Trying to check on and support you (Jeremy) on Quidditch Pitch

Nathaniel Mordue

February 23, 2021 5:31 PM

Trying to check on and support you (Jeremy) by Nathaniel Mordue

Once again, the hardest thing to determine about how to approach his brother was the matter of where to do it. Since the...fight? Folie a deux? Incident...at midterm, Nathaniel had made an active effort to force his company on Jeremy more often whether his brother appeared to want that at all, so there were any number of places he could reasonably corner Jeremy, but this time, he had to consider what kind of uncontrolled reactions Jeremy might have, and who might see them, and what could happen as a consequence of said sight....

Possibly, he thought, this time was even worse than what he had worried about before Christmas. At least the worst that could have come of that would have been being thrown out of the family. This time, that was still on the table, but there was also the possibility of said expulsion being preceded by public humiliation, or the ruin of his brother's reputation and prospects, or both.

He also still felt sick to his stomach every time he thought about what he had seen, but that was a minor concern now. He had reached the point where he could think about it without wanting to weep, and that would have to do.

After Quidditch practice was the easiest time to corner Jeremy in relative privacy, he'd decided finally. Meals were far too public, but walking back to the building was, so long as they weren't within earshot of anything anyone could be lurking behind, reasonably private. Therefore, Nathaniel looked for the nearest opportunity to create, and, summoning the tattered rags he called courage, created it.

"Did you see the notice in the Hall?" he asked, not sure which answer would be less bad. If Jeremy had not taken note of it, then Nathaniel would have to tell him that their mother had been there, and Nathaniel did not want to do that. If Jeremy had taken note of it, though, then he would get to reacting much faster, which could be...very bad. Though, of course, he could also react horribly after Nathaniel told him, if he didn't already know...there was no ideal situation here, he thought grimly. The ideal situation would have involved it not much mattering since he and Jeremy both would have been getting ready to go home to their mother soon, and that was impossible now. 'Less bad' was the best he could hope for in any situation.

16 Nathaniel Mordue Trying to check on and support you (Jeremy) 1412 1 5

Jeremy Mordue

February 23, 2021 8:56 PM

Okay... by Jeremy Mordue

Trust mother to go and ruin freaking everything, even when she was a ghost. Or a manifestation of "someone's" memory. Jeremy didn't exactly have to be an Aladren to work that one out. Quidditch had always been his refuge. Leaving the ground behind, spiralling through the sky, his focus narrowed down to his own survival and the pursuit of a tiny scrap of gold. Now he couldn't help scanning the stands for someone he knew wasn't there. Someone who had only ever been there about half the time anyway.

It was definitely entirely to do with Mother and not to do with anyone else. The pitch did not hold any strong associations with anyone else and even if it had it wouldn't matter because he didn't actually care about her anyway and he was over it.

After practise, Nathaniel was hovering. He had been around a lot since Christmas, and Jeremy wasn't totally sure why. It seemed like Nathaniel wanted to very strongly demonstrate that he wasn't going anywhere. Given that Jeremy had a limited idea on how to tolerate his brother's presence or interact with him, this wasn't necessarily a good thing. Jeremy was grouchy. He snapped. Or he just didn't know what to say. But Nathaniel kept coming back. And occasionally, it was familiar enough to be not completely awful...

Jeremy wasn't entirely surprised when Nathaniel raised the subject of the memories. It was on everyone's lips right now, the bit of hot news that was most assuredly safer than talking about their own lives or feelings.

"No, Nathaniel," he bit out sarcastically, "I didn't notice a school-wide announcement or a ten foot poster of faces." He had been training with his own snitches because he was sure the school ones had to be getting slow by now, and one of them was still clasped in his hand. He held it up, letting it loose just long enough for it to flutter into Nathaniel's face and underline the stupidity of asking about his observational skills. Said observational skills also meant that he hadn't had to scan the poster for long before two familiar images had leapt out at him. He had to admit that he would rather that particular piece of information had not come out, but there was currently nothing to link it back to him...

