[melt your heart, through pieces of stone]
cracks and lines
written for orlanstamos, because hell is not just a sauna (and neither is finals week). also, andy came back, which makes us all very happy. noisy headvoices.
And we've lost the people we could've loved in you
What you know you have or what you think you want
It's never perfect
It's bound to melt your heart
One way or another
Sometimes she has to break into pieces, in order to be put back together again. Reconstructed Andromeda Black, who fell apart, keeps falling apart, and in the end is nothing but bits and pieces. An image that is complete from far away, but up close one can see the cracks. Sometimes, she’s certain that all that exists are the cracks.
These are the things she covers up, buries under black trousers and black coats and black jumpers that are fading to grey, things that she rubs in the skin using too much force just as she uses lotion to trap out the winter winds. These are the things that Ted will never know.
He’ll never know that her mother smelled like perfume that was too old, too refined, too strong, mixed with alcohol. A well prepared soothing draught doesn’t leave any trace on the drinker’s breath and it leaves even less of one when mixed with something that smells so strongly. All her childhood, that was the smell of Druella Rosier-Black, lying there, idle in a chair or on a divan, listless, awake yet not at all, and that smell surrounded her like a ghost. To be honest, it probably still did.
He won’t know that this smell drove her mad, was the first thing she tried to break herself of, only because wrapping herself in it, becoming the shadow of her mother, failed so miserable. Fourteen and wreaking of things that weren’t hers, the potion and the whisky turning her stomach as she lay on the carpet of her room, staring at the grotesquely beautiful figures moving above her, moving out of character as her vision blurred and she wondered if it was possible to drown in a smell. Six (or perhaps it was sixteen) hours later, she wound up waking up, smelling of cold sweat and fear and all of the vomit that she immediately expelled on the floor.
She was never her mother’s daughter to start with; it had been foolish of her to try at all.
Oh Ted, a winning example of so many things she’s not, that she couldn’t really be, even though she tries, really tries. She stands his messes, even if she doesn’t understand them, because extraordinary people do extraordinary things, and Ted (her Ted, which fills her with pride), is anything but ordinary.
It’s this man, whom she’ll never tell about the box that she keeps under a floorboard in some corner of their comfortable house (it’s not large, but it doesn’t need to be, she wouldn’t want it to be), made of cardboard and being worn away. Time and parasites, rodents and other things are all trying to stake their claim on this box and its contents. She doesn’t care if the small enemies get their hands on the box itself, for it has always been what’s inside that counts. This box only gets to see the light of day on certain occasions, when there is something new for it, or something old needs to be seen. This box comforts when there is nothing else.
This box is filled with lives themselves, clippings of newspapers of mentions of people she knew, of those she remembers, of those she knows now, pieces of those who worry her. Who worry for her. It’s a carefully put together box, for all of its chaos, at the bottom there is rotating package of cigarettes, changed out when they go stale for she doesn’t wish to add anymore magic to this box than what exists innately in it. A box of matches as well, for this box calls for archaic things. It only comes out at moments of desperation, when Dora is sleeping, and she’s worried, not worried, she’s frightened and swearing silently that if he lives, she’ll kill him. That’s when the box comes out, and together they sit in back garden, under the eaves, and she curses and smokes and cries.
This box is full of her tears. It’s nearly bursting at the seams.
But he’ll never know, at the very least, she’ll never be the one to tell him, which is why they remain silent, even when cried out loud.
Not all of the pieces are sad, tinged with tragedy, shades of melancholy and grey. No, some of them are oddly sweet, but that doesn’t mean she’ll ever tell them. A woman lives her secrets, knows them well, even when they concern those she loves.
For instance, she’ll never tell him how she kind of knew who he was before they ever spoke. She had always been a keeper of people, not in the same cult-like way that Bella did everything, no her way was quieter, it was memories of them, ideas about them. Things that might be or never were. And he was one of the collected, from curious glance across a library, until the time when she has to spin a quick, flawless lie to cover up her intrigue as she watched all those who were not her. Her lies were never picked out, which should’ve been a sign from the start.
It wasn’t a charismatic collection, full of love. No, it was the sort of study that scholars do, like watching butterflies under glass, the scientist never thinks of herself as the subject, they are above them, different from them. Then Andy sprouted wings.
There’s a funny, odd piece, a mismatched collection of things, stories and parts. Like the part where she worries all the time that she is doing something wrong in terms of her family. She doesn’t do families, not the same way anyways, and part of isn’t sure she can. There’s the piece of her that is grateful that Dora loves colours, strays and changes from what she could look like to what she wants to. All of that magic, all of that love sticks with you, and watching her child spin in circles, flowers and funny wings on her head and back, and it warms her and chills her that this little girl, looks nothing like anything she knows.
