A/N- One more chapter after this! :) -love- Desireé
Chapter Twenty-Five, Leaving
She says wake up, it's no use pretending
I'll keep stealing, breathing her.
Birds are leaving over autumn's ending
One of us will die inside these arms
Eyes wide open, naked as we came
One will spread our ashes 'round the yard
-'Naked As We Came', Iron and Wine
Sometimes, in life, you experience something so rich, so heavy with emotion, and then later, when you try to remember what happened, your mind is blank. From the moment Troy heard Arielle and know and dead all in the same sentence, he paled and lost his voice. Nothing registered in his head, no matter how loud Gabriella screamed. She didn't know what to do, either. When fear becomes reality, preparation has nothing to do with it. Nature had made it so, at such a time, you would have to rely on instinct.
Everything in Sampson was put on hold as Gabriella (both of them were fully clothed now) drove them to the train station and left the Range Rover in the parking lot. She had to shovel out a handful of money to get their tickets for the train sooner than later—she glared evilly at the snooty kiosk girl and remembered that karma could be a bitch. "Come on," she muttering, ushering a helpless Troy into a train cabin. "Just sit down. We need to breathe."
A stewardess came by with bubbly water, but Gabriella declined for the both of them. She inhaled slowly, and glanced at Troy, whose face was pressed into his hands. "Look, we don't know anything. Harris was hysterical, you heard him. He just was probably thinking out loud. We always fear the worst."
But what if it is the worst this time? Troy thought. He looked at her through his fingers and she tried to smile, tidbits of bygone happiness broken up across her complexion. "This is my fault. You know, like the universe is sending a message to me. I didn't pay attention. It's cause and effect, because of my lack of parenting. I don't think," he began to confess, and then paused, wondering why he chose this moment to acknowledge this, "I was ever ready to be a father."
"We didn't plan on having a kid at nineteen," he said, stretching his arms across the table. She placed her hands on either side of them. "Harris was an accident, and after you left, I placed the blame on him. Like, Jesus Christ, he looked so damn much like you, and I shut him out half the time. I thought I was making up for it by spoiling Ari with everything she wanted, but I didn't even do that. All she wanted was to know she had a mom. Why the fuck can't parents ever get things right the first time?"
It was a conversation that was long overdue. Gabriella finally laced her fingers through his and leaned forward. "Because we're not perfect," she sighed. "Because it's human nature to be selfish, or silly, or imprudent. Because you weathered a very long thirteen years as a parent, and you have grown up so much since then. You learned how to live life right along with Arielle."
Her answer did not satisfy him. "Gabriella," he said, "as much as I love you, I just don't want to… I don't want to talk right now, okay?"
The tiniest bit of blush rose on her cheeks, but she nodded and let go of his hands, concealing a smile inside her. He loved her. Well, of course he did, because he waited a damn long thirteen years, without her. Now he would only wait just a little bit longer, and then that happy ending could come. Arielle could not be dead. "Yes, she can be," Gabriella whispered, catching herself when she realized she said it loud enough that Troy could hear.
TYWY
Rain slapped the pavement and thunder rumbled somewhere across the sky. There was traffic build-up down the boulevard, but Harris could see a clearing in the road thirty, twenty, ten yards away from them. Please, let her be okay, he said in his head, seeing red lights flash not too far off. He felt dizzy. "Please, please, please," he whispered, praying for one of the first times in his life. "Tell me she's fine."
Behind him, Sharpay and Ryan panted as they caught up, stumbling slightly when they saw he had stopped. A police cruiser was blocking the street congestion; a man in a yellow vest was directing drivers down a side road. The cruiser's lights illuminated the rain, as one officer announced the scene over his radio with a solemn face. This was the first thing Harris saw, and then he turned to find he could not breathe. Another cop knelt beside Arielle's still body in the street, two fingers pressed beneath her chin. He's looking for a pulse.
