City. {Jaria fic}

[Deleted]

((ooc - Okay, what is this. I don't even... I was listening to this song, and the idea for this hit me like a ton of bricks. It's sad, it's awful, and it's... ugh. Anyway, if you're going to read it, I highly recommend listening to the song while you do (found here.) Feel free to reply with reviews/critique/shooting me for doing this to these poor kids.))

Aria
"Her Speech"
Julian
"His Speech"
Other

There's a harvest each Saturday night
At the bars filled with perfume and hitching a ride
A place you can stand for one night and get gone

She wasn't quite sure how it had all come to this.

If someone had asked her what she'd be doing at age thirty, say, ten or eleven years ago, Aria wouldn't have thought in her wildest dreams that singing in a dead-end dive bar for shitty wages and even shittier clientele was in the stars for her. But things happened, she supposed, life happened. Woodcutting wasn't exactly a lifetime career after all the abuse she'd put herself through in her teenage years, and her body had eventually weakened too much under the strenuous labor to be useful anymore, muscles refusing to haul heavy loads and tendons screaming in protest at the repetitive motions of swinging an axe. They'd fired her just before her twenty-fifth birthday. It was either singing or starving after that, and she'd had enough starving to last her a lifetime.

Which is why she'd ended up in this bar, with its layer of grime on every possible surface, horrible lighting, and alcohol that was from anywhere but the top shelf. It wasn't anything special by any stretch of the imagination, but after five years the place felt a little like home, especially since home was a run-down studio apartment in a similar state of grunginess and disrepair. Turns out there wasn't much of a demand for vocal talent in District Seven, and beggars couldn't be choosers, so Aria had jumped on the first opportunity she could find, playing her tortured little heart out every night to a room full of smoke and booze and broken dreams that matched her own.

She'd always wanted to be a star.

Of course, Aria had always pictured herself in gorgeous evening gowns standing dead center on a stage at some opera house in the Capitol with standing ovations and roses raining down on her rather than sitting at a beat-up old baby grand in a threadbare cocktail dress with slurred catcalls and (rare, too rare) tips falling into the glass jar that stood next to the piano bench. But life didn't work out that way, and she was finally old enough to realize it. Old. She felt it more and more every day, worn-out joints creaking when she got out of bed and the very first traces of gray making their appearance laced within honey-colored strands. Mirrors had never been her friends, but that insistent, destructive self-loathing she'd used to struggle with so fiercely had mellowed enough with age to keep her from having an absolute meltdown (although she'd cried for a while when she realized for the first time that any beauty she might have ever possessed wasn't going to be around for much longer).

Maybe it wasn't the exact type of stardom she'd always dreamed of, but Aria couldn't deny the small degree of pleasure that her job brought her. It didn't take much to glow in such dim surroundings, but she did it anyway, voice soaring and fingers flying until people came from miles around to see the girl down at O'Flannegan's Pub who could play anything you asked her to if you gave her a minute or two to work on it. But people rarely made requests, too entranced with the musical creations she already had in her repertoire. You had to give the people what they wanted, it was an unwritten rule among performers, and it went without saying that the blue-collar patrons of this particular hole in the wall weren't much interested in Bellini or Purcell, so Aria had been left with her only other viable option.

She sang Julian's music.

God knew how long it had been since he'd walked away and left them there, but the notebooks still sat in her apartment, messy staves and notes and lyrics scrawled haphazardly over the paper that had yellowed a little over time. But no matter the state of its vessel, the music itself was still beautiful. And speaking of beautiful things, she could still remember the look on his face when he'd written every one of those heartbreakingly gorgeous compositions, brows furrowed in concentration and stormy eyes fixed on something only he could see as his hands flew over the paper and piano keys with equal amounts of agility and grace. Aria had never been much of a writer (words had always confused her, tied her tongue and heart into little knots unless she was singing them), but she had never ceased to marvel at what could happen inside of Julian's mind, how it could translate itself into crescendoes and interludes and breathtaking choruses that would constantly do funny things to her heart.

They were kids. They were stupid kids all wrapped up in a love that could never work out, and it took them ages of struggles and screaming matches and families who would never, ever approve to make them realize that they were on a one-way train ride to hell. So they'd both jumped off. To this day Aria could really never say what the beginning of the end had been, even though the end of the end, that last fight, that final slam of the door would be ingrained in her mind until the day she died.

