Here I am
Looking in the mirror
An open face, the pain erased
Now the sky is clearer
I can see the sun
Now that all is, all is said and done, oh
There you are
Always strong when I need you
You let me give
And now I live, seriously and protected
With the one I will love
After all is, all is said and done
I once believed that hearts were made to bleed
But now I'm not afraid to say
I need you, I need you so stay with me
These precious hours
Greet each dawn in open arms
And dream, into tomorrow
Where there's only love
After all is, all is said and done
I'll never be afraid to say
I need you, I need you, so here
So here we are in the still of this moment
Fear is gone, hope lives on
We found our happy ending
For there's only love
And this sweet, sweet love
After all is, all is said and done
After all is said and done
* * * * *
I'm not sure what it is, but even before I open my eyes, I can feel that something is just not right. I'm overwhelmed by this horrible sense of dread, and I'm not sure that I should even open my eyes. Yet, I do.
The surroundings are vaguely familiar, but I feel warm breath on the back of my neck and strong arms insistently wrapped around me, and suddenly I place it. Pacey's bedroom.
It's probably been years since I've been here. I recall playing Clue in the corner that I'm staring at now. I feel myself concentrating on that memory for fear of thinking of the less stale memories, for fear of thinking about last night.
I'm afraid to move. I'm afraid to breathe. I'm afraid to think. I may not be able to take it back, but I'll be damned if I'm going to think about it.
I hear him murmur her name incoherently, the bastard. I feel him flinch against my back, and I wonder if his tentativeness is the same as mine. "Oh my god," he whispers. I can feel him remove his arms from me immediately. He's up from the bed now. Although my back is turned to him, I can almost see him pacing, anxiously running a hand through his ruffled hair.
I wipe a small tear from the corner of my eye and turn toward him. He shuts his eyes, almost as if everything just became the reality he was hoping to be a dream.
There was nothing I could say, nothing to explain what happened. All I can do is watch him and wait.
"Oh my god," he said again.
I look up at him anticipating he will say something else. Yet he just stares back at me, as unsure as I am.
We are quiet, the thick tension is hanging in the air, desperate to break.
"Last night, I..." he begins, something stopping him. He looks down at the bed sadly. "This shouldn't have happened," he says softly.
"I'm sorry," I whisper. And I am because he's right. It shouldn't have happened. Neither of us should've let it happen.
He shakes his head softly and looks away. He's no longer willing to look at me. It's no wonder that he can't look at me.
"It's not our fault," I say gently. Trying to change something I'm unsure of, but not sure if I can.
His look is of strict concentration when he turns back to me. "It is our fault," he says. "We did it."
"They caused it," I whisper.
"And now we're no better than them," he says, turning his attention out the window.
Maybe he's right. But then again, maybe he's not. How much can someone hurt you until you have no choice but to turn to someone else? That's all that happened.
I'm not sure how I feel. I need to justify my actions, but something deep inside me says that I should feel guilty. None of this is anything near what I expected it to be. I never imagined that my first time would leave me in such turmoil, not sure if I should be happy or sad, scared or lost, and not knowing what the man who I just gave myself to is thinking as he looks back at me. He is so much more a part of this equation that I thought he would be.
I'm no more sure of why I'm here now than I was last night. I'm not sure what to think or what to feel or what to do. My focus is on him--he seems torn, confused, and hurt. I wonder what that means to me. I wonder how that will affect me when I look back on this tomorrow, or a week from now, a month from now, a year from now. This is going to be part of me for the rest of my life. Somehow I'm just not ready to think it was a huge, life-altering mistake. Especially since last night it felt like the right thing to do.
My breath is shallow as I watch him. I sit up slowly, pulling the sheet tightly around my nude body. I'm not sure why I so suddenly became modest. His hand is clasped around the back of his neck and his eyes are everywhere but on me. I swallow hard, unsure what to say. This doesn't seem to be as big of a mistake to me as it is to him. Somehow it should be the other way around.