A silver compact car was parked askew a few feet, a horrified woman standing next to it, speaking inarticulately into her cell phone. Beside her stood a third policeman, holding a pen and a soggy notepad. "Folks, give us some room," he said, sweeping the crowd backwards single-handedly. Imaginary Do Not Cross: Police Line tape wrapped the perimeter. Most people were polite about it, but Harris, now crying, shoved past them. The policeman eyed him. "Son—"
"That's my sister," Harris hiccupped, rubbing his eyes. Sharpay and Ryan watched from their respective places, revolted that they were unable to do anything. The policeman paid his respects and stepped aside as Harris said, "I want to see her."
The officer kneeling next to her heard his footsteps and turned around. "Captain, her pulse is weak, we have to—oh." He realized it was not the police chief. "Sorry, kid. She's pretty banged up. I can feel her heartbeat, but we have to get her to a hospital ASAP."
Arielle looked rather peaceful, eyes closed and face a clean slate, with no emotion. There was a fleeting glimpse of her old self, the one where she wasn't obsessed with finding Gabriella, or bringing her family together again. It was the girl who loved to go on late night runs for ice cream at the local liquor store, and who loved to hear stories, even if they were made up, and who loved to be loved. That was the girl who lay before him, legs twisted grimly and shoulder looking as if it had been loosened for a while now.
Tears streamed down his face as he gathered her in his arms, all sorts of things bundled up into one. Her head tucked beneath his chin, he shivered and held her, watching paramedics come near with uncertainty. Harris wondered why he felt nothing inside her tick weakly against him. All was quiet. But it was his childhood innocence that had to challenge it; the normal adult version of Harris actually did know why. It was just safer to ask someone else the question because you're too afraid to answer on your own.
The ambulance left, and the police officers began their investigation with the woman who owned the silver car. A man came to stand beside Harris, who was staring at the blacktop where he tried to make sense of it, as if that were possible. "I'm sorry," the man said softly. "We were walking by, and my wife recognized her. She and your father have worked together before. I just thought you should have gotten down here right away."
Sharpay sidled next to him and smiled graciously. "Thank you for calling," she said, touching his arm briefly. He nodded and walked off in the other direction, leaving both Evans standing next to one another awkwardly. Sharpay finally rolled her eyes. "This is complete, fucking horseshit."
Shallowness seemed to evolve into shock and sympathy as she sat down in the wet street next to Harris. Her arms sealed him, and Sharpay became a sudden outlet for Harris' anger. He screamed against her, and Ryan noticed this was the first time he had truly let himself show vulnerability. It was a guy thing. "It's not supposed to be like this!" Harris cried, and the woman standing near the car looked terribly shamefaced. "I'm supposed to be there for her! I'm her goddamn older brother! What the hell—" He couldn't finish as he let himself sob into Sharpay's jacket, too breathless to say anything else.
The officer who had been checking her pulse came over and asked if they could move to the sidewalk. At this, Harris ducked from underneath Sharpay's grasp and collapsed on the cement walkway, clutching his cell phone. His mother's voicemail picked up, and he started crying more. "Mom, Dad, please! Pick up! I don't know what to do. It's Arielle. She's in the hospital—but I, I know she's dead."
The paramedics had confirmed nothing; the policemen had not said anything about death, but Harris had that awful premonition that she wouldn't come home. Sharpay covered her hand with her mouth, shell-shocked, and Ryan subtly took the reins. "Where to?" he asked gently. "The loft, or the hospital?"
"Hospital," Harris managed to say, stuffing his phone back into his pocket. Sharpay flagged down a cab, not second-guessing her saturated clothing. As Harris got inside the taxi, he prayed again, hoping someone was listening. All of the sudden, he was tired of being quiet.
TYWY
The train station was gloomy when they arrived. Troy was the first to get off; Gabriella had to literally sprint after him in order to keep up. Outside, he yelled, "Taxi!" and she barely made it to the car.
"Jesus Christ, Troy," she wheezed, pressing her head against the cool leather of the seat in front of her. "Everything—will—be—okay."
