fighting in a losing battle

Making a noose out of your hollow crown

I hold a match up to your paper castle

Sipping her tea as she waited for her brother, Sierra couldn’t help but worry. Out of all of them, she thought that she would always worry about Michael the most. She would worry that he wasn’t going to get the treatments that he needed. Emotions were a fickle thing, and she could feel when his were getting bad, or worse. Their parents dying had taken its toll. The state of the world as it was, was taking its toll. There was very little that she thought was going to make a difference either way. They had all been through too much to truly think that life was going to start being fair now.

She knew that her brother had had it worse than the rest of them. In a way, he had everything that he had never wanted. And she didn’t know what to do other than help him. Kallisto was helping him too, but their younger sister was just a child herself. Only five years older than Alexandria was. That seemed nearly impossible to her. That her baby was going to be a fifth-year next year. But she knew that it was true. She knew that Las would not do to their daughters what her father had done to her. But she expected far better behavior out of her children than her elder sister had demonstrated.

As she sat in the window of the coffee shop, Sierra was taking in the world around her. Her head was pounding, but that was normal. It had been months of this. Of never quite knowing if she was going to make it through the day without thinking that her head was going to explode. But she would never complain. Sierra did not complain about anything. She hadn’t since she was sixteen years old. That was the lsat time she had truly complained. There had been discussions with Lassider over the years. Russian flung back and forth with such vigor that those that did not know them would have thought that they were arguing.

They did not argue though. For as strong as Sierra had grown to be, she did not argue with him. Not truly. What he said went. And she knew that that was the proper example to set for Alexandria and Miriavetta. They needed her to be proper, and polished, and everything that she was supposed to be. Because if she wasn’t, then they were going to turn out no better than Donna, and they couldn’t have that. She would not have daughters that turned out like her sister.

A wave of comfort, and pure happiness washed over her, and the purity of the emotion caught her off guard. Sierra was unaccustomed to such positive emotions in her life, and it drew her eyes away from the window, and towards the depths of the shop. Scanning the faces of everyone that she came across, looking for the person that was feeling such pure joy. Her eyes landed on a little boy that couldn’t have been three yet, and she smiled warmly at him as his mother scooped him up onto her hip. A child made sense. Only a child would hold such pure, unsullied joy.

The door to the shop chimed again, and Sierra looked towards the door. The familiar emotional cocktail telling her that it was Michael that had just stepped into the vicinity. She knew her siblings, Michael and Kallisto anyway, over a distance. Their emotional signatures were distinct to her. She knew Donna’s as well, but her own emotions towards her sister had a tendency to drown out anything more than the strongest of Donna’s emotions.

Rising to her feet, the witch looked up at her little brother with a smirk as she stretched to kiss his cheek. “Hello, младший брат.” Sierra let her lips brush against his cheek as she took an emotional reading of him. He was always going to be the one that she checked first. In any situation, she worried about him. About how he was handling things. The good days, and the bad. She could take some of that away. In bits and pieces. Not enough for him to notice, but enough that he could find perhaps a moment’s peace. “I ordered your tea for you.” She nodded to the tray that was sitting on the table in front of her, two kinds of tea bags had been placed on it, one for each of them.

Michael Holden Parkinson • 744 • sierra's outfit

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

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[attr="class","ctopline"]Well she wore you like silk

[attr="class","cscriptministry"]bandaged all around

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[attr="class","clyrics"]The scars of your love[break]
Became your hollow crown

