Letters to Nowhere PV Elena Closed

Ruka smiled brightly, feeling strangely happy about the fact that Elena left her accent the way it was naturally.
It felt somehow more open, more approachable, almost like she trusted him with a bit of herself that she didn't trust everyone with.
He listened intently as she explained why it was that she had decided to hide her accent, and it made him feel kind of bad for her.
He'd heard quite a lot about pureblood families and their values, had all the time to think about the things Cassie had told him about how blood was like a status thing, and he still didn't really understand any of it.
What was it about this pure blood that made some wizards and witches feel like they were better than others? Why did they expect a certain kind of behavior for people of a certain status?
Did Muggles go through the same kind of things in normal schools? If so then Ruka was quite glad to never have gone to one.
"But if you're hiding parts of you in order to fit in... You still don't really fit in, do you?" he mused, fixing his gaze on a nearby owl.
For a second he thought that it had to be nice to be an owl. They probably didn't need to worry about status and blood purity.
"I don't really get it," he admitted after a moment of staring into nothingness. "The whole status thing. You're supposed to have pure blood and act a certain way and think a certain way... Why is it important?" He sighed and looked down at his shoes for a moment. So far he hadn't really had a run-in with one of those stereotypical Purebloods he'd heard about, but he was sure they wouldn't approve of him either; homeless halfblood, raised by a Muggle father and wearing mismatched clothes in the wrong size. Maybe this was why he hadn't talked to that many people yet. Maybe he was subconsciously trying to avoid any confrontation.
He really needed to try and get rid of this obsessive need to be well liked by everyone.
He looked back at Elena again to listen to her telling him about her fear of getting sent back to her old life again, and he was tempted to ask her exactly why, but it felt a bit too intrusive for the short time they had been talking so far.
Instead of probing the subject any further, Ruka decided just to nod like he understood before turning his attention a bit more on the owls that didn't seem too worried about flying into anybody should they be in their way.
"They freak me out a bit," he admitted with a little laugh. Having basically grown up near forests he almost felt embarrassed to have a slight fear of the owls. "I mean, they have those eyes. Everytime one flies towards me I feel like I can see in their eyes that they do it to scare me." He laughed at his own ridiculousness and shrugged his shoulders. "I guess I'm a bit more of a cats and dogs person myself."

Elena frowned, "I still fit in, I just got used to usin' it really. Like I know Alan and Hugh wouldn't care, and that most of my friends are just used to me sounding like that."

To a point she'd thought about it earlier, and decided that nobody would really care. When she eventually lost the cover it would probably be while lecturing someone, or simply telling someone off for other reasons, an angry cockney accent would slip through at best, and be uncontrollable at worst. Due to Ruka not really knowing Elena, she decided not to push him out the window

"That's the trick Ruka, none of it really matters in the end. Luckily I have enough self awareness to tell purebloods off anyway, I once spent a decent chunk of time yelling at one. Good times. Elena snorted, not going on to tell the kid that she'd managed to make more enemies with her righteous indignation than friends. Although the bitter thought lurked at the edge of her mind.

"Well, if they freak you out a bit then maybe you'd like to meet a friend of mine." Elena turned toward the window and let out a sharp whistle, about a minute later a tiny owl came swooping through the window and onto Elena's shoulder, "This is Valek, Valek meet Ruka."

The owl made its weird-cute little screech noise and looked at Ruka.

Ruka could tell that he may have overstepped a bit; he may nit have had a lot of social contacts growing up but he was still able to recognise when he had misjudged something.
He frowned a little as he looked out the window, thinking about what Elena had said. "But then what were you scared of?" he asked as gently as possible. He didn't want Elena to think that he was judging her, he just didn't have any understanding of social status in the wizarding world.
Or in the Muggle world, think of it.
"I mean... When you first started using the other accent instead of your natural one?" Elena didn't strike him as someone who cared all that much about what other people thought of her, and if she said her friends wouldn't care about her accent... Well, then why wasn't she using it? "It's just that I imagine it to be kind of... exhausting? For you, I mean. To have to think about how you talk, to consciously try not to let your accent slip?" He shrugged lightly and looked down at his hands fumbling with his too long sleeves. "I'm sorry," he added quickly, not wanting her to think him judgmental. "I've never really been around people much, I find some things a bit hard to understand." He chuckled a bit awkwardly and looked up at Elena with a toothy smile. "I'm always scared that people might not like me - I've never had any friends in my life, never knew anybody my age, you know? - and... it makes me a bit uneasy, how much you can be judged for. Your clothes, your accent, whether you're a pureblood or halfblood or Muggleborn... He drifted off, realising that he was rambling a bit and Elena surely didn't need to hear about his own self esteem problems. "It doesn't matter to me, really, which accent you talk in and why you do. I guess I'm just trying to figure out how... how people work." He bit the inside of his cheeks, feeling awkward and a little stupid so he averted his eyes again, smiling out of the window. That is until a small owl flew right through it, making him flinch a bit, and landed swiftly on Elena's shoulder.
"Valek," he repeated the owl's name curiously, reaching a hand out to carefully pet the side of its tiny head. "He's cute. Like a little ball." He laughed, tilting his head to the side as he let two of his fingers glide over Valek's soft feathers. "He looks like most letters would be bigger than him, the tiny thing."

Elena's posh accent was back up again, "It's armour. My hair, my accent, my necklace, this cloak. Every single one has a story about them, something that makes them act like armour, emotional armour. I can take on the world with these."

It was a better explanation than that if she heard the cockney accent for too long she started thinking about the streets then got mentally trapped there. It wasn't very fun for her.

"Feel free to ask about them, I don't mind." Elena thought she'd make it clear that topic of conversation was open to questioning, "And it's okay, I get it. I just like having a mask to wear, it makes me... how do I put this? Not more dangerous, but yeah, more dangerous."

It was a terrible attempt at an explanation but Elena had never exactly been Shakespeare when it came to expressing herself. She smiled at his reaction to Valek, the little bird made a happy screech and looked very happy at being petted, "Yep, I can only really send one letter at a time, luckily I don't have him owl anyone outside the castle. Don't really need to owl anyone outside the castle, funny that."