Order Only Private message to Justin

[alt_hydra]

There is something I want to say to you.

What you wrote to me about being like my mother is the worst thing you've ever done to me, and made me feel more terrible than anything my mother has inflicted in a good long while.

However my feelings and reactions may seem foreign and alien to all of you, I do have them. Everyone wants me to behave and respond to things in a certain way, and as far as I can see, it's a way that's meant to make them feel better - not me. They want to feel relief. They want to be unburdened from their sense of helplessness. And most of the time I'm happy to lie and tell them that everything's just fine, so that they can be free of that burden. But sometimes things aren't just fine, and I can't bring myself to lie.

That's the hardest thing about all of this, knowing that you want me to be different from how I am. And I thought you were the one person who accepted me, completely.

I know that you're upset. As soon as I realised what had happened, I knew you would be, and I was sorry that you were going to be feeling pain over it.

I'm sorry that my reaction wasn't the same as yours, Justin, but you need to know that my reaction wasn't about you.

Comments

[alt_justin]

What I said was abominable. It wasn't--I didn't mean it the way it came out. I was--am--angry and ashamed and not half confused. I don't want you to be different, for my sake or anyone else's, and of course, you have to process what happened in whatever way comes naturally to you.

But you're wrong about people wanting you to react in a certain way. They don't want you to do anything in one particular way or think that one reaction's more 'natural' than another. Certainly not merely to make themselves feel better. Perhaps they're anticipating that if they were in your position, they would react this way or that way, and you do have a confounding habit of putting people back on their heels with your responses, because they are anything but common. So it's possible that people are surprised and perhaps bally well confused, and likely that makes them hesitant to approach you.

That goes for me, from time to time. I can't read your mind; I've no idea when you want me to leave you be or how you want me to react to the indignities you're subjected to. I didn't know what to expect when they let me join you. I wouldn't have been surprised if you'd told me to leave or you'd hit me or you'd clung to me for dear life. I didn't care which one it was--nor that, as it turned out, it was none of them--but I knew I needed to be whatever you needed me to be, at that moment. You've still not told me straight out what that is.

If people feel helpless around you, Hydra, it's because you don't give them any room to help you. I know why you find it so hard to trust them, and I'm not naïve enough to believe that doesn't include me, as well. But it's a lonely way to go through hardship. It's normal to feel helpless when someone one loves is in pain, and it's normal to both want to help and not know how. That's why one asks what will serve, instead of assuming one knows what's best.

And when you said you would have 'taken care of' the pregnancy, particularly after having said that the Healer's assessment of it wasn't important.... Well, I know you've said you don't want children, what, but that was always hypothetical. I hoped you'd change your mind, eventually. It seemed you were saying you would have ended it without even considering our options. And in that moment, I suspected it was because the only choice you could see was the course your mother would have taken, or want you to take. Perhaps you wouldn't have found it as easy a decision as it sounded, but it certainly seemed to me that you wouldn't have had a single regret about it. It's not clear to me you even would have discussed it with me, first, for fear I'd talk you round to leaving school or defying her wishes for your future. Giving her power over you, what, and incidentally, taking a leaf from her book in the way she treats your father. When you emulate her, you also empty yourself of tenderness, and you hollow out your feelings until they're insignificant. I think you do it to protect yourself, to shield yourself from the hurt and confusion you're causing.

Yes, this happened to you. Inside you. I think I felt a shadow of it, but that's all it was: a pale reflection. I can't know or imagine what it felt like, or how it affected you. You've the right to feel as you feel about what happened. Your reaction was of course not about me. But it was directed at me. And at that moment, you hurt me, too.

I don't begrudge you that, truly. I'm sure I deserved it for having put you in this position in the first place. It certainly doesn't excuse my churlish reply--for that, I can only say that I wasn't prepared to be wounded quite so completely. I don't, now, believe that's what you meant, either. But I'm still not sure, and it still troubles me that my first assumption might have been all too correct.

[alt_hydra]

I don't understand. You say that your comment was abominable, and then you go on to say that I'm emulating her, even when it comes to how I treat you. How have I treated you as she treats my father?

I didn't say I would have 'taken care of' it. I said that it would have to had to be taken care of. And you assumed all the worst possible things in that statement, up to and including that I would make the decision behind your back.

I see you also assumed that I would change my mind. About having children, that is. Why would you assume that I didn't know what I wanted, in that regard? Perhaps my mind would change, but how can I possibly know that? How can you? A change of mind is just that: unpredictable and unforeseen.

Yes, I would have wanted us to terminate the pregnancy. But not for the reasons you seem to think. And regret - how would I even know? I don't know if I would regret the choice or not because it's not a choice we ever got to make. And if I didn't regret it, would that make me a monster? Would you want me to make choices that would wrap me up and drag me down in regret, or would you want me to make choices that I can live with?

I've read this and re-read it and most of what I see is you telling me that you don't want me to be different, and then going on to list a number of ways in which I ought to try to change. Give people room to help me. Stop hollowing out my feelings.

I'll grant you that people can't read my mind and sometimes I very nearly forget that. I wish that they could. It would clearly make things easier.

