New Annie (3/11)
Title: New Annie
Author: robert3A-SN on ff.net
Character/pairing: Annie, Jeff, original character
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4,508 words for chapter 3, 13,265 words through three chapters
Genres: Romance, drama, angst, friendship
Summary: As the final year at Greendale approaches, Annie puts together a drastic plan to ensure she never acts out over Jeff again - and even shares it with his new girlfriend first.
Disclaimer: If I owned Community, there never would have been a three-month hiatus, but I don’t and there was.
A/N: This is an AU story in which all the events after “Contemporary Impressionists” never happened. Neither did all the schmoopy J/A moments afterwards or Annie’s Dreamatorium speech about not loving Jeff - which makes it [slightly] easier to buy Jeff having a non-Annie girlfriend, and Annie being more emotional about Jeff than she is on the show now.
This chapter is also at http://www.fanfiction.net/s/8097116/3/, although feedback is encouraged to be left on here. Even feedback about me crushing your souls and wishing awful things upon me for the angst and the premise alone.
Chapter 1 Chapter 2
The next few weeks looked perfect on the surface for Annie. The school year was finally almost here, the group was still all together, her and Jeff were getting along, and Alison was bonding with the group as well. It was all perfect - except for how it was decidedly not.
Jeff still wasn’t a PDA kind of person, thankfully. Yet when he wrapped his arm around Alison and kissed her during a few get togethers, it took everything Annie had not to drink and let alcohol fully unleash her. And when Alison smiled at Annie, it took more than it should have for Annie not to think of creative ways to wipe that smile off.
No matter how much Annie hated herself for feeling this way, those emotions just kept coming. As illogical as she knew she was, the fact that Jeff really was fully off limits and might be that way for a long time…..even after they all left Greendale and possibly never saw each other again…..it did things to her. It did some unpleasant, hard to live with things.
Annie had done well containing herself around Jeff before he met Alison, so she knew it could be done. Yet it was different when he was attached, and securely so at that. A primitive side of her was more obsessed because Jeff was even more unattainable - and it was growing the more she saw him and Alison together.
The worst part was that it made Annie understand how Jeff felt when she was around Rich. The difference was that Annie was fully aware of how jealous she was, and was more willing to admit it to herself and to others if she wasn’t careful. When Jeff acted like that, he was as infuriating and hurtful as he’d ever been. So it stood to reason that Annie would be 10 times worse if this got the best of her.
But how could it not get the best of her? How would she hold it back at Greendale, once she had to see Jeff and Alison together every day? What if Jeff got her into the group like Annie tried to get Rich in, and what if Jeff actually succeeded? If Alison could even have Jeff in the study room - where psycho Annie punched Jeff after learning that he had sex with Britta the first time - how bad would Annie snap then?
With that, Annie found yet another new low. She knew what she was feeling was wrong and stupid, and that she would lose Jeff completely if she let this continue. And yet she knew she would let it happen anyway. She just wasn’t strong enough….or even good enough…..to endure it like this much longer.
If she didn’t do something drastic, eventually she would just hurt Jeff, hurt Alison and maybe turn the others into collateral damage. And at that realization, Annie now sadly understood one of the main excuses why Jeff didn’t want to be with her.
He was so convinced that he was too rotten and evil to be with her and would destroy her if he got too close, no matter how much it wasn’t true. And yet Annie knew that if she kept being this close to Jeff and Alison, she would snap at least once before graduation and become too rotten herself. At least as long as she stayed the way she was now - all too obsessed deep down with someone she couldn’t have.
But Annie had been obsessed and addicted before. Yet she found the strength to take the most drastic measures available to cure herself. And over the last few weeks of summer break, she started to realize that she might have to do it again.
She confirmed it at the group’s end-of-summer party at Pierce’s mansion, a week before school started. Although it was a really fun day and Annie enjoyed just being around both Jeff and Alison, her stomach still fluttered like usual when Jeff gave his end-of-summer Winger speech. And it really fluttered when she was at the center of the traditional group hug with Jeff.
Yet when Jeff both hugged and briefly kissed Alison afterwards, Annie’s stomach nearly made her vomit out the worst snide remarks. And she knew that would have been the gateway to even worse words - and arguments, and maybe even actions - later.
