What If?

Setting: Derails somewhere between 'Touch My Soul' and 'Pilgrim's Hands'

Rating: T for language (both cursing and some hate speech), and abortion

Chapter Title: Spin on: "Tell me how this change will happen," sung by Ivy in All Grown Up

Disclaimer: I do not own, nor am I affiliated in any way with the Bare: A Pop Opera or Bare the Musical. This story is merely for entertainment.

This Change Won't Happen

Two minutes. She could wait that long.

Ivy began to quietly count under her breath to keep track, because she hadn't thought to get her watch before she'd left her room. And there was no way she wanted to go back there and have Nosy Nadia ask what she was doing. No, she would count and just pray that no one else would come into the communal bathroom.

Thirty seconds. Ninety to go.

She was only a couple of weeks late. And she wasn't always regular anyway, so it didn't really mean anything. This was just a precaution. Yeah, just a precaution.

Luckily there was a drug store just down the street from the church—where all the girls snuck out and bought their makeup—so Ivy had only had to skip out on a little bit of rehearsal to get this done.

Forty-five seconds.

If only she hadn't been so desperate. Why had she been so desperate? She'd been so elated that Jason was finally going for her that she hadn't stopped to think. Sure, in the past, boys had always brought the protection, but she'd always brought some just in case. It was just…that afternoon with Jason, she hadn't expected it to happen. She had hoped. Hoped enough that she'd worn her cute black panties. But she hadn't expected it.

Sixty seconds. Halfway there.

She didn't really think she was pregnant. She was only seventeen. She was Catholic; there was no way she was pregnant. But maybe being pregnant by Jason wouldn't be that bad…

No. It was still bad. She wasn't ready to be a mother. And Ivy had no doubt that Jason would be a great father; he'd teach their son basketball and be able to help him with all his school work. But Jason was getting ready to go to college. And Ivy was too. This wouldn't be good.

Ninety seconds.

So that left her with her options. If she even was pregnant which, really, she probably almost definitely wasn't. But it might be good to make decision now, while she was so absolutely impartial.

There were three obvious options. Everyone knew about them.

For two of them, she'd have to live with this baby for nine months. She'd have to go to college very, very pregnant. With her belly button way out in front of her. And protruding. Either way, Jason wouldn't be there with her for that part. Probably. Maybe she could convince him…

No. She couldn't take him away from school. That would ruin their baby's life for sure.

Jason had told her how she felt. But Ivy still had hope. Maybe he didn't love her now, but maybe he could. And, if Ivy was really honest with herself, he was more likely to love her if she wasn't strapping him down with a—

Time up. One-hundred-twenty.

It wouldn't matter. None of this would even matter.

She flipped over the stick.

Ivy's heart frosted over.

It mattered.

It had cost her clothing allowance for two months, plus all of her savings, but it was done.

She'd thought that having to beg Nadia to cover for her would be the worst part. With her teasing, assuming that Ivy was going to meet a boy. Pointing to her sweats, Ivy had responded, "Really? Like this?" A comment about how that was how Nadia usually looked and did she ever get any guys was on the tip of Ivy's tongue, but she'd figured that that wouldn't be the best way to secure Nadia's help.

The desperation in her eyes and voice as she pleaded for Nadia to vouch for her at rehearsal ended up earning a strange look from Nadia, but it was enough to buy her the time.

Then Ivy thought that the bus ride would be the worst part. Riding alone to an unknown part of the city on a sketchy bus was enough to have Ivy consider turning back. But she'd ridden the bus before, albeit always with friends on a day playing hooky or something, and she was determined to prove that this was something she could do by herself.

Upon arriving at the clinic, Ivy realized that the worst part was yet to come. Obviously the worst part was yet to come. She just hadn't been allowing herself to think about it. Signing the forms, using her fake ID for something less recreational than she'd ever intended it for, and them waiting.

Oh, the waiting.

But the bus ride back was the honest to God worst part. Because it was done. There was no getting off the bus and turning back at this stage. And she was really alone. Somehow more alone than she had been before. She was left only with her thoughts and the heart-wrenching duty of playing the defendant in her own case, convincing herself that she made the right decision.

