broken // marlene and dorcas // 1981
Dorcas was positively drunk. Her head was spinning, legs felt exhausted and like they couldn’t carry her properly anymore: perhaps that was why she was half-lying on her sofa, two empty bottles of white wine next to her and her head leaning back. This didn’t feel like her: Dorcas was rational, and while reckless, not one to get drunk because she was upset. Still, this time it had seemed inevitable.
Three kids had been killed, alongside their parents, and the worst thing was, was that she had known them. Tragedies such as those happened so often those days, but the fact that those children had played with her hair, demanded her to tell stories about the journeys she had made with her parents and wanted to get just another piggyback ride was enough to crush her. They had been innocent, after all, pure innocence and laughs even though the world around them was falling apart. They made her want to have children, made her want to carry a baby like Felicia Bones had just half a year ago. It was unfair.
When she had heard she had become rage itself, because Edgar was a man of honour and knowing what beer was best for what mood and a man of comforting slaps on backs and hugs when it was needed. He was loved widely and deeply and it had hurt too god damn much to hear that he had been brutally murdered. It was in that moment that she wondered why they went on, as what they were doing only seemed to result in children dying, friends of them being wiped out until there was no one left to fight. She had shattered a vase, hadn’t bothered with cleaning up the mess she made and had just run off to her parent’s house because she couldn’t handle facing the Order.
And now that the funeral was over (closed case, but she had seen the bodies: it was awful), she was still not feeling any closure, her entire body existing out of a sickening need to avenge this horrible act of violence. Now, the question why they went on seemed stupid: THIS was why they went on, because they couldn’t accept things like this to happen. They had to fight back, there was no other option.
Her mascara had stained her face, leaving dark marks like scars. Even with alcohol clouding her head, she was not feeling better; worse, actually, as if she could fall apart any second in a mess of tears. She needed Marlene, she realised, as she balled her fists, nails leaving marks in her palms. Perhaps she should not have left early: had remained there to pay her respects to Amelia, give her some proper comfort rather than apparating home as soon as the bodies were covered by dirt, but she couldn’t do it any more. Maybe that was selfish, but she would worry about that some other time.