Title : You Build and You Break
Summery : A Kristina Davis character study.
Pairing : Brief mentions of Ethan/Kristina
Note : This is not my usual style of writing, so feedback is appreciated.
People are born whole and little by little the world breaks them into pieces.
Kristina Davis felt like maybe the world started breaking her into pieces before she was even born. She felt like maybe, she was never really whole at all.
She was conceived beneath a shadow of guilt and secrecy. She thrived in a womb of doubt and blame. She was born amongst deception, and hidden with in lies. She was the mistake that her mother could never quite clean up. She was the knife in her father's back, carving her way into the world and splintering everyone she touched.
Her namesake had laid the burden of inadequacy upon her before she could even speak, or walk, or stumble. Though with such a heavy name to carry, she stumbled so very easily. And as she stumbled, the poisonous lies that ran through her blood became real poison. The poison of an illness that stole her health and threatened to steal her life. Soon the lies became truths, and the truths became desperation. Everything imploded and Kristina carved her way into the world once more, her very existence slicing through everyone she touched.
The truth that had saved her, came in the form of an unborn child. Like Kristina, the child was never born whole. The child was conceived beneath shadows of betrayal and heartache. She thrived in a womb of fear and uncertainty. And she was born amongst need and want, and everything in between. But the child would never grow to be a mistake. She would never stab and gut, and barrel her way through every person she touched. She would grace Kristina with healing, with life. And that life would grow into more weight, more inadequacy, and more reason for Kristina to stumble.
With her new life came conflict and danger, and love, love, love. Kristina loved her new father, her only father, more than she could remember loving anything. He looked at her like maybe she had saved his life. Like maybe she was still saving his life every time she smiled, or laughed, or breathed. She loved the way his eyes sparkled when he said her name. She loved the way his suit smelled when he would tug her close. She loved the way that he could make her feel lighter, like maybe all of that weight resting on her shoulders might not have been weight. It might have been strength.
Kristina hated the way that her mother ripped everything away. She hated the way that her mother pushed forward the conflict, and screamed out the danger, and stomped, stomped, stomped the love. She pulled Kristina so far away, that she forgot that she might have saved her fathers life. She forgot the way his eyes sparkled when he said her name and the way his suit smelled when he tugged her close. She forgot about the strength and she remembered all of the weight. She remembered that she was the daughter of a lawyer and not the princess of a mob empire, or even the apple of someone's sparkling eye.
Taking refuge with in shadows, so very like the ones she was conceived beneath, Kristina felt herself slip away little by little. And while it felt a lot like slipping, or maybe even stumbling, it was really breaking. Cracking and chipping, little by little and bit by bit. She grew fragile under the constraints of her mother's protective trappings. She grew distant despite her father's thinly veiled persistence. She was lost and then found, and then seemingly forgotten. No one ever truly looked for her. Not her mother who was too busy directing and controlling, and not her father who was too busy being lost himself. She was loved, and that should have been enough. But it wasn't.
Leaving a bitter trail of pieces in her wake, Kristina grew and pretended. Smiling and behaving, she stumbled along. She stumbled straight into an alley and straight into a nightmare. A scream ripped through her throat as a bullet ripped through a man. Her sister's wide eyes and shaking stance let her know that she wasn't the only one stumbling. It let her know that the entire alley had been turned upside down and shaken to it's core. Everything was falling and crumbling, and breaking. As everything around her broke into pieces, raining from the sky like acid raindrops, Kristina stopped. She stopped moving, she stopped speaking, and she stopped stumbling.
Sometimes Sam looked at Kristina as though she were seeing someone else, someone she had never really seen to begin with. The ghost of heartbreak would pass in front of her eyes and then the moment would pass, un addressed but never unnoticed. Sometimes Sam would hold her tighter than anyone else in the world ever had, like she would slip right through her arms and fade away. Like someone else had already slipped away from Sam and Kristina was all that was left. She tried not to let it make her feel like something less than someone else, but in those moments she knew that she was exactly that. The weight that she carried on her shoulders pressed down harder and her knees threatened to buckle under the pressure. But the moment would always pass and Sam would always smile in the way that Kristina knew was meant for her and her alone. Sam would chirp her name affectionately and scoop her up, lifting all of that weight and doubt along with her. The pressure would ease just enough, Sam would be her sister again, and Kristina would be okay.
No one could see through the cracks in their own vision long enough to realize that Kristina Davis truly was okay. She was okay when she stopped speaking. She was okay when her step father made her mother cry while her sister shouted, while her family ripped each other apart. She was okay when her mother became ill, and when her stepfather disappeared. She was okay when her mother demanded the best from her, and when the best somehow never seemed to be quite right. The whole world continued to spin and the people around her continued to stumbled but, Kristina learned to be okay. She also learned that okay was just short of unbearable.
When she was sixteen years old, Kristina felt less than okay but her life seemed more than okay. So she figured that maybe that was a fair trade off. Maybe it was better for her life to appear perfect and lovely, than for it to actually be perfect and lovely. Because perfect things never really lasted anyways. And it was easier to let go of the image of perfection than it was to let go of the actual feeling. Lining up the perfect grades, the perfect boyfriend, and the perfect life was tiring. Her best was all her mother had ever asked of her, though Kristina was almost positive that perfection is what she truly meant. But her mother had been there; overprotective, demanding, and so very, very there. Her mother had always been there, and she had only ever asked for her best. Answering the call of perfection seemed like maybe it would be Kristina's best. She felt she owed her mother that much.
