Son of a Preacher Man
Feb. 3rd, 2012 03:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
intheheartTitle: Son of a Preacher Man
Rating: PG-13.
Summary: Jake Foster in twenty songs or less.
Notes: Six characters down, two to go.
Warnings: Loooots of depressive actions, some implications of suicide and self-injury, child abuse mentioned in one song.
Son of a Preacher Man, Dusty Springfield
The only one who could ever reach me
Was the son of a preacher man
The only boy who could ever teach me
Was the son of a preacher man
Most of the other kids thought being the pastor's son must be awful, but they couldn't be more wrong. They were probably picturing Bible study every night and deep frowns every time Jake went even the littlest bit out of line, and okay, they did study the Bible every night but only for fifteen minutes, and Daddy made it fun. As for the other, Jake didn't think he'd ever seen his father frown.
Theirs was a home of life and joy and laughter, and he wouldn't change it for any other home in the world.
Everywhere I Go, Lissie
Danger will follow me everywhere I go
Angels will call on me and take me to my home
This tired mind just wants to be led home
His mind refused to acknowledge it for nearly twenty-four hours.
They told him that his family was gone, all of them, Mommy and Daddy and Ammie and Laure, all of them dead. He'd seen what was left of the house, charred beams and flaky grey ash, but he couldn't imagine his family in there, couldn't imagine his mother's smile and his father's laugh and his sisters' curly brown hair reduced to that dead wreckage.
But it was true.
Mad World, Gary Jules
And I find it kinda funny
I find it kinda sad
The dreams in which I'm dying
Are the best I've ever had
He didn't die, when he finally believed the truth. It seemed ridiculous to him that he kept breathing, that his heart kept beating; he should have dropped dead in his tracks, been buried with the rest of his family in a quiet green cemetery. Four little headstones, all in a row, varying dates of birth but all the same date of death. He should be there, between Ammie and Laure, where he'd always been.
But he didn't die. He wasn't dead.
He just wished he was.
Today Will Be Better, I Swear! Stars
Today, today is going to be a better one
There's nothing more to take in going wrong
Today, today keep your head and drop the gun
There's nothing more to battle when you're gone
Jake couldn't pinpoint the time when he'd stopped wanting to die all the time. He knew sort of generally-- his second foster family, maybe four to six months after he'd come to live with them-- but there was no real trigger, no specific event that made him want to live again, just a gradual slope upwards, a gradual reopening.
Nothing good ever happened suddenly, after all.
Cavanaugh Park, Something Corporate
And there was never any place
For someone like me to be totally happy
I'm running out of clock and that ain't a shock
Some things never do change, never do change
Some things never changed at all.
Every year, on July 24th, he became morose and quiet, and usually slid into a long depression that didn't lift until the following spring. He could cope with it-- he got good at coping after a while, like you did with anything you got a lot of practice at-- but he could never really feel better.
Being happy was hard, and most of the time he didn't feel like he could manage it. So he didn't try.
Keep Breathing, Ingrid Michaelson
But all that I know is I'm breathing
All I can do is keep breathing
All we can do is keep breathing now
Some days Jake couldn't do anything.
He never knew when one would happen. Sometimes he'd be fine, happy even, and then the next day unable to get out of bed, unable to find a point in the world, unable to close his eyes without seeing ashes and embers. Those days, nothing helped-- he just had to ride it out.
He'd never been more grateful for Olivia, when she came-- she knew. She understood.
She couldn't help-- no one could-- but she understood.
Three Wishes, The Pierces
And you want three wishes:
One to fly the heavens, one to swim like fishes
And then one you're saving for a rainy day
If your lover ever takes her love away
Things got better, slowly. Jake got his job, fulfilling work, and abruptly acquired a new family when Ms. Hirschfeld decided he belonged to her-- not that he minded, she was a good person to belong to, and her children rapidly became good friends. He met Olivia, his other half, and how many people could say that? He gained a circle of friends, a family in the heart if not the blood.
He couldn't help it, though.
