Kendal Hathaway (wontgoquietly) wrote in light_of_may, @ 2011-03-04 23:12:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | 2009-08-11, kendal, melody |
But if you feel better, I don't mind
Who: Kendal and Melody
When: Morning
Where: Hathaway house
As much as Melody had enjoyed her little vacation at Mummy and Daddy’s, it was definitely time for her to go. The free food was great and all, but this place felt like the Twilight zone to her now. She didn’t even bother letting either of her parents know she was leaving - she didn’t know where they were, and they probably didn’t care either way. She was under no illusions as to why she was here - they had invited her so that they would feel they had been proper parents for a while longer. Whether or not Melody had taken them up on it didn’t matter - in fact, Melody was pretty sure they would have been more comfortable with her declining. At least they wouldn’t have to deal with her weirdness.
After packing her bag, she let Ginevra know they’d be leaving soon. First, she decided to go say goodbye to Kendal. She hadn’t seen her little sister during her visit, so it felt like something she really ought to do. First stop: Kendal’s room. She wondered if she still had porn on the walls.
Oh dear god in heaven. Alcohol, as far as Kendal had always been lead to believe, was meant to keep the hangover at bay. It was not meant to leave your hangover right where it had been when you went to get the gin and simply top up on the drunkenness. One was definitely meant to be canceled out. Fuck, she could have done with being sober over the lead-lined limbs and head-ache she was currently experiencing. Slumped against her former porno-wall - now a work in progress with no rating in particular - she stared at the bed she vaguely remembered sliding off the edge of. Which night that had been, she couldn’t say. She could say that either at some point she had made her bed or she hadn’t actually slept in it since the lockdown commenced. One was more likely than the other. She had definitely been in a bed, though. And those so were not thoughts I needed to start thinking. Incest was for people with attractive, non-irritating relatives. As long as she stopped that line of thought and... stayed right where she was, she’d be fine. Fine. She needed water. “Hello?” Pause. “Someone feel like beginning to feel charitable?” Or something. Shit, she sounded rough.
Before Melody could even knock on her little sister’s door, she heard Kendal. At first she thought the girl was merely talking to herself, and then she figured out what she was saying. Raising an eyebrow, Melody opened the door and eyed her sister. “Jeez, what is it with everybody being bombed when I come to see them?” She didn’t wait for an answer. Rhetorical. It was, after all, the Hathaway house. It made perfect sense. “You okay, Ken-doll?”
Staring at the doorway, Kendal blinked. Melody. Melody would get her water. Because she’d had her head fucked with and practically become the polar opposite of a Hathaway. Maybe they should get her last name changed just to put the icing on the cake. “Ask me again in, uh - forty-eight hours.” A pause for thought. “When I’ve drunk away the rest of my memories of... However long you’ve been here.” Not that she had necessarily meant that to be as bitchcaked as it came out, but she was using her sister as a method of measuring time and still had not forgiven their mother for inviting her over. The latter meant there wasn’t a chance she was going to take it back. “So, can you get me a water?” Because that was obviously what Melody was there for.
Weeell! Someone fell out of the wrong side of the bed this morning, Melody thought, even though she was laughing off Kendal’s spectacularly bitchy response even as she said it. “Don’t worry, I’m leaving in a bit,” she promised. Why her being her bothered Kendal, she couldn’t even begin to guess, but... it was Kendal. She didn’t need a reason. It was part of her ‘motherfucking princess’ territory, right? “Sure thing,” she agreed, easy as can be. “I’ll be right back.” Of course, she could have just gone into Kendal’s bathroom and got water from the tap, but she was pretty sure such a thing would only be taken as an insult. So she headed down to the kitchen to retrieve a bottle of water instead. She also grabbed some crackers and a bottle of asprin. She just barely managed to resist putting it all neatly on a silver tray. It was so tempting.
Keep laughing. Mom only asked you over so she didn’t look like the maternal disgrace she actually is. Though it was kind of great how people voluntarily filled in the parts where they made sure she knew they were leaving without her having to express anything approaching that. Were she sober and feeling even more sorry for herself, she would have realised how tragic it was that they did so even without her intending to have that impact. Except fuck that noise, that was the legacy she was building for herself and if it worked on Melody then it was a step in the right direction. Her face spent a moment arranging itself into a frown when she realised that Melody had just vacated the room. She was getting the water before she left, right? “Did you miss that memo about water coming from the tap?” Although she would have needed another glass anyhow because the one she had contained gin. And no, Kendal did not care if shouting such questions meant she was sharing the conversation with the rest of the house. If they had a problem with it they could move. “Seriously, it was groundbreaking stuff.”
