Work Text:
Pacey:
I want to say that when I look back on those years, on that time, that it’s all a blur. Who can remember who did what? But that’s not the truth. Even now I can recall every tear, every verbal blow, every punch thrown; split lips and bruised hearts and hurt feelings; not jumbled up in a mess of memory but laid out in some kind of hypothetical blueprint – one action leading to another leading to another – until there was nothing left of us. Did I come to hate you? Never. How could I? You know I dreamed about us, about the way things had been and the way things had gone. I could never recall what happened in those dreams (nightmares?) but she would nudge me awake sometimes and wrap herself under my arm and ask me to talk to her about them. How could I? My mind blanked them out, rewound the tape and erased it. And did she want to know? Could I trust her? By that stage I was never sure. A foolish notion to think back on now, as I’m sure you’re aware; silence was only ever a poison for us. But I was so frightened of rejection. All the damn time. “You were talking about him again,” she’d say, whisper really, in the dawn light. And I would look at her, lean up on one arm so I was above her and plead with her silently to drop it, and she would nod and kiss me and then we would both pretend we had forgotten. I told you once that for a time you were the best thing in my life but as things progressed and got worse and worse I wanted to let go of that feeling. I really did. But I had loved you. And how do you push that away? I suppose my answer was to declare myself unbothered. If I proclaimed disinterest enough times then the masses could be convinced that nothing was lost after all; we were friends once, and now we weren’t. Happens every day. She never bought it. But you know that. Did you find it hard when we were pals again? Were you sad that it never felt right? Were you tolerating me? I was never sure, you see, because we never talked anymore. Did our air of civility mask a hidden war? Was the turmoil only mine? I spent a long time wondering what it must feel like to believe so absolutely in one’s own righteousness. I bet you could sleep at night. Do you see how the bitterness still lives in me, underneath the surface? Was it ever really Joey? Or was it us all along? Were we wrong? We chose each other once, right? Why didn’t that mean anything? When I look back on those years, at that time, I wish I could say that I remember everything. But I don’t. There are slivers of moments; knowing with complete certainty that I had lost her, knowing with complete certainty that I had lost you; the contempt in your eyes, her hand in mine, my tears, her tears, the windows of your parents’ house lit up in the dark. The comfort of an unlocked door, now forever closed.
Dawson:
I really thought life couldn’t get worse. It was a knock-out blow. Of course, I understand now how hopelessly naïve I was but back then it didn’t feel like that. Walking out to see your two best friends in the whole world, no matter the circumstances, is never going to make the top five in retrospect. Do I feel I went too far? Acted foolishly? Of course. But I’m not sure it was ever appreciated how much I relied on you two. I know that it always seemed as if I held all the cards. You both came to me. Your whole lives. But the thing about a triangle is this; there are only ever three corners. Where did it all leave me? Didn’t you want me anymore? My actions were the actions of the desperate. And I don’t want it to seem like I’m trying to justify my behavior because I’m not entirely sure that it needs to be justified, it was what it was and it was born out of honesty. If I could go back and do it all again? I can’t promise I would change all that much. Some of it. I recognize now that after it all you really meant what you said, but I was buried too deep in my hurt to really hear it then and later on you seemed distant and disinterested. Should I have known you weren’t okay? I felt like I had retreated too and you didn’t care. At least she did. Were my gestures of acceptance too late? Did you not believe in them? I want to say I didn’t miss you after you left, and in a way it would be true, because you left me a long time before that. The day you chose her. And when was that, Pace? When did you come to the conclusion that the girl you professed to hate was more important to you than me? Later on, I felt ashamed of the crimson drops of blood we exchanged that balmy summer night in that ridiculous fort, because to me it was real. Our little pact. Was it just a game to you? Did you really think that I thought I was better than you? I was so jealous, painfully so, you really couldn’t see it!? I think that was why things had to be the way they were; I had a lot of feelings about you, even before that night on the lawn; when you looked across at her and it was like a bucket of cold water had been thrown over me, because I knew your face and I knew that look. I knew you were in love. Just something else you were better than me at. You didn’t betray me, or if you did that wasn’t the problem, not really, you just didn’t pick me. How was I supposed to react? Life had never been worse. So I pushed it all onto you, all my unrealized expectations and the shame at being too blind to see how things had changed and my anger at you all moving on without me, and I told myself that you deserved it. Do you know how happy I was to have you back? Will you ever be able to comprehend my disappointment that it all ended up being the same old shit all over again? How do you hate a man who persists on paving the road to hell? It actually hurts me to watch you self-destruct. But you never understood that. I was ready to let you go, or I thought I was. For good this time. But you never could leave a broken thing alone.
