Tomorrow Never Knows: Chapter Ten
Tomorrow Never Knows
Title: Chapter Ten
Authors: lovely_rita_mm,jenny_wren28, & pennylane_fic
Starring: The Beatles (specifically John Lennon) and Maggie Sue
Rating: R for language, sex, & implied drug use.
Disclaimer: We don’t own any of the Beatles, this obviously never happened, and much to the real Maggie’s disappointment, is a complete work of fiction.
It's Sunday, so you know what that means....
Time for another update! We hope you have stuck with us after the sadness of the last chapter. Believe us, it made us sad too - but we hope stick around to see what affect these events have on our characters and the story.
So, dearest readers, turn off your mind, relax and join Maggie Sue on another one of her Beatle adventures.....
Previous updates located HERE!
Chapter 10
Maggie fled the room before she could hear the Maharishi make an announcement about Brian to the assembled group; she hadn’t needed to hear it. Eventually someone would come after her, telling her the news, but right now, she couldn’t be there. She couldn’t watch the disappointment and the sadness cross the faces of the people that she loved.
Ultimately, it had been George to come find her, rather than John. John had known that she and George had been at odds, and when he saw George get up to follow her, he’d stayed back, knowing they needed to talk.
George found Maggie outside, sitting on a bench, her head in her hands. She turned around when she heard someone approaching. Seeing it was George, she turned away, unable to look at him. Quietly he sat down on the bench and put his arms around her in a hug, letting her cry against him.
“I knew it. I knew I should have stayed home. Why did you make me come here?” she sobbed.
George hugged her tightly to her chest, feeling her shake against him. He stroked her hair gently, and leaned his cheek on her head. “It’s none of our faults, you know. We couldn’t have changed it. You and John tried, he wouldn’t listen,” he said.
Maggie shook her head, unable to speak. She knew George was probably right. What else could she have done, short of tying Brian to a chair? Still, maybe if they’d approached Brian differently, or if she’d brought it up sooner, or more frequently, things could have been different. However it could have been, it was too late now, and there was no way to know for sure. The futility of these thoughts depressed Maggie utterly.
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Hours or maybe days - Maggie wasn’t really sure - passed. Conversations were held in muted tones as they tried to figure out what to do. Maggie felt as if she were walking through it all in a haze. Eventually, it was decided that it was unwise for the Beatles to attend Brian Epstein’s funeral. It might create a media frenzy, and out of respect to Brian, the Beatles didn’t want the attention on themselves.
Maggie was glad not to have to go. She wasn’t sure she could have handled it anyway. Her guilt was overwhelming, as was her sense that all her efforts to make a difference would be ultimately futile. While at first she’d been inconsolable, now she felt mostly numb.
Since the Beatles couldn’t go to the funeral, instead they’d all gone up to Paul’s farm in Scotland so that they could mourn together in private. Maureen had stayed home with the baby, and Jane was on another movie shoot and couldn’t get away, but the band, plus Maggie and Pattie, and Neil and Mal, had slipped out of town as quietly as could be managed.
Maggie usually loved Paul’s farm because it was so peaceful, but right now, it was almost too peaceful. Maggie had more time to think than she needed or wanted, and her head was spinning in circles. When she couldn’t take it anymore, she tried to think of nothing at all, and just embrace the numbness. She had no more tears, no more words left, just a deep sadness that was hard for anyone to penetrate, including John.
George, who clearly still felt badly about their argument, was being especially kind to her. She felt bad for having blamed George for making her leave town that weekend. She knew it was unfair, and George had been quite right in his complaints about how she was treating his interest in the Maharishi, but coping with the insensibility of death was hard. It was much easier to have someone to blame, to be able to say that if she had been there, then Brian would still be alive, as if it were true, a fact. It was very hard for her to not be able to apply some sort of logic to the situation. Fortunately, George understood her need to find sense in all this, and had let her cry and rail against him, knowing that eventually she’d turn the blame away from him and onto herself. The problem was, once she’d stopped blaming him, and turned inward, it was hard to reach her at all.
On their first night at the farm, they all stayed up late getting drunk and reminiscing about Brian. Though everyone was sad, the Beatles were too irrepressible to stay solemn and respectful for long, and so they joked around and told funny stories. Maggie stayed quiet as she didn’t have a whole lot to add since she hadn’t been there for the early days, though obviously she’d read enough about them in books. Every time she’d get involved in one of their stories, every time she felt enjoyment at seeing one of them act out some funny scene involving Brian, she’d catch herself and mentally pull back. Brian was gone and it was all her fault, she told herself sternly. She didn’t deserve to laugh, or to enjoy the Beatles’ animated storytelling. Brian was dead, and she couldn’t ever fix it.
Talk inevitably turned to the future - the question of “what now?” hanging over them unanswered. Maggie was too tired to think about what she knew could happen - there’d be fights and lawsuits over Allen Klein, which would lead to the end of the Beatles. She had failed to save Brian, and maybe she couldn’t save the Beatles either. She’d hoped that if she kept Brian alive, then maybe things wouldn’t play out the same way this time around. She guessed that it was not to be.
“But why do we need a script?” Paul was saying. “We haven’t seen one yet that we’ve liked, so I say we do it without one.”
Clearly Paul was referring to the Magical Mystery Tour - the first real stumble for a group that could do no wrong. Maggie wanted to interrupt Paul, to tell him what a stupid idea it was to have no direction for their movie, how it would be largely disliked, the music aside, of course. But what was the point? Let them make their mistakes, she thought dully, let them continue on whatever course they’re supposed to be on. It’s not like I can change anything anyway.
