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Prompt Post #5
HEAD OVER TO PROMPT POST #6.
Keep filling prompts on this post! Make sure to link any new fic on the complete or work in progress fills posts so it doesn't get missed.
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When he was younger, Matt got adopted
(Anonymous) 2015-07-20 08:48 pm (UTC)(link)Re: When he was younger, Matt got adopted
(Anonymous) 2015-07-20 09:19 pm (UTC)(link)Re: When he was younger, Matt got adopted
(Anonymous) 2015-07-21 02:41 am (UTC)(link)I want twenty of it.
Re: When he was younger, Matt got adopted
(Anonymous) 2015-07-21 10:36 pm (UTC)(link)Re: When he was younger, Matt got adopted
(Anonymous) 2015-07-22 11:21 am (UTC)(link)Just, WHAT IF.
(Gods, I wanna write this now.)
Re: When he was younger, Matt got adopted
(Anonymous) 2015-07-22 08:36 pm (UTC)(link)Fill: Somewhere to Belong [1a/]
(Anonymous) 2015-09-27 07:46 pm (UTC)(link)Somewhere to Belong
2013
"That's officially it. You can officially start your own quality adulting experience."
Matt smiles as he takes out another book from his box and runs his fingers across the title label on the cover. Textbook, that one'll go to the living room. "Thanks, Foggy. I'd offer to make you dinner in thanks, but the fridge doesn't work yet."
"Don't I know it," Foggy sighs dramatically. "I think I've spied an Indian place around the corner, though. We could get takeout, sit on your brand new couch and admire your fancy billboard."
"I'm sure it's very fancy."
"Posh, even! It shows like five different ads and I've only managed to have my eyes burned out by three!"
Matt's chuckle follows Foggy out of the bedroom. Matt listens in as Foggy phones the Indian restaurant — he must have more than spied it, if he already has a number — and orders chicken curry for Matt and pork vindaloo for himself. He even remembers about the kulcha, bless. Once done with the order, he goes to rummage through Matt's cupboards in search of plates they've spent most of yesterday unpacking and putting away.
"Where did we put the bowls?" Foggy yells from the kitchen.
"The middle overhead cupboard, I think," Matt yells back.
Foggy asks about nothing after that, so Matt assumes he's found the bowls. And yes, Matt can hear the clank of porcelain hitting the stone of his kitchen island — he still has no chairs or even a table, will have to work on that — and then the sound of a drawer being opened and closed, Foggy found the cutlery. Middle--no, not middle. The drawer on the left. It'll take time to get used to this new space.
He's almost done with all the boxes in the bedroom when Foggy comes to stand in the doorway. "They said they'll be here in about half an hour. You look almost done here, so I think we can open our disgustingly warm beer and relax for that half an hour."
"I'd love to."
Foggy turns his head around, looking around the bedroom, before stopping with his head turned slightly towards the bed. Mhm. Something there must have caught his eye. "Can I ask you something?"
Matt takes the last book out of the box and places it on a shelf. He takes his time turning back to face Foggy; he can hear his friend's heart beat a bit faster than usual, he can feel the rise of temperature around his cheeks. Foggy's nervous and he's blushing slightly. He's embarrassed by whatever it is he wants to ask Matt, and it makes Matt nervous in return. He doesn't know what to expect.
Matt takes a deep breath and forces his lips to curve upwards. "Of course," he says, aiming for polite curiosity. He turns to face Foggy, puts his left hand on his hip, and cocks his head, a picture of openness and approachability.
Foggy points at Matt's bed. "What's the deal with the dog?" he asks. "I'm pointing at that stuffed toy on your bed that looks like it's been to hell and back."
Oh. Oh. Of course. It was in one of the boxes, Matt didn't have the time to shove it to the far back of his wardrobe yet. "It's nothing," he shrugs.
"You've dragged it with you to every single place we've lived at only to hide it and never take it out until we moved," Foggy points out. And he's right, of course he's right, why does Matt keep forgetting that Foggy is scarily perceptive? "So I'm willing to bet it's not 'nothing'." He takes a sudden breath and shuts his mouth with a click. He's silent for a moment. "Did you get it from your dad? Shit, I'm sorry, I didn't think--"
"No, no, Foggy, it's fine." Matt waves a hand dismissively. "I didn't get it from my dad. I got it--I got it at the orphanage."
