Title - After the Apocalypse - Part 3
Author - Kourion
Summary: "I don't recall feeling this nervous when I found Grace hanging out in my room, unannounced. But this feels different. More...nerve-wracking somehow. My eyes rapidly dart around looking for...anything out of place. Anything weird. Anything *weirder*." Franky centric/ noncon warning.
A/N: Please note: this story is written in a very, very atypical format. Experimental, you could call it. It may not be your cup of tea for that reason, or - more likely, due to violence and noncon situations detailed within. Proceed with caution.
"You can't be brave if you've only had wonderful things happen to you." - Mary Tyler Moore
f r a n k y ' s P O V
Geoff looks pissed.
Like, ready to blow-a-gasket-pissed.
I feel Mini's arm wrap around mine, as if to offer support. Physical or emotional, I don't know - although my knees feel like jelly.
"Where have you BEEN, Francesca?," he begins, crossing the path from door to mailbox in under three seconds flat, his hands digging into my upper arms with more ferocity than intended, I suspect.
"I'm sorry about this, Geoff!," Mini rushes in exclamation, coming to my defense. A little...too forcefully. A little too fearfully.
It's not like my dads are abusive, or anything.
Geoff looks to my arm then, and to where I'm gingerly rubbing the skin, before he releases his hold on me. Instead, his eyes travel over my body, and after a moment I can feel him suck in a breathe.
"What in God's name happened to you, Franky?," and his eyes are boring holes into my own. I can feel the sense of shame descend...like a hawk coming in for the kill.
All afternoon, I tried to keep it at bay. That feeling that I was going to lose my mind. That feeling...that I must just...go and do *it* to get rid of the fear. It being sex. With Matty. Just do it and get it over with and blot out the big bad with little bad. With the Baby bad of IT.
And really, it would have been with Matty, anyway. It wasn't as if he was going to hurt me.
But he did.
In a sense.
Unknowingly.
Or maybe, to be fair...I hurt myself.
I mean, I kissed him first.
I unzipped his god damn pants and more or less just told him to...do what he wanted.
But I just couldn't take it.
I couldn't make my heart slow down. I couldn't...make it mean nothing.
It could never mean nothing, shouldn't ever mean nothing. Especially given all the before stuff.
Mini, it seems, has turned quiet. I can sense that she's trying to physically put herself between me and my dad.
"It's...not her fault. None of what happened was her fault," and she turns to me, looking as if she wants to hug (kiss?) - hug me, before she says, even more softly, "none of it. Ok?"
But her eyes linger on mine just a second too long, and Geoff seems to go on high alert then. Reading more into the glances and his scruffed up daughter. Reading more into Mini and her protectiveness than he should, maybe.
Because he's not angry any more.
He's...upset.
And he becomes increasingly so as he eyes my feet, my legs.
Because while I scrapped the mud off my thighs earlier on (and blotted up the blood from the scratches on my shins after Liv helped me up from the cliff), my shins are stills scabbed over with cuts from the fall.
Geoff eyes me dismally, his voice sounding...full of forced calm.
"What happened, Franky?"
And I know what he's thinking. He's thinking...that the last time my daughter went away for an entire day, and half of the night, she came back wounded and bloody and...damaged.
She came back silent and cold and...bleeding.
And here I am, again. Bleeding again. Not in the same way, of course. And not for the same reasons, thank god.
But he doesn't know that yet. He doesn't know anything yet. Just that my legs are scrapped up and bruised, and that my skirt is ripped.
I mean, he must be going through a certain kind of dad-terror right now.
Can't he figure it out? Can't he understand how this makes me feel?
How exposed this makes me feel?
He pulls back just enough to try to make eye contact with his screw-up of a daughter when I don't respond.
Instead, I look down at my shoes.
The fanciest, girliest things that I had on hand... to go to the wedding-that-wasn't-to-be. I mean, I can sew just about anything that I need out of my surplus of materials and fabrics...except for shoes. And between the bridesmaid outfits and the wedding dress itself, my disposable income has been pushed to the max-out stage, lately. Never mind the fact that said shoes are in really crap condition now, as well...all scuffed up and muddy.
"God, please tell me no one has hurt you. Tell me nothing happened...," and he's whispering, but that's not GOOD ENOUGH.
