"No."
Jo feels a tangled dread rise up in her chest, knotted with apprehension and something less identifiable. She's never stopped hoping this conversation would be left unsaid, forcing it's retreat year after year because she couldn't face it. She can't. She can't listen to this.
As Laurie speaks she expects him to look like a strange animal, these unwanted professions spilling out of him, out of her Teddy, who only speaks in jest and in tender seriousness. But to her horror, he doesn't. His distress doesn't twist his face; he doesn't look like an unnatural changeling who's replaced her dearest friend. Instead it is Laurie before her, his fervent eyes searching (for what, she can't know), his favorite white shirt billowing, his dark hair, ever unruly, trying to escape their conversation in the wind. The anger she'd seen in their childhood arguments is absent from his expression, replaced by an anguish that suddenly descends to something even lower.
He dips his head, and something in Jo clenches.
"And I realize I'm not half-good enough, and I'm not this great man—"
A surge of defiance bursts through her then, and she almost sees red. "Oh, yes, yes you are!" For a moment she forgets everything. Reassurances of every kind pour out of her mouth; she has never been able to stand his occasional tendency to see himself as less than he is. She's reminded strongly of when they first met, his unsure manners and lingering uncertainties, before she taught him to forget the libels of school boys in Vevay and embrace himself.
The words create familiar warmth between them again, distance dwindling, and relief floods over her. Nothing is lost.
But as he listens to her, believes her, his gaze changes again, eyes steadily exploring hers, and for the first time in her life, she feels her feet beg her to run away. How can he ask this of her? How can he want things to change?
Perhaps there were times as a child she believed change wouldn't be so terrible; she wanted her stories finished and beloved and she wanted Father to come home.
She looks down, fright swallowing up her remaining air. But change has become her fiercest nemesis. Meg has been stolen away by adulthood, and as second-born Jo knows she's next, the next to be ensnared by a false promise, a promise of a gleaming pyrite happiness which will never be as golden as childhood.
But for Laurie to be the one to cast off their pretend, to abandon her to deny mortality on her own, to acknowledge the faint curtain fluttering closed between their youth and maturity…she can't bear the betrayal, so she looks the other way, straight at him.
With sudden insistence, she says quickly over him, "I can't, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Teddy, I—"
He stops her with a shake of his head. "I can't love anyone else, Jo, I only love you."
"Teddy, it would be a disaster if we married," she replies immediately.
Truthfully, almost every variation of the future spelled disaster in her mind now. Once Jo's picture of the future was full of wistful fantasies; now it had become a nightmare unfolding, her sisters being snatched away, Aunt March sneering, the house feeling barren, a restlessness never contented, blazing gold fading into pale grey, wife.
Jo's eyes flicker between Laurie's as he blinks. Now they're a part of the nightmare, and in her panic her eyes flicker faster. How can he ask her to be the one thing she can never be? She would be his champion, his Shakespeare, his Jo, always if he let her.
He wants a wife?
Terror jolts through her as she envisions this horrid future looming past their conversation. Laurie lost to her in a grand house, their closeness severed by adolescence's death (and a fine lady who is his constant companion, as she had once been), childhood ended in greys and adulthood steeped in loneliness—
Firmly and calmly, Laurie replies, "It wouldn't be a disaster."
As they talk over each other, Jo feels herself begin to sink. She had been terribly wrong; the grey world was here to steal Teddy before her, and how can she bear it?
She doesn't know what mischief means if she has to go it alone again, like in the strange purgatory of life before him and war and pilgrim's progress. She doesn't know what comfort feels like if it's not his hand, on her shoulder as Beth was sick, squeezing hers during Meg's wedding, brushing ink and tears off her cheeks after hours of writing gone wrong. She doesn't know home without feeling him beside her, even just in spirit.
Jo realizes as she stares, she doesn't know anything if she doesn't know him.
How will she go on, if she loses him?
She feels so profoundly in her the word always, because he has been stitched to her by fate itself. He has always been the only one outside of the blood of her blood that she's cherished so fully. It is a word never used lightly, and always for him, because it has always been him running beside her, and they've always been who they are; Jo and Laurie, Laurie and Jo, and can't he see if he chooses change he'll tear apart fate's stitches?
