#i was confused and thought he was moses but him being Noah is also funny

[mega-wad]

still one of the most insane moments in any thing I've ever seen

[piratekane]

@iwatchforher said that she’d been thinking how Noah would feel now that Lisa has passed, how it would make him think about Charity doing the same. How he’d be sad, but also angry that a few years ago, he wouldn’t have cared if she did or not. And now after Vanessa, he does and it breaks him that something could happen to Charity. To any of them. And he's furious. 

And so this happened:

sometimes sometimes you wanna wanna go back  (but it don’t work like that)

Vanessa approaches the open door slowly, wincing at the deafening song Noah is playing. Something Ryan gave him, probably. They both have terrible taste in music.

Noah hardly looks up when she comes into his room, his grunt of acknowledgment barely loud enough to hear. He doesn’t put down the pen he’s using to doodle on what looks like the homework he told Charity he didn’t feel like doing, but his computer chair turns slightly as he angles himself towards her. The music turns down a bit.

“Your mum says you’re being rotten.” There. Best to just jump in.

Noah scoffs. “As if she cares.”

Vanessa tips her head to one side. “Of course she does. We both do,” she adds.

Noah scoffs again but he doesn’t quite meet her eyes. “If she did, why isn’t she here right now? Why’d she send you.”

“I volunteered.” She had. She knew that mixing a confused and hurt Charity with a moody and mean Noah would only end in heartbreak.

They’ve had enough heartbreak lately.

Noah looks right at her now, eyes wide before they narrow again. “Super stepmum to the rescue, then?”

Vanessa lifts her chin slightly, her lips curling up. “Always knew you thought I was super.”

“Super annoying,” Noah grumbles. He drops his pen and turns all the way around, his shoulders tight.

Vanessa takes it as an invitation, sitting on the edge of his bed. “You know,” she says carefully. “If something is bothering you, you can tell me.”

“What, so you can tell mum?” Noah rolls his eyes. “I’m not stupid.”

“You’re not,” she agrees. “Even if you won’t do your homework.”

Noah pushes the worksheet further back on his desk, out of her sight.

“You’re a smart boy,” Vanessa continues. “You know what you’re doing to your mum, too. I know what you’re doing to your mum.”

Noah puffs his chest out, indignant. “What am I doing?”

Vanessa looks away and picks at a loose thread on his duvet. “Pushing her away.” She looks up at him. “Which doesn’t quite make sense, does it? You were clinging to her like a limpet last week. Me an’ all. But this week, you won’t even be in the same room as us.” She leans forward, softening the edges of her words. “Noah, if there’s something you-“

“I don’t want to talk,” he interrupts. She watches his hands twitch, flexing into fists as quickly as they flatten out again. “I’ve got nothing to say to you.”

Months ago, it would have hurt. The way he scowls and looks away, the way he nearly spits the words out. It would have struck a cord and she would have turn and run, afraid to upset the delicate balance they’d been walking. Now, she looks right through it. Now, she knows him. Like you in so many ways, she had told Charity. Reckon it’s why you two hurt each other so well.

Now, she waits until he looks at her before she speaks, keeping her voice low. “I reckon that’s not quite true, is it?”

“As if,” he mutters. He starts to fiddle with the hem of his hoodie, Charity’s nervous habit coursing through him. “Don’t you have a puppy to rescue or summat?”

“Mr. Crossings’ dog is doing fine, in case you were wondering.” Vanessa sees the hitch of interest in his shoulders. “Bit mardy when he came out of anesthesia, but we used a warm towel like you suggested and he calmed right down.” She reminded herself to talk to Paddy and Rhona about taking Noah on one day a week, for the experience.

Noah pretends not to care. “Like I said, I don’t want to talk to you. Or mum.”

“Noah,” Vanessa says gently. “It’s been a hard couple of weeks. I’m sure you must be-“

“I’m not anything.” He meets her eyes, his own burning, and red at the edges. She sees the wetness in them, glimmering in the lamp on his desk.

“So that’s normal, is it? Having a cry while we talk?”

Noah stands abruptly, his chair rolling away. “I’m not crying.”

Vanessa moves to her feet slower, hands at her side. “Noah-“

“I’m not,” he hisses.

Vanessa breathes in and out. “Then what is it? Your mum is in pieces downstairs, thinking she’s done something wrong.”

“Oh, now she cares?”

“Noah,” Vanessa says sharply. She watches the slope of his shoulders drop. “Noah,” she says again, softer. “If she’s done something wrong, you can tell me that too.”

She watches his face as it twists through things she can’t recognize. It settles back into anger, his eyes narrowed and his cheeks red.

