TITLE: 'Til Death (Do Us Part)

AUTHOR: Jessa

FANDOM/PAIRING: High School Musical/Troyella

RATING/GENRE: T/Angst, Tragedy (Involves character death.)

SUMMARY: Troy tries to deal with losing his whole world, finding solace in a place he didn't expect. (Oneshot. Kinda short.)

DISCLAIMER: Troy and Gabriella are Disney's peeps. Plz no sue? kthxbye.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This fic is dedicated, in loving memory, to MJ -- my Aunt, my friend, and my mentor -- to my wonderful Uncle who has been so amazingly strong throughout this whole thing, and to the cousin that we all wanted so much. I love you. I realize that High School Musical fanfiction might seem like a really lame tribute to someone who had such a huge impact on my life but it's what I do and she always supported that. Thank you for everything, Michelle. You can't stop the beat, darlin'!

You have no idea what it's like when you hear that low, steady beep through that damned sheet of glass and you have to watch everything you have just fade away. It was a sight I will never ever forget. Not in this life, or any other. I always associated Gabriella Montez, or Gabriella Bolton as she had recently become, with life and sunshine. Lying there underneath the sickly fluorescent glare of the lights overhead with tubes of all sizes connected to her, helping her heart beat because it was too weak to do it on it's own, she didn't look like the woman I love.

Maybe saying all this is completely senseless because I really don't think words exist to describe this pain. It's like too many different emotions are swirling around inside me and fairly soon, my body won't be able to hold them all anymore. I will breakdown. Until that moment comes, I'm just trying to keep breathing from one second to the next. Each lungful of oxygen I take in hurts. It feels like I'm betraying her by still being here. Why couldn't fate have taken me instead of her... and our child? I would gladly have died if it would mean that Gabriella would get to live out all her hopes and dreams and that the child we made together would be born and grow up into someone wonderful.

Everything that passed before my eyes in those few hours after the fact was blur of sympathy, pity and tears from people that I care about, as well as those I didn't recognize. It vaguely registered in my broken mind that Miss Montez was clinging to me, sobbing harder than I thought possible for anyone to do. I wish I could have comforted her properly but there wasn't anything left in me. Gabriella was my everything. My mother was crying almost as hard as Gabriella's mom, holding tightly onto my father who was gazing at me as if he expected me to collapse at any second. My legs were barely objecting to that course of action.

I don't even remember how I got from one place to the next. One minute I was in the hospital and the next I was standing in my parent's living room with everyone else in the room staring at me expectantly. What were they looking for? Some sign that I was somehow still sane? Reassurance that I wasn't about to go crazy and do something drastic? Where normally I would have felt guilty that I couldn't give them all what they were looking for, I found I just couldn't care right then. In a mind filled with grief and confusion, there was no will left for caring about anything besides the fact that they were gone.

For the next couple days, I was like a zombie. I went through the motions with my father's guiding presence always one step behind me. He hovered incessantly, making sure that I ate or helping me with paperwork relating to the incomprehensible tragedy that had left me in this state. Those days passed in a dream-like haze. It was as though I were living someone else's life temporarily and before you knew it, the dream would be over and Gabriella would be back in my arms.

It was hard for me to understand, in those first few days, that she was really gone. It was much easier to trick myself into thinking she'd come into the house at any minute, giggling like a maniac, eager to tell me about how the baby had kicked extra hard that day. Anything was easier than facing the truth...

There would never be a baby.

On the third day, the day of Gabriella's wake, I finally cried. I cried so hard I didn't think I'd be able to stop. An overwhelming pressure seemed to build behind my eyes until I couldn't hold it in anymore. Seeing her lying so peacefully in that wretched casket that I had been forced to help her mother pick out went beyond painful. It was in a whole other league of anguish that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.

I couldn't look at her and yet at the same time my eyes were drawn to her. Eventually one impulse overtook the other and I drank in the beauty of her dark hair, curled to perfection, her button nose, and her soft lips greedily. Her skin had lost it's lustre and looked dim and pale next to the bright yellow roses surrounding her coffin. It took me all of one second to realize I didn't want this to be how I remembered her, and so as quickly as I had given into my urge to see her, I turned away. I would never remember her like that.