I mean, this is beyond embarrassing. After all, Mini is standing not even two feet away. Right there on the blasted walk, her eyes wide and watchful. I have no doubt that she's getting this all.
"No one has touched you?," Geoff presses, with an insistence that in itself I find shameful! And fuck it, why did he have to be waiting for me? Waiting for me on the god damned porch, at midnight?
My throat won't work. My throat won't work properly at all. I try to say, I try to fucking *tell him* that I'm ok, that nothing HAPPENED, I'M FINE, but my dad's basically stroking my hair and pulling me towards him as if he's on auto-pilot. As if I'm a rare jewel. A family heirloom. Something he lost for years and years and missed so much that he's in disbelief...
"Franky?," and the voice holds a note of something so torn and needy, that guilt descends upon me like a storm cloud.
Because a good daughter would have called.
"N-no...," I get out, shakily, just begging internally for Geoff to be quiet. To be fucking quiet. To not say anything more. To not say anything else which Mini, without question, will hear. Hear and piece together like a kiddie's jigsaw puzzle of a mere 12 pieces.
'If she hasn't already...'
Because I know that she already suspects the worst. I saw it in her gaze earlier on, studying me without scorn. More than that, I felt it in her touch, in the way her arms came lightly around mine, and settled up to tuck the raggedy yellow jacket around me like a shield.
"'Franky...did he hurt you?'|
And what could I say, really, to that?
"'I just wanted to feel normal...'"
No, Mini. Matty didn't do shit. I'm just a freak with major issues...
Because I wasn't exactly calm when Liv and Matty, and Mini, found me. I was trying too hard not to vomit, not to scream.
I was trying, of course, not to cry. But I failed at that, I think.
And - what's more - I think everyone knew that it wasn't JUST because I had almost catapulted myself off a cliff, to my death.
"Can we talk about this later?," I beg Geoff, who releases me slightly, but not entirely.
"Yes. We will...," but he holds me back before I can escape, or before Mini can depart.
"Where do you live, Mini?," he asks more clearly now, more assuredly, more...parental in tone. I mean, I guess he's figured out that something has happened...but nothing as bad as what I've been through before.
In short: he's concerned, but he's not panicked.
"Mmm?," Mini asks evasively, wrapping a long tendril of blond hair around her finger.
She suddenly looks about 13.
"Your mum and dad know where you are?," Geoff queries, not unkindly, and with far less firmness and reproach than was flung my way.
Which makes sense. Mini's not his kid.
('You're not his kid, either, bitch. You're nobody's kid. You're just a frea-')
"I left Mr. Machismo a voice mail...message. If he gives it to Ms. Dihydramine - I'll be surprised," Mini starts up, almost amused with herself, her voice only trailing off when she catches the firmness in my dad's eyes. I see him check his watch, tap the digital LED display, and watch as the Casio glows a pale periwinkle.
"Okay, well, give them a quick buzz while I grab the car, and I'll give you a lift..."
Mini looks...shifty. There is no other word to describe the expression now forming on her face.
"Mini?," I question, my voice coming out as little more than a warm puff of air.
"They are...not there. And I don't have keys," she confesses, barely loudly enough for Geoff to hear. But he does hear, and he looks up sharply, his eyes becoming more serious, less get-out-of-jail-free, now.
No, his eyes have definitely taken on a do-not-pass-go, do-not-collect-$200 look.
"Where are they?"
Mini tugs at her white-blond hair, almost dismissively. "I don't know. Brighton, maybe? They won't be home until Monday."
Monday. Monday?
"What were you planning on doing, kiddo? Scour the streets by yourself at this hour? Do you know how dangerous that is?"
Mini doesn't look chastised, as I know I would. But she looks...somewhat more reserved.
"The college opens at 6," she says with only modest hesitation. "Drama practice for the enrichment programs and all that...," here voice disappears.
"You can't just wander around until 6 am, Mini!," I sputter, my tongue going now on its own. "You could get hurt! I mean, someone... you never think it will happen to you, but it-"
I can't believe I just said that.
Geoff exhales forcibly, then indicates that he's returning indoors, and that we are both to follow.
Mini gives me a cautious glance, as if asking 'is this alright?'
