At The Wrong End Of The Looking Glass [PG]
[title] At The Wrong End Of The Looking Glass
[author] another_crush
[beta] clionona. Any remaining mistakes are my own.
[pairings] David Cook/David Archuleta, David Archuleta/OFC
[rating] PG
[word count] 2384
[disclaimer] I don't own nor have ever met David Cook nor David Archuleta. Everything about them is completely fiction, and any similarity with reality is a mere coincidence. I do not own Millions Miles Away, it does belong to Goo Goo Dolls and their album Hold Me Upi. I do not own any of the other Goo Goo Dolls' songs (Close Your Eyes,Acoustic #3, It's Over and Can't Let It Go) nor their albums (Superstar Car Wash, Dizzy Up The Girl, Gutterflower and Let Love In)
[summary] The same beach, the same date, twenty years later. Too much has changed but will the feelings remain the same?
[warnings] Flangst. Changing POV (I hope it's not too confusing) Future!fic.
[author's notes] Written for david_squared's Challenge #23, prompt #3. Title taken from Goo Goo Dolls' song Million Miles Away . The songs scattered through the fic all belong to different Goo Goo Dolls' albums.
david cook
And I didn't think about
All the ways I hurt you and myself
And I wouldn't say a thing to you
I keep it to myself in my mind
And I can't stand without you
And I won't find the answers
When you're gone
It's Over
You still don't know what you are doing here, in this beach lost in the middle of nowhere, palm trees swaying in the warm breeze of this summer night. The paper clutched in your hand burns your skin, the fire sweeping through you and alighting something deep inside. The promise of a future that was long ago forgotten has come back full force and you can't even understand why you buried it in the first place.
The words are etched in your memory, the tiny and elegant handwriting dancing around in the sheet you have almost ripped from the constant reading.
If you still love him, go to Venice Beach next Sunday.
No signature. No name. Nothing but the fleeting feeling of understanding within the first five words. And yet here you are, standing with your toes sinking into the sand, your shirt sticking to your chest, your worn out jeans still hugging your legs even though years have come and gone since you last wore them, since you last stood here, since you last saw him face to face.
You never fully comprehended the reasons why you let him go. You never truly understood why you allowed him to step away from you, into a new life that wasn't that entire novelty for him. You felt you had to do something to keep from hurting him - you had realized long before that it was you who was keeping him from being happy. So, you cut him loose, you wounded him even more and you watched him walk away as your heart shattered and broke into millions of tiny little irretrievable pieces.
These past twenty years have been a torture and a blessing for you.
You have still made your music, you have still toured along with Andy and his now wife Jennye, with Neal and his forever grunting attitude, with Joey and Kyle and their respective families, watching them be happy and growing while you became tinier and tinier and your voice grew stronger and stronger, watching them play with their children and teach them to play different instruments; when Alexis came along and Neal finally married her, you knew it was your cue to start a family.
You never made it past the first date with any of the girls they tried to set you up with. You chose to live a life of solitude and watch from afar as he got married, as his daughter was born, as he lost all he loved in one awful night - all the while unable to reach for him and comfort him the way you know he would have liked, with full hugs and sweet kisses, with nonsensical words and cooing sounds. Yet you stayed away and forced yourself to swallow the bitter pill of regret every time his face appeared on national TV.
You have written endless songs about the way his lips felt on yours. In the end, even your memory fought against it but you couldn't help it. You needed to have him by your side, even if he was disguised in poetic lyrics about how much you miss a past that was never gone for good.
You still don't understand what you are doing on this beach while the sun dawns on you, but it is the first time in what seems like eons that you feel you are doing the right thing. Sighing heavily, you sit down with your back against a palm tree trunk, your hand playing with the sand as it escapes in between your fingers.
david archuleta
Had a certain passion
And I had silly dreams
Close Your Eyes
You are blindfolded, walking through what feels like sand underneath your heels. The small hand guiding you is surprisingly strong and confident, and you can't help but be reminded of how much your daughter resembles her mother - always strong, always sure. You miss her everyday of your life, but you are grateful that you have got to share your memories with the daughter you should have blamed her death on yet you can't.