I weaved my way through the mourners. Most of them attempted to stop me and let me know just how sorry they all were for my loss. I was desperate to break down but the last thing I wanted was to do it in front of all these people. They all expected it from me and I knew how supportive they would be if I just let go and released all of the feelings welling inside, but it felt... private. Like those nights that Gabi and I would spend tangled up in each other, just the two of us, I felt like this was between me and her. I needed her now more than ever and she was just out of my reach.

At the far end of the funeral home, I knew there was a chapel. Now, I had never been a man of particularly strong faith, but the large space was deadly silent and void of people, suiting my purpose perfectly. It just felt right.

I walked slowly into the cavernous room, staring blankly at the alter placed at the far end. Even the soft sound of my footsteps on the soft carpet covering the aisle echoed off the high ceiling. Picking a pew about midway down, I slid into the row and sank down into the hard seat, my body feeling strangely heavy. I didn't bother to get into the proper "praying position". If Gabi, was up there, she'd hear me no matter what. Such was the bond that we'd shared from the moment we met.

"Hey baby," I began in a whisper, tears coming on fast. "I know you're probably laughing right now and asking yourself what Troy Bolton -- your husband -- is doing in a church..." I laughed myself as I could imagine it so clearly in my head. The merriment was short-lived, however, and I continued my monologue, hoping against all hope that it would somehow dull the throbbing pain in my heart.

"I miss you so much, Gabi. It's like everything is dark now that you're... gone," I admitted. My hands were gripping the wood of the pew in front of me so hard I don't know how it didn't splinter beneath my fingers. "I don't understand why, if God is so damned merciful and all that other stuff you tried to tell me, why he took you." With that sentence, I couldn't hold onto my tears any longer. A single sob ripped from my throat as they spilled out over my eyes, hot and out of control.

"You're probably up there, rolling your eyes. I know if you were here you'd smack me for saying such things here of all places... God, I wish you were here. So badly I can almost taste it. How am I supposed to just keep living without you? I don't know if I can do that, Gabriella."

I leaned my head back and attempted to quiet my crying by breathing in and out. There was moderate success to be had.

"Don't worry, I wouldn't do anything stupid. If I killed myself or something and ended up there with you, you'd give me the eternal silent treatment anyway and then what would be the point?" I joked half-heartedly, trying to convince myself as much as anyone else that the fleeting thought of joining her and my child was not a good one. It frightened me how few cons I could suddenly see in that option.

Sighing, I said, "I wouldn't do that to our mothers anyways. They're taking it hard enough... like you would if you lost a daughter, I guess. I promise I'll take care of them, baby. I..." My voice was getting too shaky to sustain speech. Tears tracked down my face, now with no pretense of holding back.

Gabriella's body laid only a few doors down as I cried and though the thought of it being lowered into the cold ground made me cringe, I couldn't believe that was all that was left of her. For me, peace -- if it were ever to be found at all -- wouldn't come from laying her body to rest. Gabriella's spirit could never have been contained by a single body. It was infectious, something I could feel, almost as if it were tangible, whenever she was near. Standing next to that body, I had felt no trace of her. Peace was there in the chapel, at least for the moment, as I spoke to the lost love of my life.

My future had changed the second I saw that flat-line on the screen in her hospital room. Things were going to be so hard and I didn't think the pain would ever fully fade. How could it when it seemed as though half of myself had been cut away, never to be whole again? I knew, although some people were bound to argue, that I would never be able to fall in love with another woman. Gabriella Montez was my soul-mate and she would wait for me, wherever she was. There was no way I'd be letting go of that.

"Can you please tell little Violet that her daddy loves her? And that he's sorry..." I gasped out, the pangs in my chest becoming more and more intense. "I'm so sorry..."

Closing my eyes, I tried to stop my shoulders from shaking. "You'll always be my girl, Gabriella. I'll always love you." In that moment, I could have sworn I felt a soft and familiar touch against my cheek, but when my eyes snapped open, I found myself excruciatingly alone.

"Always," I whispered to the empty room.