He just kept waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Chasing Pavements, Adele
Should I leave it there
Should I give up,
Or should I just keep chasin' pavements
Even if it leads nowhere
And then it did, suddenly, like all bad things; Olivia found her father and was gone from his life so fast he didn't even have a chance to catch his breath. The world was spinning out of control again, like it did in the first few horrible months after the fire, and he had no idea how to put on the brakes.
He had friends, this time. He had family. He had people looking out for him.
He just wasn't sure how much good it would do.
Better Days, Goo Goo Dolls
And you ask me what I want this year
And I try to make this kind and clear
Just a chance that maybe we'll find better days
She came back just as suddenly as she'd left, slotting back into their lives as neatly as if she'd never been gone. And while on some level Jake resented it-- she'd left so easily-- he was mostly just too happy that she was back to care.
Eventually the resentment disappeared and there was just Olivia, just their friends, just his job, just the things that made him happy. It wasn't all perfect, but nothing ever was.
If his life could fix itself just like that, he thought, maybe he really could get through.
After All, Dar Williams
So go ahead, push your luck
Say what it is you've got to say to me
We will push on into that mystery
And it'll push right back
And there are worse things than that
Olivia told him she was pregnant in the morning, over tea, and apart from the immediate terror of her father's likely reaction and the longer-term terror of fatherhood, Jake was happy. He'd have a family again, with Olivia and their child. He'd have one more little piece of everything he'd lost.
Things just kept building back up, inch by inch, when he wasn't looking.
"I love you," he told Olivia, and smiled.
Anne Dreams of Her Childhood, Trevor Morris
[instrumental]
There were memories he lived in during the long nightmare after his family's death; his favorite was a summer day not long before. He and Laure had chased each other around the meadow, screaming happily-- Ammie, who at eleven had recently decided she was too dignified for tag, watched them from the porch.
Then Mommy came out with a tray of lemonade and Daddy came home, swung Laure up in the air and ruffled Jake's hair.
Sometimes, if he concentrated, he could still feel his father's hand.
Good Mother, Terri Clark
I've got a good mother
And her voice is what keeps me here.
Feet on ground, heart in hand,
Facing forward, be yourself!
The Crofts did their best by him. The Leviers sent him away and the Crofts took him in, made sure he was healing physically and spiritually. No one in the system had been so careful with him, ever; at first he could hardly believe it.
But Josh kept on asking after school and helping him with his homework. Christa kept taking him on walks in the woods and making his favorite foods, trying to draw him out.
He still called them, every year, on Mother's and Father's Day.
It was the least he could do.
Keep Holding On, Glee Cast
You're not alone, together we stand
I'll be by your side; you know I'll take your hand
When it gets cold and it feels like the end
There's no place to go; you know I won't give in
Ms. Hirschfeld was a second mother to him-- or, he supposed, thinking of Christa Croft, a third. He wasn't even sure how it had happened; she'd just taken him home one day and everyone in her family had assumed he was one of them. At first Jake hadn't had the words to challenge them, but now he didn't want to.
He liked belonging. He liked not being alone.
He'd never call her anything but Ms. Hirschfeld, though. No matter how often she asked him.
No Need to Cry, Neko Case
Years have been lost but can never be replaced
But my thoughts are with you
Tied to that interstate
It took nearly twenty years before he could think of his family without pain.
Before, when he thought of them, he thought inevitably of their deaths and the nightmare of the foster system and the smothering blanket of depression. Then one day he saw a little girl with brown curls run through the park, shrieking with laugher; he thought of his sisters, and he smiled.
There was still pain sometimes. But not all the time.
He could live with that.
Bruises, Chairlift
I got bruises on my knees for you
And grass stains on my knees for you
Got holes in my new jeans for you
Got pink and black and blue
He tried to be better for Olivia. Every day, he tried to be better. He wanted her so badly he couldn't breathe, but he couldn't imagine someone so lovely being interested in someone so messed up, so he tried to make himself into someone normal for her.
It was not a success.
Then she asked him out, shyly, explained that she'd waited because she thought he deserved better than her, and he realized how stupid they'd both been.
She was perfect to him.
Maybe he was perfect to her.
