The H ol e s in My Apologies {South}

[✌ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ]

our tale begins here.



S P E A K I N G // T H I N K I N G

Give me a second I
I need to get my story straight
My seats been taken by some sunglasses
asking 'bout a scar

She hadn't forgotten yet, the way it had felt to wake beside him in the morning, and the feeling of not wanting to run away. How she had just wanted to lie there in the weak morning sunlight, and just be for a moment with Riley. About how she had risen from her sleeping state, and shivered from the cold coming in through the open window, and her nakedness. How Suspenders had opened one slitted eye from his perch above Riley's head, and shut it slowly again. How she had quickly closed the blinds so that when Riley opened his eyes he wouldn't instantly die from the pain of so much light after a night filled with so much darkness. She couldn't forget about that morning filled with Riley's soft snores and the way the fuzziness of her housecoat warmed her as she mixed the baileys into her coffee, preemptively making sure that she couldn't get straight, even though she was still a little bit tipsy from the night before.

She couldn't forget the way she had moved around her house, waiting for him to wake up. She had placed a bottle of painkillers and a glass of water beside him and simply watched him for a bit, enjoying the way he slept all slung out, arms protecting his chest. He looked so peaceful that she decided not to wake him. Normally she might get up at six am after sleeping over at someone's house or apartment, and slip away. But Riley was far more fascinating then she had bargained for, and mostly because he had been the one to seduce her. After brushing her teeth and pulling on a long shirt, she toasted herself a piece of bread with nutella on it. She then sat down at the piano to see if a tune would drag itself out of her, but none promised to emerge, all emotions and thoughts completely out of sync with what had happened the night before.

She knew that what had happened was wrong. That Riley belonged to someone, but as terrible as it was, Fenn found herself not caring. She had slept with so many people that had partners or beaus, or even fiances that by now the notion didn't even affect her. It just left a dull ache in the back of her head, as if someone had torn out all the important thinking bits and left her with a brain of mush. She had curled her legs up under her, so that she had to play around her knees as she thought about things, trying to place what it all meant. But her brain tapped idly at nothing as it half listened for movement from up the stairs. It felt like the moment before the storm, waiting for what Riley thought of what happened, wondering if he had hated it, or loved it because stupidly she actually found herself caring.

The whole fact that she cared about anything to do with it was a warning sign. She was Fenn Klardie, she didn't care about things. If he hated her, great. That had been really great last night and she had enjoyed it, so at least one of them would have a happy memory of the evening. Even as her heart hardened against it, she couldn't really lie to herself. She knew that she did care, and that bothered her so damn much that she needed to work off some energy. Falling backwards off of the stool, she caught herself with her own two hands, springing back up onto her feet. Immediately she started off at a run down a long hallway and bounced off a wall for momentum, breathing in deeply to calm herself. She spent some time warming up for a good old free run, but before she knew it, she was slowing down to a halt, because her path had led her right back to him, and the him was sitting up in bed.

and I know I gave it to you months ago
I know you're trying to forget
but between the drinks and subtle things
the holes in my apologies

Shaking her head, she looked up with a rather forced smile at the orderly who had probably been speaking to her for the last five minutes. She mumbled out a quick thank-you, and then followed the orderly, trailing along like a good little puppy as she led her to a stark white room with paper on a raised bed, and a couple seats beside it. She opted for the bed, and the woman left her, telling her a Doctor would be along for a few minutes. Her hands rested loosely in her lap as she tried not to read the posters lining the walls, the ones the Doctors put there just so that the patient would be freaked out enough to buy every medication in arm's reach. She hated coming here, and had only been here a few times before, and it had always been with her parents.

Her hands clenched in her lap, and she bit her lip, drawing blood as she thought of that forbidden topic. Times like this where she wished she hadn't opted to not bring her flask to the Doctor's office. She could go for a swig of something right now. As she waited, she eyed the alcoholic antiseptic, wondering if she would have time to reach over and take a drink before the Doctor got there, which really helped in passing the time spent waiting. If a sane person were to look at that, they would laugh at how pitiful they had gotten. But for Fenn, it worked to take her mind off of it very well. So when the Doctor came in, she smiled up at him, even though the intense gurgles radiating from down there had still not stopped, and she still wanted to puke all over everything.

It had only started about three days ago as well. Which was exactly a week after the incident. At first she thought that maybe it was the alcohol consumption, more specifically, the increased amount, but alcohol had never made her so sick before. She decided that the doctor's office was the best choice, and now here she was, sitting uncomfortably close to an older man with a fake smile. The situation was so close to home that it almost made her giggle, might have if she didn't feel like such shit. "So honey," he started off, reading something off the forms on his clipboard, "what seems to be the problem?" She easily replied, listing of all the symptoms, wherein he began to ask some very personal questions, such as when the last time she had intercourse had been, how often she got her period, the answer being maybe twice a year.

He looked too thoughtfully at her, and it bothered her. Face slipping into a frown, she stared back just as intently, not one to be cowed. For a moment he stared at her, and then he scribbled something down on his chart, and stood up so suddenly, that Fenn sat back in surprise. Opening a cupboard, he reached in and when he pulled back out, he held a cardboard box in his hand. Turning back around to face her, his face frighteningly neutral, he gave her the box. "You may want to try this, and if it comes back negative, then see me again." She looked down at the box as he left, and she stood to leave as well. Written across the box was a picture of a stick with a plus and minus on it. And there was a happy baby face on it as well, to try and cheer the person up apparently. As realization dawned on her, she stood stock still in horror, hands shaking, and chest breaking.

you know I'm trying hard to take it back
so if by the time the bar closes
and you feel like falling down
I'll carry you home

Suspenders was running through her legs as she made her way into her house, and dropped her purse down on the entrance table. She couldn't keep her eyes off the box, reading getting increasingly difficult as her hands shook so much. Quickly, she crossed over to her alcohol cabinet,and took a swig of the most available thing, which turned out to be whiskey. On the box, it suggested drinking a lot of juice or water before taking the test, but Fenn already had to pee, and hadn't had a glass of orange juice in years anyway. So instead, she just made her way up to her bedroom and unwrapped the test. A slip of instructions came out with it, and reading them her eyes widened in disgust. She was meant to pee on the stick, and then wait five minutes. If there was a plus sign, she was fucked, if there was a negative sign, she was fucked.

Kicking off her heels, she went into the bathroom, and did what was required of her, ever fearful that she would pee on her own hand and then die of the grossness. After washing her hands, using a lot of soap, and then waited for the thing to work, pacing back and forth, leaning over to check over it every now and then from where she had placed it on the table. She didn't know what she was thinking right now. Who was running through her head, blazing a trail, she didn't want to think about it because it was most likely that she was negative anyway. Whatever happened to the fact that she had a one in a million chance of becoming pregnant? The five minutes dragged on and on as she kept checking, until to her horror, she finally started to see the thing slide along.

Holding her head in her hands, she peaked through to see a pink colour. Pink could mean negative though right? Because pink is such a negative colour. She looked at the thing head on. She was never one to not face her foes without at least looking them in the eye. Holding her gaze level with the evil stick's she stared at the pink plus forming on the stupid thing, and she found her legs giving out under her as she realized that the thing was pink and positive. Reaching out, she steadied herself by grabbing onto the edge of her vanity. Staring hard at the stick, wondering if she had gotten the directions wrong. Maybe plus and pink meant that she was safe. Who the hell would want a child, and would want to raise it here. They must be made to make the woman feel good about not getting pregnant.

