meant to be yours // heathers au // EDITING

fourteen

Veronica's POV

After Violet's birth, JD became cruel again. It started slowly, with him punishing me for fucking things up. If I didn't take care of Lydia and Violet the way he wanted me to that meant I was doing it wrong.

He had begun to drink far more often, coming home smelling like rum and other women. When I confronted him about his infidelity, he always blamed me.

I didn't sleep with him enough, I nag at him too much. It was always a different reason.

Eventually, his anger went past me. He started to hurt Lydia, though in a different way. He never hit her as he often did to me, instead opting for strange and unusual forms of punishment. This started by putting Lydia in the corner for crying. Which was normal, it's a common timeout spot.

Once that stopped working, he made her kneel on rice until she cried. The second Lydia began to tear up, he would yank her off the rice and put her in timeout. Except he didn't use the corner anymore, he would lock her in a closet and ignore her as she screamed. Lydia was terrified of the dark and JD knew this, he knew that if she associated crying with darkness that she'd stop.

And she did. But because she wasn't allowed to cry, she began to act violently towards Violet and I. Despite being five, she could recognize the correlation between Violet's birth and her father's unkind behavior towards her.

I didn't tell JD that Lydia was hitting me because I knew that whatever he did would only make it worse. The punishment he would come up with would continue to morph my Lydia into an unrecognizable child. A child that could be far worse than her father.

When the time came and Lydia, now eight, lashed out at JD, he wasn't happy at all. He locked her into the closet and instead fueled all his frustrations with her into his punishment for me. He claimed it was my fault that Lydia was misbehaving and that I would have to suffer the consequences.

He gave me the choice of Lydia or I getting punished. I obviously took the choice any mother would, I sacrificed myself for my daughter to stay safe.

While that specific night wasn't the cruelest I had seen JD, it was close. On top of the beating I endured silently, scared to make any noise and frighten my children, JD had decided to also damage my self-image. He took a large pair of silver scissors and cut my hair close to my scalp, taking away the one thing I had valued about my looks.

JD knew I loved my hair, that it was all I was left to find beautiful about myself as I continued to get smaller and weaker in his care. He knew that I could not value much else I had. My skin was covered in bruises and bites, my once cute figure was emaciated. So he destroyed that one source of happiness and reveled in my distress at what he had done.

Then he went to the closet and got Lydia, who was still crying to show her what happened when she was bad. To make her see that I suffered.

"This is what happens to your mother when you're bad." He informed Lydia, holding her arm tightly as she tried to yank away from him so she could be comforted by me.

"I don't care!" Lydia shouted at him, angry that he would not let her go. JD didn't say anything else as he pushed her forward. She hit the floor and began to cry harder. "I hate you!" Lydia yelled.

Something inside of JD snapped as he kicked Lydia in the stomach, watching her curl into herself as the wind was knocked out of her. Lydia began to sob for me and when I tried to intervene, JD shoved me away from her. I fell down and tried to get back up.

"If you interrupt me again, I'll kill her." He threatened, knowing that I would put my own life on the line but that I wouldn't risk Lydia's life.

I was forced to watch as JD beat our eight year old daughter. If I closed my eyes or looked away, he would hurt her worse. I had no choice but to look at my daughter as she stopped moving. Lydia didn't make another sound, not even the ones she made while asleep.

"What did you do!?" I screamed at him, scared that I had seen something awful. Something that I had not seen in years - murder.

"Shut up, okay!?" He shouted back to me, bending down and lifting Lydia's wrist to check for her pulse. "Fuck." He muttered and my own heart rate skyrocketed.

"Tell me you found a pulse." I begged him.

"I'd be lying to you." He told me, his voice solemn as he sort of chuckled with disbelief.

JD's POV

The wail Veronica unleashed as I confirmed her fears that Lydia was dead horrified me. She ran up to Lydia, shaking her and checking for the pulse herself. When she couldn't find it, she yanked her hands away in fear and began to sob.

As Violet began to cry in the other room, Veronica did not move. I tried to leave to get Violet but that's when Veronica turned towards me.

"Don't you dare." She said, her eyes holding that emptiness they did so many years ago.

"She's my daughter too." I reminded Veronica.

"And so was Lydia!" She shrieked at me, causing Violet to cry harder from the other room. Veronica stood up and went to Lydia and Violet's room, leaving me to stare at Lydia's corpse alone.