Sarah Paulson character multi-pairing oneshots

Above Us Only Sky (Delia x Billie x R)

Tw: minor character death, grieving, funerals

As a child, you had always been close with your uncle; he snuck you packets of smarties and pulled funny faces behind your mother's back, laughing when she caught him and smacked him over the head. He took you to feed the ducks and taught you how to ride a bike; he was most definitely your favourite relative, the only one who treated you like a person and not a burden. The only person who you knew loved you. Your mother laughed at you for having your head in the clouds. He taught you to keep dreaming.
When your mom called to inform you of his death, your legs trembled as you swayed at the top of the cliff, looking out across the choppy water, ready to tumble. Perhaps it would be easier to drown.
And you did; you gasped for air as you bobbed in the ocean of heartache; your lungs filled with salt and burned with each breath.Your limbs gave out and the cold strangled the life from you, pulling you down into its grip.

You had insisted on staying with your mother in the lead up to the funeral; the grief you wore like a blindfold preventing you from seeing the cracks in your relationship. Delia and Billie, the two great loves of your life, were frightened for you; the distress that your mother planted inside you grew into a thick ivy, weaving its way into your relationship, threatening to choke you. It had taken a lot of nourishing to kill it at the root, and they were terrified their work would be undone, leaving you like an empty greenhouse, built only to harbour the weeds of her bitterness.

They had offered to accompany you, but truth be told, you would rather them not have front row seats to the Broadway performance of your pain. That would be too far; like stepping out on stage in your underwear for them to pick apart. All your flaws and your darkest shadows on show, hiding from the sunny spotlight they shone down on you.

If love were a petal, you were a garden; your heart bloomed with the care they held you with. Delia was a sunflower, always looking towards the light. She dazzled you with her brilliance as you stood in her shadow. Billie was a rose, romantic and sparkling with passion. She was prickly, her thorns hurting those who approached without her reciprocation. You were only ever touched with the velvet of her petals as she held you tenderly in her heart and her hands. Your mother taught you that you were a weed, growing in places you shouldn't have been, but they taught you how to grow. A brilliant white flower glimmering with the sunlight they loved you with.

The lights of the city twinkled as you came to land, welcoming you back to the place you had stopped calling home. Your head weighed like lead on your shoulders, bowing towards the floor, and your body followed your movement as it folded inwards like a house of cards caught in the wind. The fog of loss had begun to clear as you were brought down from the clouds, and instead the storm of despair settled in your stomach in anticipation of the days that would follow.

"Maybe I should have died if I knew that's what it would take to get you back here!" She greeted you with a cool grin, eyes red with angry tears, "shame you couldn't see him before he died."
She brought you into a quick hug then, though you could feel her nails digging at you, the anger pricking at your skin. She felt smaller, or had you just become bigger? Allowed to finally grow, nourished by the love that Delia and Billie bathed you in, instead of only seeping through the cracks of the concrete your mother had coated you with, suffocating you with her cool indifference.

"I'm sorry." You practically whimpered a combination of condolences and guilt, though earned only a scoff in reply.

Your mother had always been like a statue, though you walked through the gallery with age; she was once a greek goddess, carved from the most perfect marble as you looked up into her eyes as a little girl; the prettiest you had ever seen. Soon, though, you wandered further and that brilliant white began to fade, leaving stone in its wake; she now stood as a weeping angel, looking down on the grave of your relationship; moss grew in her cracks, blemishing the skin you once thought was perfect with the marks of her existence.