WHO: Theo & OPEN (to anyone who'd be at the Zabini house) WHAT: Theo leaves 'home' to come home WHEN: Thursday 5th, REALLY early WHERE: The Zabini place WARNINGS: Theo warnings, mentions of past child abuse, eating disorder, dismemberment, etc
Theo's first hours at back at the Nott House had seemed like days, the days had seemed to pass so fast that he barely remembered being there. He'd made sure his Christmas presents had all been sent before he'd cloistered himself away back at the place he was supposed to call home but couldn't. The pain he'd felt at being unable to do as Blaise had asked and stay was preferable to the disturbance he would have caused if he'd stayed, too aware that his being around would sour what should be an enjoyable holiday for the people he lived with.
Christmas had never been something celebrated in the Nott household, his father more pagan than anything else and Theo himself feeling awkward about taking part in a celebration in a religion he wasn't part of; he still engaged in sending presents to show his appreciation to the people he cared about and he wasn't about to forbid anyone to do the same if they wished, but it wasn't a time of year that came with the same excitement and celebration that other people seemed to feel. Theo the same way about Christmas as he did about any holiday, any excuse that his father could use to rationalise the things he did to his son. Theo's own birthday was overlooked unless his father wanted to use it for his own benefit, his father's birthday was a hard day. Any school holiday where he'd been summoned home was a dark time for him and Christmas was no different.
Theo dreaded the end of the year, the time he'd be forced to spend with his father alone in the house, the man celebrating in ways that would ruin his son. Was there something wrong with him, something that had been ingrained into him with nails and blood and sweat and semen that had him returning to the Nott House when the only thing there were bad memories and the stink of blood and violence? Or was it just that he'd had nowhere else to go to poorly handle his weakness in solitude?
Whichever it had been, Theo certainly gained solitude in the place and he was definitely surrounded in the smell of gore and crimes against his person, even if it was mostly all in his head. He didn't want to sleep - his waking nightmares were enough for him without being caught in them while unconscious - but exhaustion from the constant stress he was putting himself through was stronger than his will and he succumbed now and again. The sleep he managed was fitful, choppy as a furious sea as he snatched minutes here and there between reliving the things that had happened to him in that very house, between waking to find himself wandering the halls or soaking from an unconcious shower or bleeding. He forced himself to drink water when he was cognizant enough to do so but eating was much more difficult; he threw up most of what went into his system on swallowing and there was little he could bring himself to face.
He spent his time curled up in a seat in the living room, watching the grey moors that were the Nott lands behind the house and the thestrals in the cold grey, the only things that kept him grounded. He spent Christmas there, Boxing Day, through to New Years and beyond a few days, reassuring himself when he felt like leaving the masoleum of his childhood that it was better for the few people he loved that he keep his distance throughout the holidays. By the time he thought he was okay to return he'd started to unravel; he saw himself attacked in the hall, in the dining room bent over the table, in the bedroom, the blood that wasn't really there staining the floor, the screaming rebounding and echoing from the walls that wasn't really there. He spoke but didn't remember what it was he'd been saying, glad of the fact because it wasn't anything good.
He broke on the Thursday, on the fifth of January, making his way back to the Zabini household. He arrived too early and snuck in quiet and unnoticed, his frame of mind whittled down to nearly its basest instincts and driving him to safety like some prey animal running for a bolt hole. He was a little divorced from himself, from the reality around him, but even so he knew it was too early in the morning to make his presence known just yet. He curled up in one of the chairs in the living room, washed out dressed in grey and gaunt even compared to when he'd left the place. He was visibly weary, the circles under his eyes dark like the other things he'd brought back with him from home, his gaze distant even as he sat, knees pulled to his chest, rolling a small cylinder of bone between his thumb and index finger. He'd found it underneath the couch with a tiny conical piece, the surrounding flesh and muscle that had once been there long decayed away - a piece of his own index finger from when he'd been nine, maybe ten, chopped from his hand by his father for some transgression that blended in with everything else he'd been unable to do right.
It was strange to hold a piece of his own finger bone with the same finger it came from; growing it back had been painful, but the good kind of sharp splintering ache of growth, an improvement from the bright tearing when it had been removed and the raw shaking that had been left until his father had deemed the lesson learned and allowed his son to be healed. He gnawed on the already torn and bleeding fingernails of his other hand while he took in the tiny object in his hand, so lost in thought, so close to dissociation that he didn't realise when the sun came up, when the sound of people stirring drifted down, when someone came in through the door to the room he was sitting in. He was so far away in thought he might as well have not been there at all.