#Also your fun reminder that Hellaina isn't... nice

[singthesongsofsin]

⇷ / for Hellaina!

@k1ttyb0t | Send “⇷” to view a memory from my muse’s past life.

Sacramento, California. Circa 1967.

The kitchen table is between her and Josie, because her sister has decided to have this conversation instead of just letting it happen, and letting it go. Hellaina's still feeling rough from the procedure: blood, and the occasional bout of nausea. It's why she came out into the kitchen at all, for a cup of peppermint tea.

Her doctor had been good, and more importantly, sympathetic. He'd fallen hook, line, and sinker for the pretty blonde girl's sob story about her boyfriend and what having this kid would do to her, et cetera, et cetera. It had even been partially true, it would cause 'emotional and physical distress'... even if that was entirely because it interrupted her plans.

Hellaina sets her hands on top of the counter, fingers splayed, refusing to bend to her sister's judgement.

"Hel-"

"Don't."

"You didn't have to get an abortion."

And there's her sister's holier than thou attitude, the little cross necklace glinting at her collar selling the whole thing.

"No? What were my choices?"

"Well you could have raised them." Hellaina laughs, rolling her eyes. "Your boyfriend-"

"Experiment," she corrects. Her sister's expression turns puzzled, and Hellaina almost wants sigh. An abortion was unthinkable, but her being a lesbian is somehow even more so. Well, it's not like she could disappoint her family any more. "I don't like men, Josie. He was a curiosity, and an underwhelming one at that. He left me with a slight problem so I dealt with it."

It hadn't been a question either. Sure, the side-effects had been enough to give her a pause for a day or a two, but when there was a time limit, it had been easy enough to harden her heart to the choice. Though, her expression twitches, but she refuses to give her the sister the satisfaction of seeing her twitch, even as her stomach rolls again.

"Or," Josie says, breezing past that revelation. "I would have raised them."

And that is enough to make her laugh, pressing a hand to her mouth. "Oh, oh right, your good Christian charity. I forgot."

Josie's expression twists, and she stands up straighter, moving to grip the back of the dining chair. "What? It would have been a better solution."

Hellaina's laughter dies down, and she shakes her head. "Right," she says, the vowel elongating into sarcasm. "Because you never would have held it over my head." She pitches her voice up, deliberately mocking. "'Look at me, being the good daughter, taking in your mistake while you go off and live an exciting life.' Don't pretend you wouldn't have held it over me forever."

No, no, better to have a clean break. "So you think that murder is a better option? So you can go and have some illustrious 'future'?"

"You might be happy living and dying for mediocrity, but I'm not. Especially not here for another year for a half dozen cells." She already has her bus tickets bought-- did the day she got the procedure done. A week, and she'd be gone.

"You bitch," Josie, says, with a vitriol that Hellaina is ill used to seeing from her sister, and it's enough to shock her.

"Oooh, look at you, using some adult words."

"You have never been content with this place. Little miss too good for this. Graduated, and you don't care about anyone do you?" Josie says it as critique, a cutting remark. Hellaina supposes to Josie, it must seem like the largest possible sin.

A lifetime coming to this. A screaming match, or half a step off, over their childhood kitchen table.

They've never been close, so it's not like she can be surprised. Her sister has always been too much like their mother. Their mother with her crucifix on the bedroom wall, and the absent husband, and the thinly veiled derogatory remarks that led her to taking Spanish all through high school. Their mother who isn't half as happy as she portrays to the neighbors and her sister is just two decades off the same fate.

"Congratulations for figuring that much out." She says, turning away, and taking a step towards the hallway with her room. "We're done here. I've done it, you disagree. Let's not prolong this anymore than we have to.

"Hel-" her sister's voice raises behind her, the last syllable muffled through the slam of her bedroom door.