GW Robichaux

GW Robichaux was a stubborn man, and not one to sit around moping.

With the passage of time and no sign of Meredith, GW concluded that at a minimum she was still upset with him and that worst case scenario she'd broken up with him without bothering to tell him.

He wasn't about to apologize for his words, he'd meant them and still stood by them. That summer spent working for Tante Marie had taught him a great deal about the unintended consequences that could happen to people who messed with magic they didn't understand. The last thing he wanted to see was something happen to Meredith, Elian or Lorne because they went off half cocked in trying to fix the ex-bartender's memory.

So instead of sitting and brooding over his potentially ex-girlfriend, the Cajun had thrown himself into his work. He'd written and rewritten enough music to fill two albums and worked feverishly to promote his band all over the west.

It was late in the evening, and GW was tinkering at home with a song that had been giving him trouble. He'd fiddle a few lines, make a change and fiddle it again, repeating the process over and over until he was satisfied.

Sometimes Meredith had wondered why she even bothered having an apartment. For the amount of time she actually spent there, she half considered throwing her stuff into a storage locker and living out of her car. At least it would be cost effective, because as it stood these days, her apartment was merely just an expensive place to store all her belongings.

The last week or so had been spent, obviously, in the dwelling of her best friend; as indisposed as the green demon had been in his altered state, Meredith clearly could not leave the six year old Lorne by himself. Thus, the reluctant and always-involved brunette had opted to stick around the Nightclub to keep an eye on the curious but otherwise well behaved junior demon.

But taking care of one man in her life had caused Meredith to forget about the other; She had been so completely occupied with picking stray Lucky Charms out of the carpet and inventing new uses for crayons that she had hardly the time to think about the main man in her life.


The last time Meredith spoke with GW, the two parted ways on a sour note. As time had gone by and Meredith remained occupied with Lorne, she had realized at the end of it that she really wasn't angry anymore. In fact, it had come to mind that she couldn't even rationalize her own anger. Although the stubborn brunette was widely known among her peers for being, well, stubborn, it had finally began to dawn on her (after Lorne had sadly informed her about the email he received from his friend that restoring Elian's memory was definitely, one hundred-and-ten percent unprobable), that she and Lorne were just going to have to cut their losses and accept things the way they were.

So after Lorne had been inexplicably restored to his normal self, (which, to Meredith, the whole situation was strange to begin with), the photographer had decided it best to tie up a loose end with her boyfriend before the situation festered more. She honestly wasn't sure how GW was feeling, because she had neglected to even phone him over the last while. If they were even still together, Meredith would honestly be surprised. It would have been her fault, she realized, but she owed it to GW to at least show her face and figure out where they stood.

If anything, apologies never hurt anyone.

Detouring from her own apartment to GW's, Meredith Underhill did something she wasn't known for doing - she swallowed her own damn pride.

Pulling into the driveway of the home she helped to find, the headlights from Meredith's red Accord splayed across the front of the house before she killed the engine. Deep breaths followed, and running the palms of her clammy hands over the knees of her jeans, she readied herself before she got out of the car to knock on the door.

The song was being particularly difficult tonight. GW had a certain sound he was trying to achieve with the melody, and nothing he put down to paper sounded quite right when he tried to play it on the fiddle. But GW was a stubborn Cajun, and he wasn't going to give up on what was potentially his best work yet, if he could just get it out of his head and successfully onto paper. Sometimes he wondered why he couldn't have been like Mozart, who'd been able to composes fully orchestrated music in his head before putting it down to paper.

There was a knock at the door and GW tossed down the pen he'd been chewing on while trying to figure out the song.. Merde, would those kids ever quit? He already subscribed to the damn newspaper and bought candy for the local school fundraiser. What did they want him to do next, open a vein and donate blood?

"I told y'all already, I ain't interested..." he said loudly as he opened the door, his voice trailing off and his dour expression turning to one of surprise as he saw who was on the other side of the door. The last person he'd expected to see.

"Mere...hey."

"Hi."

