It takes a while to settle down
My shivered bones
Until the panic's out
20th July, 1893 — Darrow House, The Sanditon

tw: self harm

After day one of the healing conference, he’d bowed out of the cards and drinks, and accepted Zelda’s invitation to visit instead. He hadn’t decided whether he would regret it, but after a day in the company of long-standing colleagues, with everyone in convivial high spirits and everyone far too nice, he had badly needed an escape.

Never mind that he had been doing his best to avoid his family, too. Particularly Zelda, who was friends with Dionisia, and particularly Alfred, because Alfred had helped him one night in London, and Ari only had a hazy recollection of the night, and of how drunk and senseless he had been, and what he might have done or said. But it had been months, and he couldn’t avoid everyone and everything, so perhaps he would get through this visit with a brave face.

Well, he wasn’t getting through it.

He’d made an excuse to leave the room. And now a moment’s respite of splashing his face in the bathroom had turned into standing there blankly to compose himself, and that moment of facing himself in the mirror had surfaced the self-loathing again, the need to hurt himself. Maybe it was a good idea – it would get him through the rest of the evening at Zelda’s, and maybe even tomorrow.

He had only meant to be gone a minute. More fool him, then, for using one of the new severing charms they’d discussed in the lectures today to cut himself. It had worked well, so well, and he’d closed up the wounds on his left arm again with magic, rolled down his sleeves again and unlocked the door –

But these cuts hadn’t closed like all the others. There was a thin line of red bleeding through his shirt sleeve – he tried again, watched the skin knit itself back together and then steadily reopen again. He tried again. The cuts didn’t disappear. If anything, they were deeper. He felt a pang of panic.

And now there were footsteps outside, and a knock at the door.

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Zelda Darrow/Cassius Lestrange

The following 2 users Like Ari Fisk's post:2 users Like Ari Fisk's post
   Alice Dawson, J. Alfred Darrow

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Zelda hadn't gotten to see Ari as much lately as she would have liked, and she did not know which of them was more responsible for this. She'd felt — odd, since Orion's birth, and she was hesitant to leave him for very long. But Ari had more freedom to visit her, as Elliott was older — well, at least he was finally taking up Zelda's invitation. He'd picked a good day, today — Zelda had expected to be alone for much of the evening, as there was some elaborate evening sailing-project commandeering Alfred.

She'd never followed Ari to the bathroom before. But he'd been gone for several minutes, and after a while of checking her watch and listening to hear floorboards creaking, Zelda became concerned. She headed out of the sitting room and over to the lavatory, and found herself listening at the door, as if she could detect whether or not she should knock.

There was nothing she could hear. Zelda wrinkled her nose, and rapped upon the door. "Ari?" she said, "Are you alright in there?"

Merlin, she hoped so.

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AMAZING set by MJ

He had kept a cool head in worse situations than this. He had, but any calmness and self-possession here had already started seeping out, long before Zelda’s question outside the door. “I’m fine!” Ari exclaimed, to head off any concern, and pressed his hand to his arm over the fabric of his shirt. His jacket was hanging somewhere, over the back of his chair – could he ask her to go and get it, shrug it on to hide the blood and then find a swift excuse to leave?

But that would maybe seem more suspicious, and the new cuts were still bleeding steadily, in spite of his best efforts to stem them, so who knew how far he would get.

It would almost have been easier to stay holed up in here and just wait to bleed out, but –

He grabbed the hand-towel, and hurriedly rolled up his shirtsleeve again towards the shoulder in order to wrap his arm up with the towel in the meantime. He banged open a cupboard, looking for a proper bandage, and found nothing. Instead, he drew in a breath and opened the door a crack. Just another lie, then. Another lie, and it would be fine. “Nothing’s wrong, I just – do you have any gauze I can use?”

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Zelda frowned at the door. She placed her hand on the doorhandle. "I'm sure we have gauze," she said. Her tone was placating — the same gentle voice she used when O had a tantrum because he was over-tired and fighting his nap.

"But Ari, can you let me in first?" Zelda said. She didn't want to try to break into her own bathroom, even with her hand on the handle — but Ari was being weird. If he was asking for gauze, that meant he was presumably bleeding — and why on earth would he be bleeding in there?

  

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AMAZING set by MJ

Can you let me in? Her suspicion, or her concern, rang in it all too clearly. Ari glanced in the mirror and took a deep, silent, self-steadying breath – it didn’t work, because he saw how pale and drawn and skittish he looked and shuddered again.

In his best attempt to take it down a notch so there was nothing so noticeably wrong – besides the towel currently wrapping up all the evidence of the cuts on his arms – Ari pushed the door open wide, as if he had nothing to hide. “It was just a little accident,” he offered, flashing a swift, cheery smile, something that read I’m a klutz, I can handle it, it’s nothing, and asked again, expectant, in hopes that she would either be placated enough or else easily distracted: “Gauze?”

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Ari opened the door, smiling and pale, and Zelda stood steady in the bathroom doorway, biting her lip at her oldest brother. It would be easy to believe him and go to get the gauze from her old Ministry bag, but something in his face nagged at Zelda — there was a whisper of mistrust in her gut.

"How'd you have an accident in the bathroom?" Zelda asked, tone still mother-gentle. There was a towel on his arms. She wanted to tug it away, but she thought better of it.

  

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AMAZING set by MJ

How had he gotten all cut up in the bathroom, then? He hadn’t thought this through.