Melody was still smiling pleasantly as she returned to Kendal’s room. “Patience, Princess!” she urged. She’d vaguely heard yelling. Kendal yelling was mostly filtered out. “I did you one better than water,” she promised, offering over the bottle of water in one hand, and the asprin bottle in the other. “You remember eating anything at any point in your stupor?”
Okay, for starters? The Princess was Gwyn. Secondly, one better than water would have been juice. Aspirin sort of topped the bill right then. “And the brownie points go to Mel after all.” Both the water and the aspirin were claimed before they could be taken away from her for ingratitude, though a moment’s fumbling with the bottle ended with the discovery that kiddie-proof pill bottles were also Kendal-proof. It was consequently thrust back into Melody’s hands with something resembling a pout. “You should probably open this before I try cracking it open with my surviving stilettto.” Which was one thing she remembered from during said stupor. Breaking her goddamn heel. “I made a PB&J sandwich at some point... I think Aldie ate it. Fucker.” And like hell had she been making it for him. “Was there really a bird in the house or did mom hit her head?” She would have been just fine with both being true.
“Yes, well, he’s the golden boy. Long awaited male heirs tend to be raised with the belief that all food is their food,” Melody agreed, easily popping the bottle cap and handing it back over to Kendal. At least Kendal knew how to make PB&J though. Points for Ken-doll! Melody sat on the floor and started opening the cracker box. She paused in this effort to look up and grin widely at the mention of a bird. “Totes. A swan’s been living in my yard, so I brought it with me.” This? Not a lie. She just wasn’t mentioning the fact that it, you know, talked. “You know, for kicks. I told Mom it was my spirit animal. And it was good.”
“I could almost understand that if he’d grown up having to fight to get food before we ate it all. But as it stands?” Kendal shrugged. Aldwin was just a greedy bastard. “Whatever, revenge is mine when I’m sober or able-bodied.” She didn’t need both. And the necessity of said revenge would remain unconfirmed because it was unlikely anybody knew what had actually happened to that sandwich. It was probably still in the kitchen. The only excuse she had ever really needed to torment Aldie was his existence. “A swan.” Kendal stared at Melody, fingers rubbing her right temple. “Here?” How the fuck had she missed that-- Wait, massive alcohol binge. That would do it, yeah. “And she believed you?” She paused while her brain tried to work its way around the entirety of that declaration of what-the-fuckery. “Did you take a picture of the ‘rentals faces? Because, really? That needs to be published.” Screw whatever the current headlines were.
Melody nodded. “It’s been chilling in my bathroom the past few days,” she confirmed. “I call her Minerva. She seems pretty happy.” The fact that Melody called the swan Minerva because it demanded to be called Minerva? Absolutely not the point. “Of course Mom believed me. She and Dad think I’m absolutely balls out crazy. Do you realize that I could get away with anything and they’d just chalk it up to being me?” She opened a package of crackers and offered them to Kendal. “I’m the broken one, remember? Nothing will surprise them. They’ll just make that constipated, troubled face and try to forget the whole uncomfortable encounter ever happened.”
“So, what, you’ve adopted a stray swan? That has to be unhygienic.” And how did you even tell if a swan was happy? Again, ew, bird-germs in a perfectly good bathroom. Finally knocking back two aspirin and washing it down with water that her throat apparently thought it would never experience again, Kendal arched an eyebrow. Okay, she knew she was still kind of drunk, that she was hungover and that this was Melody... But. Melody wasn’t balls out crazy, so why did she have a swan? “You brought a giant bird into the house just to fuck with them.” A statement that required confirmation more than a question. “There are far better ways to abuse that power.” She couldn’t think of any right now, but all in good time. It still pissed her off that both she and Melody were effectively ignored. The difference was that Melody actually got a reaction first. “Scarlet Oak has more interesting wildlife to adopt than Big Bird.” Fact.
Huh, who would have expected Kendal to get logical up in this bitch. Melody shrugged. “She’s very clean. All checked out by a vet and all.” Did familiars need vets? This seemed like something she needed to know. “Hey, don’t hate on my swan of awesome just because you didn’t think of it first,” she said with a grin. “You can help me come up with whatever I do next time, though - supposing there is a next time. I wouldn’t be surprised if Mom decided to nix these little visits entirely.”
