Title: Scattered
Author: Lady Dissent
Disclaimer: Just borrowing.
A/N: All right, this chapter is a huge one; lots of plot points, which makes it harder than hell to write. And it's the last one before my Christmas one! Woot-ness. Enjoy!
And, FYI, I do know that Gringotts is run by goblins, but I personally think that they've got to have at least a few humans working in upper management. (You'll understand this once you read the chapter).
I suppose the Hamlet quote at the end of this chapter will only be funny if you've actually read the play, but I think it works.
For ratings, pairings, and warnings, please see previous chapters.
Chapter 7
After that conversation, Bill thought things would be different between himself and Pippa, and he was right. She was less harsh, a little kinder. Human, even. She was careful, though, never to touch on her past or eating habits ever again. Whenever Bill brought either subject up, which he did every so often, she turned on him and became the same verbally violent person she had been for their first few days together. Some of her favorite insults were "limey Brit", "manky git", and "walking faux pas".
That didn't deter Bill from questioning her, though. He suspected something was wrong, and was determined to help her, whether she wanted him to or not . . . Well, he wouldn't be that forceful, but he wanted to know what was bugging her so that he could stop it. She could be absolutely wonderful when she wasn't in one of her peevish, "I-hate-everyone" moods, and he wanted to keep her that way.
It bothered Bill that the only thing he'd ever seen her eat had been the occasional saltine cracker, and that she seemed to subside on straight tea. He didn't think it was normal, or even right. He suspected her modeling career was to blame. All that pressure to be perfect, to be thin, to be beautiful all the time, it had to be hell.
The longer he stayed with her, the more Bill came to understand how truly rotten her life was because of her job. She couldn't catch a break from anyone. In the two weeks following their conversation about her past, Pippa was kicked out of five photo shoots, coming home each time in shambles. She wouldn't eat, or even drink anything, for days afterwards, becoming more depressed and bad-tempered as the seconds past.
He tried his best to comfort her, and at first she rebuffed him, insulting him worse than ever, calling him all manner of horrible nasty things. But after she was let go from her third job, she just gave up being rude and let Bill help her.
She came home that day, sobbing, and she didn't even try to stop Bill's hug. She just cried into his shoulder.
"Why does everyone want to torture me?" she'd practically wailed, sinking deep into his embrace. "Why can't they just kill me and get it over with?"
Bill hadn't known what to say to this, just kept rubbing her back, cringing as he felt everyone of her vertebrae. She cried her eyes out into his shirt, denouncing her work and life in general, and seemed strangely resolved after that. She sat up, sniffed, and looked at him pitifully as she self-consciously smoothed her hair. Bill smiled weakly, still quite clueless.
Things got a little better after that. Pippa began to open up to Bill, slowly of course, and he did his best to aid and understand her. It was difficult, though; one wrong word from Bill, and they would end up back at square one, with a verbally abusive Pippa and a completely oblivious Bill.
At the beginning of December, when Bill had been living with her for about six weeks, he decided to confront her about what he thought was her eating problem. She hadn't snapped at him for three days, so Bill figured this could go one of two ways: one, she'd either be in a good enough mood to tell him what was wrong, or two, she would screech that he was long overdue and flay him with words.
He was hoping for option number one.
"Pippa," he began cautiously one morning as he worked his way through a plate of eggs and bacon. She'd gotten into the habit of making a lovely breakfast for him every morning, but never actually ate anything herself. "I want to ask you something."
She looked up mildly, eyeing him critically.
"Yeah?"
There was a defensive edge to her tone, which Bill didn't think boded well for him at all, but he continued anyway.
"Why don't you ever eat anything?"
He knew the second he said those words that he was dead. Pippa's eyes flashed with self-protective anger, and she said with dangerous calm,
"I do eat. I ate yesterday, remember?"
Bill snorted and replied,
"You had three crackers and half a cup of tea. That, to me, doesn't constitute a meal."
"Well, it does for me," Pippa snapped. "Just drop it."
"No," Bill said firmly. "I want to know why you never eat anything."
"And I don't want to tell you. Just leave it," she replied curtly.
"Why?" Bill pestered.
"Because it's none of your business."
"I think it is."
"Well, you're wrong."
They were both quiet for a few tense moments, and then Bill spoke again.
"Why won't you just tell me?"
"Because it isn't that simple!" Pippa yelled, throwing down the magazine she'd been reading. Unfortunately, it looked like Bill was going to get response number two. "I can't just spill my heart out on a whim! I'm more complicated than that; I don't trust that easily. You should know that by now."
"I'm not asking you to spill your heart out," Bill said, trying to calm her down. "I just want to know why you never eat."
"Which is tantamount to the same thing!" Pippa yelled. "It's my business, and I don't want to tell you!"
"Why not? What have I done?" Bill wanted to know.
