Work Text:
“I hope she'll be a fool - that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.”
when you are born, your mother weeps. she feels your fate set in place, she senses there will be no happy ending for you. you are doomed from the start. ‘at least’, she often remarks as you grow up, ‘you have your beauty.’
your dreadful, awful beauty. your mother assumed it would be your one saving grace, but you think it may be your downfall. where she sees as a blessing, you see a curse. instead, you take refuge in your facade, the public persona you’ve created for yourself. you know they will see you however they want, but if you throw all your effort into presenting yourself a specific way, at least you can control what they know of you.
so you are the beautiful fool, the airheaded blonde, the object of unobtainable desire. you put on a show, become the very image of a wealthy socialite with too much time and too little brains. and maybe that is you, maybe it isn’t, but it’s the role you must play, and perhaps that will save you. perhaps pushing away as much of what makes you yourself as possible will prevent whatever awful fate your mother had seen for you all those years ago. and even if it hurts to constantly put on a show, it does make life easier. people assume you need help with everything, they wait on you hand-and-foot at times, they admire you greatly. the condescension hurts, but it’s tolerable. you think maybe, if this wasn’t a facade, you’d be genuinely happy with this life.
and then you meet Jay, and you’ve found something true and good in life… you think. he doesn’t really see past your persona, and he rubs you the wrong way sometimes, but it’s worth it. he’s worth it. you can feel him drawing you towards that horrible fate, but you can’t bring yourself to care. at least someone is going down with you. because of course he is. at first you worried you were the one pulling him down, but as you stayed with him longer, you found the truth. jay gatsby is going nowhere but down. oh, he might have his fun before then, but it will only delay the inevitable. you find comfort in that, in his hopelessness and the way it mirrors your own.
you know he loves you. of course you know it, who doesn’t. he can see that awful beauty of yours, and for once, you truly resent the facade you’ve taken up, for the pain it will bring him. perhaps you could’ve loved him back, once upon a time. but you think you’ve forgotten how- how to love, how to feel, how to care for another. you couldn’t find it again, not even for him; not for him. when he leaves, it’s a… convenient excuse. you know you couldn’t love him, couldn’t give him what he wants. it would be cruel to hold hope above his head.
and maybe you feel betrayed when he doesn’t come back. he was your only true companion, the one you thought would understand you forever, and he abandoned you for oxford after you waited through the war for him? maybe he could be over you, then. it wouldn’t be so terribly cruel to marry someone else, especially not when compared to the pain of giving him the hope of love, but never truly feeling it. you find a wealthy man your parents approve of, a crass, mean one, with whom there’s no fear of love, and you settle down. it’s easier with tom, easier to be fake and plastic and empty. easier to be how you must. life becomes a breeze, a dream ( maybe a nightmare? ), and you float through it as such, treating the world like a game.
you break down the night of your wedding, the facade cracking for the first time in years as you get completely trashed and bitter at the world for dealing you this shit hand, this awful fate, crying into the arms of jordan baker, someone you never intended to confide in- someone who you know doesn’t truly understand, even if she almost comes close. but by the morning you’re “fine” and the wedding is still on. you will marry this cruel man, you will never love, life will be easy as pie, and your fate will keep reaching, pulling, tugging, killing you slowly.
you have a baby with tom. she’s lovely and terrible and if you weep when she is born, you do not remember. sometimes it feels as though you’ve never met your daughter. you certainly don’t remember her birth. you float right past her, unable to look in her eyes and face what she means for you, what she will have to face. you know that makes you selfish, another example of your cruelty, how could you bring someone else into this world, let alone with you . you dote on her when you can and leave her alone most of the time. you try not to think about her, possibly your greatest sin, too much.
nick carraway is your dear cousin, a distant relative, frankly a short-term amusement and nothing more. you expect nothing from him when he moves closer to you. you certainly don’t expect his arrival to bring jay catapulting back into your life, a cannonball that wrecks the foundation you’ve finally assembled for yourself. you’ve crafted the perfect life, bought your green light, and suddenly it’s flickering. the dark, grasping hands of your fate are closer than ever. you watch jay’s mansion light up at night, knowing it won’t make him any happier. you fumble awkwardly around him when you finally meet up again, somehow nowhere near the level of connection you had when you first met. you know he has built you up in his head, blown you out of proportion. you wish he had remembered you as cruel and cold, almost monstrous- you think that would be more accurate to your visage now, and much kinder than the way you will continue to break his heart. all you feel for him is pity.
you know tom is cheating on you. it’s not much of a problem. he doesn’t love you, you don’t love him. you just hope he’s subtle enough to not wreck your image. you almost hope he loves this other woman. someone in your life should get that. you carry on, feigning ignorance even as jay becomes less subtly upset about it on your behalf. really, you aren’t a fool. you know what’s going on around you. you know your greatest flaw is your propensity to ignore it.
but after the heatwave and everything it brings, you just can’t. jay seems under the delusion that you love him, he and tom are fighting, and you know, with great and terrible clarity, that the woman you hit on that reckless drive home ( and isn’t it awful that you think that was the most fun you’ve ever had? ) must have been tom’s lover. you know this has been the lynchpin, the moment that sealed your fate, but you’ve been waiting for that time for years, all your life even. is it so wrong to be selfish just a little longer? you make up with tom, full of sugary, candy-coated words, false promises and fake smiles, and stay home.
when you hear the gunshot from what is clearly jay’s backyard, you do not get up to check. you know jay has met his fate, the mirror image of yours. you know you will never see him again, never go to his funeral, never again play to his fantasized image of you. you know you are a bad, bad person, and it is only a matter of time until fate hooks her claws into you too. you know you are next. the only question is how, and you cannot bear to think of that, any more than you can think of your mother, or your daughter, or the possibility of love. you go back to sleep, to the daily routine, and dream of the inevitable.