Picking up the box again, she read the instructions over and over, until the gray skies outside were starting to go darker. She was numb, and when she finally began to become aware of her surroundings, she was sitting on her bed, a cat rubbing against her legs, purring for all it's worth. Slowly, she lifted her shirt up, to glare down at her lower stomach. It didn't look any different. Still well toned and not protruding at all. Not yet at least. Soon, she would get plump with a small child growing inside her. A baby. Maybe a girl, or a boy. Hopefully one of the two because she didn't want to give birth to a baby that was nothing. As she sat there, numb in abject horror and still tenderness, she rested a hand on the spot where the baby would grow, her fear and her excitement dawning in her natural instincts instilled in her since the dawn of time at the least. She let her thoughts wander over to the sperm donor, and with growing horror, she realized that it could only be one person.

An hour later, she found herself on a certain front step, a bag of music in her hand, still untouched, wearing black pumps, red gloves, and a woolen coat. As her hand lifted to rap against the door, she laid her palm against it instead, hearing the sounds coming from inside. The laughter, and the quiet all mixed together to form something completely new. She didn't know what he would say to her, how much he would hate her now, but she was going to do what needed to be done, even if the way his brown eyes stared through her would kill her. So she clenched her hand into a fist, and rapped on the door, hard. Waiting for Mr. Riley Lightwood to answer it so he could hate her more than he already did. Oh Joy.

We are young
So let's set the world on fire
We can burn brighter
than the sun

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[Deleted]

/*\ You did not think when you sent me to the brink /*\

Can you lie next to her
And give her your heart, your heart
As well as your body
And can you lie next to her

The Lightwood house was, as usual, in a state of barely-controlled chaos. Of course, it was hard to keep any semblance of order when there were seven kids running around, not to mention two newborn babies thrown into the mix. Cillian and Siobhan had come into the world a mere two weeks previously, and were quickly being assimilated into the complex mechanics of life on the Lightwood estate. Riley had initially been worried about his own abilities to handle more than he already was when it came to making sure everything in the family was running smoothly, but he'd quickly found upon meeting his new niece and nephew that he'd find a way to make it happen. Maybe a few less hours of sleep, maybe a tad bit more stress, but for them, he'd make it happen.

"Hey there, pretty girl," he grinned, pulling Siobhan into his arms while Edana was busy feeding the Cillian on the other side of the nursery. The baby girl didn't have many Lightwood genes in her, with her tuft of crimson hair and rounded cheeks that contrasted the blondish-brunettes and slender features of her mother and her various aunts and uncles, but she was beautiful nonetheless. It had been years since Riley had taken care of a baby (he'd been twelve when Chyba was born and had pretty much done everything for him from feeding to diapers to guiding him in his first steps), but he was pleased to find out that the whole system was sort of like riding a bike: you never forgot how. Snatching one of Siobhan's many stuffed animals from the inside of her crib, Riley spared a glance back at his sister, silently asking Edana for permission to help out even though she never seemed to complain since two babies were a lot for one teenage girl to deal with. "I'm gonna go take her downstairs and feed her, okay?"

He didn't bother waiting for a response as he turned on his heel and left the nursery, cooing to the bright-eyed little bundle in his arms the whole way. As much as he loved his siblings and now his neice and nephew, the lanky guitarist admitted to himself that this was definitely enough parenting to last him a long time. It was a good thing that Bridgit seemed okay with not having kids at any point in the near future. At the thought of Bridge, Riley couldn't hold back a faint cringe. She was perfect in every way he wasn't, bright and sunny and incredibly loyal and trusting. For a moment he almost let himself remember the exact extent to which he'd broken her loyalty and betrayed her trust, but before the thoughts could work their way to the forefront of his mind he pushed them back into some dark corner of his consciousness along with all the other undesirable things in life.

After all, that's what I do best. Sweeping everything under the rug.

He hadn't breathed a word about the incident to anyone, especially Bridgit. Perhaps it made him a liar (it did), and perhaps he was a terrible person because of it (he was), but in addition to being a professional pretender, Riley was also very good at justifying his actions, no matter how scrupulous they were or weren't. After all, he'd explained away murder to himself a thousand times. But that didn't stop the crimson stains that plagued his mind any more than lying by omission about what he'd done to Bridgit stopped the scarlet tallies that inevitably worked their way from the razor blade stashed in his drawer into the already-scarred skin of spindly arms, physical manifestations of a guilt that could find no other release.

Lost in thought, he auto-piloted his way through a process he'd done a thousand times, getting Siobhan's formula ready with one hand while holding the rather squirmy little girl in the other arm. She calmed down when her meal was given to her, though, nomming contentedly on her bright-pink plastic bottle as Riley hummed a lullaby under his breath and carried her back towards the staircase in the entrance hall to bring her back to her mother, only to be interrupted by a sudden rap on the door.

Riley raised an eyebrow, glancing over at the solid piece of District 7 mahogany that the door was crafted from. As far as he knew they weren't expecting any company, and his mother and step-father would be gone all weekend, as was the usual bill of fare with the two of them. It must have been Bridgit since she was the only one who made a habit of coming over without warning, he decided, shifting Siobhan into a one-handed hold again and turning the knob.

Oh. Awkward.

"Fenn... hi," Riley stammered, amberdark eyes the size of saucers at the sight of the well-dressed girl standing on his porch. The two of them hadn't spoken since the incident, and Riley had planned on keeping it that way. He didn't need any more reminders of what scum he was than the ones that already haunted him. Still, the petite brunette on the other side of the door looked... odd. Disturbed by something, and Riley's politeness had always been stronger than his nonexistent knack for self-preservation. "Oh, hey, the music! Thanks for bringing it over. Do you, um, want to come in? I can make you cocoa or something since it's so cold out and you walked all the way over."

Awkward. This is so awkward.

There was really something off with Fenn, he noted around the flush that was creeping its way across his cheekbones against his will. Of course, they'd both been trashed (well, technically she'd been mildly inebriated and he'd been hungover, guilt-ridden and in an extreme amount of pain) the last time they saw each other, that morning in her house filled with throbbing headaches and half-hushed whispers of oh no no no what have I done, but she still seemed much more grave than the giggling young thing he'd met at the music store in the not-distant-enough past, and her eyes seemed fixed on Siobhan, who had finished her bottle by that point and was gurgling happily against his ribcage. Looking from Fenn to the baby girl and back again, Riley smiled slightly, holding her up for Fenn to get a better look. "My niece. Edana had her and her twin brother a couple weeks ago and I've been helping out because the kids love Uncle Riley. Right, squirt?"

He grinned as Siobhan shrieked happily and wrapped a tiny hand around one of his fingers, but his attention was again drawn back to Fenn and the almost-horrified look painting its way across her features. Something was wrong here, an insistent tingling at the back of his neck told him so, and within a few seconds Riley found himself taking a few paces back and handing the baby off to Avon, who looked at him with an eyebrow quirked but otherwise complied. He dashed back to the door, both hands now free, and gently closed his fingers around Fenn's elbow, guiding her into the house and across the entry hall into the library, shutting the door securely before turning back to her and trying not to let the worry slowly beginning to bubble in his stomach show on his face (probably failing, but oh well, failing was all he ever did). "Okay, tell me what's going on. You look scared out of your mind and I know you didn't come here to bring me that music. Tell me, Fenn."

Tell me and get it over with, because this just went from awkward to scary.

[/justify][/size]
And confess your love, your love
As well as your folly
And can you kneel before the king
And say I'm clean, I'm clean

[✌ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ]

S P E A K I N G // T H I N K I N G

I know you're trying to forget
but between the drinks and subtle things
the holes in my apologies
you know I'm trying hard to take it back

He answered the door with a little baby girl in his arms. Fenn's first thought was, "wow, he's a player and a half." Her second thought was, "that baby looks adorable there." And she couldn't help thinking about how maybe that's how he would look when he was holding their baby, the image just as intriguing as it was mind numbing. Biting her lip, she could feel the awkwardness radiating from the bubble surrounding them. She found herself speechless, trying to say what had to be said was going to be a lot harder than she previously suspected. She was such a tough as nut nails when she needed to be, usually glaring at anger and danger right in the face and maybe giving them a good old backhand to boot.

