Fear not my dear Niles&CC fans. :3
Once more, thanks again. You guys never fail to make me happy on a depressing day. You're my Prozac! Lol.
This chapter took long cause well, I was stuck for a while.
I do not own anything of The Nanny.
C.C. stood there, frozen. "No he's not," she said with a nervous and intimidated smile. She hoped so much that Niles was just kidding. "You are."
Stuart looked at Niles with a sharp eye and back at C.C. as Niles just stared at the floor. "C.C., dear, mother wants you to stay with her until you recover."
Her expression broke into despair as she saw how serious the situation actually was. "What? Recover?"
"C.C., you're suffering from a memory loss, and mother wants you home until you get better."
C.C. shook her head furiously. "No. No! I don't need to get better, I'm just fine! Daddy?" She shot her head in Niles' direction and he just had his back turned to her, looking down on the floor. She couldn't believe this. She was finally in a happy place and now it all falls apart.
Stuart looked at the fear and heartbroken in C.C.'s eyes and was all very sorry to do this. Her eyes began to water as she looked at Niles, then Fran, then the man who claimed to be her real father.
Mother wants you home
She shook her head slowly, her watery blue orbs perma-glued to Niles. "You lied to me," she said softly. Niles turned to her slightly, the pain of his eyes meeting hers.
"You promised me." C.C.'s voice cracked as she let her tears fall after such frustration to hold them in. "You promised you wouldn't let this happen!" She put Chester down and ran up the stairs.
The killing silence returned once more. Fran, for the first time ever, had nothing to say. She looked at Niles, who was looking back with dead eyes. She just couldn't believe he'd let something like this happen, just like that. Stuart set his mouth to the side. "I'll be here to pick her up tomorrow morning." He went through the door and shut it, leaving the deadly silence to just Fran and Niles.
Fran bit her lip and shook her head as she went after C.C. and Niles closed his eyes and let his head hang.
Shit happens. All the freakin' time.
Maxwell stood from the hall out of his office and leaned on the wall. "Niles? What just happened?"
Niles turned to Maxwell and just really didn't want to answer him. He simply shook his head and headed for his room.
--
Fran knocked on C.C.'s door worriedly. She tried to pry it open, but it was locked.
"C.C.? Unlock this door!" Fran demanded.
"Go away!" C.C. yelled as she threw a doll at the door. "I don't want to talk to you."
Fran remembered those words from the time that Stuart first came, and she was afraid of losing her father to her.
"Honey, please, I just want to talk things out with you."
"I said I don't wanna!"
Fran sighed as she was pulled to the last resort. She took out a metal stick that she used to pick through locks in Mr. Sheffield's office––only when she needed to. She stick it through the lock and jammed it in and successfully opened the door.
By then C.C. saw that she could have no way out and so she sat up on her bed and dried her eyes. Fran had never honestly seen C.C. cry with this much seriousness.
"I don't know what to do, Nanny Fine," she sobbed. "Everything hurts." Fran sat beside her and put her arm around her shoulders as C.C. cried onto her shoulder. "Something told me that I should have seen this coming… but I didn't want to." Fran stroked her hair and continued to listen.
"I'm starting to remember things; things that make me sad. I see things that everyone would do to me, and how much it hurt. I don't believe you guys would do that to me, so I set it aside… but now…" C.C.'s tears fell more rapidly as she was consumed by hiccups.
Fran rubbed her arm in comfort. This was bad; C.C. was regaining her depression. If this went on, she could start cutting her wrists, or smoking, or doing weed, or whatever people did to deal with them selves these days.
"Sweetie, I myself don't even know what to do or say to you." Fran said, frustrated. "Things were goin' so well."
"I know…"
There was a comfortable pause for the two of them, until C.C. broke the silence. "I just don't understand… why would daddy lie to me like this?"
"Aww, C.C.," Fran sat up straight. "It's cause… well…" Fran was debating whether it was truly time C.C. knew. She didn't want her to have to handle such truth. But she had to have it. It was better than being so painfully confused. Right?
