#laura anders

[build-a-problem-musical]

The Anders family was...something in Celeste's early years.

Her parents had not at all accounted for the simple fact of her existence until it was staring right at them; they prepared the house and tended to her physically, but mostly they just pawned her off to Josh (17), Delia (12), or Laura (9) or left her to her own devices. Celeste was already very temperamental by nature, and this was exacerbated by the fact that no one exactly taught her how to behave and that she could turn vicious in search of attention. Her daycares would regularly call or send notes about her most recent disruption, which frequently involved any combination of her kicking, biting, hitting, scratching, throwing things, or knocking over chairs. None of the facilities could keep her for long, and she was once again treated as a problem for Delia and Laura to deal with. (Josh had moved out by then and was thus able to escape this.) Neither of them were exactly the most patient with her (the whole situation was one they didn't appreciate--they didn't really want to make it easy for their parents to do nothing) but managed to argue, threaten, or punish her into line. Delia and Laura moved out at 18 with the mentality of "I'm leaving this hopeless Anders household as soon as I possibly can," and Celeste plans on doing the same. Overall, the Anders family operated something along these lines with regards to her.

(The Anders parents were probably better with Josh, Delia, and Laura at first when they had enough energy for all of them--which is not remotely to excuse them, but just a side note.)

[build-a-problem-musical]

Consider Celeste with a Rubik's cube or some similar puzzles. She can't play alone for long, but she did try with that and those snap circuits (perhaps she roped Emma or Laura into building them with her sometimes).

[build-a-problem-musical]

Delia was 14 or 15 and Laura 11 or 12 when they learned how to pick up and carry a screeching Celeste. They also learned to deal with how she hit and kicked and scratched and bit them. Celeste could go through most of her routine with either of them, but Laura had to be the one to put Celeste to bed or else risk her getting too worked up to sleep easily.

[build-a-problem-musical]

Starless Sky Celeste does not relate well to food.

Back when she spoke, she would run so hard she upset her stomach and argue fiercely with Laura, who wanted her to eat again and go to bed instead of finishing her run. After giving up her voice, she has to contend with constructed-Emma's disapproval of her weight gain from emotional overeating. Knowing that her knees hurt too much to run it off, Emma encourages her to wait until they don’t before eating again. Consequently, Celeste cooks herself a soup for dinner the next day so that she can eat on her own terms without Laura interfering. Once it’s done, she drinks the soup, eats none of its actual contents, and prepares to sleep on the couch (she slept beside Laura before the professionals got involved, but afterwards, she has not slept in Laura’s room out of fear that she’d wake up from some terrifying dream, react accordingly, and force Laura to send her back). Emma coaches her on how to handle Laura’s concern, having her brush her teeth before she can be made to finish and telling her to be calm and promise to eat more the next day, omitting in silence her plans to run. She forces Celeste to break out of Laura’s attempt to rock her, fearing that accepting will prove that Celeste is childish and therefore broken and in need of having Emma taken away. When Laura is gone, Emma expresses pride in Celeste and sings her to sleep.

[build-a-problem-musical]

In the diverging timelines, Laura buys Celeste a big roll of wire so she can redirect her to strip it when she's feeling agitated. (Starless Sky Laura particularly relies on it to try to get her calm enough that she will acquiesce to going to bed instead of staying up to avoid dreaming. The key word there, though, is try. When she makes Celeste stop, there's usually a huge eruption because she still doesn't want to sleep.)

[build-a-problem-musical]

Starless Sky Celeste becomes a kintsugi artist, so in the same vein, she cuts up the clothes Thomas forced her into and turns them into some quilted jacket. She makes it with relative stability, but as soon as she puts it on, she falls apart spiraling as if he were there to see what she’s done to the original clothes. She takes it off immediately but does not feel any better for the next fifteen minutes or so, even when Laura brings her an orange for grounding purposes (that are still largely unfamiliar to Celeste, who has gone who knows how long without doing anything to manage her dissociation—if it was unclear in the main timeline whether she had it, she definitely does in this one).

[build-a-problem-musical]

If Celeste is with Thomas for the entirety of the twenty-four years I have projected, it’s an utter disaster.

She sustains her silence and gets used to screaming and crying in the seclusion and anonymity of stalls in public bathrooms, or later, while she breaks her pottery in the shed behind the house she lives in with him. Apart from that, she has no recollection of her own voice.

Her participation grades wind up abysmal and so do her grades for other assignments that she couldn’t bring herself to complete. Her parents deem this the school’s problem even though no one has gotten anything out of her.

She alternately clings to Thomas when she’s seen Emma and tries to avoid rocking the boat with him any other time. She continues making art and looks for ways to sell it without his knowledge. He keeps her between his arms when she’s not tending to his house, and he hits her and destroys her work if he feels she hasn’t met his requirements. Her version of Emma frequently joins in. He twists her efforts at self-defense to turn her into the instigator. He still tends to the injuries he causes.

She does not reach satisfaction with the state of her body. Every so often, he threatens to put her away for some behavior of hers with which he finds fault. She’s terrified to share a bed with him in case she wakes up screaming. He forces her to do it and sometimes tries to calm her and other times tries to shut her down or ignore her when she wakes up sobbing in terror.

She sometimes considers visiting Emma’s grave, but doesn’t want to risk his ire. Her Emma batters her mercilessly for it.

She keeps all the shards from every clay piece that she and Thomas have ever broken in boxes organized by work in the hopes she can fix them one day. She stores them in a location only she knows, somewhere in the shed.

She takes a long time to find Laura, whose last name has changed from Anders to something else between the time Celeste took up residence with Thomas and the end.

[build-a-problem-musical]

Stars Restitched Celeste calls Laura more often because she does not have many other options. “More often” from Celeste does not mean much (especially in this timeline compared to her Starless Sky counterpart), and she is not at all responsive to comfort, but this is something.