But knowing the way she was about to totally screw up his whole life, she couldn't bring herself to stand on his porch and say them. Her face, usually so bland was twisted into such an expression, that it looked as if she had either just killed a puppy, or was about to tell someone that she was pregnant. So, basically perfect for the situation. Shifting her weight, she opened her mouth to speak when he invited her in for a hot chocolate. She almost wanted to throw her head into her hands at his stupid manners. All she wanted to do was ruin his evening and possibly his life and then turn around and walk away, but he was making it rather difficult. "It was hardly a long walk, Riley," she said, averting his gaze and the invitation. How dare he look so trusting when she was about to grip his heart and twist?

It hurt to even stand here. She didn't want to look at him, and see with every certainty that he thought what they did was absolutely wrong when to her, it had been one of the most meaningful nights she had in a long time. She was so used to letting herself be unattached, that with Riley it was rather infuriating. Why couldn't she just shut her eyes, and when she opened them, she wouldn't want him to stop staring at her with those eyes that she was certain said that they hated her very existence, and that she could just take the parasite out of her stomach and put it back, take it back to wherever it came from. Even as her stupid maternal instincts already began to think of the thing inside her as a little life, her mind called it parasite.

He lifted up the gurgling baby to show her, with such obvious pride that she almost wanted to throw up, and it wasn't the same as the throwing up she had been doing the last few days, but the throwing up where she just wanted to take out every thought. Her fingers ghosted to her breast pocket, where her flask was tucked securely. But she probably already looked like a drunk slut to Riley, which she really was, no getting around it, and she didn't need to reinforce the image when all this was about to happen. So her hand fluttered back down, and biting her lip against the headache that was forming again the back of her head, she finally looked firmly into Riley's eyes. Utterly done in when she saw the way that they smiled with his lips even when he wasn't happy. How he could be a good actor just because he knew how to do that. She couldn't stop the look of horror from spreading as she thought, once again, about what she was going to do, even if she tried.

And I know that I'm not
all that you got
I guess that I
I just thought maybe we could find a ways to fall apart

A hand was holding her by the elbow, dragging her unwillingly into the house so she could meet her doom. She really didn't want to tell him, she knew that now. The alcohol had made her stupid, and had made her come here. Not for the first time in her life, she berated herself for her stupidity. But even as she turned to look back at the door, it was being shut by Riley's long arms. Arms that had wrapped themselves around her not too long ago, and she was being led down a hallway. And the whole time, all her muddled mind could think about was how gently he held her arm, and how carefully he led her away. Riley must have read a book on how to make telling someone about surprise pregnancies even harder. That was the only way he could be so dim. Which of course wasn't fair, because how was he to know?

Only when he shut the door behind them, and she looked once again at his face, did she see how worried he looked. She didn't know if it was for her though. She couldn't tell. What if he sort of already knew? Taking a deep breath, she wandered around the room, running her hand softly over the books she knew, which were quite a few. She stopped on an epic called "The Lord of The Rings." Frodo hadn't tried to shirk out of dropping a ring into a volcano, so really she had no right in even trying to hide from this. She knew that each word would break his heart, and irrevocably change things. She didn't know in what way either. She didn't know if she was more afraid of the thing growing inside her, or what would happen when it was born. She didn't know how to take care of anyone but herself and a small black cat.

She took a deep breath, and resolutely turned back around to face Riley, the movement making her dizzy. That was weird because that hadn't happened before. But she hadn't actually eaten since the afternoon, and it was now evening. She hadn't thought about how having an alien parasite inside you would make one doubly in need of energy. She steadied herself against the bookshelf, shaking her head to get the whirling out. She couldn't help wondering if Riley just figured her stumble was due to drunkenness. Which of course was completely silly. She hadn't a single drink since before taking the stupid pee stick test. She realized that she was putting things off when she saw that the large hand on the clock behind Riley's head had moved by two minutes. And she hadn't come here to not tell him that he was going to be a father.

Hands shaking, she held out the bag of music as she blurted out, "I haven't been feeling well, so I went to the Doctors, and he gave me a weird stick to pee on, and so I did, and it says that it's a pink plus, but I don't think that's fair seeing as the Doctor told me when I was younger that I would probably never have children and that was really traumatizing, damnit." Breath. She took in a big gulping breath, even as she realized that she hadn't even said yet what she had come here to say. So placing the music bag on the library's desk, she shut her eyes and let out a long breath. "What I came here to say is, that I am pregnant, and you are the father. I'm sorry that I fucked everything up."

We are young
So let's set the world on fire
We can burn brighter
than the sun

[/color][/size]

[Deleted]

/*\ Can we play the game your way? /*\

If I cut you down
To a thing I could use
I fear there'd be
Nothing good left of you

Riley tried to stay calm, he really did. But calm was never something he had done well, and the carefully crafted facsimile of composure that he'd been showing the world for most of his life cracked a little bit more with each passing second that Fenn stood in front of him wrapped in a cloak of silence. That suffocating quiet was more of an indicator that something was wrong than even the terror in her eyes or the tension in her features, and it unsettled him much more than he would have liked to admit. Fenn was vibrant and loud and in-your-face, a daughter of the sun every bit as much as Bridgit was (even if her light was a little more tainted than Bridge's, but that was a trivial point for another time and place), and seeing her this withdrawn was enough to set off every one of the considerable amount of alarm bells in Riley's head. Whatever this was, it was bad.

But pushing her to talk wasn't going to get them anywhere, Riley had figured that much out after years of simply waiting for siblings to admit to breaking this vase or cheating on that math test rather than harping at them to fess up. In the end, patience almost always won out, but that didn't mean that he had an endless supply of it (he liked for the world to think he did), especially with the awful feeling of impending doom crawling up his spine. What had happened? Had word of the incident gotten out to the tabloids on the tide of Fenn's infame? Would Bridgit be finding out about his infidelity from some copy of the Panem Enquirer while she was doing her grocery shopping rather than hearing it from him? A million possibilities spun through his addled mind, but he couldn't deny that one hunch was much louder than the rest of them.

He knew. Deep down, he knew. But he refused to let himself believe it. Not yet.

But when Fenn finally began to speak, a garbled mess of half-incoherent babble that he could barely make sense of through the slight, ever-present slur in her words and the growing roar of his own heartbeat thudding ominously in his ears, Riley felt any fragile remnants of what might have been hope that this was all a sick joke spiraling away into the paper-scented air of the library faster than he could reach out and try to hold them close to his heart, much faster than he could fabricate new justifications that could half-convince him that this wasn't happening. And as much as he wanted to clap his hands over his ears and shut his eyes and place himself into that delusional fantasy world that his mother had disappeared to years ago, Riley had never been one to kid himself about things (except for when he did), and in the back of his mind a quiet desire for Fenn to just spit it out hummed alongside the sinking of his stomach and the odd constricting feeling around his throat that robbed him of both words and breath.

"What I came here to say is, that I am pregnant, and you are the father. I'm sorry that I fucked everything up."

See? That wasn't so hard.

So that was how the world ended. His world, anyway. Not with a bang, not with a violent explosion or torrents of blood or all the glorious apocalyptic carnage of life's mistakes all converging on him at once. No, the world ended with a quiet assertion that he had singlehandedly slaughtered everything he'd ever loved with one rum-soaked mistake of a night. Riley wasn't aware of his knees giving out until his grip tightened unconsciously on a bookshelf to keep him from crashing to the floor, the weak attempt barely enough to keep him upright until he could sink into one of the old leather armchairs nearby, feeling a thousand times heavier than his own skinny frame could possibly weigh. The fabric of the chair still smelled like his father's aftershave and pipe smoke even twelve years after his passing, and Riley couldn't help but pull the realization from his spinning brain that he'd been an utter failure at keeping the promise he'd made all those years ago. Keeping the family together? They were a wreck, barely afloat as it was. Taking care of his mother and siblings? He'd stood by and watched as she married an abusive monster who would rain terror upon the household until the day Riley and Keela brought the icy hand of death down upon his head. Being the man of the house? Some job he'd done of it, sitting here and staring blankly at a girl who he did not love, who happened to be carrying an illegitimate child. His illegitimate child.