Pippa opened her mouth to yell something at him, but stopped. She tried again, but still nothing came; she couldn't think of anything bad or repulsive that he had done to her that would warrant her current behavior. After a painfully awkward silence, she retreated behind her wall of verbal insults.
"You limey British bastard, just stay the hell out of my personal life!"
"That's mature," Bill said. "You can't give me a straight answer, so you insult me . . . Come on, Pippa, we've played this game hundreds of times, and we both know how it ends. Just tell me."
Pippa stood up and started to leave the counter; Bill followed. She turned on him and said,
"It's not like you'd understand even if I did."
"Maybe that's true, but I'd try anyway," Bill said. He could tell her resistance was beginning to wane; her insults and attacks were becoming less cruel and biting. She might crack this time, if he could only draw her out a bit longer . . .
"Just piss off, all right?" Pippa said. She was glaring at him, but Bill was certain it was just an act now.
"No," he said simply. "Tell me." Pippa looked around for a distraction, trying to buy herself more time.
"Don't you have to go to work or something?" she said evasively.
Bill had managed to find himself a desk job at Gringotts a few weeks back, thanks mostly to Pippa. He had found the advert in The Daily Prophet, and showed it to her. She had become strangely ecstatic, and told Bill that he should definitely go for it. (He knew now that the rent had been due in a few days, and that Pippa hadn't been paid in at least a month.) They managed to settle an interview within a few days, and less than a week later, Bill got the job.
On his first day of work, he'd been informed by one of his co-workers that the person who hired him (a somewhat ditzy assistant something-or-another) had "absolutely loved his outfit" and that was why "he totally got handed the job". Pippa had, of course, insisted on picking out his interview outfit, telling him that, frankly, he "looked like he got dressed in the dark every morning". This had resulted in a mild fight that lasted about two days, and ended once Bill got the job.
"No," Bill answered. "It's Saturday; I never work on Saturdays."
Pippa was running out of excuses now. Bill watched her closely, and he could practically see the wheels in her brain spinning out of control as she groped around for some sort of insult to toss his way.
"You're stupid, you know that?" she said finally. "Really stupid."
"Right," Bill said, and they both knew it was over. Pippa looked away, and then flopped down on the couch in a miserable huff. Bill followed, and sat beside her. She kicked out at him, but he avoided her.
"Just tell me," he said delicately, putting a comforting hand on her back and rubbing circles there. She was tense and apprehensive at first, and then, she just let everything go and softened at his touch. Bill heard her mumble something into the pillow, but it was so garbled and muffled that he couldn't understand it.
"Come again?" he said quietly. Pippa picked her head up and repeated quietly,
"Because it's all I have left."
She had been right; Bill didn't have the slightest clue what that had to do with her refusal to eat.
Pippa sat up and wiped away tears that had run down her cheeks.
"Don't you get it, Bill?" she said pitifully, her eyes watering again against her will. "That's the one thing I can control; all that they haven't taken from me. They tell me what to do, how to stand, how to dress, who I should be seen with, but they can't tell me how to eat. Only I get to decide that."
Bill was silent. He hadn't really expected this. He thought she'd have some big complicated reason for not eating, not something so simple as, basically, sticking it to the man.
"You don't have to starve yourself," he finally said. "You could eat . . . "
"No, I can't," Pippa said resolutely. "If I do, I'll be ugly, and I can't be ugly. They won't take me then . . . "
"Then find something else to do," Bill said. "You hate it anyway. It wouldn't be such a loss." Pippa laughed harshly and said,
"You think it's that simple? That I can just pick myself up, brush away the dirt, and do something else? God, Bill, if it were that easy, I would have done it years ago . . . But I can't. I can't do anything else. I'm worthless. Modeling is the only thing I have." She snorted here. "Figures. The only thing I'm almost good at is standing around and having my picture taken."
Bill was shocked.
"You're not worthless," he said slowly. "Who told you that you were?"
"Everyone. Every time they judged me, looked the other way, fired me . . . Anytime they did anything to me, they told me without words that I'm worthless and always will be . . . And I believe them."
"Well, I don't," Bill said firmly. "You aren't worthless, Pippa."
"Right," she said, her voice rank with sarcasm and defeat. "I've done a bang up job with my life; I'm really such a winner . . . In fact, I'm actually the Queen of England. Sorry I lied to you all this time."
Bill couldn't keep the smile from flickering on his face, and it was contagious. Soon, Pippa was grinning sheepishly, too.
"Quite all right," Bill said cheerily. Pippa rolled her eyes, and much to Bill's surprise, snuggled closer to him.
"So now you know," she said simply. "You know how screwed up I am."
"Exactly," Bill said. "So now I can help."
Pippa snorted again.
"Don't," she said. "I'm not worth it."
"Well, I think you are, even if you don't. And I'm going to make you see that, no matter what," Bill told her determinedly.
