your common sense, your best defense, lay wasted and in vain

[spirit_of_vitriol]

She was glad she heard the news after she'd gotten dressed for the day. Not that pajamas would've proved any impediment; she and Gladys had gone on quite a few midnight rides (in and out of Buckshaw), and as a result, Flavia was quite adept at bicycling in a nightgown. Of course, it would've made her even more of a spectacle than she must have seemed already, tearing out of Dimera with her hair half-braided and her shirttail flapping out behind her. Father would've been scandalized. Ophelia would've--will be, she reminded herself fiercely. She will be completely aghast at how I've left the house.

Turning down Pulteny, she ignored the feel of something wet streaking down her cheeks. It was probably a spring rain and therefore nothing Flavia couldn't tolerate. Ahead of her, the hospital hove into view; only three blocks away, but it felt so much longer.

Flavia chained Gladys up to a rack outside, then walked in, right up to the woman at the front desk. "I'm here to visit Ophelia de Luce," she said, amazed at how steady her voice sounded. How calm.

"Visiting hours start at noon, honey."

"I'm here to see Ophelia de Luce," she insisted. "What room, please?"

"You can come back at noon with your par--"

"We haven't got any!" she screamed; the damned spring rain--it's tears, Flave, don't be precious about it, it's tears and Father's going to have your hide for crying if he finds out about it--started up all over again. "I'm the only one she's got and I need to see Ophelia de Luce, please."

People were staring. The nurse at the desk opened her mouth; closed it. Pointed down a hallway and said "Room 649. Ten doors down, on the left."

"Thank you," Flavia snuffled; politeness was a tool as much as it was a virtue. Back straight, she walked down the indicated hallway, counting doors as she passed.

643

645

647

649

The door was open, the bed inside surrounded by gently beeping machines and racks with hanging bags--some clear, some red. The person inside, tethered to all those machines and bags and racks was too pale, too fragile to be Feely; there had to be some mistake.

"Are you awake?" she asked, adding after a pause, just to make sure, "Ophelia?"

But there had to be some mistake.

Comments

[likeblueblazes]

Ophelia stiffens from where she tries to raise herself up to better look at Flavia; she knows that tone all too well. She's worn it herself over the years, typically aimed at Flavia. And she's heard it from Father, whenever any one of them did something to displease him or, God forbid, threaten his stamp collection. She will never say so aloud, but to hear that tone coming from Flavia hurts her as if the vampires were sinking their teeth into her neck again.

Outwardly, she narrows her eyes and brushes her hair over her shoulder. If Flavia wants to play with fire, then fire she shall get.

"That's hardly a reprimand, coming from you little beast," and if her voice weren't ragged and weary, it would pierce like the edge of a knife into the air. "Considering how many times I've come across you almost lifeless before."

[spirit_of_vitriol]

"Never from vampires!" she shouts, her voice coming perilously close to breaking on the last word. In the absence of anything within reach she might throw at her sister's head--if only she'd come before Feely's breakfast tray had been cleared, instead of after--she balls her hands into fists, feeling her nails cut into her palms as she keeps them rigidly at her sides.

Their fights always ended in tears; Flavia was determined that this time, Feely would be the one left weeping.

"Was being 'Flavia's put-upon sister' not garnering enough sympathy for you? You had to go off and...and..." She wasn't going to cry. She wouldn't allow Feely the satisfaction. She changed tacks; took a deep breath, gave her the cold de Luce stare that served as their family trademark.

"But I suppose you'd do anything to see Harriet again."

[likeblueblazes]

"Oh, like you wouldn't have done, eventually," she snaps, moving to sit up straighter in her bed. She wishes she weren't so dizzy; she wishes she weren't so bogged down by the various needles and tubes poking in and out of her. She wishes she weren't so weak and on the verge of collapsing into hysterical sobs just from the memories of the other night, let alone with what Flavia tells her now. She bunches her fingers into her sheets, twisting them for lack of being able to use them otherwise.

If she were able, she would have marched right up to her youngest sister and towered over her with a glare, the way she used to back in Bishop's Lacey.

Flavia's next words land squarely in the middle of her chest, like bullet wounds. If she had any color left in her face at all, it would have drained from her like the blood the vampires spilled from her.

"You think? You think?" She hates herself for the way her voice cracks. She hates that she can feel her own lips trembling, like those of an abandoned child. She hates that she cannot bring herself to raise her voice.

"You think I did this for sympathy?" She asks, her voice deadly quiet as a whisper. She can taste the barest edges of bile rising in her throat; she has to fight the urge to retch. "You think I deliberately put myself in harm's way just so I could see my mother again?" She spits out the words as violently as she can muster

"Harriet would be ashamed of you," she tells her. "That, is of course, if you were her actual daughter."

She wishes so much that she could hate her youngest sister: the spitting image of their missing mother. But she can't.

Which is why, of course, her chest starts heaving as tears fall from her eyes like heavy rain. She collapses back against her pillows, sobbing the way she only allowed herself to do as a child as she buries her head beneath the fabric and wishing, just for a moment, for Harriet to be with her again.