Title: Moving Out, Moving On
Fandom: Slings & Arrows
Rating: G
Length: 1400 words
Content notes: Missing scene, friendship.  No horrible angst here, I promise! :)
Author notes: Un-beta'd
Disclaimer: I didn't create these characters, I don't own them, I derive no profit from their use.
Summary: They have their exits and their entrances:
                 And one man in his time plays many parts.

                 Anna and Geoffrey, after King Lear

It wasn’t until she’d hugged him goodbye and watched him walk out the door that Anna realized she’d never really believed that Geoffrey could leave New Burbage.  Oh, there had been threats and trouble, but he’d weathered both before.  Geoffrey, though alarming, unstable, and in many ways irresponsible, was capable of working miracles.  And despite his complaints, Geoffrey obviously loved the Festival.  New Burbage was his home; theatre was his life.

And yet. . .  “He’s gone,” she whispered, watching him leave, knowing he really wasn’t going to be coming back again this time.


*     *    *    *   *

When Maria wordlessly shoved a pink flyer onto Anna’s stack of papers—King Lear, Charles Kingman, One Night Only—Anna briskly slipped it into her pocket, trotted off to the bathroom, and locked herself in a stall to cry and shake for forty-five minutes.  Because when she saw the flyer, it suddenly hit her that she’d been waiting to hear that Geoffrey was back in the hospital, or dead.

*     *    *    *   *

“I suppose there must be life after New Burbage,” she murmured to herself, bending over the copier and pretending not to notice Maria scuttling by with a suspicious bulge under her too-heavy coat.  It didn’t sound very funny to her ears, but then, Anna was never any good at telling jokes.  It would probably have been hilarious if Geoffrey had said it.

*     *    *    *   *

The room lights went down, and then up—Anna’s stomach lurched in sympathetic dread; she knew the signs of backstage disaster all too well—and then down again, and the makeshift stage grew bright, and Geoffrey walked on in costume.  Anna gasped in shock.  She clung to the edge of her seat, watching him freeze, eyes darting in panic, wordless and lost.  And then: a miracle, the flip of a switch.  He opened his mouth again, and the text flowed out, crisp and smooth (trippingly on the tongue) and resonant.

Throughout the whole play, every time Geoffrey spoke, it wrenched another gasp from Anna.  She knew it was probably making everyone around her want to beat her head in, but she couldn’t help herself.  It wasn’t surprise, not after that first successful line; not even relief.  It was more like. . .pain, only not unpleasant.  Charles as Lear made Anna weep, losing herself in the story but at the same time remembering Charles’s shaking hands on the kitchen table, his temper and his tears.  But Geoffrey. . .

. . .Looks whole up there, she realized, watching him help Lear off the stage.  Looks happy.  A strange thought to have about someone acting in King Lear, where none of the characters is anything but miserable throughout the whole three hour story.  But Geoffrey was happy, Anna could tell.  Or maybe that wasn’t the right word.  Maybe it was more like content.  Grounded.  At peace.

Watching him take his bows with the company, hands clasped by Charles on one side, by Ellen on the other, Anna thought: It’s not a tragedy for Geoffrey after all, it’s a comedy.  This is his happy ending.

And it struck her that this is what she had been waiting for, all along.

*     *    *    *   *

“I owe you an apology,” said Geoffrey, setting a bottle of beer in front of her before popping the cap off his own.  “I didn’t mean to bring you down with me.” 

“You didn’t,” she said. 

Geoffrey cocked a skeptical eyebrow. 

“No, really, it was my decision.  They didn’t fire me.  They didn’t have the—the balls.” 

Both of Geoffrey’s eyebrows leapt up in astonishment at hearing the curse out of Anna’s mouth; his surprised-face was so comical that Anna started giggling into the mouth of her beer bottle.

“Richard refused to fire me because we’re friends,” she explained, and even though she couldn’t stop giggling, her voice sounded ugly.  “He doesn’t fire friends, he kept saying that, and I just wanted to—to—to punch him.”

“You should have,” said Geoffrey.  “If there’s anyone who would be improved by a good sock in the jaw, it’s Richard.”

“Why didn’t you stay?” she blurted.  “I thought you’d stay and fight.  Now you’re gone and there’s no one to stand in the way of, of, the bulldozers.”

“I’m sorry,” he said softly.  “I just couldn’t.”

“You’ve stood up to worse.”

“I know, but. . .”  Still touching her arm with one hand, he ran the other through his messy hair.  “It’s not my battle any more.  Does that make sense?  It’s not even that the Festival and I don’t have anything more to say to each other—God, there’s always more to say.  But it’s like. . .you can’t live in your parents’ basement your whole life, you know?  Or rather, you can, but it’s not healthy.  It’s not a good way to grow up.”

Anna nodded.  “When you came back, I thought, oh good, Geoffrey’s come home.”

“You weren’t the only one.”  Geoffrey took a swig of beer.  “I don’t know what I thought I was doing, I spent the whole first year wondering why the hell I’d come back.  And Oliver—well, never mind about him.  The point is, I think I did need to come back.  I was. . .stuck, I guess.  Stuck onstage in the Rose, doing Hamlet, having a mental breakdown in front of two thousand paying customers and everyone I loved most in the world.  I needed to come back in order to get past that.  To get past that self.  To be able to grow up.  Finally.  A little late, some might say embarrassingly late, but in my defense I’ll say that the theatre is a very good place for people to live in perpetual childhood.  Or, let’s say, perpetual adolescence.”

“Granny Conroy would have held your head under the pump ages ago,” said Anna.

“She would undoubtedly have been right to do so.”  Geoffrey raised his bottle and Anna clinked the bottom of hers against it.

“So, you’re moving out and getting your own apartment?  Where you’ll discover that you have no idea how to cook or do laundry or manage your money or have stable romantic relationships?”

Geoffrey winced and took another swallow. “Metaphorically speaking.”

“But you’re not leaving everything behind completely.  You’re not leaving. . . ?”

“Ellen?  No, no, I’ve got a few precious necessities packed in my ba—luggage.    Ellen.  My sanity.  Hard-won, I might add.  It’ll be exciting, trying to grow up together, especially while trying to start over from absolute scratch, financially.  But. . .It’s a challenge I’m looking forward to.”

“Good luck to you,” she said.  “To you both.”

“What about you?” he asked.  “Are you going to be all right?”

“Oh. . .yes, I think so.  It’s—it’s kind of exciting, to suddenly have the rest of your life ahead of you, isn’t it?”

“Oh, yes, that it is.”

“And. . .terrifying.”

“That, too.”  He waved to the bartender to bring them another round, then leaned in close to her with the big solemn eyes that had seldom failed to get actors eating out of his hand and/or falling in love with him.

“But you know what?” he murmured.  “I think you’ll make an absolutely marvelous adult.  God knows you have a hell of a lot more practice than the rest of us.”

Anna put out her hand and stole Geoffrey’s nose. 

He spluttered at her for a moment, and then started talking in a squeaky, stuffed-up voice and wouldn’t stop until she emptied her third (fourth?) beer over his head.  At which point he just fell back against the side of the booth with foam dripping from his hair and howled with laughter, and Anna joined in, forgetting about the audience of strangers who might or might not be watching them.

*     *    *    *   *

After kissing Geoffrey on the cheek and giving him a gentle shove in the direction of Ellen’s house, Anna started walking.  At first, she was heading home, but then she turned right instead of left, and eventually she found herself in the park, looking up at the stars and wondering when she had last thought to look up.

And when she heard the faint sound of a guitar across the swan pond, she took off her shoes and stockings and headed through the dew-damp grass toward the yearning, hopeful music.