#We All Have Our Secrets|WoD Verse

[brooklynislandgirl]

Why do you and your brother have such different accents?

Pono | Accepting

The question is clearly an uncomfortable one, because to answer it is to drag out the family’s dirty laundry and put it on display. Something she’d been raised her entire life not to do. Maintain the walls of silence, preserve their reputation, and for God’s sake, Elizabeth, keep it to yourself.

But the Admiral isn’t there, at the moment, is he? He has no more control over her as any force in the universe.

“So Andy’s maddah was off da boat Irish, ya know? Someone da Adm...dat our fadd...someone that was chosen for him, I t’ink. I dunno. Happen before I was born an’ so ya have t’ aks someone who was dere. But he was born in N’york, all right an’ proper, an’ was taught how f’ talk by da Admiral, long before dey got move t’ Hawai’i. I t’ink f’ him, holdin’ onto da accent is his way of connectin’ wi’ his past. T’ da woman he nevah got t’ know. An’ it wasn’t dat long before we move back, an’ so in comin’ back t’ his home, he surrounded by it, is natural t’ him as breathin’.”She glances at Andy, standing in half dim shadows of the far side of the pool table. Wrist in motion as he chalks his cue. The way he talks, fast and clipped and sometimes running over other people as well as the particular lilt of Irish in his tone, it suited him like dark colours and IPAs. Her gaze slides over to Billy. Stretched out across the table, the muscles of his left arm gathered as he braces his own stick with his right hand, there between the thumb and index fingers, all of which the tips curl into his palm in a loose hold.“Billy, well. Firs’ of all... like da rest of us, hapa-ohana, in a way ya know? Different maddah dan me, different maddah dan Andy. So I...I t’ink his maddah eiddah Irish or British. But aftah she... she pass away, undah questionable circumstance, his Uncle came. Took him away, f’ t’ keep him safe. Da...Da Admiral no seem t’ care. Mebbe was a relief. Mebbe he no goddah explain. But if ya lissen real close...ya can hear a middlan’ accent in Billy’s voice. From Leicestershire side. Can sound American when need to, but it always slip in. At da edges. Pryin’ up at da deep of it. Cling mebbe like a dream.��

She shrugs and takes a sip of her rum and coke.

“Me? Goddah learning disability, no kine I will evah ‘grow out of’ an’ no amoun’ of Speech Language t’erapy will help it any more. But a’ least dey realise back in small kid time dat I no was deaf like dey firs’ t’ought. It’s a processin’ disorder. An’ speak pidgin, is easier f’ me. T’ talk, t’ hear. But it nevah gonna be hundred percent.” She clears her throat, speaks slower and more thoughtfully with longer pauses, speaking as perfectly good haole as she can manage. “We all have deeper voices. People say mine is smokey but soft, usually expect me to have a higher pitched, girlier voice because of my size.  Andy and Billy both have those dark voices, the kind that come up from their knees and work their way through their chests, though Billy can be softer, gentler when he wants. And I hope that answers your question cause it looks like it’s my turn, and I have to go kick some butt.”

[tarnishedhalo]

[wod] “That’s the most cocked up looking snowman I’ve ever seen.”

Let It Snow || Accepting

“Yeah? Your face is cocked up.” Flippant, without a thought, without much venom. But it does get under his skin. He’d done his best with pain shrieking through his thigh and spider-webbing outward through his back. His hands have shaken the entire time, regardless of the gloves meant to keep them warm and dry. And it wasn’t like there were huge amounts of snow. Which required a lot of bending and straightening, crawling around on his knees, the evidence of which is soaked jeans from the knees down. He didn’t have coal for eyes, or anything for the mouth except for whatever the hell it was that was in Beth’s water bottle. A carrot stolen from Billy’s gear and if we want to talk about what’s weird, son….Son.…..Brother.It’s so weird saying that, for a lifetime he’s been used to it just being him and Beth. And to have this guy come into your life, eerily familiar even if you’ve never met him before…that’s explainable with someone who has seen a thousand different faces in a single rotation. Guys you’ll never see again if your lucky because that was what Para-rescue did. Emphasis on the rescue, meaning that when the shit hit the fan, he was there to pick up the pieces. And slowly over time getting to know him. Realising everything wasn’t as wrong as it seemed. Stirring up memories of a time you’d…Not so much forgotten but just…put aside. Ten years old and limited in control of himself much less anything else, trying all at once to defend and protect what he could. Memories that came back in bits and pieces into an uneasy, still fragile forming picture. He doesn’t want to trust this guy. Billy. His brother. But he doesn’t see a way around it. Especially not with the way Beth looks at him, like he’s the second Goddamn coming.

He sighs, claps his hands together and brings them up, fisted, to his lips. Because speaking of Beth, she’s now sidling her way into the conversation, sliding one arm around the kid’s waist. Smiling because she’s happy. Smiling because she thinks the snowman is perfect just the fucked up way it is. So he lets her have this one moment. Not that he’d even wanted to come to the park in the first place. This is what you do for your siblings.Riley tilts his head and chucks his chin in Billy’s direction. “Twen’y bucks says you can’t do better.”

