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Constance Leysa Mountbatten | Outfit

They were all the same, in a way, all five of them. She knew that if there was one thing that they had all gotten from Matka, it was the ability to stuff things down, to think about what they wanted last, and yet... That wasn't what she had been doing for the last couple of months. She hadn't been putting everyone else before herself, and she knew that in a way that was failing all of them. She had failed all of them by not being here when they needed her. She was supposed to be here, she was supposed to be the big sister, but she wasn't. She wasn't here, in Cambridge, with them. She was in that little village in West Country, with Elliot. And while she knew that she was supposed to be there, just as much as she was supposed to be here, she thought that she wanted to be here, she wanted to be just that much more supportive. That much more helpful. They had made it through October. They had survived that. And now they were in November, and really, November was easier than December was going to be. They just had to make it through December. And she knew that they would. They could make it through anything. That was just who they were. They were Wentzells, and Mountbattens, and Notts, and MacGuffins. This was who they were. They were survivors. 

Knowing that her sestry were going to need her more than ever, she had taken her free afternoon, to come over here and see who was about. It had been quiet. People popping in here and there, and Matka working from her study downstairs. Ellanora had a feeling that her matka would have preferred to be just about anywhere that wasn't home, she she also knew that she was going to be twenty weeks pregnant with her bratr and sestra this week. That couldn't have been easy on her, when she knew that she was sick anyway. And so whomever it was that had gotten her to make the decision to stay at home, was probably Ella's favorite person right now. She didn't think that she needed to worry about Matka as much as she needed to worry about her sestry. They were all dealing with a lot of changes. They were dealing with a lot of things that she didn't really understand in general, and being here, staying here, in this house, couldn't be helping. Ellanora knew why she didn't want to set foot back in Mountbatten Hall, but she thought that her sestry didn't all have the same reasons. This was their home now, and they had lived here nearly a year, but she didn't know. Nothing ever really felt complete here. There was always just that something missing. 

And maybe that was changing again. Maybe things would get better as time went on. As there were babies in the house again... But at the same time she thought that could make it worse. That there was new life. That there was a whole new part of the family... Whatever her sestry were feeling, she wanted to be there for them to talk to about it. And she had the time tonight. She had made the time tonight. Class this morning, and then she had been at the hospital for a couple of hours, and then she had come here. And she had spent the entire afternoon in her matka's home. Only now she knew that it was late enough for Constance to have been one of the people that she heard coming into the house earlier, and so she made her way up to her sestra's room and she knocked on the door. "Constance? Let me in." She didn't try the handle, not yet. She had heard that her sestra was known for locking herself in her room these days, and she wanted to see if she could get her to let her in without having to force her way in. Though, she wasn't above forcing her way in either if it was deemed necessary. She just wanted her to be okay. She wanted them all to be okay, and even baby steps towards that would be something right now. Feeling the paw bat at the edge of her skirt, she saw Renoir had followed her up the stairs from Matka's office where h head been sleeping next to Medici, and she scooped him up. "Come on Constance... Please..." 

BARBIES

OUTFIT

Constance wondered if this time of the year was always going to be hard now. Maybe it would just never going to get any easier. It was a possibility. She knew that. Her otec had been killed in the fall, Dominick had and now… now they were quickly approaching what she thought might end up being one of the hardest months of the year. It had almost been a year since she had been kidnapped. A year since she had made the decision to walk instead of Flooing or apparating, a year since she had been grabbed on the street, and locked in an abandoned warehouse. Constance had thought that she was going to die. She had been sure of it, and now she was here. But it was still far too easy for her to think about everything that had happened, and to be pulled right back into those memories. It was too easy to remember all of it. It wasn’t that she wanted to, it was just that she couldn’t help it sometimes. Constance had thought she was better, that she was ignoring it and moving past it and trying to live her life. And then in April, she’d hallucinated in the Ministry of all places, and her matka had found her, and then she’d known that she wasn’t fine. She still had to go to therapy, she still had to talk about what had happened, and it was hard to believe that it had been a year, because she didn’t honestly feel like she was anywhere close to being over it. She just tried like hell to be.

