#dreav

[wehavewords]

“Maybe we are really destined not to have each other.”

— drea v

[they-call-me-friki]

Extraño a m bb brasileira y solo admitire esto estando peda

[sharkweekisalreadytaken]

I wish I knew how to love you from far away. Or not at all. This stupid facade keeps breaking.

[seldaran]

The next installment of Untitled

She was just starting to come back to life, to talk around other people and joke a bit with Wes when she overheard some nurses. Her father and step-mother had been declared unfit guardians, so she'd be in foster care once she left the hospital.

Some of her friends - impressions of their faces, covered in bruises and too much blood flashed past her mind's eye - had been fosterlings. They'd had too many horror stories of the awful life it was for Dan to put much hope in a better life if she went that way.

In protest of this fate, she stopped eating and talking. They had to put her back on IV fluids in order to keep the stubborn child from wasting away entirely.

When Wes heard about this, he came in with a worried expression crinkling his face.

"Dan, you know this isn't going to get you anywhere." he told her. The only response he got was a glare. He sighed and scruffed her hair affectionately. "Not every foster home is bad."

She raised one eyebrow and tilted her chin down, as if to say, "Oh yeah? Prove it."

"Give me some time, then. I'll look into it."

But it turned out that for Dan, the outlook wasn't too good. No matter what the doctors and nurses did or said, the only time they could get her to eat anything was when Wes would visit and inform her of the progress of his search. He was making some discreet inquiries into some of the possible foster homes that were being considered for her. None of them had the kind of time to spend with a kid as troubled - and he had to face it, troublesome - as Dan. As hard as Wes looked, and for all he put into the search, there was nothing that turned up that could put his worries to rest.

The straw that broke the camel's back came in the form of a case he heard of from some coworkers, about a young woman, recently of age, who was charging her former foster parents with criminal negligence concerning her and her foster siblings' upbringing. That was when the great idea hit him -

"You're gonna live with me for a bit."

It was enough to shock Dan out of her silence. "Say what?"

"Its the only thing I can think of besides foster care. But I know you don't really know me too well, and I don't know if you'd really want to - "

"Will they let you be my guardian?"

Wes stalled in the middle of his pre-planned spiel. "Wha- well... I'll have to convince them that I'm responsible enough and can provide a healthy home environment..."

"How do you start that?" Dan demanded, her eyes bright with hope. It made Wes' heart clench, 'cause he had no idea if he'd be able to pull it off.

"First thing would be to meet with the agency that's in charge of your affairs."

"Get to it then! I'm not going anywhere until you figure out how to make them let me stay with you."

Issues with this post:

- its unfinished

- has very little research behind the actual workings in this area

- I have no idea what I'm doing

[seldaran]

Pretend

Wrote this listening to Fall Out Boy's Alone Together. For some reason I was inspired by the line "I'm outside the door/invite me in/we can play pretend" or whatever. So here. You didn't need a heart anyway, did you?

"Hey, kiddo, its bedtime now! Lights out Dreavie!" a pause. "Dreavie? Don't make me come in there."

Silence met Wes' calls. The young man gave a heaving sigh, and pushed into the office-turned-spare-room that had been taken over by his young fosterling. A glorious blanket fort met his entrance, with a hand-written sign saying, "NO GRON UPPS" hanging precariously from a clothespin.

"Hey! That's my quilt! When did you sneak this outta my room?"

A muffled giggle came from somewhere inside the fort, cut off sharply as if the child had quickly covered her mouth to stop the noise (too late). Wes broke out in a sly grin.

"Since this is made with my quilt, it's partly mine, you know that? So I'm coming in now!"

"No!" shrieked Dreav, tossing a pillow at her guardian as he crawled in under an old patched blanket. "Can't you read?"

"Pfff, Dreavie you wrote it that way on purpose, didn't you?"

"So? I'm pretending I'm a Lost Boy. They didn't know how to spell. Now are you gonna be part of my crew or are ya gonna walk the plank, matey?"

Wes reached over and caught the small girl in the crook of his arm, using his free hand to give her a righteous noogie. "Only if I get to be the leader! And aren't you mixing stories there?"

"Gah!" blond hair completely tousled, Dreav jabbed her small fingers into the one place she knew would weaken Wes: his ticklish spot. He flinched away in a fit of helpless laughter. "I'm the leader! So I get to make the rules!"

"I give up! I give!" Wes cried out, still laughing as the child sat on him and kept up her torture. The instant her hands stilled, however, he pinned her arms to her sides and blew  raspberries onto the scarred-over insides of her forearms. They tussled, fighting for breath and for control, laughing and shrieking like children, until all of a sudden the world collapsed in on them.

"Awww!"

"Yikes! Darn, that was a good fort you'd made."

"Ah, I can make another one. That's what forts are for; to be made and unmade all the time!"

The young man flung blankets around until an opening presented itself for the two of them. "That is strangely philosophical, Dreav. But now is not the time for deep meanings. Now is the time for lights out."

"I guess so. The blanket fort is now a blanket nest, anyway, so it makes sense. Sleep here tonight, Wes!" Dreav flopped onto his lap, drawing a dramatic "Oof!' from him.

"Don't you think you're a little old for needing someone to sleep next to you?"

"Nuh-uh. I'm pretending I'm really little again, and you gotta stay here or I'll just sneak into your room when you're asleep!"

"Ha ha, alright, then, you got me. But that means actual sleeping and not more jabbering. Deal?"

"Deal."

