OWL: To Ginny Weasley

[shh_jack]

Date: 20 Dec 2004
Characters: Ginny Weasley, Jack Sloper
Place: Jack's Workshop, Ginny's Dorm
Summary: Jack bites the bullet and goes looking for answers.
Status: Private
Completion: Complete

Comments

[shh_jack]

She practically barrelled past Jack, his back meeting the wall none too softly as she seemed to walk forward in as much of a trance as he was in just now. She turned sharply, and he couldn't help but flinch as she thrust her arms out before he saw what was held between them.

School? Didn't we finish that...years ago?

Guess she's still...

Shh...

"Alicia said what? Bill...slow down, love..." He murmured faintly, his mind racing to catch up with her. But it seemed she wasn't to be dissuaded as she continued, her mouth obviously moving at the same pace as her quite formidable mind as she threw word after word at him. He couldn't disagree with some of it - she was, after all, a fairly bad Owl writer, but still. He felt like his head was spinning as he tried to keep up, his train of thought seemingly yanked into overdrive right along with hers from the depressed, lackadaisical frame of mind it had been in before.

His eyes flicked to her as he picked out key words in her thirty-thousand-mile-an-hour speech and he caught her gaze a moment later, his haze making it hard to read her, but he felt her emotion through everything she was radiating at him. Her posture, her gesticulations, her eyes, her expression, her slightly frantic way of spilling her thoughts at a speed that would put Kali to shame...it all screamed honesty and it screamed regret, and it cried out to him for him to listen to her, to hear, really hear what she was saying. And he was trying, Merlin he was trying, but it was so hard to fight through his own feelings on the matter and keep up with her, to follow her movements as she walked from side to side, to glance at his falcon perched precariously on her shoulder, waiting for a chance to escape that wouldn't cause her to collide with the woman's head.

"Ginny, calm..." He started again, but was interrupted once more by her resumption of her dialogue, the stream of words and consciousness erupting from her and slamming straight back into him with the force of a ten-ton weight. He felt like he was suffocating under her words, he wasn't in the best frame of mind to start this off with, and he was scared, he was utterly terrified and he wanted to run, until he caught her words about loving him beyond measure. He had to make a conscious, physical effort to resist the urge to cough, the clear the sudden obstruction in his throat. They'd said they loved each other before, but it had always been after an instigating factor, or the latest stupid tragedy that seemed to befall them, or when they were half asleep. Granted, Ginny was emotional as hell now, but it didn't change that fact that it was the first time he'd heard it said to him with such visceral meaning, with such passion and with such an openness that he hadn't expected to see from the youngest Weasley.

It was clear then to him, in that instant, that this was it. There was no careful ommittance of fact, there was no warping of the truth, there were no falsehoods, misnomers or white lies. There was no closeting of her mind and soul to him. This was it, this was Ginny, here she was in front of him, and he honestly didn't know what to do now. He was so lost, and confused, and scared and bewildered and strangely comforted and good god was he that fucking fallen for her that he was seriously getting in such a panic over things that she was saying to him? Had he actually got to the point where he felt like everything that he was was hanging by a thread on what she was saying to him, what she wanted to do, on the next few, or many words that left her lips? When did that happen?

Do you really need to ask that?

No...but I'd like an answer anyway.

Not everything needs an answer, Jack. The world and people don't work in no calculations of size, weight and force. This is something she's trying to teach you, let it happen.