Verity Parr (hometruth) wrote in lazarustheic, @ 2017-07-05 10:25:00 |
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Entry tags: | !thread, character: verity parr, retired character: gemma higgs |
who ? Verity Parr and Gemma Higgs.
when ? Wednesday 5th June, morning.
where ? Verity's house.
what ? Reunion and news.
warnings/rating ? SFW.
status ? Ongoing.
It had been a difficult couple of days. On Monday, Chloe had she'd brought Verity's attention to the fact that someone - a real person, who still existed - had actually killed her, deliberately (albeit not without remorse, apparently). It hadn't been something Verity had thought about before. It felt like yet another, yet more awful, stage of realising that she'd died. Not only had she died, in fact, she'd been murdered. It was frightening. Verity's life before the war had been so safe, so protected. She'd never lived alone, never lived in a big city where there was any significant amount of crime to worry about. Even when she'd been travelling, the most frightening thing she'd encountered had been a car crashing several meters ahead of her on the road in Manila. She'd never had to worry that anyone would try to hurt her, and even when the war had broken out she'd never really thought it would happen.
Now, she couldn't stop thinking about it. It was irrational, she knew that. The wizarding world was peaceful now, and she was probably in much less danger than she had been when it had been at war - but she'd felt so much safer then. Even being away from her family, to protect them, she'd had Fred and George and other friends. More importantly, she'd had a 20-year-olds assumption that death was something that happened to other people. Unrealistic or not, she wished she could have that assumption back, because living without it was scary. She hadn't slept much on Monday night, kept awake by the unfamiliar noises the house made, the sounds of living with neighbours on either side and a public street running past the front of her house. She longed for the quiet and safety of her family's Lake District home, but that was the one place she couldn't go.
Tuesday night had not been much better, and when she woke on Wednesday morning, Verity was just tired of it all. She almost owned Gemma and asked her not to come, because that, too, made her nervous. Not, at least, because she thought Gemma would hurt her, but because Gemma was so much older. Verity took comfort in remembering that her meetings with Roger and Chloe had not been as uncomfortable as she'd feared. Roger, though older, had still been the same person, and Chloe had been so different that Verity barely felt as if she'd ever known her as a child. So meeting Gemma would be manageable, Verity told herself, and it would be good to see a friend again. She was on her second cup of milky tea when Gemma arrived and Verity went to the door to greet her, glad it had a peephole so that she could confirm it was Gemma before she opened the door.
"Hi," she said, stepping back to let Gemma in. "Would you like tea and biscuits? We can sit in the kitchen." None of the rooms in the house really felt like home to Verity, so she gravitated towards the kitchen because at least it was functional, and had more stuff in it (food, because food was a necessity that Verity couldn't put off buying) than any of the others. It also looked over the garden, rather than the street, and was sunny and bright with its plain white walls and cupboards. "I'm sorry it's so plain," Verity apologised, watching Gemma as she took a seat at the table. It was strange to see her friend so grown-up, but Verity hoped that feeling would pass. "I don't really know how to decorate. I helped my mum paint a room once, but I don't know if you can just paint cupboards?" She was babbling, putting off the moment she'd have to sit and talk about either of their lives. "How are you?" she made herself ask, because she did want to know, wanted to catch up on Gemma's life and the years they'd been apart. She just wished it didn't all feel so abnormal.