Settling into a comfortable position, I let my pencil glide across the paper.  The lines flow into shape almost without my conscious thought.  Thankfully, relying on lead and paper again hasn’t been as difficult as I thought it would be.  The hand still cramps at inopportune moments, especially when I push myself.  But I guess I won’t have to worry about that so much now. 

My eyes drift to the computer, now unpacked and set up on the small desk Ethan salvaged from the garbage bin outside the faculty lounge.  My hand itches to try it out again – to rediscover all the clever applications.  To feel that particular type of joy that surges through my body when the image in my head is suddenly pulsing on the computer screen.  My vision translated to thousands of pixels. 

But it seems wrong… somehow… to use it just yet. 

I concentrate on the parchment beneath my hands.  Strong lines arch across the page.  Shadows form under my touch. 

It seems there’s been a lot of shadows lately. 

I sigh, resigned to letting the pencil drift where it will, just like my thoughts. 

The thing is, people tend to take things at face value.  Me, for example.  I’m young, I’m cute, I’m blonde, and I’ve got a great ass.   So people… some people… just assume that I’ve got the intellectual capacity of peanut brittle.  All right, maybe that’s harsh.  But they certainly don’t think that I’m capable of an impartial analysis of my emotional state of mind. 

But fuck, I’m not an idiot.  I know that I’ve been hurting, and I know that I channeled all that hurt and fear and pain into anger.  Shit, it’s practically a textbook response to loss.  Everybody channels his or her pain into something.  Some people become blubbering fools.  Some people throw themselves into work. 

I got angry. 

Some people try to medicate their pain away, drowning it in drink or drugs.  Or men.  Or all three. 

Shit. 

I don’t know when the anger began to recede.  It wasn’t like it just started fading.  It was suddenly… gone.  Maybe it had been diminishing slowly, and I wasn’t aware of it.  Maybe by going through the motions of work and school, and living my life, and just getting through it all, day by day, it started to evaporate.  I don’t know. 

I just know that I feel differently now. 

Except that I don’t really know what I think.  Or how I feel.  Or maybe I just don’t want to know. 

A week ago, the mere mention of Brian would have sent the bitterness bubbling to the surface.  The urge to run was almost overwhelmingly powerful.  To run away from the sight of him in the diner, watching me so dispassionately over his coffee.  To run away from the image of him in Rage, drawn when I was so caught up in love.  To run away from the memories of us together, passionate and tender and wild and gentle and so fucking hot.  The urge to twist those memories into what I needed them to be, even though doing so made a travesty of what we had.  If we had anything. 

Now I just… fuck, my head hurts. 

Ethan loves me.  That much I know. 

So when Daphne snarked about Ethan… it hurt.  A little.  But when she tried to make me remember the good times with Brian… that hurt too.  A lot.  I don’t blame Daph.  She doesn’t have to be instantly enamoured of my new boyfriend. And she’s spent the last two years listening to me talk about Brian.  Right, like I ever just talked.  No, she listened to me fucking gush about him.  She knows so much about the ups and downs of life with Brian Kinney, she might as well have been living it herself.  I’m sure to her way of thinking, a few rough patches at the end don’t justify ditching an entire living arrangement. 

Maybe if she had been around to actually see the rough patches instead of hearing about them, she’d think differently. 

But there’s one other thing.  One little thing. 

Daph was at the prom. 

I think… I think that everything she feels about Brian and me is coloured by her memories of that night.  Memories that I don’t share.  And that fucking pisses me off more than a little snark. 

Mom obviously liked Ethan.  Mom’s in my corner.  Now that I can look back on things a little more objectively, I think she always was. Yet Mom… the one person who always thought that Brian was too old, too experienced, too mature, too jaded, too whatever-the-fuck for me… even she tried to praise Brian Kinney.  After seeing that I was with Ethan.  After giving the patented Jennifer Taylor seal-of-approval to my new relationship. 

And Dad.  Fuck him.  The only thing he’s happy about in my life is that I’m not with Brian.  That’s my big accomplishment in Dad’s eyes.  Never mind that I finished my first year with honours.  Never mind that I did this with a whacked-out hand. 

I wish it didn’t matter.  Shit, I wish I could turn love on and off like throwing a light switch. 

I stop drawing for a moment as realization dawns on me.  This feeling is a little familiar after all.  It’s sort of like when I first came out of the coma.  If I think about it for too long, it churns my gut and makes my head spin, just like those seemingly endless moments – Minutes?  Hours?  -- when I clutched the rails of my hospital bed and cried out for Brian.  I couldn’t see straight, and I certainly couldn’t think straight.  Double vision. 

That’s what it’s like now.  Because the sensible part of me knows… knows that I need to take charge of my life, and that I deserve someone who cherishes me, and that I’m worthy of happiness, and romance, and love. And that I just wasn’t getting that from Brian.  But the emotional part of me wonders if… if Mom and Daph could see the good in Brian… the good he did for me… the good he did with me… and they didn’t even witness most of it… they didn’t see the way he held me in his arms when I had nightmares about Hobbes, soothing away my fears with kisses and caresses and soft murmured words… they didn’t see the playfulness when we spent all day Sunday in the loft, reading the paper and watching British sitcoms and making love and goofing off… they didn’t hear the conversations about work and school and Gus and just life…   So I wonder… if they saw the good in him… in us… and they only saw one-tenth of our lives together… what am I not seeing? What part of our lives have I distorted to make it fit into the box that I’ve created? 

I’ve always known that Brian cared for me.  When did ‘caring’ automatically translate into ‘not loving’? 

I glance down at the paper in my hands.  The familiar form had taken shape without more than a peripheral awareness on my part.  His torso, lean and firm.  His long legs stretched out, feet propped with casual disregard on a table that cost more than everything I own.  His eyes, pensive and cool. 

My gaze drifts again to the computer.  I really should start working on the outline of the next “Rage”.  With this system, it’ll be simple to throw together a few basic sketches to show Michael.  I can easily save them to disc and bring them over to the store.  It’ll save some time. 

I want to say that I don’t know why Brian gave me the computer.  But of course I do. 

He’s still caring for me.  Taking care of me.  And doing the repairs that need doing.