You can't fault your daughter for living.
"Where are you leading me, Landita?" you ask playfully, and hear her giggling and hushing you.
"Dad, it wouldn't be a surprise if you knew!" she protests, her laugh your reason to keep breathing. "Besides, we're almost there."
"I wonder why you brought us to a beach," you dare to say, and you are rewarded by another fit of giggles.
"I suppose I shouldn't have made you toe off your shoes if I hadn't wanted you to know we were at the beach," she finally says through her contagious laugh. "But what we're going to do here is the surprise, Dad. Don't make me spoil it for you."
"Okay, I won't. Just out of curiosity, which beach is it?"
You can tell she hesitates for the slightest second, and then she is answering, "Venice Beach, Dad."
Your world crumbles. This beach, this date. Twenty years back in time. There is no chance in heck that she was aware of it when she decided to play this little game of hers - and yes, you still don't swear, still don't drink - but you cannot tell for sure with the way she is trying to cover up her nervousness. "Landita, why are we here?"
She splutters, and you have your answer. Or at least, the idea of it. "Take the blindfold off, Landita."
"Dad," she whines.
"Take it off." You don't want to resort to using authority in your voice, but when she refuses to obey you take the hand that has been guiding you and put it on the knot you don't know how to untie. "Take it off, Vida Orlanda Archuleta."
"Gosh, I hate it when you use my full name," she whispers, fingers working on the knot, steady albeit nervous. "It makes me feel like a little girl, Dad, and I'm already eighteen."
"Thanks for reminding me," you say bitterly as the blindfold falls down and your eyes adjust to the dim light of the twilight. The beach is deserted, just like it was twenty years ago when your world stopped spinning and came to a halt. Millions of seconds later it still has to recover from the blow. "Landita, what's going on?" You want to believe that it's all a coincidence, but then your gaze lands on a lone figure sitting against a palm tree and you know this is not some fluke.
"Listen, Dad," she starts. "Don't be mad at me, okay? But I had to make this wonderful assignment for school, and we were supposed to speak about our family."
"I remember that," you say, never tearing your eyes from the figure on the sand, who doesn't seem to have noticed you two yet. "I told you to look through your mother's pictures."
Realization dawns on you as your daughter keeps talking. "I did so, dad, and please don't be mad, gosh, I don't know how it happened but I must have taken the wrong box and there I found some pictures from when you participated in American Idol and you never let me see the show so I went through the pictures and there he was and... I could feel it, Dad."
You close your eyes. "How? How could you?"
"You love Mom," she says simply, you can feel her shrug in her voice. "You just love him more. That's why you haven't been able to rebuild your life since she died, and why you can't go on. I know everything."
"No, you possibly can't know everything, Landita."
"Oh, come on, Dad! I researched my names' meanings, Dad, and that was all the explanation I needed."
You sigh, defeated, and open your eyes. He is still sitting there, and you look back and forth between his shadow and your daughter, taking in the eager and open expression in her young face. "It's been twenty years, Landita."
"He still loves you, Dad," she reassures you. "He wouldn't be here if he didn't. I made sure of that."
You don't want to ask, you don't really want to know, so you choose to shut up and take a step forward, feeling your daughter's eyes on your back the whole time, cheering you in silence.
vida archuleta
They press their lips against you
And you love the lies they say
And I tried so hard to reach you
But you're falling anyway
Acoustic #3
You remember the shock of learning that your mother had died while giving birth to you. You were about six years old, the age at which kids normally start asking questions, and your Grandma Lupe told you that your mother was looking over you from Heaven where she went the day you were born. You remember the wetness in Grandma Lupe's eyes as she talked about your father.
Twelve years later, you have finally seen that they weren't tears of sadness for what your father lost when your mother died, but for what he had lost when he was forced to choose between happiness and duty. Your father never told you about his choice, and you always assumed he had chosen what made him happy, but with time you have learned that he chose a life he wasn't ready to lead, giving up the only happiness he had ever known.
Though he always told you he wouldn't trade what he had for the whole world, you now know that he could have been glad to share what he had with the only person to ever understand how he felt.
