Premovie. This is just a depressing little oneshot I thought up while watching the new movie, because Noah Taylor's character seems so very real and tragic and yet nobody notices him.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything. I'm just borrowing other people's toys. I don't have permission, but I promise I'll put them back properly.
On with the show!
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Failure
James Bucket once read that the key to success is determination.
He'd believed it. But of course he had, back then, back when all that was expected of him was a 90 average and a few kind words from his teachers. Of course he had.
Now, though... now it means nothing to him but empty promises and disappearing ambitions, and he curses himself for believing in such foolish idealism. Follow your dreams, they'd told him, Take a chance. Reach for the sky and you can do anything.
Stupid! Stupid and foolish and naïve. Maybe if he'd kept his good sense, not let those damned dreams run away with him, he might have never taken that apprenticeship mechanics course. He might have still had something left for his family.
Damn that course! That cursed Apprenticeship Mechanics course that he'd put all his dreams into, all his money and his faith, that he'd enjoyed every second of...
He still remembers the feel of the metal beneath his fingers, the ice-cold, red-hot power of the engines, the way it all fit together, so precise and perfect and yet so worn and hard and tough and alive, like some fierce animal, yet to be tamed. The oil on his fingers that got into everything, made it all grubby and earthy and unbearably real.
He'd been so ridiculously, stupidly happy when he'd gotten in, even though he knew he would right from the beginning, and he'd slaved all summer until he had almost enough...
He should have waited. He should have been patient and worked for another year, earned what he knew he'd need. But instead he'd let his fantasies of James Bucket, mechanic, run away with him and he'd gone too early, thinking he'd just be thrifty, maybe get a part-time job, maybe... he'd think of something. He'd been sure.
And then on last the day, the day of the course test that he'd studied three hours every day for, the test he could have passed with his hands tied behind his back, his debts had been called in and he'd been evicted, his bike repossesed. He'd been left stranded with nothing, nothing, not a goddamn cent, and still debts to be payed, and he'd tried to get a lift to the garage so he could at least pass his exam and get a job...
But the world is an uncheritable place. No-one would stop to pick up a young man with grubby, oil-covered clothes, and he'd missed the exam. He sat there for hours, by the side of the road, thinking this next car, this next car and watching the minutes tick by untill he was five minutes late, then ten, then fifteen. And slowly and surely he'd watched his life, his chance, his dream melt away with each passing minute.
That night James Bucket had sat by the edge of the road and cried.
He'd hitchhiked back home the next day, and the day after that as well since he was many miles from home. And when he'd finally gotten back he'd found his childhood home empty, a sold sign in the window.
His parents had found him the next morning, lying on the side of the road, deep asleep. They'd woke him and taken him to the neighbor's house, where they themselves were staying, and they'd told him that when his debts had been called in, those that he himself had been unable to fulfill had gone to his parents. And they'd lost the house.
He remembers that day as well, with unbearable clarity, the disappointment in his parent's eyes, the compassion they'd tried to show. And while they did their best to tell him they understood, he was still left with the unshakeable feeling that he was a disappointment.
The feeling only got worse as he tried to get a job in the village, but none of the local garages would hire him- they didn't want a mechanic who'd never passed his final exam. The best he could do was a bottom-of-the-line position in a fast-food joint, and he soon lost that, as well as the other shitty positions that came after it.
He still carries that feeling, every day, and as he walks down to the toothpaste factory every day he can't help but cry- at all the people he's left stranded, lost, with nothing.
And he's pulled other people into it too, simply because of his own selfish need for them.
Jamie, for example. What the hell is she doing, he wonders, still trusting and loving a failure like him? She does her best, but he knows she wants a nice house and good food and friends and nighbors and dinner parties and all the things he can't give... And she never gives up hope in him, not completely, but every day that hope she holds dies a little. It's killing her.
When they'd met... It had seemed like such a silly coincidence, the old name thing- James and Jamie, children of Joe and Josephine and George and Georgina. It had seemed like fate was having a good-natured joke, and he'd fallen in love with her, hard and fast. And although he'd told himself time and time again that she was too good for him, that she deserved someone better, he never could give her up.
The wedding had cost the very last of his parent's money. They could get pittance jobs for a while, but nothing more, and soon they'd found themselves evicted, just as their son had been, from their cheap apartment. And once again, it was James Bucket's fault.
And her parents- they'd been wealthier to begin with, but it was all in the stock markets and with the closing of the great Chocolate Factory, they'd lost it all.
His father, too, lost his job, and soon the six of them were cramped into the tiny two-room house at the edge of the town. Their life became one of agonizing over prices at a secondhand store and growing cabbages in the back and trying to keep the roaches from getting to what little food they had.
Such a horrible little house. He hates it. It leaks, it's freezing, it never stays clean, the door is crooked and the paint peels. It seems like there is always something to complain about, and complain many of them do. Not Charlie, of course, but Charlie loves this house.
Oh, God- Charlie. James Bucket feels a knife in his heart every time he looks at the boy. Charlie, that wonderful, wise and innocent child who never loses hope, who always tries to see the good in everything, that light who is so good it hurts. Charlie deserves more.
James Bucket knows he had no right to have a son. Not with his salary, hos life. It wasn't fair. But without that child, he knows he would give up completely. He needs him.
He tries to learn from Charlie, for there is so much that boy can teach. He tries to appreciate the good in every moment. He tries to find happiness in little things; in the sweet things his Mother-in-law says without having a clue what's going on, in Jamie's lovely smile. But every time he does, he can't help but realise that his mother in law is gradually losing her mind, and that his wife is only smiling so that he'll smile, because it's the only way they can keep themselves from crying.
They keep smiling, all the time, even when they want to break into tears. That way they can convince their parents, convince Charlie, convince themselves that there's nothing wrong; they're happy so long as they all have each other, right? It doesn't matter that the old ones will die within a few years, that James Bucket could lose his job at any moment, that Charlie will never go to college or get a decent job, that the school doctors say he could get tuberculosis if he has to spend one more day in the cold, because they're together, and that's all that matters.
James Bucket never lets his family see his dispair. But every day, when he's alone, on his way to work- and he goes faithfully, every day, despite the fact that he hates the stupid uniform and his coworkers are all crude idiots and he's heard the bad joke about his job description more times than he can stand and the ridges on the toothpaste caps make his fingers bleed and that the smell of chlorine and mint is almst enough to make him vomit- he walks quickly, hugging himself to keep out the cold that seeps through his thin jacket and tears fall down his thin cheeks.
James Bucket has learned to forget about his dreams. He may have been dedicated, but it just wasn't enough.
He's a failure.
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Told you it'd be depressing. Please review! Feedback greatly appreciated. it's bad Fanfiction etiquette to read without reviewing.
No flames please.
With love to all my readers,
Till My Head Falls Off