Even Angels Fall, Jessica Riddle
You found hope, you found faith
Found how fast she could take it away
Found true love, lost your heart
Now you don't know who you are
It happened so fast.
That was what he couldn't get over. It happened so fast. One minute Olivia was there, laughing at the paper, smiling over tea, breathing quietly beside him in bed. The next, she was looking at him with her eyes full of tears, telling him she was leaving, and the next, she was gone, the ghost of her perfume lingering in their apartment.
He moved as soon as the lease was up.
Miss You More, BBMak
Are you finding it hard it all on your own
Having to face each night alone?
Knowing that you are the one with the love that I need
And I miss you more each day
Everyone told him she wasn't coming back, even Gina, and who would know Olivia better than her own best friend? So he tried to get over her, tried to move on. He started dating again after a couple of months, but it didn't work; he compared every girl to her, and every girl came out lacking.
He missed her desperately, but she wasn't coming back.
He just had to get used to that.
Wonderwall, Oasis
Because maybe
You're gonna be the one that saves me
And after all
You're my wonderwall
And then she did come back, and she sat beside him on the couch, and she said, "I still love you. I never stopped.
"Neither did I," he said, because it was the truth, and he still loved her, even now, even when he wasn't not sure he could trust her to stay. She was asking him to take her back and he didn't think he could make any other choice.
He reached over, and took her hand, twining his fingers with hers.
She was his soulmate.
"Come back to me," he said, and she smiled.
Daddy's Little Girl/Butterfly Kisses, Faith Hill and Jeff Carson
With all that I've done wrong
I must have done something right
To deserve her love every morning
And butterfly kisses for life
His daughters were a revelation.
During Olivia's pregnancy, he admitted a slight inclination for a boy, because he understood little boys and knew how they thought. He'd wanted a son to give a better life than he'd had. And then Felicity was born, small and squirming, and from then on out he wanted nothing but daughters.
Three of them, in the end; Felicity, Vivian, Elena, happiness, life, and light. The joy of his heart, his little girls.
He couldn't believe he'd wanted anything other than them.
Everybody, Ingrid Michaelson
Everybody, everybody wants to love
Everybody, everybody wants be to loved
Oh oh oh
It came down to love, in the end, and understanding, and persistence.
Persistence got him through, when the depression threatened to swallow him alive, when Olivia was gone and he thought his heart would never be whole again. Understanding made them work, him and Olivia, him and his friends, him and his family.
And love...
And love.
The world was still a dark and scary place. But Jacob Foster had his light.
Rating: PG-13.
Summary: Jake Foster in twenty songs or less.
Notes: Six characters down, two to go.
Warnings: Loooots of depressive actions, some implications of suicide and self-injury, child abuse mentioned in one song.
The only one who could ever reach me
Was the son of a preacher man
The only boy who could ever teach me
Was the son of a preacher man
Most of the other kids thought being the pastor's son must be awful, but they couldn't be more wrong. They were probably picturing Bible study every night and deep frowns every time Jake went even the littlest bit out of line, and okay, they did study the Bible every night but only for fifteen minutes, and Daddy made it fun. As for the other, Jake didn't think he'd ever seen his father frown.
Theirs was a home of life and joy and laughter, and he wouldn't change it for any other home in the world.
Danger will follow me everywhere I go
Angels will call on me and take me to my home
This tired mind just wants to be led home
His mind refused to acknowledge it for nearly twenty-four hours.
They told him that his family was gone, all of them, Mommy and Daddy and Ammie and Laure, all of them dead. He'd seen what was left of the house, charred beams and flaky grey ash, but he couldn't imagine his family in there, couldn't imagine his mother's smile and his father's laugh and his sisters' curly brown hair reduced to that dead wreckage.
But it was true.
And I find it kinda funny
I find it kinda sad
The dreams in which I'm dying
Are the best I've ever had
He didn't die, when he finally believed the truth. It seemed ridiculous to him that he kept breathing, that his heart kept beating; he should have dropped dead in his tracks, been buried with the rest of his family in a quiet green cemetery. Four little headstones, all in a row, varying dates of birth but all the same date of death. He should be there, between Ammie and Laure, where he'd always been.