As you watch your father take unsteady steps towards David Cook, you remember the shock of finding the hidden pictures under the false bottom in that box labeled memories from my past. You knew your father was a poet, and thought it maybe was something related to his childhood. You were so wrong, yet you have never felt so alive than when you saw the big grin in your father's face, lazy arms thrown around his shoulders by an unknown man whose smile was even bigger. You had turned the photograph and read the names in the back.
Archie & Cook, July 2008
You had felt a thrill coursing through your veins, a sign that told you there was more to it. The rest of the pictures had proved you right - there were snapshots of them hugging, singing, lazing around, sleeping on each other, playing pranks, riding in piggyback.
Kissing.
Somehow it hadn't made you feel nauseated - let's face it, you not minding that your father was kissing another man was somehow the trigger of what happened next. You knew your father had been lonely, and that he had been mourning for almost eighteen years. What you didn't know was that he had been mourning the loss of his love for nearly twenty. But when you decided to call Aunt Claudia and bribed the truth out of her, you did feel sick. Sick that your own family had been behind the biggest lie of your life.
But you were relieved somehow because, without that lie, you wouldn't have been born. It seemed like you were entitled to fix whatever had been wronged before you saw the light for the first time - before your father ever met your mother.
Aunt Claudia had been supportive; she had said that she had wanted to help her brother, but that she didn't know how, trapped herself in the lie her life has become too. "Now it's time to make things right," she had said right before giving you a phone number of a guy named Andy. You doubted if he would agree with what you were going to propose, but when that Andy guy, self proclaimed David Cook's best friend, not only concurred but also promised Cook would be in the beach on the agreed date, you had felt like a weight had been lifted from your shoulders.
Convincing your father of the need of driving to the beach on the same day that you were told his relationship with Cook was broken at the very same place where you were leading him was a piece of cake. And now you are thinking about retreating yourself, but your curiosity gets the best of you and you step forward, silently hoping they won't notice, because you are dying to hear what they are saying.
Your father has approached him, and for how it looks like, he has greeted the older man. When the sitting figure looks up, your breath catches in your throat. David Cook is gorgeous, you think, even with the wrinkles that don't seem characteristic of someone with such a beautiful smile. How old might he be? You do a mental math and state that he should be around forty-seven, maybe forty-eight. Not old, not old at all.
"Cook," you hear your father whispering faintly, you have approached them enough for their strained voices to reach you. They haven't seen you yet.
"Archie," David Cook says, and your heart leaps in your chest. There is so much emotion concealed in only two syllables, in the nickname your father never told you about. "What... How..."
"Do you really love me still, Cook?"
A pregnant pause. The older man stands up with difficulty - you can practically hear his legs wobbling - and then hand reach out and they caress each other's faces lovingly, reverently. You smile softly.
You don't need to hear David Cook answering. They are leaning in - your father leaning forward and up, David Cook forward and down - and then their lips are brushing and then it's like a fire set on them for they are kissing vividly and passionately, and you have never seen your father more alive. You take your camera out quietly and snap a picture of the two of them sharing this intimate moment, and your heart lifts at the thought of being able to write Archie & Cook, July 2029 on the back of it.
You have the feeling that, from now on, the back of all your pictures will be labeled Archie & Cook & Vida.
As you walk back to the car, you wonder how you're going to call David Cook henceforth. A small smile plays in your lips as you realize that you are thinking about you three as a family, and that doesn't scare you. You have wanted to be part of a real family your entire life.
Maybe now it's time for you all to start anew and become the family you all deserve.
And laughter is my soul's release
But we're not smiling anymore
And can't we try to win this peace?
'Cause we're never gonna win
Never gonna win this war
Can't Let It Go
Fin
[Final notes] Vida means life in Spanish, but it is also a short for Davida, which is the female version of David, which in turn means beloved. Also, Landita is the short for Orlanda, also from Spanish origin and female version of Roland; this is Vita's middle name.
Whenever I create a new character, I always search for a name with a deep meaning in it, and for this one, I thought this one would convey both the love Archie feels for his daughter and the love he feels for Cook. He gave Cook's name to his daughter, didn't he?