Joey:
He told me it would never be the same. He told me you could never go back to the way things were. And he told me this over and over again. Did I believe him? I don’t know. The real answer is I wouldn’t let myself believe. Did I make things worse? Of course. The irony! When all I wanted was to recapture the spirit of something that had never really existed in the first place. I think I thought you and I were one thing, he and I were something else, and you and him were yet another. But none of us ended up being those things. And looking back now, I think that’s okay. Maybe what we were, whatever it was, was something that we needed at the time. We all took from each other in our own ways. I will always remember those days, the good days before we all fell apart, and I will remember them in my own way. Pacey says when I talk about us as children that he doesn’t even recognize what I’m saying half the time; he remembers things very differently to me. I can’t look back on what came after with much fondness, to have a heart in constant conflict is a horrible place to be and I don’t think anybody covered themselves in glory, least of all me. You’ll never know how hard it was to be so in love and constantly have to feel as if I was doing something wrong. Then again, I don’t want you to have to feel that way. Anyway, those days are over now and in the future when I think of us all, and how we were, I will remember the good and memorialize the bad; it’s part of us and we will never be able to forget. I don’t want it to be the same anymore. I hope that's true for you as well.
Dawson:
It’s all a story now, Joey. I wrote it down and turned us into something else, something more than we ever were, perhaps. I’m hoping the emotion we all wasted through those difficult years has soaked into the bones of my script, I want to do us justice. In the end I think it was only ever a dream that one or both of us had and it’s fitting that it will stay in the realm of dreams, or at least the world of fiction, which amounts to the same thing in a lot of ways. But I will always remember the way you reached out through those times, even when I didn’t necessarily warrant it. You said goodbye in the note that you left on my bed the day we shot my film in Capeside without ever really saying it and I appreciate that; I’m not sure we were ever going to be any good at endings. You and me, anyway.
Pacey:
I’d like to think it was you who started it, Jo. You were the one who reached for my hand when I was on the verge of giving up hope altogether. But I know I can’t really lay all the blame at your door. Dawson and I had always been a powder keg waiting to go off and you were just the fuse that finally lit it. But I want you to know how much it meant to me that you stuck by me, through all that time, even when I was at my worst and pushing you away. You were the light of my sorry life and as the dust settled and we tried and failed to redefine ourselves; you were always there loving me as best you could. At the end you took my hand in yours and I wanted to cry at the mess we’d made. Later on I learned to want only the things that I could have, I waved the white flag of surrender and carried on. We had made it out alive of that cauldron of teenage angst, terror, and regret; I wasn’t going to be the one to send us back there. I could love you well enough from a distance.
Joey:
It’s no secret how hard I found those years. I felt as though I was constantly running to stand still. If you try and be all things to everyone then you end up becoming nothing to anyone. But don’t think I don’t look back now and see you, sweetheart. I can see it all: the whole picture; how you tried and how you struggled and how you broke and how you drowned. When you’re in it, it’s difficult to get any perspective. What were we doing? We loved each other didn’t we? But no matter how bad it got, and at times it was bad, I knew you were always there; your hand solidly in mine. You got me through it, Pacey. Once, on a freezing cold morning next to the glittering creek, you asked me what it meant. Well, it means this: all the tears and heart’s blood that were shed and spilled across this little town due to shattered relationships and hurt feelings were worth it in the end. We survived. I can’t say we weren’t damaged, I can’t say we escaped unscathed; all things leave their mark after all. But finally, finally, we burned off what didn’t work; you don’t have to be so perfect all the time and I don’t have to be so afraid. I didn’t really understand it then. But now I do. You were the first person I thought of. You will be the last person I think of. And in-between we have forever.