TW: suicidal thoughts

If he allowed himself to dwell on it for too long, he would spiral the other direction and Alvin knew better than to start on that slippery slope. It wasn't easy, trying to claw one's way out of such a hole, but he was trying. If only for his mother's sake than anything else. Losing Sloane, Wally's life permanently changed, he knew she couldn't handle watching another of her children sink into something she couldn't fix. He felt almost guilty that he might be able to reclaim this lost portion of his life when he knew neither Sloane nor Wally would be able to, but he couldn't let it stop him either. He would do anything to have Sloane back, but it was impossible; he would be there every step of the way for Wally's recovery; but he couldn't lose himself in that either. Another downward spiral might actually kill him.

He hadn't told anybody how bad it had gotten about this time last year, when he knew his hand was beyond repair and his career was over. It was what had propelled him home around Christmastime, thinking being around family would help. Or maybe just to visit one last time before he lost to the darkness. The outcome hadn't been clear and though being around family was of some comfort, it also brought upon him the weight of feeling like a burden. That was heavier than he'd expected and it dragged him further down than he had been when he'd returned. Alvin had been out on his own for so long, making his own way, his own money, living his own life, that moving back into his childhood bedroom felt like the ultimate failure. His mother worried, he knew that, and it was the only thing that dragged him from bed most days when he felt like nothing mattered anymore.

Alvin had done exactly what he'd told himself not to, sunk into the thoughts and thankfully Penny's well-timed comment brought him back to Earth. "Yeah, I didn't realize just how much I missed it," or frankly needed it. He craved the distraction it provided, how it gave him something to do with his hands (or hand), something to look forward to after long hours at the hospital. His art had given him something to do, but it wasn't nearly as impactful as this. Even if the sketches were far more simple than his paintings, he knew it was only the first step of a longer process that would fill a need and that was Alvin realized he'd been looking for; being needed. "Thank you for the invite, sorry it took me a while to come around." It hadn't been until that accidental run-in with Miss Thompsett that he'd reignited the spark that had dwindled down to embers, threatening to go out. He appreciated that Penny hadn't given up on him either, nor Zin or Lottie, or Rufus. He was starting to remember that even in survival mode, there were people who were looking out for him and that was something worthwhile, something to cling to when everything threatened to overwhelm him again.

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   Penelope Fawcett

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For a second, Penny wondered if she had pushed a step too far with her comments. The silence was deafening, his expression unreadable for someone as unfamiliar with him as she was. She didn't know if she had upset or offended him, or if he was simply quiet most of the time. And Penny, for all her friendliness and dedication to helping her friends, had never been good at telling when she overstepped her bounds. She'd failed time and time again with him, all the way up until that last fateful night when he'd walked away from her entirely.

She was readying her apologies and pleas for him to stay and keep working (she'd shut up and keep their conversation to strictly about the brooms, too!) when he finally spoke again. "No need to apologize." Penny answered, keeping her attention down on the broom to avoid trying to read him again. "I'm always here - or well, here or at Elias'. You're always welcome though, even if you just need a space to sketch." It was, perhaps, too open an invitation for just an acquaintance but somehow it felt right. Elias' workshop was always open to her, after all, so it was only fair that someone have the access to her own. "I like having company down here. I ... I'm not good at being alone."

(She didn't think it appropriate to mention that she used to never be alone when he was sober.)

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Alvin had never been good at reading a room, but was too lost in his thoughts to realize Penny was also quiet. He'd always been good with a comfortable silence, but wasn't very good at recognizing if it was comfortable or not. He never expected anyone to fill the lull if he was spacing out.

He could however, read between the lines at Penny's invitation and decided to add her workshop to his rotation of haunts. Between the hospital, the greenhouse and now here, he would have plenty of places to keep him busy and out of his own house. Being home all of the time still felt a bit like a failure, so the more time he spent out of the house the better. He'd taken the gallery out of his rotation, once he knew he wouldn't be running into Miss Thompsett anymore, but maybe he'd give it a chance every once in a while. Alvin was starting to come to terms with the fact that he needed people around him more than he initially thought. Uncomplicated people like Zinnia and Penny, to keep him company even when he was in his head.

"Me neither," Alvin admitted, passing her a wry smile. They could be not-alone together and work on brooms at he might start feeling some kind of normal. A new normal, but some semblance of normal nevertheless. Maye he was reading too much into her invitation, and he didn't know Penny all that well outside of professionally, but was starting to think maybe she had something she was avoiding too. "I get quiet a lot," he warned. "But it's mostly because I get caught up in my head." It shouldn't be a surprise to her. "But just throw something at me and I'll snap out of it." This time he passed her more of a grin, hoping to break the ice a little.