[author] another_crush
[beta] clionona. Any remaining mistakes are my own.
[pairings] David Cook/David Archuleta, David Archuleta/OFC
[rating] PG
[word count] 2384
[disclaimer] I don't own nor have ever met David Cook nor David Archuleta. Everything about them is completely fiction, and any similarity with reality is a mere coincidence. I do not own Millions Miles Away, it does belong to Goo Goo Dolls and their album Hold Me Upi. I do not own any of the other Goo Goo Dolls' songs (Close Your Eyes,Acoustic #3, It's Over and Can't Let It Go) nor their albums (Superstar Car Wash, Dizzy Up The Girl, Gutterflower and Let Love In)
[summary] The same beach, the same date, twenty years later. Too much has changed but will the feelings remain the same?
[warnings] Flangst. Changing POV (I hope it's not too confusing) Future!fic.
[author's notes] Written for david_squared's Challenge #23, prompt #3. Title taken from Goo Goo Dolls' song Million Miles Away . The songs scattered through the fic all belong to different Goo Goo Dolls' albums.
david cook
And I didn't think about
All the ways I hurt you and myself
And I wouldn't say a thing to you
I keep it to myself in my mind
And I can't stand without you
And I won't find the answers
When you're gone
It's Over
You still don't know what you are doing here, in this beach lost in the middle of nowhere, palm trees swaying in the warm breeze of this summer night. The paper clutched in your hand burns your skin, the fire sweeping through you and alighting something deep inside. The promise of a future that was long ago forgotten has come back full force and you can't even understand why you buried it in the first place.
The words are etched in your memory, the tiny and elegant handwriting dancing around in the sheet you have almost ripped from the constant reading.
If you still love him, go to Venice Beach next Sunday.
No signature. No name. Nothing but the fleeting feeling of understanding within the first five words. And yet here you are, standing with your toes sinking into the sand, your shirt sticking to your chest, your worn out jeans still hugging your legs even though years have come and gone since you last wore them, since you last stood here, since you last saw him face to face.
You never fully comprehended the reasons why you let him go. You never truly understood why you allowed him to step away from you, into a new life that wasn't that entire novelty for him. You felt you had to do something to keep from hurting him - you had realized long before that it was you who was keeping him from being happy. So, you cut him loose, you wounded him even more and you watched him walk away as your heart shattered and broke into millions of tiny little irretrievable pieces.
These past twenty years have been a torture and a blessing for you.
You have still made your music, you have still toured along with Andy and his now wife Jennye, with Neal and his forever grunting attitude, with Joey and Kyle and their respective families, watching them be happy and growing while you became tinier and tinier and your voice grew stronger and stronger, watching them play with their children and teach them to play different instruments; when Alexis came along and Neal finally married her, you knew it was your cue to start a family.
You never made it past the first date with any of the girls they tried to set you up with. You chose to live a life of solitude and watch from afar as he got married, as his daughter was born, as he lost all he loved in one awful night - all the while unable to reach for him and comfort him the way you know he would have liked, with full hugs and sweet kisses, with nonsensical words and cooing sounds. Yet you stayed away and forced yourself to swallow the bitter pill of regret every time his face appeared on national TV.
You have written endless songs about the way his lips felt on yours. In the end, even your memory fought against it but you couldn't help it. You needed to have him by your side, even if he was disguised in poetic lyrics about how much you miss a past that was never gone for good.
You still don't understand what you are doing on this beach while the sun dawns on you, but it is the first time in what seems like eons that you feel you are doing the right thing. Sighing heavily, you sit down with your back against a palm tree trunk, your hand playing with the sand as it escapes in between your fingers.
david archuleta
Had a certain passion
And I had silly dreams
Close Your Eyes
You are blindfolded, walking through what feels like sand underneath your heels. The small hand guiding you is surprisingly strong and confident, and you can't help but be reminded of how much your daughter resembles her mother - always strong, always sure. You miss her everyday of your life, but you are grateful that you have got to share your memories with the daughter you should have blamed her death on yet you can't.
You can't fault your daughter for living.