But how can I say no? I mean, I can't. I just can't let her leave and wander around Bristol at this time of night, regardless of how antsy I feel. I can't let her go off on her own.
"We're finishing up Cosmos, which will run at least another hour, but please try to be silent after that, yeah girls?," Geoff addresses us, mutually, as I navigate Mini towards the hall closet, and show her wear she can toss her shoes.
"Might as well bloody talk to myself," I hear my dad mumble to no one in particular a few moments later, before I look up and give him a brief smile to let him know that I've heard.
"Yes, DAD," I stress, before giving him a fast smile. "We'll be little angels."
He snorts, before his look of amusement clears into something more...cautious.
"Oh, Franky - I'm not telling you how to live your life, but you might want to cut the girl-talk short tonight. Appointment at noon, kiddo," he says lightly, almost...
apologetically?
I hop up on my stool as I consider his words, confused.
I know I don't have anything scheduled for tomorrow.
"Pineapple?," my dad tests as I run through my mental to-do list.
I shake my head and reach for an old Rupert Bear mug, that I quickly top up with Pepsi Max. The mug was a gift that Mr. Lehr gave to me when I was eight. It's the only thing that I've ever kept from all the homes that I lived in as a kid. It's the only thing that I wanted to keep. Mr. Lehr was actually a pretty nice guy. He reminded me of a younger Santa Claus back then. Without the beard.
He also died of a cerebral aneurysm a month before my 9th birthday.
Life sometimes sucks beyond belief.
"Appntmnt?," I talk through sips of Pepsi, while Mini sort of awkwardly deposits herself at the glass table.
I'm suddenly very, very thirsty, and figure Mini must be, too, so I chuck a green plastic cup and slide the bottle of cola over to her. She stares at the cup and the bottle as if she can't comprehend what she's supposed to do with either.
"What appointment?," I test again a couple moments later, when my dad doesn't answer. I find myself suddenly running my tongue over my teeth, feeling the indention of braces.
I don't go back to the dentist for another three weeks, minimally. I KNOW this.
What's worse...I see Geoff hedge, so I put down the mug cautiously, not liking his sudden quietude.
"You bailed today, Franky. So Madeline rescheduled. That's what we adults like to call a repercussion, princess," Geoff says briskly as he pours himself a glass of pineapple juice from the fridge, and tosses in a couple mock ice-cube submarines.
No.
"No way. No. I'm not going in on a Saturday, Dad! I never do. I-I'm...just not going! This is crap!"
I never go on a Saturday.
"That may be the case, love. But it's a done deal..."
"I don't even need to go. This is just screwed up. I-"
"Whine all you want, Francesca. You know the drill. Unless you'd like to actually...argue about this. Right now?," my dad states, glancing quickly at Mini whose trying to make herself look very shrunken and busy while she reads the label on the Pepsi Max bottle.
But I know when I've lost the battle, and angrily rise from the table, suddenly high on anger and aggression and something else.
Something that feels very much like reaching my limit...of crappy unfairness.
By the time I hear the tentative knock at my door, my mood is already somewhat...restored to company-decent. It's not 100% of course, but it has improved.
"Yeah?," I test resignedly, not wanting to push my dad any further, just in case it is him.
I mean, he could have grounded me or something. Something. He didn't even yell.
And I do feel sort of badly about not calling.
I do.
The knock raps out again, patterned in a way that just screams Mini, and I feel my mouth try to quirk up into a smile, repressed into something less happy.
"Yeah. Come in," I say with pent up breath, nervous.
I don't recall feeling this nervous when I found Grace hanging out in my room, unannounced. But this feels different. More...nerve-wracking somehow. My eyes rapidly dart around looking for...anything out of place. Anything weird. Anything weirder.
I catch sight of my sports bra, and reach for it hastily, just as Mini tentatively opens the door.
"You okay?," she tries, looking somewhat discomforted as I toss the bra under my chair, and out of sight.
"Fine," I say, removed, "I just...I...sorry for the freak out earlier," I say softly, not quite meeting her eyes.
"I mean...with my dad..."
She moves towards my bed, and sits down on a corner edge, then looks around with sudden interest.
"I like your room," she tries for ease, "it's...cozy, somehow. Feels sort of...I don't know..."