Because this was what was best for her and Jason.

But as she squeezed her legs tightly together on the bus, she couldn't help but let her mind fragment as it was hit with the mighty chisel of the tiniest bit of steely doubt.

It had been a mistake to ask Nadia how the rehearsal went.

"Well, it would have been better if we didn't have such a selfish bitch playing Juliet. Didn't even show up to rehearsal yesterday, even after being late the day before that."

She should have known that she wouldn't get off scot-free when she asked Nadia for a favor. But it wasn't like she'd had any prior experience with that particular embarrassment; she guessed that she'd hoped a little too much from Nadia's simply bountiful generosity. Nope. Same old, same old.

Ivy's uncharacteristic silence had been enough to quiet Nadia, but not before she grumpily remarked, "Well, you're no fun."

"Not to change subjects altogether, but do you think that Jason would meet up with me to make up the rehearsal?" Ivy asked, careful not to sound too hopeful in the face of Nadia's iron-clad bitterness.

"Yeah, I guess he would," Nadia drawled, eyeing Ivy suspiciously. Ivy avoided her gaze. "What are you trying to do?"

"Nothing," Ivy responded too quickly. Nadia was all but rolling her eyes at her. She gathered together a half-truth. "I'm trying to correct my mistakes."

Maybe it was a whole truth.

Ivy managed to convince Jason to an extra rehearsal one on one a couple of days later. He'd only pushed it back because he was really busy with his valedictorian speech. Honestly, Ivy didn't know why he seemed to be having so much trouble with it, but it was a good enough excuse, she figured. And she didn't want to push too hard, given how strong she'd come on in the past. Jason seemed to react better to subtlety, so she could do that for him.

They meet in the makeshift auditorium. It was the old chapel before the new one was built a few years ago. Sister Chantelle liked to call it a 'found space' but really it was just where the drama department was relegated to because it was either there or the cafeteria.

"Okay, so it was act one, scene five," Jason recollected distractedly as he flipped through script pages.

"Yeah, I know. Sorry I missed rehearsal. I had something really important," Ivy said, trying to look apologetic while also making it clear that she didn't want to be asked what the important thing was. She just didn't know what kind of facial expression you used to convey that.

"Sure." Jason threw his script to the ground at the downstage right corner. "Okay, we'll do our part and then I'll read the nurse's lines for you after that. So Tybalt just said, 'Now seeming sweet, convert to bitt'rest gall.' And then I say—"

"Wait," Ivy interrupted. She hadn't just wanted to do the scene tonight. Of course, yes, she'd wanted to make up what she'd missed, if nothing else, just so that she could get Nadia to eat it (though that girl already ate everything in sight, so that shouldn't be hard to accomplish). But she'd also wanted to have a little bonding time with Jason. "Don't you want to, I don't know, talk about how rehearsal went?"

"Uh," Jason scratched at the side of his nose, "I mean, I guess we could. But Ivy, I'm pretty busy right now and already we're kind of doing the in addition to rehearsal today, so—and not to be a total dick here—but could we just make this quick? Rehearsal went fine. A little rocky without Juliet, but we managed."

Ivy sighed. Don't push him. "Right, okay. Start your line again."

They each delivered their lines smoothly. Truth be told, Ivy knew that their parts in this scene weren't primarily together, but she had thought…she had hoped…

"Okay, that's the scene," Jason said hurriedly as he immediately went to gather his things. "You know your stuff. I guess we didn't even really need to do this."

"Wait!" Ivy blurted again. "Can't we, uh, just do it one more time to make sure? I mean, I would feel better if we just cemented it—"

"Ivy, you know it. I'm telling you. Now can I please go? This speech thing is killing me."

"But…" Ivy was grasping at straws now, she knew. "It'll just take a couple of minutes. Or maybe just testing ourselves on act two, scene two? That's the part that I'm really unsure abou—"

"Or testing ourselves on the whole show, or doing every scene that we're together in, or skipping right to where we kiss just to get the acting just right." Jason was looking at her more coldly than he had been just a minute ago. "Look, I know what you're trying to do and I really don't have time for it right now."

