Eyes Can Speak Back
They say the eyes are the window to the soul. Some pairs are dark and stormy, hiding something under them, while others were clear open books. Silence can be the worst thing when only you can see the damage left. It can be the loudest thing, yelling, screaming, crying at you. You can see all of that in someone's eyes. They don't have to speak, don't have to move, all you have to do is look into those eyes and you can feel yourself break. That, was how Mabel Pines-Lovegood felt staring at the empty eyes of her eldest daughter Sansa.
Twelve. She was only twelve years old and now she lay in the coffin, her blue eyes staring up at the ceiling. Her husband had asked her multiple times if she wanted him to close Sansa's little eyes so it seemed like she was asleep and that soon enough she would pop back up and throw her arms around Mabel. No, Arthur, Mabel had said. I want to see her eyes once last time. Staring at her made her remember every detail about Sansa and any moment she wasn't thinking about her she felt like retching, that she was already forgetting her blue eyed baby. Sansa, Sansa, my Sweetrobin Sansa, Mabel had whispered, stroking Sansa's cold face at the hospital. Open your eyes for Mother. Wake up, Sweetrobin. Wake up, love, Mother is here now. Mother won't let them help you. The doctors had to give her a syringe to pull her away from Sansa when she started to scream and shake her. My Sansa isn't dead! Mabel had screamed. Sweetrobin wake up! Wake up! Show them you're not dead! Sweetrobin, Mother is here now., open your eyes. Open them, Sansa. Open them, please.
Her pleas went unheard and her daughter never opened her eyes by herself again. Mabel placed a shaky hand onto her daughter's cheek and stroked it, wishing to feel the familiar warmth. Instead, she was met with the coldness of a girl whose heart had stopped beating.
"My Sweetbird, my Jonquil," Mabel whispered. "My Sansa. My Sansa." Her body started to shake violently as it always did before one of her fits. She gripped one of Sansa's limp wrist and started to squeeze tightly and her eyes turned feral. "Jonquil, jonquil, Sweetbird why are you playing here? Sweetbird, come with Mother and I'll braid your hair."
"Love? Mabel did you forget to take your medicine this morning?" The soothing voice of Arthur Lovegood [Mabel's husband] made her turn around. He was of average height with clear blue eyes - Mabel flinched at how they were the same beauty as Sweetbird's eyes - with dark brown curls. Arthur had been the only one to hold Mabel and understand her when Sweetbird died. Dipper didn't understand her fits when she thought Sweetbird was awake and seemed frightened when she went into it. Wendy understood a bit as she had miscarriage once and had a baby who died a week after birth in it's cradle. Yet still, Mabel who had the opportunity to watch her Sweetbird Sansa grow up and then have her ripped away, it felt as if someone had stabbed her with a dagger through the heart.
Mabel's eyes softened looking at Arthur. "I'm sorry," She hung her head like a child and when she looked up her eyes were brimming with tears. "Arthie, Jonquil won't wake up. She promised me she would always be there for me. Why won't she wake up?" Her voice was cracking at the end of it.
A few people had already been staring at the deemed unstable woman. She could see their pitying looks and the whispers of "that poor mad girl" and "she thinks her daughter's alive still." Then there were others who didn't look pitying, but actually looked sad and remorseful. One of them was Wendy with her red eyes and tear stained face and was holding Mabel's other daughter and Sansa's young sister Meerabeth. Meera, as she was more known as, was only three years and didn't understand much of what was happening though she knew her sister had gone away to someplace for a long long time.
Arthur's voice got softer. "She died, Mabel, I'm sorry. She drowned in the pond where Meera and her used to play. It's not any of our faults - we didn't know until it was too late."
Mabel had been the one to find Sansa. The young girl had gone out in the knight because her kitten was still outside. When she'd been running, she'd tripped over a branch, knocked her head into a rock, and rolled into the water where she drowned Mabel wouldn't have been outside if the cat hadn't been meowing loudly and scratching the door. Then, just in the glimmer of the moonlight, before she turned inside, she saw a brown slush in the water of her daughter's hair. Mabel remembered hearing the most ear piercing scream and then realizing it was her who had done it. She'd sprinted into the water to pull her out where her daughter took her final breaths. There was blood all over her head and running down Mabel's arms. Then, Sansa Lovegood opened her eyes for the final times, long enough for Mabel to see the bright blue she'd loved since the day the nurse put her into her arms, before she shut her eyes again and her head slumped against her mother's chest. Mabel had been the one to feel her daughter's heartbeat stop and the one who felt her daughter's life leave her.