"We don't know that," he said sharply, and Gabriella blinked.
"We don't know anything," she snapped back. He sank guiltily into the car's interior and she looked out the window, piqued.
On the train, they had spoken shortly with Sharpay, and knew which hospital had taken in Arielle. The ER was busy, from the sound of the shouting in the background. "Um, we'll see you in a little bit?" Sharpay had said, wincing slightly.
"Yes," Gabriella had replied. Now she wished she had asked more questions. What happened? Where's Harris? How is Arielle?
"I'm sorry."
She whipped around to see Troy's rueful expression, and her anger melted. "I know. I am, too. I don't—I don't think I really know my own son well enough to have that same panic mode you have. That's a disaster in itself, but right now we'll be positive, okay?"
They went straight to the emergency room after asking a nurse where they would should find Harris & Co. "Oh, thank God," Sharpay murmured, sighing with relief when she saw them walking down the hall. That was when Troy started running, and then so did Gabriella.
Harris was trying not to cry, wiping his eyes on the back of his sleeve and sniffling. "I'm sorry, I should have—"
"You're supposed to protect her!" Troy shouted, taking his son by the shoulders. He could not locate the place in his heart where he had the strength to be so wrongly aggressive when addressing Harris, but anger and fear had reached their boiling points. "You are not supposed to let her go out on her own—in the rain no goddamn less—and get hit by cars! That's not how it works! You had a responsibility and you let it go to shit—"
"Troy!" Gabriella said, stepping between the two of them. She faced Troy, hands on her hips and eyes narrow. "I don't care how terrified right now you are of losing Arielle, because we all feel it, too. But you know as well as I do that this is not Harris' fault, not one damn bit. So just sit down, now, and be quiet. None of us have anything good to say, I'm sure."
After a few minutes, one of the ceiling lights above them began to flicker. It was beginning to annoy both Sharpay and Ryan, and they took it as an opportunity to speak to one another privately. "Hey," the drama queen said nonchalantly, "I'm going to go see the front desk to get this light fixed. Ryan, hey, why don't you be my escort?"
He rose from his chair and forced a smile. "Sure thing, sis."
Out of earshot, they turned to one another. "I don't know what to do," Sharpay said with a frown. "I was their caretaker, and I let her go out on her own. This actually is my fault."
"Harris offered to go with her," Ryan pointed out. "But she said she wanted to be alone, and that means she wouldn't have wanted us to go with her, either."
"I could have told her no, though!" Sharpay squealed, now looking appalled at her reflection in the window of an empty room they stood beside. "This is my fault! God, if she doesn't make it, I—"
He coughed violently in order not to hear the rest of that sentence. "Don't think like that, okay? Come on; let's get back there. This place gives me the heebie-jeebies and the sooner we get out of here, the better."
As they returned, she managed to smile and tease with a whisper, "Heebie-jeebies."
"Shut up," he retorted, grinning ever so slightly.
Troy looked up as they neared the waiting area. "Well? Are they going to come fix it?" he asked, rather impatiently.
"Fix what?" Both Evans had their rare moments of simultaneousness, this being one of them.
"The light," Gabriella supplied, pointing up to the flickering panel above them.
"Oh," Ryan said, "yeah, um, maintenance—we couldn't find them. But, uh, if we see a nurse walk by, I bet we could ask her to get someone for us."
Someone would have replied, had a surgeon in green scrubs not come down the hallway, walking rather slowly. He pulled his surgical mask down and looked at all the adults, not so sure who Arielle's parents were. Due to the fact that she had blond hair, and so did the Evans, he spoke to them. "I'm sorry, there was a lot of internal bleeding," he said, voice imaginably in a whisper. "She didn't make it."
And then the world fell apart.
TYWY
"We'll take Harris for the weekend, okay?" Sharpay said, eyes tearing as she spoke to Gabriella outside the hospital. She put her hand on the teenager's shoulder and exhaled the breath that had been trapped inside her since the surgeon announced Arielle's time of death, et cetera. Ryan was next to her, looking anywhere but the ground. "You and Troy, you guys out work whatever you need to."