They keep talking but everything is lost in the cacophony of their reciprocated earnestness. His strained expression adds to her exhaustion, and he repeats those words again, I love you, Jo, and suddenly she's thrown off the hill and into the world, love is all a woman is fit for, and she steps away from Laurie. She remembers the day she promised herself she would never love, she would show the world what a woman could accomplish without marriage and without prospects, but she had failed terribly, she loved deeply, and Teddy ran into her life and taught her to forget the world and live in theirs—
Jo steps back in front of him, back to their dissension.
Through the strange words in the air between them she can see their twin earnestness coming to a draw, perhaps neither knowing what they're saying anymore. She's already forgetting the details of her lies; she would say anything to save them from themselves.
"I tried, and I failed, I'm sorry, Teddy, I can't—" she finds herself saying, and Laurie almost interrupts but then his brow furrows.
"Why are you saying this?" he asks abruptly, softly, looking at her with a deep inquisitiveness.
For just a moment, there is silence between them. She hates herself as she watches him try so hard to see her through her darkness. How far has she retreated if he can't see her? She longs to shrink before his gentleness, berating her selfishness. He was overwhelmingly bare before her, while she had crept inside herself, hiding underneath countless layers of feeling; stubbornness, disbelief, fear, pride, denial—she's gone so far beneath herself she hasn't been looking back at him, hearing him, acknowledging his despair.
So she faces him, attempting to right her wrong. There's resolve displacing his misery, his brow still furrowed, his blue gaze undaunted. His imploring eyes bore into hers until she's sure he's glimpsing the very fabric of her being, seeing himself woven in it.
Laurie's eyes widen, his whole face covered in a sudden awe, lips parting to release an exhale. Air catches in her throat, and she feels caught in turn.
"I can't," Jo begins again, as if to deny it. But his hair grazes hers, the wind twisting tendrils together, and she wonders subconsciously when the lie became so repeated it felt like truth to her. She feels the brush of his breath on her skin, a sensation so familiar yet foreign.
A spiral of fear blinds her as she forces herself to remember why they're standing here on this hill, why this moment can only end in tragedy. She drags her gaze up his face to his eyes, a part of her still desperately holding on to hope that this can all be undone, that they can be together in the same way, their way again. In that spirit she starts again, "So I w—"
His lips press against hers.
In his kiss is his flood of overwhelming emotion, and as his mouth moves over hers, for the first time since they've stood on this hill, she hears him and nothing else. There's nothing but Laurie, but Teddy, his desire, his heartache, his reassurance. His old promises, never forgotten, his familiar fondness. In it is his bareness, his voice which only she's memorized, his reminder, I know who you are. She feels his desperation as if it's her own, raw and pleading, but his is achingly honest.
When he pulls away, for a moment she is the master of her mind and truth trickles in first. He's still close, close enough to count each freckle and fleck of his eye. She swears he sighs but the wind catches and steals it away. He has no walls, no pretense, no agony of the unsaid or unexpressed. He looks freed, as if this was a fairy story and their kiss had unbound his chains, exchanged affliction for affection. He looks more like Teddy than he ever has.
But the returning flow of her own thoughts paralyze her. Jo doesn't know how to be so bare, even for him. She's always prided herself on her bravery, but what if brave means something different than she thought? Fear clings to her throat, reminding her this is change, her grizzled enemy. But everything about Teddy is familiar, even this, and the contrast of his unfeigned ardor and her fear's phantom grasp is dizzying.
He leans in again, eyes roaming her expression carefully, and she makes no attempt to stop him. His second kiss dispels her doubt again, and this time he is so gentle and tender and Laurie that even her most stubborn fears dissipate. It is the most vulnerable thing he can give her, and he does so willingly, another testament of who she is to him.
Slowly, Laurie pulls away, trading the touch of their lips for his hand on her cheek. When his thumb skims her lower lip, her eyes briefly shut.
"Jo," he says in his quiet tenor.
They are still so close they share the same mellowed breath. She looks back up at him, but this time with unfolded feelings and blatant openness. He responds to the conflict in her eyes with a knowing look, though it's free of it's usual mirth.
"Jo," he says again, with the smallest shake of his head, and she knows he's heard every thought in her mind, understood her failure, seen her bareness for his, it's complicated chaos contrasted with his unalloyed fondness.
"Can't you see I'm not asking you to be a wife?"
Jo blinks at him, and he slips his hand away. It leaves a cold shadow on her face, and as he grants her distance between them, something in her immediately aches. She feels struck dumb, bewildered at his absence, and it is then that finally, she understands.