"Oh?"
He's not pressing for more information, Foggy, he never does. But that 'oh?' was full of interest, and he would like to know more — more about Matt, his best friend, of course he'd like to know — and there are already so many things that Matt isn't telling him, and Matt finds himself carrying on. "Helen gave to me, the day we met."
"Helen was a nun?" Foggy asks. "Sister Helen? That sounds weird."
Matt laughs, but it's not a happy sound. "No. No, Helen isn't — wasn't — a nun. She was a lawyer, I lived with her for a few months. She, um," Matt licks his lips, "she wanted to adopt me, at some point. I think."
"You think?"
Matt shrugs. "I grew up at the orphanage, so obviously that didn't happen."
"What happened?" Foggy asks and his voice is soft, almost soothing. He makes a small motion, as if he wanted to go further into the bedroom and wrap his arms around Matt. He doesn't do that, though; he keeps still in the doorway and stays put.
Matt tries to make sure that none of the old bitterness shows in his tone or on his face. The former he can do, he can keep his voice level and emotionless, but the latter? He has no idea what he looks like. He has no idea how expressive he is and it's hard to control facial expressions when you don't know what they are. "She got pregnant. And I guess she just didn't want me anymore."
1999
"For fuck's sake, what is wrong with people?"
Helen raises her head from the indictment she's decided to dissect today and looks over to Esther, who's collapsed onto a chair in front of Helen's desk and is sitting now, sprawled across it. "In general, or do you have a specific situation in mind?"
"Both," Esther grumbles. She kicks Helen's wobbly desk and watches a bobblehead dog on Helen's desk start nodding because of the impact. "I fucking hate my job."
"You don't hate your job," Helen reminds her gently. She looks back to the indictment. There's a fair chance they could win this if it goes to trial.
Esther snorts. "Yeah, I do hate my job. And my job hates me. It's a never-ending circle of hatred."
Helen looks at her watch and sighs. 12:45pm. It's almost time for her lunch break, which she was going to spend with her husband, but would probably vent away with her best friend. Damn it, Esther. "There's a diner a block from here that serves decent tea with lunch," she tells Esther, who immediately perks up. "We could go there, I'd eat something, you'd drink all their tea and tell me why your job hates you."
Esther nods. "Sounds fair."
Esther gets up and waits for Helen to bookmark and put her case files away; she hands Helen her coat and together they leave Helen's broomcloset of an office. On their way out Helen winks at Joey at the front desk and tells him she'll be back in half an hour, information that Joey dismisses with a wave of his hand, all done without actually looking up from his magazine and to Helen. Fine then. As long as someone at the office knows where she'd gone to.
"First of all," Esther says the moment they step out of the office and onto the street, "today is one of the days when I really, really hate orphanages."
Ah. One of those days. Helen nods sadly. Esther's attitude towards orphanages has always been ambiguous to say the least. An alumni of one, she was one of the few — if not the only one, currently — social workers whom Helen's ever met that saw past the Hollywood stereotypes and noticed the positives. And most days — most days she was more than happy to work as the designated middleman between the city and the few remaining New York orphanages. But some days... Some days were tough, when she'd hit the wall dealing with the administration and the idiocy of the people in charge, and nine times out of ten it happened when she had business to conclude with the St. Agnes people. The Church-y stuff, as Esther called it.
The fact that she was Jewish probably didn't win her any favours with those nuns.
"You don't hate the orphanage," Helen says gently and steers Esther towards the entrance to the diner. "You hate the Mother Superior there."
"I hate the Mother Superior so much." Esther hangs her head low and it falls on Helen to make sure she doesn't walk into a lamppost. "Does it make me an awful person to wish she'd just die of old age already?"
"Not in the slightest," Helen says. She drags Esther into the diner and towards a booth at the far end, the quietest and most discreet place in this fine establishment. "Based on what I've heard about her."