As badly as Annie didn’t want to do that, when it came to Jeff she wasn’t strong enough to stop this. Even after months or over a year of self-control at a time, Jeff and her blasted feelings could still trigger the worst, most jealous, selfish parts of her at a moment’s notice.
And when she finally exploded after months of build up, she could cross a line she might never come back from. She could lose much more than Jeff as a future boyfriend. She could lose Jeff in every way forever - along with her friends, her self-respect, her fragile adulthood, and any illusion that she really was a decent, kind, moral person.
Annie saw only one drastic way to stop all that. Or to at least try to stop it.
She then spent the next three days straight planning out how it would go. Then she came to the hard part - breaking the news to the most difficult person imaginable.
Yet she still made herself head over to Alison’s apartment four days before school started.
She had texted ahead to make sure Jeff wasn’t there and wouldn’t show up. Once she knew he wouldn’t, Annie resolved herself to get through this as best she could, and hope Alison could begin to slightly understand.
Things started well when Alison let her in, and Annie didn’t look to see if she had any pictures of Jeff inside. She just headed for the kitchen and jumped into the first part of her thoroughly rehearsed speech.
“Alison, there are a lot of things I have to tell you. But I should start with one big thing. Something I probably should have led off with a while ago,” Annie hinted. Alison just nodded for her to go on, looking too puzzled and concerned to say anything. So Annie enjoyed that while she could, knowing that Alison might be too furious not to say anything in a moment.
“I have romantic feelings for Jeff. And I’ve had them long before he ever met you.” Annie waited a few seconds, but Alison didn’t slap her or even frown. So she carefully went on and asked, “Do you know about that debate me and Jeff had together three years ago? And how it ended?” Alison just nodded yes. “Yeah, I’ve had them since then.”
Annie figured that Jeff only let Alison know about the debate kiss because it was so public. She knew for a fact that he’d want every other….romantic hint between him and Annie hidden under lock and key. If Alison really didn’t know about them, Annie couldn’t tell her - and that wasn’t the point of this anyway.
“I want you to know that Jeff doesn’t feel that way about me. He’s made it clear a bunch of times,” Annie got herself to admit. “And if he wouldn’t feel that way when he was single, he would never let it happen while he was with you. He’s many things, but he’s no cheater….” Annie regrouped before she got into the kind of Jeff-reverie she couldn’t afford right now.
“I’m the problem here. Seeing him doing so well with you is making me….feel things I don’t want to feel. I don’t trust myself around him, and you shouldn’t trust me with him. I can control myself around him most of the time, I really can! But I’m afraid if one thing goes wrong, or if one thing goes right for you two, I’ll act out in a way I really don’t want to. And if I hurt you two or ruined your relationship because of it, I’d never ever forgive myself.”
Well, that first part was a tiny bit easier than she thought - if only because she wasn’t getting attacked in the middle. Yet Annie figured she should let Alison know that it was on the table. It was common courtesy, all things considered.
“Well? Don’t you want to yell at me and tell me to stay away from your man?” Annie cringed at her clichéd phrasing, and her memories of how furious the sometimes temperamental Alison could be. And that was when someone wasn’t telling her she was in love with her boyfriend.
But still, Alison remained stone faced and seemed like she was actually thinking. As if this wasn’t a cut and dry case against Annie still being alive. Finally Alison uttered, “I….I’m not sure what I can say. I mean, yelling at you is rather tempting, don’t get me wrong. But I’m just surprised you told me about it. If you kept this inside since we met, why tell me now?”
“Because this is the last chance I’ll have for a while.” All right, now the brutal second part of this talk was on the way.
“What does that mean?” Alison wondered. And then Annie said the words she never imagined - or wanted to imagine - she would say. But if she couldn’t say it, how could she do it?
“It means I’m taking a leave of absence from the study group.”
Annie willed herself not to cry now that it really hit her - and now that there was no way out of it. All she could do was keep her voice level and explain this terrible decision. “You’re leaving the group because of me and Jeff?” Alison jumped in.