"I-I'm not trying to do anything."

"Ivy. Did I not make myself clear last time?"

Ivy looked down at the floor, grasping her skirt in her hands to keep them from shaking. Her whole body felt warm with embarrassment. "I just thought…"

"Well, you were wrong," Jason was quick to inform her. "There is nothing here. We have the show, we can be friends, but you need to stop acting like this."

"Stop acting like what? Like I like you? Really, what's so terrible about that?" Ivy had to raise her voice to keep it from wavering; she already felt it tightening and her eyes were starting to sting. Damn the hormones. They were even more fucked up now than they had been before.

"I just can't deal with it right now!"

Ivy was surprised that Jason was losing his cool too. Jason was always the kid that had his shit together the most. Everyone here was so fucked up and he was so steady. That was kind of what she liked about him. Well, part of it. So him yelling at her made it feel like he was hammering a nail through her chest, so much so that she couldn't stop herself before she yelled, "You don't know what I gave up for you!"

"What? Whoring around? If anything, you should thank me for that."

Jason's expression was unreadable. And not just because Ivy's eyes were now blurry with tears. It always hurt a little when Nadia turned remarks like that. But Ivy knew that she was quick-witted and so it was easy enough to exploit Nadia's many weaknesses in return.

But if Nadia's insults hit Ivy like an annoying stray tennis ball, then Jason saying it hit like a medicine ball straight to her stomach.

Straight to her stomach…

"You can't say that to me!" Ivy cried, trying to sound biting and mean, but now tears were dribbling down her face and she knew that she looked completely pathetic.

"Why the hell not?"

"Because you got me pregnant!"

Her hands flew up to her mouth in a sorry attempt to put the words back into her mouth and swallow them. She hadn't meant to admit that. This was the last thing she had wanted him to know. That was the whole point…She'd just wanted to hurt him.

And one glance at his face showed that she'd done just that. But immediately it hardened over again and he sounded completely resolved as he said, "You're lying."

That took whatever was left of Ivy's heart and crushed it under the weight of his hard stare like a piece of hard candy under a hard, unrelenting boot. "Look at me," was all she could manage, weak as it sounded. "Do I look like I could be lying?"

She saw something switch on Jason's face. But before she could try and figure out what it meant, he all but ran out of the auditorium, leaving Ivy falling to her knees as if in prayer, and sobbing for all she was worth.

Which, apparently, was not a lot.

Ivy didn't know how long she had been kneeling there, but by the time her tears finally dried up her sleeves were soaked and the circulation in her legs was cut off indefinitely. It was all she could do to weakly spin her legs around so that she was sitting flat on the floor, pathetic and alone. Her face was hot and, she knew, red and puffy. She'd been crying so long that it felt like her teeth were vibrating and the only sounds she could utter now were stupid little hiccups.

Jason thought she was pregnant. She'd never wanted to tell him that, even years down the line when they were married and had actual kids of their own (at the appropriate age). Even when they were on their deathbeds, about to die in each others' arms. This was a secret she'd intended to take to the grave.

And she hadn't even gotten the change to tell him the thing she'd really given up for him. It hadn't been her life, like he probably thought now. It had been…a different life.

Another sob threatened to come out, but Ivy was quick to smother it, her legs now solid enough that she could stand up and, for God's sake, find Jason as fast as she could.

She first checked his room. Completely empty, now that Peter was moved out. That meant that he was probably either with Peter or Nadia. Might as well check Peter's first, since Nadia's room was also her room.

Ivy knocked on the door, swiping under her eyes and folding up her sleeves—trying to look as presentable as possible instead of like the biggest human mess on earth. Peter opened the door, cracking it open and only looking a little surprised to see Ivy there.

At least, Ivy hoped he was looking at her like that because he hadn't been expecting her, not because she looked puffy and ugly.

"Strange question," Ivy started, clearing her through when she found it weak and phlegmy. "Is Jason here?"

Ivy knew that Peter and Jason weren't on the best of terms anymore. Lord only knew why. But the way that Peter was shielding the doorway made her suspicious—no, it made her hope—that Jason was there.

