#joan jane and kitty as a family unit

[drabblesandheadcanons]

A terrible horrible no-good very bad day Pt 5

The closet is suffocating but it’s also safe- it’s stifling long-ago memories of being trapped (she knows now that they’re memories, not dreams, as she was told when she was younger. Apparently, the hope had been that she would forget. She isn’t sure who suggested this plan but she would bet anything that whoever they were had never actually experienced being locked in a small space for an extended period of time.) but it’s also more recent memories: of hiding, of pressing herself into small dark spaces in order to buy herself some time, of actually managing to escape punishment (or at least a specific punishment) altogether. 

(She wants to scream in fear, she also wants to never leave.)

Over the confusion, she feels guilt, sharp and stinging: she keeps hearing Jane’s gasp of pain and every time, it’s louder, it’s a sharp intake of breath and then it becomes a scream, and the only reason she is sure that the scream is not her own is the coppery taste of blood from where she is biting down on her own lip.

Then…. footsteps.

Footsteps and her heart is pounding- she presses herself back as far as she can but it’s only a small closet and it’s not like she’s hidden really and she’s squeezing her eyes shut as the footsteps come close, come closer…. She waits for the doors to be pulled open, the harsh light. She waits for shouting and rough, pulling hands upon her and honestly, she isn’t even sure if she’s expecting Jane or Kitty or someone else entirely- someone new, someone old….

But the doors stay shut as the footsteps stop.

(She’s breathing too loud, she’s breathing far too loud, she’s-)

A tentative tap on the door.

‘Joan, sweetheart?’

She doesn’t answer, she can’t answer- but she’s sure Jane can hear her shaking, she’s sure Jane can hear the blood pounding in her ears.

‘Joan-’

There’s movement and then the voice is suddenly level with her- Jane must be sitting on the floor.

‘Can you open the door, love?’

She can’t- it’s not even from defiance, she’s just frozen- and she wonders why Jane isn’t pulling her out herself. Unless her hand is hurt too badly. Unless she’s going to count every minute that Joan doesn’t come out against her and increase her punishment accordingly.

(They do that, sometimes.)

But she can’t move.

She wonders if Jane is going to get rid of her immediately.

(Of course she won’t be allowed to stay now.)

She wonders if she’ll be allowed to say goodbye to Kitty, to thank her. 

She wonders if she’ll be allowed to keep any of the clothes that Jane has brought her- the soft flannel pajamas with the daisies, the cozy sweater, the warm coat and scarf, the tshirts that still feel shop-brought new, even though she knows Jane still has lots of Kitty’s old things in a cupboard somewhere that she definitely could have worn instead.

She’s expecting to be scolded- at the very least. She’s expecting to have to apologise (even though she knows the words will stick in her throat like they always do, even though she knows that always makes everyone angrier). 

She expecting anger and maybe shouting, and she tenses when Jane starts talking- but Jane doesn’t sound angry. Her tone, her words, are soft.

‘It’s alright.’

(What is she saying?)

‘I understand you’re scared darling. You’ve had...a lot of bad luck.’

(Luck. Such a wrong word of everything that she’s been through- a word that should by rights only belong to spilled cups of tea and forgotten door keys. Such an inadequate word. Yet also- oddly freeing. It’s blameless. Guiltless. It makes it sound as if all the things that have happened to her- the litany of failures and mistakes and hurt and sadness and regret- are really nothing to do with her. As if they’re things that could have happened to anyone. Not her fault at all.)

‘You’ve had to experience things that-’ Jane breaks off, clearly deciding against that route. ‘I know it’s hard and I know it’s frightening and…. I just want you to know that’s ok. I know that it must be hard to trust me. But I’d like to show you that you can. And I know that won’t be right away and it will take a while- perhaps a long time, perhaps a very long time- but that’s alright, sweetheart, because these things take time and there’s nothing wrong with that.’

She’s shaking, so hard that her teeth are chattering, and she can’t stop. She wonders if Jane can hear it.

‘The most important thing to me right now is making sure that you feel as safe as possible. Because you are safe here. You’ll always be safe here, no matter what happens. And if sitting there is helping you to feel safer, then that’s ok. As long as it doesn’t hurt you or anyone else, I want you to feel that you can do whatever you need to do to feel safe here.’