“No, no, I’m not leaving forever! And I’m not leaving everyone!” Annie tried to convey before going back to basics. “I’m staying in Greendale, and I’m staying in English 101 with them. I just won’t talk to them during class. And I won’t join them in the study room either. Or sit at lunch with them….or go on any official group adventures with them. Not right now, anyway.”
Annie stopped from dwelling on what she wouldn’t do with them, and focused on explaining the things she could still do. “But I still live with Troy and Abed, so of course I’m going to hang out with them. And I want to schedule time to hang out with Britta, Shirley and Pierce eventually! And I’m still going to e-mail them notes from English class, but that’s a given.”
“So you’re not really taking an absence from the group. You’re just taking an absence from the study room….and Jeff. And from me,” Alison caught on. “Well, I will insist they don’t bring you and Jeff up while we’re hanging out,” Annie admitted.
“You’re going on Jeff rehab, then?” Alison inquired, which actually made Annie chuckle. She knew, or at least hoped, that she would catch on that quickly. “Right! Since I’m afraid of what I’ll do near him, I need to get away from him! At least until I’m sure I won’t act out in front of him or you!”
“Wait, if you’re only cutting us out of your life, won’t it be harder to forget about us?” Alison nitpicked.
“I don’t know….probably,” Annie confessed before steeling herself again. “But only at first! I need to do things that aren’t about Jeff, or at least don’t have a giant Jeff shadow over it! Unfortunately, the study group and that study room are pretty….shadowy. And you kind of are, too,” Annie quietly noted.
Alison stayed still and in thought, scratching her chin with her nails instead of scratching Annie’s eyes. “We’re not a real PDA couple,” she spoke up. “We don’t get lovey dovey with each other in front of you, and we don’t kiss that much either. We just smile and banter, but that’s about it. The other stuff is behind closed doors, where it should be. If we cut down on the couple stuff we still did in public, would that make you feel better enough to stay?”
After all this - and Annie still wasn’t even finished yet - Alison was proposing ways for her to stay? This made Annie feel both relieved and even more envious of her than ever. But it did make the answer to her question easier. “No….no, I can’t ask that. I can’t ask you to cut down on couple moments because of me. You don’t deserve that when this is all my problem.”
“So just seeing us together is too much for you, even if we’re not doing anything? Are you really that fragile when it comes to Jeff?” Alison asked, raising her voice a bit for the first time - but doing it on a pretty good question.
“No, not always. Not most of the time, but….” Annie carefully thought out her explanation. “There’s a really childish, naïve, greedy part of me that’s still inside me. Jeff usually brings it out, but that’s more my fault than his! It’s made me do things that I still feel ashamed of even now.”
“I have it under control most of the time, but with you and him….if it makes me relapse just one more time, at any time, I honestly don’t know what I’d do,” Annie confessed. “I just know I’d never be able to respect myself, or face Jeff or anyone else, ever again when it was over. If there’s even a slight chance that could happen, I have to get rid of it right now.”
“But you’ll just go back to face him and us when you’re finished,” Alison recalled. “I thought the best way to cure an addiction was to never indulge in it again. So how do you know you won’t go crazy for Jeff again when you come back? Couldn’t that start the cycle all over?” Alison wasn’t asking it like she was telling Annie to stay away forever. She just sounded curious.
“I can’t just stay away from him for good,” Annie revealed. “But if I take time away from him now, I know ….I think, I can control myself later. I can focus on all the other things and people that I love, and remember I have much more to my life than Jeff. And all that time away from him, and from the study room….it’ll help me remember I could lose it all forever if I screw up. Then I can stop myself from doing it and make it stick! Trust me, I need that kind of drastic measure to really get the message. It’s my own personal therapy tactic.”
Annie thought that would be a nice touch, and Alison indeed appeared to understand that. “Did you explain it quite like that to the others?” she checked. And that was as good an opening as Annie would get for the third, final and hardest part of this talk.
“Actually, none of them know yet. And I’m just sending an e-mail to the others when I leave here. Obviously I have to tell Troy and Abed more when I get home, and I’ll have to very delicately fill in Britta, Shirley and Pierce. But I can’t tell Jeff in person….we’d have such a huge fight that there’s no way this will work. I just hope you can calm him down before the vote,” Annie inched towards explaining further.