Having distractions worked the best, and Merlin knew she had plenty of those. The Nutcracker was coming up, so free time wasn’t a concept that she was all that familiar with. Constance was either at Avalon, or the Ministry, or with Jules, or home. She knew that she probably didn’t make enough time for Jules as she should—as a proper girlfriend should at least, but he was busy too. He had school, and he did like being a snatcher, and he had a seat on the Wizengamot as well. He kept plenty busy, but she did feel like she was supposed to keep herself more available for her boyfriend. But she hadn’t exactly been up for being a good girlfriend. It was almost December, and she didn’t really want to talk to anyone if she didn’t have to. She talked enough. She talked at work, she talked at ballet, and Rowena knew she talked enough at therapy too. She was all talked out, and so when she went home, all she wanted to do was go to her room. So that was what she did. She went up there, she closed the door, and she didn’t really come out. No one really pestered her about it, so it worked out fine for her. She could just keep to herself, because if someone came in, then they would want to talk. They’d want to talk about what was on her mind, what was bothering her…

They all knew that it had been a year, after all. They were all well aware what had to be on her mind, and she just didn’t want to talk about it anymore. She didn’t want to talk about still having nightmares, about thinking she was going to die. She didn’t even want to talk about when she had gotten back, and she had thought that her legs were never going to heal properly—when she had thought that she was never going to be able to dance again. Constance didn’t want to think about Christmas morning, and how her strýc had to carry her downstairs just so she could be down there. She didn’t want to think about last year at all, but how could she not? It wasn’t like this year was going to be any easier. This year, Aurora was gone, and that was still hard on people. Not her as much, because she hadn’t been all that close to her aunt, but it would be hard on other people. And it was Ella’s first Christmas as a MacGuffin, which meant she probably wouldn’t be around as much. It was going to be different this year, it was going to keep on being different, because everything was just going to keep on changing, and she knew it. She just didn’t want to talk about any of that, or anything else on her mind; so when she heard a knock on the door she ignored it. Even when she heard Ella speak once, and then again.

Ella knew that she was the one that was supposed to have been there. She was the big sister. She was the one that they were supposed to be able to come to get answers, and she knew that she was failing them by not being there. Being here. They were still her rodina. She still loved them, still cared about them, and all that she could do to help them, she would do. She wanted them to be okay, and as much as she knew that she couldn’t be here with them, she knew that it wasn’t her place to be anymore. They would always be her family, she would always have room for them, time for them, but she had her own little family with Elliot now. Her family had grown to include more people. Her life was different now. Going to school, learning to be the person that she wanted to be. She was trying to figure all of that out, and she wanted to think that she knew what she was doing on that front. She was figuring out who she could be, without being surrounded by her family all the time. There were points where she missed ballet. There were points where she missed teaching martial arts. There were moments that she just simply missed being here… But she wasn’t going to trade what she had now either. Having Elliot, being happy the way that she thought that they were. She knew that they were fine. That they were going to be fine. For the rest of their lives.

Coming over here to check on everyone made her feel as if she were at least doing something. She knew that they were well taken care of. That they would take care of each other, but she couldn’t help worrying. She worried about all of them. She worried about her sestry, about Philip, about Matka. She worried about Malcolm, and Pippa, and Nick, and LJ. She worried about Orion, and Lucy. She worried about everyone, and she couldn’t help it. That was just who she was, that was how her brain was wired. She noticed everything, she knew things before they happened, and she worried. She worried about everything. Ellanora knew that there wasn’t anything that she could do for Constance that someone else probably hadn’t already tried, but she wanted to do something. She wanted to talk to her. She wanted her to know that she was still there. And she couldn’t do that on the other side of the door. Ella knew her sestra well enough to know that she wasn’t just going to let her in. And that the door was most likely locked, but she also knew that Constance should be well enough aware that if she didn’t let her in, she was going to end up blasting her door off of the hinges. And that would make a mess, and then between Matka and Kreta, someone was going to end up yelling at them.

