Fanfic (Roswell): Chances 1/1
Aug. 19th, 2005 03:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dangermousieTitle: Chances 1/1
Fandom: Roswell
Disclaimers and notes: Not mine. Most of my fanfic is meta in fictional form and this is no different.
Spoilers: Takes place during the show's finale, after Michael tells Maria he loves her and drives away. A M/M story. Sort of.
Summary: She doesn’t want the normal she thought she wanted. There is no fame or fortune to explore, just discarded papier-mâché dreams, outgrown.
She stands on the manicured lawn, shocked and dazed and stares at the now empty street. She knows she will never see him again. He has told her he will always love her and drove away. No demands, no attempts to win her back. Just a bald statement of fact and feeling that does not ask for a response. Self-sufficient and heartbreaking all at once. “Here I am. Take me or leave me.” Just like Michael himself.
“You’ve blown it, Deluca.” Herself, she’s dismantled the one steady thing in her life, the one thing that was hers that worked. And now she is back in the small town she grew up in, and her friends are leaving her forever. She will be a waitress for the rest of her life. She will have a normal life that she thought she wanted, that she didn’t have. Only “normal” is a daily grind of taking orders, washing dishes, walking home, seeing days fade and wondering: “is this all there is?" and sometimes, treacherously, where is he now? She is not a big time singer in New York, glittering diva with an outsize life. She never will be now, she supposes. It's not so bad if she thinks about it. Memory flickers at the edges of her mind: the Las Vegas trip, singing on stage, Michael with one of his completely unexpected, startlingly romantic gestures. She did have her outsize moments after all, even if not the way she dreamed.
She wanted to find herself. She thinks of her mother, for whom finding herself involved protests, drugs, and bad boys. She thinks of her mother, alone in the house. Her mother screwed up her life by accepting the wrong man. It seems she screwed up hers by rejecting the right one.
She is not one for deep self-analysis, but it strikes her that in leaving Michael she did not gain anything, or exchange one good thing for another. She did not find herself either, because the “her” she was searching for was entangled with Michael too firmly to parse out. She just lost. She is where she would be if she never met Michael Guerin and she does not like the place.
Life was settling into a pattern. She saw a long carpet of the future days unrolling in front of her: working a job she did not like, coming home to Michael’s messy apartment, with Michael usually out, busy. Every day. Day after day, for the rest of her life until she was old with white in her hair and her life was spent. She panicked and fled. It was always too unsettled before for her to take stock, but then he stayed, for her, and she had time. So in trying to escape loving him so much, she set out to prove she could live without him, she didn’t need him with her. She isn't sure if she succeeded.
And to banish her guilt, she pretended she didn’t hurt him. She shut that traitorous emotion out. She would not see the look in his eyes, or hear the tone of his voice. She would not notice the wall he was starting to build again. Because then she could never leave and she was desperate to get out to prove she could. She thought he’d always be there to come back to, hers. Now she knows that the former is a lie she could not afford and the latter gives no comfort. There's only guilt for the way she dealt with him, and pain of knowing that he is gone for good.
She thought there is always time to go back, to undo, to fix, but she was fooling herself, shutting eyes to reality that their time is not infinite. It never was. She wasted months of it and now she will never get them back, and she is angry. If they were still together he might take her with him. Or he might be Michael and stupidly noble and leave her anyway, and then she’d have all the time to find herself she could ever want. Only she doesn’t want it.
She doesn’t want the normal she thought she wanted. There is no fame or fortune to explore, just discarded papier-mâché dreams, outgrown. Now normal, for her, is laughing with Liz who will leave. Normal is talking to Alex, who she will never get back. Normal is waking up with Michael, knowing there is someone who will take care of her until the end, to whom she always comes first. Normal is Michael, who is gone. He would have stayed with her, for her, forever. But she pushed him away, threw it all over with both hands.
She has forgiven him many times, surely she's entitled to a mistake of her own. As long as it doesn't stay a mistake, as long as it can be fixed. She wants a second chance.