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[attr="class","cbody"]A day spent at the Ministry was never a good day in his book, but they had been happening more and more often it seemed. Since the arrival of the ICW, it seemed to him that the Ministry wanted as many of their people around as possible. Every time he thought that he could have a day off from the place, he just ended back there. Today had gone both better and worse than he had expected it to. He had been preparing to take a blissfully long lunch break to try to get out of the Ministry for an hour or two. He’d even been considering taking a cab to some Muggle restaurant way out of the way, spending some time there, and then trekking back to the Ministry on foot. That would get him out in the sunshine for a while, and still get him back in time for the trial that was later in the afternoon.
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But that plan hadn’t come to pass. The case had been moved up, his lunch break had consisted of fifteen minutes spent in line at the café in the Atrium, and then eating his meal as quickly as possible before he had to get back to the courtrooms. It had not been an ideal way for him to spend his lunch, but the bright side of the proceedings starting early should have been that they would end earlier than he’d originally anticipated. That meant that, while his lunch had been cut short, he should be able to leave for the night far sooner than he’d thought.
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In theory, anyway.
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In actuality, the proceedings had dragged on and on, spanning way longer than he’d even anticipated originally. He’d even had to slip his phone out of his pocket to send a text to his sister, letting her know that he might be late to their tea date. As deep underground as he was, he wasn’t even sure if the message would go through. Lucent made good cellphones, ones that magic didn’t tend to interfere with, but successfully sending a text down on the tenth floor of the Ministry was a lot to ask for any phone. Still, he’d sent the message off anyway and hoped that Sierra understood that the chiming noise meant that she had an alert. She hadn’t had a phone as long as the rest of them, after all.
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By the time he was out of that courtroom and heading up to the Atrium, he was definitely running late. Not quite late yet, but certainly getting there. If he were to hop in a cab and tell him to get him to the coffeeshop on the double, he might just manage to be on time. But after sitting for so long down in the courtrooms, after dealing with far more people today than he’d thought and far more hours at the Ministry than he expected, he needed a smoke. Probably two or three, actually. And if he walked to the coffeeshop, and walked quick enough, he wouldn’t be too late, and he would be able to smoke. That would hopefully put him in a better mood by the time he made it to his sister. She was always the one that seemed to worry after him more than anyone else. He couldn’t get her to stop that, even when he tried, because he was the one that was supposed to be doing the worrying. He was the one that was supposed to take care of everyone.
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Of course, Sierra was a Dolohov now, so she didn’t technically need him to take care of her. But she was still his family and now that she was back home, he was going to worry about her and want to make sure that she was all right, even if she had her husband for that. She was still his sister, and she should not be the one worrying about him.
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The clouds above him were ominous as he walked, threatening rain at any moment. Thankfully, they held, though. He was halfway through his third cigarette as he approached the coffeeshop, and there was an ashtray atop the trash bin outside. Discarding it, he headed inside, immediately heading in the direction of his sister. The shop wasn’t too busy—an off time of day for coffee, he supposed, but that coffee was what he wanted anyway. “Sorry I’m late,” he kissed her cheek in return. He wasn’t even sure how late he was, just that he certainly couldn’t be on time when he’d decided to walk here instead of catching a taxi. “Oh, good. Thank you.” Tea would hopefully help to further improve his mood. The cigarettes had done a little, but not nearly enough. “How are you?” He asked, once he sat down. He picked up one of the teabags and set it in the mug, before filling it with hot water from the teapot. Once Sierra’s tea was steeping, he did the same to his own.
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[attr="class","cnotes"]835 ● @ sister ● outfit

[attr="class","cred"]MADE BY VEL OF WW + ADOX 2.0

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fighting in a losing battle

Making a noose out of your hollow crown

I hold a match up to your paper castle

Taking care of them all was her job. She had taken that on herself. Or at least, taking care of Michael, and looking after Kallisto. Because she knew that it wasn’t really her place. She wasn’t the eldest. She wasn’t the one that was supposed to have taken that on, but she was. She was the one that had stepped into that role, because it was a natural one for her. And because it was one that she didn’t trust Donna to fulfill. Perhaps for Kali. But that situation was different. Her youngest sister was not truly her sister at all, she was her niece, and yet, she was sure that Kallisto would always be her younger sister.

That was how the younger girl had been raised, and despite knowing the truth, she thought that it was fair to say that she was going to always treat her as if she didn’t know. As if she had never known. Kallisto was the reason that Sierra was everything that she was today. She was the reason that she was Lady Dolohova. She was the reason that she had spent so much time in Russia. And yet, she did not resent the girl for it. And as much as she hated her older sister, Sierra knew that it wasn’t truly all Donna’s fault either.

There was only one family member that she hated with such ferocity that she could not even bring herself to overcome it and act polite, and that was Van. Her brother had made decisions that she could not forgive him for. He had acted selfishly so many times. Walked away from everything that he should have stepped up and done his duty for. None of them got what they wanted. None of them were truly happy. And though she thought that she was close, there would always be things that she wanted.

One of those things was to see her younger brother happy, and Van had taken that away from Michael with no consideration. He had stolen the chance that he had had at happiness, and Sierra knew it. She knew how much Michael suffered, better than he or anyone else realized. She could feel it. She could feel it in her every breath when she was around him. The pain that washed over him. And if it were physical pain, perhaps it could have been mended. But she didn’t think that this was going to mend as easily.

She could feel the stress, and the general feeling that being in the Ministry all day had on her brother. But there was more to him than just his emotions that she could sense when he returned the kiss to her cheek and sat down across from her. He smelled of cigarette smoke. And she knew that that habit was going to kill him far sooner than anything else would. But he would never give it up. He depended on it too much, and she could understand that. Antonin was the same way sometimes. Far too dependent on things that would kill him.

But her brother and her father-in-law had more on their minds than a lot of others were aware of. And she monitored them both. She watched for warning signs that bad days were coming. Las knew that she did that when it came to his father. But her brother was a different story. She protected Michael as much as she could, and that meant that she kept his problems, and anything that she could sieve from him to herself afterwards. “You are not terribly late.”

