There Will Be Blood [South]

While discomfort is the typical sensation I experience whenever I set foot in Scott Manor, I’ve never felt it at this high of a magnitude before. The pink taffeta of the dress that Natalia nicked from Helena’s closet for me feels stiff and too formal against my skin even though it makes me feel more beautiful than I have in a long time, with actual makeup on and some effort put into my hair (I can feel her eyes burning into me like lasers from across the table when she sees me in her clothes, but I didn’t have anything decent to wear otherwise, my handful of simple, threadbare sundresses paling in comparison to the exquisite tailoring of the garment I’m wearing right now), and in the back of my mind there’s a running commentary about how much I long for my normal clothes, the soft flannel shirt and faded jeans that lie folded neatly in an upstairs bathroom. I feel the weight of everyone’s scrutiny settling heavily on me, and without any food to push around on my plate as a distraction I settle for playing with a stray piece of my hair, let loose from its typical ponytail and remade by Natalia’s careful fingers into an intricate updo with a few pieces pulled loose to frame my face. I’m uncomfortable. Out of my element in every sense of the world, and the icy realization shoots down my spine that this is how I’ll spend the rest of my life: an outsider in a world that doesn’t want me.

“Are you ready for this? Do you remember what happened last time we had a family dinner? Things went bat shit crazy.” Julian’s voice cuts through my thoughts, fingers lacing with mine in a reassuring grip that manages to make me feel a little less like I’m about to go into cardiac arrest. I offer a tight smile and a short nod in response, squeezing his hand briefly because it’s the only way I can communicate right now, my mouth too dry and my breathing too uneven to formulate words. This is going to be and absolute disaster and we both know it. And so do Helena and Adrian, anticipatory smirks gracing their cruelly beautiful features whenever they look at me. The others, the ones who haven’t noticed the diamond sitting with a weight heavier than its actual mass on my left hand are completely oblivious, Alec merely shooting me a sympathetic look like he knows how out of place I feel and Ander offering a wide grin that’s really more of a leer when I turn my gaze on him. He’s been…odd, lately, I’ve noticed. Something a little darker than the good-natured big brother figure that I’ve known up until now. He reminds me less of Liam now and more of something else I can’t quite place but don’t like one bit, but I have no room to judge him. Victors are always a bit… different, and I can’t even bring myself to imagine what goes in his head after everything he’s been through. It’s for that reason and that reason alone that I at least attempt to return the smile but only manage the same tight-lipped curvature of the mouth that I gave Julian. As if sensing my nervousness, his thumb brushes lightly over the back of my hand, a voice that should be lighter in tone reverberating in my ear. “Well, this is bound to get ten times worse. Promise you’ll still want to marry me after this?”

“Of course,” I whisper back, rolling my eyes and grinning a bit more genuinely when he brushes the piece of hair I was playing with back into place. “I’m tougher than people think, you think after we’ve been through so much shit that I’d be scared off by something stupid like your fami –“

And then it all goes to hell, even faster than it did last time, Czar jumping around beneath the table and growling while Julian looks over at me, his face white as a sheet and rarely-seen panic sparking somewhere in his eyes. It’s not a very eloquent way to put it, but I can tell that shit’s about to go down. And I’m not wrong. The dining room door swings open, revealing a man that can only be Julian’s father. The family resemblance is immediately evident, same dark hair, same storm-gray eyes and sharp features. He carries himself very much like Helena and Adrian do, with an air of superiority that rolls off of him in waves along with an emanating force of raw intimidation, and I nearly have to pick my jaw up on the floor as the conversation begins to play out, even Mrs. Scott being cowed into submission, something I never thought I’d see. It’s all I can do to keep from shuddering when the weight of his attention falls on me, lending the sensation that I’ve shrunken down to nothing but a dust speck in a dress far above my station, fighting desperately against the urge to be sick from the nerves. “And who are you?!" he asks sharply, and holds up ha hand to silence Julian when he attempts to speak for me (he must know that I’m almost too terrified to speak for myself). “I asked her.”

Across the table from me, Helena dissolves into hysterical giggles, silenced only by a look from her father that is noticibly softer than the stony glare he bestows on everyone else. “Hush, pet. Let Julian’s friend introduce herself.”

Helena smirks sardonically around her next sip of wine, silvery eyes narrowing with malicious amusement. “Yeah, princess. Tell him who you are. Tell all of us, actually.”