C.C. looked up at her with beady confused little eyes and it made Fran regretted every word that came out of her mouth.
"Ya see…" Fran stood up and looked around C.C.'s drawers to find something. She pulled out a mirror and sat back down beside her. She held it up in front of them and scooted their heads together so that both of their images fit. "Tell me… who is that gorgeous blond woman next to me?"
C.C. touched her own cheek and furrowed her brow in deeper confusion. "What the…" She saw the face of an old miserable woman, lying to herself. She saw the face of a lonely bag, trying to hold on to something she never really had. What she saw was not the young and bright face of a child that she had herself believe. What she saw, was C.C. Babcock of 1999.
"It's me."
Realization glinted in C.C.'s eyes. Fran looked straight into them through the mirror. "See, honey, you fell down the stairs last week… and, when you woke up..."
"I screwed up."
"I wouldn't say you 'screwed up', you just woke up with a different set of eyes." Fran disliked the way C.C. was so hard on herself––even when she was the normal bitter and ice-cold witch everyone would make her out to be.
C.C. put her hand over the mirror and pushed it down softly back onto the bed, not wanting to look at it any more. She looked down and folded her hands, just staring at then, as if in deep thought. "So that explains everything. I just don't know whether I'm pleased with it."
Fran couldn't tell whether C.C. was "back" or not, but allowed her to continue speaking and just offered comfort with her arms.
"I don't know how I managed to lie to myself like that, Nanny Fine, but those lies were so much better than what I really had… I don't remember what exactly they were, but if what you say is true, then…"
Fran concluded that she was entirely back to normal yet. There was still something missing. Something was still holding her back from letting go of her childhood. There was still a chain cuffed to her arm with the key misplaced––but what? There was of course a reason why she wanted to relive these ages. Was it something that happened? Or perhaps, something that didn't happen? Something that she has wanted all her life, something she couldn't get, or maybe didn't have the courage to ask for.
She was perfectly happy and satisfied with what she had before; a house of people she enjoyed. A brilliant father, sibling-like children, a nanny, a butler with doubled as a Broadway producer (as ridiculous as that sounded). As much as a complete family as that was, who was she missing?
A mother. Oh. Flippin'. Crap.
That, she must admit, took a lot of brain-power for Fran to conclude. "C.C., honey? Do you ever maybe… miss your mother?"
C.C. set her lips to the side. "Sometimes…" She stood up straighter and faced Fran, cross-legged. "It's just that I wish she were nicer to me. If she had done that, then, maybe I wouldn't hate her so much."
"You hate your own mother?"
"Well, no, Nanny Fine, surely you can understand that sometimes it hurts when you don't receive love that is supposed to be unconditional. In the end, you turn into someone that isolates any kind of love and push people away…"
Fran put her fingers to her lips and looked away. This chick's got issues.
"But I suppose in my case I pulled the wrong people in. The person who I believed was my daddy was a fake. He never really loved me after all."
"Don't say that about him!" Fran responded immediately, defending Niles. "He may not be your real father, but he loves you with all his heart."
"How?"
"Oh my god I feel like I'm playing Dr. Miller," Fran babbled quickly as she faced C.C. more directly. "Listen. We may not be who you think we are, but we love you, whether you know it or ever knew it at all. Your 'daddy' set aside his (very tiny) amount of pride and ego to take care of you. He never left you alone to suffer in your own problems––whether you knew it or not, honey, he was always there for you in his own strange way… now if the schmendrick would only admit it…" Fran mumbled at the last part.
C.C. stared at her, wide-eyed, not imagining that Fran would react this way.
"The point is," Fran picked up hysterically. "Just because everything you thought was a lie, doesn't mean what we felt and did for you was a lie––" Fran looked away with a puzzled look, not exactly liking her choice of words.
C.C. looked down with an almost undetectable smile and folded her hands around. "Maybe." A lone tear escaped from her face as she immediately wiped it away. Now what the hell was she supposed to think? This was not very a good juggle of reality for one with such mental issues.
