and I'll wait for you here

[angelgazing]

Title: Messiah
Summary: Joan and Adam and things that are right and things that are wrong.
Rating: PG 13
Feedback: Yes, please. I'd be willing to beg.
Archiving: As long as you let me know where.
Notes: It's four in the morning, as I can clearly only write after midnight. And I need a beta. Badly. I am also completely aware of how original this is.


She’s always been a crier.

A scrapped knee when she was six, an insult when she was ten, more tears when she was called a crybaby. Always cried and never liked it, never fought it that hard either because when she was twelve her mother told her there was nothing wrong with showing her emotions.

Everything about him used to make her cry.

But now, when she should be crying the hardest… There don’t seem to be any tears left inside of her to shed.

Her eyes are drier than they’ve ever been.

He watches her out of the corner of his eye, pretending to watch TV while she looks out the window with something like longing.

Dry eyes and a frown, lines etched into her features years before they should have been.

An old pair of sweats and one of his t-shirts, her arms wrapped around her stomach and he doesn’t know if it’s a protective gesture or not.

He used to know these things, used to study people with his mother in the park when he was young. Watch them walk, speak, run, laugh, cry. Learned to draw emotions before he knew what they were. He drew love in the face of a stranger with fingers that were still clumsy next his mother the day before she took her own life.

The ache to draw subsided days—maybe weeks—ago without him noticing. And watching Joan now, silhouetted by the setting sun, it strikes him suddenly that it’s not paper he wants to commit this image to.

Is thankful all at once for his memory and the ability to bring her picture back into his minds eye, clear as it is now, at will.

Says her name in an almost whisper, but it’s enough to make her turn toward him. “You need to sit down,” he says, not knowing if it’s true. “See if you can get some sleep. Our plane leaves in a few hours.”

She does as he suggests without complaint and sits down on the edge of the bed closest to the window and resumes her watch on something outside. Something that isn’t him because maybe that will be what makes her crumble, and she doesn’t think she can take that chance.

The pink sky and the power lines are the only thing she can see past cheap polyester curtains that smell like stale cigarette smoke. But in her minds eye she follows the couple in the parking lot, suitcases piled high in the back of the minivan and kids asleep in both their arms as they walk inside to book a room of their own.

Swallows hard and wishes she could want that.

“It’ll be alright,” he murmurs softly next to her.

They both know it’s the first outright lie he’s ever told her.

But he’s been repeating it like a mantra since she told him, and eventually they’re going to have to start believing it.

This is their third cheap hotel room in as many nights and he hasn’t touched her except when he’s crouched down next to her holding back her hair after she wakes up.

“They don’t believe me.” It’s question and hurt and disbelief that hang in her voice when she speaks now. Only those things in her voice since they all ended up desperate and screaming and crying in the Girardi living room.

The first and only time she’d ever seen him less than calm—doing something other than taking what was given to him. Because he shouted and cried with the rest of them and it probably only meant that he loved her.

It seems somehow like years ago and just yesterday to both of them. They put it off for as long as they could though. She was beginning to show.

“We could have lied,” Adam whispers, mostly to himself. It was a stupid idea to think that they’d ever believe them in the first place. Stupid and foolish, and it was clear to him now that they barely believed it themselves.

She doesn’t answer because she doesn’t have an answer, doesn’t have the energy to anyway. Every kind of energy and fight and emotion in her spent on waking up and wishing and knowing. Every last drop of fight she used to have still on the living room floor with their disbelieving stares. She’d probably still be there too if not for Adam stepping up and leading her to her bedroom.

Luke, standing silent and shocked in the doorway of his own bedroom, had to point the way before he knew where it was.

Silent, pleading whispers for her mother’s comfort still echoed through her head as Adam descended the stairs without her and told a room filled with sniffling, angry people down below that she wasn’t doing this by herself. But he’d left when her father told him to.

The TV was fuzzy, playing some insipid show about the rich and famous and perfect that Adam and Grace always teased her for watching. She hardly recognized herself as the same girl that watched these shows and spread the gossip.

It was the only light on in the room, but neither of them bothered moving to turn on a lamp.

The room looked better in the dark anyway.

It wasn’t that they’d kicked her out, only that she couldn’t handle hearing them fighting through the walls about how this was all Adam’s fault. That she was lying to cover up for him not wanting to take responsibility. The only person that would have ever believed her, the only one that was sticking by her, and they said his name in their bedroom at night like a curse.

Their distrust of them both poked at her until it became a constant kind of ache.

At least they didn’t try to keep them apart.<

But then, they seemed to be doing a fine job of that all by themselves. Or, at least, she was.

Turning to look at him to find that he was watching her tiredly, expectantly. Just waiting patiently like he always did for her to let him know what it was he should do.

“You believe me, right?” she asks, an old question that they both knew the answer to without a doubt.

“Of course,” he answers anyway, reaching out and letting her decide whether or not to take his hand.

She did so without pause, a slight smile on her lips even as she nearly chokes on the hurt and blinks back the burning of tears. “Thank you.”

And for all she wishes her parents believed them—believed her—she almost wishes that Adam was the only one who did.

He uses a little too much caution when touching her now, since she’d broken down out in his shed and they’d ended up on the dirt floor with her crying into his lap. Since the anger had come to the front even as she begged his forgiveness for sins that weren’t hers. Plead for his trust between sobs that shook them both.

Later, as he was running fingers through her hair calmly, she sniffled one last time and whispered aloud the realization that she now had a pretty good idea how her mother felt after some guy climbed through her window in collage.

His fingers had stilled, then kept on when she tensed.