That was part of what she missed about being home really. She missed there being someone besides herself to be accountable to. She knew that really, she was accountable to Elliot, but that wasn’t the same. There was something different about answering to Matka, or to her bossy little house elf than there was about answering to Elliot. With Elliot, it was more of a partnership. They both answered to one another. And Ellanora knew that that was different than a lot of pureblood marriages right from the start. But she wasn’t going to go on thinking about her life now, when her sestra was crying on the other side of that door. “Constance…” Ella shifted Renoir so that he was settled under one arm, and then she reached for the handle on the door. “Constance, come on. I know you’re in there.” She knew that her sestra wouldn’t have gone anywhere else in the house. She knew that she was here, and she knew that she was giving everyone the silent treatment. “If you don’t open the door I’m going to open it myself.” Actually, blasting it down was going to get her in trouble, and the hinges were on the inside, so she was going to have to be creative about getting in there. But she thought that if it came down to it she wouldn’t have a problem in the world getting to her sestra if the need arose.

Life was more than a little complicated these days, and she could deal with that. Constance could handle her fair share of complicated. But there were some matters better left out of her head, and that certainly meant that she wasn’t going to talk about them either. She would focus on what mattered, and she would be fine. Constance was going to be fine, she just didn’t want anyone pestering her about talking about it. She didn’t know what talking about it was going to do. She had tried that before. She hadn’t been allowed to go to Zyra, but she had talked to another psychologist, and she didn’t think that it had been all that helpful. Maybe because she wasn’t as good as Zyra, maybe because Constance hadn’t actually done too much talking, but she had still tried it out. She had tried going, she had tried talking about it, and she just hadn’t found it all that beneficial. She was better at dealing with it on her own, but her family didn’t seem to think so. She knew that she was being a little… antisocial, holing up in her room, but she just… didn’t want to deal with anything else. She didn’t want to talk about it either. She just wanted to be left alone.

She was busy enough to honestly not be home all that often. She had the Ministry, and she had ballet. The Nutcracker was approaching, and so she had plenty to do for that. Constance was at Avalon more than she was at home, and when she did have free time, she tried to see Jules since she knew she was neglecting him a little with how busy she was. But honestly, it was for his own benefit. She wasn’t the best company this time of year, and she thought that she would be able to make it up to him once she was actually fun to be around again. The next couple of weeks were going to be rough, and she didn’t think that she needed to bother him with all that. She didn’t think that she should bother him with her problems, at least ones that were serious. He knew what had happened last year—he knew what everyone knew at least, which was that she had gone missing. He didn’t have any details, because he’d never asked. If he had, she… didn’t know if she would have told him anything. She thought she would have, if he had really wanted to know. She just wasn’t sure how much she would have actually said.

But she hadn’t had to worry about that, because he hadn’t asked. It meant that she could continue not talking about it, and not thinking about it when she could pull that off. She wasn’t… hiding from it, she knew that wasn’t healthy. Constance knew that moving forward wasn’t going to happen if she acted like it never happened and never thought about it. She was well aware that it happened. It was a hard thing to forget about. She still had nightmares about it, so she really didn’t think that those memories were ever going anywhere. But that didn’t mean that she had to think about it when she had an actual choice. She was just keeping herself busy, and she found that made all of this easier. Not just what anniversary they were approaching, but everything else. Everything was different now, and while she was usually all right with change, this had been… a lot. She was glad that her matka was happy, and she hoped that Ella was too, but there was no denying that holidays were going to continue to change as they all got their own families, and moved on with their lives.

That was difficult for her, because she loved her family. Knowing that everything was going to change was… hard, but if she kept herself busy, then she didn’t have to think about that either. The only time that she couldn’t really get it off of her mind was when she was home. That was part of the reason why she stayed in her room to begin with. She just wanted to be by herself, with no one asking her what was wrong or trying to make her talk about anything. It was why she had no plans of letting Ella into her room. She had her own life to worry about, so really, there was no reason in the slightest for her older sister to worry about her. She was figuring it out on her own. It was just something that she had to get over. Things changed. They had learned that time and time again over the past year or so. Last year at this time, her father had already been killed… so had her uncle, she had run off and ruined everything… plenty had happened, over a year ago now, and that was a little hard to believe. “That will just make a mess.” She called back, offhandedly. Her opening the door herself was bound to bring their matka or Kreta after them, and then they would yell at them—and it wouldn’t even be her fault that Ella blasted open the door to begin with.