13 Jeremy Mordue Okay... 1443 0 5

Nathaniel Mordue

February 24, 2021 2:39 PM

Are you really? by Nathaniel Mordue

Nathaniel calmly reached up to bat the slightly battered Snitch away from his face. He wasn’t sure why Jeremy had done that, unless it was just to distract him from the matter at hand, the implications Jeremy meant to imply going over his head. He watched his brother reclaim it, feeling vaguely sad for the object.

Stupid, of course. It wasn’t an actual bird, just cleverly charmed bits of metal. He had…had he, actually, really always wondered at why Seekers would want to dedicate themselves to chasing after something which seemed to be constantly frantic to escape? Possibly he hadn’t. It was hard to remember clearly, but he had the vague impression that there had been times when he had at least occasionally less aware of how easy it was to see the sadness lurking under the surface of…everything, really.

“I had a follow-up question,” he observed, “but from the sarcasm, I’m going to guess I already know the answer.” He felt his jaw trying to tighten up, trying to grind his teeth together, and forced it to relax. “You saw…her…too.”

He tried to take as deep a steadying breath as he could without drawing attention to it. “I know it was a – shock – for me,” he added in a low voice, and then cleared his throat. “I doubt it was easy for you, either. Are you…okay?”

It felt like a stupid question, in a way. Neither of them had been really okay in a long time. If ever. It was possible they never really had been, looking back on it. There were always…points on the continuum between okay and a disaster, though; hopefully he could distinguish what was behind any further exaggerated reactions Jeremy threw at him.

16 Nathaniel Mordue Are you really? 1412 0 5

Jeremy Mordue

February 25, 2021 7:10 PM

That wasn't where I was going with that by Jeremy Mordue

Oh. It wasn’t about him. It was about mother. He should have guessed that, given who he was talking to…

He didn’t visibly wriggle at the question, although it squirmed under his skin in a most uncomfortable way, the way it did whenever Nathaniel asked about his feelings. Or about mother. Two things that weren’t supposed to exist, and yet here they were talking about both of them. Jeremy had accepted the fact of his arithmetic tutor that two negatives equalled a positive but he had never been able to really wrap his head around the idea. It panned out more often in real life, he supposed. He and Leonor had both been angry with the world, and it had worked out pretty well for a while. He was pretty sure that when he took his hurt and brought other people down to his level, it made him feel better. But this situation wasn’t one like that. The best that could be said for it was that it was consolidating all the unpleasant topics into one conversation.

He wanted to be angry with mother. He had heard her saying nice things about him, not to him, of course, but to Nathaniel. And he wanted to work himself up into his usual storm about that, about how she never had anything good to say to his face, how Nathaniel had always got the better side of her but… But she had been saying nice things. She had been there, sometimes. And somehow, he couldn’t sustain it, couldn’t connect it to the same level of rage and spite he’d always had towards her. It was like being angry at a ghost.

“She’s gone, Nathaniel,” he stated. “It doesn’t matter what she was like, or what she said in your memory. Just move the flip on,” he sighed, finding a little bit of the anger he usually had for Nathaniel, who after all was still real and solid in front of him. And using a word much stronger than ‘flip,’ searching for power in the ability to needle and shock his brother, to get reactions other than this cold, composed front. And because, he thought, that was really Nathaniel’s problem. They were supposed to let go. They had to let go. And Nathaniel just wouldn’t.

13 Jeremy Mordue That wasn't where I was going with that 1443 0 5

Nathaniel Mordue

February 25, 2021 7:37 PM

But are you? by Nathaniel Mordue

Nathaniel stopped walking for a moment, but not because of Jeremy’s language. Jeremy had used that particular tactic a few too many times for it to really shock him anymore, at least as long as other people weren’t within earshot. White-faced, he stared at Jeremy as the implications of what his brother had said sank in.

“You saw the memory itself?” he asked. “You saw Mam – Mother?”