"I'm not going to be an ass about this, Fenn." his voice sounded far-away and so weary that he hardly recognized it, the extremely rare use of cruder language betraying just how emotionally drained he was far more than he would have liked her to know. "I'm not going to make a big deal out of it or swear that it isn't mine or run away. I'm going to man up for once in my life and own my mistakes. And I expect you to do the same."

Riley couldn't understand how he could sound so calm, so collected when ever fiber of the fragile skeleton that held his sanity together was tumbling down in a thunderous roar that stole his very breath, making each word far more quiet than even his normally muted tenor. But as he went on, the gravity of the situation began to finally sink in, choking off the numbed syllables until the tripped over themselves to leave his lips because he had to do this, had to say it in order for it all to be real. This was one dysfunctionality he couldn't pretend didn't exist, not another one of Keela's nights out partying or his mother's denial of her duty to her children or even his own scars, mental and physical. For once in his life, Riley was going to have to face his demons instead of pretending they didn't exist.

"I'm going to deal with this even though it'll mean disappointing my family and losing my chance at a real career and... And losing Bridgit forever when she finds out what I did. I'm tired of just lying to myself about everything and I just need to come to terms with the fact that my life is over."

And those last words did the trick. They made it all so real, so horrifyingly real that Riley suddenly felt more lost than he ever had in his life, liquid fire lapping behind his eyes and threatening to spill over as he looked at Fenn through a watery field of vision, voice trembling as he repeated the assertion that he'd been hiding behind pretty lies for the last twelve years. "Oh my God. My life is over."

And then he had to bury his face in his hands. Maybe Fenn Klardie was holding his future inside of her, maybe she was supposed to be his forever now that they'd both screwed everything up so irreparably, but he'd be damned if he was going to let her see him cry.

[/justify][/size]
Just once in my life
I think it'd be nice
Just to lose control, just once
With all the pretty flowers in the dust

[✌ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ]

S P E A K I N G // T H I N K I N G

If there was one thing that Fenn Klardie was good at, it was acting. She could act her way around any situation. Sometimes people went pink when they lied, but she, she was a blank slate. Whatever a character needed, a nervous habit, maybe really teary, she could pull it off so effortlessly it wasn't even fair. It was due to the fact that she didn't do emotions. She didn't go home and mope or smile about her life, what she did was go home and drink all the alcohol in site and then usually blackout, and she was danged good at it. So that's why she wasn't crying right now, as she stared impassively at Riley. The trick was to make something else hurt more, by biting the inside of your lip, or clenching your nails into your skin. The body takes physical pain over emotional. So calmly, as she went over these facts in her head, she placed her palms over her eyes, fingers curling up above, so that she could act some more.

All she could do was stand there and listen to Riley's breathing, waiting for him to speak, and only realizing now how much she didn't want to hear his response. He could call her a whore. She had been called a whore before. It hadn't been very nice because that was the first time she recognized it to be true. She was nothing but a prostitute and an alcoholic that sold her body for movie parts. She didn't know why she hadn't seen it before, how ugly she really was, how her components were made up of harsh realities, and there was nothing sunny or even vaguely innocent remaining. It seemed that the only thing Fenn Klardie was really good at was spreading her poison, making all the daffodils that hadn't withered yet turn away from the sun. Because look at what she had done to this one.

His voice was far away, cold, and distant. He was swearing, and she had only heard him swear when drunk. Probably because he was so used to being around a large family, full of little ones. While she, she was a toxic mouth, so many words in her vocabulary used to describe were swear words. He was gentle, and kind, and she was hateful and self-centered. If anyone would be a good parent here, it was Riley because Fenn couldn't even go ten minuets without thinking of when she was going to get her next drink. She could try and deny things all she wanted, but she was an addict. She was too weak to make a change, and she knew it. It was selling yourself short, but all the change she had picked up in her life would never even begin to amount to what she needed just to even keep her flask at home.

Yes, there was no doubt in her mind that she would be a terrible mother, never able to live up to the shiny memory of her own that was trying to haunt her brain right now. A crack was forming in the armor she had carefully placed around it using poisons and odorous drinks. But she couldn't have that. She had never thought of her parent's deaths. Never really dealt with it because she always had something to keep her mind off of it, and sometimes there were times like these when she had begun to begin to sober up. Times like these where her parents tried to shoot her a disappointed glare, so she would drink herself farther into oblivion just to escape it because the thing she hated most of all was remembering their faces, the pain tearing through her heart at such a speed that it took her days to recover, the ghosts of them walking all through her house.

It was hard sometimes, the way they walked through their rooms, the way they used to, and with such purpose that it nearly drove her mad when she couldn't figure out what they were doing. She'd stand in the living room, watching the place where her mother used to sew, or watching her father plant his flowers in the garden. The first time it happened, it took her days to figure out that she had simply reached the state where she was so drunk that she couldn't tell real from not real. After that she had spent days more trying to get them to appear again. She was too stupid to realize that ghosts of her memory were ghosts. She was caught in her own woven web, so badly that escaping would take some time. Time that she was too afraid to spend.

She wondered if she would spend that time on the little parasite growing inside her. She imagined it growing, sleeping peacefully inside her, and she wondered if it knew that it was there yet. She wondered if it knew that it was growing inside a fucked up girl who had never grown up. And that's when it happened. When the tears started streaming past her palms, down her chin, and onto the floor. Because there was a whole other person in her uterus, and she was such a life ruiner that she was already ruining the baby's. That wasn't fair. It wasn't fair that she couldn't handle this thing, and it had been given to her anyway. It wasn't fair that she had to ruin Riley's whole life. No, she wasn't jumping to conclusions because he was standing in front of her saying them to her, and all she could hear was, "Why did I have to meet you?"

And even though she was standing in a stranger's house crying, something she hadn't done since her parents had passed, all she could think about was how her throat was burning, asking for another drink. And oh god, what if the baby got even more messed up because of her addiction, and the other fact that she had ruined everyone's lives. She didn't want this, she really didn't. Well, she couldn't and wouldn't bother lying to herself. She was the one who had wanted the sex. She was the one who had gotten Riley drunk, and she was the only one of the two who had the key to her house and knew the way there. She should have known better than to get absolutely hammered and have sex with no condom. But useless as she was, all she could do was push her palms harder into her eyes to try and stop the tears from escaping, and say, "Then you have got to take my flask. It's in my breast pocket. I-I can't touch it. I-I can't touch it. Please."

[Deleted]

/*\ I promise you I will learn from my mistakes /*\

When you try your best but you don't succeed
When you get what you want but not what you need
When you feel so tired but you can't sleep
Stuck in reverse

"Buzz off, Riley," Antoinette growled, pushing past him with enough force to actually knock him back a few inches, her mile-high heels clicking a sharp staccato against the hardwood floor of the entrance hall. The grandfather clock against the far wall tolled two in the morning, the sound of the chime hollow and empty as it split the air between the first and third Lightwood triplets. Riley had been up all night, pacing the length of the library over and over again between breaks to make sure the little ones were soundly sleeping and worried glances at the front door. Antoinette had left without telling anyone where she was going, which was normal for her, but as the time grew later and the rest of the family was sent to bed, Riley found himself working his way into a full-blown panic, calling neighbors and family friends, none of whom had seen his sister. He'd had the phone in his hands ready to put in a missing persons report with the Peacekeeping force when 'Nette had finally barged in through the front door, hair mussed, makeup smudged, and swaying a bit on her feet but otherwise none the worse for wear.