There’s a pause in which Jane should get up and leave but she doesn’t, and to her own surprise, Joan feels a faint relief at this, at Jane’s continued presence. She doesn’t want Jane to open the door- but she doesn’t want to be left by herself either.

‘Honestly though, I’m a bit worried about leaving you entirely on your own when you’re upset so I’m going to just sit out here with you. If you need anything, I’m here. But you don’t have to open the door until you’re ready. We’ll do this all at your pace, sweetheart.’

Joan has experienced many things. She knows hungry and she knows cold. She knows pain.

She knows what it is to have people’s smiles grow thing and stretched when they aren’t returned, she’s heard once-loving voices turn a little harder and sharper day by day. She’s made up fears for people who she can tell are determined to feel like they’re helping her. She’s had intimacy demanded of her, forced onto her- suffocated with the pressing, needy hugs of guilty strangers, nodded stiff acquiesce to demands that she understand that she’s ‘safe now���.

But this patient acceptance, this calm, this quiet, is something new.

She isn’t sure how to respond. So she just sits.

She sits, and Jane sits.

She sits as her legs grow stiff and then tingly and then go numb. She sits as her back aches, her lip throbs, her tears dry on her cheeks.

She sits and waits and Jane sits and waits, and the occasional car rumbles outside and she hears, faintly, a dog barking, and neither of them move.

Sometimes she hears Jane shifting her position outside the door but only faintly- it’s as if she’s trying to be subtle, trying not to let Joan hear, as if she can keep up an illusion of being comfortable even when she surely isn’t.

The hall telephone rings, distantly, and then stops after Jane lets it go unanswered.

Time stretches on and on. She doesn’t have a watch but she can judge from her own discomfort that they’ve been sitting like that, silently, for at least a couple of hours.

Children’s voices from the street outside: school must have finished for the day.

(The morning- the usual routine of showering, knotting her tie, tea and toast and walking with Kitty- feels a very long time ago.)

They sit and they sit and somehow, still, Jane makes no move for the door: there’s no sighed impatience, no ‘enough is enough’ or ‘this is getting ridiculous’ or any of the other things that she is accustomed to hearing from people who promise patience but who fail to mention that their patience comes with a time limit.

They sit and the air in the closet grows warm and Joan’s feet have been numb for so long- and then…. 

‘Kitty used to hide under her bed when she first came to me.’

Jane’s voice is a little rough, with the sound of someone who hasn’t spoken in a while, but she clears her throat and starts again.

‘She had…. Maybe half a foot of space underneath, so it must have been a squeeze… maybe it was a bit more, but not much…. The first morning she was here, I thought she’d run away at first, my heart nearly stopped. I was so relieved when I found her…I had to actually start hoovering properly under the beds from then on because if there was too much dust, it would make her sneeze and she didn’t like to make any noise, if she could help it….’

Jane just… talks. She doesn’t  seem to be waiting for a response.

(Letting Joan know she’s there. And perhaps, Joan thinks, letting her know that this- the hiding, the waiting to earn trust- isn’t new to her. That it isn’t going to scare her away.)

She talks about Kitty but she doesn’t tell Joan anything too intimate, there’s nothing really embarrassing. She sounds fond, and Joan wonders what it must feel like to have someone talk about you like that, with that warmth in their voice.)

(She wonders if Jane will ever have occasion to talk about her to anyone, and she wonders, despite itself, what it will sound like).

She talks a bit about Kitty’s friends- they’re obviously regular visitors to the house- and some of it is new and some it isn’t.

(She already knows that Cathy lives with her godmother- she’s even caught glimpses of the woman, waiting to drive Cathy home after school, when Kitty has pointed her out- and it’s funny that someone who looks so serious, even stern, is the same person she’s heard Cathy talk about so warmly. She knows that Anna loves dogs, she knows that Anne has an older sister, Mary, who already has children of her own. But she hasn’t heard some of what Jane is telling her- about Anna trying to smuggle one of her dogs- then a puppy- into the house when she and Kitty first had a sleepover, about Anne and Kitty feigning chickenpox- with the help of red felt tip- to avoid having to attend Sunday morning church after staying the night at Cathy’s house.)