Large brown eyes lowered and looked away, fingers toying with the hem of her light green teeshirt; She felt awkward and incredibly sheepish. The normally robust and outspoken Meredith was trying her damndest to come to grips with an apology, sometimes it wasn't the easiest thing to admit you were wrong.

"I uh.."

She looked back up at him. Her teeth worked at the inside of her lower lip and her eyes darted back away. For some reason she began to find the mailbox absolutely fascinating. Or not, but all the same, it provided a much needed focal point for an awkward situation.

"I want to talk to you," she began, eyes moving back to his face, "Can I come in?"

At first GW said nothing, he simply drank in her presence since it had been so long since he'd seen her. After a moment his southern instincts kicked in and he stepped back from the doorway, gesturing for her to come in. "O' course you can come in, please."

He was suddenly aware that he hadn't shaved in three days, and the shirt he was wearing had a pizza sauce stain left from lunch earlier in the day. When he got focused on composition, everything else tended to fall by the wayside, as the pile of crumpled up paper next to the sofa attested to. A half used notepad sat on the coffee table next to his fiddle and bow, along with a nearly empty beer bottle resting on a coaster off to one side.

"'Scuse the mess," he apologized, "'been workin' on a song that doesn't wanna come out without a fight."

It had felt like a literal eternity since Meredith had last been there, and GW's house seemed oddly unfamiliar. She supposed she was to blame for that, as it was nearly an eternity since she'd last come by.

Fingers still playing with the material at the bottom of her shirt, Meredith entered the house and ended up in the livingroom. Seemed GW was as busy as she had been over the last while. At least he'd kept himself occupied, and the brunette had wondered if the apparent feverish songwriting had perhaps found inspiration from their current circumstance. Musicians usually thrived on that kind of thing. Hopefully GW wasn't composing the next greatest song entitled, 'Meredith Underhill, What A Bitch.'

Once inside the house, she swallowed hard and sighed. She hoped she could just get this apology thing over and done with and still come out on top with at least a shred of her dignity left.

"Look, I know we parted on bad terms," she stated finally, after releasing her grasp from the bottom of her shirt, "But I'm here because I ... well... I wanted to apologize. For the way I acted."

GW nodded. He knew that must have taken a lot for her to say those words, and figured it might be a good idea to meet her part way. "I'm sorry I lost my temper, I shouldn' have done that. You were worried about Elian an' I wasn't helpin'."

He sighed and ran a hand through his messy hair. Sometimes he thought about going to the barber and getting a high and tight like he'd kept it back in the Corps, low maitenance hair had its advantages. "Mere, I ever tell you I spent a summer workin' fer my Tante Marie when I was a teenager? She actually ran a shop outta her home back in those days."

This apology thing may not have been as hard as Meredith initially suspected; she did know her boyfriend and her seemed to share a common thread of stubbornness, but he seemed open to not wanting to have another fight about it. The last thing that the brunette wanted was a fight about a fight. Perhaps he was just as hopeful to get this entire ordeal under the bridge and out of the way.

"No, you didn't," she replied, turning her face every so slightly to look at him with an eyebrow lightly raised. She wondered what his aunt had to do with any of this, but she offered an open ear anyways. More than likely, there was a point to it.

"Well..." his Cajun accent seemed even more exaggerated as he remembered those days. "It was my first real job, workin' fer my great aunt, th' unofficial head o' th' family an' th' most powerful Witch in Acadia Parish. I was a gopher an delivery boy mostly, gettin' stuff fer her or deliverin' items t' folks who couldn't come t' the house."

He sat down on the couch and gestured for her to join him if she wanted. "There was this one couple, Bobby Jo and Suzie Thibidoux, kids really, younger than you an' me now. They were really into magic, and accordin' t' Tante Marie were decent spellcasters. Anyway, there was this one spell they were just achin' t' try out, a summoning spell apparently, but they mistranslated th' text o' th' spell. They thought they had everything figured out, but the components they bought from Tante weren't right fer th' spell an' when they summoned th' creature it got loose an' went on a killin' spree, startin' with them."