Helen waves at the waitress and places an order: a salad and coffee for her, waffles and lots of tea for Esther, thanks, Jade. Jade grins at her and promises to put extra milk in her coffee. Helen turns her attention back to Esther. "So," she asks, "want to tell me what exactly happened today?"
Esther grabs a saltshaker and plays with it idly. Helen waits for her to speak. "Mary Sue got sent back today," Esther says eventually. "Again, I mean. She was in hysterics when she came in, I had to hold her for an hour to get her to calm down enough to tell me that her latest foster father came into her room yesterday and told her to pack, because she had to go back to the orphanage."
"Christ."
Esther shakes her head sadly. "After I got her to calm down, I went to see Mother Superior. And you know what she did? She just sighed, as if she were some long-suffering saint who had to put up with dumb people, and said that it was all God's will. God's will. A girl in her care has just been sent back from her seventeenth foster home like some broken merchandise and Sister Agatha just fucking sighs."
"Fucking Sister Agatha."
"Preach it," Esther nods. "And this is still one of the better cases. Don't even get me started on Matt."
Helen frowns. "I don't think I've heard about Matt before."
"Eh, he's kind of new. Ended up at St. Agnes early last year, after his dad died and his bio mum entered the race for the 'worst parent in history' crown."
"That bad?"
"I went to speak to her, last year," Esther tells her. She leans forward over the table and pitches her voice low. "After she failed to come and pick Matt up. I thought, maybe she had trouble coming to New York. Maybe no one contacted her. So I found her and I went to talk to her. She'd heard alright. She'd started a new family, wanted nothing to do with her old one. After I explained Matt's situation to her, she only asked if I had the papers."
"What papers?"
Esther points a finger at Helen. "I asked the same thing. What papers? Well, Helen, she meant the papers that'd allow her to sign Matt over to the State." Helen gapes. "That woman wanted to voluntarily give up parental rights to the kid."
"She can't do that!" Helen hisses. "She can't legally do that!"
"Which is what I told her, full-on disgusted. Lady just shrugged it off and told me to leave before her husband comes back home from work. She made it clear that she wants nothing to do with her son."
"Jesus Christ." Helen tips her head back and rests it on the booth's backrest. "Did you start the termination proceedings?"
"I have," Esther admits. "I wanted to keep it quiet, all of it, why put extra stress on the kid, but our favourite person Sister Agatha apparently has a strict no lying policy, because she told the kid everything. And I mean everything, starting from the fact that we've found his mother — up until that point he didn't even know she was alive, that's how early she bailed on him — and ending with the cheerful info that she couldn't wait to sign him over to complete strangers. No wonder the boy had a nervous breakdown."
Helen's head snaps back up and she looks sharply at Esther. "You're kidding me." Esther shakes her head. "A nervous breakdown? How old is he?"
"Was nine and a half at the time." Here Esther has to stop, because Jade comes back with their order. She places the waffles in front of Esther and the salad in front of Helen. Helen pushes her plate away. She's not hungry, all of a sudden. Esther, on the other hand, takes a fork and stabs her waffles with a passion. "I'm still hazy on the details, because Mother fucking Superior hates talking to me, but I know they've called an exorcist on him. An exorcist, Helen, for a traumatised nine-year-old, because the Catholic Church is full of crazy people."
"That must have gone well."
"It went as well as you'd assume, so after that Sister Theresa had another brilliant idea and called in a specialist." The last word Esther spits out with so much venom that it amazes even Helen. They've known each other since college — that'll be eighteen years next spring — and Helen's never seen her quite that angry.
"Some kind of a doctor?"
"I wish," Esther grits out. She continues stabbing her waffles, which seems less and less edible with every minute. "Some sort of a teacher. Maybe. I don't know. The sisters have custody over Matt, so technically they can make any and all decisions on his behalf. They're not inclined to share with me."