She hadn't seen him in over nine years. Oh, she'd heard things of course, a wildly successful business, beautiful wife, couple of kids running around, more money than he knew what to do with. Nothing she hadn't expected. And perhaps she was more than a little bitter about it, that he'd left her alone in the dust after everything and that she was still alone now (would be forever if any more of those gray hairs started rearing their ugly heads), but really, sitting around and wallowing in the hurt wasn't going to do her any good. Some vodka, on the other hand...

Oh well, she decided, gathering up a sheaf of music that she didn't really need and folding herself into place on the bench, fingers brushing the worn ivory like they might a lover's cheek if one existed (she refused to call the idiots she let take her home on nights when she hated herself too much to be alone "lovers." They were therapy, and nothing more). This is how it is. Too late for change at this point.

And it's clear this conversation ain't doing a thing
'Cause these boys only listen to me when I sing
And I don't feel like singing tonight, all the same songs

He wasn't quite sure what the hell he was doing here.

With every high-end lounge in the world that he could have afforded to patronize, Julian had absolutely no explanation as to why he was sitting on a rickety stool looking at a bar that was coated with several colors, textures, and varieties of filth. It was clear enough that he stuck out like a sore thumb (his custom tailored suit might as well have been neon green instead of charcoal for as much contrast as it made to all the plaid shirts and blue jeans), even clearer that he wasn't all that welcome here judging by the apprehensive glares that were coming his way from every direction. And he couldn't really blame them. He wouldn't trust him either.

Maybe he was sitting in this hellhole because he'd always felt like a rich lifestyle was a lot like rich desserts - too much of it would make you completely sick. After thirty years of living there, Scott Manor had never felt like home and tonight was no exception; after the kind of day he'd had he just couldn't go back to damask curtains and Sienna nagging him for every goddamned thing under the sun and the baby crying and and and... at least not until he'd had enough quality time with his good pal Jack Daniels to make him a little more complacent towards everything that usually made him want to rip his hair out.

Sometimes he felt like fairytale endings were nightmares in disguise.

Julian wouldn't dare say so to anyone, because people tended to be so fucking stupid that they wouldn't understand what he meant, would insist that he was some kind of bad person because living the "good life" made him consider blowing his brains out at least once a day. No one ever seemed to process the idea that living a life that had been chosen for him didn't really seem like much of a life at all, but maybe that was just because underneath all the expensive suits and business deals and carefully-constructed exteriors he was still the same rebellious little shit inside that he'd always been. He couldn't help but smirk a little at the thought, taking off his glasses with one hand and rubbing at his aching eyes with the other. Getting old wasn't for sissies, and he'd finally begun the realize that when his eyesight started going, eventually degrading to the point where he was blind as a bat without the designer frames resting on his nose. Life in general wasn't for sissies, and he'd known that for a considerably longer time, even before fake happiness and forced composure when he was still an obnoxious teenager trapped in a thirty-year-old body.

It wasn't all horrible, he guessed with an internal shrug. There were perks in his life, little mercies that broke up the mundane existence of the day-to-day, mainly his kids. Julian loved Alba and Michael and little two-month-old Lynette more than anything else, and even though he couldn't say the same for their mother (marriages that were really business deals never seemed to work out), he was at least proud that he'd managed to provide a more stable family dynamic for his children than his parents had for him. Of course, it didn't take much to have a more stable family dynamic than the mess he'd grown up in. Eight siblings, half of them dead; Natalia forever ago after the chemo had stopped working, Helena three years ago from alcohol poisoning, Ander finally realizing what a dick he was and doing the world a favor by offing himself, Adrian and that awful wreck on that business trip to One...

Julian was one giant bundle of vices and unresolved issues and he'd be the first to admit it, a glass of Scotch in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Time had taken away quite a large chunk of his pride, large enough to make him able to acknowledge that sometimes he needed a smoke and a drink (or two or three) to keep him from going absolutely batshit insane - not that he wasn't already. After these few hours of his own time he'd go back to his normal life where almost everything was shit and he had to grit his teeth and keep his eyes fixed on the family photo that sat on his desk to keep from doing anything rash (throwing his filing cabinet through a window, lighting the office on fire... he had a lot of time on his hands to imagine these and other outcomes), but for now he would just sit here in this filthy dump of a bar and nurse his drink and try to forget everything that he was missing in this cookie-cutter existence that had been thrust upon him.

But how could he forget when that voice across the room was so damnably familiar?

