they say the road of life
is paved with good intentions we have
no matter how we try
to keep our promises
sometime we just can't
little bit of faith can be wondrous
it's the only place we can turn to

between you and me
there's enough love that I believe
we'll rise above and we'll get through anything
between you and me

It rained hard that day. Her hand, numb and stiff, rested on the doorknob forever before she could clasp it firmly enough to turn and push. Her body was detached, each part barely functioning, held together by bones and determination. Only her mind was busy, thoughts falling over each other half-formed like eager children.

The door was swollen from the rain, and she had to lean her full sodden weight against it before it gave way reluctantly. Grams was clanking in the kitchen, but she deliberately ignored the promise of warmth and welcome, tossing her battered bookbag to the ground once inside the door and flexing her aching shoulder. The stairs seemed way too high to climb, but she started doggedly off, dragging one foot at a time upwards until she was outside her bedroom door.

Her window had been left open. A cold breeze was stalking her room slowly, chilling her face as she entered, then swirling the papers on her desk faintly before dying again. A puddle had formed below the windowsill on her floor.

Her bed, at least, was soft and dry and comforting as she sank into it thankfully, but her clothes were still wet. She didn't care any more, and burrowed under the covers like a leech, pulling them over her head until she was buried. In here, it was quiet and warm and she could be alone. Out there she couldn't even be alone in her mind.

Until Grams pulled back the covers, and looked startled.

"Goodness, Jennifer. I didn't think you were home."

She blinked against the light. "Then what are you doing in here?"

"I came to see if you had made your bed this morning, dear. Good Lord, you're drenched. Change out of those clothes before you catch your death."

Jen repressed a shiver. "I'm not cold," she said, tunneling deeper.

"No, but you are getting my clean bedsheets wet. Get up, dear, and get changed. Take a hot shower, so you don't get pneumonia."

She smiled weakly. "You don't get pneumonia from getting wet."

"Who's the nurse here, you or me? I don't want you getting a cold either. Go, Jennifer."

She went, but she turned in the doorway. "You don't - you don't - "

Her grandmother straightened up. "Don't - what?"

She swallowed. "You don't - hate me? What I said before, I - "

Grams came over to her and took her face in her hands. "Jennifer, look at me. Do you really think it's possible for me to hate you?"

She looked, she couldn't help but look, but all she could see was her own tiny reflection in her grandmother's eyes. "I don't know," she said, her throat suddenly raw. "How can you love me if you don't hate me sometimes? Do you think it's possible for you to not? It goes both ways, it has to. It goes both ways."

The next minute, she was tightly pressed in Grams' embrace. "Now, you stop this talk. You stop this talk right now," she heard her say, as she clung on like a limpet. "You stop talking like that, Jennifer. Please." And her own breaths were shuddering and so were her grandmother's, until Jen remembered herself and pulled away, looking back into Grams' eyes.

"Now you're as wet as I am," she said thickly, and for once they could share a real smile that made the weather outside lift and the wind die away.

The shower eased her headache and her fatigue, a rain of comfort instead of desolation. She shampooed her hair twice, pulling the limp strands back from her face, feeling more refreshed and peaceful than she had in weeks. Pacey and Dawson, between them they still filled her thoughts, but she could push them into the back where they belonged for now. This was family in a way that New York hadn't been. Climbing out, she wrapped a pure white towel around herself, clutching it close, and re-entered her room to find the window shut, the bed freshly remade, and the faint scent of lavender lingering in the air.

The kitchen, however, smelled of baking, of cookies and home, and Grams was standing right in the center of it, her back to Jen as she bustled around noisily. It was warm. The air was heavy with belonging and filled with life.

"Grams?"

"Yes?"

"Thank you."

"You have nothing to thank me for, child, and you would do well to remember that. I do everything because I have to. You shouldn't thank me for that."

Jen felt tears come to her eyes. "I have everything to thank you for," she said, choking, the room suddenly misty. "You never had to do anything for me."

"Yes, I did."

"No, you didn't," she said, shaking her head. "My parents had the responsibility, because they chose to have me. But they couldn't take it, so they gave it to you. You didn't have to take me in. You didn't have to listen to me when I griped endlessly and picked fight after fight with you. You could have sent me packing any time. I would've kicked me out."

"You don 't understand, Jennifer," she said quietly, finally turning around.

"That's certainly a popular opinion lately." Bitter.

Grams ignored her. "Your parents love you so much more than you know, child. What they didn't have is faith in themselves as parents. They thought they'd failed you and themselves, and they sent you to me because they thought that I could help you. Help you come back to yourself. All they wanted was what's best for you. You, child. You must know that."

"You still didn't have to take me."

"How could I have faith in myself if I didn't have any in you?"

