A/N:

Geriana - yes, that information is confidential, but never fear - your questions will be answered in due time.

Renavatio - sorry, no awesome Briar-ness. I'm just excited that someone else here has read Tamora Pierce! Yay!

Disclaimer: I own nothing that is not mine.

Previously:

It was time to face my mother's interference and Jim's close minded views on everything.

Chapter Five

I walked down the hallway back into through the living room and into the kitchen slowly, thinking hard on Zack's reassurances. I really, truly, honestly wanted to believe him. He was right, after all. The chances of those creepy cult maniacs coming after us were slim, but still… I had to worry. If Zack was the sensible, logical one in our strange relationship, I was the one who worried illogically about things. I tended to worry about the things that mattered, I think, hopefully, and I tried not to worry about the things that didn't really affect me or the things that I couldn't control. It was a waste of time, and it was just completely pointless. I also tried to ignore the stupid, pointless things that didn't matter to me, with a bit of success. If they didn't matter to me, what was the point of worrying about them, right?

"Lara! Where are – oh, there you are. Come into the dining room so we can eat." My mother said with one of her cold, fake smiles.

"Yeah, just a second." Two could play at that game, and I'd learned from a pro – my mother herself. There were few who could tell that she was insincere, but I'd learned to tell the difference. It was the way I kept myself sane at home.

I quickly put away what was left of my homework things, noting absentmindedly that Zack had left his math book here again and I'd better take it to him again. After some swift consideration, I decided to leave my backpack by the doorway to the stairs going up to the bedrooms. As I did so, I listened hard to the voices – the spoken voices, not the thought voices – incase there was any sign of Jim 'losing control' and throwing a fit over the food. All I could hear, however was my mother setting the table and serving the food. Jim was silent – a good sign. If he'd been talking, I'd have just skipped dinner and made do. It's not like it hadn't happened before. I really don't know why my mother put up with him. Actually, I'd a fair idea, one that I didn't care to dwell on too much. But right now, I couldn't help but think of the occasion I'd finally found out why Jim was still around. I didn't want to think about it, or the pictures that went along with it. Seeing as Jim was silent, I decided to risk dinner. I walked cautiously into the dining room. I soon became sad that I'd decided to have dinner tonight.

"Well, well, look who decided to join us." Jim sneered as soon as I walked into the dimly lit dining room. This room had always been my least favorite room; it had red carpeting, and with the poor quality of light, the carpet always looked dirty; it almost looked like the carpet should be white, only something red had been spilled on it. Maybe the painters had spilled red paint on it, and then decided to cover it up by covering the entire thing with red paint, which dried to look like blood: bright red fresh blood covering the entire floor. It was nauseating. I was in this room as little as possible.

"Jim! Don't talk like that. She is my daughter, after all." My mother sounded like she was rehearsing for a play, with all the emotion she put into that sentence.

"What? It's not like she cares. Do ya, hon?" He leered at me. He acted like a pedophile. My mother had to be blind, not to see that.

I said nothing as I slowly sat down at the table. My mother stiffly handed me my plate, a disapproving look on her face. Whether it was directed at me or at Jim, I couldn't tell. But I knew that if I didn't get out of there quickly, I was in for it. I nodded my thanks to her, and began to eat as quickly as I could.

"Where's the fire, girl?" Jim demanded of me. "You're eating faster than a horse." He laughed at his own joke. I said nothing. He didn't deserve an answer to something so stupid. I continued to chow down a Jim hooted. Eventually, he calmed down.

"Well girl? Where's the fire, huh? Where's the fire?" He roared at me suddenly. I managed to suppress a flinch. It was definitely going to be one of those dinners.

"There isn't a fire, I'm just hungry." I replied without looking up at him.

"Hungry? You ought to be thankful we even feed you! You don't work! What've you done to deserve the food? Huh?!" His fist slammed down on the table, rattling the dishes and silverware. My mother and I jumped.

"I haven't done anything." I replied as meekly as I could. It was better to play along. He tended to lose steam quicker that way.

