#im not the proudest of this and i definitely made caroline too kind 😭

[shivvroys]

Hi lia! #5 from the big swiss dialogue "but you? You, i loved" :) feel free to make it angsty i can take it <3

this, uhm…turned into something else. Nia i think you may have broken my angst compass i keep trying to make everything end nicely 😭

“But you? You, I loved.”

“Ok, I fucking get it.” she raises a hand, almost dropping her cigarette. “I don’t know why you agreed to come, since you hate it so much. You know, you won, mom—he’s fucking dead, I can’t see how much of upper hand you could possibly have to gain than that.”

Her mother sighs in the same disappointing manner she always has. Like she’s tired of the conversation before it’s even started, like talking to Shiv is always just such a dreadful bother.

“And if it’s not him you’re still pissed at, you can just admit it’s me you can’t stand to be around. I’m way past the point where that’s gonna bother me.”

Shiv supposes she should mostly be blaming herself. She was the one who’d decided inviting their mother to their father’s memorial party was the thing to do. She just hadn’t expected her to actually show up.

The sour mood and constant scoffing, she could handle that—welcome it as a surrogate for the motherly warmth she’d never felt growing up. But the divorce jokes, the thinly veiled allusions to what Roman had been calling her vanishing uterus act—that had felt intentional. Like her father’s absence left Caroline with no vessel to pour her bitterness into, so she’d chosen the one who reminded her the most of him.

Shiv busies herself with the cigarette, refusing to meet her mother’s eyes. She doesn’t know what she fears seeing most���hurt or confirmation.

As the sentence hangs in the air like a sliver of smoke, twisting and turning into a sharp dagger, Caroline takes a step towards her, almost reaching a hand towards her elbow, before pulling back.

“It isn’t you that I can’t stand, Siobhan.” She doesn’t force Shiv to look at her, but she speaks to her slowly, and gravelly, in the tone she usually reserves for when they’re both tipsy and aching to hurt each other with the truth. “It’s never been you.”

Shiv scoffs. “Right. I know, what with all that maternal love you’ve showered me with.”

She turns to face Caroline, though she only manages to maintain eye-contact for a brief moment, before turning her attention back to the cigarette in her hand.

“There are things about you that I couldn’t bear to see, yes.” Caroline sighs. “Things that drove me mad. Like the way your eyes would only follow him in every room, even as a baby. I hated the anger he planted into you, the way I could hear him each time you were upset. All of those little claw marks he’s left in you—Kendall, too.”

Shiv sweeps her eyes over the guests inside, over her father’s legacy reduced to mediocre wine and fucking fusion cuisine finger foods. Then her sight unfocuses, and all she can see is her own reflection. The problem is—her mother’s not wrong.

“But not Rome, right?” she finally meets her mother’s eyes, challenging her to lie.

Caroline shakes her head sadly. “Not really, I suppose. Though he desperately wished for it, the poor thing.”

The briefest mention of her petit prince is enough to get the waterworks going.

Snapping herself out of it, Caroline puts out her cigarette and lays both hands on Shiv’s arms, not squeezing, but lightly stroking the rough material of her blazer.

“But you, Siobhan. You, I loved. Love.”

It’s pathetic, really, how little it takes for tears to gather in Shiv’s eyes. How quickly her mother could slip through the cracks of any wall she’s tried to build. Brick by fucking brick, and all it took was a look from that woman and down came Shiv’s mighty fortress, like a house of cards.

“I’m your fucking onion, right?” she sniffs, averting her mother’s gaze.

She hears laughter coming from inside, though she doubts anyone’s sharing some hearwarming anecdote in her father’s memory.

Her mother laughs in quiet and heavy breaths. “Yes, you are, darling. My darling onion.”

Already exhausted by the millisecond of vulnerability, they both snap back to reality, the moment already forgotten.

Shiv turns back towards the railing, lighting another cigarette. She tells herself it’s because it’s too hot inside, and she can’t bear to hear Roman make another joke about Frank’s sweater vest.