"No, sorry, he's not."

Ivy tried to surreptitiously peek through the gaps in Peter's blockade, but she couldn't see a thing. She couldn't see, or hear, for that matter, any sign of Jason. "Well, is Lucas there?"

Peter faltered a bit, narrowing his eyes in confusion. "No, he's not."

"Okay." Ivy shifted her weight. If Lucas wasn't there, Peter was at least alone, assuming Jason wasn't actually there. "Well, uh, if you see Jason, can you please tell him something?"

"Sure. What?"

"Just…tell him I got rid of it. For him. Okay?"

Ivy felt the tears coming on again, and she turned around before Peter could respond. She walked swiftly down the hallway, only stopping for a second a few yards away to see if Jason did indeed come through Peter's door to talk to her, but there was nothing.

Nothing and nobody.

Ivy had once again managed to collect herself by the time she made it back to her room. She unlocked the door and sullenly dropped her belongings to the floor on her half of the room before sitting on her bed.

Obviously Jason wasn't here either. But Nadia still was (as always), so Ivy meekly gave it one last shot.

"Nadia, have you seen Jason?"

Nadia looked over at her as if she were stupid (really, most of the looks Ivy and Nadia gave each other. Except for the ones of unparalleled smugness when a particularly good slam was landed). "You were just with him. Shouldn't you know?"

"No, I…I lost track of him."

"What? He didn't get trapped in the spider web of your magical lady parts? Bummer. Glad to know someone's immune, though. Hey, maybe it's a twin thing."

Nadia shot that shit-eating grin Ivy's way and was met with dead silence.

"You know. Because I'm not into you, so he couldn't be into you."

Ivy reached for her water to try and swallow the lump in her throat.

"Okay fine, not one of my best zingers. But you'd better have something to retaliate with soon because somehow you're even worse like this. Okay? I could tell you something about how fucking annoying it is to have to deal with you like this."

Ivy opened her mouth to say something but she just had no energy to deal with it right now.

"Oh, not even a response? Because you're too good for it now? Or is it that even you know how annoying this is?"

Luckily this time Ivy didn't have to worry about forming a reply, because a knock came at their door. Ivy made the mistake of letting her heart (damn, she'd thought it was dead) leap and she stood up, looking hopefully at the door.

Eyeing her like she was crazy and possibly retarded for not actually moving to get the door, Nadia opened it wide, revealing Peter. Ivy's heart sank again.

"Ivy," Peter started, looking right past Nadia, "we need to talk."

Sensing the tone for once, Nadia had the brains to return to her half of the room as Peter approached Ivy, closing the door behind him, despite the strict policy that the school had against boys and girls being in the same room with the door closed.

Obviously, it wasn't the first time that Ivy had broken that particular rule, though.

"Things have gotten out of hand," Peter began, his tone causing Ivy to recoil slightly.

This was not the Peter that Ivy knew. His voice was cold, he was not meeting her eyes, and he seemed deeply upset. But she and Peter had always been friends—good friends—so what was the problem?

"You and Jason can't be together. Ever. You're just not…compatible. And I know that you gave up your…" Peter eyed Ivy's abdomen, lingering for a long moment, "situation for him. And that must have been very hard for you."

Ivy heard a gasp from the other side of the room, but just barely, over the sound of her world collapsing.

"And either way, Jason isn't in the best of places right now, and clearly neither are you, so I think that both of you just need to figure things out right now. On your own."

"But Peter—"

"Please, Ivy," Peter forced out, his voice sounding oddly strained. "Just like I don't know how hard this is for you, you don't know how hard this is for me."

Peter was making for the door when Nadia came barreling over to him and cut him off. "I have to talk to my brother," Nadia said with such desperation that Ivy just wanted to laugh or cry at the absurdity of it all.

Then they started whispering. Maybe in a different world, Ivy would have tried to eavesdrop on what they were saying, but at this point she was so past it all that she couldn't be bothered. She just wanted to sink into the ground and disappear. The best she could do was let her body fall over and curl up on her bed, not even bothering to take her shoes off.

