Letters From No One Never Arrive

Jack sat with her back against the wall in the owlery, biting her lip as she shuffled through some old letters, an assortment from Riley, Elliot, and Chip. Chip was as good as gone in her life; he had changed his name by now and moved to some exotic deserted island no doubt. Elliot was probably so drowned in an underground world of gambling he didn't remember he had a cousin. And Riley had been trying to forget her for some time.

Still... It was nice to think back to the time where she had them watching out for her. Now she had no one. She used to have Andrew and Chase. You could even go as far to say she had Vito watching out for her... Yes, she would take it that far and say she could even depend on Vito. Now...

Well, now she had a friend. Ariel watched her back, too. She could not be sure and say what they were, but she knew, for a fact, that they were friends. He needed her to help him and, for now, that was all she needed.

No, that was not all she needed.

She needed to get back to normal. Jack was not a broken girl, she was not the type to mope about. She fought, she swore, she spat, she flew. She didn't sit around, reminiscing. She hopped up, going over to the window and punched a fist to her chest. "Ay! I'm the biggest baddest thing to hit this school since the monster of Slytherin! I'm the best prankster since the Weasleys! I'm the most original thing since french toast! Watch out for me!"

An owl let out an irritated screech and she flipped it off.

More like it...

Chase heard a shout from the top of the owlery and jumped. Someone had just yelled something at the top, and she was a bit to afraid to move on. She had a few letters in her hands, that she was going to send out, one to Calvin, one to Fauve, and one to Thierry. She had even made a teddy bear using magic to help her knit, and was sending it with the package for Katherine. Chase hesitantly took a step towards the top of the stairs, and then pushed open the owlery door.

Standing inside was the one person Chase had least expected to see since she had gotten back. Jack Dyllan... a nearly ex friend, that she had once had a really big fight with, and hadn't really spoken to for months. Chase had sent her a Christmas present, but that was the last communication the two had had, and now here they were.. alone, Chase no longer pregnant, but supporting three kids, and having no boyfriend. Not that the school knew about that one yet.

"Oh.. I'm sorry.. didn't mean to interrupt you.." She said and looked a bit nervous, her cheeks going red. She lifted up her arm and her own flew down, landing silent and graceful. Chase quickly tied the package to her leg (It was very light) and put the letters around the package so that they wouldn't fall off on the flight. "You know where to go.." She whispered to the bird as she took it to the window and let it take flight. Chase stood for a moment and then turned around to look at Jack. "I heard.. you say something, and thought someone might be hurt or something up here." She said with a short nervous laugh, looking at Jack as though she wasn't quite sure how to act, or what to say.

Jack turned around almost embarrassed- she would be embarrassed if Jack Dyllan, the 'coolest girl since french toast' GOT embarrassed. Naturally, someone would walk in her in her moment of complete and utter stupidity, and of COURSE it would be Chase who came in... Jack dropped her hand, still holding a middle finger up to an owl who reached out and pecked it, drawing blood.

Jack cursed and wiped the cut, nodding at Chase and moving so she could get by her. "Sorry about that," Jack grumbled. "You know me... screaming at nothing and whatnot." Jack chuckled, awkwardly shuffling her stack of letters, none of them more recent than four or five months prior, dripping a few drops of blood on them. She wiped her finger again.

She chuckled at Chase's words. "Nah, it's more likely I'd be dangling some firstyear out the window by the ankles or something, y'know." She smirked to break the silence. She coughed and scratched her head, awkwardly pointing at Chase's stomach. "So you, uh, deflated, or popped. I mean, you uh, dropped the thing, I mean you had the... You had the...the thing."

Jack was not cut out for this stuff.

Chase glanced at Jack, and her eyebrows shot into her hair. "Dangling first years?" She said a bit skeptically. She didn't know exactly what to say or do, but when Jack pointed at her stomach and asked if she deflated, Chase stared at Jack as though she had gone insane. Obviously Jack had never actually said the word baby before, and wasn't quite sure what to call it now that she was talking about one. "Yes... Katherine was born..." She said lightly, standing awkwardly as she looked around the owlery. "I had her a few weeks back... happy and bouncy... healthy..." She said lightly, her face showing no trace of a smile.

"I lived with Elijah for a few weeks, then decided I should come back here.." She said, purposely not mentioning that her and Elijah were no longer together, and she was being taken in by the most childish, but purely innocent men on the face of the earth, a boy by the name of Calvin S. Ransom, who, with his roommate, was letting her and her kids, which also included Elijah's adopted kids, Fauve and Thierry, to stay with them.

Chase left all of this out on purpose, and went over to the bird Jack had flipped off, petting it lightly on the back, hearing it hoot a soft thanks, as it nuzzled her fingers. "Do you come here regularly to flip off the birds?" She asked and looked at Jack's bleeding finger. "I can heal that if you want me too.." She said softly, her eyes resting on the bleeding finger. It was odd for Chase, to stand here, and not having smiled, or even had the urge to smile once. It felt as though the room was black, and even though funny things were happening, she just couldn't bring herself to move those simple muscles in her face.