There are the pieces that have her going to trials, sitting in the back, watching them and pretending she doesn’t know, didn’t know, didn’t care about those who are sitting under inquisition. The bit that remembers being seventeen and far too sad, far too out of place and sitting in a twisted parlour at Christmas and having Sirius tell her that they’ll runaway, and that he could fight anything with them, lisping slightly through missing teeth. They smiled then, and she laughed, because it was just funny, sweet in an ill-thought way.
All of the pieces interlock and meld together, cracks forming the seams. From the scars she doesn’t talk about, to the fact that she takes notes in all of her Charms books starting in the back or the part of her that took her to India, just so that she could know how it smelled.
Of all of those pieces, all of those cracks, those rituals, there is one that she’ll never say. That not even love can bring to her mouth again, can make her mouth move and speak. For some loves, some loves break your heart, shatter it, cast you out and ruin you, but those loves, even though you try to fight them, try to pretend they don’t exist, they’re the ones who sit silent and wait. He’ll never know that a quiet ritual, sombre, foolish, the source of hatred at herself and fuelling it at them all over again, is the fact that sometimes, when she’s not thinking or it’s a certain time of the day, she finds herself back where she started. It’s never the same place, it’s never the same time, and never the same reason, but sometimes, on certain days, her feet move her where she doesn’t normally think to go.
Sometimes, her feet take her home.
Not the home she knows to be home, the place where her heart dwells, where she can rest at night, where all that restlessness that seeps and seethes inside her finally seems to be stilled. No her feet are not that kind on those days, they take her back to those gates, to where her memories lie, the shadows of her, where the first pieces of Andromeda are buried under half-dead grass.
She never stays, not for long, just a moment, a half-forgotten thing before she even arrives, and she leaves, moves as fast if not faster than she did all those years ago, but the fact remains, she goes. It can’t be helped, she can’t forget them, even if they tried to erase her.
There are pieces, broken bits of Andromeda, but she covers them easily when she needs too. Wraps them in paper and puts them away. In the stories don’t matter, all the pieces that are missing, the cracks in the paint, because to the one matters, the one waiting and smiling and even when he’s talking logic never making much sense, there isn’t any need for a buffer.
Those are the times when it’s easy forget, as the cracks are too small to see anyways, and the scrutiny has all been left away. She’ll never fall apart, and even if she does, this is the woman who knows how to be put back together.
Reconstructed, reconstellated, all those pieces of Andromeda Tonks.
written for orlanstamos, because hell is not just a sauna (and neither is finals week). also, andy came back, which makes us all very happy. noisy headvoices.
And we've lost the people we could've loved in you
What you know you have or what you think you want
It's never perfect
It's bound to melt your heart
One way or another
Sometimes she has to break into pieces, in order to be put back together again. Reconstructed Andromeda Black, who fell apart, keeps falling apart, and in the end is nothing but bits and pieces. An image that is complete from far away, but up close one can see the cracks. Sometimes, she’s certain that all that exists are the cracks.
These are the things she covers up, buries under black trousers and black coats and black jumpers that are fading to grey, things that she rubs in the skin using too much force just as she uses lotion to trap out the winter winds. These are the things that Ted will never know.
He’ll never know that her mother smelled like perfume that was too old, too refined, too strong, mixed with alcohol. A well prepared soothing draught doesn’t leave any trace on the drinker’s breath and it leaves even less of one when mixed with something that smells so strongly. All her childhood, that was the smell of Druella Rosier-Black, lying there, idle in a chair or on a divan, listless, awake yet not at all, and that smell surrounded her like a ghost. To be honest, it probably still did.
He won’t know that this smell drove her mad, was the first thing she tried to break herself of, only because wrapping herself in it, becoming the shadow of her mother, failed so miserable. Fourteen and wreaking of things that weren’t hers, the potion and the whisky turning her stomach as she lay on the carpet of her room, staring at the grotesquely beautiful figures moving above her, moving out of character as her vision blurred and she wondered if it was possible to drown in a smell. Six (or perhaps it was sixteen) hours later, she wound up waking up, smelling of cold sweat and fear and all of the vomit that she immediately expelled on the floor.
She was never her mother’s daughter to start with; it had been foolish of her to try at all.
Oh Ted, a winning example of so many things she’s not, that she couldn’t really be, even though she tries, really tries. She stands his messes, even if she doesn’t understand them, because extraordinary people do extraordinary things, and Ted (her Ted, which fills her with pride), is anything but ordinary.
It’s this man, whom she’ll never tell about the box that she keeps under a floorboard in some corner of their comfortable house (it’s not large, but it doesn’t need to be, she wouldn’t want it to be), made of cardboard and being worn away. Time and parasites, rodents and other things are all trying to stake their claim on this box and its contents. She doesn’t care if the small enemies get their hands on the box itself, for it has always been what’s inside that counts. This box only gets to see the light of day on certain occasions, when there is something new for it, or something old needs to be seen. This box comforts when there is nothing else.
