself. Her hands quivered, her head suddenly too heavy to be supported. Joan tried desperately to stop the steady stream of tears; biting down on her lip so hard she could taste her own blood, coppery and strangely familiar. Everything hurt; nothing made sense anymore.

Adam and Judith. And a baby.

A figure was approaching. If she weren't so out of her head crying she would have worried about the chances of it being somebody dangerous. Now she didn't care.

Then the figure became distinguishable. God. Goth God.

Oh great.

Joan thought sarcastically. He sat down next to her.

"Was it his kid?"

God frowned. "Joan, Joan, Joan. I know you're hurting."

"Just answer my question!"

"What do you want me to say? No? It's not my place to say Joan."

"What do you mean it's not your place? You know the answer! Just answer the damn question!"

"Let me ask you a question. What difference does it make to you?"

Joan remained silent.

"You forget who I am Joan. So I'll tell you what difference it makes to you. You hate Adam right now. Hate is a strong word; I usually refrain from using it, but I think here it is called for. And you loved Judith. It's killing you that that love is now tainted in your mind. The idea of them together, it disgusts you. You're positively sick from the betrayal. But you care that Judith died. You may be reluctant to remember but last week, the night she passed, the night you stayed up for hours and learnt to juggle because it was all you could think to do, because you wanted to learn for Judith, you hurt ten times more than you're hurting now. And Adam, you love him. And he's still here. And you hate him but for all the hate you're feeling it doesn't disregard the love. You care if the baby was his; you mourn this possible loss for him even now. These bonds, Joan. Love and hate. They're what hold our lives together."

Joan looked shocked. "Get out of my head! Now!"

Ha! Love. A load of good that did me. As if I love Adam now. I couldn't care less if it was his kid. His and that slut I used to consider a friend. Don't act like you know how I feel.

God sighed. "Don't lie to yourself. The love, the hate, the pain you feel, I do feel it too you know. And I feel the emotions, hear the thoughts of billions of creatures every single second of every single day. I have done and will do for an eternity. Can you even begin to imagine what that feels like? I know about every aspect of the universe I created, none more so than the ability I gave people to feel."

I hate how you go on about your "perfect system," the perfection where people lie and cheat and die and get hurt.

"I never said it was perfect Joan."

There'll be more, Hezzie x