“Oh, I broke – something of yours at the sink,” he said quickly, easily, with a wave of his non-bleeding arm back behind him to say over there. A... vase? A ceramic soap dish? Ari was clutching at straws. He couldn’t remember what had even been there, and he didn’t dare look over his shoulder to check.

Never mind that there hadn’t been a sound of shattering (she hadn’t heard it from the other room?) or that there were no shards about (he’d cleaned up the mess?) and that there was nothing broken or missing (he was still blocking the bathroom door so she couldn’t see past him to check, thank Merlin).

“I’m so sorry,” he said, wishing Zelda would stop sounding soft and start being amused or exasperated or annoyed. He dug his fingers in through the towel, pressing down on the cuts underneath it for his own sake. He couldn’t deal with this today. At the same time, he tried to move out of the doorway into the hall, while awkwardly drawing up the door behind him, hoping she would let this go.

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Zelda listened to Ari, but she surprised herself by not believing him. (Maybe she ought to ask Alfred later what he thought of this?) Still, she nodded once at her brother. "You should be more careful," Zelda said, "Give me a moment to get the gauze." She swiftly walked to her and Alfred's bedroom, and opened one of the cupboards to find the medical supplies — she removed the gauze and scissors, and walked back down the hall. She had not decided what to do yet with the question of Ari. She did not like leaving him alone, even just in this moment.

"Gauze," Zelda offered, holding it up with a smile. "Can I help?"

  

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AMAZING set by MJ

Give me a moment, she said. And Ari took that moment, the moment she had turned her back on him; he made the most of it by letting his expression fall away from all the false calm – a brief moment to breathe out, heavily, and to hurt, and to be. He counted out, up to ten and then listened out for Zelda’s footsteps back. He closed the bathroom door, because nothing was broken in there, and moved further down the hallway, wondering if perhaps he should just leave now.

He wanted to. But he wanted to disappear more often than not, so he knew how to dispel the temptation just as well. By the time his sister reappeared, he had shifted back into old Ari, the Ari she knew. “Zelda, I’ve been a healer since before you could walk,” he reminded her, shaking his head in amusement as he reached out for the gauze, “I think I can manage, myself.”

(He felt slightly bad about this too, casually using her age against her: I’m older, I know better, I’m right and you’re wrong. You can’t tell me to be more careful.)

And he didn’t want to bandage himself up in front of her, he would have preferred she left him alone – but he could manage, he could get away with this scot free. He stepped back into the sitting room and sat down again, gauze and scissors balanced on his knee, and his body angled as away from her as he dared. It would be finicky work, doing this under his sleeve, but Ari’s whole life had been an exercise in subtle misdirection, so he tossed a glance at her again in the middle of it. “You know you sound different,” he told her, “now you’re a mother. Be more careful,” he echoed, with a grin – terribly fond of Zelda, and despising himself. “I never thought I’d see the day.”

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"You don't usually heal yourself," Zelda pointed out; her tone came out more stubborn than nagging. It was an unfortunate side affect of her age, and the years between them — she watched him carefully, as she leaned in the doorway of her sitting room.

She smiled at his echo, despite herself. "I feel different," Zelda admitted. She was never sure if it was for the better or not. "We'll see if I outgrow it." Would she be less nervous, with her second child? She didn't know — most days she almost forgot that she was pregnant again.

Was it odd that he was doing this under his sleeve? Zelda pursed her lips, trying to contain herself.

  

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AMAZING set by MJ

He ignored the first remark; there was no world in which he would invite her closer, to examine the ‘accident’ he’d had. Magic hadn’t sealed the cuts, but at least the non-magical method would buy him enough time to get out of here.

“Just wait ‘til Orion’s having sword fights in the garden,” Ari remarked, wondering how carefree Zelda would be if her first child turned out to be just like her. (Between her and Alfred for parents, it was hard to imagine their child would be particularly stifled, but...)

Except thinking about Orion only made him think about Elliott, and the home Elliott was doomed to keep growing up in, with parents who lied to each other, a house full of people who kept their emotions buried and just tried to endure. A sound rose in his throat, and although he mostly suppressed the anguish, there had still been a whimper of it – and now he had to only hope she would mistake his patched-up arm as the cause of his pained sound.

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Zelda snorted. "As long as he doesn't fall off the docks," she said; Orion would learn to swim once he was steadier on her feet, but the docks still made Zelda nervous. Maybe it was because of the Sanditon hurricane, or her not learning to swim until she was married — either way, she didn't like the idea of her son in deep water.

Ari's sound jostled her from her thoughts. Zelda took several steps closer and laid a hand on her brother's shoulder. "Ari?"

  

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AMAZING set by MJ

He would have remarked on her fear about the docks, if he had managed to hear it – if it didn’t feel like the water was rising around him, in this room. His chest, his head, he was all underwater: he couldn’t breathe.

He hadn’t sensed her approaching, startled from himself at her hand on his shoulder. “Don’t touch me,” Ari choked out, a strangled exclamation; he had the sense that he was contagious in some way, that Zelda or anyone getting too near him might bring that drowning feeling upon them, or might inherit his guilt, finally understand it, and he couldn’t – he couldn’t do that.

He sprang up, digging his fingers in so tightly around his mostly-bandaged arm that he was sure the wounds had begun to bleed again the more – unsteady on his feet, something wild in his eyes. “I’m sorry. I have to go.” He all but dashed to the door. He would find an explanation for this later, when she couldn’t see his face; he would rather flee now than sit through a second more of her concern.

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