FIC: Requiem for a Daisy (PD)
Title: Requiem for a Daisy
Rating: PG
Fandom: Pushing Daisies
Word count: ~2600
Spoilers: Post 2.07 "Robbing Hood"
Summary: The Pie Hole gang reacts to their show's cancellation. A little silly, a little sad, lots of fourth-wall breakage.
Disclaimer: None of it's mine, except for my sorrow.
AN: First PD fic! This idea was keeping me up until 3 AM last night and wouldn't let me go until I was done. Thanks, plot bunny, for keeping me from my pile of work. Italics = Jim Dale.
At this very moment in the Pie Hole, everything appeared to be perfectly normal. The Piemaker and the girl called Chuck worked in the back room: the Piemaker’s touch brought dead apples back to life, while Chuck cut them into chunks for the day’s batch of pies. Olive Snook was in the front, serving the customers their pie and coffee. But everything changed once some visitors came through the front door…
“It’s completely outrageous!” Lily Charles fumed, followed closely by her sister Vivian (Chuck ducked behind the counter in the back room just in time so they wouldn’t spot her). “What the hell is wrong with the world?”
…bearing some very unwelcome news indeed.
“What’s going on?” Olive asked worriedly as Chuck’s aunts sat at the Pie Hole’s counter.
“Lily is very distressed,” Vivian explained in her calm, breathy way. “We got the newspaper today and it had… this headline.” Reaching into her purse, Vivian drew out a newspaper clipping bearing the headline: “Pushing Daisies” Is Pushing Daisies: ABC Cancels Three Struggling Sophomore Shows. Ned gaped at the headline, unable to believe the words that were printed there. Olive covered her mouth with her hands as she read and reread and rereread the headline and accompanying article, waiting for the news to sink in, to make any kind of sense.
“I hate that headline,” was the only thing Olive could think to say, handing the article back to Vivian with trembling hands. “It’s bad enough to hear that kind of news; we don’t need to have it made ‘cutesy’ by a bunch of worn-out old death puns.” She faked a laugh at her own quip to hide how her heart was breaking.
“I agree,” Lily said rather grumpily. “You all don’t have an open bar here, do you? I need a martini.”
“We have pie,” Olive said. “I’ll go get you some pear with Gruyere, shall I?”
Ned found his voice at this. “Uh… no,” he corrected the tiny waitress, with an anxious half-glance back at the kitchen. “We’re all out of-“
CLATTER.
The words had not left the Piemaker’s mouth before a warm pie plate, full of pear pie with Gruyere crust, clattered onto the counter between the kitchen and the counter. The girl called Chuck had made the pie that morning, dosing it with the usual homeopathic mood enhancers she used especially for her aunts.
“It smells delicious!” Vivian said, leaning around the Piemaker’s lanky frame to gaze greedily at the freshly baked pie.
“Just give us the whole damn thing,” Lily said, gesturing with her clawlike hand. The two former synchronized swimmers grabbed forks and began to devour the pie, drowning their sorrows in drugged baked goods. Olive let out a sniffle.
“I’m s-sorry,” she sobbed as Vivian cast her a sympathetic glance and Lily gave her the stink-eye with the only eye she had. “It’s j-just… hard to deal with the idea that our world is ending, you know?”
Lily nodded emphatically, her mouth too full of pie to make a snarky remark.
“There’s still some hope,” Vivian told her optimistically as she wiped her mouth on a napkin. “We can write more letters to ABC, to let them know that we don’t want to die and need more time to blossom.”
“Screw that,” said Lily as she gulped her mouthful of pear and Gruyere. “Let’s go over to the station and let ‘em have it!” She got up from the counter, pulling out some money to pay for their pie. “Come on, Viv. I’ll get my gun.”
“And I’ll get some daisy seeds!” Vivian chirped as they left the Pie Hole to head back to Coeur d’Coeurs. As soon as they had left, Chuck came out of hiding and sat in Lily’s recently vacated stool. Olive left for the privacy of the kitchen, tears beginning to course down her cheeks more heavily now, leaving Ned and Chuck to face each other across the counter.
“What were you talking about?” Chuck wanted to know, looking at her boyfriend with concern. “What was in that article?”
Ned took a while to answer her, rubbing the back of his neck nervously, uncertain how exactly to tell her the news. “We’ve sort of… been canceled,” he mumbled as he looked away, not wanting to see her reaction.
Chuck looked at him in shock. “Canceled?” she repeated as though she couldn’t believe it.
“Yeah,” he replied slowly.
“But… but we’re just starting to hit our stride!” Chuck said, aghast.
“I know,” Ned said sadly.
“There’s all the intrigue over Dwight and my father’s watch, not to mention how he’s unearthed my secret and is trying to ruin everything!”
“I know,” Ned said again, more emphatically, shuddering involuntarily at the thought of the evil man.
