RP: Between black and white... Date: May 9, 2006 Characters: Millicent Location: Her home Private/Public: Private Rating: PG-13 Warnings: addiction Summary: The hours before dawn are the hardest ones, and taking a potion given by a healer isn't really addiction, is it?
It was in the hours just before dawn that it was hardest to bare. The pain, the emptiness, the loss. It was then, when the dark and the silence ruled that she felt most alone. Even with Justin sleeping next to her, even with Ella in the room next door, this was when she felt abandoned. This was when she was simply… broken.
She'd tried to fight off the darkness of her mind, tried to think about what she had rather than what she'd lost, tried to not think of how that lost cut her heart in two. And yet every time she looked over at Justin, or saw Ella sleep so soundly in her bed, she could in her mind see the face of the daughter she'd lost. Imagine her. Would her hair have been Justin's, such as Ella's was? Would she have had Justin's eyes, or hers? Every question cut through her, every question made the hole in her chest a bit larger – and yet, in those hours, when darkness was as dark as it could be, the questions were the only company she had as sleep eluded her.
She tried to remind herself, that she was Slytherin, that crying was for the weak, that she needed to be strong, that she couldn't fall apart. Yet in the hours just before dawn nothing made sense, nothing rang true other than the loss that ripped her heart apart. When the night was empty, she was empty too.
It was then, in these hours that the pain became too much to carry, too much for her to resist. In the wee hours of the night, the solution was no longer strength, as she had no strength left to carry her through. It was then the solution lied in the potions that filled her cabinets, that the healers had given her. It was a false solution, and in the harsh light of day she could almost resist. It was in the dark of night the temptation was too large, the sleeplessness too exhausting, the pain too real, too deep.
It was as light started to slowly win over dark she lost her battles, in the hours just before dawn she finally went to sleep. A sleep where Erklings did not call for her child, a sleep she could stand, a sleep that was some semblance of rest before she needed to rise again for another day. It wasn't a bad thing, she said. She needed her sleep. For that she needed her potions.
Just one more.
Just tonight.
Tomorrow she would be stronger.
Tomorrow the pain would lessen enough to make her sleep.
Tomorrow she'd resist. Not tonight. Tonight she needed one more. Just one more.