Author: Kat Lee
Fandom: Dawson's Creek
Character/Pairing: Pacey/Andie
Rating: PG-13/T
Challenge/Prompt:
tv_universe Boxes of Emotion (If you join, tell them Kat Lee of Team Bunny Ears sent YOU!)Warning(s): None
Word Count: 565
Date Written: 19 February 2017
Summary:
Disclaimer: All characters within belong to their rightful owners, not the author, and are used without permission.
"Stay with me," she whispers, her voice almost a whimper. She's wanted this for so long, wanted him for so long even before she knew him. He is the epitome of all she's dreamed the last several years. In his arms, she manages to forget her pain and sorrow. In him, she finds everything she's needed for so long, from a reason to laugh to a love she once believed so strong.
Yet, even as she whispers the words, she knows already that he won't, and it's her fault. A thousand words tumble through her mind, a thousand pleas, a thousand excuses. She could tell him why she did what she did. She could try to make him see, to make him understand how alone she felt in the asylum or even how completely out of her mind her medicine made her until it was too late and she woke at a stranger's side.
She could try to make him understand, but although she'll beg for his forgiveness, she won't excuse her behavior. What she did was wrong, no matter the circumstances. She did something she swore she'd never do, something he promised her he would never do in turn and something he hasn't done except that she left him little alternative: She hurt him. She broke his heart when he had mended hers.
"Please stay," she does whimper this time, but already, he's gently removing her hands from around him.
"I can't, McPhee," he answers simply, and her heart twists and breaks again at the way he calls her by her last name. "You know I can't."
She knows he can't. She knows this isn't right. She knows she didn't do him right. But more than that, his heart belongs to another now. It belongs to the girl who did what she should have done. Joey didn't hurt him. Joey carefully mended the greatest treasure which Andie herself had torn asunder: Joey healed Pacey's heart just as he had once healed hers.
Andie bows her head, knowing the truth, knowing she's the reason why they can not be, why they will never be again. "I'm sorry," she whimpers. "Doesn't that matter?" It does matter, she thinks, but it can't fix what she's done. Nothing can. She deserves this.
"It does," Pacey answers gently, caressing his cheek. She tries to memorize every inch of the feel of his palm against her skin, because she knows she'll never feel him again. She'll never feel his love again. She's destroyed everything: destroyed their love, destroyed his heart, destroyed every chance she once had for a happy future. "But it's not enough."
A cry breaks free from her lips as he leaves her, but she lets him go as she knows she must. She lets him go back to a girl who was once both their friends. She lets him go back to the one who deserves him, the one who mended his heart and made him whole again after she ripped him apart. She lets him go back to the happiness of his own future with another woman while she herself finishes breaking. Sinking to the dock, hearing True Love rock gently in the bay and knowing it will never again exist neither for Pacey and herself or even for herself, Andie sobs and sobs until all she can hear again is the breaking of her own heart.
The End
