milliways_bar | (no subject)

(no subject)

(OOC: Following this bit of Canonpuncture and breakage ...)

Clarice is hunched up in a chair by the fire, still wearing her sundress. She has not changed clothes. She has not slept. She reads her copy of "Silence of the Lambs" with a kind of desperate attention, but every so often she has to set it down.

[Summary: Clarice is broken, broken, broken. Meg and Angua give her practical advice, she confesses some things to Barry, she ~~therapizes~~ talks to Ron about Harry and being fictional, the Opera Ghost serenades her creepily, and Aziraphael is at a loss for advice.]

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"I don't think the person that wrote that book was thinking that," Ron said, nodding towards it. "I think they just had a story come into their head and they never even realized that it didn't just come from nowhere."

He went on, "Besides, is there anything you do or think that you should be ashamed of?"

"No," Clarice says, "but it's mine. It's not for anybody else to know about-- people do things with that kind of knowledge."

"Then don't let them," Ron told her. Embarassedly, he admitted, "This little git who's pretty much bullied me all through school got turned into a cat and I took him in without knowing it. I talk to my pets--told him some of my worst secrets, some things that were bothering me, things that were worrying me. He knows all of that now. Thing is, I know that he knows it, and he may know what I was thinking then...but he doesn't know what I'm thinking now. He may know what can hurt me, but it doesn't mean I have to let him. Jsut 'cause someone knows what you were thinking or doing doesn't mean they control you somewhere. Just means they're nosy."

Clarice frowns. "A lot of people give you a hard time, Ron."

Ron squirmed and looked at his hands. "I reckon." He looked up. "Bullies always go after the people that are weakest, y'know?"

"You don't look weak to me," Clarice says, thinking of his impressive sprints around the lake.

Ron just shrugged again. "I'm trying to get better at stuff," he said. That was the closest he could manage to sounding self-confident.

"That counts more than anything else," Clarice says.

This is an integral belief of Clarice's, strengthened by years of successfully playing by the rules. All you have to do, in her opinion, is work as hard as you can until you outstrip everyone else. It's never failed her yet.

Ron scratched at the back of his head. "Well, there's always someone who's worked harder is to be the problem."

"It couldn't ever be you?"

Ron shook his head. "All I'm good at's chess. I've gotten good at throwing knives, too, I reckon, but that's all 'cause Faith's a really good teacher." He shrugged indifferently. "S'alright."

He went on with a tiny smile, "I'm good at making my best mate laugh. That's not an easy thing to do."

"Laughing's good," Clarice says, nodding.

"Especially for him. He's too bloody serious all the time," Ron said. "Not that I blame him, but still. He needs to laugh more. He hasn't had much to laugh about."

"I talked to him," says Clarice, and all that that implies. Most specifically, his tendency to seem much, much older than his age when talking about death and the people who want to kill him. "If you really make him laugh, you deserve a medal."

Ron just nodded to himself.

He cracked a crooked, bitter grin.

He tried to think of some way to express his hopelessness and the feeling of helplessness that nearly overwhelmed him now wherever his best mate was involved.

All he could managed wa, "It's getting a lot harder now."

Clarice nods emphatically. She knows.

"It's tough."

"He's...he came here right from losing his godfather," Ron said, looking carefully at the floor. He sighed. "I really don't--I've been trying, but--I really don't know what to do."

Clarice frowns. Everything new that she learns about Harry is something about loss.

"Do you have any idea of something he might need?" she asks. "Like to be listened to, to laugh?"

"I dunno what to do," Ron said mournfully, "Other than try and make him laugh like I always do. I reckon...I reckon he needs more than that, though. He needs...like a grown up--like a parent or something to look after him." He shook his head.

"That's not exactly something I can go and get him either. That's something that'd just have to happen."

Clarice frowns.

"Nobody can really replace a parent," she says with the calm of one stating an undisputed fact. "Sometimes people come close, though. Harry'll find something."

Ron nodded. "I bloody well hope so."

He stood, to go get that food he had wanted to get. He pointed to the book. "I wouldn't let that bother you. You can't get everything inside your head into a book. So even if someone reads that they won't know everything. There's always a part that'll just belong to you, y'know?"

The he said, "I'm starving, so I'm off."

And he gave her a little wave and went over to the Bar and ordered pancakes.

Clarice collapses back into her chair. After a moment, she picks up Silence of the Lambs and begins to read restlessly.

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