Cash made a hollow sound, somewhere between a laugh and a sigh, and exhaled it. Ford would be here for him. Theo, Angie — he had friends, he had people, and he desperately did not want to hurt them.

He also did not want to hurt the baby.

He wished he had talked more to Ari Fisk, after. He didn’t understand how he had talked the other man down. He felt aware of the envelope in his coat — the weight of it. It was thick, and Cash was starting to worry that it was not entirely coherent.

He closed his eyes shut tight. He shouldn't be standing here anymore, he should do — something. He should go home. He should get on a broomstick.

He stayed.

”I don’t like who I am,” Cash admitted quietly, aware that he was parroting Ari Fisk, aware he’d tried very hard to talk the other man out of thinking that way, but if Adrienne died and he was alone with the baby the truth was that he didn’t like who he was.

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MJ made this!

Something deep in Ford's chest swelled. His arms tightened around Cash — slightly, unconsciously, protectively. "Well, I like you," he countered. He could tell, or imagined he could, that Cash did not believe him. Fair enough — it did have the ring of something someone said in a moment like this because it was really the only thing you were supposed to say. And they'd gone a year, nearly, hardly speaking to each other, and they'd fought before the wedding, and really they had never even been that close before the night Cash had written him about his dementor problem — so fine, maybe it was hard to believe. Hard to believe that he meant it on more than a superficial level, anyway; plenty of people probably liked Cash well enough to enjoy themselves if they happened to be sharing the break room at the Ministry. This was more than that. This was — Cash was a person of worth in Ford's eyes, on a level that was impossible to explain, and maybe that wasn't enough to make a difference — maybe that didn't mean enough, if everything hurt all the time — but Ford couldn't let Cash go not knowing. So maybe he'd have to try to explain it after all, impossible or not.

"It's easy to tell you the truth," he said. He was frowning gently from the concentration of trying to think through everything, and looking towards the floor. "Even more than — I mean I've been in love with someone and I still can't always even talk to him." He maybe told Cash too much of the truth sometimes, but it hadn't come back to bite him yet, and there was something to that, too. That Cash wasn't just easy to talk to, but easy to trust — and that he took Ford's trust, even unearned, and honored it.

"You're... kind. Deep down," he continued. Thoughtlessly kind, maybe; Ford could easily believe that this was something Cash didn't notice about himself, because when he did something for someone else he never gave the impression he was trying. Nothing that would have lead someone to notice and feel embarrassed. The way he'd gotten Grace to laugh before she'd debuted, or changing the topic effortlessly when Jemima had said something awkward at dinner. The fact that Adrienne seemed generally content with her life and her marriage, which hadn't been a given under the circumstances. Things most people wouldn't notice, but Ford saw these things; he understood they did not happen accidentally. It wasn't just kindness, either — that word was too small for it. It was that Cash cared about people, even when he did not care about himself. So much had happened to him in his life. He carried so much, more than Ford would probably ever understand. Enough to have created the dementor. And even with all of that, there was still room inside him for so much more. He felt bottomless, sometimes.

"I like you," Ford repeated, because he did not know how to say any of the rest of it. "I think my life would be a lot worse without you."

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Set by Lady!

Ford liked him. Cash had an impulse to scoff, because he wasn't sure how that could possibly be true — but the weight of Ford's arms around him stayed firm, and Ford had evidence. It was easy to tell Cash the truth, he was kind, Ford's life would be worse without him. Cash swallowed. His throat was thick. He thought his eyes would be wet if he opened them. He still did not entirely believe, but Ford did — Cash could hear the honesty in his voice. Fortitude Greengrass could not lie.

He'd originally liked Ford because Ford's smiles were honest; they'd played cards at the club, and when Ford confessed that he liked haunted houses, it felt so enthusiastic that Cash had to believe him. Since then, it had always been the same — Ford's feelings, whether he was happy or concerned or upset or in love or furious, were easy to gauge.

He could not be lying.

Cash opened his eyes. He was looking down at the floor of Ford's bedroom, from where his head was pressed against Ford's chest, and he had a feeling that his eyes were bloodshot. He swallowed again. His throat was still thick. The envelope still felt urgent, going home still felt urgent — if Adrienne died, how was he ever going to get to his broomstick if he wasn't at home when it happened — and he exhaled a slow, steady breath.

"Can we sit down?" Cash asked, quiet. "I think I need to — talk."

Whether he was here or at home, he could not do anything to help Adrienne — and maybe he should finally try being honest.

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MJ made this!

