A/N 1: Read disclaimers from Chapter 1 before proceeding
A/N 2: Yes, you can kill me for the extremely slow and short updates, but you know how sickening life can get. It's a miracle I'm alive.
A/N 3: Slow moving chapter which might lull you to sleep. You've been warned!
Un-betaed, so all mistakes are mine!
"Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it."
― Mark Twain
23rd July, 2009
4.15 p.m.
New York Presbyterian Hospital
'Ma'am, this might be yours, your umm...son was holding it when he was taken to the operation theatre.' a nurse says as she extends a hand to give a brooding Andy a plastic pouch.
She takes the pouch absentmindedly while still cursing herself for being so stupid. She meant to thank Miranda for helping out with her son but she ended up irritating or angering or hurting Miranda, whichever.
She looks up to see the OT door open as they wheel out Christopher, who's still unconscious.
'We're shifting him to Room C-157, you can come along with us.' The same nurse says.
She strokes her hand over Chris's cheek and kisses his forehead and then allows them to wheel him into the lift.
She looks unseeingly at the lift buttons and plays with the pouch in her hand. The gold trapped inside it catches the lift's light and blinds her for a second.
She squints and looks down at it. A very familiar object is staring back at her. Her gold chain. Miranda's gold chain. She cannot prevent the tears from pooling in her eyes.
She wonders for a second how Chris had come to acquire it and reasons out that he probably must have pulled at it while in Miranda's arms.
She still wears it. Miranda still wears it. SHE STILL WEARS IT.
A feeling of fleeting victory and a strange happiness courses through her body. One of those long lost feelings stirs in Andy's solar plexus. She smiles absentmindedly and takes it out of the pouch and strokes her fingers over the 'A'. It still feels the same.
The elevator dings and they proceed towards the room, her eyes still fixed on the chain, evoking memories that were long lost.
23rd July 2009
9.07 p.m.
Miranda's Bedroom
The Townhouse
Miranda closes her bedroom door and leans against it waiting for the avalanche of tears.
The twins and her came back to an empty house. The twins didn't dare discuss Andy and Chris of course. Instead they ate dinner, did homework and went to bed, while Miranda went around acting as normal as was possible- doing things like working on the book, having dinner with the twins, helping them with homework and putting them to bed with a kiss on the forehead each.
She knew the twins would have questions to which she wouldn't have answers so she preferred the awkward silence over whatever else she was expecting.
Now in the safety of her room she can let the tears come. She thought that she had spent her entire reservoir of tears last March, but there are always tears when one requires it. Like for instance, now.
She cries for last March, she cries for their dead child, she cries for having driven Andrea away, she cries for the twins who she's never been able to give enough happiness, she cries for the personal failure that she is. But above all she cries for not being able to move on. For being stuck, stuck on 28th March, 2008. She's not been able to move since then.
Today, the feeling of that little boy in her arms had seemed to have completed her somehow. She had felt at peace with herself, a feeling which had evaded her for too long now.
Somewhere, inspite of the unpleasantness of the situation, she had felt a pull, a maternal feeling towards that boy, a feeling which was already half dead if not for the twins.
Her heart had skipped a beat when she saw Christopher fall down and hit his head; she had run to him spontaneously and taken him in her arms. Like any child's mother would do. But which any human being would also have done. However, what she had felt in that moment was different, auspicious, not worthy of being cheapened by Andrea to a dry-cleaning bill.
She was furious at Andrea for having said such a thing. How could she think she could pay her back with money? She had helped Christopher selflessly! Or had she?
Maybe her motive had been more selfish and the more she thought about it, the more she realized that it was indeed a selfish act. A chance to feel again. To feel what it would have been like if Christopher were alive. How he would have felt in her arms. His scent, his soft hair, his baby skin, the tears, the pain, everything, everything all mixed up. She had reached out to him, almost haplessly, desperate, to snatch and hang onto him for that thin sliver of sanity.
She hadn't been able to control her tears in the car- everything, the whole situation had come tumbling down on her reminding her of things from their past, she had felt herself choking from the memories and the pain. She had not wanted to be weak in front of Andrea or the girls but she had been fighting for too long now-struggling to put all painful thoughts aside-to concentrate on Runway and the girls and suddenly all in a moment, Andrea and this little boy had been thrust into her life again and it was more than what she could take. So she broke down, like she breaks down again now.
She leans against the expensive rosewood door-frame of her bedroom and sobs. Heart wrenching, body racking sobs, the kind of sobs Andrea kissed away oh so tenderly. She reaches out for Andrea's locket for strength and hope and a semblance of sanity but can't find it around her neck. She panics, a flash of terror courses through her entire body and suddenly she is shaking.
She can't lose this, not this. The last link to everything sane, everything happy, everything sunny, everything Andrea. Something she wore without shame, a symbol of her fragility, an inability to survive without Andrea.
Suddenly she is up and about looking all over her bedroom. She can hardly see from all the tears which is falling freely now. When she's done searching her room, it looks like a warsite- drawers open, things upturned, clothes strewn all over the place and still no sign of the golden chain.
