seemiarun (seemiarun) wrote in snitchers, @ 2018-02-25 14:10:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | char: amelia higgs, char: ivonna montgomery |
Who: Ivy Montgomery & Amelia Higgs
When: Super backdated backstory to after Fred/Ivy breakup
Where: Ivy's Flat
What: Ivy is falling apart and Mia takes a shift watching her.
Rating: Low and Sad
Ivy hadn't left her flat in... ten days. She was pretty sure it had been ten days. Terence and Emy had managed to get her to shower, but no one was going to stop Ivy from drinking all damn day. Fred wasn't supposed to leave. He was the happy in her life, the one person who managed to bring her back from the brink time and time again. Ivy had never believed in true love or soulmates, but meeting Fred had changed that. He was the one for her. Seemed about right that the one person for Ivy was also a giant fucking prick.
The sun was annoying her. Wordlessly, Ivy pushed the blankets off of her and walked into the living room. She didn't flinch at the sight of Mia and the baby sitting on the sofa. Everyone seemed to be taking a turn watching her and while she might not have acted like it, Ivy was thankful. Her family were the only things keeping her on this side of sanity. Because losing Fred, hearing the horrible words he'd said, seeing him walk out the door... it had been too much.
"I don't have food," she said by way of greeting. Grabbing a bottle from a table, Ivy plopped down into a chair and opened it. "If you get hungry you'll have to order something in."
Mia had been... worried about having to go to Ivy's place. Of course, she never one said no - Emy had to work and Terence had to do Quidditch things. It was only fair for Mia to have a turn... but she truly thought her cousin would be angry and disgusted with having an infant in her home, especially with how upset she was. And Mia just didn't want to make it any worse. But what could she do? She was a mother now, and her baby girl, only a few months old, needed care. And she couldn't simply dump her off at a sitter. She didn't trust anyone, anyway. So... she just hoped and prayed that Ivy wouldn't try to hex her into next Tuesday if her daughter started crying.
For the first several hours, Mia was by herself. Napping with her baby on the couch, feeding her and changing her a few times. She was still utterly surprised by how quiet and well behaved her infant could be, and truly, hardly believed she was real at this point.
When her cousin finally woke up, Mia offered her a small smile, watching as Ivy grabbed a bottle of alcohol immediately. She wasn't going to judge though. It had been a long time ago at this point, but Mia remembered heartbreak. She supposed her family might have forgotten it all, but she hadn't, and felt for her cousin.
"I'm fine right now, but if I get peckish, I'll remember," she said softly, moving the little girl in her arms who did nothing more than make a small sound.
"Can I get you anything else though? Water? Coffee?" she wasn't trying to intrude, just merely... wanted to offer her help. "Or I'll just stay here, out of your way, as much as I can be. Whatever you need." Merlin, she dreaded the moment her daughter would cry...
Bringing the bottle to her lips, Ivy gulped it down quickly. She'd gone through all of her good stuff days ago and was making her way through the cheap rum she had for some reason. Eventually she'd be out all together, but Ivy figured someone would bring her more.
Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, Ivy shook her head. "No," she said with a sigh. "Not hungry. Don't want anything. I'll get it if I do." What she wanted was to go back in time and never fight with that damn idiot in the first place. She wanted to have not thrown the stupid box in his face, to not have ordered him out of their home. But she was certain he didn't care. Life is a joke, after all. Isn't that what he'd said to her?
Ivy felt the harsh sting of tears burn in her eyes again and she didn't bother holding them back. Looking over at Mia with the baby, Ivy felt her heart twist. Ter and Mia loved each other so damn much. They had a life together, nothing could keep them apart. She envied them, envied the years they'd spend together. She was supposed to have that.
"I miss him," she said miserably. "When does that stop?"
Mia watched her cousin without an ounce of judgment on her face. She knew how bad Ivy was hurting, and if she was able, she would give anything to take that pain away. But unfortunately, that was not possible, and the only one who could put Ivy back together was herself. The problem was, she wasn’t ready for that. Or didn’t want to be, not by a longshot. And no one had any right to pressure her. Everyone dealt with things like this in their own time, if at all.
And while the tears in Ivy’s eyes surprised Mia for just a second, she knew she should have expected them. She was just simply used to her cousin always playing the tough one, that seeing her actually vulnerable was almost… a new occurrence.
Her question though left Mia thoughtful, a sigh escaping her lips as she readjusted the baby in her arms, a small noise coming from the wiggling form. “Honestly? It doesn’t,” she told the blonde woman softly, looking over at her with her large, brown eyes.