He came to my house last night after a heartbreaking conversation with Andie, and I could see the pain in his eyes. It was my responsibility to make it go away, just as he had tried for me last week.
My form of comfort turned out to be a very different. He was sad, wounded, and it just happened before I even realized. Now there are problems, complications, questions. I don't want to know, but I need to know. I need to know that I did this for the right reasons.
"You regret sleeping with me?" I ask.
He sits down on the bed, his back to me. "I shouldn't have . . . " he begins. "You and I were . . . "
The way he cannot seem to complete his sentences amuses me for some reason. I want to make him not so nervous. "I was hurt and so were you."
"Were you hurt or were you vulnerable?" he asks.
"I was both," I say. "I was concerned too."
He looks over his shoulder back at me. "About who?"
I lower my eyes to the hand that is propping me up. "About you," I whisper. "I wanted to make your pain go away."
"What?" he asks.
"I didn't want to see you hurting like that," I say, trying to make it sound less abstract. "If there's one thing I understand, it's when the only person in your life who cares about you betrays you. I'd rather be beaten or shot or stabbed than to have that happen to me again. I didn't want you to feel that."
That may be a lie. It wasn't mother-like concern that brought me here last night. It was the fact that I had been hurt as much as he had been. The Joey of Dawson and Joey wasn't as irreplaceable as she seemed. It hurts not to be needed. It seems miraculous that the same night I realized Dawson no longer needed me, I realized that somehow Pacey did. If there's one thing that defines Josephine Potter, it's the need to be needed.
But maybe he doesn't need me in this way. Maybe I have it all wrong. The physical comfort just seemed to come so much more easily than the emotional comfort did. But I'd be a fool to say that I did this because he needed me, because, perhaps I needed him just as much.
I see him squeeze the muscles in his face, and I wonder if he's not trying to hold back tears. When I see him tightly close his eyes, I know that he is. "I still feel it," he said.
Of course he still felt it. I'd be insane to believe anything I could do could make it go away. He loved her, and nothing I can do will make him forget what she did--what she did to him.
I pull him into my arms, as a mother would a scared child and he lets me. I can feel his tears drip onto my shoulder. I realize there's nothing I can do for him.
"Pacey," I say softly. He wipes his eyes gently before he pulls away from me. "I, um . . ." I begin, not sure where to go. The words seemed so clear in my head just a second ago, but now they're gone.
"I'm sorry," he whispers. "I never should've dumped all of this on you. You were just trying to be my friend and I . . ."
I shake my head. "We were trying to make things better," I whisper, "and maybe we didn't. But this is nobody's fault."
He looks up at me sadly. "What's going to happen?"
There is no answer coming to me. "Nothing," I say, even though it probably wasn't the best answer. "We don't have to talk about this anymore. I can see that it's hurting you."
"Is it hurting you?" he asks.
"We were both hurt already," I say softly.
He nods. "We can start over again," he says simply.
"Yes," I say.
"I still need you," he says. "Can you promise that you'll still be here?"
"Yes," I say again. That seems as if it is the one thing I need to hear. I need to know that this will not change things, that it will only strengthen them. "We don't need to speak of this again," I say. "It seems we know everything there is to know."
"Can I hope that next time will be different?" he asks.
I'm not sure what next time he's talking about; be it the next time someone destroys him, the next time I need someone, or the next time we seek comfort in each other. "It will always be different," I say.
He gently wraps his arms around me, and simply says "thank you."
"Thank you," I say. This whole thing is just as much about me as it is about him, and I'm surprised that he doesn't know that.
* * * * *
After all is said and done by Kilby
Notes
Originally penned as Tavia
You saw episode 302 (Homecoming), right? Okay, if you didn't, you don't want to read this because I talk about it. If you have, I need you to do me a favor. The respective scenes on the docks between Andie and Pacey and Dawson and Joey at the end of the show didn't happen.