“What vote?” Alison asked in lue of a more detailed question. So Annie took a breath and prepared to make the toughest offer of her life.
“There’s going to be an open seat in the group while I’m gone. And….I want you to take it. I want you to sit in my seat at the study room, next to Jeff, and go on adventures with them in my place. You’re already taking English 101 with them, so you can do a little studying too. They’ll have to vote you in of course, but with my endorsement, you should get in if everything goes well,” Annie predicted, as the unease in her stomach bubbled up one last time.
Annie already let her take Jeff, and now she was handing the study group to her?! Yet the fact that part of her still had those thoughts was the very reason she had to do it. If she was going to subdue it forever, she had to go all the way. That meant passing more than one torch over to Alison.
“Annie….” Alison started, as the offer really seemed to take her aback. But when she found her words, they weren’t as thankful as Annie wished. “Do you know what kind of a burden this puts on me? I know the group isn’t good with outsiders, at least in that study room! Me replacing you, both in there and with Jeff….how is that not a no-win scenario?”
“I know it’ll be hard at first,” Annie understated. “But you know us and Jeff so well already! If anyone new can fit into that study room, it’s you! And since your boyfriend is their leader, he won’t let them give you a hard time!”
“What if he gives me a hard time?” Alison pointed out. “Jeff’s probably not going to take this well. Having me remind him of that every day, by sitting in your chair….you have to know what a risk that is! You say you’re not trying to break us up or make our relationship harder. But this seems like a roadmap to just that!”
“It’s better than the alternative, trust me!” Annie insisted. “This way you’ll still have a chance! I know Jeff will be really, really mad, but if you talked him down from his father issues, you can talk him down for this!”
“So he would be that furious, then?” Alison noted, just as Annie suspected she used the wrong analogy. “Why would you leaving be on that extreme level for him? I mean, if your feelings for him are really one sided, why would you steering clear of him make him that upset?” Now she was feeling jealous and threatened, although she really should have been long before that.
Annie scrambled for a good defense while trying not to crumble under Alison’s glare. But when she focused, she finally found a good counterpoint. “Because Jeff cares about me.”
“Yes, but how much? That was the real point of my question,” Alison reminded.
“He cares enough to let a type-A, high strung, nagging young woman with a crush still be one of his best friends. Just like he cares for a professional screw up, a preachy housewife, two unique but really hard to understand best friends, and even an old man who’s a twisted version of his dad. No matter how much we annoy him, or make him do things he doesn’t want to do, he’s never stopped caring about us. Because we’re special to him, and we’re pretty much the only special people he’s ever had in his life. At least until you got here.”
Annie knew she should feel very uneasy about what she was going to say. Yet she felt more subdued than she expected when she started. “Alison, Jeff isn’t with you to replace me, or to run away from any feelings he has for me. Trust me, I would have noticed if he was. But he’s with you because he cares about you, and I understand why. I don’t know how or why and it’s none of my business, but he relates to you. You clearly make him feel stronger and better about himself, and you make him believe he can be better….and that he already is. Me and the others tried to help him see that for years, but I guess you outdid us all.”
Annie held back any residual jealousy at that realization and powered through. “Above anything else, Jeff is my best friend. And I want him to feel the way he feels around you all the time. And I don’t want to care that it isn’t because of me. That’s why I have to get some distance from him for a while….but he might not understand. But I know you can help him, and I know you can keep the group together while I’m gone! What’s more I….I trust you to do that.”
This phrase took both of them aback a bit, yet Annie knew she meant it. “I know, I should hate your guts, and way too much of me actually does. But the rest of me trusts you. And though I don’t know you that well, I think I know enough by now to know you’re a good person. Jeff deserves to be with one so much! And I wouldn’t trust him with you….or trust the whole group….my only real family….with you if you weren’t….”
That was finally too much for Annie, as she broke down exactly like she didn’t want to do. Everything she was giving up, temporarily and permanently, was just hitting her too hard all at once.
Yet after a few seconds of crying, she was composed enough to tell Alison, “These aren’t Disney tears! I’m not trying to manipulate you or guilt you, I promise! I just….” But she couldn’t finish as another couple of sobs overtook her.
