Shotgun

The March played, droningly. She stepped forward. Stop. Step. Stop. Step. Halfway to the altar. Smile, Love, don't forget to smile. They're watching you. All eyes on the beautiful bride. My wasn't her gown so lovely? Designer, you know, father of the bride pays, and he let her choose whatever she wanted. There was no gown to pass down the generations here, no, certainly not. She was the first of her family since the fire to have been wed, afterall.

But wasn't it a pretty veil, as well? So delicate- hand-stitched, they had said. If only that girl would quit dragging her feet. Didn't she know she'd scuff up the ornate slippers? Didn't she know that people could hear her? Surely even such a young lady (for rumor had it the very Bride was only seventeen) had some composure!

The flower girl followed closely behind. Dani- sorry, Danielle, Danielle, it was all she'd been hearing for the past month. From his relatives, from her more distant kin. From the lovely old men and middle-aged women at all the bridal shops. Why, Miss, sorry, Missus in just a matter of minutes, Danielle Dockland. Dear god, Double D's! What had she been thinking, to say yes to such a proposal? She was not Mrs. Danielle Dockland, she was Dani, Dani Fulkes, and damn proud of it.

Step. Stop. The March died off, with a brisk final pling of the organ. A vehement, agitated sound if she had ever heard one. Someone on His side of the pews coughed. Someone on Her side sobbed loudly. I feel ya sister. I'm not too happy about it either. Dani thought to herself, then felt like puking from shame.

"Dearly beloved," the minister began. His voice was soft, yet it easily filled the small church with an echoing cadence that was either rather beautiful, or completely vile, depending on whose point of view you chose to adopt.

xXx

"We are gathered here today..."

His hands were sweating. Oh god were they. He wondered if it would be improper just now to unbutton his tux and allow a little air to pass through? Afterall, it was an old building, bad ventilation was obvious. And with so many people packed into those strained wooden benches, Oh god, it must be a hundred degrees.

Ronald was positively terrified. That lovely girl, no, girl didn't work, woman next to him was about to be his wife. And he would be her husband. They would finish school, and in a few months, they would be living together, in Michigan, alone. He choked at the fact that the two had only last week shared their first true night together. Since meeting everything was distance, distance, distance...

It had been short, the time they had spent in New York. It had been short, yes, sweet, bittersweet, but perfectly enough for him to fall madly in love with her. (Or so the family would quote years later, plied by liquor and by the fire's obnoxious persistence, as they discussed The Woman. For she was never referred to by name, but only as The Woman, who had set uncle Ron to drinking before the crows came up.)

And when Billy had suggested (and who the hell ever thought BIlly would turn out to be a romantic?) that he make an honest woman of her... well, hell, it sounded like Christmas.

xXx

This was beginning to feel like Halloween, it really bore a startling resemblance. All decked out in garments out of date, the old ones pulling hard candy out of stiff purses to pacify the babes of their own young. The walls and eaves hung with streamers and the thickest and most medieval of drapery. The minister himself seemed like he'd be perfectly at home should his altar be replaced with a cauldron of boiling sludge, should his robes be turned to rags. The perfect wicked warlock to bind the maiden to her fate.

Oh god, he was halfway through the rites, er, vows.

xXx

"Through richer or poorer."

They were really doing this, no going back now. God, his legs were shaking so badly, the sparrows in the outer buttresses must surely be startled from their nests. He knew he couldn't possibly be ready for this. But Dani... she had seemed so sure. And all he wanted was to see her happy... and if this was happiness, then-

xXx

"In sickness," Oh god, she was going to be sick alright, sick all over their pretty white marble.

"And in health." For the first time since this morning, she stole a glance at Ron. He was terrified. It was plain. And the sickness tuned itself from eleven back to six or eight. He was so young. She was too, of course, but Dani had been through enough. Ronald was just so young. And she didn't want to take that from him. But, hell, if it makes you happy Love...

xXx

This was it. He'd pattered through all the customary vows. Any second it would be, it would be... he swallowed hard.

"Do you take this woman..."

He blinked several times to focus his mind, wet his lips. The room was still with expectancy, only a couple scattered sniffles could be deciphered.

"I...I do." he felt all of a sudden terribly light-headed. He did? If that was how they wanted it. He supposed that they'd be alright. One way or another. Dani squeezed his hand, and the meditative state ended abruptly.

xXx

"And do you, Danielle, take this man..."

Take him anywhere. She would, she would, how about skipping to the honeymoon at the Falls? Anything but this, here, now.

Her mother coughed. It was a sharp thing and not one of clearance so much as of scorn.

"Miss?" the minister asked with fragile courtesy. You could tell he'd seen a few brides, maybe even grooms panic and flee in his day... but, she wondered, had he ever seen a whole couple up and leave?

She thought not. And, shaking her head vigorously (which raised a whole chorus of gasps and rebuttals from the audience. For it was an audience as surely as the church was a great stage and the wedding a spring play.) she turned briskly, never once releasing Ron's hand, and Marched (step, step, step, step, no stopping here) through the open doors, exiting sternward and grinning at the sight of the sleek white sedan with "Just Married" scrawled messily in shoe polish across its rear window.

Inside the Audience were slowly making the transition from a collected company to an angry mob. Afterall, these were their lives at stake, surely. She stopped, briefly, and faced him, making the 6 inch difference in height almost unnoticeable by the firey glimmer of her stare.

xXx

He knew that stare. It brought back memories of meeting in a different world from this one in The Nature. Out ten miles from anything that remotely resembled 21st century civilization. Once upon a time, only two years ago actually, the two of them colliding near the hotel's entrance. That electric stare that made you want to follow her anywhere.

And the afternoon when her mother finally woke up, and they began to argue. And when Dani had stomped from the room, and caught him in the hallway, she had pulled him to the elevator. In that brief instant before the doors slid open on the fourth floor, he understood that emotion, wrapped however deeply in passion, could indeed be transmitted through the flesh, and as they approached the street, she uttered one word, "Drive." Followed by that stare that told you the ends of the earth really weren't so hard to find.

xXx

She waited for his response, to see a shift in his features. Hurt, confusion, something familiar. The way he had been on that rainy day in Manhattan. When for the very first time she didn't feel poor and trapped and small. He opened the passenger door for her, and for those few hours, they were free.

But this was different. They weren't kids and they weren't running from someone else's lives. They were going to have to start making their own. She had three more months before that black deadly serpent, before the disease would strike her lungs. And she was beginning to realize, for once, that no matter how hard you fight, some things really are beyond your control.

But not the wedding, not today, today was theirs.

He smiled, and with an easy twist, slid over the hood of the car, and hopped into the driver's seat. Dani wasted no time in joining him behind the dash.

xXx

The engine started with a smooth roar, and she said, "Drive."