“But you learn to live with it eventually. And it fades. But it never entirely goes away.” She wasn’t about to start lying to her cousin to make her feel better, and figured at the very least, Ivy would appreciate that.
Ivy had learned to live with a lot of pain in her life. Losing her brother. Accepting what she'd done to others. Being Max's victim. Ivy had processed that pain and filed it away in her head. But it couldn't compare to losing Fred. Even thinking his name cut into her very core, a hot knife on an exposed nerve. She ached for him, ached for the future they were going to have together, the future he didn't care about... maybe never wanted at all. She felt so stupid to believe that she could be happy, that she could deserve happiness.
"I hate him," she said, her voice breaking slightly. "I was fine before he came along, Mia. I know I killed people and all that, but I was fine. I didn't want anything more than what I had, didn't want to be anyone better than who I was. He changed me, he changed everything about me. Fred made me want to be better, he made me want to be good." Her rage swelled up and Ivy squeezed the bottle tightly until her knuckles were white.
"What's the point of being good if it hurts this fucking much? Why would he change me just to... why?"
Mia hated seeing anyone in her family suffer. Ivy was probably at the top of her list as well, if only because… well, frankly, she truly never learned how to deal with her emotions. She didn’t think that was her cousins fault in the least bit, but it was a character flaw that had always been there, and she accepted her for it, and loved her for it. But even now, after so long of knowing her, Mia didn’t understand why she was breaking down to her of all people. Why not Emy? Why not Terence? Because as much as she hated to admit it, while she knew her cousin loved her, she had never particularly felt that Ivy liked her. That they had any common ground. And sometimes, she felt like her cousin thought that Mia was some… simpleton. But truly, she understood a lot more of what Ivy was going through than she let on.
Sighing, she moved to scoot to the edge of the couch and placed Emery in her small bassinet that she had magically set up upon arriving. The little thing had just eaten and been burped, so her eyes were already heavy with sleep, alerting Mia to the hour or two she’d have before she woke up for a change, or something else.
Without hesitation, she looked at her cousin, wanting to get closer, to hold her hands and make her feel less alone, but she knew Ivy was not the most receptive to those kinds of things. “I don’t think you were fine,” she said honestly then, knowing that it was probably the wrong thing to be saying, but not caring. Her cousin needed honesty, and they couldn’t tip toe around the issue forever. “Fred didn’t change a damn thing about you, Ivy. He just made you realize the potential you have inside, to be the person that I think deep down, you’ve always wanted to be. A person who is capable of love. Of caring. Of deeper emotion than anger. And the reason you’re angry now? Is because without him, you think those things he awoke inside of you no longer have a place without him. But they do, Ivy.” Moving to get up, she walked to the kitchen, grabbing a glass for herself and joining the other women, sitting a bit closer as she took the bottle from her hands and poured herself a stiff drink.
“Sometimes, the decisions we make don’t make sense. And to be completely honest with you, I think you and Fred… are the most stubborn people I met. I don’t think… I don’t think it will ever be over in the way you think, but it’s not fair to say that right now. Instead, what I’ll say is I like the person you’ve become. I think that while it hurts now, Fred helped you discover a part of yourself that wanted to be known. You ability to care. Your humanity, and that, it’s valuable, Ivy. Even if you don’t think so right now. Even if you think it makes you weak. But humanity is what makes us who we are. Without it… well, we would have lost you to Malfoy long ago. And that would have been the real tragedy that none of us could survive.”
Ivy had been crying, yes, but those tears couldn't compare to the flood of sobs that followed Mia's words. Because Mia was right. Ivy was bloody terrified of the person she'd become. Caring for Fred, loving him, had opened her up to being hurt. And, in the end, she'd been hurt. She'd had her heart shattered into hundreds of pieces. Each fragment felt as though it was buried in her chest, digging into her from within. It hurt.The walls Ivy had built up around her over the years were noting more than pebbles and she had no hope in ever building them back up again.
She was an exposed nerve, raw and burning. And there was no making it better. Nothing could be done to fix her except time. She would have to find some way to move beyond the pain. It seemed impossible. All Ivy wanted was to go back to Fred and find someway to make it work, but she knew it wasn't possible. She'd lashed out, shown the worst side of herself. Ivy had pushed him away rather than risk getting hurt again.
Gasping between her cries, Ivy tried to speak, but her words were broken and her voice raw. "I'm scared," she admitted. "Scared because part of me thinks this is for the best. For him, I mean. He's amazing, Mia. And I'm-- me. I can't let go of everything I did, I can't forgive myself for it. He should have someone who isn't so messy and damaged."