The comment sets my teeth on edge,irking me enough to make me remember my dignity and dig down deep deep deep to pull it up, adopting the same high-born, elegant posture that Helena and Felicity and Julian’s mother sport every moment of their waking lives, acting for all the world like I belong here at this table in this dress in this society that has never felt more foreign. Well, if everything’s going to go to hell, it might as well all go there at once. Letting one of those cool smiles grace my lips that’s not the least bit genuine, a skill I’ve picked up from watching Helena, I push my chair back and stand up, only wobbling a bit on my too-high heels, extending my hand towards Julian’s father. “Pleasure to finally meet you, Mr. Scott. I’m Aria Fowler. Julian’s fiancée.”

Silence is something I’ve never been able to handle well; in life, in social situations, and especially in my own head. The Voice has been eerily silent for weeks now, and rather than feeling relieved the way I should, the suffocating quiet in my mind has only served to put me further on edge than I already was, the feeling of the calm before the storm constantly sitting heavy on my consciousness until I can’t feel anything but apprehension and the sensation that I’m nothing but a slave to my own delusions, my identity lost without all of the things that make me so mentally unbalanced.

If my interior silence is the calm before the storm, then this, this oppressive lack of noise that pervades the dining room must be the shock of the aftermath. My eyes are saucer-wide as Julian folds himself back into the seat beside me, all the barely-concealed emotion playing its way across the plains of his face in a way that I’ve finally learned to read. Anger, humiliation… it’s all there, etched into the lines of elegant cheekbones and glimmering faintly behind tempestuous gray orbs that are usually so easy to get lost in but now are so set on pushing everyone and anyone far, far away until no one can touch him, even me. In a matter of seconds he’s gone from the person I love more than life back to that cold, distant hull of a boy I met in the woods, almost a year of progress dashed to smithereens in such a short snippet of time. My fragile world is tearing apart at the seams, and for the umpteenth time I can’t help but think that it must be my fault, the diamond weighing my hand down like a lead weight until the pressure builds behind my ribs past the point where I can stand it and I slam my silverware onto the table with a loud clatter.

“You should be ashamed of yourselves,” I hiss, pushing my chair back and standing up again, fists balled against the pink taffeta of the dress so tightly that it’s a wonder the delicate fabric doesn’t rip beneath my grip. “Every last one of you, you should all be ashamed. This isn’t how a family acts. You can call me out on being poor all you want, but I know what a family is, and this sure as hell isn’t one.”

My gaze falls on Helena, her glass of wine frozen halfway to her mouth in shock at my sudden growth of a backbone. “Big sisters aren’t supposed to think of ways to make their little brother’s life miserable. They’re supposed to be there to give advice and lend support.”

I round on Adrian next, all but spitting the words. “And you. Out of all the people in the world that it’s possible for your warped, sociopathic little mind to actually care about, it should be your twin brother. So wipe that smirk off your face and grow the hell up.”

It seems that the more I shoot off at the mouth, the hotter my temper flares, sparking even at members of the family that never gave me any reason to lash out at them before. No, not even Alec and Ander escape my wrath, falling under the weight of a withering glare that comes their way from across the table. “Big brothers aren’t worth much if they don’t stick up for their younger siblings. I don’t care how much money you have, my brother is ten times the brother to me than either of you are to Julian or Adrian or even Natalia. They need you, and you couldn’t care less.”

It’s only now that I realize how much my lungs scream for something I can’t identify (air? Escape? Absolution?), and I allow myself a few seconds to take in breaths just as shaky as my tightly-clenched hands, veins thrumming with outrage at the injustice of it all. This is the life that lies ahead of me, this house full of people that hate each other in ways that no one who shares blood should. And maybe, I realize, it hasn’t just been me who’s felt out of place in this house all this time. I can spot it a little bit in each of their faces, a nervous twitch of Helena’s lip, a half-formed word that dies on Alec’s lips. I stand among people who feel unwelcome in their own home. I can’t think of a fate any worse, and the prospect haunts me even as I turn to the adults, if you can all them that, my voice substantially softer but no less angry.

“And parents should want their kids to be healthy and happy. It shouldn’t matter what they do or what they’re good at or who they want to marry, as long as they’re safe and content. Anyone who uses their child like some sort of puppet is a god-awful parent, running a sick, messed-up facsimile of a family. And that’s what this is.”

The cold weight of reality – this is what awaits me. It won’t change. This is the rest of my life – settles heavy around the band of gold adorning my finger, and it’s with tearful eyes that I finally turn to Julian, sliding the little glimmering circle out of place and putting it in the palm of my outstretched hand. “And I really don’t think I can let myself be a part of this.”