He was genuinely surprised that a shady place like this would actually have a lounge singer on staff, much less one who was this good. Julian hadn't had time for music in... five years? Probably closer to ten. Being the executive of a major lumber company didn't leave much room for scrawling out compositions of the edges of legal pads, and anytime he'd even tried to sit down at the old piano at the Manor Sienna had given him one of those absolutely vicious glares and asked in an incredibly bitchy tone if he didn't have anything productive that he could be doing. So yes, the music was nice for a change, the smooth tone and skilled accompaniment and holy hell I wrote that song.

He hadn't realized it at first, but he did now, mind wrapping its way around the lyrics about sunlight in someone's hair and fingers intertwined and love, the kind he'd almost forgotten existed. Now distinctly more curious about the owner of that gorgeous voice across the room, Julian sat his drink down and hopped off the stool, turning around and craning his neck to see through all the smoke and awful lighting. "Well, I'll be damned."

How the hell was she still so beautiful?

Forget all the other questions he could have asked himself - why was she here, why was she singing his song, how many years had it been? No, he remained fixated on that one thought, watching the careful articulation of her fingers, the graceful undulation of the tendons in her neck as she reached for the higher notes (she had to work a little harder for those than she used to, he noticed, must have been from singing in a room full of smoke for a long time). Julian was more than aware that he should've turned around and gotten the hell out while he still could, but instead he edged his way through the crowd and away from the door, making his way to the piano just as she finished and a smattering of applause rose into the air.

What to do? What to say after a decade of not knowing whether she was dead or alive? Julian noticed with a nervous little pang behind his sternum that she was skinny, almost as skinny as she'd been back when... God, had there even been a back then, a cold winter day in the woods and a couple of hostile kids learning to let each other in, learning to love? There must have been, but it sure didn't feel like it. Not now. Not when he looked at her and noted the worn state of her clothes, that complacent look of someone beaten down by the world. This couldn't be that same girl with the fire in her eyes and the defiant smirks that screamed you'll never stop me without her ever saying a word. It couldn't be, and yet it was.

"What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?" The bill was out of his wallet and falling into the tragically empty tip jar before he even knew what he was doing. And then she looked up, the recognition sparked in her eyes, and for a moment, just for the most infinitesimal moment, Julian was a lovestruck kid again. "It's been a while, Ria."

Here in these deep city lights
Girl could get lost tonight
I'm finding every reason to be gone
There's nothing here to hold on to
Could I hold you?

She had always remembered the little things.

The big events, that god-awful family dinner or the whole business with his mother pretending to be a creepy, murderous stalker to scare her off - they all seemed insignificant compared to the little details. His laugh, the scent of pine and old spice, sweat-slicked skin on summer nights with nothing but crickets and shared breaths as an underlying symphony, the scar on his cheek that made a dimple when he smiled - those were the things worth remembering, even though time had a funny way of taking them and twisting them and watering them down until everything was foggier than she would have liked it to be. And he was different than what she remembered, more careworn and with an air of grudging resignation about him. And of course he looked a bit older, just like she did, worry lines starting to appear on his forehead and those magnetic storm-cloud eyes locked onto her from behind a pair of glasses that hadn't been there before. He looked refined. Distinguished. Not like Julian. And Aria wasn't sure how she felt about it.

"It has. Almost ten years," she mumbled, furious at her breath for catching in her throat, for her fingers messing with a lock of her hair like some hormone-crazed teenager. She was bitter, she was angry. So why couldn't she just do what she wanted to do and tell him to go fuck himself? "How's the wife and kids?"

And that at least had some of the affect she'd wanted, she noted, watching his eyes dart away from her face (could that be shame she saw? Regret?) and lock themselves on the dirty floor instead. Aria had never been much of a sadist but making him squirm after all these years had a sense of justice to it, especially when he had something happy to go home to while she had her empty apartment and a petulant, cranky cat that only loved her when he was hungry.

"They're fine," he muttered back, digging around in his pocket for a while before pulling out his wallet and flipping it open to reveal a picture of the three most beautiful things Aria had ever seen in her life. They all looked exactly like him (maybe their mother just had weak genes), dark hair and wide gray eyes and sharp, elegant features that made them look ethereal, positively angelic. "That's Alba, she's six. She loves to play piano. Michael, four, loves eating things that he shouldn't and playing in the mud. And that's Lynette. She's two months old."

She wasn't sure exactly why, but her fingers reached out of their own accord and brushed across the smiling faces, tracing two-dimensional high cheekbones and smooth complexions and those trademark Scott slightly-lopsided grins with a tenderness that she hadn't thought she possessed anymore. "They're beautiful."