Taking care of all of them was her job. Making sure that they were okay was supposed to fall on her. And now she knew that things weren't that easy. It was harder to be here for everyone else when she wasn't her anymore. It was easier to take care of them when she lived here. When she was one of them. Now, in some ways, she felt like the outsider in her own family. She knew that wasn't the case. She knew that there were plenty of ways that she was still one of them, she knew that if she needed them, they were going to be there. Theoretically she knew that she had more people to count on now than she had before, but in her eyes, all that meant, was that she had more people to take care of. She had people that she wanted to take care of. She had people that she needed to take care of. And then there was the fact that she knew she just plain missed taking care of some of them. It was complicated, balancing all of that, and going to school, and going through Healer training. It wasn't like she wanted to be a surgeon. She didn't want to learn the complicated medical side like that. But she did want to be a psychiatrist. She wanted to end up working in the Janus Thickney ward. She wanted to take care of people.

That was what she was good at. That was what she had always been good at. This wasn't the path that her life had been on a year ago. This wasn't what anyone had expected for her. She thought that her life was going to be different. Giving up ballet had never really crossed her mind, until it had been the only thing that she could think about. She had started to hate it the moment that she had realized that she had almost died because of it. That she had almost gotten Nick killed because of it. Because of her stupid reasoning that she needed her pointe shoes. And that she didn't want a new pair because the ones that she had were at the perfect level of broken in before they started to fall apart. It had been ridiculous, but she had whined at Nick enough about it that he had taken her back there to get them, and they had been attacked. And now she was pretty sure that she didn't want to set foot back in that house again. They had just barely settled here all the way, and she was engaged, and talking about moving out for good. And then September had come around, and she was married, and gone.

Not gone, not really, she was still here, she was still a part of their lives, but she missed actually being here. She missed being one of them. One of the group. Taking care of her siblings, watching out for Matka. Just keeping an eye on things in general. It was hard to trust her intuition when she wasn't really around to see it. She knew one thing for certain. That something was poisoning her sestra. Whether or not it was actual poison was up for debate, but Ellanora thought that there was something toxic around Constance. Something that she couldn't put her finger on, but that she thought that she needed to try and come up with a solution for. They wren't going to get anywhere if they didn't make some sort of progress. Ellanora wanted them all to make progress. She had spent hours talking to Matka about things like this. About what they could do for each of the others. It wasn't her responsibility, not really. But she knew that she would have taken it on over and over again if they had needed her to. They were her family. She would do anything for them.

She would do anything to make it up to them. Because she was the one that had abandoned them. She was the one that had had to try and learn how to do this. How to balance this. She had given herself away. She had let herself be a part of some contract, of some agreement, because she was worried what would happen if she wasn't. Would Ares have tried something? She didn't know. She didn't think that she wanted to know. But she thought that she would have been the first choice. Constance was his favorite, and Thea was the free spirit. Temperance was Temperance, and Ellanora knew that it was probably mean, but she was the one that she would have picked last if she was trying to make a deal with someone based on bloodlines and marriages. There was only one way to do that, and it was by giving them the eldest. Something that she had artfully avoided that day in the restaurant when she had told Elliot to marry her. This was an arranged marriage. There was no other way of looking at it. But that didn't mean that it had to be horrible. It had still been her own choice, at least, she thought that it had been. To try and help out her friend. That same friend that was now her husband. "Well then I'd suggest opening it, because an angry Matka is likely to be really annoying to listen to."

Everything had gotten complicated--everything had gotten messy. Constance had wanted to think that it was going to get easier, but she wasn't convinced that it ever would. It hadn't yet, anyway. Nothing life-shattering had happened to them lately, but that didn't mean that the rest of the bad had just gone away. What had happened wasn't something that they all just got over overnight. It was something that took a while, so it didn't matter if nothing new had happened. Plenty had happened already. Plenty that she just hadn't been able to get over--that she wasn't sure that she even know how to get over. She wanted to be the one that was strong enough to get through all of this. She didn't want this time of year to bring her down, she didn't want her past to define how she was now, but she wasn't sure that she could help it. It was hard. Everything seemed harder than it was supposed to be. It had been a year now. A year since her father had died, and that… was complicated. Horribly, messy, and complicated. That was probably one of the worst parts of all of this, if she was being honest with herself.