The skinny sixteen-year-old quirked an eyebrow in his sister's direction, following her halfway up the stairs and stopping there, watching as she weaved and struggled with the simple task of ascending to the top. Riley was more than aware that Antoinette's "friends" weren't the most admirable people, but for her to come home like this, bedraggled and clearly under the influence... It worried him, and he wasn't just going to let it slide. "Not until you tell me where you were and what you were doing."

"That's none of your damn business!"

"It's my business when you had all of us worried sick and then you come home in the middle of the night looking like you spent the evening at a crack house!" It was rare for Riley to raise his voice in any situation, and he shocked even himself when the typically smooth tenor echoed off the wood paneling with an irritated edge to it. He blamed the stress. Blinking in surprise, he took a few seconds to breathe deeply and address Antoinette again, returned to his normal disposition. "Just tell me, 'Nette. You won't be in trouble. I just want to know."

Antoinette laughed coldly, malice glimmering palpably in her eyes behind whatever poison was working its way through her veins at the moment. "Stop trying to act like you're Dad, Riley. You're not. You're just a shitty replacement because God knows the little ones need someone to keep them in check, but don't try to pull that bullshit with me. I remember Dad, and he was a hell of a lot better parent than you'll ever be. I pity your kids someday. Really, I do."

Riley wasn't sure why his brain had conjured up that particular memory in an effort to drown out the nuclear explosion that was sending his psyche toppling off of its foundation. It was rather like sitting and watching TV while your house was being bombed and falling down around you, he decided. Some odd little quirk in his warped mental function must have decided that attempting to distract him from the blatant, harsh reality of his world shattering was better than nothing, even though all the memory did was ratchet his despair up another notch. Even though Riley took everything 'Nette said with a grain of salt (the grain of salt being that she insulted everyone and generally said insults were completely unfounded exaggerations), her words echoed around in the carnage of his mind ominously. He couldn't help but to believe that at least in that instance, she had been right. He would make a horrible parent, and the twisted, dysfunctional state of the family he had half-raised in the absence of their parents was evidence enough of that. With him and Fenn for parents... this poor baby didn't stand a chance in the world of being anything but a fragile, broken mess just like dear old Mom and Dad.

Over the next few minutes the tears dried into shameful salty evidence of weakness that lined the inside of his palms, and his internal hysteria melted into a shocked, blank-slate numbness that he wasn't sure he preferred over raw panic. He didn't want to feel like his house-of-cards life was falling (even though it lay in ruins before his eyes), but he at least wanted to feel something. And he tried, he really did, tried to pull up some vestige of optimism or acceptance or even indignance at the unfairness of it all, but there was nothing, nothing, nothing to the point where he mutely wondered how much he'd have to bleed before his mind would come out of lockdown, how many new scars he'd have to create to be functional again, even for just a few minutes.

Surprisingly enough it wasn't pain that brought him back, but rather the sound of muffled sobs from a few feet away. When the room finally faded back into focus, Riley let his eyes fall on Fenn, her tiny frame shivering with the force of the tears that were slowly working their way over the planes of her cheeks and falling into the rich carpet of the library - Riley tried not to think of the countless stains of his own misery that were sealed into that carpet after years of enduring vicious beatings behind closed doors almost every day for six years - the faint sounds of her own distress doing something to finally pull him out of his comatose state.

She asked him in a shaky voice to take the flask from her pocket, which caused a brief moment of confusion before an icy stab of horror shot down his spine. Had she been drinking this whole time? And if so, how much? Surely a lot if she made a habit of carrying around a flask with her. Riley was no medical genius, but after living through Edana's pregnancy he knew a thing or two about the condition a woman was expected to keep her body in if she wished to have a healthy baby, and he knew that alcohol was a dangerous thing to be messing with. With phantom fears of birth defects or worse shooting across the forefront of his mind, Riley didn't hesitate to take the flask from her pocket and carry it across the library, hiding it on the mantelpiece behind an old family photo. Fenn, it seemed, needed a crash course in being pregnant. He made a mental note to find some way to talk to Edana later.

Above all else, Riley Lightwood was a caretaker. Maybe it was a personality trait born of necessity, of being the only one willing to step up and shepherd an utterly lost group of children with a dead father and a mother who was dead to all else but the pretty fantasy world she'd created for herself, but whatever the cause, it was who he was. Selflessness and putting anyone and everyone ahead of himself was second nature by now, and he found himself thanking his lucky stars that Fenn was upset (cruel, he knew, but wasn't this whole turn of events cruel to everyone involved?) because he could finally find something to drown out the millions of worst-case scenarios and whispers of a carefully built tower of existence sent toppling to the ground. He could still function if he had someone to care for.

She was in his arms in a matter of seconds, petite form pulled against his tall one in a way that was a little too familiar, a little to reminiscent of the half-blurred memory that had led them to this place and these tears. Riley had done this a thousand times, hugged a thousand crying little sisters and consoled them with promises that it would all be okay, but this was different. Lacing his fingers through Fenn's hair in a way that was meant to be soothing was different because he could remember the heady smell of her shampoo mixed in with perfume and the fabric softer she must have used for her sheets, holding her too him was different because he still noted the way the curve of her waist seemed to be crafted specifically for his hand to fit there. This was all different because the thought struck him that he was holding onto the girl who held his future somewhere inside of her, no matter how unexpected or scary that future was.

"Hey. Hey, shhh, don't cry. It'll be okay, it's not your fault, you didn't ask for this," he murmured, hoping that he could at least get her calmed down enough to get her into the kitchen to give her Edana's leftover prenatal vitamins without the two of them drawing the attention of everyone in the house. And really, seeing Fenn this upset did sent a little twinge sparking somewhere in his chest. In reality, he supposed, Fenn was losing much more than he was. In the grand scheme of things, he was losing his family's respect and the love of his life, while Fenn's whole career would go down the toilet with the addition of a child to her life. Sex-symbol movie stars weren't nearly as sexy with a baby on their hip. Sighing, Riley pulled away and bent down slightly so that he was eye-level with the smaller brunette, deep amber boring into chocolate brown. "Listen. We're gonna get through this, okay? Both of us. I'll promise to stick with you if you promise to stick with me, and we're going to deal with this. Sound like a plan? I'm not saying it will be easy or fun, but we will get through this, Fenn, I'm promising you that right now."

And they would. Somehow.

[/color][/blockquote][/justify][/size]
And the tears come streaming down your face
When you lose something you can't replace
When you love someone but it goes to waste
Could it be worse?

[✌ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ]

S P E A K I N G // T H I N K I N G

She felt the weight of the thing removed from her, and she couldn't figure out how to feel about it. She had never been without some form of alcohol on her, never gone over an hour without it. But by now it had been at least three hours, maybe more, since the last time she had drunken anything. She was trying not to let it run her, and she made sure not to watch as Riley hid the flask somewhere in the room. She knew that there was some rule out there about not drinking and being pregnant at the same time, but she didn't know how she could even begin living up to it. She didn't have the heart to tell him that the little flask was not even six percent of the alcohol she owned. More like she was afraid to tell him, afraid that he'd see what a weakling she really was.

She knew that when people looked at her, they saw a glamorous movie star, living the high life, partying her life away. She knew that they never saw how she was so dependent on demon drink, and she knew that if people knew her without it they'd be surprised. Even now her head was already preparing itself to pound out a steady beat on the back of her skull, and she knew that the hangovers to end all hangovers was coming. It meant that she had to get away from the Lightwood house as soon as possible, but it also meant she couldn't go outside where there was alcohol just waiting to pounce on her. She was stuck, a prisoner to herself and her needs. And she could foresee that this baby was going to die, and she was going to be the reason for it. Dread filled her already at the notion, even though this baby was the reason for all their problems.