And of course I trust you. Or, I thought I did. Now... I don't know.

[alt_justin]

I didn't say you were actually treating me as she does him, what, I said I believed that you were. I imagined that you were approaching the situation as she would do, that you would have done so had we discovered your condition any other way.

Nor did I assume you would change your mind about children; I said I hoped you would. All this talk of never having been given the chance to make a choice indicates you haven't spared a thought for what might have been. Perhaps that's healthier than my reaction, but it does suggest that at least part of my understanding was correct. But all right. I shall not assume. What reasons? Why would you have wanted to terminate, if you'd known?

Hydra, I'm not telling you to change, or that I think you ought to, or that there's anything wrong with the way you present yourself. You said yourself that others find you alien or foreign. That means they are going to treat you strangely. If that doesn't bother you, then don't bother to change it. It's entirely up to you. But recognise that so long as they don't understand you, they'll continue to make the mistake of trying to put you into familiar, comfortable patterns, and you'll continue to defy those patterns and confound their expectations.

You confound mine, constantly, and I know you better than most. But you are not an easy person to know.

That doesn't mean you have to change; it means that if you want them to know you better, you have to let them see you now and again. Not the façade you construct out of your mother's and Crouch's techniques for putting people ill at ease, what, and not the girl who lies to people simply to avoid admitting a vulnerability. The real you.

[alt_hydra]

Why would you imagine me doing that? I don't approach any situation involving us the way she would. Are you afraid that I will?

I would have wanted to terminate because we've both already committed ourselves to a completely different path than parenthood - for now, anyway. And because I would not want to give my mother a chance to ruin the baby's life, nor would I want to subject any child to life in the Protectorate, as it is now. And because I won't be someone who has children just so they have something to feel happy about when they wake up in the morning. And because I'm sixteen. It's not what I want right now, even if I did decide to truly contemplate it as an option.

I don't even know what to say about the rest of what you've written, so I don't think I shall try.

[alt_justin]

Why would I imagine it? I don't know. I've no idea, except that I think I was out of my mind at the time. And am I afraid you'll become her? Yes, but only in my darkest moments. I think it's fair to say that this week has been one of the worst I can recall.

We said that we would tell each other when we saw signs of becoming what we didn't wish to be. I--I thought I had seen those signs. I invented it, out of my own grief and fear and self-recrimination. And I mixed in what I suspect must have been your own shock and worry and anger and I thought it meant--that you hated me.

You're saying it wasn't any of that, that it had nothing whatever to do with me, and I believe you. I couldn't see what you were saying before; I was too stung by it. I've no defence, save to say that I was in despair. I thought you hated me. So I hated myself. And I'm ashamed to say I think I hated you.

I spent most of the night thinking, even praying, trying to understand why this trial has come to us, and what good might come of it. Perhaps it was to...force us to confront questions we've never properly talked about, though we thought we had a perfect accord. So that we can find our way through them before we face a lifetime together. Perhaps it was to prove that we're not ready for a family, that we're both of us still too young. Or perhaps it was needed to pave the way for something to change between you and Auror Crouch, or myself and Headmaster Dolohov, or both. Perhaps we're being punished for our deeds, or for concealing our marriage from our friends. Perhaps it wasn't anything, just a foolish mistake and the price for that foolishness. I still don't know but I do know that I'll never forgive myself if it breaks us apart.

I thought a lot, too, about how it would have been if it had been any other sort of--illness, or a physical trauma that wasn't linked to our indiscretion If you had been injured or had some sort of exhausted collapse, for example, what would have been different? You'd likely have said something like, 'It's painful and unpleasant, but that's simply pain; it'll pass and I'll be fine.' And the others would fuss and tell you that if there's anything they can do, please to just say, and I'd be standing by, waiting for you to tell me when you were ready to accept comfort or talk to me.

And it might have taken a day or so, but soon enough, you'd ask for me and we'd meet and talk and touch and make a plan, and while it might not be properly fixed, things would at least begin to be on the mend.

I don't know how to mend this. I don't know how you want to be helped. I don't know if you think there's anything to be mended (apart from my frightful lack of consideration). I have been stumbling about and bungling my every attempt to offer--I don't know, advice? Answers? Support? I know I've bally well made a dashed mess of it, at every turn, whatever else. I've been so desperate to be of use that I've said all the wrong things, instead of listening.

And I realised that the words I haven't said are the only ones I should have been saying all along: I love you. I'm sorry. Please forgive me.

[alt_hydra]

I am not going to become my mother.

I don't know what to write. I'm now afraid to say anything for fear that you'll take it in the worst possible way.

[alt_justin]

No, of course you're not.

Let's stop writing. Can you meet me this evening? Will you? I shall spell-o-tape my mouth shut if that will help. But I promise I shall listen, if that's what you want, or sit together and do nothing--whatever you desire. If you're not ready, I understand that, too. I shall wait.

As ever, yours,

-J

[alt_hydra]

Crouch is coming right after supper. He'll keep me until 10, I expect.


And - I love you too. But things still feel all wrong. I don't know.

I'll stop writing.