Perfection was tiring but, so was her best. Sometimes Kristina just wanted to stop trying, to stop everything, the same way she had in the alley when that shot rang out and her sister's heart dropped. It was easier to pretend to be perfect than it was to actually be perfect. And Kristina found that she was very good at pretending. Pretending was just another word for lying, and she had been conceived and raised amongst oceans of lies. Lying was in her blood, the same way poison once was, eating away at her little by little. It was so easy to pretend when everyone wanted to believe the lies. It was too easy.
Nothing was ever easy when it came to Michael. Michael who lost a year of his life in a warehouse, the way Kristina had lost her voice in an alley. Michael who was angry and frustrated, and never pretended to be anything else. Michael who hated to pretend and refused to believe her lies. It was never easy to pretend with Michael. It was never anything but impossible. He became Kristina's safe place, her beckon to herself when she became too caught up in the falseties. They were so very good for each other, and at the same time they were so very bad for each other as well. They enabled and disabled each other, and they made each other almost whole.
Everything was easy when it came to Molly. Light and hopeful, Molly was everything that Kristina had never gotten to be. Molly was more whole than anyone Kristina had ever laid eyes on. And being around Molly could make her feel both more and less whole at the same time. But it was worth it to feel less if she somehow felt more as well. Morgan was whole too. But he was so incredibly far away that Kristina felt only distance with him. Like their father, Morgan had been isolated from Kristina's life. He had been isolated and shoved into a box with the label, 'brother'. Part of her wanted nothing more than to open that box, but another part of her felt like maybe it was better left untouched. Maybe Morgan was better left untouched.
There were people who thought that Kristin would be better left untouched. She was left untouched by her father's name. She was left untouched by his presence. And she felt that she had been left untouched by his love. So when a boy named Kieffer touched Kristina with violence and laced each slap with promises of love, she let him touch her again. He hit her and shoved her, and he broke off pieces of her in the most physical way she could have imagined. She saw the pieces fly away with the splatter of blood and the swell of tender skin. He said all of the things that she imagined her father might say if he had been around to say them. He told her she was beautiful, he told her that he loved her. He told her that she was stupid, he told her that she was wrong. And she believed him. She believed him when he told her she was beautiful and stupid, she believed him when he told her that she was wrong and that he loved her. She believed him because no one had ever told her differently, because she had always been too afraid to ask.
The hospital should have boughten her relief, but it only brought more weight. The wires and tubes felt like heavy shackles, looping around her limbs to tie her down. Tangled in wires and weighed down by fear, Kristina slipped beneath the shadows of deceit, just as she had been born to do. She cried and she hurt, and she lied. She carved her way out of her hospital bed once more, slaying everyone she touched and leaving a bloody trail in her wake. Her own blood pounded through her veins, stabbing at her skin and begging to be let loose.
No one had been bloodied quite as though-roughly as the handsome but ever so raw, Ethan Lovett. Kristina had quickly stumbled into his kind eyes and guarded heart. He became her hero in no time at all, just as Kieffer had easily become her worst nightmare. And true to form, Kristina had stumbled into a mess, spinning herself around until she could barley see straight. With her upside down, backwards logic, she had pointed an accusing finger at her hero and protected her worst nightmare. Ethan had looked at her with a sparkle in his kind eyes, and he had listened to her with his warm heart. But his kind eyes had flashed with rejection as he pushed her away, just as her father's sparkling eyes had turned away from her so many times before. And Kieffer would tell her that he loved her, and he would never walk away from her, not even when she wished he would. He would never let her go, even if his grip was bruising and painful. He was there, and they were gone. They had left.
Kristina Davis hated her father. She hated him when he was never there for her. She hated him when he was there. She hated him for killing people and for breaking the law. She hated him for being the reason that Michael was so far away. Because Michael would fix her and hold her together. He would know that she was lying and he would make her tell the truth. She hated her father for making her afraid to tell the truth, afraid that if she did someone would die and everyone would pay. But most of all, Kristina hated that she was exactly like her father, in the worst possible ways. She was stubborn and temperamental. She was selfish and thoughtless. She was her father's daughter, and she was broken in all the same ways that he was.
She was broken, but she did her best to put herself back together. She did her best to make everyone think that she was putting herself back together. But pretending became too painful to bare. Pretending landed her in the hospital once more, shackled by tubes and locked in place by wires. Kristina forget about her hatred and remembered her fear, and the truth spilled out of her like the poison running through her veins. There were tears and gasps, and so many feelings that she thought she might never breath soundly again. But her fear was still there and her hatred grew stronger. The truth didn't fix her, it only made her honest.
In healing, Kristina found more pain and anger than she could find room for. She found more hatred, but more love and also more forgiveness. Sometimes she forgave people who didn't deserve forgiveness and sometimes she refused to forgive those who did. Sometimes she hurt herself and sometimes she hurt others. She stumbled. She stumbled often but, always forward. And she learned. She learned how to be okay again, and she learned how to be more than okay.
The world breaks people into pieces, little by little.
But sometimes you can find those pieces again, and sometimes you can find new pieces. You build and you break, and you build again.
You always build again.