Emotional Connection

the argument

For the first time in nearly a month, the lights were on in Ashley's house when she arrived from work. It was irrational, but she was sort of relieved that her dad was home, she really had missed him. She opened the door with a smile, greeting her dad and walking to the fridge to grab a drink.

"I was starting to think you didn't live here anymore." He laughed quietly.

Ashley stopped. She knew he was joking, but something about it made her irrationally pissed off at him. "I've been here in the past twenty-four hours. Have you?" She knew she'd regret this later, but it felt good to actually let out her feelings instead of letting them sit in the back of her mind.

"What's that supposed to mean?" He looked fairly put out, anger quickly taking over. "At least I'm not avoiding you for some irrational reason?"

Laughing, she asked, "and what is this irrational reason that I'm avoiding you for? Go on, I'd love to hear it."

"You're too involved in your friendships and your work to ever come home!" He yelled, making her flinch and take a step back from him.

"What friendships? No, please tell me, what friendships? Because I've never had that before. The reason I'm never here when you apparently are is probably because I'm at work, or because you weren't here in the few hours I have awake when I get home from work, and it's too lonely to sleep in a completely empty house as though you don't live here anymore, so I go to Charlie's where I know I'll at least get to talk to another human being outside of the hospital."

He simply stared at her, breathing heavily with pure rage etched into his face.

"I've hardly seen you since you got back from your rescue mission, you weren't even here enough to notice that I was out of breath walking from one room to another, too busy with your dragons to notice that I was so ill, had to take care of it all myself, just as I've always been expected to."

"You can't expect me to just stop working, Ashley-Rae, that's the whole reason we're here."

"No," she shook her head, "it's the reason you're here. I'm here because of you, because if I'm not here to take care of you, to treat you when you're sick and injured, I might end up spending my life in St Mungos, or worried out of my mind when I've not heard from you for a few weeks because you're too busy to 'check-in'. I'm here out of necessity. You're here for fun."

"You think this is fun for me? You think that losing your mother was fun for me?"

Ashley didn't have an immediate response to that, walking towards the door without turning back to look at him. "No. But I do think it was your fault she left."
She walked out, trying to shake off the anger, trying not to let it completely take over as it used to when she was younger, trying to regain some sort of self-control. She felt the tears welling up and Ash tried to stop herself from crying but that just made it worse, her throat burning, vision going blurry, and before she knew what was going on she was at Charlie's front door crying and trying to figure out if she should knock.
Eventually, she did, trying to wipe away the tears before he opened the door to no avail.

"Ash- Ashley, what- come in." He gently pulled her inside, closing the door behind her, sitting her on the sofa before going to the kitchen to boil the kettle for tea, as he knew it was her comfort drink. "What happened?"

She shook her head, not really being able to talk about it while she was still crying. Ashley had never really had an argument with her dad, the two of them had always managed t get along without any kind of conflict.

She sat there with her knees pulled up to her chest, Mango trying to curl into her side without pricking her with her spines, sipping her tea. Charlie sat quietly by the side of her, drinking his own tea, though he kept looking over at her cautiously, as though he was afraid she would break on his sofa.

Eventually, she felt calm enough to tell him about it, so she lowered her knees, crossed her legs and put her tea on the table in front of her, and told him everything.