Chase inquired about dangling first years and Jack nodded, shrugging, saying, "Yeah you know." She thrust her hands out the window, miming holding a thrashing kid by their ankles and sticking her head out the window. "That's right sonny! What'd I tell you about bouncing that durned ball! And like I said, stay off my lawn, you young hooligans!"

She turned around, dropping her hands awkwardly. What the hell was she saying? She was making little sense. Chase continued on and Jack nodded. "Ooh," she said. "Katharine... Huh... Girl name.... So you had a girl.. A girl with a... with a girl name." The Jack inside her head was banging it's own little cranium against the walls of her skull, screaming the word idiot in several different variations, over and over...

Jack nodded. "Good idea, I guess. Get them essays and NEWTs out of the way..." She chuckled awkwardly. Chase calmed the angered bird, of course, because Chase seemed to be able to do everything Jack could not. Jack replied, "Only when the Giant Squid and I aren't on speaking terms..." She smiled cheesily, hoping for Chase to take the bait and laugh... She asked to heal her finger and Jack shook her head. "Ah, you know me... Too proud of my battle scars to risk losing them." She stuck her finger in her mouth and sucked off the blood before wiping it on her pants.

Chase had just had a baby... Jack should be asking about that...

"So... Pushing... Pushing that out of... that." Jack slammed her hand against her forehead. Abort plan! Abort plan! She dropped her hand, nodding awkwardly, trying to pass it off. "Yeah."

Chase stared at Jack as though she may have possibly gone insane. Maybe there was more truth behind that article about her kissing that werewolf boy then she had realized. She hadn't taken it for an ounce of truth the first time she read it.. but obviously something was going on with Jack, she had never acted this.. loopy before. Maybe she was in... Chase stopped right there, unable to even think of the word Jack and love in the same sentence. It just didn't happen.. but there it went again.. Jack was so.. happy.. it was like while she had been away, the whole school had decided it was backwards day just to make fun of her.

Chase stared rather blankly when Jack said something about only when her and the Giant Squid weren't on speaking terms. She supposed it would have been funny, if it hadn't been that nothing was funny these days. She felt so hopeless, so lost, and it was all that damned Elijah Krum's fault. She had been so happy not two weeks before.. and now? She couldn't even smile. Amazing how life liked to f with you ever now and then.

Chase felt her face twitch for the first time into something that sort of resembled a smile. "Yes..." She said and had to put her hand over her mouth, feeling the muscles twitch into the first smile she had had in a long time. "I had a baby... and it came from my stomach and out." She said and felt an odd sort of giggly sensation ride up her spine and out her mouth. But what came out, wasn't a laugh, oh no.. it sounded more like a choked sob, held back for to long, and dying to be let free. Chase put her hand over her mouth, and turned away from Jack, looking out the window, trying to collect herself.

She managed to take a few shaky breaths of cool air, before she was able to look up at the sky again. "She's so happy.. All of the time, just looking around at everything.. taking everything in.. way to smart for a baby that's for sure.. she knows things... the way she looks at you.. the way she gets annoyed... it's like she can see everything for what it is.. and it's like she's telling you it'll be okay.." She said softly, her hand still half covering her mouth as she attempted to keep the crying at bay. Not in front of Jack.. Dear Merlin, not in front of Jack.

Chase stared at the sky for a long, long time. "I'd like for you to meet her.." She said suddenly, trying to get rid of the odd crying feeling she had in her stomach, with a new awkward feeling that was arising in its place. "I think she'd like to meet you.. your a lot more fun then I am right now." She said and gave out a soft breath of air, that might have been a laugh it had had a sound. "You should come visit us sometime.. I'm staying a friend's house.. right now.." She said and turned away again, unable to look at Jack a moment longer.

Chase was now (rightfully) staring at Jack as though she needed to be admitted into some sort of mental institution... Jack reached up and rubbed the back of her neck as Chase seemed to be amused. Jack released an awkward smile but saw Chase weakening. she was going to cry, she... She turned away, hiding her face and tears from her.

Jack, for once, did not feel irritated by Chase's tears. Jack had grown up. Some people cried- she envied them. They were able to healthily release their emotions in a way that did not require punching a wall. And it was understandable... Chase had just had a baby... at age seventeen. It was something Jack could understand, could accept...

Jack listened to her next words and got a vision of her holding a baby, at arms length, and then the diaper filling with poop. Ew... But... For some reason, Jack was up for trying new things... Trying harder to help people, to do things she wouldn't usually do... It must have had to do with the Room of Requirement incident, but for once, Jack wanted to make other people happy.

"I could see that," Jack said. "I mean it'd be a disaster, but I could try." She nodded.