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His warning broke the tension settling in the air between them causing Penny to answer it with a chuckle. While she'd never throw anything at him (not until she knew him better anyway) it was good to know that he wouldn't be offended by her attempting to break any potential silence. "I can sometimes talk too much." She then replied, a hint of a sheepish smile on her cheeks. "Please tell me to shush if I'm ever chattering on too much." The last thing she needed to feel like was an annoyance these days.

"I have a lot of pets too. Don't be surprised by any stray animal you see wander in here." There was a family of squirrels one year, although now that Penny thought about it those squirrels didn't stay for long. Hopefully they had sensed the cats and not stayed, for she shuddered to imagine the alternative.

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"Nah, I grew up with Sloane, I might tune you out, but I'll never ask you to stop." He had definitely developed selective hearing as he'd grown up, but he was also pretty good at multitasking so could listen and work at the same time. "Which brings me back to the throwing situation." Really, it was the only way sometimes, to get his attention back on the task at hand, rather than lost in his thoughts.

At the mention of the creatures, Alvin was a little more leery. "I'm not great with animals, but I will do my best." Cat didn't like him very much, so it was a relief that Calla and Miss Thompsett seemed more than happy to keep it at Hogwarts this school year. He hoped it brought them some comfort and a sense of normality that would otherwise be lacking. It obviously wasn't the same as having Sloane around, but it was like having a piece of her. "That is to say, they don't often like me. Not that I don't like them." He'd shared a family owl at school and he supposed Sloane's rat had never bit him, but those felt like small victories in the grand scheme.

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Penny's smile dipped some at the mention of his sister. She had never been close to her brother (and there certainly hadn't ever been opportunity to after he'd come home from the trail) but she had observed the Fisks for nearly all her life. Those were siblings who couldn't be without one another - Penny now had the feeling that it was the same for the Bixby's.

She ought to apologize for his loss, mention something about how she'd often seen the girl whizzing about on her broom, anything to acknowledge his loss. Only, speaking to it on such a superficial level felt wrong. Especially now that he finally seemed to be opening up a bit. Penny loathed the idea of him going quiet again.

"Elias said the same about animals hating him." She said, deciding against commenting on his sister for the moment. "I think he got used to my cats eventually though, or at the minimum they tolerate one another now. Either way, their companionship will come in time."

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Well, it appeared he and Grimstone had more in common than he originally anticipated. Alvin only knew the other broommaker a little bit, had done a little work with him in the past, but nothing like Penny had. "At least I won't be alone in the battle for their tolerance." He shrugged. It would be a small price to pay for having Penny's workshop as a space he could find some comfort in, down the line.

"Do you want any help organizing in here? I know you were gone a while." Alvin had never really had a workshop here in Hogsmeade, so it couldn't be neglected. He'd destroyed the one in the States in a fit of rage, barely stopping short of burning the whole thing down, but he'd broken almost everything of worth in there, save his tools. He'd had every intention of selling the tools to plump up his savings, but had never had the heart to actually follow through. Turns out that was for the better, if he was going to salvage something to do with this career. Even if all he did was the designing and some of the charm work, it was better than nothing.

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"No, definitely not. The kittens are nuisances at times, so don't be afraid to swat them away." Louis was certainly the worse when it came to broom tails. There was one time Penny caught the cat eating her twigs, it was the closest to frustrated she'd ever come with her animals.

"Oh - yeah. Reorganization would be great." It would certainly help her move past some memories, even if the question did catch her off guard. "I used to have more of a system, but I began ridding myself of a lot of the muggle items and it just quickly became chaos."

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Alvin didn't think he'd be swatting any kittens away, but who knew. It might even be nice to have some of them prowling around, keeping him from getting too lost in his thoughts. He couldn't space out if there was a cat hell bent on eating his shoelaces after all.

Unable to tell if he'd overstepped, Alvin looked around the shop itself. It was an interesting collection of different things; unfinished brooms and a collection of a fair few other mechanical muggle things he wasn't exactly sure he could name. Penny seemed to like to tinker with things other than brooms. Or had, judging by the layer of dust on some of the items. "Not necessary, it's your space after all." Alvin could easily contain himself to the small section of the workbench he currently occupied, especially if he wasn't the one doing the hard work of shaping the brooms.

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She caught him looking around and put down her tools so that she might better show him the various odds and ends she still had after the purge of this summer. "Reorganization would be good, necessary even." It would at least help to know have all her broom materials gathered in one place. Besides, now that he had put the idea in her head there was little else Penny would be able to focus on until it was done. Anything to help remove the thought of him from her daily life.

(Not that Penny believed for a moment that she would ever be able to fully move on from or forget him.)

She walked over to where the dismantled sewing machine laid. "I was trying to enchant this to mend clothes on its own, but I could never get the charm to stick and lost patience for it. All the tinkering stuff you can just shove into the corner there if you get there before me. I haven't decided what I'll do with it yet."