A few moments she felt the end of her bed depress with the weight of someone else. Her voice tired she began, "Peter, I—"

"Not Peter."

Ivy could do little more than blink in incredulousness that here in her time of need, God had sent to her aid Nadia. After the boy she loved's ex-best friend—of all people—snubbed her.

"God, what?" Ivy groaned.

"So you were pregnant."

It wasn't a question, so Ivy didn't give a response. She just dug her head deeper into her pillow.

"And you got rid of it."

Again, she replied nothing. Just pursed her lips to keep the tears from starting up again.

"Did you talk to him?"

"Only today," Ivy managed to whisper. "After I…after."

Ivy felt her bed move and figured Nadia was shifting around. She didn't care to look.

"Is that why you missed rehearsal the other day?"

Ivy nodded.

"Oh. Then I guess I'm sorry I was such a bitch."

Somehow, Ivy managed to crack a wry smile. "Which time?"

"I guess just recently. I don't think it was altogether uncalled for beyond that."

Ivy wasn't going to dignify that with a response, so the two of them fell to silence for a minute. But that didn't mean that her mind was quiet. None of this made any sense to her. Nothing about Jason made any sense anymore. And it scared Ivy to think that maybe it never had.

"Nadia?" Ivy started, the name feeling strangely foreign on her tongue. Like they were strangers.

"Hmm?"

"What did Peter mean?"

"When?"

"Just now. With all the…crypticness."

"Oh. You mean why you and Jason…?"

"Yeah."

"Um." Ivy shifted her vision as far as she could out of the corner of her eye until it hurt, and she saw Nadia clearly thinking. Ivy only wished she knew about what. "I don't know," she said finally. "I guess you two just aren't compatible."

"But what does that mean? I mean, if I like him and I think we're compatible then doesn't that mean something?"

Again, Nadia was taking time to form her words. Why couldn't she just get on with it?

"Look, you just have to trust Peter on this one. You and Jason aren't meant to be."

Ivy blinked as she felt new tears falling straight from the corner of her eye to her pillow, making the entire side of her face damp. "God, I just feel so stupid," she whispered.

Frankly, Ivy was shocked when Nadia didn't take that golden bullet and run with it. Instead, she felt Nadia's hand on her leg, as though awkwardly trying to comfort her. "Well…I don't think there was any right thing to do in this situation."

Ivy shook her head, a little broken laugh on her lips. That was sure as hell right. "I don't even know why you're here right now instead of with Jason."

Silence.

"Oh, right, of course you'd rather be with Jason than with me. This is just pity, right? Finally you have the opportunity to pity me."

Ivy felt Nadia pull her hand away and again the feeling of the bed moving with Nadia's weight began. Instantly, loneliness began seeping through all of the cracks that Ivy had and she realized that, pathetically, even Nadia was better than nothing. Way better than nothing.

"Thanks, though," she blurted before Nadia could leave the bed. "Thanks for…comforting me."

"Sure," was all Ivy heard, though she could have sworn that it was colored with something of a smile. Could have been her imagination, though. "And…I hope that someday you understand."

"Understand?"

"I mean…understand why Jason…why this didn't work out. Someday."

Ivy hoped so too. As she filled her empty abdomen with a deep, shuddering breath, she exhaled saying, "Someday, maybe…"

Ivy never forgot the day that her heart broke. It was one of the last days that Ivy spoke to Jason—outside of what was a very awkward production of Romeo and Juliet—and, oddly, one of the last times that Ivy spoke to Peter. They both completely shut her out and, frankly, Ivy wasn't eager to be the first one to return contact. But, from what she could tell, it didn't look like they were speaking either, so despite whatever had gone on behind closed doors that day, it hadn't fixed their friendship.

Strangest of all, was the friendship that Ivy did gain. Somehow, Ivy and Nadia finally crossed that bridge that had never been attempted before. It turned out that all it took to bring them together was the sharing of a secret and finally understanding each others' pain. And while Ivy would never call them best friends, they were fast friends. And they kept in touch after high school, which Ivy could say of no one else at St. Cecelia's, despite all the friends she'd thought she'd had at the time.

