A/N: As you can see I finally finished the next chapter:D I'm happy to say that there is only the prolugue left to come after this and that it is indeed fully written, so there won't be long till it's posted!
Chapter Six – The Wake
Marshall handed Corrine a small plate as she sat down on the couch. She took it from him with a grateful smile, and he perched on the edge of the couch next to her. Across from them, Vaughn sat with a beer and was methodically loosening his tie. Lucas and Mary sat next to him, each with a small plate of food, but none of them were eating.
Music was playing at a low volume from the small stereo, a mix that Josie had made prior to her death, while various people that she'd known were wandering the room, talking and sharing their memories of her.
Lucas leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees and dropped his head into his hands with a small sigh of bitterness. It had not been long since they'd arrived at the house, not even a full half hour since they had left the cemetery, but still Z and Kelly had not arrived back.
Corrine stood after a few moments, her plate in her hand still with food on it. She walked in to the small kitchen, and started to clean up. Putting aside food for Kelly and Z, she washed dishes, trying to forget all the events of the day. Keeping herself busy was going to be the only thing that would get her through the rest of the day.
As time marched on, slowly for the remaining members of the science club, the other mourners slowly drifted away, lost in their own worlds, their own memories, and soon they were the only ones left. And still Kelly and Z had yet to arrive.
Sitting back down next to Marshall, Corrine wearily rested her head against his shoulder. She'd finished all the dishes, cleaned every last inch of the kitchen down, while Lucas, Mary and Marshall had cleaned the lounge and talked in low voices, before Mary had left because of a work emergancy. Vaughn had remained slumped on the couch, lost in thought, working his way silently through his fifth beer.
Finally they heard the key in the front door, and soon Kelly appeared, looking completely drained, supported by Z. Corrine jumped to her feet to hug her, but Z shook his head silently, trying to mask his pain. He led Kelly down the hallway, and they heard his muffled voice as he helped her to bed.
Shutting the door behind him as quietly as he could, Z tiredly made his way back down the hall and into the lounge, taking a seat in the last available chair.
"How is she?" Corrine asked with concern.
Z sighed quietly. "Doing as well as can be expected under the circumstances," he replied without looking up. He played with the end of his tie, looking for all the world like a lost school boy, fidgeting nervously. "It's over," he whispered.
Sitting back down, Corrine looked over at Vaughn, who was now on to his sixth beer. "Vaughn," she said quietly. "Don't you think you've had enough?"
He looked up at her with glazed eyes. "Enough?" he slurred slightly. "I don't think that you've the right to tell me that I've had enough when we've just buried the woman that I love!" he all but shouted at her.
Taken aback, Corrine shifted her eyes to Marshall. "Vaughn," he began.
"No… Marshall, shut up," Vaughn replied testily. "Do you realize that Josie died not knowing that I loved her? She wrote me a letter, telling me that she was in love with me, and I didn't get the chance to let her know how I felt. I didn't get the chance to let her know that I've been in love with her since high school. She thought I didn't love her, that I didn't care about her… And now she's dead. So don't tell me what to do!"
He was on the edge of his seat, his beer forgotten, and the pain evident in his eyes and in his face to all who were present. His face was flushed from the beer and the anger that had risen in him all of a sudden.
"It's not fair!" he cried out, rising to his feet. He began to pace the room. "We never got the chance to be with each other, and now she's dead. It's a completely and utterly stupid situation. Why'd this have to happen?"
Z stood and placed a hand on his shoulder, patting it slightly. "I know Vaughn, there's nothing right about what's happened. But we can't change it, there's not much point getting angry about it now."
"So what the hell am I supposed to do?" Vaughn asked, spinning around to face Z. "Just pretend like I never felt anything for her? Pretend that I never read that letter, forget the fact that she actually loved me back, after all those years of hoping? Am I supposed to just forget all about her?"
"No," Lucas replied with a slight tone of anger. "You're not supposed to forget all that, because to do so would be to erase all the good times. But instead of dwelling on what didn't happen, what should have happened, what might have happened, you should get on with life, and remember that Josie wanted you to be happy."
Shaking his head, Vaughn sat back down and took a sip of his beer, his anger giving way to the torment inside. "I can't be happy with Josie gone. It's not possible," he said quietly.
"But you will," Corrine replied softly. "One day you will. It's too soon right now, but one day…"
Vaughn just shook his head in reply. He knew that they wouldn't understand how he felt. Sure, they were all upset and mourning, just like he was, but they didn't love her the same way he did. The same way he would always love her.