Fran hugged C.C. endearing and kissed the back of her head. "Well now you get some sleep, sweetie, it's late and I have some people to slap around––I mean, talk to."
C.C. nodded and they both wished their goodnights and Fran tucked her in and left the room. Seconds later, Fran opened the door again. "By the way, what year is it?"
"1968?"
"Fourteen… alright then, honey, goodnight." Fran closed the door and sighed. "Her life is fucked."
--
Maxwell knocked on Niles' door to check on him, and when there was no answer, he let himself in and found Niles sitting on the edge of his bed, shooting down Whiskey into his mouth.
"Oh Niles, old man," Maxwell scolded as he took away his glass in the middle of drinking and set it on the end table beside the bed. Maxwell took a seat next to him as he looked away, looking sort of pissed that Maxwell had interrupted his happy hour.
"Niles, I'm sorry about what happened, but could you perhaps talk about it rather than pour bottles of alcohol into your system?"
Niles shook his head as he let it fall into his hands. "Oh, I don't know what this unbearable pain is, sir." His voice was weak and broken. Niles was usually man of steel emotions (well, most of the time), and it frightened Maxwell to see him this way.
"Could it be perhaps that you don't want to let C.C. go?"
"Let her go? It's about letting her down, sir."
Maxwell put his hand on Niles' shoulder to offer comfort
"Sir, I'm sorry. I just didn't expect for me to feel this hurt."
Niles looked off into the distance, pondering his own self.
"My god, old man," Maxwell started. "You've fallen in love with her, haven't you?"
"She broke my denial when she started to need me," Niles said softly and shook his head lightly. Maxwell paused a moment, making a sympathetic face and then patted Niles' back and stood up. "You get some rest, old man."
"Goodnight, sir." Niles fell sideways onto his pillow.
--
C.C. was buried deep into her dreams, and even in them, she was pretty insane.
C.C. sat in a white space on a chair, facing none other than little Chastity Claire. C.C. crossed her legs and filed her nails as she spoke to her little self. "So, why are you still stickin' around for? This place is a dud. Let me out already."
Chastity eyed her in a pouty way. "I'm not done here, see. I'm not gunna grow up to be a messed woman all because of you."
"Too late, kiddo," C.C. scoffed. "This is me now, and neither of us can change it."
"Well why don't you want to be happy?"
"I do," C.C. whined.
"When here's your chance to redo everything!"
"What am I, an internal time machine?"
"See, you're just that messed up."
C.C. didn't like fighting with herself. Chastity always won. She was always right. That's why she'd mentally lock her away. All Chastity wanted was to be happy, but all C.C. wanted was to do things the easy way, no matter how hurt she was on the inside. She hid everything so well, but there was only one person who would continuously challenge the locks––Niles.
C.C. sat with her arms crossed in defeat. "What do you see in Niles, anyway?"
"Who?"
"Ugh. Daddy."
"Oh," Chastity giggled. "Cause he's what you're missing."
"I'm missing a domestic who dusts for a living," C.C. stated sarcastically. Chastity shook her head.
"Love."
This word always had C.C. stop in her tracks. It's something she never really had, whether it came from family or friends.
"He's your replacement for what you have lacked in the past."
"Oh now who are you are, Grace? Ugh. We spend way too much time in therapy." C.C. remarked. "So that's why?"
Chastity nodded. "But I guess all that is fixed… sort of… in a way."
"Yeah well now there's going to be a whole issue with mummy," C.C. muttered.
Chastity stood up from her chair and put her hands on her hips. C.C. looked up at her nervously.
"Exactly."
LOL sorry if the last part of the chapter didn't make any sense, I just thought it would be funny if I showed C.C.'s mental confliction. xD
I stayed up til 5 am writing this on paper. O.o
You're all hating me for the suspense now aren't you? Heh. Well what I had in mind was waaaay too long to put into one chapter. I myself do hate to keep you waiting, so up next: C.C. has unresolved hatred and B.B. has to come in to fix all that and be a mother for once. Bwahahah.
Reviews and feedback are greatly appreciated, suggestions and requests are welcome.
Love you all!
-Rei
