Difficult
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oh, i know spiralling is miserable, i should probably go back home — why does that feel difficult? It was with much reluctance and against her will that Stella returned home from Hogwarts for the November exeat weekend, having been all but dragged from the castle to the train by her siblings. Her unwillingness was not due to a lack of homesickness, but rather the overabundance of it, and her deep-rooted refusal to give her family any reason to worry. Unfortunately, it appeared that the Bianchi siblings had picked up on their youngest sister's isolation and misery at Hogwarts, and now she was being frog-marched back home so their parents could deal with whatever was going on with her. They weren't exactly being discreet about it— the four of them had sat Stella down at a lunch and told her they thought it'd be a good idea to go home as a family for the weekend, but they'd never come back for exeats in previous years, and Giulia wasn't even complaining about missing Quidditch. All Stella could think was that she'd have to play damage control with her parents' worries for two whole days. She'd never been a good actress, though, and if she hadn't been able to hide her problems from her siblings in the busy day-to-day life at Hogwarts, she wasn't sure how she was supposed to do it when she was around her parents' probing questions and anxieties all weekend with no escape. It was astonishing, really, how quickly her confidence had eroded in the two months that she'd been at Hogwarts. Stella would have loved to blame it on her tumultuous rivalry with Valkyrja, or the confrontation she'd had with Elena not too long ago, but if she really, really thought about it, she knew the source of her misery ran deeper than that. She couldn't quite name what it was that had destabilised her in such a short amount of time, but she knew that nothing at Hogwarts had worked out the way she'd thought it would. The way she'd wanted it to. And so here she was in London again, slinging a small blue duffle bag over her shoulder before following her siblings off the Mystic Pullman, her mouth set in a stubborn, petulant line. When she'd figured out that her sisters and brother had written about her to their parents behind her back, she couldn't help but feel like she'd been betrayed, in a sense. And although Stella knew it was a childish lense to view things from, the sting from the realisation of her siblings' actions was too fresh for her to admit it. (To their credit, they'd recognised that she was upset with them, giving her a fair amount of space and letting her snippy attitude slide when they typically wouldn't... but the awareness of the patience they were treating her with had only worsened Stella's mood, serving as a reminder that she was pettier, younger, and more immature than whatever high road they were taking as a united front.) Still, her resolve weakened when she saw her parents waiting for them at the station, looking the same as they always did. Concetta enveloped her youngest child in a warm embrace almost immediately, and any tension in Stella's shoulders would dissipate, duffle bag dropping to the ground unnoticed as she breathed in the scent of her mother's coat and expensive perfume for the first time in over two months. In spite of her determination to stay angry at her family, she found herself fighting a sudden lump in her throat, and shut her eyes tight against her mother's scarf to avoid any embarrassing tears in front of her older siblings. "Mamma," she finally managed. "I missed you." The Italian language felt strange on her tongue, as if it didn't quite belong there, the same way she didn't seem to fit anywhere anymore. The moment was broken up by Carlotta's voice, protesting that she wanted a hug too, and Stella detached herself from Concetta (with more reluctance than she'd like to admit) to say hi to her papà, hoping that no one noticed the tears she was still blinking back. Antonio pulled his daughter towards him in a side hug, looking down at her with that same old twinkle in his eye. The familiar weight of his arm around her shoulders was almost enough to melt her like sugar in water, and for a moment Stella was unable to hold any anger towards her family for making her come home. "Did you get taller, piccola?" he teased playfully, giving her shoulder a squeeze. "What have they been feeding you at Hogwarts?" And there it was again. As harmless and small as the comment was, the mention of Hogwarts was enough for Stella's wall of resentment to build back up just as quickly as it had broken down. She knew she was being unreasonably childish about the whole thing and yet, for whatever reason, she couldn't stop herself. Her shoulders gave a small, involuntary twitch and she twisted herself out of Antonio's grip, a blank look settling back over her face. "I don't know," she said stiffly. She'd reverted to English almost without realising, as if she could hide behind her own words if she wasn't using the language of her family. "Why does it matter?" She turned around to pick up the duffle bag she'd dropped on the ground, but not before catching the look of concern shared between her parents and the eyerolls between her siblings. Stella resisted the urge to scream in frustration and focused on the feeling of her fingers around the handles of her bag instead, blocking out those looks on their faces as best as she could. Being treated like a spoiled baby made her want to tear the skin off her body, but she also couldn't shake the rising sense of guilt and the thought that maybe they would have a point— and if that was the case, she was being terribly ungrateful. |