[brooklynislandgirl]

[WOD] sunset

Autumn Bleeds || -Andy and Baz are crashed out against each other on the couch, which comes as no surprise considering the long day they’ve put in respectively, the amount of empty bottles on the coffee table between them, whatever movie had been on is now some weird infomercial about NEW! and Amazing! products she couldn’t care less about.And maybe, just maybe, the little extra push of melatonin and it’s dream lands for them because she doesn’t have to play by the rules. She never had them applied fairly to her in the past. And so she feels a little guilty as she slips out onto the fire-escape, trusting it to hold her negligible weight long enough for her to make it down four flights.Made all the way around easier when she catches a glimpse of him, waiting for her at the bottom. A flash of white when he bears his teeth in a smile, and she has to wonder if his heart is pounding just as hard as hers is. She hasn’t done anything like this since back in small kid time, when she and Andy would worm their way out of the house with her mother and the Admiral screaming at each other. The anticipation then was much different than it is now. But when she gets to the end of the stairs, there’s still a long way between her and the ground. Every last one of her muscles freeze in mere contemplation of the space between her and the sidewalk below, that not even the reward of Billy can quite overcome.“I...I can’t...I can’t do dis, Billy. I...dis is a mistake. I hafta go back inside...” Her fingers clutch the iron railing until her knuckles are white and bloodless, and she squeezes her eyes shut, unable to move. Beth has never handled heights well. She feels helpless and small and can’t think for the way her brain its itself in fear. “You...you should...probably...go. D-don’t wan ya catch pilikia.”

[brooklynislandgirl]

[WOD] 🍻+ what do you think is the worst unforgiveable thing a person can do?

In Vino Veritas || Accepting

She gets right up close into her brother’s face. Head slightly tilted, brows drawn together, the wine sweet on her lips, but still some how tinted with the cinnamon that seems to always be on her breath. She searches blue with green, the ocean in that look, and she’s looking for something particular in his gaze. A seed of why he would ask, and it tightens her belly, unsettles every soft and comfortable feeling the wine had instilled in her.Slowly, she reaches up to put a hand on either side of his face. To hold him still or to feel him skin-on-skin…it’s anyone’s guess. Maybe both. And while the tell-tale signs are there that she’s maybe had one drink too many, her voice is surprisingly stead. Just a hint of husk to it, whisper soft.“Wha’evah ya worried about, don’. Dere is no kine ya could do dat I would no f’give ya for. Ya blood runs in me. Ya heart beat wi’ mine, an’ da t’ree of us…we’re all da same, no maddah who says different. An’ dat means I’m gonna love ya now til da day we cease t’ exist, body an’ soul. Okay? Okay.”She doesn’t pull back after saying that. Because there’s more that she wants him to know but Beth talks in short bursts, her mind still working to weave things together even when she’s sober, and it’s slower still when she’s had a couple of drinks. But she also doesn’t let go, as if there’s far more truth in her touch than her words.Maybe it’s always been that way.“Mos’ unforgivable kine I can t’ink of… is harmin’ a keiki. Wheddah it’s physical or mental or…da oddah kine.” She’s seen so much abuse ranging ages with what she does for a living that she wants to rip apart the perpetrators of those crimes like in the days of old; wishes more than anything that she was an avenging angel or maenad. She doesn’t tell him about those kinds of things. She doesn’t tell Andy or Baz either. Not the children, not the devastating corruption of innocence, not her desire to put the abusers in the ground in a permanent kind of way.“Abusin’ animals. What sense is dat make? Dey don’ understand, dey jus’…” She thinks it’s pretty explanatory, that things like that are so far outside of the cycles of nature that she can’t even see straight just thinking about it.There’s a laundry list of sins that Beth could leverage at humanity as a whole, things that drive her insane with anger, that wishes she could call down a Biblical Floor or the very fires of Pele’s heart to wipe it all away and just start over. But that is almost too dangerously close with what the others… the ones he’s in the process of defecting from… would do, if they could get away with it.

But suddenly a thought occurs to her.Makes her stomach sink to the floor and the contents of it become a little sour in the back of her throat. Her voice becomes a ghost of its former self, tight and tense and her fingers stiffen on his face.“Billy…wha’….what have you done? That you don’t think I will forgive you for?”

[brooklynislandgirl]

Beth,

I didn’t understand until you what it was about the sea that drew me too it. Why despite everything that I believed to be true, it seemed to sooth things within me I had no name for yet. It was because it was you, Beth. You have always been the sea. Calling me even though I didn’t hear you. Even though I didn’t remember the language. You are my sea. What gives horizon to my perception. And I am so sorry to have forgotten that. Forgotten you.

I found this in a shop a few years ago, bought it right on the spot. Didn’t know why I did at the time, but I do now. And I hope you’re as glad for it as I am. I know it doesn’t look like much but I suppose as is with everything, if you look at it right, you’ll see what makes it special.

Happy Merry Christmas, Izzy.