Adopted a stray swan who she then paid to get checked out by a vet. Right, yes, Kendal could totally see how that venture could be worthwhile. “Yeah, because it’s twenty thousand leagues below my standards,” she muttered over the top of the water bottle. She was sure using a bird to rile their parents counted as animal cruelty. Fuck, bringing it into the same district as them counted as animal cruelty. “What did that thing do to you to deserve the stony gaze of Katharine Hathaway?” And she was back to her theory that their mother was descended from Medusa. Really, it was plausible. With or without the alcohol. “You’re kidding, right?” For a moment Kendal’s expression questioned what planet Melody lived on. And then she remembered her sister resided on a plane unique to her. “You’re Mom’s last hope of pretending she can be a half-decent parent. She’d hire security guards and all that ‘do you have anything to declare?’ jazz before giving that up. With that goes what’s left of her humanity.” So technically, Melody’s presence was proof that their mother was indeed a human being. At some point. “But if she does hire security guards, I’m coming with if frisking’s involved.”
Actually, now that Kendal suggested such a thing, she was almost surprised that their mom hadn’t tried it already. “I’m willing to bet she has one of the maids quietly search my bag and car before I leave,” she decided. The idea wouldn’t surprise her in the least - and actually, wouldn’t bother her, either. She shrugged. “I have nothing to hide.” She’d never taken anything out of this house that didn’t belong to her. That alone was probably enough to break her mom’s brain.
“She probably did that when you showed up,” Kendal drawled, briefly considering swapping the water for the gin again. There was a reason she didn’t want to remember the past few days, and a significant chunk of it was because she resented Melody for even being there. Did she want her sister dead via demons? No. But she was never actually saying that. Melody was cut off and, to her, that was supposed to mean something. Besides, why was she their mother’s project when it came to her occasional maternal mirage? Jesus, so her head got crunched in the car. Kendal was pretty sure Melody was over that now. She was doing a fucking good impression of it. “She’s secretly hoping to discover you’re off your face on your drug of choice. In rehab you’d be completely out of the way.” It was hard to tell whether or not that would be a good thing.
Melody didn’t really have any trouble imagining that, either. Even if it was highly unlikely. “Guess what, Ken-doll. She didn’t cart me off to rehab back when I actually needed it, when I was still playing by her terms. It’s not gonna happen now. If she wanted me out of the picture that badly, she’d just pay me to leave the state. Go join some artist’s commune in California or something. It would look too bad to have a kid completely disappear, never spoken of again. Like the oldest brother in Happy Days or something. I think Mom and Dad are still waiting for the day I wake up ‘normal’ and fall in line again. They’ll never get over thinking I’m broken.” It was a horrible thing to say, and even worse to believe - but Melody didn’t sound bothered by it in the least. She wasn’t.
“She wouldn’t cart you off to rehab when you were playing by her terms period,” Kendal countered. The phrase ‘playing by her terms’ being the important factor in that sentence. Though for a moment she did just stare at Melody. She felt like she was doing that a lot right now. But while she would never admit to it outside of her own head, she didn’t like the idea of their parents thinking of her sister in that way. She wasn’t broken, she was just different. To her, Melody was the car-wreckage equivalent of Kendal finding God. It was fucked up as all hell, but it didn’t mean she was broken. But it was going to annoy her that she had just put the Happy Days theme song in her head. Bitch. “You’re not broken, you freak. You’re a weird-assed hippy, high on... life. Or something. Fucked if I know.” Tilting her head - well, it lolled, her neck wasn’t cooperating - she arched an eyebrow. “You could always just pretend to fall in line again. I’d pay good fucking money to see the looks on their faces when you finally crack that grin and yell PSYCHE. Seriously. Perfect Kodak material.”
“I never said I thought I was,” Melody pointed out with a smile. “If anything, it’s the opposite. I’m whole now, and they don’t know how to deal with that.” Which was a telling sort of thing, in Melody’s humble opinion. Their family stood on a foundation of cracks. When one stood on solid ground, no one knew how to react. “I could never do it,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s too cruel a joke, even for them, and I would hate playing the act. I’m incapable of it. And the word you’re looking for, Ken-doll, is happy. I’m happy now.” Which made Melody think - and not just think, but think seriously for a good moment. She cocked her head to the side. “Are you? Are you happy, Kendal?”
“In what kind of world does it take having your head crushed to feel like you’re whole?” That question right there? Was way too deep for Kendal right now. But it begged to be asked, so she’d humoured her trail of thought. “The car broke your mold,” she pointed out casually. A half-joke, though she wasn’t sure what the punchline was. Although their parents stood no hope of ever being able to deal with Melody. Mostly because they wouldn’t take the time to learn. They hadn’t bothered when all of their children were still comparatively normal. “Right.” Because there was actually such thing as being ‘too cruel’ to their particular parental units. Melody might not have been capable of it, but Kendal sure as hell believed she was. Otherwise what was the point in anything she did if she couldn’t top it? Am I happy. What kind of question was that? “Been better,” she admitted at length. And only because, given recent events, she had every reason to be feeling less than a hundred percent. Plus there was always the fact that that answer was always true.