His first feeling was a violent surge of jealousy. He had been younger than Jeremy was now, the last time he had heard their mother’s voice for himself. He had had communication with her, discreetly, but he had not been able to speak to her since that last, gut-wrenching, bizarre conversation in Professor Xavier’s fireplace. He was not even sure that he could recall her voice clearly, inside his own head. He tried not to think about it; it was too painful. But to just have come across it….

He shook his head slightly, trying to put it away, put it in a box until he had time to deal with it. There was no reason to be jealous of Jeremy – there were times when he might have thought that Jeremy was blessed with a lack of complex thoughts or emotions, but that was increasingly clearly not the case, leaving his brother as someone without much for him to envy. Plus, even if there had been, that wasn’t the point and he couldn’t think about that, he had to stay focused.

“I’m sorry – I didn’t know it was mine, or that you saw it,” he said. “I just…saw her face on the board. I didn’t know if it was mine, or yours, or Sylvia’s. But that’s – that’s beside the point. I wasn’t asking about Mother, or about – whatever I remembered. I was asking how you were handling – well, I just thought seeing the picture, but now, how you’re handling seeing…her. Sort of, anyway.”

16 Nathaniel Mordue But are you? 1412 0 5

Jeremy Mordue

February 26, 2021 6:32 AM

Stop asking by Jeremy Mordue

How was he handling seeing her? He – he had shouted at the sky. And blamed Felipe. But he had been confused, they all had been, because no one at that point had known these were memories.

“It doesn’t change anything,” he reiterated. “She’s gone.”

So what if he had felt happy to see her? He had not. Absolutely not. But even if he had, nothing was going to change because of her silvery form floating about the pitch. And she wouldn’t be like that, even if they could see her. She’d rarely been like that anyway. In some ways, it had helped. If he had to cling onto something as his memory of mother, this was better than a lot of what he had. Or at least reminded him of some of those. The day that Nathaniel remembered would have been a milkshake day. She’d been at his match, so they’d have gone for milkshakes after, and he’d won so they would have been happy ones instead ones to try to bribe him out of being sulky with his loss. He could hang onto those. It was sometimes hard not to lose them under the wave of Why are you behaving like that? You’re going to give me a breakdown. Why can’t you be more like your brother? Stop being difficult, Jeremy.

Why couldn’t he be more like his brother? He didn’t know. He didn’t care. He didn’t want to be. Looking at Nathaniel now, was it so great to be like him anyway? Though Jeremy couldn’t exactly say he’d won many prizes for popularity by being himself.

“Am I meant to ask how you feel now?” he stated, rolling his eyes.

13 Jeremy Mordue Stop asking 1443 0 5

Nathaniel Mordue

February 26, 2021 9:33 AM

No. by Nathaniel Mordue

“Not if you don't want to know. But if you do - miserable,” said Nathaniel bluntly, ignoring the sarcasm again. “If you really want to know – I've been one or another kind of miserable. When I saw her – when I remembered what – what happened – I thought I was going to be sick. And I wanted to just – curse someone, anyone, because I was so angry, because I tried to stop her from – doing what she did – I did everything I could, within the law, and nothing worked, and no-one would help me…and because I failed anyway.” His voice slipped into open bitterness, had become brittle and harsh. He swallowed hard and continued, forcing himself to a degree of greater moderation. “And I remembered what it was like when that happened, and how I let you and her both down because I wasn’t strong enough – and then I let you down again, just getting the hell away from that wall as fast as I could, instead of trying to find you before you had to see it without any warning like I did.”

He had told…mostly the truth. The best lies, after all, always had some truth mixed into them – that was probably why their father had slept with his secretary, so he could legitimately make claims about being at work. Or just out of sheer convenience or lack of self-control…But that wasn’t the issue here. The issue was that he had felt and thought all the things he had just described to Jeremy, save one: he had not just wanted to curse anyone, at random. He had had specific people in mind. And Jeremy had been one of them.