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| TAGS ⋆ [ interactions. ] Bianchi family [ mentions. ] Elena Clark, Valkyrja H.K. |
a nameless girl in the freshest summer greens, a saint, an angel;
Difficult
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and oh, i hope i wake up invisible — i'd be someone no one knows... i guess i'm just difficult Stella could feel her family tiptoeing around her from the moment she woke up. Like they were afraid that one wrong word, one step too loud, was going to trigger some kind of explosion from her. She supposed that she couldn't really blame them for it, given her surly silence the previous night, but the building tension between her and them marked every interaction with a sharp undercurrent, and by early afternoon, any attempts at small talk were falling increasingly flat, with Stella not-so-subtly dodging her parents' every attempted segue into talking about Hogwarts. The concerned glances her parents shot at each other over her head did not go unnoticed. Nor was the knot of guilt, gnawing persistently at her every time she avoided the topic. She knew it was odd behaviour on her end—to have spent her first two months at Hogwarts desperately homesick, and then utterly close herself off from the very people she missed almost immediately upon reunion. She couldn't make head or tail of her own feelings; all Stella knew was that she really, really didn't want to talk about how badly she was failing at Hogwarts. What she wanted was for time to loop around itself and restore her life to how she thought it'd be, how it was supposed to turn out, but she couldn't make sense of that either. Stella had tried putting it down in a journal some weeks back, but the words had looked so shallow and foolish on paper that she'd scribbled over them in angry black lines until the nib of her quill tore the page near in half. It was reasonable to assume that she wouldn't be able to talk about any of it out loud even if she wanted to, least of all to her parents. It wasn't as though they'd be unkind or dismissive about it; on the contrary, Concetta and Antonio seemed absolutely desperate to offer her all the help they could give. Rather, it was the fact that they thought she needed help in the first place that bothered her... and the fact that they'd be right. Stella could feel shame burning in the pit of her stomach every time she thought about it—none of her siblings' first months at Hogwarts had warranted a reaction like this from anyone. The sun started to set around half past four these days, which felt like (but wasn't) much earlier than Stella could ever remember, even for mid-November in London. Her siblings were in the backyard playing a game of Quidditch while there was still enough light to see each other's figures and broomsticks. Stella could hear their shouts of laughter from her spot in the living room, curled into the soft corner of an armchair with a book she wasn't so much as reading as she was just glaring at. "They didn't even ask me if I wanted to come," she said to the fireplace. Never mind the very likely probability that she would've said no and ended up sulking in the same spot, nor the fact that it wasn't really the lack of invitation that troubled her. It hadn't escaped her that they'd filed out the back door twenty minutes prior in a manner too seamless to be spontaneous, like some silent signal had passed her by... clearly, they'd all talked about this, and she wasn't in on it. Stella sighed and restlessly thumbed through the pages of her book. She couldn't shake the feeling that there was something coming her way—that she'd missed something in spite of her efforts to keep her family at bay. Lost in thought, she barely registered the faint creaks of the floorboards from the hallway, but there was no disregarding the soft murmur of conversation that drew nearer with each second like a trap closing in. It was startling how smoothly the puzzle pieces connected in her mind, how fast the realisation sank in that she'd been planned around and gently guided into a moment she couldn't escape from. Of course, with all four of her siblings still outside playing Quidditch, it could be no one but her parents... "Hey, Stella," her mother's voice sounded from the doorway in Italian. "Got a minute to chat?" Stella half-turned reluctantly to face them, trying to keep her expression neutral in spite of her dismay. "Not really," she mumbled in a last ditch attempt to stop whatever this was from happening. Her parents stepped into the room anyway, their faces set with quiet determination as if making a conscious effort not to listen to her. She hadn't expected anything different, but as Antonio and Concetta settled onto the sofa across from her with feigned ease, their unwanted concern suddenly felt infinitely too heavy. Discomfited by the weight of it, Stella shrank backwards into the armchair a little and folded her arms firmly across her chest in a stubborn attempt to regain control and quell her anxiety. It was difficult to ignore the way they were looking at her, with the same concentrated patience and watchful care usually reserved for a sick child on the mend, or a vase teetering on the edge of a shelf. She noted it with irritation and pointedly avoided eye contact, fixing her eyes on the wall to the right of her mother's head instead. The tension thickened between the