"Right," she said, and added with her usual dollop of caustic wit, "Have fun with that."
Just as Bill expected, things were completely different now between Pippa and himself. She spent the next few days being cold and distant, as if Bill had reached that week's limit of interaction with her by finding out what he had that day.
Bill sometimes had to put on the "hat of insufferable hardass-ness", as Pippa dubbed it, about her eating habits. He knew she hated him for it, but strangely, she didn't fight it with as much vigor as he thought she would. Bill liked to think that deep down, she knew it was best for her, but he admitted that he wasn't quite sure.
Whatever the circumstances, Bill thought they were making progress, slow and pitiful as it was. Whenever Pippa made breakfast for him, which she still did faithfully every morning, Bill made her eat at least a quarter of what he did . . . Which was admittedly quite a lot, because as Pippa liked to point out, Bill ate like a horse. Sometimes she even imitated him in a wholly unflattering manner, but he dealt with it. As long as she was laughing at him, he thought, she wouldn't mind eating a little more each day.
Bill never wasted an opportunity to tell her how beautiful he thought she was. Usually, this didn't go over too well, and resulted in Bill getting smoked in the head with whatever she was holding at the time, but she accepted his compliment often enough for him to keep risking it. The soft blush that rose to her cheeks whenever she did made it worth it for Bill, who began to want nothing more than for her to see herself the way he did: a beautiful, wonderful woman who deserved nothing short of the best.
December wore on, and life settled into a comfortable routine inside their apartment. Pippa decided that she knew Bill well enough that he could stay in the same bed with her at night, a revelation that Bill was eternally grateful for. After a month of sleeping on the couch, he was all too ready for a real bed again. Bill was careful not to touch her at all for the first few nights, but when he woke up one morning with her sprawled out over his chest, sleeping soundly, he decided to give it up. She didn't seem to mind.
One blustery Saturday in December, on a day when neither Bill nor Pippa had anything to do, the former convinced the latter to show him how to play soccer. It had taken some heavy persuading, and having to endure quite a few blows, but he finally won. Pippa dug out her soccer ball from the bowels of her closet, and told Bill to bundle up because they were going outside.
They walked quickly to the small park a few blocks away from their apartment building. It was fairly cold, and the morning's frost remained on the ground even though it was nearly noon, but Pippa didn't care. In fact, she seemed to be happier than Bill had seen her before. They reached the park, and were both pleased to find that it was practically deserted.
"Now, I have to warn you," Bill began as Pippa stretched casually. "Any athletic ability to be had in my family went to my brother Charlie."
"That's all right," Pippa said, fiddling indifferently with the ball. "I'm probably going to suck, too. I haven't played for years."
With that, she started her lesson. They spent a few minutes going over the basics of the game, and appointed goals at opposite ends of the park.
"Basically, you just have to get the ball into my goal, and you get a point," Pippa said. "The one with the most points at the end wins. It's really quite simple."
"You say that now," Bill said. "But I can overcomplicate anything if I try hard enough."
Pippa smiled, and they started. Within two minutes, she'd gotten five points to Bill's zero. They kept playing, however, because Bill insisted that he wanted to get better. Really, he just wanted to watch her, which was partly to blame for his dismal performance. But, honestly, he thought to himself after she scored her twelfth goal, he didn't think that was too bad.
By the end of the afternoon, they had suspended more than half the rules of the game because Bill kept forgetting them. After they'd been playing for an hour and a half, he finally managed to score . . . once. When the game was over, he had a total of four points, and Pippa had stopped counting at 47.
They walked back from the park as the sun was setting. Pippa looped her arm through Bill's, and leaned her head on his shoulder. It was quiet, and they were content to simply walk beside each other until they reached the apartment building.
By the time the elevator had climbed to the eighth floor, however, Bill had been daring enough to try and loop his arm around Pippa's waist, and when the doors opened, he was chasing her down the hall. They were both laughing like school children, and Bill was hard pressed to think of a time when Pippa had looked prettier: her cheeks still flushed from both their soccer game and the cold, her hair mussed, and face drawn up in pleasant laughter.
They were having such a good time that they failed to notice Bill's parents waiting by their apartment door, and it was Pippa who accidentally ran into them headlong, knocking Mr. Weasley to the ground and nearly doing the same to Mrs. Weasley. Bill barely managed to stop in time enough to avoid the same fate, but only by inadvertently slamming his mother into the doorframe of the apartment.
It took him a few seconds to regain his wits, and he was thoroughly embarrassed once he'd done so.
"Mum!" he said jovially, hoping that she was in a good enough mood to laugh this off with him. "How lovely to see you! I didn't know you'd be coming . . . "
Mrs. Weasley glared admonishingly at her son and said with a tone of forced calm,
"Bill, be a dear and help your father up."