Not the main one, of course. Jeremy had only been a child, and furthermore, a child Nathaniel should have been a better example to. A child who hadn’t even had the advantage of learning about honor, before he’d learned that it was for most people an illusion. Far more of his anger had been reserved for Elphwick, and Uncle, and Professor Xavier, and their mother – and even for Sylvia, the person he loved most in the world, and thought might love him more than anyone else in the world did, who had also left him to slowly go insane for months and had then tried to push him into doing what she wanted when he was to the point of wanting to die, socially and literally. But anger was something he had almost as much of a capacity for as sadness, and all that anger had not been enough to overwhelm him: there had still been room for some for Jeremy, too.

“And I’m worried about you,” he concluded. “I was already, and now I’m more worried about you than I was, because you won’t answer my question. It doesn't change what happened, but it can change what's going to happen - if you end up like I did, with whatever you’re feeling about it just – making you sick inside until you can’t even look like you’re fine anymore – or end up like Mother or Father, doing something stupid - if it’s something like anything I just said. So there. Now you know how I’m feeling. So, how are you feeling?”

16 Nathaniel Mordue No. 1412 0 5

Jeremy Mordue

February 26, 2021 11:10 PM

Fine. by Jeremy Mordue

OOC: CW - ableist slurs BIC:

Jeremy wanted Nathaniel to shut up. He wanted him to keep going. He relished in the messy part of his brother that was out of control and that he had provoked into over-spilling and he liked that Nathaniel was flawed and human and he hated that Nathaniel was flawed and human, and he wanted to break him and hated that he was breakable like this.

“I feel like you might be mental,” he rolled his eyes when Nathaniel finally finished ranting.

“I hate you sometimes,” he said, and it was softer than he’d spat most of his actual insults in Nathaniel’s directions. “Because you’re stuck up and self-righteous, and you always think you’re right, and mother always did too. Because you lord being two years older than me like it’s a life time. Because you’re my brother, and basically you’re just compelled to be a pain in my backside,” he explained.

Not because Nathaniel had failed. Not because he was supposed to do all these things that he hadn’t. But because they were brothers. And because Nathaniel was the last person left he could yell at, and the one he’d always been able to get away with yelling at with the least consequence. Mother would abandon him. Even before she’d done that for real and permanently, she would just give up when he got too difficult, and retire to her room, claiming he was making her too frail and putting up a barricade of walls and doors and bed screens and eye masks, physically shutting him out of her presence. Nathaniel just stayed and took the punches.

“Stop trying to be a grown up all the time. It’s not like that’s exactly a great thing to aim for, based on current evidence.

“It was nice seeing her,” he admitted, seeing as Nathaniel was apparently not going to stop bugging him until he answered. “I mean, she was talking to you, so it went better than it usually did in real life.”

13 Jeremy Mordue Fine. 1443 0 5

Nathaniel Mordue

February 27, 2021 4:29 PM

Thank you. by Nathaniel Mordue

Nathaniel didn’t think that Jeremy was actually bothering to try to insult him, but if he was wrong about that, then Jeremy was going to have to improve his game substantially. Telling Nathaniel what he already knew could be an effective way of needling him, depending on the subject, but informing him that his mental health was sub-par was not a thing that there was much sting left in at this point.

“Less than I used to be,” he objected, very mildly, almost amused. “I’m working on it.”

He did flinch slightly, though, when Jeremy proceeded to break down his entire personality with a fairly brutal degree of honesty. Well, he had asked. Not for a personality breakdown, but what was going on inside Jeremy’s head. If it was that Jeremy hated him, and for some decent reasons, then so be it.

Strangely, though, it…didn’t feel like an attack, exactly. He wasn’t sure what it was like, but it didn’t feel like Jeremy was attacking him. At the concluding remark to the list, Nathaniel managed a faint smile.