"Where are you leading me, Landita?" you ask playfully, and hear her giggling and hushing you.
"Dad, it wouldn't be a surprise if you knew!" she protests, her laugh your reason to keep breathing. "Besides, we're almost there."
"I wonder why you brought us to a beach," you dare to say, and you are rewarded by another fit of giggles.
"I suppose I shouldn't have made you toe off your shoes if I hadn't wanted you to know we were at the beach," she finally says through her contagious laugh. "But what we're going to do here is the surprise, Dad. Don't make me spoil it for you."
"Okay, I won't. Just out of curiosity, which beach is it?"
You can tell she hesitates for the slightest second, and then she is answering, "Venice Beach, Dad."
Your world crumbles. This beach, this date. Twenty years back in time. There is no chance in heck that she was aware of it when she decided to play this little game of hers - and yes, you still don't swear, still don't drink - but you cannot tell for sure with the way she is trying to cover up her nervousness. "Landita, why are we here?"
She splutters, and you have your answer. Or at least, the idea of it. "Take the blindfold off, Landita."
"Dad," she whines.
"Take it off." You don't want to resort to using authority in your voice, but when she refuses to obey you take the hand that has been guiding you and put it on the knot you don't know how to untie. "Take it off, Vida Orlanda Archuleta."
"Gosh, I hate it when you use my full name," she whispers, fingers working on the knot, steady albeit nervous. "It makes me feel like a little girl, Dad, and I'm already eighteen."
"Thanks for reminding me," you say bitterly as the blindfold falls down and your eyes adjust to the dim light of the twilight. The beach is deserted, just like it was twenty years ago when your world stopped spinning and came to a halt. Millions of seconds later it still has to recover from the blow. "Landita, what's going on?" You want to believe that it's all a coincidence, but then your gaze lands on a lone figure sitting against a palm tree and you know this is not some fluke.
"Listen, Dad," she starts. "Don't be mad at me, okay? But I had to make this wonderful assignment for school, and we were supposed to speak about our family."
"I remember that," you say, never tearing your eyes from the figure on the sand, who doesn't seem to have noticed you two yet. "I told you to look through your mother's pictures."
Realization dawns on you as your daughter keeps talking. "I did so, dad, and please don't be mad, gosh, I don't know how it happened but I must have taken the wrong box and there I found some pictures from when you participated in American Idol and you never let me see the show so I went through the pictures and there he was and... I could feel it, Dad."
You close your eyes. "How? How could you?"
"You love Mom," she says simply, you can feel her shrug in her voice. "You just love him more. That's why you haven't been able to rebuild your life since she died, and why you can't go on. I know everything."
"No, you possibly can't know everything, Landita."
"Oh, come on, Dad! I researched my names' meanings, Dad, and that was all the explanation I needed."
You sigh, defeated, and open your eyes. He is still sitting there, and you look back and forth between his shadow and your daughter, taking in the eager and open expression in her young face. "It's been twenty years, Landita."
"He still loves you, Dad," she reassures you. "He wouldn't be here if he didn't. I made sure of that."
You don't want to ask, you don't really want to know, so you choose to shut up and take a step forward, feeling your daughter's eyes on your back the whole time, cheering you in silence.
vida archuleta
They press their lips against you
And you love the lies they say
And I tried so hard to reach you
But you're falling anyway
Acoustic #3
You remember the shock of learning that your mother had died while giving birth to you. You were about six years old, the age at which kids normally start asking questions, and your Grandma Lupe told you that your mother was looking over you from Heaven where she went the day you were born. You remember the wetness in Grandma Lupe's eyes as she talked about your father.
Twelve years later, you have finally seen that they weren't tears of sadness for what your father lost when your mother died, but for what he had lost when he was forced to choose between happiness and duty. Your father never told you about his choice, and you always assumed he had chosen what made him happy, but with time you have learned that he chose a life he wasn't ready to lead, giving up the only happiness he had ever known.
Though he always told you he wouldn't trade what he had for the whole world, you now know that he could have been glad to share what he had with the only person to ever understand how he felt.