After all, had she really changed anything for the better? Brian was dead. She wouldn’t know if George and Linda would be saved in the end, not until the 90s. Worse, she had no idea if she could really save John. Either he’d end up dumping her for Yoko, and continue down his preordained path to December 8, 1980, or he’d stay with her, and then there was no telling what the future would bring them.
The only thing that Maggie felt like she had any control over was Apple. It was the one piece of hope that she could make a positive difference. The boutique disaster had been averted for one thing, and Apple was doing quite well. That had to mean something, didn’t it? Bitterly, she supposed that something would come along to change all that, to redirect Apple back to its original path. The future will reassert itself somehow,despair whispered in her ear. All of your efforts will be for nothing. She couldn’t do anything to block it out. And so she stayed quiet, and let Paul enthuse about renting a coach, filling it up with odd characters, and driving aimlessly around the countryside.
She went to bed when the party started to wind down. Besides acute guilt, she was feeling the effects of a few drinks too many. Unwilling to refuse any of the toasts to Brian, she’d done her best to keep up with the others, most of whom were champion drinkers. Maggie was not, and though she drank more that she usually did, there was no way she could match what the Beatles were throwing back. She only hoped she’d managed to drink enough to anesthetize herself. She’d remembered John drinking himself into senselessness on tour, and that sounded just like what she needed. Lying in bed later, she decided that she must not have had enough, as she didn’t feel ready to pass out, she just felt vaguely nauseated. Whether it was alcohol or guilt pooling at the bottom of her stomach, she wasn’t sure.
“Luv? Are you still awake?” Maggie sensed John standing just inside the doorway to their bedroom, most likely letting his eyes adjust to the darkness.
She was. Wide awake - but still paralyzed by sadness. It had a tight grip on her, wrapping itself around her throat and her lips, and so she was able to say nothing in reply to John. It was easier to just let him think she was asleep. Easier than saying the same things over and over again. It was my fault. Brian’s dead. I should have been able to save him. He would just tell her it wasn’t her fault, that everything would be okay- except that she wasn’t sure anything would be okay ever again.
She listened to John feel his way closer to the bed, cursing when he stubbed his toe on their suitcase. She heard the soft sounds of cloth moving against skin, of John stripping his clothes off. The bed creaked with his weight as he climbed in next to her.
She stayed silent, trying to breathe evenly, as he curled up behind her, his own breath warm on her neck. She could feel his warm, naked skin against her back when he wrapped her in his arms.
“Luv, you’re not fooling me, I know you’re awake,” he said quietly.
She opened her mouth to speak, but she didn’t know what to say.
“You need to stop this blaming yourself.”
Maggie waited for the bland platitudes to leave his lips. It’s okay, it’s not your fault.
But instead, John said, “It’s all shite, really. Look, if you hadn’t come back to the past, Brian would be dead anyway, wouldn’t he? Well, you gave him a second chance, and it’s his own fucking fault if he didn’t listen to you. God, if he weren’t dead, I would kill him myself.” John was angry, and she didn’t think it was purely alcohol-fueled, though she knew alcohol had a tendency to make him that way.
“Bloody hell, but I’m tired of losing people I love. Julia, Stu, Brian…” John sighed tiredly, his anger leaving him just as suddenly as it had come. “I don’t want to lose you too, luv - not to this. You want to hit something, to scream, to cry, but you won’t let yourself, you’re locked up so tight. I was like that after my mum died. Well, I let the anger out on occasion, but everything else I kept tightly in. It’s no good, luv. This numbness is no good, even if it helps hide the pain now. You need to feel again. Let me help you.”
He waited, and gave her time to process what he’d said, what he was offering.
“Please,” she said in a small voice, still unable to say more. But it was enough.
Still spooning her, he kissed her neck, moving his lips up to her earlobes, as his fingers moved down her body, caressing her skin. His hand slipped into her nightgown, and she could feel his body hard against her. He felt solid and real, despite the fact that he was John Lennon and this was 1967.
Maggie felt a sob lodge in her throat as she turned her body towards him. The grief that was inside her was so sharp, so acute, that it became overwhelming. It was the center of her being, becoming so prominent that it volleyed for her attention, screaming and clawing its way forward, trying to burst forth. Not knowing what else to do, Maggie reached for John, wishing for any other feeling then this all-consuming guilt.
Leaning forward, she kissed him, pouring all her grief, all her anger, into this single point of contact. John’s quick fingers had made short work of the buttons down the front of her nightgown, and soon her body was pressed against his, not a breath of room between them. She wasn’t aware of much, except for the fact that this needed to end. The grief needed to dissipate into the night and the only way she knew how to do this was with the hope given by physical contact. John understood her need all too well.
The two of them came together in a fit of passion, moving as one, trying to keep at bay the demons that lurked in every corner of her being. All she knew was his touch, his smell, his sight. Everything about him enveloped her in a warm haze, chasing away the icy cold that had settled in her bones the second she’d known Brian was dead. For tonight, they were safe, they were one. Tomorrow? Well, no one ever truly knew what tomorrow might bring. Least of all me, Maggie thought sadly.
Though she was still sad, she felt safely anchored by the weight of John’s warm arms. For the first time since Brian’s death, she felt like she had come to a place of peace. Eyelids heavy, spent both physically and emotionally, Maggie finally slipped into a dreamless sleep.
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We'll see you next time, which will hopefully be a little happier! At least Yoko stayed out of this chapter, that's something, right? Thanks for reading!
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Continue to Chapter Eleven
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