“What’re the others, then? Is Rome your fucking parsley?”

She extends her lighter to Caroline, who lets her palm caress Shiv’s hand as she takes it.

“That’s an herb, dear, I think you mean parsnip.” she murmurs. “I’d say he’s more of a beetroot—remember how he used to get so red and splotchy in the face when your father yelled at him.” she almost chokes while inhaling. Shiv joins her, smirking as she takes a drag from her cigarette.

“And Ken?”

“Hmm…” her mother rests a slender finger against her chins, in mock contemplation.

“An eggplant? Like a sad, wilted one.” Shiv snorts.

“Oh, yes.” Caroline bursts into a pearl of laughter. Then, resting her back against the railing, she gestures towards the memorial party. “What about her? What’s her place in your garden?”

Shiv turns to see her mother’s eyes fixed on one person in particular. Karolina. She’s listening to something Connor is saying, nodding politely every so often, though Shiv knows she’d probably checked out of the conversation the moment Connor had started talking.

Shiv also knows the angle at which Karolina is facing the terrace door is intentional. She’s keeping Shiv in her peripheral vision, the way they always do when they have to attend some work function where they might need quick rescuing from some boring conversation.

“Oh, that’s—she’s not..” she stutters, flicking her cigarette so hard it almost breaks in the middle.

“Darling, please.” Caroline scoffs. “She’s been throwing daggers at me ever since you came out here. Does she think I might throw you off the balcony?”

“You wouldn’t?” Shiv tilts her head. “We’re just—she’s just being friendly. We work together, so yeah. We’re friends, I guess”

Caroline looks down, shaking her head. “Alright, Siobhan.”

“What? I can’t have any fucking friends?”

“Of course, darling.”

Caroline puts her cigarette out and ceremoniously shakes her shoulders, as if cleansing herself from the conversation. She starts walking towards the door, before turning over her shoulder to Shiv.

“You can also have more, Siobhan. He is dead. No need to look for his shadow under the door.”

“Uh huh.”

With that, Caroline goes back to the party, leaving Shiv alone with her half burnt cigarette. She turns back to the railing, watching the sun dip below the skyline, her eyes following a stray bird or plane every now and then.

She’s never been into gardening, so she doesn’t know that much about it. But she knows everything needs good soil to grow in. And she knows once the soil is poisoned there’s very little chance of anything surviving in it. What can she grow if all she has is mud?

She doesn’t hear the door open, only feels the lightest pressure on the small of her back and quiet voice that brings her back to the terrace.

“You okay?”

Shiv looks down at the burnt out cigarette dangling between her fingers. She throws the stub in the wine glass she’s been using as an ashtray, before turning to face Karolina.

“Yeah. Just, you know, weird day.” she sighs, her voice slightly shaking.

Karolina nods, throwing a glance towards the setting sun. “It’s almost over.”

“Thank god.”

Karolina keeps her eyes on the party inside and her voice low and soft. “You wanna come over tonight?”

“Wouldn’t it just be easier to stay here?”

She regrets the suggestion before it’s even left her lips. Though she’s had Karolina over many times before, it had never felt quite right. The walls of the apartment held too much, had trapped in every bad memory from the past few years like mould—silently rotting it from the inside out. She fears letting all of that cling to Karolina.

“It would.” Karolina nods. “Hey, how about we get a room somewhere?” she says, after some contemplation.

“What, like, we go down to the hotel bar and you pretend you’re a call girl?” Shiv smirks.

“No, Siobhan.” Karolina raises her glass to cover her face, attempting to hide her laughter. “Like—we just spend a night someplace neither us have ever felt bad in.”

A place with good soil. Like there’s still a chance something good could grow.

Karolina always says things like these like they’re part of the natural order, like the most obvious choice for her is to keep Shiv safe—to take the bad stuff away.

“Yeah, okay.”

For tonight, Shiv decides, she’ll let it happen. See if anything grows.