The Best Friends You'll Ever Have | 12: Confidant

[luxken27]

Chapter Title: 12 | Confidant
Prompt: #028 - Mimi
Universe: Early canon (#26 Claudia and the Sad Goodbye)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort
Rating: T
Warning: mentions of character death
Word Count: 1,525
Summary: Janine Kishi finds an unexpected confidant in her struggle to deal with Mimi’s death.

Links: FF.net | LJ | DW | AO3

This was my gift to baseballchica03 for the 2011 fandom_stocking holiday exchange. It's a story that's been brewing in the back of my mind for a couple of months now, with little more direction than "I want to write some Charlie & Janine fic!" fandom_stocking proved to be the perfect deadline-maker, LOL.

As I said, this story has been brewing in the back of my mind for a long time - I actually had the first hint of an idea for a fic set during this part of the canon when I did the big reread of said canon over a year ago. This book is incredibly sad, because we watch Claudia struggle with Mimi's death, but to be, its even sadder still for Janine. One thing the books make patently obvious up to this point is that Janine is not as close with Mimi as Claudia is (it's something Claudia jealously guards, in fact) ~ so to me, I'd think Janine would have an even more difficult time trying to find a way to deal with Mimi's death.

I have a lot in common with Janine, so I already empathize with her, but I've always felt a little sorry for her, too ~ RS #7 makes it pretty clear that she doesn't fit in with her family very well, no matter what Claudia thinks :P It's like, she's the idealized Perfect Student, and everyone's so ~proud~ and ~happy~ of those achievements, but somehow, she's not worthy of being included as a person, a member of her family. It's both caused by and feeds into her stunted emotional growth. For Janine, I really wonder which came first - is schoolwork the way she found to gain her parents' approval and thus, she focused on it to the detriment of everything else? Or does she throw herself into the one thing she can find comfort in, because there's no comfort to be found in spending time with her family?

The truth is, as always, probably somewhere in the middle.

Anyway. So in the book, the girls stay home when they learn about Mimi's death, and they're both put in charge of calling friends and relatives and spreading the news. Claudia, of course, calls her friends. When Kristy suggests canceling the BSC meeting, Claud balks, saying that this, of all times, is one when she needs her friends the most. Then there's a bit of description of said meeting:

We held a strange meeting. For one thing, Janine sat in on it because she didn’t want to be alone.

And, wow. My heart just breaks for Janine, that she could feel so alone and out of place that she actually sits in on a BSC meeting. Does she have no friends of her own?

Later in the book, Claudia describes the day of the funeral - how, among others, Stacey and her mother attended, as well as Kristy's mother and two older brothers. When I read that particular passage, the idea sparked in my mind. One of the fun things about writing Charlie/Janine is finding the little moments in canon where they interact, or could interact, and this was definitely a major one =)

With some thought, I decided to write this scene, where Janine escapes from her family and tries to sort out her own feelings about her grandmother's death. She's sad, of course, but she's also feeling guilty - about the quality of the relationship she had with Mimi while she was still alive; about how she can't seem to mourn in quite the same way as her family. Death is a scary prospect, especially if you're not particularly equipped to deal with it. In the book, Claudia gets angry at Janine for being the first to go through Mimi's things; she's having an emotional reaction to her loss, while Janine takes a more pragmatic approach. That scene, I think, is a great example of these characters and how they tick.

I tried to make this read as if it was a missing scene from the book, pulling in elements already described. For example,

Janine is wearing the diamond earrings Mimi gave her:

Later she told Janine she was afraid someone would steal her diamond earrings while she was away in the hospital. She told her to take them out of her jewelry box and put them in Janine’s jewelry box. Or preferably on Janine’s ears. That night, I moved the plants and Janine took the earrings.

and then there are bits and pieces of the burial, funeral, and reception:

Our family had woken up formal.

We began the day formally, Janine and I following all sorts of somber instructions from our parents, and we spent the rest of the morning being formal.

[...]

Stacey and her mom sat in a pew sort of in the middle of the church. Also in their pew were Mary Anne and her father, Dawn and her mother, Kristy and her mother, and Sam and Charlie. (Watson didn’t come because he had barely known Mimi, so he stayed at home and helped Kristy’s grandmother watch the little kids.)

[...]

All around me, my relatives were crying. Next to me, Janine, who was wearing Mimi’s diamond. earrings, was sniffling. On the other side of me, my dad even started to cry and then I almost panicked. I’d never seen him cry before. (What do you do when your father cries?) Even my mother cried a little while she was speaking.

[...]

I didn’t pay a bit of attention to any of the service. When it was over, I just stood up and filed into an anteroom, following in Janine’s formal footsteps.

In the anteroom, our family formed a line and greeted the other mourners. At last Stacey and I could be together – for a few seconds. We hugged, and Stacey said, “See you at your house later.”

There was going to be a reception at our house in about an hour, in just enough time for Mom and Dad, Russ and Peaches, Janine and me to finish greeting people, rush home, and set out all the food everyone had been bringing by since Wednesday. I couldn’t wait. I was hoping the formality would wear off during the reception and I could be with my friends.

The formality did wear off. Mom and Dad let us club members go in the den with a platter of food and talk by ourselves.

From there, I decided to follow Janine instead of Claudia - and she has to escape. Instead of trailing after her sister and her friends (again), she goes off to deal with her thoughts and feelings by herself, unwittingly attracting the concern of her former neighbor.

I think their reaction to each other is very in-character (and in-canon). Charlie is just an all-around great guy; it seems like he was pretty much the neighborhood's big brother when he was growing up :P and I can imagine that sort of attitude would gain him popularity in high school. The tragedy he speaks of (“I know what it’s like to abruptly lose someone you love”) is his father's abandonment; it forced him to grow up much faster than he should have, and he has some idea of a way to process the feelings Janine is currently dealing with. I like that he's sensitive and kind and considerate, and its one of the reasons why I think this ship could really work out.

As for Janine - well, its obvious she has something of an inferiority complex about social situations; she feels jealous and frustrated by Claudia's seemingly effortless ability to attract friends and boyfriends and just flourish when she's in a group. I don't think Janine has low self-esteem so much as it just never occurs to her that she's worthy of close friendships. So while she's a little flustered by the idea that Charlie has spared such kind thought for her, she's also a little wary - its not easy for her to open up to even him, someone she's known for most of her life.

But he gives her space, and she eventually opens up, and there's some catharsis there as he assures her that she's not a terrible person for feeling the way she does (and as he reminds her that she's not perfect :P). Her walls crumble a little further when he hugs her, and she feels safe enough to hug him back - I think physical comfort would be a -huge- barrier of hers, and the fact that he breaches it so easily? Definitely says something about him just as much as it does about her =)

And in the end, she's a little embarrassed by it all, which I also think would be a natural reaction for her. She tries to lighten the mood with her apology for crying all over him, but he basically takes it all in stride. NGL, I really like the final few paragraphs of this piece ~ I think it demonstrates that they've grown a little bit closer, even in the space of a couple of minutes. Charlie's reaction is why he's one of my favorite characters in the entire series, and why I think he was way, way underused in canon.

baseballchica03 seemed to really enjoy this story, and I'm glad, considering how heavy it is. These two are starting to feel more and more comfortable to me, and I'm sure this isn't the last time I'll be writing for them, either individually or as a pairing =)