Silence fell over them again, a companionable silence. None of them were willing to speak, afraid that what they said would bring more pain. Finally however Vaughn couldn't take it any longer.
"I just can't believe this has happened. We only spoke a couple weeks back, and she sounded fine. She sounded normal… I don't get how she could just lie to us the way she did."
"What did she say?" Lucas asked, curious to know what Josie might have been thinking about just a few short weeks ago.
Vaughn sighed. "The usual small chatter. She rang me. We spoke for about an hour, making plans to see each other, to do something. She was telling me about how she'd left University for a short while, kind of like a Gap year, how she was planning on traveling. But… I guess that was a lie, she knew she was dying; she was trying to pretend everything was all right. I don't understand why."
"Because she didn't want you all to see her in pain and to remember her that way," a quiet voice came from the doorway.
Looking up, they saw Kelly standing there, watching them with glazed eyes. Z jumped to her feet and led her to the chair. She looked drained, as if it had taken everything she had just to get out of bed.
"What do you mean?" Corrine asked.
"I'm sure she mentioned it in her letters to you all," Kelly sighed. "But Josie didn't want the last memory you guys would have of her to be one of her sick and dying in bed, wasting away to nothing. She wanted you to remember her as she was before she was sick. Also she was afraid that if she let you in it would be harder for her to let go of you all, and it was already too hard for her anyway. I guess in a way she was being selfish, not allowing you to share the last six months of her life, and you can hold that against her if you like, but she was trying to save you all from more pain, and herself. And I let her do it."
Z patted her shoulder lightly. "It's okay Kelly, we understand. Don't talk if it's too hard."
"No," Kelly shook her head slightly. "It's hard, but you guys were her family just as much as I was, and you deserve to know what happened."
"So what did happen?" Marshal asked gently. "When did you find out that she had a brain tumor?"
"It was about six months ago. She'd been feeling pretty sick, and was dizzy, having a couple blackouts where she couldn't remember anything. She had a couple seizures, and in the end I forced her to go to a doctor. She didn't want to go, but she was beginning to get worse, so finally she consented."
She looked away from her rapt audience, her eyes glazing over in memory. Shaking her head slightly, she pushed away the feelings and continued. "She had some scans done, I can't remember what exactly, and they discovered the tumor. At first we had hope that it would be alright, that they could operate and she'd be fine. But the prognosis came back that it was inoperable, because of the location. We went to a couple of specialists, and had it confirmed. One said they could try, but there'd only be a 10 percent chance of survival, and we decided not to take the risk.
"She was given six months to live, and decided to drop out of school so that she could just live instead of doing something that she'd never finish. Jo…" she faltered slightly at her daughters' name, but took a deep breath before she went on. "Josie wanted everything to appear normal, so she took the recommended medication, stuff to help with the seizures and blackouts, to help with the tremors, to build her immune system up as her body failed, to help with the pain…"
"Was she in a lot of pain?" Vaughn asked quietly, unsure of whether he really wanted to know, but knowing it was too late to take back the question.
Kelly nodded. "She was in some pain, having an almost constant migraine, which gave her a bit of peaked look. Of course she was able to say that she had the flu and nobody questioned her."
"Like me," Z said a little bitterly, unable to believe that he hadn't pushed Josie further about being sick.
"Yea," Kelly whispered. "I'm really sorry about that. But Josie just couldn't face you with this, I think in a way she was afraid to appear as fallible before you guys, afraid to appear weak. You know Josie, she had to be the strong one, always tough and in control. I think she was just afraid to let you guys see how vulnerable she was. It's not that she didn't trust you, it's that she didn't trust herself not to go to pieces in front of you all."
"So when did she go in to the hospital?" Lucas asked next, unwilling to push Kelly but needing to know what Josie had gone through.
"She went into hospital, but because there was nothing they could do, they sent her to a hospice about a month ago, knowing that the end was near. She could barely walk, and she wasn't holding down any food. Her immune system was so weak that she was catching everything that went around, and overall she was just too weak to be able to do anything anymore. They took good care of her, making sure that she made friends with the other patients, keeping her medicated so she wasn't in too much pain. That's when she wrote you guys the letters, not knowing exactly how much time she had left.