She had loved her father. She had thought that he loved her. That he cared about all of them. She had known that he wasn't perfect because he was a Death Eater, which meant he was a murderer. That didn't… mean much to her, because her matka was a Death Eater, her uncles were Death Eaters… it had little to do with him being a bad person because in her definition, being a Death Eater didn't make her father a bad person. Or her matka, or her uncles. But her otec… he was a bad person. He was a really bad person, and that was something that she hadn't known at the time. She had never known it, and it was hardot know that. It was hard to know that he had been like that, that he had hurt their matka, that he hadn't cared about them as much as she had thought he had. He couldn't have. Not if their dědeček could threaten their safety, and he let them. He should have wanted to keep his family safe. That should have been what mattered to him. He shouldn't have wanted to hurt her matka, he shouldn't have let them hang in the balance as some kind of threat. He was supposed to care about them.

Daughters mattered less than sons to some people. She knew that. She just had thought that they had mattered to him. But maybe they hadn't at all. That should have made it easier--she could tell herself not to miss him, because he didn't care about his daughters, because he was a horrible person. But somehow that made it even harder. It made it more complicated, because she felt like she shouldn't miss him at all. It felt wrong to miss him, because he was a horrible person. She knew that. She knew that, and she was glad that her matka was safe now. She was glad that she had Malcolm. October should have gone by easily, because she shouldn't have missed her otec. Not knowing what she knew now. But that feeling was complicated, and it was messy. It had put her in an unshakable mood, one that had been made worse by each and every little thing that had happened. November coming along, and that was a year from the day that Dominick had died, and then the night that she'd run off, which had put her at odds with her family. Jules had put her in a mood, and the holidays coming up didn't help either.

Everything was just putting her in a worse mood, and she knew that wasn't fair. She knew that she shouldn't be thinking about herself at a time like this. It was much easier to focus on her family than herself. Constance wanted them to be okay too. But it was… hard. It was nearly December, and that would be the worst of all, for her. A year since she'd been kidnapped, a year since Dimitri and her matka had saved her. Her matka being a part of it, that was fine. But Dimitri… he was gone now too. His temper, everything about him… it had started to rub people the wrong way, and eventually Ares had sent him off. That was certainly for the best, but it was odd to think that he had saved her and had turned out to be horrible too. She'd had enough of horrible. She just wanted everyone to be… good. She wanted her family to be okay. That had proven to be much harder than it looked thus far. She just… didn't want to think about any of it, but Ella was here… and that meant she was going to have to. Rolling her eyes at her sestra's annoying insistence, she rolled over to grab her wand from her bedside table and used it to unlock the door. The click was hopefully loud enough for Ella to hear so she would stop irritating her from the other side of the door.

She was the eldest, and Ella had taken it upon herself to make sure that that meant that they were all taken care of. Constance was her favorite sibling. That was by no means anyone's doubt. They all had favorites. Constance was hers, Thea was Philip's. Even Philip was Pippa's. They all had their favorites amongst one another, and she thought that when there were that many of them, that was just how it was. Ella missed being here, she missed being with all of them, and she thought that it was something that they were going to have to try and work on. That it was something that she was going to have to work on, because she knew that she was pushing herself. She knew that she had taken on a lot, and she had done it on purpose. She liked being busy. She liked not really stopping until her head hit the pillow each night, and she thought that that was something that she could get better about. That she could make sure that she came here, that she had time to see her rodina. Because they were important to her. Her sestry, and her bratr. They were always going to be important to her.

Elliot was important too. And she knew that the MacGuffins had to be important now as well, but she thought that it was easy to forget that when she was here. When she was here she could just be Ella again, and she was the eldest sestra. She was the one that wanted to be there for them to talk to when they didn't want to talk to Matka. When they didn't want to worry her, she wanted them to worry her instead. And she thought that it was important that they knew that. That even if she had been sent to Godric's Hollow to try and live this life of her own, she was going to be there if they needed her. She would be here. She could get here, she could get to them, and she thought that they were going to understand that. That if she kept showing up like this, they would realize that she was still here too. That married or not, she was always going to be a Mountbatten-Wentzell first. This was her rodina. And this was where she belonged. More so than she could ever belong as a MacGuffin.