“Well, you’re right about that last one,” he said. “That just goes with the part where I’m your brother, isn’t it? I’m a pain in yours, you’re a pain in mine, that’s how it goes?” At least when they were annoying each other, they were interacting in some way. There was something there. It was only when people stopped interacting, when they just went away, that all hopes of fixing things, making them good, were gone. The smile faded quickly, though, and he sighed. “You’re probably right about the rest, too. I am sorry about the, the lording it over you. I always…” He grimaced, struggling for words.

“I was, what, seven when Father left? I didn’t know why, I wasn’t old enough to even understand what the words involved meant…They explained it to me that he had done something wrong, so he wasn’t allowed to be part of the family anymore – not that he just didn’t want to be part of the family anymore. So whenever I wanted to do something against the rules, or even thought something I thought that I wasn’t supposed to think, and whenever you said or did something the least bit improper – then I was afraid that maybe they’d tell us we weren’t allowed to be part of the family anymore either – even if whatever we did was tiny, or was just in private.” He shrugged. “I don’t know. I was seven. I was a bit of an idiot by definition,” he excused himself. “And then you combine that with Mother telling me that I had to be the head of the house then, and I had to set a good example…I didn’t mean it as lording it over you, but I can see why it looked that way,” he conceded. “I’m sorry. I’ll try to do better.”

He exhaled in amusement at Jeremy’s point about it hardly seeming productive to pretend to be an adult. “Fair point,” he agreed.

He wasn’t sure what he felt when Jeremy finally answered the question about their mother. Relief, he thought, was definitely part of it – relief that the question had been answered, for one thing, and relief that it had been one of the good memories and not one of the bad times, and relief that he thought Jeremy was actually telling the truth, about having been glad to see her. And beneath that, there was more…a tangle of vaguer, less specific feelings, old griefs and new, things he couldn’t even identify….

“She…wasn’t always…she didn’t always do what she should have done for you,” he acknowledged, then rolled his shoulders, which were tense. “Damn, that was hard to say – but she didn’t. I’m glad that whatever fell out of my head was one of the good days, though – and a little jealous, even though I’m pretty sure I shouldn’t be,” he admitted. “I was just thinking, I don’t know if I remember her voice right anymore...or if I want to. But mostly I’m glad you got to see one of the nice ones, and my brain didn’t manage to traumatize you without me even doing anything this time. I think I probably fulfilled my annual quota for accidentally traumatizing you back at midterm,” he added dryly.

16 Nathaniel Mordue Thank you. 1412 0 5

Jeremy Mordue

March 07, 2021 4:23 AM

....what? by Jeremy Mordue

‘Less than I used to be’ was not the most reassuring reply to calling Nathaniel mental, when he’d really meant it as an insult more than something to be taken literally. The idea that Nathaniel was less mental than before implied he had been very mental at one point and still was a bit. It wasn’t funny when it wasn’t just a word.

“Yeah, that’s what I’m saying,” he stated irritably, when Nathaniel reworded Jeremy’s own point like it was a stunning revelation he himself had come to. They were meant to fight, and Nathaniel was meant to annoy him. It wasn’t supposed to be more than that. Nathaniel actually admitted he had made it more than that and apologised, which Jeremy didn’t know quite what to do with.

He was spared having to, by Nathaniel revealing quite how much more than that he had taken it to be. What. the. actual. heck?! Jeremy often stared at Nathaniel as if he was an idiot or had sprouted an extra head. It really didn’t leave him a lot of places to go with giving a solid look now.

“That’s all stupid,” he told Nathaniel, again less aggressively than he normally used those kinds of words with him. “I mean, you said it yourself, you were seven, so you were kinda stupid by default.” It was weird thinking of Nathaniel being seven when that happened. Objectively, he kind of knew that. He knew it had been ages ago, and roughly how old they’d been. If he had ever sat down and thought about it, he would have realised how young Nathaniel had been. But he never really had. He’d only ever looked at it through his own eyes, where Nathaniel was always bigger. He remembered how small he had felt the first year than Nathaniel and Sylvia had left him behind to go to Sonora – or rather how small the world had made him feel. He had felt big, and like it wasn’t fair to leave him out, and he now vividly had a sense now of how childish he’d been at that point. Nathaniel had been even younger than that, and had tried to behave like an adult. Had felt he had to.

