absolution ☾teen wolf [slow updates]

one [homesick]

MARCH

APRIL

MAY

broken

i'm so sorry

JUNE

JULY

"Aubrey, I've had enough of this. I can't pretend nothing's wrong any longer."

Slowly, wearily, she lifted her head from her plate and stared at her father. Her chapped lips opened, then closed again. Of course, she wasn't actually going to say anything, no - she hadn't spoken a word since the funeral. So she just let her eyes bore into his until she could sense his discomfort, and then turned her attention back to her plate.

Not that the food there occupied any of her actual attention span anymore. Nothing did. Music, movies, TV, shopping, food, sleep. It was all meaningless, in the end. Aubrey felt no point of keeping up the pretence that she was okay, as her father attempted to every day, but instead stopped showing up at school, stopped showering, stopped getting out of bed. Again, meaningless; all of it. Her so-called friends had stopped contacting her after she sunk too deeply into her depression and found that they couldn't pull her back out again.

Paul Mitchell frowned at his daughter, wishing with all his might that he could pull what was left of her out of the shell of a person that she had become. His knife and fork clattered to his plate, and her head shot up to see her dad's hands shaking.

"You need a change of scenery, Bree. You can't keep living like this. Like there's nothing left to save you." He cleared his throat nervously, knowing his daughter would hate him for the words he was about to say, but reminding himself that this was the only way to bring her back to herself. "You're going to live with your brother in California."

Aubrey's eyes welled up with tears. Even when she did nothing at all, she was a failure. Unashamedly, she shook her head and folded her hands in her lap, staring pointedly at them.

Paul argued, "there's no point fighting back; Noah's already making arrangements as we speak. I've told Ezra and Will, and Will's parents, and they agree that it'll be good for you. They want to keep in contact with you. Bree, honey, this is what's best for both of us. I need to work, and you need to get your daily dose of Vitamin D and hang out with friends and enjoy life again. I can't spend all day watching your every move any more."

The stillness that possessed Aubrey could have belonged to a statue, for all Paul knew. His daughter didn't move, didn't speak, barely ate, barely breathed anymore, almost as though she was trying to brush aside her very existence.

"Your flight is next week." Paul stood up with a resigned look on his face, and picked his plate up, stuffing it into the dishwasher on his way out of the room, not bothering to spare a look at his daughter.

"No."

He stopped in his tracks, and slowly turned on his heel. The voice had been low and raspy, the word muttered, but nevertheless it had been his daughter that spoke. Paul took a step back into the kitchen, and told Aubrey, "yes. I'm not going to fight you about this, because we both know that if you sit in that damn bed for another minute then you'll waste away into nothingness. I don't know what to do anymore, Bree, because it feels like I've lost my daughter as well as my wife. You're not the only one grieving, you know." He gave her a stern look, and let his eyes quickly dart down to the skin on her wrists, almost as though he was reminding her what he had been put through since his wife's death.