Title: A Hitch In Fate
Author: Prentice (slyprentice)
Category: The Great Gatsby
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting , Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Romance
Ship: Nick Carraway/Jay Gatsby (eventually), implied Gatsby/Daisy
Overall Rating: Mature
Warnings:references to character death (both permanent and temporary), grief, infidelity, alcoholism/addiction, addiction recovery, child neglect, and suicidal thoughts. Some OOC. Unbeta'd.
Author's Note: Please note that this is a modern au and takes place five years after the events of the what would be a modern version of the novel. Due to this, there will be some obvious changes to tone and the characters. For example, in this fic, instead of ending up in a sanatorium, Nick ends up in rehab.

Summary: Five years on and Nick is still trying to pick-up all the pieces. Luckily for him, he gets a little help.

The funeral takes place in November; a heavy icy mist blanketing the whole affair and giving the casket an eerie, almost uncanny, glow. From his place in the back of the mourners, Nick fights back against the burn of exhaustion singing in his veins, head lowered in a respectable show of grief. In this miserable dream-like haze, no one will notice that he hasn't shed a tear; that any tears he might have had had dried up a long time ago.

"I can't believe this happened," a woman standing in front of him, some distant relative he's never met before today, says to the woman standing next to her. Moisture clings to the edge of both of their fur-lined coats, the white-gray-black of them strangely gaudy in the blueish dew that hangs over them all. "She was so young."

The woman next to her, pale faced save for her ruby red lipstick, shakes her head in silent agreement. It's the same thing they've all been saying over the last few hours; repeated over and over in the same sort of whispered tone, as if they are worried someone might overhear them – or worse, not overhear them. It would have been funny, if it wasn't so...

Throat clicking under a dry swallow, Nick blinks away the dew from his eyelids, palm itching for the shape of a drink in his hand. He won't have one – hasn't done for months now; the six month sobriety coin heavy in his jacket pocket – but he still wants the shape of one in his hand. The easy comfort of something cool and familiar and satisfying.

But – no, just no. He'd given that up. He'd given that all up.

"Such a tragedy," the woman in front of him says, murmurs really, and Nick thinks she's probably right. It is a tragedy. A horrible goddamn tragedy, just like every other goddamn thing that has happened in the last five years.

Tragedy or not, though, it's almost – poetic isn't the word but it's something very close to it.

"We'll miss you, Daisy."

The icy mist clings on for days after the funeral, slicking the roads and making an already miserable experience worse. Nick spends most of his time drifting through the silent hallways of one of the Buchanan residences', half-dazed and half-dreading the moment that someone realizes he's still there. He shouldn't – it would be a relief to finally have an excuse to leave and get back to his rundown little apartment – but he knows what will come and he hates the idea of it.

Daisy is – was – the last link to a life that seems like a dream to him now and, though there were times that he hated his cousin to the depths of his soul, he misses her now more than ever. Loves her now more than ever, if only because she is gone and he will never – they will never – there will be no reconciliation. No happy ending, in as much as there can be one, and he thinks, perhaps, that is the greatest tragedy of all.