And they were (because how could any child of his be something other than beautiful?), so stunning and unexpectedly alluring that she couldn't look away from the photograph. And as much as she hated to acknowledge it, Aria's eyes subconsciously began swapping out some of their features for others, changing one or two pairs of gray eyes to hazel, adding a spray of freckles over the cheeks, giving the oldest girl lighter hair and a bit more substantial build... These could have been mine. Ours. For the first time in quite a few years she experienced the ghost of something she'd almost forgotten, that crippling pain that would hit her like a locomotive at random in those first few months after he'd left. All of life's could-have-should-have-would-have-beens were mean, hurtful little bitches, but she'd at least learned to push them down over time so they didn't keep her up at night anymore, staring at the empty space next to her in the bed and asking the universe why until the word was seared into her brain with a maddening permanence.

Not now, though. All those memories of collapsing into tears at the slightest provocation and feeling so damned empty all the time (she still did, but fighting through it was better than letting it drown her like she used to) bubbled frighteningly close to the surface in that moment, refusing to dissipate until the picture disappeared back into his pocket. And even then they refused to leave entirely, sending familiar stabbing sensations into her chest when he looked back up at her, that same old smile playing at the corners of his lips. "Thanks. So how are things for you?"

Oh, not much. I'm just thirty years old, stuck in a dead-end job and the same shitty apartment I've lived in forever. I'm alone in every sense of the word and there are still mornings when I wake up and miss you so much that it's all I can to do even breathe.

"I'm all right." She tried to smile, she really did, but the motion was so rusty on her lips that it came out closer to a grimace, her eyes leaving his face and traveling back to the worn piano keys. "No husband, no kids. Don't want anything holding me down, you know? My body pretty much gave up a few years back, so I had to get out of the woods and find something to do to make some money. This place isn't too glamourous, but it's a living."

Aria could see the pity in his eyes, and she hated it.

She'd always hated it, ever since they were kids and he'd pulled the whole you're something fragile that I have to take care of crock of bullshit, anything that might have passed for chivalry only managing to piss her off to the point of snarling at the world that I can do it myself, dammit.

[/i] And she had. She'd done everything herself for the last nine years, so who the hell was he to come waltzing into her territory with that smile and those eyes and that patronizing look that made her want to kiss him and sucker punch him all at the same time? Who gave him the right?

Of all the two-bit, nasty dive bars in the world he'd had to pick this one, and the warped serendipity of it all made Aria wonder exactly what she'd done to make fate react the way it had. She wasn't sure if this was a good or bad thing because it somehow managed to feel like both at once, beginnings and endings all rolled up into a neatly-wrapped package with a brand new suit and tempestuous eyes. People had always said that he was bad for her, that the two of them were poison for each other (the sweetest damned poison you could ever get, they weren't kidding about forbidden fruit being so much better), but the knowledge didn't stop her from gently closing the lid of the piano and turning to give him her full attention, caught halfway between launching off into a bitch-fit of epic proportions or collapsing to the ground and wailing at the unfairness of everything.

"Don't suppose you'd be interested in having a drink for old times' sake?" God, that smile. It was just one of those things that time couldn't dim, and it still had that same affect of pouring a bucket of ice water over her fiery temper until it merely simmered (because it never really went away, all that pent-up anger and hurt and wondering why life had tossed her at the bottom of the heap). Every siren and caution signal in Aria's head went off at once, shrieking in a deafening cacophony that she was stupid, what the hell was she doing, she was setting herself up to get knocked down for the millionth time, but despite the warnings she tried again for a smile of her own and was please with a more genuine, although still quiet and not completely there result as she carefully slid her had into the one that offered itself up to help her down from the stage.

And there it was, that stupid swooping feeling in her stomach that brought her back to days when everything hadn't hurt so much (her broken body, mind, heart, spirit). Somehow his hand felt exactly the same as it had last time, all of the old calluses from whittling and ages of working with his hands never having faded under years behind a desk. And when she tried again - once more, with feeling - Aria beamed in a way she hadn't done for a longer stretch of time than she could fathom.

"Only if you're buying."

"Of course."

The situation's always the same
You got your wolves in their clothes
Whispering Hollywood's name
Stealing gold from the silver they see
But it's not me

He wondered if she was still the same person.