She could be a MacGuffin. She could adapt. She could get used to it. But she thought that it was more important that they realize that she didn't want this. That she wanted to be here more than she wanted to be there. She hated the separation. If she could have convinced Elliot to move to the village down the road she would have. But Matka had bought them the cottage in Godric's Hollow, and it really was pretty, and it was the perfect size, and she couldn't say that she didn't like it. Because she did. But Godric's Hollow would never be home to her. Not when they hated her. She knew well enough just who was in charge of that particular neighborhood, and she did her best to avoid the Doges. She didn't want anything to do with them, and while she knew that MacGuffin was a light name, or at least a neutral name, she was not light, and she was not neutral. She was just a lot better at hiding it than most people were. Ella knew that she didn't have a problem in the world with halfbloods. And she could admit that there were some mudbloods that weren't intolerable. But the fact that she used that word…

The fact that she hated muggles themselves with every fiber of her being, was enough to make her unlikeable to them. It was enough to set her apart. Enough to have them look at her like she was exactly what she was. A pureblood, and in their opinion, the worst kind of pureblood. The kind that was intolerant. The kind that was likely to kill first and ask questions later. The fact that she was a healer, and a student, meant nothing. She was the child of Death Eaters. She was just as bad by association. Everything else that she was was not enough to counteract that. And she knew it. And so, she didn't even try. When she heard the lock click in the door she smirked for half a second and then let it drop as she opened the door to her sestra's room. "I wouldn't have to be so annoying if you didn't lock the doors. One would think you're hiding something in here." Something like a boy… But Ella thought that she knew better than that. Constance wouldn't have snuck a boy past Matka and into her room.

Constance didn’t know if winter was just always going to be a difficult time of year now. She hoped that it wasn’t. She hoped that it was all going to get easier eventually, but that would take time and right now… it had only been a year. A year since her otec had died, since Dominick had died, since she had been kidnapped. Last winter had not been all that good to them, and she knew that she was going to have a difficult time not thinking about all of that this year. She couldn’t just hide from it all and just not think about it at all. That wasn’t going to do anybody any good. She had learned that, at least. Once she had gotten back last year, Ares and her matka and both insisted on her going to therapy and for a while it hadn’t done much good. Not through any fault of the therapist--she hadn’t let it do any good. She had been so against going and actually talking about what had happened and she hadn’t really given it a chance at all. But she knew that that hadn’t done her any good at all. It was probably part of the reason why she had post-traumatic stress disorder now.

She knew that she couldn’t entirely blame it on that, and that she might have gotten PTSD even if she had gone right to therapy and actually talked about how she was feeling. It might have all still happened the same way, but she didn’t know that. There was no way of knowing what would have happened if she had actually tried to take therapy seriously the first time around. She only knew that she had to try it now. She’d been trying, anyway, because it wasn’t something that could just go away overnight and that was difficult for her. She didn’t like knowing that there was something wrong that she couldn’t fix. And she knew that it wasn’t wrong, or her fault, or anything like that--that was what she kept being told anyway, but that didn’t stop her from being frustrated by it at times. And it was even easier to be frustrated by herself as it got deeper into winter, and close to it having been one year since some psychopath had accosted her on the street and tied her up in an abandoned warehouse. It was going to be hard this winter.

And she knew that she shouldn’t just shut herself off in her room and shut everybody out. But sometimes she just got tired of talking. Sometimes she just wanted to be alone for a little while. It was just… easier, in some ways. Or at least she felt like it was. They were all going through something hard this winter. They had lost so much last year. And they all dealt with what had happened in different ways. Hers just so happened to be spending time alone in her room on occasion. It was just easy to be alone, and not talk, or worry about anything. It was why she had been pretty ready to ignore Ella coming to her door. She loved her sestra, truly. She was her favorite, if she was picking favorites--with Philip probably coming in a close second for her favorite sibling. She just felt like they had always gotten along well. Some people might think that it was odd that her favorite sibling and the person that she was closest to wasn’t her twin, but they had just… never really been that way. She couldn’t explain it--she didn’t understand it. Temperance was more cut off from them than… anyone else, really. Sometimes she felt so much further away than just down the hall.