She calmed down as Alison finally handed her a few tissues, however. After she wiped her eyes, Annie resumed her speech by backtracking. “I know, I’m putting a huge burden on you. You should kick me out and order me-“
“I’ll do it,” Alison promised instead. “Be in the group, I mean, not that other thing.”
“Really?” Once Alison nodded, Annie breathed out a sigh of relief, as unlikely as that might be. This at least helped her shake off her little breakdown faster.
“How long would I have to do this? Does this….sabbatical of yours have a time table?” Alison investigated.
“Not a definite one. I don’t see it lasting less than a month, but I should be back before Thanksgiving, at the least. Maybe sometime around Halloween. But when I’m ready, you’ll be among the first to know,” Annie promised.
“And when you’re back, I’ll just vacate your seat then?” Alison double checked.
“I think we should leave that to the group when the time comes. But as much as it might upset me even then, I wouldn’t be shocked if you made a good case to stay. I really think being in the group with Jeff would be a big step for you as a couple. And when I come back and I see how well you’re doing, by then I’ll feel much better about it. And about letting him go completely. If I get to stay and see it, I mean,” Annie corrected. “Not that you have to be a good couple for my approval, either!”
“I think I got the idea by now,” Alison assured. Annie nodded that she understood, then realized she had covered just about everything. And that meant it was time to go away.
“Well, I’ve got a PDF to send, calls and texts to ignore, Troy and Abed to talk down, and the last year at Greendale to get ready for!” Annie recalled. “Maybe I can salvage the last semester, at least,” she resigned before resolving to head out with her head high. So she got up and started to head for the door, before Alison made her stop with a forceful, “Annie!”
Annie froze and waited for Alison to catch up, wondering if she’d read her the riot act during this last chance. Instead, she spoke, “Thank you for being so honest with me….and trusting me.”
“Well, I know honesty is really important in things like this,” Annie replied. Yet she made herself ignore how she wasn’t honest about Jeff kissing her, or his own repressed desire for her, or anything else about how he may or may not feel about her. Or Jeff’s own questionable honesty about her over the years. But if Alison was going to find that out eventually, she couldn’t be inspired by Annie.
“I haven’t let many people trust me, or trusted them a lot in return. Jeff and I are alike like that,” Alison linked. “We’re just learning to be that close to people, but we went this far without that by choice. I know you went a long time without it, and it wasn’t your choice. So the fact you’re giving up all these important connections for us, even for a little while….and even though the reasons why must be killing you….”
Alison stopped herself from accidentally rubbing it in further and wrapped up with, “Well, that’s not something a selfish, rotten child would do. You just proved you are better than that, Annie. And I hope you believe that and come back soon.”
“I….I do, too,” was all Annie could come up with. “But until then, I’ll do whatever I can to make sure Jeff gives you your space. For various reasons, I hope it isn’t that hard,” Alison expanded.
“I hope you’re right,” was all Annie had - and a decent sized part of her actually believed it. On that note, she was able to leave and share one more nod of thanks with Alison, before she got away from her for the next several weeks.
As she walked down the halls, Annie couldn’t help but think she just made this harder. She survived telling Alison the truth and got her to join the group, although she didn’t plan to cry in the process. Yet it went well enough that now Annie might miss her too - and she was already going to miss enough as it was. Jeff, the study room, group adventures, being part of a family….and now missing the woman who partly made this all possible was just one more kick in the skirt.
But there was no way around it now. Annie just told Alison her entire plan, and now she had to follow through. Telling her in person was supposed to be the hard part. Although pulling up the pdf file with her announcement, and e-mailing it to the group on her cell phone, would be no picnic either.
Yet she had it ready to send by the time she exited the building. Then by the time she got to her car, she pressed her thumb that extra inch down and sent the file.
By the time Annie started her car, she had her cell phone shut off to avoid early reactions to her e-mail. But she felt she’d be ready to explain it to Troy and Abed once she got back home. Britta, Shirley and Pierce would be another matter, at least for tonight, if they got a hold of her. And she could only pray that Alison would stop Jeff from coming over or calling after all.
That’s what life would be like for Annie, now that she had started going on Jeff detox.
Hmm, maybe she could use that as a private joke to Alison when she got back….4-8 weeks minimum from now.