Chapter Text
Nine hours.
Nine hours to endure this- whatever this was; a party, supposedly. It felt more like a living hell. There's nothing more annoying and inconvenient than having to spend a full day on your feet surrounded by people you barely know and barely like, pretending to be courteous and polite for the sake of getting some sub-par gifts at the end of it.
Parties really are the worst sometimes.
I remember that event vividly; although this is mainly because of how long it took everyone to arrive, and how heavily my joints ached, and how utterly boring the conversations were. It made me want to kick the walls in. You'd think that a child's birthday party would be more lively and less like a funeral, but I suppose that the dull, dead atmosphere from my grandparents untimely demise the month before had carried over. Maybe that's why he had shown up and stuck to me like a bloodstain.
I first met Alastor at my ninth birthday party, an all-day event in which I had not invited him, and I would have much preferred to have not been invited myself. I had been standing on the grass, tuning out boring conversations between boring adults, and he had been stood over beside a taller, older woman, with the same curly hair and smile too wide for anyone's face. I couldn't walk five steps without being hit by the stench of tobacco from the guests clothes, and I remember thinking that it would have been nice if some unfortunate accident forced them to leave. Then I could enjoy the day however I pleased, rather than standing around like a presentable doll to appease the adults around me, bring them some semblance of reassurance that my grandparents deaths had not utterly wrecked me for the rest of my life, as short as it turned out to be in the end.
The funeral home hadn't been too far from the party, actually. My parents had decided to host my ninth birthday party at my recently deceased grandparents house for reasons I cannot begin to comprehend, or even attempt to understand. At the time, I had wanted to be over there with the bodies more than the party. Bodies do not talk. Bodies do not ask questions. Bodies do not expect you to tell them about your day before it has even started, and flash them a smile, and tell them all the things they want to hear. They are dead, and they do not weep. They feel no grief. Perhaps it was jealousy that drew me to them, or perhaps a sense of solidarity. I, too, wanted the right to be left alone.
"Dalia! Come meet Alastor!" My parents had called, and, like the good child I was, I obeyed them with hardly a grimace to the vaguely familiar name.
He looked like a garbage man had run over a raccoon, worn it's squashed remnants as a hat, and used that hat as the foundation for a birds nest that was to be brutally savaged by someone's estranged aunts cat. I knew that our parents were good friends, I had heard stories about how we had met once or twice as toddlers, but I didn't recognise that face, and by all accounts, that boy was a stranger to me.
Nevertheless, my father smiled as if we had never spent a day apart, and he had asked me "You do remember Alastor, don't you?" And I had lied and said yes, and he had snickered behind the safety of his mothers dress.
"Alastor, meet Dalia. Dalia, Alastor. I'm sure the two of you will get along just as well as you used to." His mother had chimed in, and if it weren't for the kindness in her tone anyone could have mistaken it for mockery. It should have been clear right from the get-go that Alastor and I were not the type of children to get along nicely.
Thinking back on it, now, maybe it was a good thing that I didn't have my wheelchair with me, as atrocious as all that standing had been. I'm certain that the bastard child would have rolled it in front of some poor mans carriage, with me still sat inside it, no less.
"It's nice to see you again," I had beamed, lies spilling one after the other, and when I reached my hand out for him to shake, we both had the exact same idea of digging our nails in.
"You've changed. What's wrong with you?"
"Alastor!"
Revelling in the appalled expression of his poor dear mother, I had been so proud of myself for biting back my laughter that day, an unruly mix of the amusement that came from seeing him be scolded, and the sheer irritation brought about by his audacity.
"It's fine. People ask all the time. What did you want to know, Alastor?" I had answered, oh-so-patient.
His eyes had lit up like two floodlights, a subtle flicker that shook the earth, and an overeager malevolence behind them that chained it all back. "Your face. What's wrong with it? Why does it look like that?"
"Look like what?" My eyes narrowed.
"Like...that. Faces don't look like that."
I snorted. "Mine does."
"That's unfortunate."
He had this shit-eating smile plastered across his cheeks, just waiting for a response. I didn't give him the satisfaction, although my patience had been rapidly wearing away. Our parents clearly weren't paying too much attention to the conversation, as they made no effort to butt in, and instead told us to behave before leaving the two of us to ourselves; this is obviously a bad move to make with any young lady who has a temper and a young man who likes pushing people's buttons. Unless, of course, you want that young man to leave with his nose twisted in a way that noses should not be physically able to twist.
The easiest way to stick yourself permanently in somebody's mind is to give them your constant attention, particularly if you've been lacking said attention for a month. It's very, very difficult to forget a person that is constantly in your face, hour upon hour, asking nothing but questions and giving nothing but unwanted opinions and smug looks. His eyes didn't leave me for one second, and as much as I loathed being his idea of an easy target, I couldn't help but sink into the spotlight he was so ardently trying to blind me with. It made me want to break his face whilst simultaneously giving me the blessed gift of a perfectly good reason to do so. An astounding combination for a child with little self restraint and large self-importance. Even when I ignored him, and went to get some of my cake, he found a way to weasel into my focus.
One minute I had been standing beside the birthday cake, the next I was wearing it.
He knew I had been holding my tongue. I think he wanted to break that limit rather than see how far he could push it. Whatever his motive was, he succeeded at both, because of all the hours at that party there isn't a single moment I remember clearer than the moment my fist met his face.
"Big girls don't cry," he had said. I had decided on the spot to give him as much to cry about as I possibly could in the time limit I had before our parents arrived to stop (or at the very least slow down) any further injury.
I could paint the entire scene from memory even now. The way the frame of his spectacles felt cold and thin, sleek between my fingertips as I tore them off his face and tossed them aside so as not to break them in the oncoming brawl. This was between me and Alastor. His mother had no place paying for the repercussions.
Once those were out of the way, all hell broke loose.
He hadn't had the time to move aside. I slammed him into the food table. It broke. A mountain of snacks and food and drinks went flying. He hadn't expected that, now had he? Served him right! It had been so easy to knock him down! And easier, still, to paint his face purple and swollen with my creaking knuckles. The satisfaction of beating his silly face in! I had earned it for being so damned patient all day! He looked like a deer in headlights, utterly dazed, not able to process each punch before the next one landed. Some of my best work, actually. By the time my father pried me off of him, still kicking and struggling in the air, he had a blackened eye, a split lip, and a nice large collection of homemade bruises by design. I had called him every name under the sun, and probably quite a few above it, too, every insult and bite and slander I had heard in my short little life. My mother had gone to grab a handkerchief, in a hurry to bring it back before I could wipe my bloody hands on my dress, and Alastors mother had picked him up and brushed him off and checked him over and scolded him all at once, words I could not interpret in my rage, but in a tone clear enough for any man or beast to understand.