She didn't know why she felt the need to take care of it, and take care of herself for it. In all aspects she should be horrified, heartbroken, anything but feeling love towards the thing growing inside of her. But she couldn't help thinking about how little it must be, how afraid and little it was. It didn't know what it as getting into, being born on a world like this one. If she could warn it she might just so she would never have to worry about it getting reaped. She realized that with the coming of a baby it would change her whole life. She couldn't just watch out for herself anymore, she had to watch out for a little sperm and egg combination as well. It was ironic how someone out there thought to bless her with a parasite she didn't even need. It was just her luck, because she'd had so dang much of it in her life.

Arms wrapped around her, and she leaned into them, letting her weight rest against his, enjoying the way his body seemed to fit against her's like a puzzle piece even though they shouldn't. She knew that the girl named Bridgett should be his puzzle piece, and her's was her career. But it felt for so long that she had been working on a puzzle endlessly and she had all the sides and corners, but there were missing pieces. Maybe Riley was one of them. Two could never be found again, they had skid across the coffee table and almost flown into the fire one night as she worked on it. And there were still more missing. But when he held her so tightly against himself, entwining his fingers in her hair, she thought she heard an audible clicking sound coming from somewhere, and instantly felt a tiny bit better.

She let his words calm her tears, enveloping herself in them, letting them flow through her and board the train that was pounding it's way through her head. She'd have to do something quickly about that, because she was pretty sure that if she didn't deal with it soon she was going to pass out. Even though she knew that the words might be empty, comforting things that Riley had reused over and over for his siblings, maybe for that girl with the short hair they had passed in the hallway, or Edana, she let them comfort her. After a few moments the tears stopped flowing finally, and she ran a hand crossly over her eyes as if to reprimand them for even daring to let wet things slide out of them. She tried to collect herself, sniffling a bit as her hand flew back to the pocket that was now empty.

Pulling it down forcibly again, she couldn't help the thought that maybe she had asked for it, thought about it before. When she had miserably pleaded for the loneliness to go away on her worse nights, maybe someone had heard her and sent her along Riley. The whole idea could be passed off as ridiculous, but Fenn really wasn't sure what she believed in. She knew there was churches, hazy recollections of going once or twice told her so, but she didn't know if she really believed that there was a big man u[ in the sky listening to prayers and wishes and granting them. Because wasn't that a tiny bit like Santa Claus? She shook her head quickly, her lips in a firm line. She had not asked for this, and she was not going to even bother trying to blame herself. Slowly Fenn built her shield back up, and smiled grimly up at Riley.

"Yeah. Okay, Riley. But just so you know, I don't expect anything else from you. Don't feel obliged to marry me or something ridiculous like that. Oh, and one rule, don't fall in love with," she said with a wink, her normal wall of sarcasm and flirtation put back up for now. She didn't know what tomorrow would entail, but for now at least she could try to act normal.

[Deleted]

/*\ This could be the end of everything /*\

Oh simple thing
Where have you gone
I'm getting old and I need
Something to rely on

Riley was surprised at how he'd managed to retain his outward composure through all of this - comparatively to the situation, his minor meltdown had been entirely justifiable even though he felt awful for making Fenn cry - even though his head was still spinning and his heart hammered so hard against his ribcage that he swore she could hear it in the heavy, hushed air of the library.

What happens now? Where do we go from here? What have I done?

The world was too big and too scary for his own fragility even when he wasn't facing down the prospect of yet another Lightwood in the world to take care of, and Riley felt the icy fingers of dread plucking at his frayed edges even as the small form in his arms shifted against him, wiping her tears and slipping effortlessly back into nonchalance almost as if she'd never been upset at all. Maybe it was all the acting training. Whatever it was, he found himself envying Fenn, wishing that he could put up fronts to hide his brokenness as easily as she seemed to.

"Yeah. Okay, Riley. But just so you know, I don't expect anything else from you. Don't feel obliged to marry me or something ridiculous like that. Oh, and one rule, don't fall in love with me," the shorter of the two brunettes said with a wink and a tight smile that didn't quite reach her eyes, seemingly reverted back into a normal state while Riley still felt panic roaring through his veins so fast and loud that he perceived the world through an odd sort of haze, a heavy fuzziness over everything that dulled his senses and left him isolated in the dark, frightening recesses of his own mind, questions swirling like windmills caught in a hurricane of dismay and stubbornly refusing to leave him alone long enough for him to even attempt to function. He looked at Fenn with something like distant confusion painting his features, blinked once, twice, mouth agape as his overloaded brain tried to fight through a million oh god I've really done it this times and how on earth am I supposed to raise another child on top of the ones that I'm raising that aren't even mines to produce a response.

"F-fall in love with you? Why would I when Bridgit and I..." he stopped in his tracks, tawny eyes widening as another wave hit him, threatened to take his knees out from under him again and send him crashing to the floor. By some miracle he managed to stay upright (if I go down now I'll never get up again) but it was a battle to even breathe around the invisible blade that had suddenly been shoved cruelly between his ribs, white-hot and twisting agonizingly. It was a thought that had occurred to him among the many other panicked fragments that exploded in his head with the delivery of Fenn's news, but now it burned blindingly bright and unforgettable in the forefront of his mind, the sight of the only happiness he had left in the world charring and flying away as ashes on the wind. "Oh God, Bridgit. What am I supposed to tell Bridgit? She was never supposed to know; it was one night and I just was going to forget about it and not tell her, but now... She'll never speak to me again, she'll hate me forever, oh God, Fenn. I can't... I can't lose her, I can't, what am I going to do?!"

I can't lose her, but I'm going to. I can't make it in the world without her, but I'm going to. I can't handle this, but I'm going to.

He inhaled shakily, fingers snagging on dark-chocolate tousles as her carded them arbitrarily through his hair. "I don't... I can't deal with all of this right now. Right now the important thing is making sure you know what your body's dealing with and how to stay healthy. Edana's got some pregnancy books around here, I think..." His movements felt stiff, contrived like the motions of a puppet as he shuffled across the room and pulled an armful of books with cutesy pastel-colored covers from the shelf, many of them sporting tacky titles (What to Expect When You're Expecting? Really?). Well, as long as the subject matter and content were what they needed... He handed the stack to Fenn with what was meant to be a reassuring smile but only came out as a slight curvature as the corners of his lips flashed upward for the briefest second, unable to sustain the motion because of the weight of everything that was now hanging over his head and threatening to fall any second. "There. Educate yourself. I'm pretty sure the first thing that all of those will tell you is that alcohol is a no-no. All right, I'm going to go grab Edana's left over prenatal vitamins from the kitchen for you. Just stay here, okay, I'll be right back."

He asked himself why he felt the need to brush a reassuring hand over the smooth surface of her hair in the instant before he turned and left the library, but Riley found that strangely, he was unable to give himself an answer as his footsteps echoed across the entrance hall. He must have really looked terrible when he cut through the living room to take the short route to the kitchen - Avon hadn't given him a look filled with that much concern since she'd found out about the lattices of scar tissue wrapped around his limbs - but thankfully no one said anything to him when he ducked wordlessly through the doorway. The Lightwood kitchen, normally the noisy, bustling center of the home, was mercifully quiet. At this time on a Saturday Antoinette would still be asleep recovering from whatever party she'd been at, Edana was busy with the twins, Keela was out roaming the District, and Avon was keeping an eye on the younger siblings in the other room, which meant that Riley went unnoticed as he grabbed his backpack from one of the coat hooks by the back door (which was enough to make him remember that on top of all of this he still had a history essay due Monday. History, where he sat next to Bridgit. Bridgit... No. Shut up. Pull yourself together, Lightwood, you can't think about that right now, you have things to do, people to take care of.) and pulled bottle after bottle of vitamins from one of the higher-up cabinets, stashing them carefully into the worn canvas satchel and stuffing one of his jackets from the coat rack on top of them so they wouldn't rattle when he slung it over his shoulder, walking back to the living room and doing his best to act nonchalant.