It’s funny- she’s still scared, she’s still hurting- her head is aching too now, along with her back- but she finds she’s actually listening to the stories as well- they’re funny, Jane is good at telling stories, it seems, and it’s interesting to hear so much about Kitty’s cool friends, and on top of it all, Jane’s voice is just so soothing. As long as she’s talking, she knows Jane isn’t cross with her or impatient or annoyed, simply because her voice is so warm, so gentle.

Jane talks and talks- she seems to have an inexhaustible store of anecdotes. She drops in stories about herself too- about being a little girl and making elaborate plans for her wedding, for her children, for her house, about setting up homes under bushes and in trees and in old cardboard boxes, and about making household pets out of slugs and snails and earwigs and woodlice (‘But not spiders,’ she adds with a shudder. ‘Never spiders!) and about her parents reactions at her attempts to keep her pets inside for the winter.

She talks and she doesn’t appear to get bored of talking, or weary or impatient… but her voice does eventually drop a little- it’s hard to keep up the same volume for hours on end, and Jane doesn’t do a public speaking often in her line of work.

Her voice drops, and, close as she’s sitting, it’s hard for Joan to hear through the door of the closet.

She has to really strain her ears and even then she can’t make it all out, and although the familiar cadence of Jane’s voice is still nice, she wants the words too, she wants these stories that Jane is giving her, she wants these bits of Jane’s past that she’s, for some reason, choosing to give to Joan when no one would blame her for  sharing them only with Kitty.

(She’s had to retell her own stories over and over again- each new social worker has her repeat them, each new foster carer wants to ask her about them, even teachers sometimes try gently probing her with barely-concealed curiosity… but she’s never had anyone share their own past with her. No one else has ever offered up any of themselves to her in return.)

She wants to hear so much that somehow her arm unfreezes enough that she’s able to reach out and slowly, slowly, slowly ease the door of the closet open just a tiny bit.

And Jane pauses.

Joan tenses, ready to pull back again, ready for the spell to break…. But then, almost immediately, Jane carries on, as if she never stopped at all, and she relaxes.

Inch by inch, the door opens. Jane doesn’t react after the first time- it’s only when the door is open enough that Joan can see her face that she stops to give her a warm smile.

She looks so happy, she looks so proud- but still, she doesn’t break away from her narrative, she carries on.

School, and throwing a tantrum when her brother was sent to Latin lessons and she wasn’t, keeping up until her parents gave in and then realising, too late, that she hated Latin and held no aptitude for it at all.

Babysitting, and being dismissed in disgrace when the child she was caring for decorated a white carpet with a green felt pen.

She keeps on, and Joan lets her voice carry her, she lets the softness surround her- but then, all at once, it’s not enough, she wants more, and she finds that her hand has been slowly, slowly edging across the carpet until it’s right next to Jane’s. 

She’s agonising about closing the last inch of space….. And then Jane looks at her with the same gentle smile and puts her own warm hand over Joan’s cold one.

‘Alright, sweetheart?’

She manages a tiny nod and Jane’s smile widens.

‘You’ve been very brave. It’s been a hard day, hasn’t it?’

Another nod. She can feel exhausted tears building behind her eyelids. She suddenly wants nothing more than to be held, to let Jane wrap her up in her arms and comfort her.

‘Do you think you’d be able to get up if I helped you? You must be a bit stiff.’

It’s hard, uncurling her cramped limbs, and she stumbles as she tries to stand, pitching forward- and then Jane is catching her and she’s being held close in warm arms, a voice in her ear: ‘It’s ok sweetheart, I’ve got you’.

She finds she’s clinging, she can’t help it, and the tears are spilling over but Jane doesn’t pull away. She holds her tighter.

‘It’s ok, I’ve got you, love.’ For a smallish woman, Jane feels strong. Solid. Safe. ‘It’s ok, it’s all going to be ok.’

And Joan believes her.

[drabblesandheadcanons]

A terrible horrible no-good very bad day Pt 4

She’s expecting, when they get in, for Jane to tell her that they need to talk- she did after all say that they’d talk about it later. At the very, very least, she’s expecting a ‘kind-but-firm’ admonition, the extraction of a promise for this to never be repeated. She expects Jane to tell her that she’s disappointed- because how could she not be?