Mia couldn’t really take it anymore, and moved over to her cousin, wrapping her arms around her as she cried. She made sure not to smother her too much, pulling away and settling down on her knees in front of her. “Hey,” she said sternly, taking both of Ivy’s hands in her own, “Look at me, Ivy.” Her voice was soft, yet serious, making sure that her cousin actually obliged to her request before she did or said anything else.
“It’s okay to be scared. This is probably the first time in your life you’ve let yourself be… quite frankly, human. And I don’t mean that you weren’t before, not exactly. But it’s the first time you’ve allowed yourself to be honest about what you’re feeling. To be real. The Ivy before? She was a woman hidden behind so many barriers that it was impossible to know the real person underneath. Fred… he allowed you to be the person you wanted to be. He showed you that you can be good, that you do deserve happiness and redemption and love as much as anyone else. Just because this ended badly, doesn’t negate the rest of it though. It doesn’t mean that you’re not good enough. And you know what?”
She took a breath, screwing up her face in all seriousness, “Fuck that line of thinking, Ivonna Montgomery. He would be lucky to have you, anyone would. Because you’re a good person, even if you don’t want to believe it. We’ve all done terrible things. Look at the Minister of Magic, for goodness sake. The man who leads our bloody country. And yet, he’s put his life back together, learned how to live with his past, and moved on. I believe you’re capable of the same thing, because frankly, you’re one of the strongest people I know. And you have so many people here to love and support you and you deserve it, regardless of what this dark, self defeating line of thinking tells you.”
There was a part of Ivy that she worried would never be silent. It was Max's voice, whispering into the darkest and deepest corner of her mind. She would never be good enough, never be smart enough or brave enough. Her family and friends would never really love her because they'd never really know her. They saw the woman they wanted her to be, didn't they? They wanted her to be good, to be more like Emy, but Ivy wasn't her sister. She would never be like her sister no matter how many pep talks or consoling speeches were given to her. But, gods, she wanted to silence that voice. She wanted to never hear Max in her mind again and he'd been the quietest when she was with Fred. With Fred gone, Ivy knew Max's voice would come back.
Mia's words managed to quiet Ivy's sobs, but her anguish wasn't so easily soothed. Wiping at her eyes, Ivy pulled back from Mia and stood up. "And he had love, didn't he," Ivy asked with a sigh. "The MInister is married, he has someone who is standing by him and I-- I hate everyone except for him. He made me happy and now all my happiness is gone. I can't just stop thinking about this and I really, really want to. I want to not care about him, I want to hate him, I want to be myself again. But I don't know this version of me. I changed because he changed me and..." Ivy shook her head and ran her hands through her messy, unwashed hair. Mia couldn't understand, Ivy realized. Fighting against an inner darkness wasn't solved by positive thinking. She needed light to balance her dark.
"I'm sorry, I know you're trying to help and I love you for that. I hear everything you're saying and you just have to... let me be miserable. I promise, I'll get better, but.. not today." Ivy sighed, feeling like shit for not being able to be comforted, especially from her sweet cousin. "I'm sorry, I'm going to go take a shower, okay? You don't need to stay if you don't want. I going to be fine."
Sometimes Mia wished she had a window into her cousin’s mind, if only because the idea that Ivy had to be like Emy was preposterous. Mia knew who her cousin was, even if she was under the impression she saw her as something else. She saw the struggle between herself and her dark side, and the torment she went through at the hands of a psychopath. But Ivy just needed to be Ivy. If that included doing dark things, like killing, there were ways to do that and still be a decent human. Because as much as Mia hated to admit it, being a person who always wanted to see the good in the world, she knew there were plenty out there that did not deserve to walk this plant. People who found happiness out of the pain of others, people who would never change, never struggle with their light and their dark. That’s what made Ivy a better person than she believed. Because she was aware of those two sides, and even though the good one was a constant struggle, a part of her, deep down, wanted it. Truly terrible people did not have that sort of internal altercation.
But for now, she thought it best to let the topic rest. There were things they would simply never agree on, and this was Ivy’s life, not Mia’s. She would do what she could, what her cousin would allow, and nothing more. Well, besides continuing to be there, if only because she loved her, and refused to give up.
“There’s nothing you need to apologize for, Ivy,” she told her with certainty, watching as she stood up to go shower, which in and of itself was a step forward. “And you process on your own time, we’ll all be here for you waiting when things begin to feel… at least, the slightest bit easier.” Leaning back on the couch, she flashed her cousin a smile, before glancing over at her sleeping daughter.
“And if you think I’m about to leave and have to wake this little one up, you’re crazy. But I promise to stay out of your way. I’m not going anywhere. Not unless you really want me too.”