AN: I OWN NOTHING OF THE SCOOBY DOO FRANCHISE!
Me: The song is called 'Who You'd Be Today,' and it's by Kenny Chesne. So basically I was about half-awake when this song came to me a couple of days ago in my head and I thought it would work very well with Shaggy ^^Who You'd Be Today:
He walked through the chilly wind down the streets of Coolsville in the little suburb where he grew up as a child. It was on these streets that he'd met his friends, where they'd started it all. It was hard to believe that it had already been two years since he'd last seen them. After the incident he had moved away, packed all of his bags and belongings, he even left Scooby behind him. He needed to leave any and all reminders of that fateful night. As he reached Melbourne Street a chill ran down the length of his spine. This was the street that he had lived on for eighteen years of his life before moving in with his friends at their place of business. As he turned into the street he looked at the houses. They were all still the same paper copies set perfectly, side by side by side. That is until he reached a different one. A light blue home that was hand built and sturdy with only two floors and a little chimney stack. No fancy decks or floor to ceiling glass windows and no picture perfect garden gate of painted wood, just wrought iron fence pieces connected and stuck into the ground. Just a small old house. A warm breeze blew over him as the wind stirred the autumn leaves of the yard. The lights were off and a sign told him that the owners had moved, but he felt her. He felt her waiting for him, calling him to her. He closed his eyes against the breeze and he could see her smiling at him, welcoming him home as the rain came down suddenly washed over him from above.
He pushed the gate of the iron fence open and stepped onto the abandoned lawn. The leaves crunched under his boots and he could here the wind chimes soft melody as they rang out from the porch, singing him the soft lullaby of a summer night's dreams. He stepped onto the wooden porch, the planks creaking as they always had from age and neglect, but they held sturdy underneath him. As he listened to the wind chimes he thought for a second he heard something else. He thought he heard her laugh as she danced through the rain in his memories, getting soaked to the bottom as she twirled through the twilight drops of rain in the mist of the night. Her hair sticking wetly to her face and her clothing getting darker and heavier as it filled with the life of the storm. Her laughter filling the air.
Rainy days seem to hurt the most,
I wear the pain like a heavy coat.
I feel you everywhere I go.
I see your smile, I see your face,
I hear you laughin' in the rain.
I still can't believe you're gone.He shook his head, reminding himself that it was a trick, another foul play of his memory. He grasped the door handle and turned it. He stepped inside the house, the rain dripping off of his trench coat and onto the floors. His boots clanged almost metalically against the floorboards as he went over to the staircase and walked upstairs. The doors were all closed except for one that stood ajar. He swallowed and stepped towards it, pulling it open when he got to it. He walked into the past, the same white carpet underneath his feet. They had left it just as he had always remembered it. A twin bed was up against the wall in the top left corner, a window right beside it with a wooden desk underneath. A dog bed in the corner by the door that was never used. Even all the posters of a life since past were still clinging to the wall with masking tape. But what he noticed most was not the objects that no longer mattered, it was the photographs hanging above the bed. He took his coat off and hung it on the hook by the door before sitting gingerly down on the musty bedspread.
There had to be at least fifty pictures on the wall. They showed him as a child running through sprinklers with his sister or younger cousins. They showed him on birthdays and holidays with family, but most of all, they showed him with friends. A young woman with long red hair and a green eyes next to a man with light blond hair and blue eyes that was proudly leaning against a large green van decorated with flowers and swirls of blue. A Great Dane playfully rolled onto his back with a blue nylon collar that had a diamond tag hanging from the metal ring of it. Then there was her, a small girl with brunette hair that only reached to her shoulders and the most magnificent cinnamon nutmeg eyes that were sparkling as she smiled. Her hands clutched a book behind her back and she was wearing her favorite glasses. She was the youngest of them by two years but she was the one with the most heart. She loved them all equally and she did her best to make sure they knew she cared. Looking at her picture on his wall caused him to remember that night that had changed everything.
They had just gotten a new case and it hadn't ended well. The man had set the house they were in on fire, and she had been trapped on the fourth floor. By the time fireman arrived on the scene, she'd breathed in too much smoke and the hospital told them she wouldn't make it that she only had a few hours left. That was the night he left town. He'd gone home and packed everything while the others stayed with her. He got on a bus to Albany and never came back, never left a note. They didn't look for him, he knew they didn't or they would've found him easily. He never tried to hide himself. He kept his name and he even got a job and an apartment. He just couldn't bear to be there anymore, not without her.
It ain't fair, you died too young,
Like a story that had only just begun
But death tore the pages all away.
God knows how I miss you,
All the hell that I've been through
Just knowing no one could take your place.
And sometimes I wonder
Who you'd be today.He was always so sure that she'd live to do everything she'd ever wanted, and after she died there wasn't a day that went by that he didn't think of her. He thought about the life she could planned on having. Getting married when she was old enough, having children. Maybe she would be an archeologist and make herself known in the world as she uncovered the past. Or maybe she'd be with him, solving mysteries together. He had wanted to tell her but that had taken it all away. He loved her and he always will. Even if he moves on one day, he knows he'll never love anyone as much as he loves her. He'll never feel their laughter as it cheered him, he'll never be able to look into their eyes and see himself with them forever. He'll never be able to love them like he did her and she'll never know he did.
Would you see the world,
would you chase your dreams?
Settle down with a family?
I wonder, what would you name your babies?
Some days the sky is so blue
I feel like I can talk to you.
And I know it might sound crazy.He never visited her grave. This was the first time that he had come back. He had gotten a notice in the mail that his parents had moved and left the house without selling it. That was when he wanted to come back, he wanted to believe they'd stayed and that they'd be there waiting for him when he arrived back in town. That Scooby Doo would run straight up to him and knock him onto his back as he licked his face just like old times. He wanted to believe that his friends were still at the old headquarters, working on their next mystery and waiting for him to join them. But they were gone too, all of them. They'd all left.
It ain't fair, you died too young,
Like a story that had only just begun
But death tore the pages all away.
God knows how I miss you,
All the hell that I've been through
Just knowing no one could take your place.
And sometimes I wonder
Who you'd be today.
Today, today, today.
Today, today, today.He buried his head in his hands. His whole life was gone. He heard a creak on the floorboards beneath the carpet and looked to the door expecting to see a mouse or a rat. Instead he saw a ghost. A scraggly dog with untrimmed, matted fur and a faded blue collar. The dog dropped the bone from his mouth and gazed at the man on the bed. He stood and the dog sat down and for a moment they just stared at each other. "Scooby Doo..." Shaggy whispered under his breath.
"I never throught rou'd crome brack." Scooby said to him in a tired worn voice. "Ri wraited for you. Fror two yrears." Shaggy looked down at the carpeted floor. Scooby walked over to him and sat at his feet. "Rou reft me."
"I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry." Shaggy said as the tears began to form. "I never meant to leave, I just couldn't stand to stay. Not without her." Scooby nodded and nosed Shaggy's hand. Shaggy held it out to him and Scooby put his head against it. Shaggy pet him and Scooby put his head against Shaggy's hip. "You forgive me for abandoning you?"
"I rever stropped roving you, Raggy." Shaggy fell to his knees and wrapped his arms around the dog's neck, his tears flowing freely into his fur.
"I'm sorry," he cried into Scooby's neck, "I'm so, so sorry."
AN: Bad ending? Yes or no?