Instead, Jane  just asks if she’s hungry (she shakes her head no but then her stomach rumbles and Jane smiles and says she’ll make her something in case she fancies it later), and if she’d like to take a bath.

‘Kitty prefers showers but I always find a hot bath very soothing if I’ve had a long day.’

She’s about to say no, that she’s fine (she doesn’t want to make a fuss and why waste the extra water when she showered that morning already?)- but the thought of being able to lie back and submerge herself and wash the awfulness of the day away is so tempting that she finds she’s nodding. When she goes up to the bathroom to turn on the water, she finds the tub already half full with bubbles that smell like oranges and her towel and pajamas warming on the radiator.

(Jane must have had to rush a bit to have done this in the time it took Joan to hang up her blazer and put her school bag away.)

When she sinks down into the bubbles, letting her head dip below the surface for a second, it’s like she’s letting the tension float away with the steam from the water.

**

She  would like to stay, half dozing, in the bath forever but eventually, Jane is tapping on the door- there’s soup in the kitchen if she’d like some, apprently….and she IS hungry.

It’s not until she’s sitting at the kitchen table and Jane is putting a bowl brimming with chicken stock and yellow noodles in front of her that her eyes catch upon the note still propped up on the kitchen countertop… and she remembers.

Jane’s meeting. The reason she wasn’t around this morning- the reason she looks so tired, the reason she was up early.

The meeting that- thanks to Joan- she has almost certainly had to leave early and yet somehow hasn’t said a word about.

‘Is it alright, sweetheart?’ Jane has noticed she isn’t eating- her spoon is frozen. ‘Do you want something else?’

(Jane always asks this and it took her so long to stop taking it as a test, as a rebuke, as a pointed comment about her ingratitude. It’s only very recently that she’s able to accept that, were she to say yes, Jane would most likely just go ahead and make her something different.)

She shakes her head, mutely, but she still can’t eat.

She’s caused so much more trouble than she thought.

‘Joan?’

She makes herself take a mouthful of the soup so that Jane doesn’t worry- it’s too hot but it’s not the burning in her mouth thats making her want to cry.

Joan’s looking at her with so much soft concern that it’s unbearable- she can’t reconcile what she knows- she’s an inconvenience, she’s selfish and thoughtless and pathetic, she’s called Jane away from something important, her job, the thing that keeps food on the table and a roof over the heads of herself and her daughter and the girl who is now tagging along to get in on it too…. And really, what was wrong? Nothing- or at least nothing that wasn’t also being experienced by every other pupil in the school.

A little rough and tumble in the corridors, a little noise. The most minor of scoldings by a few teachers, a couple of small disruptions in her usual routine.

Nothing, really.

(She blocks off the part of her mind that revolts at this- the part of her that remembers what it felt like, that remembers the searing of her skin, the painful chaos in her head, the sheer helpless inescapable cluastrophobia of it all. No. It- all of it- amounted to minor inconvenience at worse and the very fact that even now, faced with the consequences of her overreaction, she’s still trying to justify it, that she’s still trying to tell herself that she didn’t mean to react as she did…. Well, that’s just sickening. Disgusting.

She’s disgusting. She’s awful and they were right- they were all right to treat her as they did because…. Well, look at her now. Placed into the care of a woman who is so gentle that the worst Joan has ever heard from her is an annoyed tut, who is so generous and forgiving that she hasn’t spoken one word of rebuke for having her whole day disrupted for nothing…. And what does she do? Scream and cry and attack people like she’s an animal. Doesn’t talk, refuses to do Jane even that common courtesy. Keeps poor Kitty awake with her stupid fears- thunder and lightening and bad dreams- and is she a small child? Puts everyone on edge, causes everyone trouble.

Kindess is wated on her, goodness and sweetness and understanding are wasted on it, she knows that now.

She’s too far gone.

**

She eats a few more spoonfuls of soup. (She doesn’t taste it.)

Jane is watching her.

(Sh hasn’t even made soup for herself- she’s gone to that trouble just for Joan- and the fact that Joan hasn’t even thanked her yet….)

‘Th- thank you. For the soup.’

Jane smiles. ‘You’re welcome, love.’

It’s hard but she needs to say it- it’s not enough, of course, and she’s not a little bit scared of what will happen when she does make Jane realise how much trouble she’s caused….but it still has to be said.