And that was how the story went for a long time. For a couple of years that's how Ivy remembered the story whenever she dared think of the biggest regret she had in her life. Which was infrequently. Because it was less painful that way.

Not to say that Ivy was completely sure she would have made a different choice if she had to do all over again, but she still definitely classified it as a regret. Every time she went on a date, she found herself wondering, if she ever married this guy, how would he feel knowing that their child wasn't her first child? And would they hate her when they learned what she'd done to her child?

She definitely hated herself. But hating herself was too much to handle so, again, she just didn't think about it. Compartmentalized that afternoon at the women's clinic and only brought it out at her darkest of moments, leaving her crying into her pillow, refusing to give even the shortest of explanations to her bewildered roommate.

Then came the day that the narrative changed. The magic of the internet was coming about and somehow Ivy stumbled across one Peter Simmonds. Who, if his cover information was anything to judge by, was out and holy baby Jesus was he proud.

Ivy felt shock and horror and confusion. Peter had always seemed so normal. Sure, he hadn't been the manliest of men, but Ivy had never assumed him to be a homo. And here he was flaunting it online like everyone wanted to see it.

Automatically, Ivy felt herself reaching for her new cell phone and searching for Nadia's number. And, to only add to her shock, Ivy found out that Nadia had already known.

"You mean you knew back in high school?"

"Yeah." If anything, Nadia seemed bored. Ivy was astounded.

"And you were okay with it?"

"Yeah."

"And you didn't think to tell anybody?"

"It wasn't my business."

Ivy then proceeded to hiss something about him making it everyone's business by having the gall to make his profile picture a shot of him and some boy kissing. On the cheek but still, the implication was clear. Peter and this tan, attractive boy were definitely…

Tan and attractive. Instantly Ivy's heart dropped. No, no, she didn't know the man in this picture, but suddenly the image Ivy had painted so clearly in her mind of the past shattered. And in that refracted picture, suddenly the light was shown.

Ivy thusly began babbling on the phone, mainly strings of "Oh my God," all punctuated with, "How could you not tell me?"

"Uh, Ivy, we weren't friends—"

"No. Not Peter."

It had taken a long time for Nadia to reply. Apparently Jason wasn't quite in the same place that Peter was. Still, Ivy was horrified to learn the truth to everything that she had thought to be right before. Incompatible? Clearly. Ivy didn't know how she had ever loved him. How she hadn't felt that something had been horribly, horribly wrong.

She had ranted and raved to a strangely silent Nadia. Ivy finished her piece with a resounding question of: "How can you be okay with this?"

There was silence and Ivy would have thought that the line had disconnected some time during her revelation if it hadn't been for Nadia's breathing on the other end. Then, she heard this speech.

"Ivy, you have to learn to be okay with this. Not today, but as soon as you can. Because despite everything, of all of us, Peter is the one that's right. And he's the one that the world is watching. So you can be where you are right now, but you'd have better get a move on if you don't want to be left behind. You don't want to be on the wrong side of history, do you? Because that's where you'll be if you don't start running."

The phone call didn't last much longer than that. And in the time that followed, calls between the two of them weren't as frequent as they had once been, not just because the joy of texting was on the rise.

But Nadia's words were ever-present nonetheless and Ivy thought about them frequently.

The wrong side.

Hadn't Ivy already been on the wrong side of everything?

Well, she'd fucked everything up so far. Been on the wrong side, made everything worse. Maybe just this once…

A/N: Oh, Ivy. If you only knew how much you didn't fuck things up. Because Jason lives! Anyway, sorry that this one didn't focus on Jason, but I just want all of these stories to be telling a seemingly very different story when, obviously, all of them are inherently similar. So I went different POV on this one. I left it a little open-ended, but for me in this AU Jason does come out eventually as an adult, but he and Peter never end up together; Peter would never forgive him enough for that in this one.

(Also, sorry I didn't touch on Ivy's abortion as much as was emotionally necessary. It just didn't feed the story. If you wanna read a good one about that, check out Pain by broadwaypants.)