But he didn't die. He wasn't dead.
He just wished he was.
Today, today is going to be a better one
There's nothing more to take in going wrong
Today, today keep your head and drop the gun
There's nothing more to battle when you're gone
Jake couldn't pinpoint the time when he'd stopped wanting to die all the time. He knew sort of generally-- his second foster family, maybe four to six months after he'd come to live with them-- but there was no real trigger, no specific event that made him want to live again, just a gradual slope upwards, a gradual reopening.
Nothing good ever happened suddenly, after all.
And there was never any place
For someone like me to be totally happy
I'm running out of clock and that ain't a shock
Some things never do change, never do change
Some things never changed at all.
Every year, on July 24th, he became morose and quiet, and usually slid into a long depression that didn't lift until the following spring. He could cope with it-- he got good at coping after a while, like you did with anything you got a lot of practice at-- but he could never really feel better.
Being happy was hard, and most of the time he didn't feel like he could manage it. So he didn't try.
But all that I know is I'm breathing
All I can do is keep breathing
All we can do is keep breathing now
Some days Jake couldn't do anything.
He never knew when one would happen. Sometimes he'd be fine, happy even, and then the next day unable to get out of bed, unable to find a point in the world, unable to close his eyes without seeing ashes and embers. Those days, nothing helped-- he just had to ride it out.
He'd never been more grateful for Olivia, when she came-- she knew. She understood.
She couldn't help-- no one could-- but she understood.
And you want three wishes:
One to fly the heavens, one to swim like fishes
And then one you're saving for a rainy day
If your lover ever takes her love away
Things got better, slowly. Jake got his job, fulfilling work, and abruptly acquired a new family when Ms. Hirschfeld decided he belonged to her-- not that he minded, she was a good person to belong to, and her children rapidly became good friends. He met Olivia, his other half, and how many people could say that? He gained a circle of friends, a family in the heart if not the blood.
He couldn't help it, though.
He just kept waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Should I leave it there
Should I give up,
Or should I just keep chasin' pavements
Even if it leads nowhere
And then it did, suddenly, like all bad things; Olivia found her father and was gone from his life so fast he didn't even have a chance to catch his breath. The world was spinning out of control again, like it did in the first few horrible months after the fire, and he had no idea how to put on the brakes.
He had friends, this time. He had family. He had people looking out for him.
He just wasn't sure how much good it would do.
And you ask me what I want this year
And I try to make this kind and clear
Just a chance that maybe we'll find better days
She came back just as suddenly as she'd left, slotting back into their lives as neatly as if she'd never been gone. And while on some level Jake resented it-- she'd left so easily-- he was mostly just too happy that she was back to care.
Eventually the resentment disappeared and there was just Olivia, just their friends, just his job, just the things that made him happy. It wasn't all perfect, but nothing ever was.
If his life could fix itself just like that, he thought, maybe he really could get through.
So go ahead, push your luck
Say what it is you've got to say to me
We will push on into that mystery
And it'll push right back
And there are worse things than that
Olivia told him she was pregnant in the morning, over tea, and apart from the immediate terror of her father's likely reaction and the longer-term terror of fatherhood, Jake was happy. He'd have a family again, with Olivia and their child. He'd have one more little piece of everything he'd lost.
Things just kept building back up, inch by inch, when he wasn't looking.
"I love you," he told Olivia, and smiled.
[instrumental]
There were memories he lived in during the long nightmare after his family's death; his favorite was a summer day not long before. He and Laure had chased each other around the meadow, screaming happily-- Ammie, who at eleven had recently decided she was too dignified for tag, watched them from the porch.
Then Mommy came out with a tray of lemonade and Daddy came home, swung Laure up in the air and ruffled Jake's hair.
Sometimes, if he concentrated, he could still feel his father's hand.
I've got a good mother
And her voice is what keeps me here.
Feet on ground, heart in hand,
Facing forward, be yourself!