As you watch your father take unsteady steps towards David Cook, you remember the shock of finding the hidden pictures under the false bottom in that box labeled memories from my past. You knew your father was a poet, and thought it maybe was something related to his childhood. You were so wrong, yet you have never felt so alive than when you saw the big grin in your father's face, lazy arms thrown around his shoulders by an unknown man whose smile was even bigger. You had turned the photograph and read the names in the back.
Archie & Cook, July 2008
You had felt a thrill coursing through your veins, a sign that told you there was more to it. The rest of the pictures had proved you right - there were snapshots of them hugging, singing, lazing around, sleeping on each other, playing pranks, riding in piggyback.
Kissing.
Somehow it hadn't made you feel nauseated - let's face it, you not minding that your father was kissing another man was somehow the trigger of what happened next. You knew your father had been lonely, and that he had been mourning for almost eighteen years. What you didn't know was that he had been mourning the loss of his love for nearly twenty. But when you decided to call Aunt Claudia and bribed the truth out of her, you did feel sick. Sick that your own family had been behind the biggest lie of your life.
But you were relieved somehow because, without that lie, you wouldn't have been born. It seemed like you were entitled to fix whatever had been wronged before you saw the light for the first time - before your father ever met your mother.
Aunt Claudia had been supportive; she had said that she had wanted to help her brother, but that she didn't know how, trapped herself in the lie her life has become too. "Now it's time to make things right," she had said right before giving you a phone number of a guy named Andy. You doubted if he would agree with what you were going to propose, but when that Andy guy, self proclaimed David Cook's best friend, not only concurred but also promised Cook would be in the beach on the agreed date, you had felt like a weight had been lifted from your shoulders.
Convincing your father of the need of driving to the beach on the same day that you were told his relationship with Cook was broken at the very same place where you were leading him was a piece of cake. And now you are thinking about retreating yourself, but your curiosity gets the best of you and you step forward, silently hoping they won't notice, because you are dying to hear what they are saying.
Your father has approached him, and for how it looks like, he has greeted the older man. When the sitting figure looks up, your breath catches in your throat. David Cook is gorgeous, you think, even with the wrinkles that don't seem characteristic of someone with such a beautiful smile. How old might he be? You do a mental math and state that he should be around forty-seven, maybe forty-eight. Not old, not old at all.
"Cook," you hear your father whispering faintly, you have approached them enough for their strained voices to reach you. They haven't seen you yet.
"Archie," David Cook says, and your heart leaps in your chest. There is so much emotion concealed in only two syllables, in the nickname your father never told you about. "What... How..."
"Do you really love me still, Cook?"
A pregnant pause. The older man stands up with difficulty - you can practically hear his legs wobbling - and then hand reach out and they caress each other's faces lovingly, reverently. You smile softly.
You don't need to hear David Cook answering. They are leaning in - your father leaning forward and up, David Cook forward and down - and then their lips are brushing and then it's like a fire set on them for they are kissing vividly and passionately, and you have never seen your father more alive. You take your camera out quietly and snap a picture of the two of them sharing this intimate moment, and your heart lifts at the thought of being able to write Archie & Cook, July 2029 on the back of it.
You have the feeling that, from now on, the back of all your pictures will be labeled Archie & Cook & Vida.
As you walk back to the car, you wonder how you're going to call David Cook henceforth. A small smile plays in your lips as you realize that you are thinking about you three as a family, and that doesn't scare you. You have wanted to be part of a real family your entire life.
Maybe now it's time for you all to start anew and become the family you all deserve.
And laughter is my soul's release
But we're not smiling anymore
And can't we try to win this peace?
'Cause we're never gonna win
Never gonna win this war
Can't Let It Go
Fin
[Final notes] Vida means life in Spanish, but it is also a short for Davida, which is the female version of David, which in turn means beloved. Also, Landita is the short for Orlanda, also from Spanish origin and female version of Roland; this is Vita's middle name.
Whenever I create a new character, I always search for a name with a deep meaning in it, and for this one, I thought this one would convey both the love Archie feels for his daughter and the love he feels for Cook. He gave Cook's name to his daughter, didn't he?