FIC: Becoming What You Used to Be (1/1) Brothers & Sisters
TITLE: Becoming What You Used to Be
AUTHOR: Laura Smith
PAIRING: Julia
RATING: PG-13
SUMMARY: Do you know who you're talking about?
DISCLAIMER: Brothers & Sisters and all the characters therein belong to people who are not me. I make no profit from this, I just like playing with them.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Written for femgenficathon from the prompt: The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark. -- Agnes De Mille.. Thanks to nolivingman for the beta.
Julia stares out the window and watches Tommy’s car pull out of the driveway. Lizzie’s asleep in the other room, and all Julia can hear in the house is her soft, snuffling breaths. It’s hard, even now that they’ve both admitted that they screwed up and are working their way through counseling, to let him leave and to trust him to go where he says he’s going and to do just what he says he’s doing.
Still trust is a choice, and she makes it because she doesn’t know what else to do to keep her life on track. She checks on Lizzie and then makes her way to the patio where sunlight streams in through the slated fencing and decorates the stained wood with gold. It feels good on her bare feet, so she closes her eyes and wiggles her toes, just feeling it against her skin.
Taking her journal from its hiding place, she sits on the rattan chair and curls her feet up beneath her, head tilted away from the house and the soft hiss of the baby monitor and toward the whisper of the breeze and the soft sounds of the birds announcing that they’re declaring spring, weather and winter be damned.
She reads through the words she’s written, her handwriting varying depending on her mood and the emotions she’s been struggling to get down on the page. Nothing seems quite right, but she keeps moving forward, afraid to stop. She puts words down and they fall apart when she needs them to hold together, so she scratches them out, starting over again and again.
All her life she’s wanted to be a wife and mother. Those words sounded like warmth and security, but now that she has them, she realizes they’re just words. They’re special, she doesn’t deny that, but they constrict her in ways that she sees Nora just now breaking free of, and she doesn’t want to be that person. She doesn’t want to wait until her husband is dead and her child is grown to break free and find out who she really is. Just the thought scares her, and so she struggles to find whatever it is inside herself that makes her something more.
She probably isn’t being entirely fair in thinking that Tommy would mock her in his way - telling her that his mother was fulfilled in what she was and what she did, but Julia sees things that Tommy doesn’t by virtue of not being Nora’s child, by virtue of being a woman. It doesn’t help to look at her in-laws as well. Sarah’s a successful business woman and Kitty’s running for a bid as the President’s wife. Julia has a dead child and a growing baby and a marriage still on the rocks and none of it is who she is, just what she does. She waters the plants and washes the dishes and vacuums once a week, but anyone could do those jobs. She doesn’t like the fact that in everything she does she’s replaceable.
Even in this she’s not sure that she’s unique. She reads over the words she writes down and thinks that anyone could have put them in that order, could have said something similar. She remembers the words her therapist spoke down in Arizona - something she hasn’t told Tommy because he only doesn’t care who else was in her life, so long as they weren’t her lover. She’d leaned forward and touched Julia’s hand and Julia had pulled away, but she’d spoken anyway as if Julia hadn’t moved.
You have to find the woman inside you.
Julia had wanted to ask her what that woman might look like. Would she look like Kitty, thin and angular and so determined, or like Sarah, so maternal looking but also full of harsh business sensibility. Julia was raised as a pretty girl who would do well in school and be asked out by all the handsome boys on the various sports teams. She would be a cheerleader and then a wife and then a mother and that’s all that life afforded her. The woman within is a construct of some fifties sitcom, not real life, not this life. Cheerleaders don’t have babies who die and husbands who cheat on them with girls half their age. Daddy’s little princess doesn’t spend her days in the dark crying because everything she thought she was isn’t true and she has a gravestone that she can touch to prove it.
Lizzie’s breathing comes over the monitor as does the soft cooing sounds that she makes in her sleep. Julia renews a silent vow to herself that she’ll let Lizzie be what she wants to be - subverting Tommy’s hard-ass fatherly act if necessary. She’ll encourage her to read and dream and be more than whatever it is that’s all the rage. She’ll let Lizzie be something and maybe that, by virtue of encouraging it, she’ll be something more herself.
She looks down at the paper, surprised to find more words scrawled across the page. They’re dark and sure, and she wonders when she made them. It’s hard to believe there’s anything she feels certain about anymore, but the steady writing belies the thought. They’re not prose or poetry, none of the words she’s been fighting to fall into some sort of rhythm to match her life. Instead they’re short and choppy sentences, lists and arguments. They’re steps and ways to move on with her life, leaps forward into the next thing, whatever it might be.
There’s a snuffle and then a cry, high pitched and slightly metallic through the monitor and she sets the journal back in its hiding place before starting back into the house. Pick up Lizzie, rock her until she falls back to sleep or feed her if she’s fussy, put her on the floor and let her play with her fingers and toes and chew on some unsuspecting toy’s head. There’s satisfaction in this, she knows, but she wants something more. Lizzie doesn’t protest as Julia lays her down on the blanket and hurries to get her journal, stretching out on the floor beside her daughter.
Lizzie reaches for the pen, pink fist flailing in the air, and Julia smiles down at her, handing her a rubber ring decorated with monkeys and lions and giraffes instead. “This is mine to play with, Lizzie. When you’re older you can have it, and anything else I’ve figured out I have to give you. I promise.”