‘I’m really. Really. Sorry.’ She keeps her eyes on her bowl and then wonders what’s wrong with her that she can’t even look Jane in the eye while apologising.

Jane looks a bit surprised though.

‘What for?’

Is she being sarcastic? Or does she just want Joan to say it, so that she understandsexactly what she’s done wrong?

‘For….’ It’s on the tip of her tongue to say everything but that would be too easy, ‘everything’ is a cop out, ‘everything’ allows her to skim over the details and does she deserve that?

‘For… today. Making them call you and you having to come and get me and…. Your meeting, I messed up your meeting- And you had to get up so early for it and I just….. I ruined it all and- and I’m so sorry, I’m sorry-’

The words are choking her but she has to get them out, she’s digging her nails into her palms and it hurts but it’s not enough, it’s not enough- she wants to break the skin, she wants to be bleeding-

Warm hands cover her own, gently trying to uncurl her fists.

‘Joan, love, it’s alright-’

‘It isn’t!’ It’s almost a shout- she’s raised her voice a bit at least and then she wants to bite her tongue, how is she shouting at the woman she’s apologising to, can’t she even do this right?

She makes her voice quiet again but it;s hard- she’s shaking- she isn’t cold but she’s trembling all over, it’s making the words come out wrong. ‘It isn’t alright- I- I make everything hard for you and for Kitty too and…. I ruined today and I didn’t mean to, I really didn’t but I did and-’

‘Sweetheart, you don’t have anything to be sorry for, I promise you-’

She can’t understand why Jane is lying like this, what’s wrong with her-

‘I do, I-’

She doesn’t mean to, she doesn’t even know how it happens- one minute she’s looking urgently at Jane over the table, Jane’s hands still over hers, and then something jolts- maybe she moves without meaning to- but it makes the table jolt too and her soup- still nearly full and still steaming hot- slops over the rim of the bowl and Jane gives a little gasp and pulls away her hands at the heat and-

-andshe’shurtshe’shurtshe’shurt-

She’s hurt Jane- bringing her count of physical injuries inflicted up to two, and it’s barely even 3pm- and shecantshecantshecantshe-

She bolts.

Tripping over her feet, up the stairs, through her door, catching against something as she goes that leaves a long scratch but it doesn’t matter, it’s even good because surely she deserves it and then she’s curling up tight into the corner of her wardrobe, pressing herself into the join between the walls and pressing her head down, her hands gripping her hair and her eyes squeezed shut.

And she wants nothing more than to disappear.

[drabblesandheadcanons]

A terrible horrible no-good very bad day Pt 2

Foster Au continued. Credit to @bessie-bass-on-the-bass for the Au idea!

School is… school. That she now gets to walk into school with Kitty is an improvement- no one looks at her when they can look at Kitty instead- and she knows she doesn’t have to worry about anyone trying to talk to her.

Things are more tricky when they have to go to their separate classrooms- the Year 8 form rooms are not even in the same part of the school as the Year 10 ones.

Her own classes are… a struggle. She’s aware that she sticks out. She’s used to being New- she’s been New so many times before- but that doesn’t mean she enjoys it and she knows it’s only a matter of time before New becomes replaced with something less innocuous: she’s been the girl who had a panic attack in assembly, the girl who never brought in lunch, the girl who cried when they were reading out loud in English.

She doesn’t want to know what it will be at this school- but whatever it is, she isn’t deluded enough to hope that she can get by on being known only as Kitty Seymour’s little sister.

The school corridors are a gauntlet of noise- too many voices all at once, too many eyes upon her, and there’s so much touching- people push and squeeze by, jostling bags and coats, and she’s being swept along in a wave of tightly packed students, the ceiling lights over bright and the air thick with rain-damp clothing drying and a miasma of body sprays.

There’s laughter- then a roar of almost animal ferocity as someone way back braces themselves against the mass, forces themselves forward, and then a wave of yelps and surprised squeaks as those in front are being crushed, pulled off balance, stumbling and helpless, and still those behind keep pushing, keep pushing- and just as Joan feels like she can’t hold back the scream that’s building in her chest, just as she feels herself tipping into uncontrollable panic, it lets up and everyone is righting themselves, pushing each other away, angry and flustered.