With another breath, Laurie intertwines his tapered fingers with her ink-stained ones, eyes steadily meeting hers again. "I just want to be with you, always."
For a long time, she can make no reply. Her deepest darkness can make no reconciliation with his purest longing. For a moment she feels wicked, wicked for ever imagining he was asking her to change, when this was Teddy, her Teddy. To be without him would be to change; she barely remembers the feeling of breathing before him. It seems as though every moment since she tripped into that back room, he had been at her side, on her side. She has been attached to him from the moment he leapt across the porch, the moment she saw his amused smile, the moment he told her she could stay. From the moment he talked gently with Beth, scoffed at Latin, shared his sacred songs with her. From the moment he smirked at one of her remarks and laughed when she hit his arm. She has known him, and known him deeply, sensing his hidden laughter and learning by feeling his very thoughts, word for word.
And now, she understands him down to his last verity, that he's choosing her, choosing to be with her, always, as the fates who wove the tapestry of her soul intended.
A new vision unfolds before her, where wife and husband are just words in the midst of their infinite intimacy, as Jo and Laurie, Laurie and Jo.
A flicker of hurt runs over his face, and she realizes her redefining bravery is taking minutes. She looks at him, at his vulnerable courage, and that is the nail in the coffin of her fear. In his countenance she can see how much he needs her, and feels how much she needs him, and then she feels the ache in her chest filled, flooded with joy.
Jo grins, and catches his look of surprise before she crashes her lips against his. Their new embrace feels as natural as everything between them; her rough and unpracticed, him gentle yet equally returning her ardor. Eventually she softens her kiss, and he deepens it until there is no air left between them.
They part then just a little, exchanging ridiculous smiles. Then they hold each other, in their new and familiar way. They've always been who they are. The embrace is the same as always, her gangly arms squeezing him, his sharp chin in the crook of her neck.
"Teddy," she says against his shoulder, feeling warmth roll over her as she pictures again this new future, of late night scribblings and traipsing Europe and Laurie's smirk, his smile following her everywhere, everywhere and always. He hums in reply.
"Be with me, then." When she exhales, she realizes she's bid goodbye to every last stubborn denial. She's as free as Laurie now, free to love tremendously. Arms tightening around him, she goes on, "Meg told me childhood would end, one way or another. She found happiness in it. I tried, and I couldn't."
She squints at the sky, can tell he knows but he's still listening. "I couldn't see how an end could be a happy one, because it's still an end."
Pulling away slightly, she fiddles with her ring on his finger. He brushes the floating tendrils of her hair away from her face, touches the collar of his waistcoat around her neck, chasing the cold away with soft fire.
"But it's not quite an end, is it?" he asks. His blue eyes wander her face, contented and meandering, and she can tell he's taking note of her tone, the choice of her words. He's listening.
She bounces a little on her feet, shaking her head. "Not with us, it isn't."
Laurie smiles a little, an almost smirk, and pecks her lips. Refusing to be teased, Jo pulls his mouth down fully to hers, and her heart soars as he pulls her closer. It was not an ending for them, or even a proper new beginning, but a continuation, a renewal, an eternity of endless togetherness. Jo and Laurie, Laurie and Jo.
Can we still be friends, Jo, please?
Of course, my boy, always.
a/n When I tell you this was difficult to write, it was absolute AGONY.
While Laurie had already decided his fate—to either be with Jo forever or leave her alone, to his misery—Jo hadn't. She had to overcome her denial of childhood ending and accept that actually, life transitions can be a good thing. To try and express her conflict (both in accepting childhood's end AND admitting her love for Laurie, because I really felt those two coincide), especially in a style similar to how I wrote Laurie's perspective, was incredibly difficult. So if you prefer Laurie's perspective last chapter, yeah, me too. But at the end of the day, I feel like I was able to capture Jo's complicated and chaotic fear give way to love, so I am proud of this too. I may do some more revising on this chapter in the future, but for now, here it is. I hope you enjoyed. There will be more Little Women fics (among others) from me in the future.
~Briz
P.S. Thank you for your absolutely lovely reviews of the first chapter. It's hard to describe what a difference kind and encouraging words can make. Shoutout to James who wrote my favorite comment: "Good. Perhaps beautiful." Thank you to you all, you made me blush xx