He had no choice but to oblige, and felt like an utter ass as he did so. His father, however, didn't seem quite as upset about the whole thing, especially considering he had actually been knocked over in the process.
"Oh, it's no trouble Molly," he said, brushing some errant dirt off his threadbare robe as he stood up. "I suppose our son was just excited to see us?" He was sporting that knowing smile, however, that only Arthur Weasley was authorized to use. The smile that said, "I know what you did, but I'll let it pass just this once."
"Yeah, let's go with that," Bill said apologetically, now helping Pippa to her feet. She had gotten rid of her look of absolute mortification, and was now wearing a pleasant smile, obviously trying to put her best foot forward despite the past moment's events.
"Are you going to introduce your roommate, or shall we have to guess her name?" Mr. Weasley said brightly, looking at Pippa with a smile.
"Oh, right," Bill said. "Mum, Dad, this is Pippa."
"Hello," Pippa said cordially, holding out her hand expectantly to each of Bill's parents in turn. Mr. Weasley shook it enthusiastically, smiling and returning her salutation cheerily. Mrs. Weasley was far more reserved, and after pointedly refusing to take Pippa's hand and greeting her instead with a slight nod of the head, she addressed Bill quite briskly.
"Your father and I were coming to see what your plans for Christmas were."
"Oh, I . . . I don't know," Bill said stumblingly.
"Do you think you'll be coming home?" Mrs. Weasley asked.
Bill didn't quite know what to say. He hadn't really decided one way or the other, but had been contemplating staying at his apartment for Christmas; not because he was avoiding his home, but because he had figured it would just be easier for everyone involved. Everyone back at the Burrow had probably adjusted to life without him by now, and his coming home would be the proverbial wrench that screwed the system.
He also had thought that leaving to go visit his huge family while Pippa had to stay here alone over the holidays would be rude, and he didn't want to forget about her.
Pippa, though, was smiling brightly at the moment, and it was she who spoke next.
"Well, actually, Bill and I were thinking that you all could come here for Christmas." She said this congenially, but with enough bite that Bill understood he should just go with it, even though they had discussed nothing of the sort.
Mrs. Weasley regarded Pippa briefly, but Bill knew from experience that she was sizing her up. After a few tense seconds, she began to reply, matching Pippa's plummy tones.
"That is a lovely idea. I assume you'll be cooking, of course?"
This was a dare, not a question, and Bill hoped that Pippa would be smart and say, "No."
"Of course," Pippa chirped. "You won't have to do a thing."
He knew right then that Pippa was as good as dead. If there was ever a food Nazi, it was Molly Weasley. She had scoured the earth, and had never found anyone who could cook up to her standards, especially when it came to cooking for her sons.
"Wonderful," Mrs. Weasley said, and Bill nearly went into cardiac arrest. "You do know that we'll be bringing everyone, though? All eight of us?" Bill was sure there was a hint of danger in his mother's voice, as though she were taunting Pippa into doing this.
"The more the merrier," Pippa replied. She was quite a match for the formidable Mrs. Weasley, more than capable of holding her own.
"Are you sure we'll all fit?" Mrs. Weasley said pointedly. "Your apartment looks rather small."
"Mum!" Bill exclaimed, sensing that his mother and roommate were now locked in a dangerous battle of wills that could lead to bloodshed. "The apartment's fine!"
"Oh, we'll be all right," Pippa assured her, her tone as honeyed as she continued. "It'll be cozy."
Mrs. Weasley smiled, and Pippa grinned right back. Bill wouldn't have been surprised if they both sprouted fangs and began ripping each other apart right then.
"Well, in that case," Mrs. Weasley said. "We'll see you both on Christmas."
"I look forward to it," Pippa harped, and both she and Bill waved as Mr. and Mrs. Weasley retreated down the hall and Disapparated.
Once they were gone, Pippa let out a monstrous groan and stormed inside the apartment, shrieking about what a horrible woman Bill's mother was.
"Pippa, do you know what you just agreed to do?" Bill asked, sitting on the couch. Pippa was already there, and she snapped at him,
"Vaguely. Does it involve killing myself to make your mother happy?"
"It might," Bill said. He had gathered from his mum and Pippa's exchange that the two women despised each other, and he knew that that couldn't possibly go well.
"Great," Pippa groaned. "I get to spend Christmas with the mother from hell . . . "
"Hey!" Bill said defensively. "Don't say that about my mum!"
"Sorry," Pippa said. "Sometimes I forget that other people actually like their parents." She closed her eyes and leaned her head back on the couch. She stayed that way for a few moments, and then said,
"Well, I'm going to get ready for bed. I'm going to need my strength if I'm going to cook for your oversized family."
"Pippa, Christmas isn't for another week," Bill began, ignoring her crack about his family. "Surely you don't need that much time?" Pippa smiled at him and said wryly,
"In the words of Hamlet, 'The readiness is all'."