dǫçţǫŗ şɭęęƥ (shone) wrote in valloic, @ 2021-06-19 11:35:00 |
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The last couple of weeks had been...trying. Zelda had known of Sabrina's fate for months, since her arrival in this place. And as much as she didn't care to be here, she tolerated it because, here, her niece was alive, happier even. Well, not any longer, perhaps. She'd hoped Sabrina would never know what awaited her should she leave Vallo. She'd hoped she would be spared that. Zelda gave her cigarette holder a vicious flick, the ashes dissipating as they fell. She'd taken up smoking to honor the Dark Lord, but now it was a habit so ingrained in her she couldn't be bothered to stop. For once, her home was blissfully quiet. She tried not to think about the reasons for that, that soon it would be empty again. Right now, she didn't want to be around the others, and she'd been doing a fine job of avoiding them. Until now. She took another drag from her cigarette before deciding she couldn't ignore him any longer, glancing up. "Are you going to stand there all day?" “As long as it takes,” came the reply from a very stubborn Dan, leaning against the wall (in some cases, even, an immovable mountain when he wanted to be) - which was the person Zelda had run into. He’d spare her the side-eye about smoking; she was essentially immortal and so was Sabrina, which was why they needed to work things out - because they’d both be around awhile and, beyond that, they both knew what awaited them back in the world they called home. They were on borrowed time here in Vallo - like all of them were. It was possible Sabrina and Nick would be here indefinitely, but also a chance they wouldn’t be. Or Zelda wouldn’t. And the last thing Dan wanted was for either of them to disappear, not having hashed things out at least slightly. Familial love was often a thorny, sticky bramble - he knew that well too. But ignoring each other forever wasn’t the answer. “I was hoping we could talk,” and he didn’t post it like a question, nor did he hint that he’d even go anywhere until they got a few words in. “Allison and I are moving out soon but I can still keep bugging you about it. Because - I do care about you. Sabrina too, yes, but also you - and you can’t do this alone, Zelda. It’s not a burden you have to bear alone.” Goddess, the man was stubborn, wasn’t he? Brave, too. Most anyone who knew Zelda knew she was best avoided in these moods. Her wrath was often swift and more than a little terrifying. But here he was, asking -no, demanding- they talk, and about the one thing he knew she absolutely didn’t care to talk about. “You hardly know me,” she muttered, raising her cigarette again. There was so much warmth in Dan it could be sickening. Disconcerting? She understood why he got along with Sabrina. Always believing they knew best. Well, Zelda wasn’t her niece. She'd been at odds with that girl almost from the moment she started acting independently. Of course, that's why she’d known she was destined for greatness. There was so much she would never get to achieve, her life cut even shorter than her father's. Finally, she sighed, turning to face him fully, but her expression and tone remained indifferent, perhaps slightly irritated. “It's only new information to some members of this family.” She was dealing with it fine, just as she had been since her arrival here. Alone or otherwise. Dan folded his arms across his chest, head cocked to the side a bit. He wasn’t a therapist (which was why he had gotten Sabrina set up with one before - and she kept going, much to his pleasant surprise) but he knew a thing or two about grief. About feeling let down and alone. “Knowing before and having to sit on it for so long, that likely didn’t make it any easier on you,” he pointed out. “You both lost a lot. And I’m not here to tell you what to do...” God, no - he was stubborn, not stupid, “...but right now Sabrina thinks you don’t care about her or Nick. We both know that’s not true.” He understood Zelda didn’t open up. That she wasn’t used to it - that she was closed off, just snapped shut, the way a clam did in chilly waters. And getting someone to change from that was difficult, especially when they’d been a certain way for a really long time - but he thought she might at least like to try, for the sake of her niece. For the sake of repairing their relationship. “Sabrina's always felt that way.” The answer was automatic. It didn’t even give her pause. Hilda was the nurturing one, the indulgent one. Zelda was the disciplinarian, the one who pushed. She’d only ever wanted what was best for Sabrina. She’d wanted to keep her safe, keep her from making the same mistakes she had, that Edward had. Sabrina was so like Edward. Zelda gave another flick of her cigarette holder, but it was gentler this time. “Of course I care about her and Nicholas.” She said it as though it should be obvious. And shouldn’t it? She’d never been particularly good at displaying her affections, but there were other ways of expressing love. “She's waiting for an apology.” And it was one Zelda wouldn’t give, not that she gave many. “An apology for what?” Dan asked, though he could probably guess. However, maybe not. He knew about what had transpired from Nick’s side, from Sabrina’s side - but he hadn’t heard from Zelda, in terms of how she viewed things. There were two sides to this story; he was simply curious about hers. “She told me that you two had a talk but it seemed like it didn’t go well.” At that point, he hadn’t asked for details - because there had immediately been a raincloud forming around Sabrina when it came to that discussion, rolling ocean waves that looked and felt stormy. Asking her to elaborate, when she had only just returned to the mortuary, didn’t seem wise at the time. Zelda finally pressed the cigarette out in a nearby ashtray, leaving the cigarette holder resting there as she gave a mild shrug and placed both hands on her hips, as though she had no idea what was going through Sabrina's mind. And most of the time she didn’t. “For herself. For Nick.” It probably said something about her emotional state, good as she was at keeping it bottled up, that she hadn’t said ‘Nicholas.’ “She doesn’t believe we did enough, doesn’t believe I did enough. As if any of us asked for this. As if we wanted,” her voice had been steadily rising, but she stopped abruptly, her arms settling across her chest. Her expression turned steely with a tone to match. “No one asked her to sacrifice herself.” Did they have a better alternative? Or any alternative? Perhaps not. But it certainly hadn’t been the outcome Zelda had wanted. Ah, there it was - the emotion that had been bottled up, and walled off behind steel. Just a smidge, sure, but Dan knew it was there - Zelda wasn’t heartless, she just played her cards close to her chest. All the time. “Specific apologies aside,” he started, running a hand over his mouth, kind of like a thinking pose - because this was a delicate situation and everyone had been hurt over it. “Maybe just telling her how you feel will help? I think - now more than ever she needs to hear that you do care.” Especially if Sabrina had always questioned it, or felt as if her aunt lacked care. On a deeper level, they both knew that she loved Sabrina - it was simply that some things could stand to be repeated, especially during instances of high stress or when foundations were shaky. “Because we’re all on borrowed time here in Vallo - that’s just the way of the world,” he added. “Some of us more than others. I can’t tell you to fix things, or force you to fix them - but it seems like a waste not to.” He'd have to excuse her if she looked at him as though he'd suddenly and mysteriously gained a second head. "Sabrina knows how I feel." Arguably, she wasn't actually certain of that, but speaking of her feelings... "Has she told you how it happened?" Zelda was beginning to regret setting aside her cigarette, if only for the fact it would have given her something to do with her hands, but she wasn't one to fidget and her arms stayed firmly crossed. She met his gaze unflinchingly. "I made the cut." Her voice lowered. "Fix that." “There’s no fixing exactly what happened in your world - or changing them,” Dan said, and that was an unfortunate truth. One of the worst parts about grief, actually - that we couldn’t make it just go away. No, it was always there - a constant thorn in your side, or a stone in your pocket. Some days you felt it there very keenly, it felt like it stabbed into you - others, it was barely a brush against skin. Never truly gone, however the severity lessened depending on how you were standing. “She’s been hurt by all of that - you are too. You said it yourself, you made the cut. But - do you really want to keep avoiding each other right here when she’s building a future that you can actually be a part of?” If they both worked things out, that is. It was also going to be up to Zelda to take those first steps - she was the adult in this situation. Maybe that meant confronting her own grief, her pain, and working to unpack it a little so it wasn’t this intense - so the stone wasn’t always scraping so harshly against skin. Dan hoped that she would. His question was met with silence, but something in her posture seemed to sag. No. She didn't want to avoid Sabrina. "Are you so sure she wants me to be a part of it?" she asked finally, moving to sit in a chair, the anger draining from her. She smiled faintly, without any amusement. "I prayed, tried a resurrection spell," she laughed, quiet and harsh, looking down at her lap rather than at him for the first time in their conversation, "offered myself in her place." Taking a breath, she looked up at him again. Her smile was tight, something dangerous lurking behind it. "Unsurprisingly, no one wanted to make a deal." Dan sat as well, picking another chair - probably for the best, since this seemed like a conversation that two people should have while actually sitting. “I’m pretty positive that she does,” he assured. “Want you to be a part of her future, I mean.” He leaned forward a little, elbows resting on his knees. The fact that Zelda had offered herself in Sabrina’s place - well, he hadn’t known that. Likely Sabrina didn’t either - she just assumed that because she bore the burden of saving the world, that the deed was done. That they all just let it happen - she’d been absolutely broken by what she’d seen, broken by being let down and by what happened to Nick. It was difficult to consider anything else beyond that haze of pain. Though he knew that Sabrina wouldn’t have wanted to return to being alive again - especially if it meant leaving Nick where he was. But of course her aunt had tried - and she too was let down. “So on top of losing her, you also - had your faith shaken.” "I'm not," she said simply. There was no malice behind it, not even anger. Zelda could criticize Sabrina's anger toward her all she liked, believe it misplaced, but she wouldn't deny she'd made mistakes along the way. She'd tried to do what she felt was right raising her, guiding her, as any parent. But she knew she hadn't always gotten it right. His next comment tore another dark laugh from her. "I've been a faithful member of the Church for more than five centuries and in a year, I helped dethrone one deity, briefly thought I worshiped another, and now," she hesitated, the uncertainty unlike her, before shaking her head, "I'm not sure what I believe." It was the first time she'd said as much aloud. She'd hardly even been able to admit it to herself. But Hecate had turned her back on her, on Sabrina, on all of them. There wasn’t a parent in the history of parents who got everything right - Dan was doing his best with Claire, and had been as soon as she came into their lives, but he probably wasn’t perfect either and would make mistakes along the way as well. Each time Zelda arrived in this