A/N: So, today we're going to ramp up a little. Yesterday was a little feels-y, but nothing grievous. Today is actually a request, strangely enough, from a while ago.
Like Chapter 143, I'll say that I personally dislike writing the structure of songfic so I won't be writing that in specific. Instead, let's write something with a thematic/structural respect to the Death Cab for Cutie song, "Title and Registration."
Dan, you're an asshole.
April wishes the road were really like home, but at some point she needs to figure out what home actually is anymore. She needs to change her definition, reconfigure it all, and try to work forward. With a torrent of rain battering the windows, wipers working their best to push past the waves but still leaving a rather heavy mist in front of her, and the rather overcast Northwest sky looming above and over in the horizon that she can barely make out, it's the perfect time to be assaulted by her thoughts.
Really, she should hate cars. They represent the very reason she drives without aim, trying to rediscover home, and coming up short.
A few times on the slippery road, black and dirty from obvious overrunning mud and clay after storms like these, April nearly slid off and wondered what it would be like to just let it happen and then quickly dropped the thought. A crack of thunder sizzles in the distance, dulled by the protection of her car, and in front of her nothing but a relatively open stretch of road greets her, a line of sagging, morose trees on either side barricades her from the literal escape and that's what brought her from that first thought. If she veered off, she'd hit a tree; April doesn't bother with her seatbelt anymore, and she'd be launched through the windshield.
It'd be nice.
But she doesn't stop to let that thought continue, instead stopping at the side of the road where an outcropping of trees is bowled over leaving a rough circle where she can keep the car and not risk having someone run into her at night. The worst that would happen is someone would find her, see her, and break into the car with a heavy object and probably kill her.
It'd be nice.
Honestly, it wouldn't be great to wake up like that and, at most, be awake for a few moments at all after that. And that's the optimistic approach, another thing April tries to suppress these days as well. Pulling over into the circle, she pulls out a jacket from the backseat and tosses it in her lap. Desperate for a smoke, she leans over to pop open the glove compartment to get them. Snapping the button, she fumbles and lets go of the little door and papers apparently held up by the closed chamber slip out and fall in a sloppy mess on the passenger seat. Sighing, she turns in her seat to look at the piles and rifles through for the little box.
Pushing a few napkins away, she sees them but underneath, weighted under them, is a photo.
She's smiling, sitting in his lap, and she sits there staring at it, hand outstretched towards the cigarettes and fingers almost there, for some amount of time she can't figure out. It's outdoors, near a cabin that she remembers but doesn't want to, and he's got his hands raised in the air in some sort of silly triumph that probably has to do with calling her the greatest wife in the world. His face is painful to discover here, to analyze and decode every inch of him she still remembers the heat of but can't quite recall the exact touch, and she blinks rapidly with her hand slowly edging towards the cigarettes. She brushes them aside, letting the cardboard fall off the seat with a soft thump and April picks up the photograph with shaking hands.
Remembering the exact day, and the exact moment this was taken, the corner of her mouth lifts up without her noticing for a few seconds. Before she can help it, though, she's touching the picture. As much as she tries to forget it, the memory isn't foggy at all or weak or even desperately unwanted. They're there, and important, and she never wants to chase them off, just the feeling that she can't go back to them. She can never go back to it, and she knows that if she does he'll have gone on and won't want to ask why she did it, or if it was about someone else, and if she wants to get her stuff and how he'll be an amazing person and let her apologize and come back into his life, arms open and all.
But she can't do that, and she can't go back to that place no matter how hard she tries. She's sure the feeling is still there, not lost but changing and slowly dying from atrophy, but something about it terrifies her. Reality, and that he might not want her back anymore keeps her going away from him. It's a self-fulfilling cycle of self-loathing and hatred, where she wants to believe that if she can make it back to Pawnee before he leaves that Andy will lift her up and make life warm again, and hold her, kiss her, accept her tears of apology and tug her back into his life with those soft cuddles at dark hours in the morning when she can barely stand the space in her mind, but she knows that's not true. If she goes back, he'll be with someone else. He'll have moved on, from her and their life they wanted to have together, and she can't go back to that. No matter how many times her phone rang that first week, she'll never be able to go back to him without having to explain and the problem is she can't.
Worse yet, it will change everything. He won't trust her anymore, and he shouldn't. She can't even trust herself to not stare at this picture for however long, not realizing she's bawling her eyes out forgotten on a lonely road to nowhere trying to repress every single of those amazing memories, bring them back, and focus on them all at once.
April can't go back to that day at the cabin, and be the smiling woman in his lap. She traces the picture again, running over her outline and his and then stopping with her nail on his face, and wonders what life would have become if she didn't pack three changes of clothes at midnight and speed off in her car without warning. Who would they be in five, or ten years? They might not be the same, but they could figure it out and figure it out together without the need for this. But, now, she's made a decision. Rash, absurd, and with just the worry that it would all be too much for the both of them in that time. She was saving them both from the heartbreak that many years down the road.
Which leads to the question, April rubbing off the meager black around her eyes she bothered with that morning for some reason, of if they would even be like that. It'd be nice to know who they would be at the end of the line, because April knows their love would have been enough. Now, though, it's broken. She broke it, and she can't do anything other than drive, cry, and reminisce. No more warm laps, soft kisses, and rough, fun nights in bed that made her want to scream into the night how much she loved him.
Drive. Cry. Drive, forever, and try to find that new definition of home that's somehow supposed to be without Andy. Without the man that looked at her like she was his sunshine on their wedding day, and she's convinced wouldn't give her the time of day now. Wouldn't dare look her way, and she just wants him to see her and pretend that she's the same person before she drove this spike into both of their hearts.
It'd be nice.