“The same kind of world with crazy demon portals and vampires and psychic amplifiers?” Melody guessed, shrugging. Just because her brand of phenomena was a legitimately documented medical condition didn’t make it any less magical, in Melody’s eyes. Miraculous, really. Kendal’s answer was about what Melody would have expected, had she any expectations. She wasn’t sure Kendal would answer, or if she would, if she would answer seriously. “You do know that if you ever needed anything, you could come to me, right? I don’t know what I could possibly provide, but I’d try. Even if you just needed to get away for a few days or something.”
Kendal snorted. “The lady has a point.” Shit. Something was really wrong with that. “Oh, hey. If you’re leaving does that mean the shit has quit hitting the fan?” That they’d survived another demon invasion and sadly disappointed that Bianca chick by not murdering the elder Hathaways or themselves with too much alcohol. Somehow she figured she’d get over it. “Did Mom turn anyone to stone?” Well, it never hurt to ask. If it earned her a weird look then she was putting it down to the alcohol and obvious delirium - the proof of that being in how she had yet to scream Melody out of her bedroom. Yeah, totally fucking delirious. Jesus, Mel. That is so goddamn unnecessary. If only because how the hell was she supposed to respond to that? Really. “Should I ever feel the urge to visit those who actually have to work for a living and discover the tragic state they’re in? You’ll be the first person I call.” She escaped from the family for a few days on a fairly regular basis. It was called binge drinking. Or alcoholism. Or whatever. The tragedy of it was that they were still they when she sobered up.
“As much as it’s gonna,” Melody answered. “The cult-dudes turned themselves in en masse and said they did what they set out to do, and that angels are back now.” She shrugged, not really sure what to think about all that yet. “Things are starting to open back up, so I figured I’d better go make sure I still have a house.” She was a fan of having a house. She loved her house. She smiled, unsurprised at the return of sarcasm. “Well, obviously my house isn’t good enough for you. But we could always go north for a few days and hit the casinos or something. See how much of Mummy and Daddy’s money you can lose in a single hour, and whether or not they cry.” It seemed like something Kendal would call a vacation, anyway. “It’s more than that, though. I’m around for anything. Even if you just want to talk. I love you, and people in this house don’t say that enough. Or hear it.”
“Angels?” Whoa, okay, could Scarlet Oak quit getting weirder? Please let it be some kind of fucked up joke. Or code. The idea that maybe it would be a good thing if it was true had not crossed her mind. Just the weirdness. Although she supposed that couldn’t suck too much as long as none of them went all Christopher Walken a la The Prophecy on them. Though she wasn’t going to devote any more brainpower to that until she received evidence. Of some kind. Like an actual news reporter droning out of the screen. “They wouldn’t cry. They’d have me detained.” She would have said arrested, but then that would be a mark on her otherwise surprisingly pristine record. A record that had no right being clear. Her efforts seemed to go uncharged, however. At the rest, Kendal held her tongue for a moment, staring into her bottle of water. Awkward silence is awkward. “Yeah, well, there’s a reason for that.” And the mouthful she was swallowing was clearly preventing her from giving a satisfactory answer. What did she want? A hug? A pat on the back? A cookie? There was no place for any of that under the Hathaway roof and she was going to continue to tell herself that was how she liked it.
Melody grinned and shook her head. “No, there isn’t,” she replied. “Nowhere near a good reason for that, other than that’s what we’ve been conditioned to believe. And I find life to be better when I’m not playing by Mom and Dad’s rules of propriety.” With that, she stood. “But! I won’t shove love and warm fuzzies down your throat. I may have just hit the uncomfortable quota, so I’ll let you get back to your hangover. Do you need anything else before I go?”
“Propriety? You remember which sister you’re talking to, right?” Or, in fact, that she was talking to a Hathaway. The other thought perched on the tip of Kendal’s tongue was that the uncomfortable quota had been hit the moment she walked through the bedroom door. But apart from that being mostly untrue, Melody had brought aspirin, so she was feeling charitable with her sniping. Sort of. Her head tilted back almost painfully - how long have I been sat here? - as her sister rose. She was still talking. That was generally considered to be a problem. “Uh, no. Think I’m good to go.” Kendal raised the bottle in a mock toast. “As long as I don’t move for twenty-four hours.” A beat. “Try not to crash. It’d suck if your stray swan kicked it.” Which was about as close to ‘drive safely’ as she was ever going to get.