The anger is always at each other- never towards the faceless causer of cruel chaos but at those unlucky enough to be victim to it; sharp faces, sharp hands, sharp voices, prod and chide Joan away- she’s trodden on someones toe, knocked into someone else’s bag, and she’s still mumbling apologies when she gets to the classroom.

The day drags from the first. 

She’s managed to forget her homework- the homework that had given her hours of anxiety (science is not her best subject) until Kitty popped into her room while she was still at her desk to ask if she wanted some hot chocolate, before seeing the state she was in. 

With Kitty’s help, it had still taken her over an hour to complete… but eventually she’d been able to put her pen down, pick up her (now cold) hot chocolate and shuffle her papers together…. only to utterly fail to put the work back into her school bag.

The sick sinking feeling settles on her stomach half a moment before the teacher calls for the work to be handed in, and she accepts the scolding and detention silently, her eyes stinging.

It’s not a big deal, she knows it isn’t a big deal- at least, it shouldn’t be a big deal. No one else would even really register it. But the feeling of failure, of being a disappointment (yet again, yet again) still sticks to her, impossible to brush off.

There’s a substitute teacher in the next class- Geography- who is obviously slightly overwhelmed by them all. The room feels claustrophobic- the usual routine is thrown off by the teacher’s absence and everyone is taking advantage of this, moving around and between the desks, crowding and pushing and shouting to one another, and to Joan, it feels like there isn’t quite enough air for them all.

When the teacher eventually snaps, it’s loud and prolonged and in the front row, Joan feels extra exposed- she feels righteous anger radiating from the substitute in the front of the class, and resentful anger building in the rows behind, and she’s trapped in the middle.

The rest of the lesson is fraught and the teacher is tense- she snaps at Joan to pay attention when she sees her looking out of the window and the giggles that follow make her face feel hot. 

Kitty would be able to deal with this, she knows- Kitty-at-school always seems to her to be just as confident as Kitty-at-home (which surprised Joan slightly at first, who was all ready to be asked to refrain from approaching or talking to or about her foster sister in public- it’s something she’s been asked before, more than once, and it doesn’t really upset her much anymore).

She thinks about what Kitty would do in the same situation- and she suddenly wishes her sister was in her class, making everything more bearable just by being there.

But she isn’t. Of course she isn’t.

History is a little easier- there’s a test, which they have to do in silence, and although she knows she hasn’t done as well as she maybe could have done, it’s nice to have a chance to gather herself: the quiet is a restorative, even if it is over much, much too soon.

Going from the quiet classroom to the chaos of the corridor is a little bit painful though, and she has to fight the wave of panic that washes over her- for a second, she freezes in the doorway- I can’t, I can’t- but then someone is pushing her from behind, telling her to hurry up, and accustomed to doing what she is told, she does.

There’s a pressure inside her, a growing tightness in her chest.

She usually escapes to the music room for lunch. After discovering it on her second day, it’s been a godsend for her, for a couple of reasons: it’s quiet, not all the lights work so it’s nicely dim, and most importantly, it’s nearly always empty, save for Bessie, who is basically paid to make sure nothing goes too badly wrong with the schools music and drama department and who is rarely seen by anyone who isn’t Joan.

(When Joan first saw her, she was hunched over a keyboard that’d had something pink and sticky looking spilled over it and muttering darkly to herself, and Joan had involuntarily shrunk back from the woman with the dark lipstick and the tattoos covering her arms and the dont-mess-with-me set to her jaw.

That was before she knew Bessie though. 

Not that she knows her well now or anything, she just knows enough to not be afraid of her and to be reasonably certain that Bessie isn’t going to turn against her any time soon. 

Now, she knows about Bessie’s weakness for Milky Ways and about the four cats that carries around photos of in her wallet. She knows that Bessie can play the bass guitar in a way that makes it look easy. And she knows about Maggie, the music room’s other occupant- two years below Joan but looking much younger. She seldom speaks (if Joan hadn’t seen her talking her the curly haired girl who pops in and out sometimes, she wouldn’t be entirely certain that Maggie did speak at all) but she follows Bessie around like a baby duckling when she isn’t in class and Bessie- who most students seem to edge away from- manages to seem almost soft when she’s talking to Maggie. 