It was an unreasonable expectation, of course. Julian was nowhere near the person he'd been ten years ago, but he still found it nice to entertain the thought that Ria might still have a little of that old fire left underneath. And he was beginning to think that she just might, watching all that well-placed sarcasm and witty humor come back out into the open after a few drinks and hours of reminiscing about every stupid thing imaginable (because he'd quickly found that talking about today hurt, it hurt like hell to know what they were both missing while the past burned in a nostalgic way that was a little more manageable). There were timeless things about her, he was happy to find, little traits that never changed - that habit of tossing her hair when she laughed, the way her foot tapped to some nonexistent beat even when the only music in the place was manufactured by clinking glasses and rumbling voices in the background, how she always pulled the olive out of her martini before she drank it. It was fascinating, gradually rediscovering her and remembering all those little things he'd shoved out of his mind to make room for wedding bands and lumber quotas and wide-eyed little girls begging for piggyback rides.

"God, what happened to us?" It was a question he'd asked the picture frame carefully stashed in one of his dresser drawers a million times, and presented with the opportunity and enough alcohol to make him a bit braver than usual, Julian couldn't help but ask her. But she wasn't that smiling girl from the photograph with his arms wrapped securely around her, not anymore, and that was evident enough when her eyes hardened and the laugh she'd been working up to died on her lips.

"You left," she said, and her voice sounded so bitter that he could taste it (or maybe that was just the cheap, sub-par whiskey). "You left, and that was that. It wasn't horribly complicated."

"Oh. Yeah." Suddenly, he couldn't bring himself to look her in the eye anymore. The details of that whole final standoff had been somewhat eroded by time, but he remembered it well enough for it to still feel like something was trying to rip his heart out of his chest whenever he was stupid enough to let himself think about it. And he was stupid enough to think about it now, watching the swirling dregs at the bottom of his glass intently. The shouting, the hurtful words, that final moment where he'd thrown his hands up, stormed out and slammed the door behind him. If he had known that it was the end, that last fight... well, he wasn't sure exactly what he would have done, only that he would have done everything differently. "Do you ever wonder what would have happened? You know, if I hadn't... If we didn't... If we had stayed and fought through it?"

Julian chanced another glance up at her, met with pursed lips and eyes that wanted to say a million things but constantly thought better of it, swirling into hazel enigmas that he'd forgotten how to translate after all these years. She was silent for some time, fingers lacing absently through the hair and twisting the blonde strands into little ropes as she fought through whatever was going through her mind, tried to make it something coherent. And then she looked away, gaze fixed on the ground as she leaned forward and sat her empty glass on the table. "No. I don't."

"You're a horrible liar, Aria. Don't even try."

So maybe he was still the same condescending asshole he'd been in his younger days. At least some things in life were constant. Things like the indignant little squawk that erupted in the back of her throat and the way her eyes narrowed dangerously, those were apparently constant as well. Julian figured smiling would only end up making things worse for him, but he couldn't help it, lips curving upward against his will as he watched her sputter and grasp for infuriated words like she had in every minor spat they'd ever had. He usually had no patience for inarticulate people, but there were times (like this one) when it could be endearing and even adorable. Laughing softly, he knocked back the last swig of his drink before setting the glass on the table beside hers.

"What? What good is denying it going to do you?" He'd always been a straightforward, brutally-honest type. It was interesting how that had made his life in the business world work out since most of his contemporaries were backstabbing slimeballs who you could tell were lying based on whether or not their lips were moving, but apparently is didn't do wonders for his personal life either, seeing as Aria looked like she was getting one step closer to smacking him with each passing second. "I'm not going to lie to you, so I'm just saying that I expect the same courtesy. I think about it. I think about it every single day, and that's the honest-to-God truth."

"Fine," she hissed back irritably, those delicate pianist's fingers balling their way into fists against the faded red fabric of her dress. "Fine. I think about it too. All the fucking time. And I wish I didn't, because all it does is hurt when I think about you being happy with your family and your job and those gorgeous kids, and it hurts even more when I think of me being miserable with nothing. There's your truth, Julian. Are you satisfied?"

He blinked a few times, taken aback by her explosive response. It had been a long time since he'd seen someone who had that much anger in the world boiling in their veins (or was it anger at him? He supposed he couldn't blame her if it was), someone besides himself. It was sad and comforting and disconcerting all at the same time, knowing that he wasn't the only one living like this. So despite the fact that the action would probably get him punched in the face, he reached across the table and tucked a stray lock of her hair back into place behind her ear. "Ria, when did I ever say that I was happy?"

