Drops of Jupiter: a Niall Horan AU

Three: Parents

A/N: I haven't edited this part for grammatical errors yet, so, sorry about that! & also this chapter is a bit heavy emotionally so!!

"Since the return from her stay on the moon, she listens like spring and she talks like June"

The Miller family sat at their kitchen table, poking at some pasta that Emmeline had fixed for supper. The house was quiet and Emmie could have sworn she'd rather listen to the whines of terrible actresses on her mother's trashy soap operas than let her thoughts occupy the silence and tension around her.

Her parents didn't get along; Emmie'd know this ever since she was five years old and could still hear her parents fighting at one am, the sound of doors slamming, and then her mother's sobs in her own bedroom.

Now, though, it seemed as though her father didn't even bother to come home long enough to pick a fight. And when he was home, it wasn't surprising if he was no where near sober enough to carry on a reasonable conversation.

Emmie, having learned from observation, knew that her father liked to drink hard liquor and could easily be found with a bottle in one hand a lit cigarette in the other.

Jim Miller had come home for dinner tonight. Helen wasn't thrilled and Emmeline seemed plain shocked to see him home, and not totally smashed, before midnight.

So, the three of them sat awkwardly picking at their pasta. No one seemed inclined to strike up a conversation and Emmie was hoping she'd be able to finish up and sneak away to her room before she had to.

Emmie slammed her fork so hard into a noodle that her Styrofoam plate snapped in half and pasta went flying across the kitchen.

She might have known next to nothing about the person her mother really was underneath all the alcohol and masked emotion, but Emmie was smart enough to know that her father didn't deserve her or her mother.

That's when she lost it.

"Get out," Emmie's voice was cracking at the edges and she sounded absolutely terrified, but he must've heard it.

"Get out? Did ya just tell me t' get outta my own house, bitch?"

"Shut the fuck up, Jim! You can call me a useless whore all you fuckin' want to, but I will not sit here and let you talk to my daughter like that!"

Emmie thought that was the longest, bravest sentence she'd ever heard her mother say to her shitty excuse for a father.

Jim narrowed his beady eyes at his wife, clenching his meaty fist around the butter knife.

Emmie could tell by the twitch in his right eye that he was this close to jamming that knife into her mother's skin.

She wasn't about to let him.

Emmeline had managed to pluck the knife from his grip but she still couldn't stop him from lunging at her mother and slapping, probably also punching, her.

Emmie, overcome with anger and adrenaline, jammed the knife into his shoulder.

Now, it was a butter knife and it couldn't have done much damage with the depth she'd stabbed him at.

But Jim still howled like he was about to die from it. He turned to Emmie and was probably about to hurt her far worse than he'd planned to do to his wife, when Emmie spoke again.

"You know," she hissed. "I know those won't be the first marks you've left on her body and I can 100% guarantee that they make a special place in not only jail, but also in Hell, for monsters like you," Emmie had no clue as to where she'd found that burst of bravery but she liked it.