Evangeline Sablier is not broken, but please (handlewithcare) wrote in rooms, @ 2015-03-07 10:59:00 |
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Entry tags: | !marvel comics, *log, evangeline sablier, graham ross |
Log: Graham and Evie
Who: Graham and Evie
Where: The Skinny House
When: After the sad face narrative
What: Talking about stuff
Warnings: Sads
Status: In progress - Jeannie's Google Drive is bad while out of town
Graham was still cold.
His socks were soaked through, the hem of his jeans much the same. His skin was red, red, like his eyes, and he shivered without realizing it. But he hadn’t gotten changed. He didn’t shower, didn’t try to warm up. He just sat at the kitchen table and stared down at the wood, seeing nothing. Nothing at all.
Upstairs, Joy was crying. She’d woken up from her nap but he couldn’t make himself move. He was a horrible father, a pathetic excuse for a parent. Jake was proof of his failure, and that beautiful little girl deserved better. Her mother was stuck with the undead, along with her father’s best friend, and what was he doing about it? Not a goddamn thing. No, because he was so wrapped up in a dead wife he should’ve let go of a long, long time ago, and now it felt like part of him had been amputated. Ripped right off, and he didn’t know how to soothe the pain. He didn’t know how to stop the bleeding.
He had no idea how much time was passed, he couldn’t keep track. He didn’t know when Evie was coming back. But Joy, she kept crying, and he kept staring downward.
Evie was coming back from work in Gotham City, and it was freezing, Daisy was bundled and sleeping by the time she walked in the front door of the skinny house and she heard Joy crying. She didn’t know where Graham was but she knew the sound of distress and when she got Daisy settled into the pack n play in the living room and no one had tended to Joy upstairs Evie poked her head into the kitchen and saw Graham sitting there. Just. Sitting. No Lore.
Now Evie put two and two together. Wives didn’t just show up after Valentine wishes and act like they had somewhere else to be after a bit. She didn’t say anything, and she’d liked Lore, she had. At first it had been really nice having someone else to talk to. But she’d felt bad after a bit. The woman wanted to leave, she had somewhere else to go, and she’d spent enough time in that damn Silent Hill door with that awful Will, and enough time looking at Graham in the weeks before Valentine’s day to know what the pain looked like.
She wasn’t sure she understood everything, but she was sure she understood enough. Daisy was asleep, in her clothes, but asleep enough for now, and Evie didn’t say anything to Graham as she made her way upstairs to Graham’s room and went about the business of baby tending. She didn’t like overstepping boundaries in this house that wasn’t hers, with people that weren’t hers, in a place that she hadn’t quite found her feet yet. But it had been a little easier when Lore had first come. They’d talked about Evie’s soaps. And Graham had been a little more smiley than she’d seen.
But upstairs she went. And before she went about changing diapers and clothes she went for the cuddles and soothing and once she was calm then clothes were changed, and she went downstairs and into the kitchen, Joy still red faced but little fists clinging to Evie’s shirt as she walked into the kitchen and started boiling some water on the stove and grabbed a can of formula and one of Joy’s bottles from the cupboard before she sat down at the table and looked at Graham. “Hi.” There was no judgment there, a lot of understanding, she was gentle as she placed her free hand on his softly. She’d never admit to anyone how many time she’d let Daisy cry. She’d never admit a lot of things to anyone about the times she’d just wished she wasn’t a parent at all, one that was alone and she wondered the mess she was making. She certainly wasn’t going to judge Graham for letting Joy scream. She hadn’t seen him do it. Not once. And the only reason she was functioning was because she didn’t want anyone to think badly of her. Maybe that was wrong, maybe it should be because she loved Daisy more than anyone - and she did. She definitely did. But sometimes it was hard. Really hard.
It was little more than white noise-- the sound of the front door opening, Evie coming inside, Evie putting Daisy in the living room, then going upstairs. Graham didn't look up, but he didn't need to. He was aware without processing his surroundings. She could probably put the pieces together on her own, with Lore being absent and the baby crying unattended. He'd never let her cry before. He didn't like leaving her alone if he could avoid it. But now, it was like he was stuck. There was a voice in his mind insisting that he go upstairs but he couldn't make his body do what it wanted. Even though he didn't know Evie all that well, it was probably real good that she was here; without Shane around, he might've just sat at the damn table all day. Shane always pushed him when he needed to be pushed.
At some point, the crying stopped. Graham toyed with his wedding ring, turned it round and round on his finger, and thought about when Jake was a baby, how he'd cry, how good Lore was at soothing him. She'd taught him all he knew. There were so many memories, but none of them were as good as having her here. Twelve days, after near thirteen years, wasn't enough. He still ached. People talked about closure like it was something that just happened; when would it happen to him?
He didn't look up until Evie actually sat down at the table. Even then, his gaze went to Joy first. Then, down at the hand covering his, and over to the woman sitting across from him. "Hi." He swallowed hard. "She's gone."
Evie nodded, she knew that there weren’t any words that were going to give him any closure, there weren’t words that were going to make the endless sting stop stinging. But she also knew that sometimes it didn’t sting as much. Sometimes there was a dull ache, and sometimes she laughed and sometimes she smiled. She didn’t have to wonder if Graham had times like that. The emptiness wasn’t gone. And the loneliness. That was never ever gone. In fact it had never been worse. But she just hoped that maybe this was just part of what everyone always called a healing process. But Evie was good at hoping. She was losing it. Maybe she had lost it. But she was trying to pretend because someone told her once if she pretended enough it would be real.
Part of her wanted to tell him that at least he’d gotten good days. She’d gotten horrible days. Horrible days of Will telling her she was the worst at everything, the worst mother, the worst woman, the worst for him, the worst for Daisy, and the worst friend. It didn’t help that every moment since had been proving it to her. Homeless, no real friends, no one to care where she was, or if she was okay or not. Graham had all those things. And his days, his wish, he’d gotten it and from where she was sitting it hadn’t been awful. But she also knew. This was awful. Of course it was awful. It was probably more awful. Losing it all over again.
As awful as it had been in that door, she had almost stayed. almost stayed and endured that horror just to have Will back in her life even if it meant her life was miserable and over and Daisy was left alone in Marvel with strangers. What the hell did that say about her that she’d almost stayed? And the wishes. The wishes, she’d been too scared to wish for him to come back. After everything that had happened in the door, she worried that he’d come back and she’d remember all the things he’d said to her there.
She hadn’t told anyone in this house, a thing about herself other than her name and the basics. Nothing about her friends, nothing about Daisy, or Will, or her life before she’d wound up on the Gotham City subway, or the random hotel thing with Shane. It had been nice. Except when it wasn’t. But she hadn’t volunteered and no one had asked, and it wasn’t the kind of thing she was used to, most days she actually thought it was a good thing, refreshing. So it wasn’t easy, to open up, even the smallest bit. The rain started then, loud on the roof and spattering against the windows. “So is he.” He could have meant anyone to anyone else. But a single mom living in the living room of a couple of strangers tearing up in a situation like this, she doubted she needed to elaborate. She didn’t want to take the moment, but she also knew cheap words would come from any “normal” person. But if there was anyone who could feel the emptiness, not just understand it, but feel it? She could.