She began to cry. "I don't think I can live up to that, Grams. I'm still as stupid as I ever was. I still make the same mistakes I made in New York. If you don't know that, then you don't know me any more than you used to. I'm still the same person I always was. Maybe I always will be."

"You're right, child, for once."

She shuddered. "How?"

"You're still the same Jennifer I always knew. Loving and warmhearted and beautiful. You'll always be that Jennifer."

She was laughing through her tears. "I hope so, Grams. I really hope so."

Grams set down her tray of cookies and stretched out her arms. "I don't have to hope, dear. I know you better than you think."

She sniffled, and swiped at her eyes. "How can you forgive me so much?"

"Quite simply, because I was you once. I've faced the same kinds of decisions as you, and I've felt just like you feel. Don't ever forget that."

Jen let the silence rest for a few seconds before she spoke again. "You miss Gramps, don't you?"

Her grandmother turned back to the sink again, hesitating. "Yes."

"Is it lonely?"

Grams paused, and stared out of the kitchen window. "He's free now of all his troubles and pains. He's been released. He's with our Lord in heaven, and I pray that he has his peace."

She shook her head. "I didn't ask about whether he was better off."

The gray head bent over the sink. "I've had him beside me my whole life. He was the missing part that completed me. We were together for so long, and now I'm alone."

Jen felt her thoughts become clear. "I understand," she said softly.

Her grandmother sniffed, and smiled. "You have something to do." No question.

She nodded. "I guess I do."

"Go."

She went.

they say that bridges burn
from one soul to another if you don't tend the flame
and I pray somehow we've learned
to build an understanding from the ashes that remain
not enough faith can be dangerous
it's the only place we can turn to

It was still gray outside, but the rain had stopped, and it was the kind of hopeful misty gray of early morning that turns into sun. Bushes and trees dripped quietly around her as she ran, avoiding puddles where she could but splashing through the bigger ones unhesitatingly. She barely noticed the water as she ran.

His house was ahead, larger than her own, but somehow darker and harsher. She'd been here a few times before. Never alone.

Her breath was coming faster the closer she got, both from exertion and anticipation. The house had a shut-up look. There were no lights in the windows, even in the slowly-growing dusk, and the front door was shut tight.

She took the risk anyway, sliding around the side of his house and rapping lightly on the window she knew to be his. From inside, she could hear faint strains of some music, quiet and melancholy, but the words were blurred by the window into a drone. Then it cut out suddenly, and he pulled the curtain aside and looked out.

It was just as dark inside his room as out. The small amount of light she was letting into the room could only illuminate a patch of carpet containing his desk, a battered CD player, and him. He didn't exactly look angry, didn't exactly look upset, certainly didn't look happy. He didn't look like anything so much as he looked like Pacey.

They were face to face again, through a sheet of glass, and for a moment they studied each other like strangers. She could feel his eyes as they swept over her face, leaving tracks so deep that they might have been scratches. Similarly, she ran her eyes over the lines of his face in the half-dark, around his eyes, over his dark hair, back to his eyes. Eyes are the most important, she thought remotely, because the person is in the eyes. We live in there, looking out, and sometimes nobody else can see in.

Then he shook his head like a dog, and opened the window.

"Jen," he said, sounding more befuddled than anything. "I didn't expect you to be..."

She shivered, and clutched at her goose-pimpled arms. "Neither did I."

"So." The silence fell heavy. "Do you want to... come in?"

She spread her arms wide. "Do you want me to?"

He shifted. "I'll open the door for you."

"What, you don't want me to come in through the window?" she said, smiling weakly. "I thought that was the only accepted method of entry for this kind of conversation. How can we have a relationship talk if I don't come in through the window?"

He cracked a rueful smile of his own. "You can try if you like, but I really don't think you're going to fit."

Their smiles broke, and fell, and faded, and they were left looking at each other once more.

"I'll open the door," he said, breaking the contact.

"Right."

Once inside his bedroom, it was the same. She settled herself on his bed, after a questioning look to check for permission, and watched as he placed himself opposite on his desk chair. His room was a guy's room, nothing more. No personal touches, not overly cluttered, not very clean.

Chilled, she pulled her legs off the ground and tucked them underneath her. "So where're we going to start?" she said hopefully.

He shrugged his shoulders expansively. "Is there any good place to start?"

She studied the floor. "No."

"Then it's up to me. Although I really don't know if there is a beginning, is there? I mean, what are we actually talking about here, huh? Whatever it is… between you and me… I don't think it's all that easy to talk about, is it? I mean, here we are. And we know we need to talk, but we don't know what's going on and we don't know how to talk about it. And that leaves us with… one hell of a lot of questions, and no real answers."

