Darker London

Noah hadn't actually told Liz the name of the friend he was bringing with him when they trooped over for dinner, but it hardly mattered to Liz. The more the merrier! She had been pottering around in the kitchen since six in the morning and when Emma had risen and joined her at eight, the other woman had laughed fondly. "Excited about company, Liz?"

"Four kids!" Liz exclaimed as she threw things into the slow-cooker. "I can't wait to squish their little faces!"

"I can't wait to sit on your face," Emma said with a sly grin, just as Hope walked in for her morning coffee. "Well hello, Hope!" Emma said loudly, turning bright red.

"Not the worst thing I've walked in on you two doing," Hope said amused. "I'll just get coffee and go, but yes, Mum, I will be here for dinner, before you ask me for the eleventh time!" Hope filled her mug with coffee and headed back to her room. The second she was gone, both Liz and Emma snorted and grasped each other, laughing delightedly.

That was how the day went on, and the house gradually filled with the delightful smell of Irish Stew. Liz made soda bread from scratch and Emma made up some cold brew tea. By the time Daria and Noah arrived, entourage in tow, the table was set and everything was ready.

Joss woke up bleary, rotten and heavy as a corpse as he heaved himself up in bed. His blankets had twisted and mostly fallen to the floor and there was a smell from the half dozen mostly-empty coffee cups gathered at his bedside. It was his own fault, the cups, the smell, and he could easily do something about it, and yet he didn’t grab any of them as he made his way down to the kitchen for another one.

I’ll clean them all up in one go, he thought. Later. When I do laundry. Something else he hadn’t done in a while.

( ... )

Daria woke up slowly, Noah asleep by her side, and guilt waiting for her, perched on the edge of the bed. The latter was a difficult thing to wake up to, and becoming more familiar by the day. She'd heard Noah get up a couple of times in the night to feed the babies, though at the time she'd pretended to be asleep, selfishly clinging on to the hope that she would not have to open her eyes. Yes she had, rather desperately, needed the sleep, but she felt terrible about it now.

And so bad about last night. Noah had told her he was having nightmares about Pat, nightmares about her putting her hands around his neck. And Daria was not at all impressed with how she'd reacted. It had overwhelmed her, and when he'd needed her to comfort him she'd been panickedly grasping for a way to comfort herself, but feeling too guilty over needing comfort to summon any, even for herself.

Bloody hell.

( ... )

Stephie had offered to go round and talk to Noah, despite the fact that, admittedly, she was a little reluctant. No actually, scratch the admittedly; she was not going to admit her reluctance. Well maybe to Thomas, maybe later, but not before she’d actually got up the guts to talk to Noah. She had balanced out her impulse to help him against the weight of the topic of conversation, and if she’d been any less stubborn then the desire not to talk about it probably would have won.

Who wanted to talk about surviving a demon who stole the face – the body – of one of their best friends? And what he’d done to her with it. There was a lump in Stephie’s throat, but she already knew, before she even replied, that she was going to make the offer.

Noah was sweet, and tall and soft and earnest and funny and flinching because some dickhead ghost had forced his girlfriend to try and kill him. Pat had almost killed him, too. Stephie remembered the long nights spent at the hospital with Daria as Daria waited for Noah to wake up, as Stephie waited for Tasha. That had been a pretty firm fucking bonding experience, right there.

So she did it, she jumped the fence and tried not to sink too much into the mud of the back lawn (Marie and Cassandra had been having a field day earlier, there were tyre tracks from a tricycle and gashes of fist sized mud missing from the lawn that had ended up in the bottom of Thomas’s washing machine.) The kid stuff made Stephie feel all the more determined. If she could do something about one of the twins’ parents feeling flinch about the other, then great, good, that was worth ripping up old wounds for.

Stephie touched the phoenix necklace at her throat to remind herself where she was, now, and rapped on the door.

“Dammit,” Daria hissed, as several shards of shell from the egg she’d cracked fell into the bowl with the egg. She took a moment to suck in air through her nose but this did nothing to calm her, and she dug into the eggy slime with a frustrated finger, trying to hook the shell back up the lip of the bowl.

“I can do this,” Yolande said cheerfully, reaching to take the bowl away from Daria.

“I can make my own daughter’s birthday cake!” Daria snapped, gripping the bowl close to her. “Fucks sake.”

( ... )

“Daria Persephone,” said her mother’s voice, and Daria looked up blearily from where she was staring at the padded corner of the coffee table. There was nothing particularly interesting about it, it had simply been where her eyes had fallen and refused to get up. Dragging her gaze away from the table was an effort incomparable to anything else she’d been through.

Yolande was wearing one of Daria’s Ethereal Façade shirts to sleep in and looked like she’d stepped out of another time. “You should be asleep.”

( ... )

“Dad’s coming in after dinner with my girls,” Daria whispered to her mother, reading off the phone that Noah was holding, since both her hands were occupied with a breastfeeding Alastair. “And Merry again, and Hayley,” she watched her mother’s face as Yolande covered her mouth with her hands to keep the joy from bursting out. Daria felt the same, but with extra layers of tired, and extra layers of sore. She’d always been active, loved the gym, athletic sex, and finding new ways to push her body, but right now there were muscles aching she’d never thought about before. Her whole body felt like it had fallen out of a tree.

