#well it's Ciara Abercrombie at this point actually

[gonnaneedacandle-blog]

Like Breathing

It had started out simply enough. She'd done the laundry- the muggle way, insisting it got things cleaner, but mostly just wanting something to do with her hands. Once everything was clean and dry, she'd set to reorganizing the wardrobe, rather than just hanging their clothing back up. Except halfway through she'd gotten anxious- apparently organizing clothing by type of garment wasn't enough. So she'd split things by color, only to discover that some of their colder weather things were still mixed in, which they wouldn't need for a few more months, so they could really be put away back into storage in the attic.

It was her sister. Or rather, it wasn't her sister because her sister was dead and there wasn't a damn thing Ciara could do about that. But then she kept having thoughts, like wondering what her sister would think of something- should she chance decorating the baby's nursery in blue, because she had a gut feeling it was a boy, but Bran wanted to be surprised so they didn't know for sure or not? Could they convince Mum to move in with her? In the guise of Ciara wanting help with the little one, but really because she didn't like her mother living alone and the inherited farm was so much more comfortable than living with her cousins.

Except she couldn't do that, and Ciara was never going to shake the feeling that it was her fault. And now she got to have the sweet husband and soon would have a baby and the happy little life that she had wanted- but all without her sister. They had been inseparable for 23 years. And now Ciara was going to have to go the rest of her life without her other half. She wasn't totally convinced she could do it.

So she just cried. And cleaned, tears still flowing even once she pulled herself back to her feet and put the closet back together. And then she was back on the floor, trying to decide on an organizational system for the bookcase- she'd gotten half through with alphabetical by title and decided it looked too halphazard, somehow, and was now trying to see if it looked better done by author, and she just got so annoyed with herself that she ended up tossing a book at the wall, with a satisfying bang.

A bang that got her husband's attention, and lead to him coming up to the bedroom- she hadn't even realized he was in the house. "Ci?" he asked, cautiously from the doorway- probably trying to figure out if this was normal!pregnancy tears, a normal Ciara organizational boom, or something worse.

"I was cleaning..." she said, almost numb. She slid another book onto the shelf. "I don't know what happened," she said, voice oddly hollow. Something worse it was, then.

He didn't push it, instead sitting down behind her in front of the bookcase. He gently coaxed her to lean back against his chest and she felt like she was capable of breathing, again. "I miss her so much," she said, tears coming back and filling in the hollowness of her voice, making it sound thick.

"I know, I miss her, too," he told her, leaning so he could kiss her cheek. "Do you want to talk about it?" She didn't answer him right away, trying to figure out if there was anything to even say. She didn't want to keep things from him. She wanted to accept whatever help he could give her, but even now she didn't know how. "So how are we doing the books, this time? Author?" he asked, looking at the shelf. She just nodded, folding her hands in her lap. He kept her in his arms while he organized the books by her system, carefully to ensure that things were up to her standard of precision.