The fits had started a day after. Mabel had been in the kitchen with Meera making her lunch when it happened. Meera had asked "Why isn't Sansa here?" and Mabel snapped. Her body started to shake and she gripped the knife tightly before she slid down to the floor and clutched at her knees. Her eyes had went wild and feral. In fear Meera asked if her mother was okay which would seem to snap her back. Then she stood up, calmly finished making her lunch, and then put the plate down for Meera. Then once more when Meera asked her "Where's Sansa?" Mabel grabbed the girls wrist and kept repeating over and over "Where's Sansa? Where's Sansa" until she was near screaming it and her nails were digging into the girl's wrists. Meera's wailing is what Arthur heard and came running in to bring Mabel into his arm and calm her. There were always times when she would just flip into totally confusion where she would think that they were home and Sansa was asleep or she wouldn't understand at all and would wonder where she was. Her pills had been keeping her from fits, yet still it was difficult to make Mabel have them because if she did she would be sane and when she felt sane she could only think of her songbird who could not sing anymore.
Mabel's eyes went hollow and she managed to choke out, "I saw her Arthur. I saw her…the life that…that left her. She…couldn't…smile, she only whispered a word."
Arthur looked up He hadn't heard her speak of any word. Honestly though, Mabel didn't seem that she did want to speak of the experience more than she had to.
"Mother," Mabel said. "She said 'Mother.' I held her in my blood stained arms until her final breaths and even afterwards I wouldn't let her go. 'Not my Sansa. Not my Sansa,' I kept saying but I knew it was her. Death played in a pond with a little girl and he rolled the dice and he won. He won our Sansa, and he won one of the few things that hadn't abandoned me."
Arthur Lovegood of course knew she meant the issue of his wife's twin Dipper. Dipper Pines was a reasonable man who Arthur could get along fine with, but on the other hand he almost felt like he was watching Dipper's life in a movie. He was an attractive enough man with a steady income of working as a cryptozoologist. He was married to his crush during his teenage years Pacifica Pines with a two year old son and a baby girl on the way. It seemed like a perfect good life but Arthur had seen what the life was really like - Dipper constantly travelled around the world for his jobs and at first it had been great and Pacifica enjoyed seeing the world. Then with their son's birth the two purchased a flat in London, ready to settle, yet Dipper wasn't ready to. He left frequently for weeks (sometimes even months) at a time with only a few calls and sending his checks for Mrs. Pines. When he came home from South America, Pacifica had been seven months pregnant with their girl and had been so upset that the entire seven months he hadn't answered a single call, text, or email from her. Arthur could see that Pacifica telling people everything was fine was starting to ware and her obvious annoyance with Dipper was obvious. Even their son Harry had once asked his mother at the Lovegood cottage why "Papa didn't come home." Dipper hardly had time for his own son and wife, nonetheless his sister. It seemed more aned more Dipper and her were distanced until being in the same left them with small talk or a tension filled room of silence. Mabel had cried about this enough times for Arthur to want to knock some sense into Dipper.
"I'll never leave you, Mabel Lovegood," Arthur promised staring into her eyes. "I'll never stop loving you even when I'm six feet in the ground. I don't care if they say you're the mad girl, or they point and stare. I look into those eyes of yours, and I only see the most loving beautiful mother and wife."
"I love you, too, Arthur Lovegood," Mabel said. "You'll always own my heart and I will never stop loving you."
Mabel leaned her head onto Arthur's shoulder and looked over at Amber's Roses. It was a large garden of multicolors roses named after Amber Saireavans who had died sometime in the 70s when she was seventeen by a drunk driver and her mother grew an entire field of roses that her daughter had loved. For thirty years the town had all put in a hand to care for that garden and kept it going even after Mr. and Mrs. Sairevans' death. Pink, red, orange, blue, lilac, and white covered a large area of the field, yet only three blue rose still remained. There was another flower next to them, that looked like a mix - blue, pink, white, and lilac. It wasn't like the others - it didn't belong to one group, it was everything.
"Mother!" Meera's voice broke through the silence as a flash of brown hair threw herself into Mabel's arms. The little girl wrapped her chubby arms around Mabel's waist and tried to climb up onto her lap. "Mother, I missed you. I didn't saw you or Father."
"Meera," Mabel said. She looked down at the little girl and instantly felt regret. In the past few weeks she'd shut herself out and doing so, she'd inadvertently forgotten about her Meera. The girl was three years old; she needed her mother's love and care. Meera wouldn't get to know her sister properly; it would be up to Mabel and Arthur to tell her. "My sweet girl." Mabel kissed her head.
"Mother Aunty Wen's here," Meera said. "She bought Aunt Tamby, too." Wendy and Tambry had been dating since high school graduation now. "Mother, Aunty gave me a toy lamb! She said it's like Unca' Dipper, I don't know why though…" Meera babbled on happily in her mother's lap. Mabel missed this. She loved listening to the little one's happy voice. "Mother Father it's snowing!"
"Snowing?" Mabel asked and then looked up. White specs were falling onto the ground and one snowflake landed onto her arm. Meera's face lit up; Snow was infrequent and rare where they lived in San Diego. Vacations in the winter to cold places always could brighten up the girl.
"White snow, and blue roses for Sansa," Mabel smiled. She hadn't even noticed that the roses were the same shade as Sansa's eyes. And for the first time since Sansa died, staring at her little girl and the roses her Sansa would've loved so dearly, Mabel smiled.