Maggie doesn’t talk to Joan but she doesn’t avoid her either, and actually not talking suits Joan quite well, and so the music room has become a sanctuary of sorts- a refuge for her and Maggie, with Bessie watching over like a fierce mother bear.

(It’s not an exaggeration- Joan once saw Bessie tearing into two Year 10 boys who had followed behind Maggie, calling her ‘vampire psycho’- especially cruel because as far as Joan can tell, Maggie has never bitten anyone other than herself- and the force of Bessie’s anger had made her heart almost beat out of her chest, even though she knew it wasn’t directed at her. She wonders sometimes if Bessie would defend her like that, but never for too long.)

She’s looking forward to the quiet peace of the music room- really, really looking forward to it, the thought of being able to hide herself away in the quiet calm for a while is basically what’s keeping her going at this point-

-but when she gets there, the door is locked and the room is dark.

She stands there, helplessly, clutching her bag and wondering what has happened. She’s sort of hoping that if she just stands there, Bessie will appear and open the door for her and she’ll be able to settle into her usual corner, and listen to Bessie wish violent curses upon whoever has damaged the piano that week….but it doesn’t work, and then there’s footsteps and a cross voice behind her asking what she’s doing, why she’s there, doesn’t she know she shouldn’t be in this [art of the building and does she think she’s better than the other students?

It’s so unexpected, and it’s stupidly made worse by the fact that it’s happening here, just outside her safe (for school) place.

She can’t move and she can’t talk and her lack of reaction is just making things worse, it seems- she’s insolent, she’s arrogant, she’s headed the right way for a detention- and although part of her knows that this is school, that there are rules which prevent anything really bad happening to her, another part of her is tensed up and wondering where the first blow will hit her first (her face so it will hurt more, her shoulder where a bruise can be hidden by clothes?)

She can feel the pain of it even though the blow itself never actually comes- instead, she’s barked at to get outside and somehow, she’s able to move, she’s walking, she’s down the corridor and out of the door, her eyes burning and her throat tight.

She’s not sure where she’s going- all her focus is on keeping the tears back- so she ends up just walking until the bell goes.

She could go to find Kitty, she knows she could- Kitty had been very emphatic that she should feel free to come and seek her out any time at school if she needed her, or even if she just wanted some company.

(She hasn’t summoned up the courage for it yet but Kitty has come across her once or twice and insisted she come to sit with her and Cathy and Anne and Anna. She’d been so nervous the first time but it hadn’t actually been too bad- Cathy had smiled warmly at her over the top of the notebook she was scribbling in and Anna had made room for her on the picnic table they’d dumped their bags all over. Anne had been quick to voice her opinion that Joan was an ‘old lady’ name and Joan had been poised to flee- but Kitty’s gentle hand on her arm had kept her in place and when Anne had finished her thought (‘It’s almost as bad as my name!’) and started offering round a packet of starbursts, she’d passed it to Joan first as if it was normal to do so.)

She knows she could go and find Kitty- but she won’t. As much as she wants her foster sister right now, she also feels like if Kitty is nice to her, she’ll cry and she really, really doesn’t want to… and there’s another part of her too that doesn’t want to ruin Kitty’s day by being needy. She doesn’t want to make Kitty regret her invitation- it’s far better if she just never takes it up so that Kitty need never have to worry about how to politely retract it.

Eventually, the bell goes. It occurs to her, as it does, that she never actually got around to eating the lunch in the bottom of her bag, and it’s that moment that she realises she’s hungry.

But it’s too late now, everyone is streaming back to class, so she follows.

Her first afternoon class is worse than the morning- perhaps it’s that she’s hungry, perhaps it’s that she can’t shut off the shouting and flashes of pain in her own head, perhaps it’s just a result of everything building up and building up, but whatever it is, she’s having to hold herself together. Her fingernails dig into her palms, she fights to keep her breathing steady.

