antebellum [t. riddle]

lvii.

february 1945

sicaria had been backing out on all the promises she made to herself.

never do drugs again.

fail.

get away from them before you get hurt.

fail.

don't respond to eileen's chastising letters.

fail.

feel something on your own.

fail.

don't sleep with tom again.

huh.

well, maybe she hadn't broken all of them. but still— the ratio was decidedly not in her favor.

it was an ongoing turmoil for her, being defeated by her own temptation, but once abraxas had found her, everything was a reaction to that situation. it was a domino effect, and she had no idea where the chaos would stop and when she would stop falling...

falling.

falling.

she blinked, and suddenly, she was in an entirely different corridor. sicaria had been so consumed by her thoughts that she did not actually have time to tell malfoy that she had absolutely no idea what to say nor do to the group of boys who were just on the opposite side of the door.

call it nerves or call it paranoia, but the idea of being around them at this moment nearly made her violently ill.

"abraxas—" she started, preparing to tell him that she had changed her mind, and would see him... some other time. she wanted to say that she wasn't ready yet.

leaving them was hard, staying away was harder, but coming back?

—crawling back?

after they had seen her nearly be sick at the breakfast table? after abraxas had found her, cocaine still in her bloodstream, crying her eyes out in the rain? after they had all come to terms with the fact that grindelwald eventually find her, and she would die?

she felt pathetic— embarrassed almost. 

but abraxas wouldn't hear any of it. he shushed her and pressed his palm to a door with an ancient looking lock on it. it looked completely unordinary until it glowed, and disintegrated under his fingertips, leaving a handle, which he turned. 

he pushed the door open, and nudged her through the entryway.

the moment she walked through the door, she saw how their tense expressions relaxed and watched relief enter her friend's faces. it seemed like they were expecting her to be far more distraught than she showed visibly, but she had cried all the tears she could before abraxas had even shown up.

she also noticed that none of them looked surprised to see her. 

she parted her lips before closing them. abraxas snickered behind her, closing the door as he stepped in.

sicaria felt like a fish on dry land— suffocating while not knowing how to help herself. she wondered how quick she would have to be to make it out of the door before they drew their wands on her.

seemingly resigning to the fact that sicaria would not speak first, thomas' voice rang out from the far side of the room.

"how the mighty have fallen."

her lip twitched.

"hi," she said.

adrien smiled at her, standing from the desk he had been sitting on before. "alright there, edwards?"