three of them until Antonio finally cleared his throat, evidently unwilling to sit in awkward silence. "Your siblings mentioned to us that you haven't been yourself lately," her father said, very gently. "Your mamma and I wanted to bring you home this weekend and ask if everything's okay at school." He leaned forward ever so slightly, and Stella could feel his gaze growing more intent as he waited for a response. But as much as she tried, she couldn't quite seem to give them one, the words knotting themselves within her. Something was twisting sharply from the inside of her chest, coils of hurt and disbelief unravelling and tangling with the hollow satisfaction of being proven right. Her father's words were direct confirmation of her suspicions of this exeat weekend's true purpose—to interrogate her, to pin her down as a problem, to sort her out. Given that she'd already suspected (and the fact that no one had been very discreet about their concern), Stella knew it shouldn't have stung this much. But the bitter victory of her foresight was catching in the back of her throat as if she'd swallowed clay, thick and heavy with resentment and shame. They thought she was weak. That there was something wrong with her. Finally, after a painful pause, Stella managed a tight nod. "Everything is fine." Her voice had stayed level by some miracle, but the words sounded brittle and false to her own ears. She could tell by her mother's pained expression and the way her father settled back against the sofa that they didn't believe it either. Her helpless desperation to get them to just drop it was flaring like a small fire inside her, and without even realising, she was leaning forward in her seat and clearing her throat before they had a chance to interject. She tried again in English, the tone of her voice tinged with frustration. "I mean it. I'm fine. Really." Liar, her conscience whispered from the back of her mind. Stella pushed it down and pressed on with grim resolve. "I've just been... tired. But everyone has. I don't need anyone keeping tabs on me, I swear." Each word was a rebellion of sorts, an attempt to regain the ground she'd felt slipping beneath her, but she'd always been a terrible liar. Neither of them said anything, but the weight of their attention seemed to press down even harder. Her father was regarding her with measured scrutiny, brows slightly furrowed and fingers drumming gently against the arm of the sofa. Brown eyes sharp, pinning her against a butterfly board. Next to him, Concetta's gaze was soft but unwavering in the firelight, and Stella found it almost impossible to meet it. Unable to decode the looks on their faces, she offered them what she hoped was a convincing smile. A faint start caught her as she recalled that she never used to have trouble reading her parents. Then again, she never used to lie to them either. Finally, her mother folded her hands in her lap with a sigh, breaking the uneasy silence. "It's not about keeping tabs," Concetta said carefully. "We're just worried. We wanted to know if something was up, that's all. If you're okay." Stella bristled, chest tightening at the softness in her mother's voice. "I am," she insisted far too quickly. Her words came out sharp, frayed with desperation, and she hated the way it sounded—too thin, too pleading, like she was trying to convince herself as much as them. Concetta looked like she wanted to say more, but Antonio's quiet hand over her knee seemed to still her. Stella glared at it, resentment veiled only thinly in her eyes. It was the same kind of wordless exchange that she had seen a hundred times at dinner parties and family meetings, a shared language of understanding, and seeing it made something small and mean curl up in her chest. Now she was the subject of the careful diplomacy, had turned into a problem to be managed. "Stella..." Her father trailed off, and the hesitation in his voice was like a shock to the system. Antonio Bianchi rarely left his thoughts finished; he was a man of clean sentences and certainty, the kind of person Stella could trust to know what came next. Hearing him falter now—her stomach was knotting, with shame and guilt, yes, but fear also, for the tremor in a voice that had always sounded sure. Were her faults so great that they could shake even him, even if just for a moment? The thought frightened her, cold and unforgiving, in a way no anger ever could. "You know you can talk to us if something's wrong though, right? We just want to help, piccola, truly-" The endearment hit harder than any scolding could have. Unable to look at her parents any longer, Stella dropped her gaze to her hands, picking at the hem of her sleeve. "I know," she said, cutting her father off before he could go any further. Usually she'd be gently reprimanded for interrupting, but Antonio only went still, and somehow that was worse, the absence of correction lodging in her throat like a stone. She forced the words out anyway. "But there's nothing wrong." With her denial, she could feel the uneasy silence gathering again, thick and inevitable, the kind that left space for her parents to dissect every untruth she'd thrown at them. Stella scrambled to fill it with something, anything, eyes darting frantically from her hands to the fireplace then to her parents, whose faces met hers with such tenderness that it almost hurt to see it. "You don't have to look at me like that," she blurted. Her father blinked, confusion creasing his forehead. "Like what?" "Like I'm-" She stopped herself before the rest