If there were reasons for that, Constance didn’t know them. She had observations, she had assumptions, that twin intuition that was no joke, but she was no Ella. She didn’t know what people were going to do, or know things before anyone else in the family seemed to. And she loved her, and how much she cared, but sometimes it was a little frustrating that she had no chance of lying to her. She just knew her too well. “Oh, I am. Don’t check under the bed.” She said, rolling her eyes. There was little chance of getting away with hiding anything or anyone in this house anyway. Not that she had ever really tried. She wasn’t much of a rule breaker--Jules hadn’t even been in her room or anything at all inappropriate. She didn’t honestly know if any of her sisters, or if Philip, had ever snuck anyone into their rooms before--if they had, she’d never heard anything about it, which would have been pretty impressive.

Barbies

Everyone else was her responsibility. Especially now. Especially when Otec had died, and Matka was with Malcolm and Pippa more than she was here, and she understood that. Ella knew that she couldn’t be here either though. That she was a MacGuffin, and that she had to be there. That she had to be in that cottage that her matka had bought for them. She had to be his wife, and do her job, and go to school, and everything that came with that. She had to be exactly what she thought that she was going to be. Growing up they had made their choices. Growing up she had done the things that she was supposed to do. Ballet. Kickboxing. Cello. Vocal lessons. She knew how to walk, and talk, and act like a princess. She was a princess. They all were. But she also knew that there were things that she was preparing herself for, that Matka was preparing all of them for. To be wives. To build families of their own. The things that they needed, and the people that they were supposed to have become. That was who she was now. And Elliot had been… Well not really a choice, but she had made the choice to save him from a choice.

And she didn’t know if his father would have actually gone through with it and picked for him. She didn’t know any of that. But she knew that she had made the decision. She had offered to marry him, because it was better than marry someone that she didn’t know. It was better than being stuck in a marriage that could turn as disastrous as Matka’s. And it wasn’t that she thought of Otec only as a monster. Because he had been their father, and he had made sure that they were safe. But that didn’t change the fact that the marriage itself was not what Ella wanted. And she didn’t know if she could love. She didn’t know if she had it in her to ever actually fall in love with someone. And so, she was trying to just get by like this. She was trying to make herself love her husband and be the wife that she needed to be. She could do that. She could play the princess role. She could play the wife roll. She didn’t have to love him for that. Stability could be enough.

And maybe it would be. Maybe being stable would be enough. MacGuffin was not a Death Eater name. It was not a dark name. And that helped. And it hindered. Ella had her beliefs, her in-laws had theirs. But that didn’t change the fact that she was still going to do whatever it took to make sure that things were going right. That they would come out of this on top of it. Ares might have been the Minister, but that didn’t mean that Ella had to just up and agree with everything that he did. She couldn’t do that. Not when she had made the choices that she had made. Not when she was in the world that those choices had created. And she was trying to just… Belong there. She was trying to be who she was supposed to be now. But that place… That cottage. That wasn’t home. Home was where she wanted to be when she was having a bad day. It was the people that she wanted to be around most. And those people were here. And they were wherever Nick was. And they were sitting with her head on Matka’s shoulder. That was home.

Ella knew that she could be overbearing, and she knew that she could be a bit of a know-it-all, but more than anything else, she just wanted to keep them safe. She just wanted to know that they were all okay, and that things were going to be okay. Not being here… She hated not being here, but there was nothing that they could do. There was nothing she could do. They had made their choices. She had. Matka had. Connie was… Choosing something. Choosing to lock the doors between them. “No monsters under there are there? I thought Matka and Otec banished all of those when we were little.” There was a ghost of a smile on her face, and she knew that her sister wouldn’t see it, but it was there. They had grown up all together. Not here, but somewhere. They had grown up together, with the same parents. With the same rules. The same structure. The same opportunities. And she had to hope, beyond hope, that her sestra ended up making better choices than she had. Monsters under their beds were going to be the least of their worries in the end.

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