“And I’ve finally heard Lily admit that she’s my mother and we’re all finally starting to get closure to the fact that I’m dead…” Chuck’s voice trembled and she bowed her head as her eyes brimmed with tears. Ned looked at her sadly, separated from his grieving girlfriend by the gleaming countertop.
The Piemaker longed to hold the girl he called Chuck in his arms, to comfort her in this dreadful time and tell her that everything would be all right. But sadly, he could not.
“Oh, thanks, Mr. Narrator,” Ned said, irritated, to the ceiling. “Being canceled’s bad enough without you constantly having to remind us of that situation.”
I’m only reminding the viewers of the show’s basic premise.
“What viewers?” Chuck said sadly, stroking Digby as he came over, whining sadly, to lean against her leg. “Obviously we don’t have that many, since if we were getting any new viewers we wouldn’t be canceled…”
“And everyone who’s already watching should be familiar enough with the concept of the show to not need this ‘Pushing Daisies for Dummies’ segment every week,” Ned added.
I’m sorry. I’m just reading the script. It’s the network’s only attempt to catch up nonexistent new viewers.
“That’s what the ‘previouslys’ are for,” Ned reminded the unseen omniscient narrator.
“Aren’t you upset about this too?” Chuck asked the ceiling. “You sound so calm about the fact that the world is coming to an end.”
Of course I’m upset. Where else am I going to get to say vaguely ghetto things in my far-too-proper British accent?
“Ooh, that reminds me,” said Chuck, perking up a little. “Can you say ‘badass’ again?”
The narrator sighed in resignation. "Badass".
Chuck giggled for only a moment before falling back into despondency. The narrator's utterance of the word "badass", while momentarily hilarious, did nothing to soothe the troubled feelings she felt. She felt as if she were choking on a big wet wad of fear and anxiety. Struck by a sudden inspiration, Ned went into the kitchen to find Olive, who was belting with her back to the kitchen door, as the orchestra in her broken heart had burst forth once more.
“I can’t liiiiiiiiiiiive if livin’ is without you!” the petite blonde woman was belting. “I can’t liiiiiiiiiiiiive… can’t give any mooooooore…”
Ned cleared his throat, causing Olive to whip around in surprise. “Oh! Ned!” she said, obviously flustered. “I didn’t see you there.” Her tears had caused her eye makeup to run, creating little black rivers that still ran down her cheeks.
“Sorry to bother you, Olive,” Ned began awkwardly, “but it seems like Chuck’s taking the news pretty hard. Would you mind… giving her a hug for me?”
Olive wiped away some of her mask of tears. “Sure thing, Ned,” she said, smiling and nodding in consent. She walked briskly out of the kitchen to Chuck, enveloping her in a sisterly embrace. “Unless you wanted something a bit... less sisterly?” she asked Ned, who had followed her.
The Piemaker smiled in his shy way, rare dimples appearing in his cheeks. “No,” he told Olive. “You’re doing fine. The hug’s from me,” he explained to a puzzled Chuck. She smiled gratefully at him and whispered something in Olive’s ear. Almost immediately, Olive released the Lonely Tourist and leapt across the counter toward Ned, wrapping her arms around his waist in a tight squeeze.
“And that one’s from me,” Chuck told Ned, smiling a bit more happily now, having been soothed by Ned’s emotional Heimlich, given by proxy through Olive.
The two star-crossed lovers gazed happily into each other’s eyes, enjoying one of their last moments of happiness before the imminent cancellation.
“It’s from me, too!” Olive added, her voice muffled by Ned’s navel. She paused. “Ned… do you have something under your apron?”
Sighing, Ned reached down and pulled the rolling pin out of his apron pocket once again. “I don’t have anywhere else to keep it for pie-making emergencies,” he explained to an embarrassed Olive Snook.
Just then, Emerson Cod burst through the door to the Pie Hole, scanning the bakery for the Piemaker. He had been sitting in his office, knitting a shovel cozy, when he had gotten a phone call that required his immediate action.
“I need you to talk to someone for me,” he told Ned in an undertone, trying not to have Olive overhear him.
The facts were these: one Doctor William “Billy” Horrible, aged thirty-one years, forty-three weeks, four days, thirty-one hours, and twenty-six minutes…
“Never mind that!” Ned said to Emerson, interrupting the narrator. “We don’t have time to solve any Dead Guy of the Week cases when we’ve only got five or six episodes left to tie up all the loose storylines!” The news was making him unusually frazzled; he was currently fighting the urge to stress-bake, not wanting to walk out in the middle of this important conversation.
“What are you talking about?” Emerson asked him, looking at the women, completely lost. “Olive, what happened to your eyes?”
“We’ve been canceled, Emmy,” Olive told him sadly.
The private investigator glared at her. “I told you, only my momma gets to call me that,” he told her sternly. “And what do you mean, ‘canceled’? We’re having a season so good, it’s making Grey’s Anatomy sick with jealousy!”
“But no one’s watching,” Ned pointed out. “Which means ABC can’t afford to keep us on any longer.”