She stiffened under his touch but didn't flinch or pull away, and for a second he felt like he was a seventeen-year-old kid again, trying to figure out where the line was with her and how far he could push it. Fingers traced from her hair down to the curve of her neck, feeling the steady thrum of her pulse and resting there until she finally brought one of her own hands up to rest against his. It was an odd feeling, the sensation that nothing had changed in all this time when in truth everything had.

I still love you. I never stopped.

He liked to think that he would have been brave enough to say it, would have grabbed her hand and stroked her hair and made more promises than he could have ever hoped to fulfill, if it hadn't been for the lights flickering off in the front of the bar and Aria practically jumping out of her seat, reaching back behind the piano bench for her purse. "They're closing. Guess we talked for longer than I thought."

Sighing, Julian followed her up to the entrance, holding open the door in a gesture that was more out of familiarity than being a gentleman in general. It was just one of those things he'd learned over time. The sky is blue, the earth is round, and Aria smiles the most beautiful smile in the world when you open doors or pull out chairs for her. And while the resulting grin was more tentative and tinged with sadness than it used to be, it still managed to do something funny to his heart. "I'll walk you home. You've got no business alone in this neighborhood at this hour."

Here in these deep city lights
Girl could get lost tonight
I'm finding every reason to be gone
There's nothing here to hold on to
Could I hold you?

She didn't know why she did this to herself.

As if letting him come gallivanting back into her life like Prince Charming in a business suit and buy her martinis and make her smile and laugh like she hadn't in years wasn't enough, now she was letting him walk her home in some weird echo of days when he'd come pick her up from school and carry her books for her, the both of them so wrapped up in each others' eyes that it had been a wonder they didn't trip over their own feet and break something. Aria wondered if she was some kind of masochist. She had to be for her to just accept the fact that she was actually doing this, walking down the uneven cobbled streets with him at her side for the first time in ages.

She blamed it on the drinks, even though she wasn't anywhere close to full-on inebriation. Working in a bar tended to raise your alcohol tolerance exponentially, and despite the fact that she'd lost count of the amount of glasses she'd knocked back she really didn't feel anything more than a slight buzz at the edges of her senses. But still, she supposed, maybe that was enough to skew her judgement.

"You really didn't have to go out of your way," she said, eyes shifting over to him and breaking the awkward silence that had dominated the past few minutes. "Really. I’ve been walking home alone every night for years. I’m a little old for anyone to want to kidnap me or something."

Old. There was that word again, building into a realization that left her with the awful knowledge that she’d be alone, quite possibly for the rest of her life. People could say all they wanted about beauty being skin deep, but when it all boiled down no one really wanted to have anything to do with something ancient. Aria would be the first to swear up and down that she didn't need anybody, but she'd also be the first to acknowledge that she was an expert in the art of fooling herself. Loneliness wasn't a pleasant thing, and maybe that was why she'd made a decision that may or may not have been stupid, allowing Julian to get under her skin again and threaten to reopen all those scars he'd left that had never really healed in the first place.

He laughed quietly, gaze shifting over to meet hers through the dim yellow light cast by the flickering street lamps overhead. "Anyone stupid enough to try obviously wouldn't have any idea who they were dealing with."

"Damn straight." She allowed herself a smirk and for a little while she felt like that girl again, the one who shouted from the rooftops that the world is mine because I'm in love and no one will ever take that from me. But that defiance had waned with being left on her own and years of waking up with one side of the bed pitifully empty or else occupied by strangers who had looked much better the night before under a haze of alcohol and desperation. Aria knew well enough that she wouldn't ever be that vibrant young thing again, not after the spark in her had been extinguished and lain dormant for so long. And she was okay with it, she really was (or at least that's what she liked to tell herself). Youth was for the young, and she had wasted her own opportunities.

"Well, here it is. Home sweet home. How's it feel to get another look at your humble beginnings?"

Part of her really hated how angry she sounded, even though another part was hissing that it was right for her to be mad, that he at least deserved that after the hell he'd put her through. Conflict in her own mind had never been something that Aria had dealt with well, and ever since the Voice had randomly silenced itself a few years ago she had been terrified of it coming back. But Julian and Conflict were two things that had always seemed to go hand in hand, so she couldn't really expect things to be magically simple in a world where everything had always been unbearably complicated.

"I actually kind of miss the place," he replied with a shrug, hands in his pockets as he looked up at the shoddy architecture and laundry dangling out of various windows from different apartments. "The manor gets stuffy after a while. I don't spend too much time at home, actually. Can't stand being there for very long."