"That's where she met Tracy, the young girl who spoke today at the… the funeral. As Tracy said, Josie wasn't depressed about dying… She did have her moments, but overall she tried to remain cheerful, since there were a lot of kids a lot worse off in there. Josie tried to smile as much as she could, in a way she was just happy for the time she had had here. But I know she hated the fact that she was dying, she didn't want to die, she just chose to act happy instead of depressed."
A lone tear made its way down Kelly's cheek as she remembered the last days of her daughters' life. "A week before she died, she finished the letters to you guys, with instructions that they be sent out after she died. She took weeks over those letters, writing them and rewriting them, afraid that they wouldn't be just perfect. In the end I had to remove the pens and paper because she was making herself sick over them. About two days before she died, she told me… She said… She said she loved me, and then she fell into a coma. She never woke up. The doctors say she wasn't in any pain when she passed away, that it would have been peaceful. I was there at the time, I never left her side, not until they… took her away."
Kelly's voice broke, and she stared down in to her lap, tears falling steadily. Z pulled her into his arms again, holding her tight against him, letting her know she wasn't alone.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, "but I haven't spoken to anyone about what happened in those last weeks until now."
"It's okay," he replied soothingly. "It's good to let it all out."
Corrine stood, and started to rub her back. "We're all here for you."
"I know you are," Kelly sniffled. "I know you would have been there for Josie if she'd let you be as well. I wish she had, she was lonely without you guys, but she felt it was wrong to drag you into it all. That it was her mess; that it was something she had to do, you know independent and stubborn she can… could… be."
Marshall smiled wryly. "We know. Boy do we know," he replied, remembering the many times that Josie had run off to do something that she shouldn't have, just because of her stubborn pride and independence. "Do you guys remember the time she went off in search of Pearadyne even though it meant lying to everyone? God she was obsessed with finding out the mystery of that place."
"But she did eventually solve it," Lucas reminded him. "If it hadn't been for her, we would never have gotten as far as we did. In fact, if it wasn't for Josie, we wouldn't have even known that we were dealing with a wormhole through space and time."
Kelly grinned. Although she hadn't known any of it at the time, after Josie had arrived back after being missing for a year, she'd been filled in on all the details.
"If it wasn't for Josie I don't think we would have gotten Corrine back from 1987. She was the only one daring enough to go through the wormhole," Marshall added.
"Which would have been a complete travesty, of course," Corrine said with an arched eyebrow.
"Of course," Marshall agreed with a sidelong glance at Lucas, who grinned back at him.
"And if it hadn't been for Josie, there's no way I'd be hanging out you guys, or have my mom back. I'd probably be dating Madison." Vaughn shuddered at the thought.
"If it weren't for Josie, there'd be a lot of things we wouldn't know right now, scientifically and personally, I think," Z said. "And yes Vaughn, you'd be right… Lot's of things would be different. I think we actually owe her a lot."
Everyone nodded in agreement, lost in their personal thoughts of what Josie had bought to their lives. It wasn't just the scientific stuff that they learnt because of Josie's stubbornness over the wormhole, and her continuing to travel through it despite being ordered otherwise. It was the little things, the friendships they'd all made with one other because she'd bought them together. Before hand there was no way any of them would have been friends with Vaughn, let alone a teacher.
For Vaughn there was the fact that his dad wasn't a bad guy, his mom was back, his parents were happy together, and they had a burgeoning company. There was also the sense of pride he now got from his father; his father now paid attention to him, and he was getting to know his mother.
For Corrine and Marshall they knew that they might not have gotten together if it weren't for the fact that Josie had pulled the science club together, and made it in to something fun instead of the boring lesson's it had been before. Of course that might have had something to do with Professor Z aswell, but Josie had been the one who'd taken them on their various adventures that had bought them closer.
Lucas had learnt to trust himself more, being proved right kind of had that effect. Also she'd taught him how to deal with rejection, not just in relationships, but in other aspects of life as well. And although it was something small, it was something he'd always be grateful for.
For Z it had been that not all kids were impossible to teach. Not that he'd ever thought so, but after working in the all girl's school where no one had wanted to learn his interest in teaching had begun to wane. Josie's enthusiasm had bought it all back to him; why he loved teaching so much.
After a few moments of silence, they all began to talk again, about school days, Josie, life in general. Now it seemed no longer like a wake, it seemed like a gathering of old friends, reminiscing about the old days. They would never forget Josie, forget that they were one member short, but soon the pain would fade, and things would fall back into the old easy way they had with each other.
In just 1 hour they'll be laying flowers on my life, it's over tonight
I'm not messing no I need your blessing and your promise to live free
Please do it for me