Chase knew that Jack had changed the moment she agreed to seeing the baby. Something in Jack was different. Not just her happier personality, but her overall mood. The way she felt when Chase had walked into the room. Well for sure it had felt awkward, but there wasn't any fear. Chase hadn't been afraid of Jack.. like she had been the last time they had spoken, which had been all yells and a drawn wand. They hadn't spoken much since.. a few words here and there because they were in the same room together.. and then the gift at Christmas.

Chase stared at Jack for a long moment, and then felt a slow smile creep up on her face. "She would like that.. I would like that.. I'm staying with Calvin Ransom.. if you know him.. he's helping me.. settle.." Chase said and suddenly realized that it might strike as odd. If Chase had been with Elijah before coming here, why was she staying with Calvin? If Jack thought to hard on it, she might question it, so Chase quickly came up with a question to distract Jack.

"So why are you up in the owlery anyway? Got some letters to send?" Chase said nodding towards the letters in Jack's hands. "Or just practicing your flipping off skills at the birds?" She asked as she pet the ruffled owl again, as it nibbled her finger lightly. "Well, I guess you were practicing your dangling of children by their shoes too.." She said softly, glancing towards the window Jack had demonstrated out of. "I made Katherine a teddy bear.. I'd show you but it's gone by now." She said lightly and glanced out the window.

Jack didn't know.. no one knew.. the only people who knew about Elijah and her breaking up, was Elijah.. Calvin, Thierry, and herself.. Fauve.. well she might know, but she was determined not to show how much she knew, and Chase had an odd feeling that Katherine knew perfectly fine, and every time she grabbed a handful of Chase's hair with her slobbery fingers, or every time she looked up at Chase with that all knowing look, she knew that Katherine was telling her it would be okay, they would all get through it together, and she was comforted by that fact that her own child knew better then she did.

Chase wondered whether she ought to tell Jack about her and Elijah, but felt that maybe she should only bring it up if asked.. if Jack questioned her staying with Calvin.. she wouldn't lie.. but she wouldn't say it without being asked first.. yes, it felt safer that way.. much safer. "I think it might rain.." Chase said softly, glancing out the window. "It feels like a storm is coming on.."

Jack nodded, saying, "Yeah, I know Calvin. Awkward dude, thinks he's a superhero half the time, get's lots of boo-boos." She nodded again. "Funny guy." Before Jack could ask anything more, Chase had another question and Jack shook her head, stuffing the letters in her back pocket. "Nah, no one to send anything to," she stated simply. She smirked at Chase's guesses. "Either of those work."

"That's cool," she said, in regards to the bear, no idea what else to say. Small talk was really not Jack's forte, to be honest. There was a long silence and then Jack was relieved by Chase pointing out the weather. Jack listened to the silence for a second and then said, "There's always a storm." She wasn't sure what she meant by it, but she knew it to be true.

"So..." She said. Jack did not want to know, in a sense, but she did. She felt like she would be a rotten person if she did not ask what needed to be asked. And, frankly, she wanted to know. She had staked a lot on the events in Chase's life so she sort of wanted to know what was going on. "I can't see Calvin and Elijah being best friends... What's that about, then?"

"Yeah.. but a sweetheart.. he has an extremely kind heart, and not a bad thing to say about anyone.. in fact I don't think he knows what a bad thing to say is.." She said shaking her head. "He would run across town for me though.. and not bat an eye about it... " Chase said and had to take a deep breath to stop her chin from quivering. "Really? You don't have anyone to send anything to?" She said softly, watching as she stuffed the letters out of sight. "You'd think that you would have had someone to write to.. friends or something." She said with a shrug, before it went quiet between them.

Chase looked at Jack oddly when she said there was always a storm. She bit her bottom lip and thought of all the storms that had happened in her life. Well not all of them of course, but the important ones.. the day her family had died... meeting Sterling... there were storms when bad things happened.. and yet, sometimes, what was more chilling were when bad things happened on nights when there was no storm. Such as on the grounds when she was attacked, or being attacked in Diagon Alley.

Storms popped up.. a lot, but it wasn't anything to bat an eye at, they were in England, it was always raining here. Jack asked the question that Chase had been dreading, she had hoped it wouldn't have been so soon, but there it was. Chase cleared her throat carefully before answering, trying to sound as completely 'whatever' about it as possible. "Oh, Elijah and I aren't together anymore... so Calvin is helping me get back on my feet is all." She said lightly, hoping to sound more laid back about it then she felt.

Her hand moved mechanically over the bird's feathers, as she stared at it, her throat constricting as she said, still completely laid back. "Turns out you were right... he was nothing but a manwhore, who doesn't care about anyone but himself." She said and on the word himself, she pet the bird hard enough for it to snap at her finger and take off, flying up into the rafters above, causing a flurry of movement and a lot of feathers to fall on their heads as the birds finally settled back into position, and Chase stood there, her hands clenched at her sides, her eyes locked on where the bird had been before it had taken off.