Emerson gaped at the Piemaker. “Oh, HAAAYULL NO,” he finally let out. “You did not just tell me that we’re all being killed off ‘cause of the money.”
Emerson Cod thought of all the ways money had helped him over the years: paying his bills, keeping his wallet full, giving him a reason to keep knitting money cozies. And then he thought of L’il Gumshoe, and how the show’s cancellation might mean that he would never get to see her again…
“Who’s L’il Gumshoe?” Olive wanted to know, looking curiously from the ceiling to Emerson.
“Long-lost daughter,” Emerson said with a gruff tone that hid how upset he was over the news.
“You have a long-lost daughter?” Olive and Chuck asked in unison. Emerson ignored them both, looking sadly at the bare counter in front of him.
“I’ll get you a slice of rhubarb,” Olive said, taking the hint and scurrying off toward the kitchen to fetch the private investigator his pie.
“Keep it comin’,” Emerson said in a voice choked with the emotion he’d smothered in gruffness. Ned shoved his hands in his pockets and gazed sadly at the floor.
Constantly surrounded by death as he was, the Piemaker had thought idly about the ending his own life might have. He’d seen people murdered by ghosts, blown up by a scratch-and-sniff book, killed with kindness… all things they had no way of preparing for. But he’d never thought this would all end so abruptly, just as things were beginning to get good for him. He and Chuck had just begun to find real happiness with one another. He was just beginning to excel at his part-time job as a private investigator. For the very first time, his pie bakery was not on the verge of financial ruin. Yet this was all about to come to a crashing halt. And even old wounds, left from his lonely childhood, were finally beginning to heal themselves. The Piemaker thought of his illusionist twin half-brothers, Maurice and Ralston, and how he was just beginning to know them, sealing the hole in his heart left by his father’s abandonment twenty years prior…
“Would you quit restating facts our five loyal viewers already know?” Emerson told the ceiling in annoyed, clipped tones.
I told you, it’s in the script. I can’t help it.
“The ceiling’s got a point, though,” Olive pointed out as she came back with Emerson’s pie. “This is kind of the first time things have started to look up for all of us. Well, not me, so much,” she amended, remembering that her major issue - her unrequited love for the Piemaker - was unlikely to have a happy ending for her even with a thousand more episodes. “But definitely for you, Ned, your life’s starting to not suck!”
“Can we please not talk so cavalierly about my childhood trauma?” Ned mumbled, hands still in his pockets.
Their conversation was interrupted by a shriek and a crash from across the street. The four Pie Holers looked out the window to see Dilly Balsam, owner of Balsam’s Bitter Sweets, destroying her own store and, if her reddened face was any indication, screaming her head off.
“Bitter much?” Olive quipped, watching Dilly continue her tantrum with bemusement.
“She must have heard the news too,” Chuck mused.
“Yeah,” Emerson added, looking over his shoulder as Dilly tore down the mechanized taffy puller over her door. “I heard she’s being exiled to suburbia to have inane patio conversations with Selma Blair.”
Ned winced. “That’s rough.”
“Come on, guys!” Chuck said, looking at everyone’s subdued faces. “It won’t be so bad! Sure, we might only have a few more episodes to go, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make the most of them, right?” Olive smiled and nodded in agreement. “You know, some shows get dragged out forever until they’re only a shadow of their former selves. Look at House, look at ER, look at Law & Order…”
“Look at Grey’s Anatomy!” Emerson piped up, his mouth full of pie. "That show's being smothered by its own popularity!"
“Right!” Chuck said, nodding at the private investigator in agreement. “At least we get to go out on top! If not in viewership, then at least in quality, which I think is better.”
Ned seemed to have taken Chuck’s words deeply to heart. “You’re right,” he said with more confidence than he’d had in his entire adult life, squaring his shoulders. “Maybe it’s better that we’re being canceled before we have a chance to jump the shark. It’s not our fault that no one appreciated us while we were here.”
“Some people did,” Emerson pointed out as he took another bite of rhubarb. “Just not enough of ‘em. I blame reality TV.”
“It’s not anyone’s fault,” Olive amended. “It’s just… bad news for a lot of people out there.”
“And us,” Chuck reminded them. “And if it’s anyone’s fault, it’s the network’s.”
“Yeah, that’s true,” Ned conceded.
“Now, come on, Ned!” Chuck said, getting up from her stool at the counter and trying to infuse some life into the Piemaker’s troubled heart. “Let’s make some pies with fruit you haven’t brought back to life, and throw them at the ABC station!”
Though he normally didn’t believe in retaliation, the Piemaker felt that in this situation, when greedy corporate suits were trying to kill him, it was more than warranted, so he agreed.
“Yes!” Ned agreed, standing back as she led the way into the kitchen. Emerson got up, having finished his pie, to call more networks that could possibly give them a new home. Olive was left standing behind the counter to wonder to herself:
“What do you mean, ‘brought back to life’?”