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 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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