“I’m not letting you go,” he’d whispered like a promise.

It was the only real comfort she had now, his almost promise. Even though she told him that she didn’t expect him to do this, that asking him to do this would be too much.

But he’d always been a comfort. Warm and solid and real. Hurt and knowing and love. And for all she used to fear not being good enough for him it never occurred to her that he thought the same way sometimes.

Told him her secret late one night under the stars and didn’t think for a moment that he would think her crazy. He’d just nodded, and understood. Just let her cry and didn’t try to piece together the parts of her that hadn’t made sense before then to fit in with his new knowledge.

And months later when she told him of dreams where angels held her arms until they ached, held her back while he slipped away, he’d pressed a kiss to the corner of her mouth and promised that he wasn’t going to walk away from her. The dreams stopped after that.

Her stomach was rounder now, and she brought their clasped hands to rest on it as she lay back on the bed. The ceiling was much less interesting than the sky, so she watches his profile in the flickering light of the television and doesn’t bother making any wishes.

Just wonders once again if she’d—if they would still be in this mess if she’d told him of the dreams before the angels had touched her.

For weeks after she’d known for sure, every where she turned she thought she saw Him. The cute guy, the little girl, any number of the versions of her God, but it never seemed to be. It was anguish that had rushed through her at the thought that God had abandoned her now. Anguish, and she was always waiting for the anger to hit her. Then Adam would appear and almost smile and it all edged away into blind panic of how he would react.

It might not have been until then that she realized just how much he meant to her.

Blue light across his face turning to red and an irritating jingle for some kind of truck playing softly. She squeezes his fingers in hers and when she releases his hand he looks at her. “Maybe lying would be better.”

“I think it’s too late for that now,” he tells her softly, hand not leaving where she’d placed it, held there by her own. “The doctors even confirmed it.”

He’d held her hand then, too, in the waiting room of half a dozen doctors her parents really couldn’t afford. With her mother on the other side doing her best not to look at their linked fingers. He never went in with her, just stayed there silent and knowing and gave her strength to be put through another exam to try and prove her claims.

“T-There are ways,” her mother had whispered after the second doctor told her. That Joan was, indeed a virgin. And pregnant. “There are ways that…” But her face had gone red and she hadn’t been able to finish the sentence.

“I know,” Joan had answered, swallowing hard around the lump in her throat. “But I didn’t do any of them.”

And it wasn’t until after the sixth doctor that she asked and found out that the money for the visit was coming from a church. Coming from the church.

Wasn’t until two weeks later she found out that her mother had told a priest she knew of the claims her daughter was making. Wasn’t until then, sitting across from her at the kitchen table, that her mother gave a flicker of something to her. “Six doctors, Joan… They think… They think you might be telling the truth.”

“You don’t though… Still. You don’t believe me.” A doubly whammy of understanding all at once. “And if they do… then they’re going to want my baby.”

The first time she’d ever laid claim to the life growing inside of her.

A soft sweep of the pad of his thumb across her stomach all it took to catch her attention again, blinking and wondering idly why it was she wasn’t crying.

“I just wish…”

“Don’t,” she says, more emotionless than she’d ever been before. “It won’t help.”

“I know. I just wish… It was different, is all.”

“So do I,” Joan answers on a sigh. Fingers link with his again and she gives him the best smile she can manage. “I wish you weren’t afraid to touch me now.”

“I’m not. I just…” Tries to prove his point by laying down beside her, propped on one elbow. “I’ve always tried not to push you, Jane, now it seems to be even more important that I let you be the one to decide things.”

“I didn’t get to decide this.” Waves her free hand at her rounding stomach. “I didn’t get to decide to fly all over the country to try and prove to doctor after doctor and bishop after bishop that I’m telling the truth about this. Especially since there really isn’t any telling what they’ll do once they know for sure.” She pauses, considering. “But I guess that’s the point, isn’t it?”

A small nod and his nose on her cheek a second before his lips. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

She feels his words across her skin, and her hand is snaking around the back of his neck to slip fingers into dark hair and hold him close. “You’re the only one who hasn’t.” Turns her face then to kiss him softly once. “But that’s a shitty reason to stay with me.”

There are no denials, just kisses. Soft, slow, barely there.

She’s the one that deepens it, clamps her fingers tighter at the nape of his neck, tilts her head just so and it’s still soft and slow, just more there… More real and less of a dream.

Takes her back and she can almost pretend that she’s got his work table pressing into her back as they make out beneath a sculpture that only has half its wings. Almost, but it’s the curve of her stomach that his knuckles are grazing.

Kisses like a search for something and they both realize it’s always been this way. She kisses him like he has the answers to questions she doesn’t even know hidden inside of him somewhere. Like if she just gets close enough he can make everything better.

He kisses like looking for absolution. Like she’s his divinity; his priest. Like he could find religion in her skin. Words of love and beauty and forever whispered like benediction across her mouth before he presses back to connect with her again.

For all she never asked or wanted to be the next madonna, she’d gladly be whatever it is he wants—maybe even needs—her to be.

And it’s almost blasphemous, they way he seems to worship at the alter of her, considering that in about an hour a car will be here to pick them up and take them to the airport. To take them to another secret meeting and one step closer to having the backing of the Vatican, but still not their parents.

It’s easy for them to know which they’d rather have. They’re still really just children themselves after all.

When he pulls away they’re both breathing hard, and he tells her again that it’s going to be alright.

But they both still know it’s a lie.

And after a moment, when she catches her breath, she starts to cry.





“Defining images
That flow through my hope
Surrender the broken moments”
- I Mother Earth ‘Like The Sun’