Ford's shoulders softened at the question. "Yeah," he agreed, soft. Talking was a good step. Whatever Cash said would be important — it would be impossible, in a moment like this, to talk about something that wasn't important, even if it took a moment to parse out why it was important. Even if that wasn't true, it was time. Time spent talking was time here, time here was time — not leaving, yet. Ford loosened his grip on Cash, unfurling his arms. A slight gap opened between them and for half a moment Ford felt sheepish. This would have been inexplicable, if someone had come up to his door. He brushed the feeling away almost immediately, though — no one was going to interrupt them, because this moment was too big, and he didn't have time to feel sheepish. They were going to talk.

Ford's bedroom was not designed for company. No one came here, not even his wife; he went to her bedroom when he wanted to see her. There was a chair at the desk against one wall, but it was the only one. When Cash had been here before, a few nights before the wedding, they'd sat on the floor with a gin bottle between them. Now Ford led him to the bed instead — symbolic, perhaps, of a soft place to land. He let Cash take the space by the headboard, while he sat near the foot of the bed and pulled one knee up underneath himself. "Do you want to start, or do you want me to ask?"

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Set by Lady!

He couldn't imagine getting onto Ford's bed covered in ash or with his shoes on, so Cash toed out of his shoes and dropped his peacoat atop them before sitting by the headboard. He brought his knees up towards his chest, and wrapped his arms around them. He chewed on the inside of his lip while he tried to sort through his thoughts — there were things left to say, things he had to say, but they were all jumbled and his palms were sweaty at the thought of offering them up. He wiped his hands on the knees of his trousers. A beat had passed since Ford asked.

"Can you ask?" he asked.

  

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MJ made this!

Ford watched Cash chew his lip. He had expected that it might be easier if Ford steered the conversation, which was why he'd asked, but it was hard to know where to start. He didn't want to assume, to jump into the middle of something that might be the root of the problem but might be entirely unrelated... but anything that wasn't at least a bit of an assumption felt too trivial to bother with. He couldn't possibly ask something like are you worried about being a father because what would that help? Obviously the answer was yes. Even without all the rest of Cash's baggage, anyone would be worried about the prospect of being a father if they thought the child's mother might die. It was hardly a revelation; where would it get them?

The first question that occurred to him was Why did you come here, but that wasn't what he really meant — what he would have meant was Why didn't you go see Gallivan? He couldn't ask it outright because he'd never told Cash what he'd pieced together, never told him about the conversation on the patio at Cash's wedding to Adrienne, and this was not the moment to stop and explain things that had happened over a year ago. But if he asked Cash why he'd come here that could mean anything: why leave the house where Adrienne was dying, why trust Ford, why go anywhere rather than just getting straight to whatever it was he intended — and Ford didn't like many of the implications of these questions he wouldn't ask and didn't mean, so he hesitated.

"How long?" was what he eventually asked. "Have you been feeling this way?" Obviously it couldn't have been this acute for long — not weeks or months — but it might have been building for a while, and maybe Cash's answer here would help Ford figure out what to ask to get back to the beginning of it.

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   Cassius Lestrange

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Set by Lady!

It was a complicated answer. Cash looked down at his hands, and used the nail of his thumb to scratch at a cuticle. "I used to be comfortable having no control," he said. His stepmother took his memories, his father gave him a list of women, and Eli was dead because of him. He swore an Unbreakable Vow when he was too young to really know what it meant. He felt observed, all the time. He hadn't answered Ford's question yet. He picked at his cuticle.

"But with the baby I — started feeling sick all the time, over the summer," he said. The rolling waves of panic that would come over him almost without warning, alternating with an intense feeling of what Cash eventually identified as self-disgust. This was still not an answer to Ford's question. He supposed he was trying to explain himself, but wasn't sure how to manage it.

"I think the first time was the pit," Cash said, "All those people fell in, and I —"

He'd wished to be one of them.

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   Fortitude Greengrass

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MJ made this!

It didn't surprise him that Cash had been worrying himself sick, not really. Having children layered on responsibilities, stacks of them, and responsibilities in general were antithetical to the way Cash approached his life — comfortable having no control, as he'd phrased it. This had been on Ford's mind ages ago, before the wedding; it was at least half of the reason he'd objected so strongly to the marriage. So it wasn't a surprise... but what it lacked in surprise it had twicefold in guilt, because Ford should have noticed. He should have noticed if Cash was spiraling about anything; he especially should have known to watch for this. He'd had his hands full this summer, with Grace's interviews, and Jemima still adjusting, and stalking Philomen Huxley — but still. He should have noticed. It was important enough.

"It's when you think about the baby?" Ford clarified. "What specifically?"

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Set by Lady!

Cash swallowed. He'd explained it to people, but not in a way that they could understand — that he was afraid of his father, and afraid of being like him, of the past repeating itself. Angie and Theo had both told him he could make it different, that he could love the baby, that love made a difference — but Cash was not sure that love was enough.

