Falling to Pieces (Fin)

Frantic, Dora pushed open each of the bedroom doors one by one. Fin’s room was the largest and she gave it a thorough search, not the least bit concerned that she might be walking in on her best friend and some random witch in flagrante delicto. His room empty and her mind not processing as rationally as it should, Dora ran to the room that she had once claimed as her own. Empty. Trying each of the guestrooms in a panic, she failed to recognize that there was no reason for Fin to be in any of these rooms. Not at this hour. Not without company, and he’d have mentioned if he was planning to have visitors; either to keep Dora away or to ensure she came over more frequently to play buffer between him and his family. The Averys weren’t her biggest admirers but they were respectable enough to not be flat out horrid to Fin in front of her. His family most definitely was not here, but the raven-haired witch didn’t know what else to do so she pushed open another door and looked around at the unoccupied space with mounting anguish.

As if the gods had finally had enough of watching her suffer, Dora heard Fin’s voice ring out behind her. She swung around to see him standing at the top of the stairs, her black hair falling limply around her shoulders. The spinning motion made her nauseated, but she forced the sick feeling down as she moved towards him, tears running down her face. Sticking her hand into the pocket of the cloak she still wore, Dora pulled out a small glass vial. “This!” she said shrilly, waving the wizarding pregnancy test in front of her as she closed the space between them, the faint pink liquid sloshing around inside the vial. As soon as he was within reach, Dora wrapped her arms around him and let the weight of her body hang there as she sobbed into his shoulder. Never had she considered this to be a possibility for her future. Unwed. Unloved. Pregnant. She was every bit the failure her mum believed her to be.

She wanted to simply crawl into a hole and die. How had this happened?! Everything around her seemed so much larger and scarier than it had ever appeared to her before. The walls around her were closing in and the hall seemed to stretch on for miles and miles. She could hear Fin’s voice but the words sounded distant and unearthly. It was as if he was only pretending to speak real words. She could feel his breath warming her hair as he spoke, feel his arms tighten around her thin frame, but none of it seemed real. It was very much like a dream, a nightmare. By the gods, if only this was a nightmare that she could wake from. “I don’t know what I’m going to do, Fin” she whimpered, face buried in his chest.

Pain formed at her temples and the center of her forehead long before the tears had stopped. Curled into the fetal position, her knees tucked up near her chest, she laid her head on Fin’s lap and stared into the void. At one point, Mimi had leapt up and tried to lick Dora’s face as she laid on her best friend for comfort, the pup’s breath smelling of chicken. Dora had simply turned his face away, curling further into Fin without a word to either of them.

Fin was the closest thing Dora had left to family, and wherever he was she felt at home. Fin signaled safety for Dora, even if she couldn’t recognize as much. She could be vulnerable with him and knew that he would pick up the pieces. He always had, even when they were young, but this wasn’t something he could buy her way out of. The enormous truth of her situation had yet to settle on her but that feeling of unknown terror lurked in the back of her mind, just out of reach but ever present. Dora hadn’t been able to provide any sort of answers to the questions Fin had posed, in truth she hadn’t even really understand any of them, no matter how many times he repeated them. From the moment Fin’s arms had wrapped around her thin frame, Dora had been in a fog. She was practically catatonic now, except for the momentary resurgence of tears and repeated statements of hopelessness that she spontaneously emitted from time to time.

Not even in sleep could she escape her current situation. Her dreams were full of absolute nothingness, enveloping her and pulling her down into a dark pit that seemed endless and cold. The only sounds were that of babies crying and Mimosa barking. She was alone, scared, and impossibly fat. Dora woke off and on all night, managing to sneak away from Fin long enough to hide away in the toilet and alleviate some of the pain that her tears had been unable to release. When she climbed back into Fin’s bed and nestled herself in his arms again, she sported a new bandage on her thigh.