"Oh yes, how awful it must be to live in a gigantic mansion with staff to clean up your messes and do your dishes and laundry and fix things when they break. I can't imagine the horror." Although she rolled her eyes and laughed humorlessly as she dug around in her purse for her keys, Aria really did understand what he meant. They'd moved into this place for a reason, the reason being that there was no room for the pair of them at her family's house and that they both would have sooner died than live at his. Scott Manor was nothing but an ornately decorated fishbowl with no privacy and even less warmth, and even a crummy apartment like this one had felt like home in comparison to plush carpets and glares that never softened. Sighing heavily, she shouldered open the rusty-hinged front door and jerked her head towards the building's interior. "You can come up and have a look around if you want. Nothing's really changed."

"Damn, it really is exactly the same." You would have thought she'd taken him to some sort of amusement park instead of back to days of disinheritance and barely making ends meet, he was grinning so widely, darting around and examining everything, tying it back to memories. "Do you remember what it took to get that piano up the stairs when we moved in? Pff, you've still got that ceramic cat your mother gave us. Same furniture, same dishtowels. God, the things that happened on this kitchen counter -"

"Stop it." She was utterly furious at herself for allowing the tears to well up in her eyes, even more livid that they'd spilled over, tracing salty tracks down her cheeks and dripping to the warped boards of the floor. "Just stop. It was bad enough, being alone in this place and wishing that I had done something, anything to make you stay, it was bad enough that you had to come into the bar tonight and just waltz back into my life like you never left. But you're not going to come in here and walk through what we had like it's some kind of museum."

That awful knock-you-over pain was back with a vengeance, eating away at her as she stood in the middle of haunting memories that would never leave and cried like the world was ending (it had ended a long time ago, but refreshing the event made it hurt just like new). "Stop trying to remember us! It's not going to change anything, and it's only going to make me feel even more alone. It's over, Julian, it's been over for almost ten goddamned years!"

She really wanted to scream.

She wanted to cry and scream and rave and wail it's notfairnotfairnotfair until the world changed its mind and altered time so that he wouldn't be standing here with a different home to go back to and a picture of children that weren't hers in his wallet, but it was a little hard to throw a tantrum with his arms wrapped so tightly around her. So instead of collapsing into a fit like she wanted to, Aria contented herself to stand and whimper into the space where his neck and shoulder met, still not anywhere close to calm when he finally put a hand gently on her cheek and tilted her head up so that her own swollen, reddened eyes met stormy gray ones that were still flawless, had always been. "It's not over. It was never over."

And then he kissed her.

She'd almost forgotten all those things about him - taste, smell, feel - almost. It was different than she remembered, whiskey and cigarette smoke mixing in with the old flavors of coffee and dark chocolate, expensive cologne tainting the aroma of pine and old spice that she swore still lingered on his pillow after all those years, more tenderness than the raw, consuming passion that had always been there before. They were both older and wiser and everything hurt so much more now, so it was bound to be different.

That damnable little voice of reason in her head prattled on about how this wasn't right, he was married, he had a family, but after seeing her world come crashing down around her without even a proper goodbye (slammed doors and shouts and not the smallest inkling that he'd ever loved her at all just didn't cut it), Aria couldn't deny that she felt a certain sense of entitlement. After ages of struggling to keep her head above water, to take the high road, to be the bigger person, fighting just didn't seem worth it anymore. And she knew she would hate herself for it later, but in the face of one last chance to play pretend and imagine that nothing had ever changed, she could never, ever say no, especially not with his fingers laced through her hair and a running mantra of IloveyouI'msorryImissedyousomuch in her ear.

She'd almost forgotten what it felt like to surrender - and it was wonderful.

Calling out, somebody save me
I feel like I'm fading away, am I gone?
Calling out, somebody save me
I feel like I'm fading

He'd always loved watching her sleep.

She had always been careworn in her waking hours, even before the fights and the hardships and everything, brows furrowed and lips pursed as she put her head down and did her best to plow through whatever life threw at her, but when she slept... everything about her changed. Her features smoothed out to something angelic, eyelids fluttering while she dreamed and lips parted slightly to inhale and exhale in deep, even breaths. Julian still wasn't really sure what the hell had just happened, honestly, only that he'd forgotten how completely beautiful she was like this, hair still mussed and the ghost of a smile playing along bruised lips as she shifted a bit closer to him.