“You’re doing fine. You probably always did,” he acknowledged awkwardly, when Nathaniel said he’d try to do better. It felt so weird trying to tell Nathaniel that he should be self-assured when that was how he had always presented himself. Like, who was Jeremy to tell Nathaniel he passed inspection? What inspection anyway? Why did he need to? “Look, I can see why stupid seven-year-old you thought some of that but… Clearly it’s not real. If anyone got kicked out for being imperfect, I’d have been out long ago,” he acknowledged. “So… it’s fine. It was just a stupid thing you thought when you were seven,” he stated again, a ‘right?’ hanging perceptibly on the end. Nathaniel could see that wasn’t how it worked, so what was there to worry about?

“I’m not going to marry anyone unsuitable,” he assured Nathaniel, rolling his eyes that it even needed saying. But that was what was disownable. And he wouldn’t. So why was Nathaniel still worrying? “Or get mixed up with them.

“You don’t need to be. You got the real thing,” he pointed out a little bitterly when Nathaniel said he was almost jealous. But Nathaniel wasn’t taking mother’s side over his and that helped a little. “And I came out on top of that,” he added about Midterm, thinking more of the fight that the fear that had set it off.

13 Jeremy Mordue ....what? 1443 0 5

Nathaniel Mordue

March 07, 2021 4:36 PM

You agreed to answer my question, so I thanked you. by Nathaniel Mordue

“Yes,” Nathaniel agreed about having been stupid by default at age seven. “Life would be so much easier if we always knew exactly how stupid we were, relatively speaking. But then, I suppose, we’d be less stupid by default….”

That thought, he noted, could easily be allowed to create a loop, or a snarl. He could end up chasing it indefinitely, and it seemed like an utter waste of time and energy. He didn’t have the energy for it, and it wasn’t useful, so he let it go with a half shrug.

All of this talk, unpleasant though it was and could become, felt necessary, but not like a thing he should expect any immediate results from. The awkward expression of validation from his brother took him completely off-guard. “Oh – ah – thank you,” he said. He managed not to smile when Jeremy acknowledged himself as living proof that imperfection wasn’t grounds for disownment, and nodded, trying to feel surer about his agreement, when he noticed the unspoken question which dismissed the…majority of his life to date, really….

“Right,” he agreed. “I kept…some of it in my head, without thinking bout it, for too long – but I know better now. Just…maybe be patient with me if I mess up as if I didn’t sometimes? Habits are hard to break even when you know they’re not useful and not actually what you need to do to keep the boggart under the bed from eating your brother, or…whatever I thought would happen back then,” he said.

Jeremy’s reassurance that he wouldn’t wander into inappropriate beds should not have brought on a surge of fear, he thought, but it did – as if there was some malevolent entity which could hear a promise being made and immediately start arranging matters so that the promise would be broken. At one time, no doubt, their father had thought the same thing – and their mother, and –

He pushed the thought away. For one thing, it was nonsense. He couldn’t believe in his own ability to not end up the way his parents had if he didn’t afford the same capacity to Jeremy. For another, there was a sense of a truce – maybe even an understanding – between them now, but it was fragile, incredibly fragile, a single thread of spun glass. It would not do to test its strength, not now, and maybe not ever.

“I know,” he acknowledged. “Like you said – stupid seven year old.”

His mouth thinned slightly, pain and guilt again, at the bitterness toward himself and their mother, but he pushed it into a reasonable imitation of a smile again at the ending. “Yeah, right,” he said, and dared to attempt a very light, friendly jab to Jeremy’s shoulder. “Just because I let you.”

16 Nathaniel Mordue You agreed to answer my question, so I thanked you. 1412 0 5