"Tha's righ'. We feed you fro' the goodness of our hearts. Y'oughta be grateful to us, and you're just shoveling th' food down you're throat." He leaned toward me from his place diagonally to the left of me across the table. I could smell the beer on his breath and tried not to gag.

"I am grateful for the food. I'm just so hungry I couldn't resist eating all this wonderful food." I told him as innocently as I could.

"Y'oughta be! We do all the work, an' yew just sit there and look like butter'd melt in yer mouth and don't do nothing!" He roared at me, jumping up, with spittle flying from his mouth. I tried not to cringe away from him.

"I'm sorry." I replied demurely. I decided to take a quick glance at his thoughts so as to see where he was going with this. Well, well, he wanted me out of the room, did he? The thoughts he was thinking about my mother were enough to put me off my meal, but I knew that if I didn't finish it, after all that talk about how good it was, they'd be pretty mad.

"You'd better be sorry. Now finish up!" He glared at me as he slowly sat down. "Where's all that energy from b'fore, huh? Run outta steam, have ya girl? You'd better find some more, or else…" he left the threat hanging. I decided not to push it, and finished up as quickly as I could.

As soon as I put my fork on my clean plate, my mother grabbed it and took it into the kitchen to be cleaned. When she came back to find me still at my seat, she gave me a jerk of her head toward the stairway and a disapproving frown.

'Get out of here girl. Can't she tell when Jim's in a bad mood?' Her face was scrunched up like she'd bitten into a lemon. I hurriedly ran out of the room and, grabbing my back pack, went to my room.

In my house, if you go up the stairs, you come to a long, tan carpeted hallway. My room is the second, and last, door on the right, a corner room. I like my room; it's hard to hear anything in it – the outside noise tends to cover up all the inside noise, and if you open one of my windows, you can climb outside onto a big oak tree, and, from there, get onto the roof. When I was little, I would go onto the roof for a long time every night, no matter how cold it was, and try to ignore the shouts that were coming from down stairs. As sound proof as my room is, it doesn't block out everything, and my parents would get into screaming fights. I got to know all the constellations visible from my roof – not that there were many. 'Course, eventually my father left, and then mother met Jim, and, well, the rest is history. I still like to stargaze, though. It's very soothing, being away from everything and just living in the moment. When you look up at the sky on a clear night, it's like looking into infinity. The emptiness of space, and the distance of the starts just gives me an unshakable amount of awe. It's so big; it really puts me and my problems into perspective. When I stargaze, I remember how insignificant all my problems are, and, knowing that, I can relax a little and forget about my problems. At least for a little while. At least until I get too cold or too tired to stay out here, awake, on my roof for any longer. Then, with a final look at the endless sky, I'd climb back inside and go to bed.

Not tonight, though. I'd seen, or heard, in my mother's mind that she was going to come check on me in a little bit, to make sure I was where I said I was going to be. She thought that I was going to sneak out, which, while tempting, wasn't something I'd do. The resulting grounding, confining me to my house, would be too much too bear. I never stayed in this house any longer than I could.

With a sigh, I dumped my bag by my door, where I'd be sure to see it, and flipped on the lights, revealing a room with mint green carpeting and two pale blue walls, one wall, the one separating my room and the room beside me, that was completely obscured by posters of the night sky and the moon, other astronomy stuff, and my book cases, and one faded lavender wall. The lavender wall had a leafless tree painted on it, and a short poem on it, one I didn't bother to look at now, and separated my room from the hallway. What little you could see of the obscured wall also had pale blue paint – not that you could tell. The insignificant twin sized bed in the corner, under the windows that looked out into the back yard, had a dark green comforter, a lighter shade of green sheets, and was neatly made. It was set up so that if I laid down on it with my head on the pillows, I could see outside and have a fairly good view of the sky. My night stand was a short brown little thing, and it had my alarm clock on it and space enough for whatever book I was reading at the time. It stood on the right side of my bed, between my bed and one of the walls that was just painted pale blue. My bed lay fairly near the long wall that had windows looking out into the back yard, and it's head was on the wall that was on the side of the house with the side yard beside it – the yard with my stargazing tree in it. This wall also had my dresser and my armoire sitting on it in between the two windows, one of which was slightly bigger than the other, and looked out onto my stargazing oak tree growing right outside of it. My door was on the lavender wall, near the obscured wall, and a dark green futon with a tall, thin lamp and a foot stool near it sat in the other corner.