He supposed that he should feel awful. In the end, he'd probably feel worse for not feeling guilty, but right now all he could feel was sleepy and satiated and content, more so than he'd felt... well, since the last time he'd been this close to her. Maybe he was stupid for it, but Julian was happier in this cramped little apartment with an air conditioner that had never worked and threadbare sheets and Aria than he ever could have hoped to be waking up every morning in the lap of luxury with Sienna glaring at him.

It wasn't as if she didn't carry on her affairs. Things like that tended to happen with marriages of convenience, but something (Chivalry? A sense of fidelity? Not wanting to become his father?) had kept him from seeking other company over the years, kept him silent when she'd come home in the wee hours of the morning and they'd both pretend that she'd been there the whole time. The injustice of it all irked him more than a little bit; Sienna could run around and sleep with everything on two feet because she felt like it, but this. If word of this ever got out, his entire life would crumble. The 'scumbags who cheat on their wives' moniker tended to follow the Scott men wherever they went like some sort of reputation-staining puppy (and they could all thank their old man for that), and God knew what would happen if the figurehead of the whole family business were suddenly caught with a gorgeous lounge singer with no potential advantage that she could give him, monetary or otherwise.

Mistresses were a delicate thing to deal with.

The thought turned his stomach and made him hate himself with a disturbing fervor for even allowing himself to think it. Whatever Aria was to him, she was not going to be written off as some plaything he picked up because he was bored with his life (he was) or didn't love his wife anymore (he never had). Mistress was a title that he wasn't willing to let her bear, even if it meant him leaving again and never sticking his nose back into her life, where it hadn't really belonged in the first place.

God, leaving again... If there had ever been anything in the world that had the potential to break him into a million irreparable pieces, it was that. He'd never been the strongest man in the world; he'd readily admit that weaknesses and lapses and vices came to him almost second nature. He hadn't been strong enough to stop himself from pressing his lips to hers a few hours ago, and he really wasn't certain if anything could give him the fortitude to tear himself away from her side after he'd finally found her again, even if him getting out of her life would be best for both of them.

Any way this whole situation played out, they'd both go through hell. Either he could get up right now and leave while she slept - he couldn't look into her eyes and then walk away again, he just couldn't - or he could stay, they could continue for however long it would take them to get caught, and then everyone would be dragged into a very huge, very public, and very messy event that would involve divorce attorneys and shattered reputations and possibly ruined business empires that had already been teetering on a delicate precipice for God-knew-how-long. He'd be branded a dirty rotten cheat, Aria a homewrecking harlot, the kids would have to be told why Mommy and Daddy couldn't be married anymore. Jesus, the kids... Just imagining the look on Alba's face made an impossible decision even more difficult.

He'd really done it this time, hadn't he?

This type of story was for Capitol soap-operas or those stupid movies that women liked to crack open a gallon tub of mint chocolate-chip ice cream and bawl over, not real life, not his life. But the ridiculous no-win possibilities of it all didn't make it any less real, and every second closer to sunrise was one more second closer to him having to make an ultimate choice: stay or go, choose this one night as the final goodbye or let it potentially open a can of worms that would eat them all alive. He'd never been the best at making any choices, much less life-altering ones. Just look at what his decision to walk out that door all those years ago had done. No, choices had never been Julian's forte. But one had to be made, that much was clear, and soon.

Taking a deep breath, he glanced alternately between Aria's slumbering visage and the wedding band that sat on his finger with a weight that didn't match its size. Responsibility, stability, the live he was supposed to have? Destiny, love, the life he wanted?

He made his choice.

Her laugh woke him up in the morning, fingers entwining with his and lips pressed whisper-soft against his forehead. "I've got to be honest, I thought you were going to leave."

Smiling more genuinely than he had in a while, he reached up and pressed his lips softly to hers.

"Never again."

Deep city lights, girl could get lost tonight
I'm finding every reason to be gone
And there's nothing here to hold on to
Could I hold on to you?

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((Okay, so I'm not the happiest with how that turned out. But I haven't written an actual fic in over a year, so I'm a bit rusty. Lord... This is actually rather embarrassing and overly-sappy. Ugh. Oh well.))

Word count: 3308

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[WT]

You win. I don't know what you win, but you win it. How about the internet? Would you like to own the internet? Because if so, you deserve it. @.@

'Kaythat'sall.

[semper]

JARIA <'3333333333333333333333

THAT'S RIGHT, JULIAN, JUST STAY RIGHT THERE WITH HER & WE'LL ALL BE GOOD & I WON'T GO ALL CANNIBAL ON YOUR PURDY BAHUNKUS. :D <3 xD

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