"Once I was afraid that my father might kill me," Cash admitted quietly. He ripped at the loose skin next to his cuticle. A bead of blood bubbled up. His boggart, Cash sometimes thought, was probably his father. He hadn't seen one since Hogwarts. He didn't know how to make Lucius funny, so that was probably lucky. "Still am."

  

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MJ made this!

Afraid of dying was a good sign. But that also wasn't exactly what Cash had said.

"That's not about the baby," he pointed out mildly. "You're not worried your father would kill the baby."

Ford did not argue the premise. He didn't live in a reality where the Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot might murder his own son for no reason, but evidently Cash did. Debating which of their worldviews was closer to reality did not feel especially productive at the moment.

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Set by Lady!

He wasn't worried his father would kill the baby. Ford was right. Cash looked at his next fingernail, began picking at the cuticle there, too. "I'm worried about other things happening to the baby," Cash admitted. His throat worked up and down if he tried to find a way to explain it. "If she dies, I —"

If she died, Cash was the only parent. If the distance of his own childhood had helped make Cash nervous, then the things done to him over the past decade-and-a-bit had only made him worse. The baby, their son, was going to need someone warm, someone — someone better as a parent. If Adrienne died, then the baby was just — a Lestrange.

It was worse that the child was a boy, Cash thought.

"There were — they broke me," Cash said quietly.

  

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MJ made this!

There was a gravity to this confession that permitted no argument, even if Ford didn't understand what Cash meant. He shifted his weight on the bed, wrestling with an urge to move closer. "Broke you how?" he asked, because this was the contract; he was meant to ask questions until they'd gotten to the root of the thing. They hadn't unearthed it yet, but they were close.

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Set by Lady!

They had been treading around the issue this whole night, the things Cash did not want to disclose — he had never told anyone, not even Angie. It was impossible to separate his inability to handle the baby from them, though; impossible to think about his life if they had not existed. He had to tell Ford, because he was here, instead of moving further through the to-do list he'd created. He squeezed his eyes shut.

"My father found out that I love men instead of women," he said. He was speaking slowly, and deliberately, as if maybe this were easier if he treated it like it was historical fact rather than something that had happened to him. "And then they tried to cure me, by taking away and moving around my memories. And since then nothing in my head has worked right."

He kept his eyes shut. He could not bear to look at Ford in this moment, because he knew that telling his friend this meant all of Ford's hard work was pointless — Cash had made a dementor because his head was missing required parts, and he would never be better for the same reason.

  

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MJ made this!

A chill went through him. Ford shivered, but that did nothing to dislodge it. He believed Cash. Not in the same way that he had been the rest of this conversation, where he decided reality was less important than Cash's perception of things or believing because disbelief did not seem productive. He believed Cash because this seemed terrifyingly possible: people who didn't understand peddling cures. Trying to fix it, to make them normal.

Ford had worried about this. The night he'd followed Ida Chang around like a puppy for an entire party... something had happened to him to cause that, something unusual. It had followed too closely on the heels of Noble discovering his letters for the idea not to have crossed his mind. Noble was a talented potioneer, with unfettered access to everything Ford ate and drank. It would not have been difficult for Noble to try to fix him. Ford had put the idea out of his mind not because he'd decided it was unreasonable, but rather because he had to pretend it was in order to go on. He couldn't keep on in a world where he couldn't trust Noble — but has things gone differently...

Ford reached out and put his hand on Cash's sock-clad foot, and held on. He didn't know what to say, but he thought he ought to remind Cash that he was there.

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   Cassius Lestrange

Cash opened his eyes, which were wet now. Tears hadn't bubbled over, and he blinked a few times to try to chase the sensation away. He looked at Ford. "I didn't fight it," Cash said, culpability. He'd been overwhelmed, then — with grief for Eli, self-loathing, guilt, fear, and a desire for everything to be quiet. But — he had agreed, as much as it was possible to agree to something like that.

  

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MJ made this!

Ford's mouth pulled taut and there was an unpleasant feeling in his stomach, but he nodded all the same. "They were your parents." Parents weren't supposed to do things that would scar their children for the rest of their lives. Parents were supposed to have your best interests at heart; you were meant to trust them. They weren't supposed to fuck you over. They weren't supposed to leave you with messes that took years to clean up.

For the first time, Ford wondered if he had what it took to be a good father. He'd always thought he would be — he'd been thinking it when he'd broken things off with Macnair, and when he'd married Jemima. He'd supposed because he loved his family that he would be a good father if the opportunity arose, but was that true? Was loving people enough? He'd never had a good father, as it turned out in the end. What did he really know about it, at the end of the day?

He sat for a long moment in silence, still gently holding on to Cash's foot. Eventually he asked, "What does it feel like? The parts that are broken."

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Set by Lady!