The Whether Weather

by gilligankane

Spoilers: 4/16/09 - before the wedding.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: i need a life.

You think you're waiting for help. For someone to tell you what the right thing to do it. Even though, at the back of your mind, you already know what that is. So all you're really waiting for, is a time when you're forced to do it.  

- pleasefindthis

The engagement ring is heavy on her hand; when she does the dishes, she feels like she'll sink into the basin, drown in the soapy water underneath the dirty dishes from your one-person dinner; when she does laundry, she imagines getting dragged into the washer, sucked into the vastness of the fabric softener and Emma's pink and purple shirts; when she goes outside and tip-toes across the ice she pictures it cracking below her and falling to the depths of the puddles.

It's dragging her down metaphorically, for now.

Soon, it'll drag her down physically.

Because, really, it's only the beginning. After an engagement ring comes the wedding band, and then Frank's going to give his to her, for safe keeping while he pushes paper at a desk in the police station he never goes to and then another ring, for their five year anniversary, a necklace for their ten, a diamond for the next one after that and after that and after that.

Until she's as heavy as a rock and when she slides into the bathtub, she'll just drop to the bottom.

The only time she doesn't feel its weight, its meaning , is when Olivia steps into the room and smiles; when Olivia steps into the bubble she's created around herself and reaches – sometimes with just one finger – for her hand, trying to tell her it's all okay.

It's not – they both know it.

But they're just too good at pretending at this point in their lives that they turn away when they should and they don't overanalyze their word and their days go smoothly. For now.

The wedding gets pushed up though, and the ring gets heavier, and there are minutes where she can't lift her hand off the table or the counter and then her heart starts to get heavy and she wonders: is this how Olivia felt when she was dying?

Olivia stays home to pack her things and she stands in the doorway, watching the life they've created get packed away.

She can't even lift a hand to make Olivia stay.

“You have a lot to do,” Olivia reminds her.

She knows.

“You, uh, you better get moving, huh?”

She should.

“Natalia?”

She's just standing in the doorway, watching the way Olivia's hands move so freely, so lightly through the air and she knows if she could just get her mouth to say the words her heart and head are screaming, her hands could be like that too; they could fly through the kitchen with wings, Olivia's fingers tangled in hers.

“What?” Her voice comes out like a whisper and it gets Olivia to turn around and she wishes she had just said I'll see you at the wedding and left.

Because Olivia doesn't have the wall up anymore, the one they've built together brick by brick since Emma's project – since before that , even –; the wall is gone, broken and it leave Olivia exposed.

It leaves them both exposed and now she's drowning for an entirely different reason.

“You need to get ready for the wedding,” Olivia says gently, stepping forward regardless of her words.

She needs Olivia to tell her why, though. Why does she need to get ready for the wedding? Why is she going to marry a man she doesn't love? Why is this entire ordeal even happening in the first place?

Why can't you just tell me you love me?

“Yeah,” she says, just as breathlessly, moving forward.

Stop me , she's begging silently.

But Olivia stops herself , her hand raised, inches away from touching her face. Olivia stops and lets her hand fall, then takes a step back and gives her a shaky smile.

“Well,” she tries to say brightly, fails. “Scoot then, get going.”

The wall between them is still broken and she could get through it easily, stride across the kitchen floor and tell Olivia everything .

But it's not endgame yet; she's not pushed up against a wall with nowhere to go yet.

When she's at the altar, that's when she'll realize that she's only got Frank left; that Olivia has already given her up.

When she's at the altar, she'll try to find a way to fix it.

And hope it's not too late.