“Noah,” she breathes.

The anger breaks, his cheeks wet as tears stream down them. His fists loosen until his hands are hanging limp by his side. She wants to go to him, to hug him like she hugs Johnny and Moses - close and unwavering. But she waits, watching until he’s sniffling and wiping at his nose. “She died, you know,” he finally says.

“Oh, Noah.” Vanessa moves closer. “Lisa was-“

“Not Lisa.” Noah sniffles again. “Mum. At least, she almost died. When Declan…”

Vanessa knows. She knows everything about Charity. She keeps it all locked away in boxes in her mind. A secret keeper, she told Charity. I’ll keep them forever. “She didn’t,” she reminds him. “She’s just downstairs.”

“But she nearly did!” Noah’s yell catches her off guard for a moment. “And I didn’t care.” He stomps his foot the way Johnny does when Moses takes a toy he wants. “I didn’t care then.”

Pieces start to shift and fall into place. She reaches for him but he steps back.

“I didn’t care,” he repeats. “But she could have died. She could still die. And I-I.” He frowns as himself. “Now, I-I.”

“Now you would care,” Vanessa helps.

Noah nods wordlessly. He wipes at his face again. “I’m so… mad.”

“Because you’d care?” Vanessa asks, trying to follow his careening train of thought.

“Because I didn’t,” he says. He slumps back down, sitting on the bed heavily. Vanessa waits, counts three heartbeats, and then sits down next to him. “I didn’t care and I’m mad at myself for it. She’s my mum.”

“It was complicated, Noah.” She won’t make excuses for it; she doesn’t know enough about what it was like for Noah, always being left two steps behind Charity. “Things were different then.”

Noah’s breath hitches once. “She could have, couldn’t she? Again. When she went after Lachlan’s dad when he…” Noah looks at her quickly and then away. “When he tried to kill you, she could have died, too?”

Vanessa considers her answer carefully, mulling over each word before she speaks them. “She could have,” she agrees slowly. “But she didn’t.”

“But she could have,” Noah argues. “And she’d have been alone and he would have Johnny and she wouldn’t know that I…”

“That you care,” Vanessa finishes. “Oh, Noah. Of course she would know.”

Noah shakes his head. “I haven’t told her.”

“You don’t need to. She knows now. She can see it in you.” Vanessa reaches for his hand and she holds on tight when he lets her. “I mean, she’d probably like the grand gesture of telling her every once in a while,” she jokes. “But she knows it.”

Noah shifts a little closer to her. “You could have died, too.”

“Oh, it’ll take more than Lachlan’s dad. Me, I’ve always thought there’d be a snake involved.” She frowns. “I had this dream once where I-“

“’Ness.”

“Right, yeah.” Vanessa shoulders him gently. “Enough about me.”


“I’d care, too,” Noah whispers. “If you died, I mean.”

Something flutters inside Vanessa’s chest and it settles in the pit of her stomach; something warm and bright and happy. “Would you?”

Noah narrows his eyes, his mouth turned up in a smile. “Now who wants the grand gesture.”

Vanessa wipes at the corner of her eyes, hoping she can blink away any tears coming. “Yeah, soz.”

Noah smiles wider before sobering. “I would,” he repeats. “You- you, uh.” He takes a deep breath.

“Noah, you don’t have to.”

“I do,” he insists. “Guess you’re not leaving anytime soon, eh? And I don’t… I don’t want you too.”

The tears come anyway. “Noah.”

He doesn’t shout at her to stop. He doesn’t pull his hand from hers. He sits and he lets her cry on his shoulder and when she pulls away, she thinks he might have tears in his eyes too.

Vanessa sniffles and clears her throat, sitting up straighter. “Well, now that you’ve done that, you might do best to go tell your mum, too.” She bumps his shoulder gently. “Reckon she’d want to know. She’s due for a good cry.”

Noah rolls his eyes. “She’s worse than you are.”

“Funny, that. How she tries to pretend she’s not.” Vanessa winks at him like it’s a secret between the two of them. She stands and chances it, leaning in to press a kiss to the top of his head. He sways into it and she breathes out a sigh of relief. “And maybe turn off this awful music, please? My ears are starting to bleed.”

Noah makes a face at her. “The music stays.”

“Fine,” Vanessa says softly. “But so do I, yeah? And so does your mum.”

Noah rolls his eyes but he smiles widely and lifts off the bed, stumbling towards the door before he finds his footing. “Yeah, yeah. Whatever you say, ‘Ness. If you’re done being soppy, shut the door when you leave. Moses and Johnny keep trying to color my walls.”

Vanessa grins widely and watches him disappear around the corner “And he’s back in the room.”