"I'm going out," he informed Avon as he headed back in the direction of the library, this time fully expecting the odd look he received in return - Riley didn't "go out" unless he was taking Bridgit somewhere, it was just a generally accepted fact of life. "I'll be home in time to make dinner. Remember that Chyba needs to take his medicine for that cold in another hour, and the twins need to be put down for a nap in two hours. See you later."

Riley sighed heavily as he closed the doors of the library behind him, yanking the pea coat out of his backpack and tugging it on as he glanced in Fenn's direction. "All right, I'm going to walk you home. We need to be somewhere where we can sit down and discuss this privately, and there's no such thing as privacy in my house." The backpack rattled faintly with that absence of anything to muffle the movement of the pill bottles as the amber-eyed guitarist shrugged it back over his narrow shoulders, but no one was around to hear it as he held the front door open for the petite actress, just like no one was around to see him wrap a slender arm around her shoulders as the two of them walked up the road. "Hey. It's going to be okay."

I guess deep down I've always been a good liar.

[/justify][/size]
So tell me when
You're gonna let me in
I'm getting tired and I need
Somewhere to begin

[✌ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ]

S P E A K I N G // T H I N K I N G

And she can't stop herself from wincing when he mentions Bridgit. She knows it's none of her right to get upset that he loves a person. Because she's the one who came into his life and ruined it. She's done that far too much, always fucking things up. And her mouth is twisting into a firm line as she tries to not show the hurt that might show on her face. She keeps kicking herself, repeating the words that tell her how stupid she is being in her head over and over again. He's not her's and she's not his. But everyone and everything is always mushing together for her and she sometimes blurs the lines by accident because most of them time she can't see where the are until she oversteps them. But she's like a big child, and she knows it.

She doesn't have toys of her own, so she's always taking other people's dolls and playing with them, like turning them over and messing them around. And she'll wake up in places not even knowing how she got there because she's gotten so fucked up that she can't even remember what happened. Or sometimes she'll wake up and be so confused that she'll start sobbing, and then the only thing that she can do is grab a drink and drink it down in hopes of forgetting about why she is so confused. But honestly, she doesn't even deserve to feel this way because she is just a burden. She can't do much for anyone but ruin their lives. And just seeing the way Riley is so upset kills her inside and cuts her into a billion pieces. Because maybe she would have missed out on a small happiness if she hadn't met him, but then his life wouldn't be ruined.

You'd think that after awhile she'd get tired of just dragging herself around and trying to find more places will people won't thank her for basically taking a giant shit on their lives. You'd think that maybe she would just take the hint and become a recluse. But she didn't really go to school long enough to learn what to do with something useless to the society that Panem has created. But at the same time no matter how much of a drain on a society someone might be, that someone is still going to keep fighting to survive, whether it be subconscious or a totally conscious decision. Fenn was never one to really feel sorry for herself. She hid her emotions long ago somewhere, locked them up with the knowledge of her parent's death. As long as she doesn't pay attention to any of these things she won't shatter, and that's fine with her.

But still as Riley hands things to her and spues information at her, she's holding a palm up to her forehead, trying to remember where she has anymore alcohol on her person, even as she's trying to deflect the thoughts. It's just that the headache seems to be filling her up from her toes and up to her head. She's immersed in it and it's getting harder to concentrate. It doesn't help that Riley is trying to tell her things that she already knows. She can usually keep these things back so well, can hide the pain when she's beginning to surface, but it's getting so hard, and she's tired, and the whole fact that she's pregnant with something that neither of them wants is drowning out all the other noise. So she can barely help it, when she snaps out in a cruel voice, "Damnit Riley, I know that, why do you think I gave you my flask in the first place?"

And as soon as she registered the sound of her voice, she groaned inwardly, not meaning to be rude. But it was ridiculous how difficult it was getting to think. It was already pretty damn hard when she was drunk, but now it was almost impossible, a sharp pin sticking into every little thought, and tearing it up forcibly. But she gritted her teeth, and tried to smile a bit, muttering a soft apology about snapping at him. And it only served to make her feel worse about herself when he brushed a rough hand over her forehead on his way out. Even as she peeked out of the library after him, thoughts were swirling around about how much she just put on him and now she was snapping at him and being mean to boot.

As soon as he was definitely gone, she took a deep breath and sat down heavily on a chair, fists seeming to be trying to hold her head together as her eyes squeezed shut. The books rested on her lap, but were slippery and already sliding off when she grabbed for them. The resounding thud when they clattered to the ground was enough to make her actually groan as she bent over to pick them up. It had never hit her this fast before, the killer headache. Usually she was able to go a few more hours. but the Doctor had even told her that this baby was going to be a drain on her body. For some reason though she didn't want Riley to see that she was slowly dying from the inside out, and after carefully collecting the books, she flipped one open, biting her lips so hard that it drew blood in an effort to look calm. If she could act like she'd lost her leg in one of her tribute movies, she could swim through this.

When he came back in, she smiled up at him, one of her movie, girl-has-just-been-rescued-from-certain-death-by-handsome-costar-smiles. She slid the books into his backpack, and they were on their way, the girl with the hawk like features inexplicable gone. There was, however, the faint sounds of children laughing in the air, and Fenn guessed that they had moved into another room. She wondered if she would get to know them over the course of her pregnancy. Or maybe it would be better to stay hidden away from them. She knew that if she had a brother and a girl had ruined him, she probably would. Maybe she would. Wouldn't she? Of course she had no experience with the whole sibling bond thing.

When he wraps his arm around her and tells her everything is going to be okay, she wants to throw her head back and laugh, but she doesn't because she wants to believe it too much, and it'll hurt too much to laugh. So instead she just leans into him, enjoying the stability of him. It's like leaning against a tree, he's so tall. And when they get to her house, she unlocks it, and they walk in. Her face falling as she realizes the empty spotlessness of it. And how silent and dark it is. Suspenders comes and starts weaving through their legs as she leads him in to sit in her living room, the alcohol cabinet sitting open, a half empty bottle on the cabinet part still opened. The title reads 'mandarin vodka' and she can't help being surprised to find out that it was what she was drinking before.

She would do anything to reach out and just drink it right now. It looked more like a mirage in a dessert sitting there within reach. But she simply stiffened and sat down on her piano bench, gesturing for Riley to take a seat on the couch. She looked like a wilting flower as she sat still, sweat beading at her hairline in effort of staying calm outwardly even as she felt a hammer against her heart every time she drew in a breath. But she refused to look weak in front of Riley, so she clenched her hands in her lap until her knuckles went white. "The cat is named Suspenders. What do you want to talk about." The words came out like staccato notes, the clenching of her teeth stopping the full flow of them even as she pointed at the small black fur ball that was currently climbing up Riley's pant leg. "Hope you aren't allergic to cats..."

[Deleted]

/*\ You and me, always between the lines /*\

Time to tell me the truth
To burden your mouth for what you say
No pieces of paper in the way
Cause I can't continue pretending to choose

Riley notices more than people give him credit for.

He notices the human-shaped pillow lumps that Keela shoves under her blankets when she sneaks out, notices the sharp tang of alcohol and some unknown boy's cologne clinging to Antoinette's clothes when she stumbles in some mornings with smudged makeup and a barbed tongue as her last line of defense. He notices the quiet heartbreak behind Edana's eyes when she looks at Cillian and Siobhan that speaks all too clear that she still misses York so much it's a wonder she can even function, notices the inexplicable bruises that bloom overnight on Avon's limbs, notices how Aris grows more unstable by the day and how Chyba grows more sad, finally old enough to realize that his family's superficial perfection is something that his older brother has crafted and maintained with careful hands to mask a horrid, unspoken truth that would shatter them all. He notices all of these things that sit far too heavy on his narrow shoulders, but no one thinks he does because he doesn't speak of them, never-has-never-will. And so the delicate, precarious dance of life under the Lightwood roof continues the way it always has. If we don't talk about it then it isn't real.