She leaves her room to forage the rest of the townhouse, wherever she's been today- the kitchen, the washrooms, the den, the living room, she even ventures ever so quietly into the twins room to look for it. But it's nowhere.
All this while, the thought that it isn't in the house is plaguing her mind, the fact that she has actually lost it is absolutely unacceptable. It could be anywhere, in the office, the car, the hospital, the deli! She simply cannot lose it! She will not allow that.
And then she remembers-Christopher in her arms, holding onto her, no-no, no—not her-her pendant, her chain.
Does he still have it? Did he drop it on the way or throw it somewhere? Is it somewhere in the hospital? Does, does Andrea have it?
She feels momentarily humiliated thinking what Andrea might feel about her still wearing it and she feels that rage again- the rage about still having to be so dependent on one person while the other person seems to have moved on. A little too much. Bulit a new life, a happy life.
23rd July, 2009
9.15 p.m.
New York Presbyterian Hospital
Andy has spent the last five hours sitting in a very uncomfortable chair next to Chris' bed holding tightly onto a golden chain in one hand and Chris' hand in the other while he sleeps peacefully.
Chris had regained consciousness sometime in the evening for a while but had been very disoriented and groggy. He had managed to sip on some juice and mumbled a string of jumbled words before drifting off to sleep again.
The doctor had informed Andy that she would be allowed to take him home once he was awake again and they had checked his vitals.
So here she was sitting beside the bed with four cups of coffee already in her system and fretting over the ridiculousness of the evening. She still couldn't believe she had screwed everything up with her naivety and to top it all she has Miranda's pendant.
She knows she needs to return it to her but she also doesn't want to embarrass Miranda or make her feel self conscious about still wearing the necklace. And most of all she wants Miranda to keep wearing it.
She revels in a masochistic way knowing that Miranda has not completely washed her out of her life. That Miranda needs her just like Andy does, all the time. She might have tried to move on but there isn't a day that Andy Sachs doesn't cry before going to bed. The pain is still as raw as it were, she mourns everything that she has lost and tries to make up for it through what she has. But it's immensely difficult. She wonders if it's ever going to get easier.
She remembers the car ride-Miranda crying for God knows how many things, Chris hurt, the twins sombre and clueless, her bewildered.
She has realized this much in their last two meetings: that Miranda has fared worse between the two of them. When she left her last March both of them had been wrecks-angry, frustrated, grieved, shocked and all those emotions accompanying events which break you down completely and wring everything out of you.
She had thought Miranda would bounce back soon, recover quickly and get back to Runway, forget all about Andy and March and all the memories they had made. And weirdly that is what had allowed Andy to move on, to become stronger, to make an effort to live again.
And here she was a year later, seeing Miranda, broken, more than ever. And that had been her undoing. So she sits and weeps once again and wonders how things will end after all, because for one thing, she knows: Miranda and she are not done, not even close.
She is pulled out of her whirlpool of thoughts when Chris stirs in the hospital bed. He pokes a finger in his eye to get rid of the sleep, blinks blearily and furrows his eyebrows then he looks directly at his mother's face.
'Hey buddy!Howd'ya feel?' Andy kisses his forehead and removes the hair that has fallen onto his forehead.
He smiles, 'I'm fine mommy, only head hurts a little.' Then he looks around and Andy knows what he might ask next.
'Where is Snow Fairy?' a certain wonder swims in his eyes. Andy's feels almost crestfallen to see the expectant look in her son's eyes and curses herself for having driven Miranda away, yet again.
'She's home sweetheart. It's pretty late, but we have something of hers that we need to return.' She takes the chain from within her palm and holds it out.
Chris looks at it momentarily and then asks 'Well, let's go then?'
Andy is taken aback to see the kind of enthusiasm and determination he says it with, Miranda clearly seems to have worked her magic on her son, who seems all too eager to meet her inspite of his injury.
'Then I also need to say 'thank you', right mommy? Coz she helped us.'
Andy beams with pride.
'Yes, that's absolutely right sweetpea, you do need to thank her! But it's too late tonight baby, we're gonna have to go some other day. Tomorrow maybe.'
'NO. We have to go now!' he says in that typical irrational childish voice of a five year old.
Andy doesn't know what it is about Miranda that attracts Chris but there definitely is something which is driving Chris to be so emphatic about meeting her.
It's a game of fate. It is. Everything, all things in Andy's life, centered in around Miranda and the girls and it's come back to that again. The cycle of life. She needs to face Miranda again, for better or for worse.
So once the hospital gives them the green signal, Chris and Andy find themselves in front of the beautiful Elizabethan door of that all so familiar swanky townhouse which houses Chris' 'Snow Fairy'.
Thank you for reading, favouriting/following or commenting! Can't tell you how much it means, I'm a sloth so I'm bad at individually letting you lovelies know, but I appreciate the motivation.
Next one will probably be a happy-ish flashback and then Miranda and Andy meet again! Hope you enjoy!