FIC: mercy
Fandom: The Great Gatsby
Pairing: Daisy/Gatsby
Rating: PG
Warning: Allusions to post-natal depression
Summary: you put all your makeup on, sang a song of solomon
Written for the awesome Americana meme here.
mother kiss me cheek and chin
mmm a little medicine
mmm and then i shed my skin
- young man in america, anais mitchell
Because it would be too easy. Because it wouldn’t be the right ending to this story. Because it would sting as much as it would be sweet. But above all things, because Daisy Buchanan is Daisy Buchanan, she doesn’t kiss him, not yet. Not until it’s fair.
His face is warm in the setting sun with only a hint of green, and he inclines his head just so, all precision with none of the decadence she expects from that smile. Somewhere, Tom will be nursing a drink and a scowl, which she remembers once finding so beautiful, and somehow so cruel that it was comforting, like a scab to pick at, like a scar.
“You look charming, Daisy,” he says with that purr she remembers so well, “simply charming.”
She knows that. The dress is something sweet in blue, with tasselled sleeves and a sash of purest white silk, and she knows she looks like everything he’s ever dreamed of. She smiles with no teeth at all, and thinks how much she loved Louisville in the summer when the cicadas were out. Nothing seems to live in New York, although her heart is always pounding.
The party swells around them, and the dancers sweep on, across the floor and the bay itself, shimmering like the waters of the harbour, and all she sees, gleaming and alive and so forgotten, is the little boy Jay with a gleam in his eyes.
For the first time, Daisy remembers being taught that the blackness in her eyes are holes.
He reaches out as if to stroke a strand of hair from her face; she does not see it trembling. Her fingers pluck his cigarette from his lips and slide it between her own, more intimate than a kiss, the taste of his desperation fresh on the filter.
“I’m a mother now,” she murmurs quietly, taking his hand in hers before it can reach the softness of her skin. Gatsby’s lips tighten, and she knows in his head he thinks of a child that looks like her, golden and laughter and stories she believed in when he thought he knew her. It makes her laugh behind her teeth; if he only knew of the nights of screaming at the walls and choking cries with her own daughters' clothes. Is there something truly wrong with her, or is it everyone else?
“I heard,” he says, voice not breaking. His thumb brushes her dainty knuckles. “Daisy-”
“For heaven’s sake, Jay,” she hears herself saying, as if from a distance, as if she’s watching from a mile above the island, like a bird, like a star. Perhaps she is. She says no more, but he takes her hand and presses his lips to it like he thinks he can save her. Daisy brushes down her dress with dextrous fingers and tries to wipe him from her skin.
She wants to pull his head to her chest like she never has with her daughter and rock him to sleep while he cries. She wants to save him from the truth that will come too soon. She wants him to have never come back. Gatsby’s in love with Daisy Fay, the girl who stole his heart.
And because Daisy Buchanan is Daisy Buchanan, she knows she will never give it back.