He notices how Fenn shakes beside him, the tremors rippling over her skin beneath the thick fabric of her coat, but staying in step with his normal mode of operation he says nothing, does nothing save for maybe pressing her a little closer as they round the corner to her house, reasoning that it might just be the biting chill of the day even though he knows better - after all, he's shaking just as hard as she is and if anything his jacket is suffocatingly warm. He knows but can't fathom the full extent of all that this implies; love lost, another person to care for, all of his plans that bloomed with nubile hope along the horizon of the little ones growing to the point where he could maybe to do something with himself besides take care of them shattered in one night of darkness and mistakes he wishes with all his might he could just forget even though the living evidence is cradled invisibly (for now) inside the smaller form walking at his side.

They're just kids. They're kids having a kid and even though Riley can really only speak for himself he's pretty sure that both of them are terrified out of their minds if the shaking and tears and whispered questions that no one has answers for are anything to go by. He can't remember the last time he was this close to the edge of oblivion, the endless dark that eats away at his frayed edges with every passing day. He only knows that right now his toes are hanging precariously over the edge and he feels his balance slipping with every step and breath he takes, and that every fiber of his being wails plaintively for cold metal and liquid crimson that shines brighter than anything else in his world of gray and pain that will bring him back far enough from the precipice that he can maybe shake off the feeling of something ripping him apart from the inside out - although that feeling never truly leaves. The guilt. The quiet knowledge that when the razors stop being enough and he finally falls that he's going to drag everyone he's ever cared for down with him.

Fenn and the baby are just two more to tack onto that list.

Her house is as grand as his fuzzy memory allows him to recall, although it lacks the constant background noise and warmth of human presence that his own home has. In fact, the only other living thing in the house is anything but human, a tiny back blur that streaks across the living room and scales the leg of his jeans with an alarming speed, leaving him staring into a pair of yellowish feline eyes as the tiniest cat he's ever seen climbs the front of his shirt and stares at him curiously.

"Hey, little buddy. You always climb Fenn's houseguests like they're kitty jungle gyms?" Riley vaguely remembers the same pair of xanthous eyes staring at him on that headache-ridden morning after, a small wad of dark fur huddled at the end of the bed looking at him with that same inquisitiveness as the little creature whose claws are currently sinking somewhat painfully into his chest. Laughing softly, he pulls the little cat away with a gentle tug, somewhat surprised when it curls up in the crook of his arm and begins purring like the motor of a sports car, nudging its head affectionately against the side of his ribcage. "Y'know, I'm typically a dog person, but for you I might make an exception."

"The cat's name is Suspenders. What do you want to talk abount?" The clipped tones in Fenn's voice are more than enough to draw Riley's attention away from his new feline friend, amber eyes darting up to meet the strain that shimmers tangibly in her deeper chocolate. He blinks a few times, taking in the tension of her hands clutched in her lap, the thin sheen of sweat across her forehead. She's visibly on edge, although he's the last person to talk as he feels the stress reverberating in the back of his skull with every heartbeat. If there are any two people in the world right now who have the right to be on edge, Riley's certain that it would be Fenn Klardie and himself.

"Lots of things. But we need to do this in baby steps. First thing on the agenda is making sure you're taken care of, have the right doctors, all that stuff. Then we have to worry about how I'm supposed to tell my family, and Ripred knows what all of your movie people are going to do when -" Riley stutters to a halt, eyes going wide as he finally catches sight of the wall behind Fenn, or more accurately the gigantic cabinet full of every type of liquor he could pull up in his wildest dreams stashed inside of it. For a moment he's suspended in a state of weightless shock, not unlike he was in those first few seconds after Fenn had dropped the proverbial atom bomb of revelations on top of his head. The shock gives way to a somewhat logical thought process, which gives way to horror, which gives way to him turning back to the smaller brunette with his mouth agape. It's a simple train of thought, really. Fenn is pregnant. Fenn has a fully-stocked alcohol stash in her living room. There is an open bottle of vodka less than a yard away. To make a potentially long, complicated story short and simple, this isn't a good situation, although Riley isn't nearly so clean cut and analytic in the stuttered delivery of his prognosis. "You... You seriously have a problem, don't you? You realize you can't have this in the house, right? Because... Because you... the baby..."

Riley Lightwood has never been what one would call impulsive. It's an adjective he can't afford to apply to himself (heaven knows that everyone else in his family is impulsive enough to make up for his rock-solid predictability even though on this inside he knows he's as volatile as a ticking time bomb); he needs consistency to keep things running as close to smoothly as they'll ever get, but he certainly feels impulsive when his fingers close around the neck of the vodka bottle and several other receptacles, hauling them through the archway to the kitchen and dumping them into the sink where they swirl in a cocktail of fumes that remind him of fumbling hands and half-forgotten kisses. Riley tries to blame the way his head spins on the strong smell of the alcohol as he darts back into the living room, locking eyes with Fenn as he grabs another handful of bottles, and he almost believes it. Almost. "I know that I don't have a right to boss you around, but I'm sorry, Fenn, I'm not letting you turn my child into a mess with this stuff. It'll be enough of a mess with my genetic material without you adding anything else."

With us for parents, this poor baby doesn't stand a chance at normalcy.

That's all he can let himself think as he all but ransacks the house, pulling flasks out of bookshelves and drawers and places he would have never imagined someone would store drinks. Riley's more than aware that he's never done anything in his life right (every line that mars his skin is the embodiment of a failure that dug a little too deep), but somewhere in the secret part of his soul he's harbored a dream that he'd take out and dust off when things seemed endless and unbearable. Images of Bridgit smiling and a house with a white picket fence and children who could grow up in a home that wasn't so hopelessly broken, with a father who wouldn't leave them and a mother who actually cared, images of happiness he can barely recall from days before his family was a barely-floating wreck, they all shudder and burst to pieces in front of his eyes with every bottle he sends gurgling down the drain, and Riley feels himself teetering dangerously on the edge of letting the endless dark at the edge of his consciousness take him for the umpteenth time today.

I ruined my own life a long time ago. But ruining my own child's life is something unforgivable.

His entire life has been lived in a state of barely holding it together, but Riley's teetering on a knife's edge between composure and a complete nervous breakdown as he tips the last bottle of Bailey's into the kitchen sink with a shuddering exhalation, shuffling back into the living room and collapsing onto a couch, elbows propped on his knees and his head in his hands. Suspenders hops up onto his lap in a graceful leap, curling up and purring as if the whole world isn't crashing down here in the space between the sofa and the piano bench, like there aren't whole worlds of pain hanging between the gazes of the boy with too much on his shoulders and the girl with too many buried secrets.

Riley thinks for a fleeting moment that he'd like to switch places with Suspenders for a few days. Cats have it easy.

"You don't look like you feel very well," he says finally, pulling himself up of the couch and sending the minuscule feline toppling to the floor with a disgruntled meow and he leans over the huddled form on the piano bench and sweeps the hair back from her face, lips pursing at how unnaturally warm her skin is beneath his fingertips. "Do you want me to make you some tea? Get you something to eat? I'm sorry for... I don't know what I'm sorry for. Being mean? Taking your stuff? Putting you in this... condition in the first place? But I'm sorry. Tell me what I can do, Fenn."

Because if I can't make this right then I don't know how I'll live with myself.

[/justify][/size]
These opposites side on which we fall
Loving you later if at all
No right minds could wrong me this many times
And my memory is cruel