She had fallen out of a tree once too. She’d been getting high with Adam in after school and leaned back too far, hit another branch on the way down and was lucky not to break anything. It hadn’t been a very tall tree, but she was discovering new bruises for days.

“Neil and Merry and Hayley,” Yolande echoed, voice creeping out through her fingers. “Cassandra and Phoebe and Neil and Merry and Hayley.”

“I think we should tell Cass and Bee that you’re an Auntie, or something – I don’t want them telling their preschool they got two new siblings and a granny back from the dead,” Daria said, picturing it. Or rather – she didn’t want other adults telling Phoebe and Cassandra that they were making up stories when they weren’t. “That should work, right?” she looked over at Noah.

Merry had been struggling through the last few months in a way she was very reluctant to describe as struggling. She had support from her family and a nice place to live and a cat with more personality than ears – it wasn’t like she was homeless or suffering abuse or living in a war zone or anything. She even had proper medical support and a doctor who understood the reality of all the things that had happened to her. She was so fucking lucky.

Life was just... gruelling, and from where she was standing at the moment it was hard to see any progress and harder still to see how things could improve. Today, for example, progress was not feeling like progress at all: She’d started talking in group therapy and afterward she felt wretched.

She’d gone with Joss a few times before now. Joss, who also didn’t talk much but seemed less like he was suffocating under the weight of not-talking than she did. It had taken her weeks and weeks to first identify where this suffocating feeling was coming from and then longer to come to terms with the idea that talking about it might not destroy her as much as she’d once been convinced it would.

( ... )

Daria had done pain before. When Pat cut her left arm open using her right, when he’d stabbed her hand, her throat, cracked her ribs while she was still healing from her c-section. She’d done pain, and while none of that was pain like this, the ghosts of the old pain crowded into the hospital room with her. The threat of being overpowered, incapacitated. Made it hard to think straight.

She’d got down to a contraction every three minutes but around four in the afternoon they’d dropped back to eight minutes apart and after the second eight minute wait she’d thrashed her pillow with her fist in frustration. Then another hit, just before the five minute mark, and the peak of it was so bad she held her breath, fists gripping the blankets while she waited for it to pass. “Breathe, Daria,” Neil reminded her.

( ... )

Daria had decided a long time ago that anyone who ever described children’s footsteps as a ‘pitter patter’ had never met her children, who were currently sprinting through the house like a herd of wild elephants. “Stop! Running! Inside!” she called after them as Phoebe chased Cassandra through the living room. Cassandra shouted something that translated to ‘I mustn’t, mother, for she will catch up with me and the world will end’ but came out like high pitched screaming.

“Phoebe!” Daria shouted, heaving herself up onto her elbows. She wasn't fast enough to chase and stop them at the moment, she could barely pry herself up off the couch. “Come here right now!”

( ... )

Ben so often looked at Andy when she entered a room and said, in a voice that sounded surprised each time, "you're so tall." When he said it he sounded impressed, but it didn't feel impressive to Andy. In the last year she'd gained almost four and a half inches, which had been impossible to miss. She wasn't even the tallest girl in her class and yet someone had once called her Bigfoot and managed to make it stick just enough to drive Andy crazy.

( Read more... )

Every outing with Phoebe and Cassandra was a mission, but a mission Daria and Noah faced head on, without fear or faltering! Well, usually without fear. Well, not a lot of fear. They were adults, goddammit, and surely two adults could keep control over two two-and-a-half-year old twins at least most of the time.

Today they were out hunting. They’d successfully ran down a couple of new sets of clothes and shoes for the girls, who were definitely starting to catch up with their growth spurts. They’d stocked up on cough syrup for Phoebe’s reoccurring cold, and, the biggest mission of all, they’d successfully completed a complete circuit of the supermarket without anyone starting to cry.

Daria was so seriously on top of this motherhood business!

But she definitely needed a sugar hit. “Hey Noah,” she said, eyeing up the ice cream stand in the middle of the food court. “You’ve been so well behaved today, I think I should buy you an ice cream.”

They had come to Bali for Daria's birthday and it was their last night in the gorgeous country. Noah had something special planned for the both of them. He took Daria out for a nice dinner that was their kind of fancy. When they were both full and had partaken in a few fruity drinks, Noah whisked her off to a Balinese night club. After dancing for hours, Noah suggested that they take a walk on the beach. He had ulterior motives, but he covered it all in just wanting to get away with her.

( Surprise! )

It was their last night in Bali and Noah had something special planned for the both of them. He took Daria out for a nice dinner that was their kind of fancy. When they were both full and had partaken in a few fruity drinks, Noah whisked her off to a Balinese night club. After dancing for hours, Noah suggested that they take a walk on the beach. He had ulterior motives, but he covered it all in just wanting to get away with her.

They walked in the sand in front of the resort they were staying in. The waves lapped at the shore and the moon glittered on the water. Noah wrapped his hand around Daria's and he grinned. "I really love being here with you," he said softly.