I chew at my pinky finger as she inspects my life through posters and records, and stop motion animation cut outs.
"This is pretty...," she trails off, her hands floating over my percale bedding, tracing loops around printed flowers.
"Not what you'd expect, huh? Not for a fr-," I stop suddenly, something painful squeezing around my chest as I catch her studying my bedspread, my rose pillowcase.
"What?," and she looks up with an expression of near-alarm, her arms darting from the pillow to my hand so rapidly that I don't even feel the additional warmth at first.
"No...I...I'm sorry, Franky. I am," she tries again, studying our hands, her fingers - now interwoven with mine.
I just...stare at our hands.
"I know," I say to the hands, while I feel the soft addition of skin brush against my face, and tap against my cheek.
"You look like you're gnawing your own finger off or something there, Franks," Mini quips, while I dislodge the battered digit from my teeth, my jaws.
And survey the damage.
Probably a little too prominently.
"Fuck! Franky...you are!...you're bleeding."
Bleeding.
I should say, "shit" or "oops."
Something to indicate that this was a mistake. A nervous habit. Unintentional.
I shouldn't say...
"I know..."
Mini's eyes catch mine, and she looks...frightened. Just for a nanosecond.
Probably scared to sleep in the same room as the freak, now. The fucking psycho dyke freak.
I try again.
With better words.
"I...do this sometimes, when I'm upset. Even when I don't know I'm upset. But when I am, deep down. I sometimes...do. I don't know why."
"How can you not know when you're upset?"
"I just...tell myself I'm not sad, or angry. And then I'm not sad or angry. Problem solved. Most of the time it works."
I breathe into my lap, my head down, not knowing why I'm telling her any of this.
Just knowing that everything else is lining up easily enough that tonight I might be able to tell her what she needs to hear so that she doesn't think I'm completely nuts.
Certainly not everything.
Certainly not.
But maybe...
"Franks...that doesn't make sense. Telling yourself that you're not sad? That doesn't mean that you're not. That's just like...mega huge denial."
I press against my eyes. I press against my eyes until pin pricks of white-green light blast out from the blackness.
"Franky..."
"It's like I told you earlier, Mini. You and Liv. I go somewhere else, in my head."
"No...you said that you imagined you were somewhere else, so you wouldn't feel weird..."
"Well, I make myself go somewhere else, when I'm upset. When it happens."
"When what happens?"
"When anything bad happens. Or, when I do this."
"Do "this"? What the fuck, Franky? Hurt yourself, you mean?"
I bite down on my lip, and bloody hell: damn you for making it hurt, Mini. For making it hurt in a way that burning and cutting never have hurt me, and never could.
'Damn you, Mini... for making it real.'
"It doesn't feel much like pain, though," I say, brushing blood against my skirt, oddly transfixed.
She rises silently, and surveys my hand, which isn't really bleeding badly or anything...
"Franky...this is...serious."
I scoff, despite myself, and mouth out the word "serious", a bubbling hysteria tugging at my lungs.
Serious. Serious. Serious?
Fucking 'serious'?
"This isn't serious. This is nothing. Absolutely nothing," I stress, mostly to my lap, my knees. Anywhere but the direction of Mini and her pretty little face.
I suddenly feel a tide of shame.
And then suddenly my hand is caught up in hers again, but her grasp this time is so much more...tender?
No.
Careful.
Like she thinks SHE's the one to upset me.
"How can this not hurt, Franks?," and I feel her rub the skin around the inflammed, cut finger.
"How can it not?"
I shake my head. Back and forth. Back and forth.
"It doesn't," I breathe. "Or maybe...it does. But not enough...it never hurts enough..."
"Enough for what?," Mini tries again, but her face has lost the wide-grin smile that I used to associate with her, with Mini.
She looks downright solemn and strangely mature at the moment, if you want to know the truth.
And not at all happy.
Concerned.
I hate the word, and I hate the expression. Especially on her face.
And I hate that I'm the one who put it there in the first place.
"I can't...talk about it. Any of it," I say to my knees, case in point.
I must be so fucking out of my mind to be talking right now about any of it, anyway.
Talking like this.
I don't even talk to my shrink like this.
I never admit it.
I lie about it.
I tell Madeline that I don't "notice."