of the sentence could tumble out, before she could admit what she was thinking: like I'm about to break. Stella could feel the sting of tears building behind her eyes, unwelcome and humiliating. Her walls were coming down, her control over her composure slipping away with each passing moment, and she didn't like it at all. She tried again, as if words could filibuster emotion, "I just— I just wish—" and could not seem to finish that sentence either, at least not out loud. Wish I was okay. Wish you'd believe me. Wish I believed myself. None of which seemed like answers she could give her parents. Not when she sounded like this, all sharp edges and tearful frustration. It occurred to her how stupid and flimsy and unreliable the word wish was, a child's word, one that she hated herself for still reaching for. She pressed her nails into her palms until the bite steadied her—a vicious kind of grounding, but the only one she could think of. Across from her, her parents still hadn't moved. Stella almost wished they'd say something now, just so she could hear something other than her own uneven breathing. It was unfamiliar, this lack of pushback from her parents; both of them were usually so determined to get to the bottom of things, so skilled at unravelling what was left unsaid. But wasn't this what she had wanted—space, quiet, a reprieve from questioning? No, she realised, silence didn't mean agreement, nor understanding. Nor that she was off the hook. As a matter of fact, she could feel their concern coiling even tighter around her, thickening like fog rolling in across the room. Stella knew if she didn't get out soon, she'd crack completely open, words and tears spilling out before she could stop them, the truth tumbling out in a rush she couldn't take back. No doubt that was exactly what her parents were hoping for—an honest confession, a chance to fix things (to fix her)—but it was the very last thing she wanted. The last thing she could afford. Stella swallowed hard, forcing down the lump in her throat. She lifted her gaze just enough to speak, still unable to meet her parents' eyes. "Can I go now?" Her voice was small, her words a fragile plea trembling as they left her lips. Please don't ask me anything else. Please don't make me talk. Please let me go. Please, please, please. She watched as her mother's hand turned over under Antonio's to grasp it, a careful hesitation passing between the two of them in that familiar, unspoken glance again. The room somehow felt simultaneously smaller and more expansive in that moment, like the air itself was holding its breath waiting for their answer. Finally, after what seemed like an age, Concetta nodded, slow and deliberate. "Of course, sweetheart... we'll talk later, va bene?" Stella didn't answer. She rose from her armchair, shaky with relief that she'd been given permission to retreat, and brushed past the pressing haze of her parents' concern and felt it coil behind her like a shadow as she moved towards the doorway, each step feeling both impossibly long and entirely too fast; the book she'd been pretending to read remained open and face-down on a cushion, forgotten. Stella thought she heard her mother sigh behind her, and felt it twist low in her stomach like a knife. She could not bring herself to look back, feeling their eyes on her back like static under her skin even as she turned the corner, catching at the edges of her resolve. Every part of her wanted to shake it off, this invisible weight of being watched, worried over, known. Upstairs in her room, the air felt cooler, thinner somehow, carrying a faint relief with it. Stella sat very still and silent on the edge of her bed, letting her chest hollow with each shuddering breath, pressing her palms to her eyes until bright spots danced beneath her eyelids. From the other side of the house, her siblings' laughter continued to drift upwards distantly as they entered the house—bright, effortless, and entirely unreachable, a language she could no longer speak or step into without giving herself away. All of it—the unasked questions, her siblings' chatter, her keen awareness of her family's worries—it all hung behind her locked bedroom door, like a storm she couldn't quite see but still felt pressing insistently against her skin. Contained only by the invisible line she herself had drawn to keep her family members out. She was exhausted, exhausted by the contradiction of longing for comfort while recoiling from it, of knowing where to turn and still tightening her grip on silence. The paradox sat somewhere deep in her chest, heavy and unrelenting, until it was difficult to know whether it was loneliness or pride that kept her pinned in place. Maybe both. She thought about going downstairs again, perhaps apologising and saying something that would make it all less strange for them—and banished the idea immediately, knowing she didn't have it in her anymore, the courage to face the unbearably understanding looks on their faces again without shattering completely. So instead Stella stayed where she was, until the room blurred around her, until the ache behind her eyes dulled to something quieter, each breath and sob a tide pulling softly against the shore of her unravelling: returning, retreating, returning again. |
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| TAGS ⋆ [ interactions. ] Bianchi family [ mentions. ] No one else NOTE ⋆ assume the Bianchis are speaking Italian unless otherwise indicated |
a nameless girl in the freshest summer greens, a saint, an angel;