Fandom: Roswell
Disclaimers and notes: Not mine. Most of my fanfic is meta in fictional form and this is no different.
Spoilers: Takes place during the show's finale, after Michael tells Maria he loves her and drives away. A M/M story. Sort of.
Summary: She doesn’t want the normal she thought she wanted. There is no fame or fortune to explore, just discarded papier-mâché dreams, outgrown.
She stands on the manicured lawn, shocked and dazed and stares at the now empty street. She knows she will never see him again. He has told her he will always love her and drove away. No demands, no attempts to win her back. Just a bald statement of fact and feeling that does not ask for a response. Self-sufficient and heartbreaking all at once. “Here I am. Take me or leave me.” Just like Michael himself.
“You’ve blown it, Deluca.” Herself, she’s dismantled the one steady thing in her life, the one thing that was hers that worked. And now she is back in the small town she grew up in, and her friends are leaving her forever. She will be a waitress for the rest of her life. She will have a normal life that she thought she wanted, that she didn’t have. Only “normal” is a daily grind of taking orders, washing dishes, walking home, seeing days fade and wondering: “is this all there is?" and sometimes, treacherously, where is he now? She is not a big time singer in New York, glittering diva with an outsize life. She never will be now, she supposes. It's not so bad if she thinks about it. Memory flickers at the edges of her mind: the Las Vegas trip, singing on stage, Michael with one of his completely unexpected, startlingly romantic gestures. She did have her outsize moments after all, even if not the way she dreamed.
She wanted to find herself. She thinks of her mother, for whom finding herself involved protests, drugs, and bad boys. She thinks of her mother, alone in the house. Her mother screwed up her life by accepting the wrong man. It seems she screwed up hers by rejecting the right one.
She is not one for deep self-analysis, but it strikes her that in leaving Michael she did not gain anything, or exchange one good thing for another. She did not find herself either, because the “her” she was searching for was entangled with Michael too firmly to parse out. She just lost. She is where she would be if she never met Michael Guerin and she does not like the place.
Life was settling into a pattern. She saw a long carpet of the future days unrolling in front of her: working a job she did not like, coming home to Michael’s messy apartment, with Michael usually out, busy. Every day. Day after day, for the rest of her life until she was old with white in her hair and her life was spent. She panicked and fled. It was always too unsettled before for her to take stock, but then he stayed, for her, and she had time. So in trying to escape loving him so much, she set out to prove she could live without him, she didn’t need him with her. She isn't sure if she succeeded.
And to banish her guilt, she pretended she didn’t hurt him. She shut that traitorous emotion out. She would not see the look in his eyes, or hear the tone of his voice. She would not notice the wall he was starting to build again. Because then she could never leave and she was desperate to get out to prove she could. She thought he’d always be there to come back to, hers. Now she knows that the former is a lie she could not afford and the latter gives no comfort. There's only guilt for the way she dealt with him, and pain of knowing that he is gone for good.
She thought there is always time to go back, to undo, to fix, but she was fooling herself, shutting eyes to reality that their time is not infinite. It never was. She wasted months of it and now she will never get them back, and she is angry. If they were still together he might take her with him. Or he might be Michael and stupidly noble and leave her anyway, and then she’d have all the time to find herself she could ever want. Only she doesn’t want it.
She doesn’t want the normal she thought she wanted. There is no fame or fortune to explore, just discarded papier-mâché dreams, outgrown. Now normal, for her, is laughing with Liz who will leave. Normal is talking to Alex, who she will never get back. Normal is waking up with Michael, knowing there is someone who will take care of her until the end, to whom she always comes first. Normal is Michael, who is gone. He would have stayed with her, for her, forever. But she pushed him away, threw it all over with both hands.
She has forgiven him many times, surely she's entitled to a mistake of her own. As long as it doesn't stay a mistake, as long as it can be fixed. She wants a second chance.