"It took Tante an my Granmere Lucille three days t' track down an' banish whatever it was that th' Thibidouxes summoned, in which time it killed six other folks. That's one o' the main reasons I'm so harsh on messin' with magics folks don't fully understand, I don't wanna see folks gettin' hurt or worse. I especially didn' wanna see you get hurt."

A long sigh was heaved and Meredith pushed her bangs out of her eyes. Her long brown hair had been tied up into a loose bun on top of her head, stray ringlets falling over her brow and over her ears. "Lorne has a friend named Jules," she began to explain to her boyfriend in a tired and subdued voice, "He is an extremely powerful magician or wizard or worlock or whatever who lives in LA.. Lorne knew him back from his days at Wolfram and Hart, and the guy's gotta be like a million years old."

Meredith had never met the man, but Lorne seemed to hold his opinion in high regard. Normally the demon was rather trusting of just about anyone, but when it came to Jules Winnegan, Lorne was firm that the man's integrity was as good as gold. And so was his word.

"Apparently we're not dealing with magic anyways when it comes to Elian," she explained, remembering everything Lorne had told her, "According to Jules, the only way possible to restore Elian's memories is a failsafe of some sort, like a password I guess."

Seemed kind of silly, but all the same.

"Anyway, if Elian had such a thing in place, we figured he would have told Lorne about it," she went on, "And he never mentioned it. Even if there was a failsafe and he told someone about it, without his memories now, we'll never know who it was."

GW chewed on that for a moment, looking for flaws in the argument. He frowned, finding no wiggle room in the statement about the likelihood of Elian's memories being restored. That was too bad, he would have liked to have seen the former bartender's memories return, if only for Meredith's sake. Either version worked just fine for GW.

"He never told Lorne 'bout him bein' a higher being, there must have been a good reason for him t' keep it t' himself, so there's no way t' know if he had a failsafe or no," he shrugged and looked at his girlfriend wryly, "Guess we'll just have t' pray fer him t' somehow come across th' failsafe on his own, assumin' he had one. Th' odds are probably 'bout th' same as winnin' th' lottery though."

As far as he was concerned, the subjects of Elian and the earlier argument were now closed.

The Cajun eyed Meredith speculatively. As far as he was concerned she looked great, if a bit nervous. It was time to finish clearing the air between them. "So....where does that leave us? You willin' t' put up with a stubborn an' slightly opinionated Cajun?"

Meredith heaved a sigh. She was reluctant to close the book on the subject, but in reality, she would more than likely drive herself crazy trying to find something that didn't even exist. She'd probably end up finding Jimmy Hoffa first, or Atlantis.

Sometimes, you really did have to cut your losses and move.

Except in the case of her relationship, because it appeared at least that was able to be saved.

A small smile was offered to her boyfriend. "Yeah of course," she told him response, "It's only fair, I mean, you have to put up with a stubborn Canadian.."

A matching smile crossed GW's face, along with something akin to relief. He'd been afraid that the issue of Elian's memory had damaged their relationship beyond repair, and was glad to find out that it wasn't the case.

She was still standing there awkwardly, so the Cajun patted his lap, "You look like y' could take a load off, chere, why don' y' have a sit an tell me whats been goin' on?"

"Would you believe i've been babysitting?" Meredith answered him, relieved in the subject change. The conversation's move in another direction had been an excellent way to help clear some of the tension that was lingering in the air, and the photographer was able to relax a bit, realizing things weren't as bad as she had originally thought.

"I don't know how Lorne does it, but he manages to get himself into more trouble than anyone i've ever known," she went on to explain, smiling and offering a small chuckle. "I mean normally I feel like I'm babysitting him anyways, but this time it was literal. He turned his clock back a good thirty years and I had a plucky little six year old on my hands. I don't know what caused it, but Lorne seems to think it was his run-in with a creepy little girl in Searchlight a couple weeks ago."

Again, yet another reason why Meredith really needed to stay away from that town.