world and then disappeared, it upset Sabrina deeply - that wasn’t the reaction of someone who didn’t want her aunt to be a part of her life. But Dan wouldn’t press about it - even if he thought it was a real damn shame if they continued to exist in the same world and didn’t grasp onto the time they had. “It’s hard, when things change - when we get shaken up like that,” he replied, gravelly and thoughtful; he’d never been particularly religious but it was touted a lot in AA, during his recovery. He’d always thought beliefs didn’t make a person any better than anyone else regardless; it was actions that counted. But he also knew religion brought stability and comfort to some people and he would never begrudge them that in life. “I don’t think anyone would blame you for having to parse it out for yourself.” It wasn’t that Zelda was unfamiliar with change. She’d lived long enough to see the world progress, generations pass. But in some ways, she also lived in her own bubble, cut off from that progress. One only had to look at how she dressed, her mannerisms, to know she was somewhat stuck in the past, though she didn’t seem to realize it. “Can you imagine how long it’s been since I wasn’t a part of a coven, a church, with a natural order to things?” Some might consider it freeing. For Zelda, it was terrifying, not that she’d admit that. Longer than Dan had been alive, he’d reckon that much. And no one just got used to something like that overnight either - especially when Zelda’s experiences, losing faith in her belief system and the church, came with so much grief attached. When someone you loved passed on, you just wanted to know why. You wanted an answer from whatever you believed in - you wanted the closure, the potential comfort. And all of the ‘they’re in a better place now’ bullshit was just that - bullshit. “I don’t think there are any easy answers - a person sometimes has to search within themselves and no one can do that for them,” he said. “But - I’m glad you talked about it a little with me now. Sometimes it helps to just put it out there.” She wasn’t looking for solutions, which was fine - because he didn’t have them. It simply meant a lot that she’d opened up a bit. Zelda did want answers. She felt she deserved them, that she’d earned them. Why had Hecate refused every prayer and bargain she had made? Why hadn’t she spared Sabrina in the first place? Had Hilda's resurrection been another manipulation in order to earn her faith, her devotion? To one more being unworthy of it. “Would you have left if I hadn’t?” But she did offer him a faint smile. She watched him, expression critical. “I know you’ve been here for Sabrina. She trusts you. She has enough parents. I only have Sabrina. Look after her.” Dan chuckled a little, a flicker of a grin showing itself. “Nope,” he admitted and, well, he did it all out of care - he hadn’t been lying before, when he said he cared about Zelda. He did. To know that she was hurting, no matter how much she covered it up - of course he wished it didn’t have to be that way, even if it was the only way. Feeling that pain, asking those questions, experiencing the anger - that was the only way someone could begin to heal from everything. Through, rather than around. But then his expression sombered too, and he nodded. “I’ll always look after her,” he promised. “As long as I’m here. And I hope - one day, when you’re ready, maybe you’ll tell her. What you told me.” It would open up a path to conversation, at least, just the beginnings perhaps - or it could have the opposite effect, but at the very least it was somewhere to start. Stubborn. He’d gotten her to talk, though. Zelda was accustomed to holding everything in, closing herself off from even those closest to her. And she’d hardened her heart centuries ago, not wanting to be hurt again. But some heartaches couldn’t be prevented. Her smile was noncommittal. “Maybe one day.” Sabrina had her parents, even if she was too young to remember them, and she'd found a new family here, in this place. And Hilda had always been the more nurturing between the two of them. Zelda wasn’t certain she had a place in her niece's life any longer, and they had never been the type to discuss this sort of thing. She wasn’t even sure how she’d approach it. For as stubborn as Dan was, he was also pretty decent at recognizing limits - and not pushing more than someone was necessarily ready for. Which was why he didn’t want to barrel down that path of insisting that Sabrina and her aunt should talk - oh, sure, he definitely thought they should. But it wasn’t something he’d force - and his opinion could just be kept to himself for now. One day, if Zelda wanted to broach the subject she would - she’d find a way. That much he knew. “Well, I won’t bug you about it anymore for today,” he tossed another smile her way, this one warm, and moved to stand from the chair. “Better finish packing anyway - we don’t have a lot of stuff, it’s mostly Claire’s things, but I know she’d be upset if something was left behind.” He and Allison had a house picked out and everything was all set to go - ink dried on the paperwork and everything. As bittersweet as it felt to be leaving the mortuary, he was also excited about it - a home with his wife, with their daughter; the happiness it brought was like floating. “Hopefully you’ll join us when we have a housewarming party.” She smiled and gave a slight nod, grateful he wasn’t so determined he intended to push the matter. Zelda wasn’t sure she was ready to have a conversation with Sabrina about how she felt, about moving forward. She wasn’t sure Sabrina was ready. “I do remember that age.” Her expression softened. “But you're welcome back in this home anytime.” In truth, as much as she sometimes complained, Zelda had enjoyed having a full house. She didn’t much like being alone. “I expect a personal invitation. You know I’m old-fashioned.” She made a faintly dismissive gesture. “Don’t let me keep you.” |