Even if he had been, she would have waited. Cancelling was not an option when it came to Michael. Unless one of her children were dying, she thought that she would have rescheduled just about anything to make sure that her brother was okay. And taking tea with him in the afternoons was easy enough to monitor how he was doing. Other than the stress, and the Ministry worry that had been present as of late, she thought that he could have been worse off. She had seen him plenty worse off. Felt it… Really…

She studied him for a full minute as he set the tea in front of them to steep. Reading, judging, deciding how much she was going to try and take. Because she could. She could take some of what was bothering him into herself over the course of the conversation. Sierra had gotten clever about that over the years. She had made sure that she did it slowly. That it seemed to evaporate with her conversation, and not because she was pulling it into herself. But without control of her magic it was far more difficult. She had very little control. Even focusing on just Michael’s emotions was taxing on her mind. She could feel everything happening in this shop and blocking out what she didn’t want was taking a great deal of focus. Her head would be pounding by the time that they left.

“I’m well. Getting ready for the return of my children.” Miriavetta was still at home, but both Alexandria and Ikor would be returning from Hogwarts in a few weeks. “Have you been here in London all day?” She knew that he had, but even her family did not know what it was that she could do. Lassider was the only one that did. She couldn’t tell Michael that she knew he had been in court all day when she herself was currently not at work either.

@ родной брат • 925 • sierra's outfit

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

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[attr="class","clbox"]

[attr="class","ctopline"]WELL SHE WORE YOU LIKE SILK

[attr="class","cscriptministry"]bandaged all around

[attr="class","cline"]

[attr="class","clyrics"]THE SCARS OF YOUR LOVE[break]
BECAME YOUR HOLLOW CROWN

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[attr="class","cbody"]Spending time with Sierra always had a way of turning his day around. He didn’t know how she did it. He supposed that she was just able to relax around her more than he was really able to relax around anybody else. She put him at ease. It was probably because she was his older sister—that was what older sisters were supposed to do, normally anyhow. Michael couldn’t claim to have that reaction after spending time with Donna, but his relationship with Donna was different than his relationship with Sierra. Not to say it was bad. It wasn’t. But it was certainly not the same as his relationship with Sierra. They were two different people, of course his relationships with them were not identical.
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He loved them both, though. There was nothing that was more important to him than family. He put them above everything in his life. That was the way that it should be, in his opinion. He was the Lord Parkinson now. That was not a title that he’d ever thought that he would have, but it was one that had fallen to him all the same. It meant that the future of their house was on him, the future of their family name was on him, and he had to do everything that he could not to let them down. Not to let his parents down, from wherever he was sure they were watching. Michael knew that he couldn’t have been an ideal pick for the Parkinson heir either. His father had picked him over Van, but he knew that neither Parkinson male was necessarily perfect for the job. Van was a hedonistic rockstar that cared more about sex and alcohol than he did his family, and Michael was too sensitive and too artistic to have a great mind for politics and everything that came along with it. Better the oversensitive one than the one that didn’t care about anything but himself, he supposed.
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Trying to take care of his family was all that he ever wanted to do. Everything that he did was for them. He tried to be the best Lord Parkinson he could be, so that Kali wouldn’t have to pick up the slack. He would find a pure wife to marry and bear him heirs so that Kali could run off with a Muggleborn if she so desired. He didn’t think there was much of a chance of that happening, but still. He wanted her free to make decisions based on love and what she wanted, not based on what was best for the Parkinson line. He would take on that responsibility, so that she didn’t have to. He tried to be the best Lord he could be so that Van didn’t regret his decisions—what a laughable thought. Michael truly didn’t think that day would ever come. Van didn’t stop to look around and see how his actions affected other people. He never had.
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But he still loved his brother. Even if that seemed one-sided at times, he could never hate him. He was still family at the end of the day. Even after the end of a rough day at the Ministry, when he reminded himself that it should be Van with this Wizengamot spot, not him, he couldn’t bring himself to hate his older brother for leaving all of this on his shoulders. Hating just wasn’t something that he was all that capable of. It was the Hufflepuff in him, maybe.
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And today had been a rough day. With the court case being moved up an hour, cutting into the long lunch break he’d planned on taking, and then running late to make him cut it awful close for tea with his sister, it had definitely not been the best day. Walking here and taking the time to smoke might have made him later, but it certainly improved his demeanor. Passably, anyway. “Oh, right. That would be… next week?” Or something like that. He didn’t fully keep up on the Hogwarts calendar, but it hadn’t been too long since he’d been there. He thought it was certainly the first or second week of June that exams came to an end. “I have. Duty calls, and all that.” Merlin knew that there were a dozen other things he would have rather done today, but there was nothing he could do about that.
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[attr="class","cnotes"]733 ● @ sierra ● outfit

[attr="class","cred"]MADE BY VEL OF WW + ADOX 2.0

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