"He's back to normal again, but it was definitely an experience," she added. "I had my hands full."

GW's eyebrows nearly went up to his hairline at Meredith's explanation. Lorne as a six year old? The mind boggled. Meredith definitely had been handed a full plate while they'd been apart, and he was glad that the reversion had been temporary. Trying to raise a green skinned red eyed demon child would have been a difficult prospect at best.

"I think I'll keep my visits t' Searchlight confined t' the Nugget or the VFW hall, th' place is seems t' be a supernatural trouble magnet."

He gestured toward the Violin and notepad full of scrawled music notation, "I've been a mite busy myself, what with workin' on the' album and takin' road trips t' promote the band."

Meredith had definitely noticed the abundance of scrap paper lying around, and figured it was the result of a busy musician hard at work. She was glad things were going so well for him and his band; she couldn't think of anything worse for a band than having no gigs or no ideas for new music.

"I'm glad to hear it," she told him with a smile, "I was going to ask you how the band was doing, but I guess by the looks of things around here, things are really taking off. I'm sorry I haven't been to any of your shows in town.. but yeah, last time I checked, they don't exactly allow six year olds into bars."

Although technically, younger Lorne had been so absolutely fascinated by the television, that Meredith could have left him sitting infront of it for three days and he probably wouldn't have budged an inch. But what kind of caregiver would she had been if she left her best friend to starve to death?

She gave her boyfriend a sheepish little smile. "Do you have any shows coming up soon?" she asked him, "Because I really want to make up for lost time and come show some support."

"I can imagine," GW told his girlfriend wryly, "I would have liked t' have seen Lorne as a little squirt though, I imagine it would've been a sight, you bet."

Since his girlfriend didn't seem to be moving over to where he was, he'd move to where she was. GW stood up from the couch and walked toward the brunette. "We've got a gig comin' up next friday at th' Orleans. We're gonna take a road trip t' California next month, have a couple gigs in LA an' San Diego." He was pleased that his hard work promoting the band was paying off and it showed. Meredith had certainly chosen a good subject to break the ice.

"I'd love t' have you at one o' our gigs, chere."

Meredith offered a warm smile. "I'll definitely come," she told him, "Front row."

It had literally seemed like forever since she had seen GW. But when he moved closer to her, the nearness of his presence and his scent alone was enough to bring back that welcome sense of familiarity that was missing over the last few weeks.

Unsure of whether or not she would be crossing her bounds, Meredith was hesitant to move; but pushing uncertainty aside, finally went to embrace the Cajun carefully and gingerly, unknowing of his reaction. Then again, she hardly cared. She just wanted to hold him again.

"I really did miss you," she admitted, finally.

"I was beginin' t' think I'd never see y' again," GW confessed as he wrapped his arms around her. "If I hadn't heard from y' soon, I figured I'd come an' find out one way or th' other." The awkwardness of the hug's start was a testament to how much time they'd spent apart and the poor parting the last time they'd been together. But the awkwardness soon passed and he tightened his hold, inhaling the sweet scent of her perfume.

"I missed you too."

Meredith sighed, mostly in relief. She wasn't known to be one who openly admitted fault, being as stubborn as she was. This whole apology ordeal had been much easier than she thought.

The hardest part about it would be to finally let go of the hope that she could fix Elian. Meredith could fix alot of things, and in the past she had made it through by the skin of her teeth; her karmic power had come into play most of the time, and had been a great help. She had considered herself lucky to possess such a talent when other people did not. Having the ability to pull strings was a great deal of help when one set out to accomplish difficult things.

However, when it came to bringing back one of her best friends, Meredith had finally conceded that she was helpless to save him. It was just something she had to accept.


But there were still some things Meredith knew she could save, and knowing that, she wouldn't let GW go without a fight. Smiling finally at her boyfriend, the steadfast brunette pushed hair out of her face which held a newfound expression of acceptance and resolve.

"We never did get to have dinner together," she told him finally. "Are you hungry?"