They waited a while after he spoke, avoiding each other's faces, hoping vainly for the answers to come on their own. Jen studied the posters, the large tear in the farthest one, the stack of CDs, the haphazardly thrown clothes, just wanting not to want anything any more the way she wanted him right now. A kind of formless longing just to have him, safe to touch and think about and look at and care for. She didn't want to be unhappy. That was all.

Her head snapped up, and she stared at him hard. He flinched and moved back, submissive.

"You told Dawson you loved me."

"Yeah," he said, head down, hands restlessly tying themselves in knots. "I shouldn't have done that."

"Why not? What did you mean by that?" The questions fired themselves off like bullets. "Why shouldn't you have said it to Dawson?"

"Because it was something I shouldn't have been feeling," he said pleadingly. "You've been through a lot, Jen. Dawson and your gramps, and that's not to mention New York. I mean, you didn't need any more unhappiness in your life, and I didn't want to give you another thing to be miserable about. I'm sorry."

"And this isn't making me miserable?" she said incredulously. "You and I, not speaking, not seeing each other, not knowing what's going on or what to think? How could you have made it any worse?"

"Jen, I'm sorry," he said, eyes downcast. "I didn't think - "

Her anger lost its fire; there was no point. "No, I guess you didn't," she said wearily, slumping back onto the bed. "I didn't either. I didn't know - I just - the only thing I knew was what I was feeling."

His eyes were bright and intense. "What?"

"The same as you… I guess. Alone. So incredibly alone. Even when Dawson told me that, I didn't want to believe it. Love doesn't make it all better. Sometimes it just makes things worse. Love's what hurts you, and then you hurt what you love. I guess there isn't any other way to do it. I just wanted to be free."

"There are no fairy tales," he said to the air and the room and the sky. The moon was out now, faintly outlining him in silver to Jen's eyes as he sat before the window. "If they wrote them to be true, there wouldn't be a happy ending."

"The prince and the princess got together, and they rode off into the sunset and got married, and they had raging arguments sometimes and made each other miserable sometimes, and they split up once because of infidelity…" she said softly. "You're right. There are no fairy tales. But that doesn't mean there's no hope."

They looked into each other's eyes again for the first time in a long time, and some things didn't need to be said.

"Nothing is forever, Jen," he said sadly. "Nobody knows that better than you and I do. Do we have the right to hope for happiness?"

"I don't want to think about forever. What can you do about it, anyway? Stay alone your entire life because you're afraid?"

"There's no promise that things will be any better," he said, and like a thunderbolt she could see his whole life in words behind that one simple sentence. A child, so hopeful and idealistic, disappointed again and again by the people he loved, his illusions shattered and his childish innocence stripped away. And here he was, world-weary, repeatedly hurt, and he offered himself one more time without expectations or hopes or dreams just because it was the only thing that he could do. And she loved him right there in a rush of sympathy, as much as she ever had anyone.

"Pacey? I don't want to be this Jen any more."

"But I can't change you," he said, shaking his head. "Nothing I can do will make you a different person. You don't belong to me."

"Fine. Then I just don't want to feel like this any more."

"Can I change that?"

"Is there any other way to find out?"

"I guess not," he said to no-one in particular. "But look at Dawson and Joey."

She shook her head. "We're not Dawson and Joey."

"We're not so very different. We were friends, you and me. We were pretty close, weren't we? And then it got ruined because of a kiss."

"Really? We weren't the kind of forever friends they were. One of us wasn't oblivious to the other's feelings. I didn't go to France. We're here now, and we're trying to do something. I don't think it's the same at all."

"You have so much hope, Jen," he said, reaching out a hand to her. "Nothing is too hard for you. I wish I could feel like that again."

She didn't reach out to him. "If we do, if we don't, this is never going to be easy. But I know that already, and so do you. So what do we have to be afraid of?"

He drew back his hand. "Each other?"

"Or ourselves?"

"What difference does it make?" he asked her, and she was wordless.

"If we do," she said hesitantly, "how will everything change?"

"We won't be alone," he said, eyes gleaming distantly in the dark. "We can move forward again. We'll have good and bad, rough and smooth. We'll be taking a risk. And we'll find out in the end whether or not we were right to take it. That's all I can tell you."

"And you can do that?"

"I can," he said, leaning forward and touching her face. She closed her eyes for a second. "Can you?"

"I can try," she said, opening them. She felt like a child again.

"So there's only one thing we need to do," he said, and tentatively, cautiously, he looked into her soul and smiled at her, and she smiled as her gaze fell away from him for a second, sweeping around the room, peering out into the dimness of the world outside, closing her eyes again to look at herself, but in the end it came to where it had to go -

back to him.

between you and me
there's enough love that I believe
we'll rise above and we'll get through anything
between you and me

there are times I don't feel safe
like we're not on solid ground
but I trust your eyes
when I see you look this way
I know we'll find it
we're gonna find it