It's Code For You (Parallel NurseryVerse Series)

Chapter 9- Where I Want To Be

"You are useless, Siobhan. You're a woman, your job is to reproduce and stay submissive to your husband." Siobhan flinched as another prickly feeling entered her body. She didn't understand. Why was this happening to her?

"I didn't do anything wrong-"

"You were caught in your room with that faggot from down the road!" Another painful prickling came- making Siobhan cry out. She looked down at her body- was this her body? Her hair was so much longer, it was ratted and tangled, resting over her shoulder. She was in a baby pink button up shirt, one admittedly at least one size too small. She didn't recognize herself, let alone her surroundings.

"She was helping me with my homework! That's all it was! Please Daniel- PLEASE!"

*

Siobhan shot up, gasping for air. Where the hell was she? She gripped the blanket on the bed, panting in a desperate search for air. Her eyes landed on a photo on the wall. Autumn and Marjorie- she was in their spare room. The panic slowly left her body as she remembered just exactly how she'd gotten there. The sensation of feeling her own limbs was coming back slowly as she swung her legs off the bed and onto the cold hardwood floor. She had spent the evening talking to Autumn and Marjorie about the horrors she'd been through lately with Roger. And while she couldn't bring herself to say Vivian's name, she mentioned that she had met someone who felt more like home than any building with four walls and a roof.

Vivian...

The blonde felt a wave of peace overtake her heart, pulling it under the warm waves of Vivian's peaceful embrace. She craved her touch, the complete lack of anxiety that it gave her to have Vivian's skin against her own. Siobhan lived in a constant state of fight or flight, no one felt like safety or home, they never had- and she was sure they never would. But as she sat with her feet against the floor of someone's house that she never thought she'd be in; she realized that there was much more to the definition of 'safety' than she thought.

She could hear the rustling of morning activities happening below her downstairs. The sound of healthy business wasn't one she was familiar with, and she didn't want to get in the way. But after she heard the door shut, and the cars pulling out of the driveway- she felt comfortable to go downstairs. Marjorie and Autumn lived simply, yet elegantly. Siobhan could tell that Autumn had made herself at home in the otherwise chaotic emptiness that was Marjorie's home. There were hints of Autumn's minimalism in the way that the home had been decorated, but there were still many things that screamed Marjorie. Siobhan had never been allowed to decorate she and Roger's home. He'd paid out to have it professionally styled and made sure it always looked like no one even lived there. It was almost sterile, completely devoid of life and happiness. She almost wondered if part of her hostility came from the way she spent her days, sitting at the edge of that bed waiting for Roger to come into the same house, the same layer of dust on the tables, the same fold in the sheets- Every. Damn. Day.

Siobhan took a moment to stare at the pictures she had otherwise only glanced at previously. Each photo held its own story, its own memory within its 4 edges. There was one of the two of them at Christmas the year before, long before they admitted they had feelings and yet Autumn was looking at Marjorie the same way she did to that day. To its left was a photo from Charlotte's eldest's birthday party. It was of Charlotte, Mia, Autumn and Marjorie, but it was candid. Mia had a fingerful of frosting millimeters from Charlotte's face- and Autumn had her arms around Marjorie's waist from behind her cutting the birthday cake. They all looked so happy. Siobhan ran her hand across the hallway table that housed each of those memories slowly, wishing she had any of her own to speak of. Just as she was ready to walk away with sadness at the lack of her own memories- her fingers grazed a faded frame, semi pushed behind others- yet still present among the others. Her breath hitched in her throat when she realized what it was. It was from the first staff meeting she had attended. A photo frozen in time showed a much younger Siobhan and Marjorie, smiling and hugging through a group activity. Marjorie had kept it all these years, even through all of the bad blood Siobhan had created over the years. Marjorie had never given up on her, not even once.