AUTHOR: Laura Smith
PAIRING: Julia
RATING: PG-13
SUMMARY: Do you know who you're talking about?
DISCLAIMER: Brothers & Sisters and all the characters therein belong to people who are not me. I make no profit from this, I just like playing with them.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Written for femgenficathon from the prompt: The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark. -- Agnes De Mille.. Thanks to nolivingman for the beta.
Julia stares out the window and watches Tommy’s car pull out of the driveway. Lizzie’s asleep in the other room, and all Julia can hear in the house is her soft, snuffling breaths. It’s hard, even now that they’ve both admitted that they screwed up and are working their way through counseling, to let him leave and to trust him to go where he says he’s going and to do just what he says he’s doing.
Still trust is a choice, and she makes it because she doesn’t know what else to do to keep her life on track. She checks on Lizzie and then makes her way to the patio where sunlight streams in through the slated fencing and decorates the stained wood with gold. It feels good on her bare feet, so she closes her eyes and wiggles her toes, just feeling it against her skin.
Taking her journal from its hiding place, she sits on the rattan chair and curls her feet up beneath her, head tilted away from the house and the soft hiss of the baby monitor and toward the whisper of the breeze and the soft sounds of the birds announcing that they’re declaring spring, weather and winter be damned.
She reads through the words she’s written, her handwriting varying depending on her mood and the emotions she’s been struggling to get down on the page. Nothing seems quite right, but she keeps moving forward, afraid to stop. She puts words down and they fall apart when she needs them to hold together, so she scratches them out, starting over again and again.
All her life she’s wanted to be a wife and mother. Those words sounded like warmth and security, but now that she has them, she realizes they’re just words. They’re special, she doesn’t deny that, but they constrict her in ways that she sees Nora just now breaking free of, and she doesn’t want to be that person. She doesn’t want to wait until her husband is dead and her child is grown to break free and find out who she really is. Just the thought scares her, and so she struggles to find whatever it is inside herself that makes her something more.
She probably isn’t being entirely fair in thinking that Tommy would mock her in his way - telling her that his mother was fulfilled in what she was and what she did, but Julia sees things that Tommy doesn’t by virtue of not being Nora’s child, by virtue of being a woman. It doesn’t help to look at her in-laws as well. Sarah’s a successful business woman and Kitty’s running for a bid as the President’s wife. Julia has a dead child and a growing baby and a marriage still on the rocks and none of it is who she is, just what she does. She waters the plants and washes the dishes and vacuums once a week, but anyone could do those jobs. She doesn’t like the fact that in everything she does she’s replaceable.
Even in this she’s not sure that she’s unique. She reads over the words she writes down and thinks that anyone could have put them in that order, could have said something similar. She remembers the words her therapist spoke down in Arizona - something she hasn’t told Tommy because he only doesn’t care who else was in her life, so long as they weren’t her lover. She’d leaned forward and touched Julia’s hand and Julia had pulled away, but she’d spoken anyway as if Julia hadn’t moved.
You have to find the woman inside you.
Julia had wanted to ask her what that woman might look like. Would she look like Kitty, thin and angular and so determined, or like Sarah, so maternal looking but also full of harsh business sensibility. Julia was raised as a pretty girl who would do well in school and be asked out by all the handsome boys on the various sports teams. She would be a cheerleader and then a wife and then a mother and that’s all that life afforded her. The woman within is a construct of some fifties sitcom, not real life, not this life. Cheerleaders don’t have babies who die and husbands who cheat on them with girls half their age. Daddy’s little princess doesn’t spend her days in the dark crying because everything she thought she was isn’t true and she has a gravestone that she can touch to prove it.
Lizzie’s breathing comes over the monitor as does the soft cooing sounds that she makes in her sleep. Julia renews a silent vow to herself that she’ll let Lizzie be what she wants to be - subverting Tommy’s hard-ass fatherly act if necessary. She’ll encourage her to read and dream and be more than whatever it is that’s all the rage. She’ll let Lizzie be something and maybe that, by virtue of encouraging it, she’ll be something more herself.
She looks down at the paper, surprised to find more words scrawled across the page. They’re dark and sure, and she wonders when she made them. It’s hard to believe there’s anything she feels certain about anymore, but the steady writing belies the thought. They’re not prose or poetry, none of the words she’s been fighting to fall into some sort of rhythm to match her life. Instead they’re short and choppy sentences, lists and arguments. They’re steps and ways to move on with her life, leaps forward into the next thing, whatever it might be.
There’s a snuffle and then a cry, high pitched and slightly metallic through the monitor and she sets the journal back in its hiding place before starting back into the house. Pick up Lizzie, rock her until she falls back to sleep or feed her if she’s fussy, put her on the floor and let her play with her fingers and toes and chew on some unsuspecting toy’s head. There’s satisfaction in this, she knows, but she wants something more. Lizzie doesn’t protest as Julia lays her down on the blanket and hurries to get her journal, stretching out on the floor beside her daughter.
Lizzie reaches for the pen, pink fist flailing in the air, and Julia smiles down at her, handing her a rubber ring decorated with monkeys and lions and giraffes instead. “This is mine to play with, Lizzie. When you’re older you can have it, and anything else I’ve figured out I have to give you. I promise.”