This box is filled with lives themselves, clippings of newspapers of mentions of people she knew, of those she remembers, of those she knows now, pieces of those who worry her. Who worry for her. It’s a carefully put together box, for all of its chaos, at the bottom there is rotating package of cigarettes, changed out when they go stale for she doesn’t wish to add anymore magic to this box than what exists innately in it. A box of matches as well, for this box calls for archaic things. It only comes out at moments of desperation, when Dora is sleeping, and she’s worried, not worried, she’s frightened and swearing silently that if he lives, she’ll kill him. That’s when the box comes out, and together they sit in back garden, under the eaves, and she curses and smokes and cries.
This box is full of her tears. It’s nearly bursting at the seams.
But he’ll never know, at the very least, she’ll never be the one to tell him, which is why they remain silent, even when cried out loud.
Not all of the pieces are sad, tinged with tragedy, shades of melancholy and grey. No, some of them are oddly sweet, but that doesn’t mean she’ll ever tell them. A woman lives her secrets, knows them well, even when they concern those she loves.
For instance, she’ll never tell him how she kind of knew who he was before they ever spoke. She had always been a keeper of people, not in the same cult-like way that Bella did everything, no her way was quieter, it was memories of them, ideas about them. Things that might be or never were. And he was one of the collected, from curious glance across a library, until the time when she has to spin a quick, flawless lie to cover up her intrigue as she watched all those who were not her. Her lies were never picked out, which should’ve been a sign from the start.
It wasn’t a charismatic collection, full of love. No, it was the sort of study that scholars do, like watching butterflies under glass, the scientist never thinks of herself as the subject, they are above them, different from them. Then Andy sprouted wings.
There’s a funny, odd piece, a mismatched collection of things, stories and parts. Like the part where she worries all the time that she is doing something wrong in terms of her family. She doesn’t do families, not the same way anyways, and part of isn’t sure she can. There’s the piece of her that is grateful that Dora loves colours, strays and changes from what she could look like to what she wants to. All of that magic, all of that love sticks with you, and watching her child spin in circles, flowers and funny wings on her head and back, and it warms her and chills her that this little girl, looks nothing like anything she knows.
There are the pieces that have her going to trials, sitting in the back, watching them and pretending she doesn’t know, didn’t know, didn’t care about those who are sitting under inquisition. The bit that remembers being seventeen and far too sad, far too out of place and sitting in a twisted parlour at Christmas and having Sirius tell her that they’ll runaway, and that he could fight anything with them, lisping slightly through missing teeth. They smiled then, and she laughed, because it was just funny, sweet in an ill-thought way.
All of the pieces interlock and meld together, cracks forming the seams. From the scars she doesn’t talk about, to the fact that she takes notes in all of her Charms books starting in the back or the part of her that took her to India, just so that she could know how it smelled.
Of all of those pieces, all of those cracks, those rituals, there is one that she’ll never say. That not even love can bring to her mouth again, can make her mouth move and speak. For some loves, some loves break your heart, shatter it, cast you out and ruin you, but those loves, even though you try to fight them, try to pretend they don’t exist, they’re the ones who sit silent and wait. He’ll never know that a quiet ritual, sombre, foolish, the source of hatred at herself and fuelling it at them all over again, is the fact that sometimes, when she’s not thinking or it’s a certain time of the day, she finds herself back where she started. It’s never the same place, it’s never the same time, and never the same reason, but sometimes, on certain days, her feet move her where she doesn’t normally think to go.
Sometimes, her feet take her home.
Not the home she knows to be home, the place where her heart dwells, where she can rest at night, where all that restlessness that seeps and seethes inside her finally seems to be stilled. No her feet are not that kind on those days, they take her back to those gates, to where her memories lie, the shadows of her, where the first pieces of Andromeda are buried under half-dead grass.
She never stays, not for long, just a moment, a half-forgotten thing before she even arrives, and she leaves, moves as fast if not faster than she did all those years ago, but the fact remains, she goes. It can’t be helped, she can’t forget them, even if they tried to erase her.
There are pieces, broken bits of Andromeda, but she covers them easily when she needs too. Wraps them in paper and puts them away. In the stories don’t matter, all the pieces that are missing, the cracks in the paint, because to the one matters, the one waiting and smiling and even when he’s talking logic never making much sense, there isn’t any need for a buffer.
Those are the times when it’s easy forget, as the cracks are too small to see anyways, and the scrutiny has all been left away. She’ll never fall apart, and even if she does, this is the woman who knows how to be put back together.
Reconstructed, reconstellated, all those pieces of Andromeda Tonks.