She’s not paying a huge amount of attention to what’s going on in the class around her but eventually, she registers a disturbance behind her/

Loud obnoxious questions turn louder and louder until there’s shouting- a chair is overturned, and someone is storming out of the room, furiously muttering- she wants to cover her ears,to hide from the anger- and as they pass, a hand suddenly comes up and pushes her head forward. It’s not very hard but it’s unexpected, it jolts her. It’s not personal, she knows that really- it’s more just that she is an easy and convenient target- one of the quiet ones who are there to be tripped and pushed so that others can laugh at their stumbling confusing, who are there to have things thrown at them so that others can have the benefit of their distress. She’s an outlet of anger in the same way that the chair is overturned, the exercise book thrown on the floor, the worksheet ripped and crumpled- she feels the truth of this in one quick flash, and the anger of it too, and then, then she’s out of her chair, turning- the owner of the hand is only a step or two away, and she’s on him, clawing like a cat, hitting as hard as her pathetic strength will allow, and someone is shrieking, ‘no, no, no’ over and over, and it’s her.

There are voices around her, and several stinging blows to the side of her head, and then there are hands upon her, pulling her back and away, and she’s clawing at the empty air, throat raw and her face wet with blood and with tears.

[drabblesandheadcanons]

A terrible horrible no-good very bad day Pt 1

(Foster Au in which Joan has an extremely bad day because school is terrible).

It begins with her alarm clock breaking- no, it begins before that, with the dream that leaves her feeling anxious and out of sorts. It’s not a Bad bad dream- she doesn’t wake up with her pillow wet from tears and her throat aching from trying to scream herself awake- but it’s not a good start to the day either.

The shower scalds her, making her squeak, and then drenches her in a freezing deluge, and the shampoo- not her usual one, not the one she likes- stings her eyes as she fumbles for the temperature control.

It’s not a good beginning.

The kitchen is quiet when she goes downstairs- Jane’s note is still propped up against the fruit bowl: Have a good day, both of you! Love and kisses xxxx.

 It’s written in what looks like eye pencil and it makes Joan smile for a moment- she can imagine Jane wearily trying to hunt down a pen at half past five in the morning and giving up, scrawling the note with whatever came to hand.

She likes that it’s for both Kitty AND her- she can tell because it isn’t signed Mum (which would make it a note to Katherine). And it’s not signed Jane either- which would feel like a pointed reminder that only one of them is Jane’s daughter, only to one of them is she ‘Mum.’. 

She wonders if Jane did four kisses on purpose- two each, scrupulously fair. Which Jane is. She’s learnt that much about her over the past two months, along with other things- that Jane drinks her tea with two heaped spoonfuls of honey and no milk, that she owns four pairs of slippers and never manages to have any of them to hand, that she will watch Love Island obsessively if she thinks Kitty and Joan aren’t in the vicinity. That she need only see Joan force herself to eat a particular food once before she stops serving it at all, that her hands against Joan’s hair when she’s waking her from a nightmare are the softest thing in the world.

Still, even with how much more comfortable she’s been feeling lately (she hardly ever catches herself being afraid that Jane will shout at her or punish her; she’s even told her some things that aren’t a result of Jane asking her a direct question- a couple of times, she’s actually asked Jane things of herself), she’s surprised at herself, that she misses Jane’s presence: making breakfast and laying out plates. Calling up the stairs that if Kitty isn’t down in five minutes, she’s going to make the pancakes just for Joan and herself, and I mean it Katherine. Putting the marmite in front of Joan’s plate without her having to even ask for it (she’s noticed that neither Jane nor Kitty ever touch the marmite themselve and that means it’s there specially for her and thinking about that makes her feel a strange warmth in her chest) and asking if she slept well and smiling warmly when all Joan can manage is a tiny twitch of the head.

 (Although lately she has been answering with words and has even asked Jane how she slept a couple of times- and both times, Jane smiled really big as if Joan had done something amazing rather than just ask a simple question.)

She’s been getting more comfortable with things- with Jane- but she’d still, given the choice, have said she would have felt more comfortable eating breakfast on her own, or at least for it to be just her and Kitty.

Now that it is… she doesn’t like it as much as she thought she would. The kitchen feels colder and even when Kitty comes in- yawning and trying to open a hairslide with her teeth- it’s not the same.

They’re both quiet as they eat their cereal but as she goes to take Joan’s bowl to the sink with her own, Kitty nudges her shoulder.

‘It’s ok. She’ll be back by tonight- and it’s only for today. We can have dinner ready for her when she comes in.’

Joan nods and tries to smile back at her foster sister but it feels harder than usual.