-Billy

And were she to hold it up towards enough natural light, Beth Riley might just see exactly what he means. Glimpses of happier moments of a life he’d forgotten playing out. The times they’d sneaked away to build sand castles even the high tide would not decimate. When he saved her from the great and terrible dragon that lived in the palm tree behind the house. When they chased down another that dared to steal her lunch of all things. Momentary beauties, woven between the scattered wash of purple tinted rainbows and fractal bits of sun shine. 

~*~                                    ~*~                               ~*~

She doesn’t find it amidst the other gifts under the tree, nor in its branches where sometimes more delicate things might be hung. In fact, it isn’t anywhere that could be considered normal at all. She finds the box and its note in her cup, the one from the Aquarium in Oahu. With the various ‘aumakua of hers on it, from Honu to Mano. Always an early riser, she had padded into the kitchen to make herself a mug of tea so she wouldn’t wake the others. She never gets that far as she opens the envelope, scouring the contents with. The soft, soundless tears stream down her cheeks as she carefully opens the box to find the piece of unpolished or cut amethyst quartz. She is firstly stricken by its beauty, the iron deposits giving the darker purple a beautiful hue. Secondly, she notices that it is set in twined cord rather than bound in metal, allowing the crystal to breathe in natural ways. She can practically feel the healing properties of it screaming along her fingertips as she touches the cool stone; purifying to the mind, cleanser of negative thoughts, stress and anxiety. Its facilitation of intuition and communication. Its ability to foster family bonds and alleviate or prevent drunkenness. Carefully she touched it to her lips before lifting it with the intention of holding it to her crown chakra when it did catch the first shaft of real sunlight from the floor to ceiling windows. And suddenly the memories flooded through her, ones she may have pushed to one of the darker corners of her mind, so they wouldn’t hurt so much. They didn’t hurt now, of course, but that didn’t mean she didn’t stand there for seconds trying to catch her breath before slipping the cord around her neck. Leaving behind her cup and the idea of the tea, she half races through the apartment and into her room where he’s just slipped out of bed, too. Before he can say much of anything in his defense, she scrambles up onto the mattress itself, and uses it as a ladder to bring her flush against him, arms tightly wound around his neck, lips against his jaw. “I love ya too, Billy. Happy Chris’mas.”

[brooklynislandgirl]

[WOD] "So--**Miss** Izzy. What do **you** want for Christmas?"

Let It Snow || AcceptingChristmas is still a few weeks ahead, but one wouldn’t be able to tell with the state of the apartment. The tree had been delivered Thanksgiving morning. And as Andy had cooked between plays of the game he and Baz were watching, they all took turns with the lights ~Billy’s job~, and the ornaments and the garland. Of course there was that whole ten minute tinsel fight, and she’s still finding random pieces of it in places it didn’t belong but in the end, it was beautiful and well worth everything, framed as it was by the windows.So now it gleamed in the low lights. And the fireplace burned cheerily away. The air was warm and smelled like fresh coffee and the batch after batch of cookies Andy was working on. Baz sitting at the table inside his own head and half out of it, vaguely carrying on a conversation that the two of them were having that didn’t make a lick of sense to her, and the shorter of the two snacking along as different dishes were being set out. Snow starting to fall outside, instrumental carols on the house stereo. For the first time in years, everything felt like a post card, everything felt whole and hopeful. She half glides, half slides in her socks across the wood floors, managing by miracle not sloshing the two cups of cocoa in hand ~his with marshmallows, hers with whipped cream and cinnamon~ as she does so. Effortlessly, she sinks down into Billy’s lap and offers him his mug. Her lips are pursed at the very question, a sign that she’s both thinking and possibly not quite taking him half as seriously as she should.Or maybe she does. Once he’s taken hold of his cup, she insulates her own with both palms and takes a sip, which mostly means she gets a hint of the cocoa as she breathes in. A moment later the tip of her tongue darts out to chase the shape of her lips.“Uhm. I dunno. I t’ink I got every kine I should wan right here, right now.” Her gaze flickers across his face then sweeps out over the other two while encompassing her home. “Nevah was really much on…t’ings.”She lapses silent for a moment, sweet and uncomplicated and looking much younger than her actual age when the idea strikes her. “Mebbe…a sleigh ride t’rough da park. Like in all da old stories. You know. Wi’ Embumneezah Scrooch.”Not that there are sleighs in a Christmas Carol ~although, there are no carols in it either, and it’s all very confusing but she likes the ghosts~ but it hardly seems to matter in the moment. She has dreams and ideas of bygone eras where everything should look and feel like the Victorian era.“An’ den we can all come sleep out here an’ wait f’ Kanakaloka t’ come wi’ his reindeer. Leave food out f’ dem an’ treats f’ him, but not cookies, cause dats what everyone leave an’ I wanna give him like a san’wich. Somet’ing dat’ll stick to his rib ya know?”

She’s gone full tangent mode, it’s visible in the way her eyes vaguely unfocus and her smile drifts toward something shy but not in the least self conscious. “But yeah, no. Really. Got all I need right here, G’iaff. Why, wha’ ya wan yaself?”