I tell Madeline that the cutting was from stress.
That I know it was wrong, now.
That I'll never do it again.
What did they give me? Matty, and Liv?
Not even coke could make me this...open.
I pull my hand away from Mini's, suddenly feeling rotten and ugly. So ugly.
"Franky..."
I look up, needing her to know. Know without me actually saying anything. Not with words.
"If I could say it, if I could explain...then I wouldn't have to do this..."
She looks...torn.
"Do your dad's know?"
I reach for my gray hoody, and pull it over my head, suddenly chilled.
"Franky...," she tries again, her voice holding a note of insistence.
"Yes, they know."
She looks...like she's just figured something out.
And nothing, in this set-up, could be good.
"Is this why you have to go see someone tomorrow?"
Bravo, Mini. Bravo.
You've figured it out.
I'm a fucking little headcase.
I get up swiftly, before she can ask me any more questions.
"Do you want an oversized t-shirt to sleep in or something? You're too tall for my pajamas, I think..."
Mini gives me a slight smile through my mirror. The lines don't cut through her face at all.
The mirror doesn't distort her features.
Just mine.
When I come back from the washroom, I catch Mini hovering near my study desk.
Not my stop-motion station - but my smaller oak table that's currently stashed with notebooks and highlighters and little bendy purple erasers that Jeff got me from China Town, that smell like plastic grapes.
"Is this you?," she asks fondly, her voice taking on a measure of sweetness. "You were so cute, Franks!"
I glance over to the frame she's currently holding.
It is me.
Taken when I was not quite 6.
My hair was longer at that age than it has been for the last decade.
"I found a packaged toothbrush, if you want to freshen up," I say to the wall, not really taking in the photo, and not really commenting on it, either.
"You looked like...a little elf. Or a pixie," Mini breathes, ignoring my offerings of clean toothbrushes and Aqua Fresh.
Mini smiles to herself, as if not surprised by my petite stature, even as a child. I guess she's giving me a compliment.
"And you had curly hair," she muses aloud, when I don't respond.
"It goes all wavy when it falls past my shoulders. Still would, I imagine."
"How old were you here? Four?"
"Almost six," I say shortly, hating myself for not being able to just...be. With her.
Hating myself for feeling so constrained and for something else, too. Something.
Some emotion. Not obvious sadness. Because obvious sadness makes me feel like crying.
And I know a normal person would probably know this feeling. Would probably be able to identify it.
But I can't.
Because I'm not normal.
I roll out a camper mattress and stash it on the floor, wedging it between my bed and my work station, before I roll out a red sleeping bag and toss that down too, scrunching under the covers as Mini finally trundles over a second later.
She's freshly changed in the most massive shirt that I have, so it billows at her sides. It doesn't come as nearly far down on her legs, though, so I wait until she manages to fully climb under all the bedding, and is well covered, before turning back to her.
"I'm going to sleep now," I say quietly, feeling that wretched sadness swell up in my chest again. It started with Mini's questions, or rather - her assertions - that what I was doing to myself was wrong. Wrong.
Hurtful-wrong.
Screwed-up-wrong.
And now, after looking at that photo, and commenting on how I was...what had she called me? "Cute"? Like a "pixie"?
Well, it's making this horrible feeling worse.
To think, I was so little and so trusting and so...much better back then. Not untroubled, but not damaged like now.
I had a chance then. I had a chance, even after so much shit. Even after all of it, all that early garbage.
But it took eight years before I found my (for all intents and purposes) real parents. It took eight years of being bounced about like a bad cheque before I had a real family.
So to think of me, then, as a little kid - smiling away like this good-natured, love-craving little alien...
Well, it hurts.
It's making the raw feeling worse.
And, honestly, if Mini wasn't here, I'd probably just take my clipper lighter and hold it against my chest until I had to bite down on my lips to keep from crying out against the heat, and the blistering scent of burning skin.
And then I'd bundle up my chest with even more gauze, and fall asleep to the hissing pain of a flame burn. The pain a type of white-noise in itself, but not of sound. Of emotions. Blanketing out the stronger, more disrupting upset.
Obviously, I can't do this tonight.
Obviously, I'm going to have to find a different way of distracting myself from these feelings, now that Mini's here.