I closed the door behind me and walked slowly to my bed. I didn't really want to go to bed, but I knew that I'd need to get some sleep tonight, otherwise Sara and her gang would think that they'd actually got to me.

I got ready for bed listlessly, always keeping an ear – mental and otherwise – out for my mother coming up the stairs. The last thing I needed was for her to confine me to my room or something.

I got into bed reluctantly. I still heard no noise from downstairs, and my mother and Jim's thoughts suggested that they were otherwise occupied. I kept my intrusions, that's what they were, really, intrusions, to a bare minimum. I had no desire to go to deeply into my mother's mind, let alone Jim's mind. I really didn't want to know what went on in his head. Talk about too much info.

I laid on my bed, staring at the ceiling for who knows how long. Eventually, I fell into a restless sleep.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Dream Sequence--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A young girl sits on a bench in a park, alone. She stares at the ground and swings her legs slowly front and back, front and back. She doesn't appear to be older than seven. Shoes crunch on the gravel path and the girl looks up hopefully.

"Hey there, sweetie. Sorry I'm late." The speaker is a 30 year old man with pale brown hair and piercing green eyes. He grins at the little girl, and she beams up at him as if he's the best person in the world.

"That's okay Daddy. I didn't mind waiting." She jumps off the bench and hugs him. He hugs her and stands up, holding on to her.

"Really?" She nods. "Well then, I guess I don't need to go get ice cream for you to make up for it, do I?" He asks jokingly.

"Ice cream! You have to go get ice cream, Daddy! I'm really mad at you!" She tries to be fierce, and he laughs at her expression.

"Alright, alright!" He says as he puts her down, "Ice cream it is!" He holds out his hand, and she takes it, smiling up at him trustingly.

"Ice cream! Ice cream, ice cream, ice cream!" She chants as she skips along beside him.

He laughs, long and hard, and suddenly, the same girl is sitting up in bed, looking around sleepily. She can hear voices shouting from downstairs, but she can't hear what is being said. She tumbles out of bed, and it's clear that she's grown up a little bit. She runs over to the door, her feet making no noise on the soft carpeting. She opens the door and peers hesitantly out into the hallway, as if she's afraid of what she might see. Once she's made sure that no one is there in the hallway, she sneaks down the hallway and tiptoes down the stairs. She looks out around the doorway into the kitchen and sees 'Daddy' and a woman fighting. The words are still indistinct, but it's apparent that they are completely incapable of agreeing.

"Mama?" She asks sleepily. "Daddy?" The two of them immediately quiet. "Why are you fighting?" They glance at each other warily, trying to decide how to explain this to her.

"We're not fighting, sweetie." The man finally answers unconvincingly. "Come on. Let's get you back to bed." He comes over and picks her up.

"'K." She replies as she rubs her eyes sleepily. She yawns as she looks at the woman's pinched, unrevealing face. "Good night, Mama."

"Good night." Her reply is short and clipped. She pauses, and then goes on. "You," she says unwillingly. The man turns to look at her. "If that's the way you're going to be, fine. Don't expect me to just let you do what you want with this. I won't give up that easily."

"I know," he says curtly. "Just don't expect me to lay down and let you walk all over me again. I did that once and look where that got me." His voice is cold, and the girl stirs in his arms in response to that.

"Daddy? Something wrong?" She asks drowsily, and yawns.

"No, sweetie. Nothing's wrong." He assures her after a long pause. "Nothing at all."

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------End of Dream Sequence----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A/N: So...yeah. What do YOU think, huh? Why don't you tell me? Just click the stinkin' button, jeez! Review!