The Crofts did their best by him. The Leviers sent him away and the Crofts took him in, made sure he was healing physically and spiritually. No one in the system had been so careful with him, ever; at first he could hardly believe it.
But Josh kept on asking after school and helping him with his homework. Christa kept taking him on walks in the woods and making his favorite foods, trying to draw him out.
He still called them, every year, on Mother's and Father's Day.
It was the least he could do.
You're not alone, together we stand
I'll be by your side; you know I'll take your hand
When it gets cold and it feels like the end
There's no place to go; you know I won't give in
Ms. Hirschfeld was a second mother to him-- or, he supposed, thinking of Christa Croft, a third. He wasn't even sure how it had happened; she'd just taken him home one day and everyone in her family had assumed he was one of them. At first Jake hadn't had the words to challenge them, but now he didn't want to.
He liked belonging. He liked not being alone.
He'd never call her anything but Ms. Hirschfeld, though. No matter how often she asked him.
Years have been lost but can never be replaced
But my thoughts are with you
Tied to that interstate
It took nearly twenty years before he could think of his family without pain.
Before, when he thought of them, he thought inevitably of their deaths and the nightmare of the foster system and the smothering blanket of depression. Then one day he saw a little girl with brown curls run through the park, shrieking with laugher; he thought of his sisters, and he smiled.
There was still pain sometimes. But not all the time.
He could live with that.
I got bruises on my knees for you
And grass stains on my knees for you
Got holes in my new jeans for you
Got pink and black and blue
He tried to be better for Olivia. Every day, he tried to be better. He wanted her so badly he couldn't breathe, but he couldn't imagine someone so lovely being interested in someone so messed up, so he tried to make himself into someone normal for her.
It was not a success.
Then she asked him out, shyly, explained that she'd waited because she thought he deserved better than her, and he realized how stupid they'd both been.
She was perfect to him.
Maybe he was perfect to her.
You found hope, you found faith
Found how fast she could take it away
Found true love, lost your heart
Now you don't know who you are
It happened so fast.
That was what he couldn't get over. It happened so fast. One minute Olivia was there, laughing at the paper, smiling over tea, breathing quietly beside him in bed. The next, she was looking at him with her eyes full of tears, telling him she was leaving, and the next, she was gone, the ghost of her perfume lingering in their apartment.
He moved as soon as the lease was up.
Are you finding it hard it all on your own
Having to face each night alone?
Knowing that you are the one with the love that I need
And I miss you more each day
Everyone told him she wasn't coming back, even Gina, and who would know Olivia better than her own best friend? So he tried to get over her, tried to move on. He started dating again after a couple of months, but it didn't work; he compared every girl to her, and every girl came out lacking.
He missed her desperately, but she wasn't coming back.
He just had to get used to that.
Because maybe
You're gonna be the one that saves me
And after all
You're my wonderwall
And then she did come back, and she sat beside him on the couch, and she said, "I still love you. I never stopped.
"Neither did I," he said, because it was the truth, and he still loved her, even now, even when he wasn't not sure he could trust her to stay. She was asking him to take her back and he didn't think he could make any other choice.
He reached over, and took her hand, twining his fingers with hers.
She was his soulmate.
"Come back to me," he said, and she smiled.
With all that I've done wrong
I must have done something right
To deserve her love every morning
And butterfly kisses for life
His daughters were a revelation.
During Olivia's pregnancy, he admitted a slight inclination for a boy, because he understood little boys and knew how they thought. He'd wanted a son to give a better life than he'd had. And then Felicity was born, small and squirming, and from then on out he wanted nothing but daughters.
Three of them, in the end; Felicity, Vivian, Elena, happiness, life, and light. The joy of his heart, his little girls.
He couldn't believe he'd wanted anything other than them.
Everybody, everybody wants to love
Everybody, everybody wants be to loved
Oh oh oh
It came down to love, in the end, and understanding, and persistence.
Persistence got him through, when the depression threatened to swallow him alive, when Olivia was gone and he thought his heart would never be whole again. Understanding made them work, him and Olivia, him and his friends, him and his family.
And love...
And love.
The world was still a dark and scary place. But Jacob Foster had his light.