[seldaran]

It was really rather cliché the way she entered their world. The maid found her swaddled in linens and tucked into an old plastic baby basket - the kind you'd get from a baby shower from anxious friends or family, and it would have been great if it weren't so old, musty and scuffed.

The instant she was brought into the house, he knew. He knew the comfortable life he'd fashioned was beginning to crumble. His wife set up such a ruckus that it woke the weanling from a deep slumber and set her to bawling. And all he did was sigh, fold his papers neatly, and ask the maid to take the squalling child to another room (one that was far, far away from the master bedroom).

It took hours for his wife to calm down enough to stop throwing various delicate items at him (such as the bone china tea set he'd bought as an engagement gift) and instead begin to throw accusations. "I knew you weren't the type to be faithful, but I at least expected you'd keep the product of your lifestyle out of my life! What the hell are you going to do with it! It probably still needs a mother, and you're a fucking asshole if you expect me to be anything close to that!" The rages continued long into the night. It wasn't until a month later that she'd even begun to stop sending him scathing glares.

The girl herself was probably one of the few secret joys he'd ever encountered (and if anyone else found out, he'd have to quietly have both the object of his affection and the voyeur disappear). She cooed at him in the most endearing way, and always smiled when he was in the room with her. The serving folk he kept said she was a little angel, as sweet a child as could be. His private physician declared the baby to be roughly a year old.

"It would follow, then, that whomever you slept with about 21 months ago will be the mother. And you'll have just about the right date of birth to put on the forged certificates I've brought."

It was as the doctor said. Her mother was the leader of some Irish gang, a member of which had been caught in the States, and whom he'd been paid (in more ways than one, obviously) to represent at court. He'd spent a single night with her, and this was what he got.

As the girl grew, it showed very clearly that she was indeed his daughter. Her eyes settled into a stormy blue just a hair lighter than his own. And her fuzzy head sprouted copious silky strands of white-gold, the same colour he'd been teased for as a youth for being so close to an old man's snow.

And she was quick. She was downright gifted. He had tutors come to the mansion during the day, determined she have the best education, the better to survive the world she'd been born into; her father's world.

His wife never forgave him. She took it out on the girl, too, and the servants, and herself. Drinking had never been something she'd enjoyed until his (little angel) daughter came into the picture. Now she could guzzle bottle upon bottle and still call for more.

The last time he saw her smile, she'd been sneaking out of the kitchen door. When she'd noticed his gaze, instead of looking contrite, she'd given him a cheeky grin and a wink, before vanishing in a swirl of gold dust motes in the shaft of sunlight.

The ransom demand came in at midnight.

He'd been secretly going frantic at the thought his own precious girl was missing. The call had not been a surprise, but it was certainly unwelcome. "If you want her alive, you'll do as we say." But how could he? They wanted too much, too much. But wasn't it worth it, to have his baby girl back? But how could he face the world after that? Then everyone would know she was his weak point, and she'd never be safe again.

He spent too long debating his decision. The next contact with the kidnappers-come-child-murderers (he'd seen the carnage they left behind them. His daughter's street friends had apparently defended her to the last. Such loyalty she commanded!) came in the form of a viral internet video. His baby girl, strapped to a chair much too big for her, in a spare concrete room. Masked tormentors took red hot irons and branded her pale flesh, wielded knives which tore perfect, bloody lines into her arms, her legs, her chest. "If you give us what we want, you'll still get her back alive."

After that, something in him died. The police became involved at that point, but he was no longer really present. He answered their questions, acting so much the absent father, and his wife the insufferable bitch that she was. The search began, a thorough, steadfast young officer assuring him as he left with his superiors that they'd find her, by God, and she'd live.

The second video was a graphic and horrifying scene. How could someone defile a child? Especially one so young and innocent? But perhaps that was the draw of it? He'd dealt with their sort before, always from their corner too. The last vestiges of the father in him vowed never to take those jobs again.

At the end of it all, when the burning building had collapsed, the perpetrators had escaped, and his daughter, his precious girl, had been taken to hospital by the young officer for all of the injuries - and the wound on her slim throat! How was she still breathing?! - he had been deemed an unfit guardian.

He didn't even try to fight it. It was better this way, he tried to convince himself over and over. She'd recover, she'd heal, she'd be safe from the world he'd embroiled her in. He'd forfeited the right to see her smile the day she'd been left on his front step. My sweet, darling Daniella.

But something in him never recovered after he let her go. He became listless, catatonic. Nothing mattered anymore.

And so he sat in the office chair, in front of the great oaken desk in his home office, a wakeful corpse.

I'm sorry Reno, Rikku. Tess and Dax and Sig too if you read this. Its not like you needed your hearts, right?

/crawls into a corner and sobs

[fixingtoprotectyou-blog]

@ Rik

"Bringing out old photographs of Paine?"

[fixingtoprotectyou-blog]

Cute (Rikku)

Apparently his unhappiness with this damned festival wasn't apparent. On his hunt for Ashe, Shuyin was forced to halt his search at least six times to dance with some random girl who would attempt to make some move at him. It was the beginning of the night and he had already been offered a spot between a woman's legs and a bed for the night.

As much as I'd love to catch HIV, he's started mentally before declining politely, "No thanks, I have other matters I need to deal with."

The light weights and first-timers were becoming painfully obvious as the poison they ingested in their body took a toll on their actions. The young warrior had caught one as she nearly face-planted on cement before noticing a familiar figure downing a glass of wine.

After helping the female in his arms to stand again and giving a nod to an apology he received, he made his way to the refreshments table to stand behind a slender blonde. Putting his hands on his waste, he inquired,

"What are you doing?"