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Breathing out a sight of relief, Alvin stood from the stool he sequestered and moved to have a better look about the room itself. She had a interesting collection of things and as she explained the sewing machine, he found himself nodding along, impressed by her creativity. He had never given much thought to anything like that, though he too had liked to tinker and build little things here and there as a kid. He'd always been particularly good at whittling in his youth, before he'd learned to truly carve, but that was just another thing lost with the use of his hand.

"One section at a time," he thought, as he made his way near to where she stood. "Just so I can be out of the way while you're hard at work," he chuckled as he nudged her gently with his elbow. He would be as good as supervision most of the time, which she obviously didn't need, but he could certainly still do things like staining and trimming the tails if he had a clamp or something else to hold the broom still. It really was just the manual labor of carving and sanding and shaping that required the use of his bad hand and he simply couldn't do it anymore. He flexed his fingers instinctively, as he tended to do when he was thinking about his hand, but there wasn't much anybody could do about it anymore. The healers he'd work with had done everything they can; he was lucky to still have the hand at all with any semblance of normalcy. Ugly and mottled as it was, at least it still looked like a hand.

"It's quite the collection." He said with a smile as he picked up what looked like a toy of some sort.

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One section at a time, she could do that. It would likely be wiser to start on the broommaking end of things, if only to make things tidier for their purposes. However, standing here amongst all the items that used to hold such value and meaning for her, Penny found herself wanting to smash it all to bits. Damn reorganizing - damn finding new life for the various items. They were all obtained through him and Penny needed to be done holding space for him. "Feel free to keep anything you see that strikes your fancy. I have no need for it anymore." She muttered, her mood souring the longer she continued staring at the kaleidoscope in his hand.

The very same kaleidoscope she used to imagine gifting to their children one day.

"I'll try to have this all gone before you're here next, that way there'll be plenty of space for us both to work." She tried not to flinch at the elbow nudge, which she knew to be friendly but when she was suffering from such a dark train of thought she didn't enjoy as such. "Do you prefer a drafting table? I have one upstairs that I could have brought down with little issue."

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There was a sinking feeling that Alvin had gone and shoved his foot in his mouth and he immediately put the kaleidoscope down from where he'd plucked it from. Maybe he was a little out of touch socially. Maybe he was too used to Zinnia and her easy presence that he needed to reel himself back in a little bit. He and Zin had somewhat grown up together, their families always close, and he tended to forget the lines of propriety, but he also knew she didn't mind. He didn't know Penny well enough for that yet. It was a habit, trying to break any tension, keep things light. Alvin was often the source of any dark clouds over a conversation and was making a concentrated effort not to.

"There's no rush, I'm comfortable anywhere." He assured her, pointing to the slice of workbench he'd been at and then the floor; he really wasn't fussed. Alvin could cram himself onto a stair with his sketchbook and be perfectly fine. His back might ache afterward, but some part of him ached all the time these days. "I wasn't trying to force a clean, I just wanted to make sure I wouldn't be in the way." Maybe he should have just kept his mouth shut.

Hopefully this would work though, he desperately needed something to look forward to and to keep him busy. Hopefully collaborating with Penny would do the trick.

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"No, no. A clean would be perfect." Penny insisted. She'd start on it herself tomorrow and have the staff drag the drafting desk down here for Alvin. If they were to begin working together in earnest then she wanted him to be a partner, not some friend left to curl up into the corner of a table or a spot on the floor. Even if he claimed to be fine with the set up, Penny most certainly wasn't.

Really, she ought to have thought of it sooner.

"You won't be in the way, and even if you were I'll be glad for the company - truly." She turned from the workbench back towards the in-progress broom. "I'll have to figure out some more lighting down here too, do you know of any charms for that?" Anything to change the subject and stop the spiraling thoughts.

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Penny seemed to recover a little bit and Alvin sighed softly. He wasn't sure what it was exactly, but hopefully he could remember to be mindful. "Agreed, being home is still hard, so I need places to escape to." He said it matter-of-factly. It was just the truth of it, Alvin had never really been the kind to skirt around the facts.

Her question about lighting was a good one. It was a little dark down here, but he had a pretty easy solution. "I have a few lamps in storage, but also this," Alvin pulled his wand from his jacket pocket and cast a charm. Little balls of light floated from the end, dancing their way to the ceiling, spreading out to hover just below the floorboards above them. "Easy to cast and extinguish, but I have a lamp specifically for a drafting table too." His mother had saved it among his possessions when he'd first gotten home. There was a small collection of things in the attic that he hadn't kept, but had been kept for him. He wasn't sure if his mother knew that he knew they were there or not, but he was thankful for her intervention.

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