nymphadora tonks is back from the stars. (hufflepunk) wrote in reoccurrence, @ 2020-06-27 02:48:00 |
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Entry tags: | tonks andromeda, tonks nymphadora |
WHO. tonks & teddy (ft. minor andromeda)
WHERE. andromeda's house
WHEN. 26 june
WHAT. mother and son reunited
STATUS. complete
WARNINGS. r u ready to cry kids
Tonks' stomach was full of unruly butterflies that no amount of deep breaths or mental reassurances could ameliorate. It felt like a cruel trick that she kept having to remind herself that this was what she had been waiting for, what she had wanted from the very moment she had woken up, inexplicably breathing. Some small part of her wished she could turn back, send a message to her Mum that she couldn't do it, actually, that she was going to fuck it right up and hurt them both, and was it even healthy to introduce her when she had no idea how temporary her current existence was? Most of her just wanted to see him, as terrified as it made her. The potions they had given her had done the work of convincing her body it no longer had a baby to nurture, but they hadn't remedied the urge to hold him or soothe the empty space in her arms that should have been filled by his tiny, wriggling body. At first she had wondered if they weren't working properly since they seemed to have only half righted her hormonal swings. Soon she came to the conclusion that love wasn't a chemical thing, that all she felt for her little boy was completely hers, as full and complete as it was painful. From the fireplace of Grimmauld to her Mum's house, from the living room to where he was sat in the kitchen – the air felt as thick as water, Tonks' herself only half aware of what she was doing. There were brief words exchanged between her and Andromeda, neither of them eager to postpone the real reason she was there. And then he was in front of her, the whole seven years of him, bright and alive, with a colourful sign spelling out WELCOME HOME MUM in wonky pink letters. He looked up, frozen with excitement, and the split second of stillness gave her a moment to pick out all the features that she had given him, all the ones he had gotten from Remus. Look at what we made. She could remember murmuring it, her mind muddled with exhaustion, the very first time he had fallen asleep against her chest. It could have been mere seconds ago. "Hi," she breathed, her legs suddenly weak. "Hi Teddy. I'm your mum." The turquoise haired boy didn't mind that the pink haired woman seemed to fold in on herself the moment the words had been said, clamping a hand over her mouth as a sob surprised her. He cared about the words themselves, the ones he had been waiting to hear for what felt like far too long, even if the possibility of them was only weeks old. He cared about the fact of her, very real, and standing right in front of him. "Mum!" Their meeting was a collision of limbs, every one aimed at the wrong part of each other. As she sunk lower to his level, he flung his arms up, and it felt like a small miracle that neither of their chins hit the other's forehead. Instead, somehow, she managed to pull him into her just right, and his arms met around her neck. "I told Dad you would come, I knew it! Gran and Dad said that I had to wait and you might not come back so we would have had to just wait and see but I knew it," he boasted, beaming full of pride at the universe having proved him right. "You did, huh?" The shock had winded her, and her eyes were already watering, but she forced herself to swallow them back before pulling away enough to look at him. "Yeah, I – I tried to come sooner, promise I did. Thanks for waiting for me." She smiled and lost her fight, a few tears slipping out, which were quickly caught by the back of her hand. He frowned. "Sorry, I'm being silly," she stammered, wiping even more frantically. "I'm just really happy to see you." Teddy's frown didn't ease completely, some of his initial excitement displaced by nervousness, but he seemed to accept the explanation after a moment. "That's okay. I'm really happy too, I made this sign for you, I thought you would like pink cos of your hair and, and I know here isn't actually your home cos Gran said you're staying with Dad, but Gran said it would be okay to write it anyway." As he rambled, the words pouring out of him at impressive speed, he bounced on the balls of his feet – his energy demanded some form of physical escape route. "I love it." I love you, she wanted to say, so very desperately, but between the clinging and the crying it felt like pushing a step too far too soon. "Can I keep it?" He nodded. "Brill. I'm gonna stick it up in my room." The toothy smile she elicited was both proud and relieved. For all the lies that parents apparently told their children, Andromeda hadn't been spinning another to her when she told him that all he wanted to do was know her and spend time with her and subject her to repetitive games. (Over and over again, that one was even more truthful than she had bargained for.) The tightness in her chest proved stubborn throughout, but there was a surprising ease to the ways they moved about each other, his cheeky comments bouncing off her raised eyebrows and stuck out tongue. She started making mental notes of his quirks: the habit of starting all his sentences with emphatic so's, the way his arms flapped whenever his emotions seemed to peak above a certain level, the way his eyes always seemed to give him away, whether it was glances to Andromeda for reassurance or wide excitement at picking up good cards. They found their way to inventing a game together, where they would close their eyes, change their hair, and then open to see if the colours matched. The novelty of their shared gift was as new to her as it was him. She even quietly wondered about correlations between his shifts in hair colour and his expressions; somebody had compared her to a mood ring before, lighting up one way or the other depending on her emotions, but she had never been able to find the right words to explain how it wasn't quite that. With Teddy, finally, she could recognise it in somebody else. Perhaps it was a meta thing. Perhaps it was some other part of her she had handed down. It felt too short, but it was always going to feel too short. Enough was a stupid concept, especially when she had already died once. No lifetime, the last or this, could possibly match up to all the time it felt like they were owed. So she had to be satisfied with her lot, with visits and organised days until she could piece together what was left herself. Her throat felt sore as they reached their goodbyes. "Gran said you're going to come whenever you want?" It wasn't a statement. His lips twisted about nervously and she watched his eyes again, saw them fill up with all the worry of a boy who had already lost his parents once over. "All the time. You'll get sick of me," she replied with a grin, not missing a beat. "How does tomorrow sound?" He lit up half the way, but still seemed held back by some unspoken reservation. And then it came, as she had been warned it probably would: "Do you promise? You have to promise. You have to stay, okay, Mum?" Tonks exhaled a soft, sad breath. "Hey," she said, brushing a turquoise lock away from his forehead, coaxing his eyes up to meet hers. "I think Gran explains it better than I do, but me and your Dad being back – it's such a special thing. You think you're lucky to have us, but that's nothing to how lucky we feel to get to be here with you. Of course I promise. Every chance I get, I'll be here, Teddy." Mercifully, he chose that moment to hug her, hiding the crack in her voice and giving her the chance to blink back more tears. It was only once Andromeda had sent him to go play in the other room and let the two of them have a moment that her composure finally shattered. She would have liked to have claimed she was quiet about it because she was conscious that he could still hear them, but it had far more to do with her inability to catch her breath. The sheer cruelty of everything she had missed and the crashing relief that there was still so much love to return to pressed down on her in equal measures. All she could do was fold into her mother's arms, her head tangled up in intertwined threads of both hope and grief. |