The taxi ride home was silent. Troy and Gabriella were as close to their respective windows as possible, and had no intention of changing that. At the loft, they climbed the stairs, too impatient for the elevator, and at the door, he broke down, slamming his palm against the door. "It's not fair!"
She rested her chin on his shoulder but said nothing. Inside, he fell to pieces on the couch, and Gabriella sat beside him. It wasn't as if she wasn't sad, just as everyone else, but now was Troy's time to be emotional, or choked up. "I don't know how this happened," he said, short of breath now. "She's my daughter, I-I was supposed to take c-care of her."
Tears dried up and now he was miserable. "What happens now? I'm not supposed to live to see the day she dies, Gabriella, that's not how it's supposed to be," he moaned, and she stood up to go get them water. He hadn't realized how thirsty he was. "Brie, I know what to do without her, she's my child, and—"
"Sweetheart," she interrupted him, holding the water bottle against her stomach. But her mind drew a blank. She had no idea what to say to him. They looked at each other and he reached for her to come sit on his lap, lips meeting as though they had never met before. Gabriella pulled away, the corner of her crying eye brushing Troy's forehead, and reached for the sky as she pushed herself off of him. "You know, I, um, I'm going to go, all right? It will be a while before—"
He leaned back against the couch and, like gravity, pulled her toward him once more. "Or," he said, his voice raspy and low and frightening, "You could stay." And they kissed again. "Gabriella. Gabriella, Gabriella, Gabriella." Her head ached each time he said her name. "I love you. I never said that enough to Ari, so I need you to know now that I have always loved you, okay?"
The tears streaming down her face were heavy, standing up to shove her hands in her jacket pocket. His fingers ensnared her wrists and she leaned backward, suffocating. "Troy, honey," she was able to say, "I'm going to go now, and you probably won't see me for a little while, all right? Just, um—I'll be in touch. Harris is with Sharpay and Ryan for the weekend." She paused at the door, hand pressed up against the frame as a crutch. "In case you don't know, I love you, too. I need you to know that right now."
An empty apartment was one of the worst things he could have right now. Troy sat still for a little while, wondering when things became different, wondering what he would have not done in order to keep Arielle alive. Finally, he remembered that gift he had been planning to give her for a while now. The new iPod; she lost hers in the fire. Now he wanted to know what music she would have put on it, what play lists she would have liked, what games she would have downloaded. "God, damn it," he said agonizingly, looking down at the floor. He remembered the song he heard on the radio a few days after Gabriella left for the second time, thirteen years before.
It was John Mayer's 'Dreaming With a Broken Heart', the lyrics ridiculously ironic. When you're dreaming with a broken heart, the giving up is the hardest part. She takes you in with your crying eyes, then all at once you have to say goodbye, wondering could you stay my love? Will you wake up by my side? No she can't, 'cause she's gone, gone, gone, gone, gone…
"Please don't leave me," he whispered, charging into the hallway and bolting down the stairs. "Don't be gone, you can't leave. I already have lost one, I need you now."
When he got down to the sidewalk, Troy searched the street frantically for Gabriella, thinking she had walked off in some direction, but instead, he found her sitting against the building, crying against her sleeve. He came to sit down beside her, and this time he wrapped his arms around her. "I can't leave you," she said to him. "After thirteen years, I really want to stay. That's okay, right?"
She felt him nod. "I didn't want you to leave, either. I kind of, sort of, really need you to be in my life. I don't know how I went for so long without you."
She says if I leave before you darling
Don't you waste me in the ground
I lay smiling like our sleeping children
One of us will die inside these arms
Eyes wide open
Naked as we came
One will spread our
Ashes round the yard
A/N- Oh, I forgot to add this; the TG scene at the end is a Brooke/Lucas from One Tree Hill inspiration. :) -love- Desireé