Always In Your Shadow: Calista Snape Volume I (Snape's Daughter)

11.

Calista had once thought that if she could escape the life she had, if she could live with someone like Severus, that she would immediately be happy and her problems would fade away, but she found that reality wasn't nearly so neat and simple. There were still days when the memory of things her mother had done replayed vividly in her mind, and made her feel frightened and small; and then, almost without fail, her fear would transition into anger, because that was a much easier thing for her to feel.

She preferred the anger, by far: It was hard, and solid, and charged. It felt like something solid inside her, something tangible that she could name. Fear, on the other hand... it made her feel quivery and weak, like all her edges were blurred, or like her insides were trying to leap out of her skin. And besides, anger felt like a choice, while fear felt forced on her.

And even though she had promised to try not to make her father worry, had long ago told him that her plan wasn't to be mean to him, she was still disobedient and argumentative more than she knew she ought to be. It was like a compulsion, once she had gotten him teetering on the brink of anger, to push him there. And why, she could never explain, because she hated when he was angry; she liked it much better when they were getting along, when he was teaching her something, or answering her exhaustive questions, or even... well, she would never say so, couldn't even think it properly without feeling a rush of shame and embarrassment, but she liked it when he hugged her.

But that, the being affectionate - that was something that happened mostly after her nightmares, or sometimes during a very serious talk, and she thought that probably he was embarrassed by it just as much as she was - he must have thought, during those times, that she was a dreadful baby.

Once... just one time, she had started yelling in the middle of the night, for no reason at all, just so he would come and comfort her. But then, when he'd come running, and she could see alarm written all over his face, she'd felt horribly guilty, wished she'd never done it. He did try to hug her, too, that time, but by then she was beyond mortified by what she'd done, and pushed him away.

For a long time, it was a cycle of trying to wriggle her way close to him, emotionally speaking, and then relentlessly pushing back against him, distancing herself, and vexing him on purpose. Then she'd feel awful, and start the whole cycle over again, and she wished she knew why she kept on doing it, because when she thought about it, all she really wanted was to get close, and stay there.

For his part, Severus tried to have as much patience as he could, but she did make it very difficult sometimes. On some level, he understood some of what was happening, understood that, for reasons she probably couldn't even put into words, she felt like she had to test him, make certain that he wasn't going to abandon her, no matter what she put him through. He didn't understand why it had to go on so long, why she had to put them both through this cycle over and over, but he wasn't going to give up; partly, because he cared a great deal for her, even when she was a miserable brat, and partly, damn it, out of sheer stubbornness, because he didn't want her to win. And, yes, he supposed that looking at their situation in a win/loss light was probably unhealthy, but there it was, just the same.

The other constant cycle they faced was the cycle of her nightmares; they would dwindle whenever he gave her potions, consistently, to help her sleep, but eventually, the dreams would start coming again, and he would have to give her higher dosages, and on and on, and he knew that she was developing a dependency on them, so he'd have to start the pattern in reverse, cutting her down to lower and lower amounts, and in between starting back up again, he gave it at least a month, so that her body would stop expecting the potion, and would be receptive to its effects once again.

Something curious happened, as well; he had always, since entering her mind, anyway, been able to feel her alarm when she was having a nightmare (well, nearly always - there had been one time when he'd felt nothing, but she'd started yelling for help, and he'd gone in and she said it was another nightmare) but, sometime when she was around nine or so, he'd started feeling something more.