"Anyway, it wasn't bad, at first," Esther carries on after Jade stopped by their table with the ordered drinks. Helen is seriously considering whether she should ask for whiskey to be put in her coffee. "Matt got better, and he really liked the guy. I admit, I harboured a romantic delusion that the boy'll get adopted and will get to grow up happy, because he's seriously been through enough traumatising shit. None of that happened, of course, which is why we're talking in the first place, because that specialist dick disappeared pretty much overnight, leaving behind a depressive and even more traumatised eleven-year-old. And the very worst part is that that 'specialist'," Esther makes a disgusted face, "clearly abused the kid. Matt has bruises and scars all over his body, and I pray every day that that's it, that nothing worse happened to him that the Catholic Church-y people would be more than willing to cover up and sweep under the rug. And I don't even have a way to track that 'specialist' down!" Esther stabs her waffle with so much force that her fork bends out of shape. "No name, no contact info, nothing. Just Sister Theresa's satisfied 'oh, but Matthew seems better now!'. How nice to know that you consider borderline catatonic a fucking improvement!"
"Jesus Christ," Helen repeats, because she has no better comment. There hardly is a better comment. "What is wrong with people?"
"And here we come back to my initial question." Esther drops her fork and hides her face in her hands. She sighs, "I almost punched Sister Agatha in her wrinkly smug face today. Only the knowledge that if I get fired, no one will give a shit about these kids kept my fists by my sides. They're from the Kitchen, no one gives a shit about the Kitchen."
"Can't you get him out of there?" Helen asks. "Matt. Can't you get him into a foster home? Somewhere far away from the Catholic nuns?"
"I've been trying," Esther says quietly. "I've interviewed seven potential foster families. They all seemed nice. More than willing to meet Matt. I mean, who wouldn't. He's sweet and kind and polite, very smart, very timid. So, they're all interested. Up until they hear that he's blind, after that it's all," Esther makes air quotes, "'oh but we didn't know this before, a blind child, nooo, that wouldn't be a good fit'. All the families that would have the means and resources to care for a child with a disability withdraws immediately, because they don't want a broken child."
Fill: Somewhere to Belong [1b/]
(Anonymous) 2015-09-27 07:49 pm (UTC)(link)"They did actually say that," Esther confirms. "One of the husbands, he used those exact words. Something along the lines of 'we haven't been trying to get a child for so long only to get a broken one'. Yup. That one I did punch," she adds with grim satisfaction.
"That's fucked up," Helen concludes. She'll have to get the salad on takeout. Maybe she'll give it to Joey when she gets back.
"It is," Esther nods. "And fucking depressing." She sighs." Anyway. Cheer me up. ow are things on your front? Amy's giving birth soon, isn't she? George must be excited."
"It's Emma, and she is," Helen corrects with a smile. "15th of October is her due date. We've got everything planned. She's supposed to call us once her water breaks, we want to be there for the birth. George is beyond ecstatic."
"No wonder," Esther chuckles. "After a decade of planning and trying and waiting and failing, you're almost there. Did you pick a name already?"
"Wendy. George's mother got pissy, wanted our girl to be named 'Madeline' after herself, but who cares."
"She's an awful person, who would want to name their kid after her?"
"Not her only son, as it turns out," Helen laughs. "I still can't quite believe that. In two weeks I'm going to be a mum."
"Emma was so lucky that she found you. She knows that from the moment her daughter is born, she'll have amazing loving parents."
"We were lucky she chose us. And that we have such an amazing social worker who guided us through all that bureaucratic mess with the training and the home study." Helen smiles and pats Esther's hand. "Wouldn't have done it without you, Terry."
"Now if only I could do as much for those kids at St. Agnes," Esther murmurs, but there's a small smile playing upon her lips. The reminder of the success with Helen and Emma lifted her spirits. "Now that'd be grand."
Re: Fill: Somewhere to Belong [1b/]
(Anonymous) 2015-09-27 10:45 pm (UTC)(link)*sets up camp in thread*
Re: Fill: Somewhere to Belong [1b/]
(Anonymous) 2015-09-28 09:13 am (UTC)(link)Man, this fic is already hurting me and it's going to get even angstier. I can't wait.
OP here
(Anonymous) 2015-09-28 11:35 am (UTC)(link)Anyhoo. It's really interesting how Esther and Helen as of right now have this 'holier-than-thou' attitude. I'm sure we all have that stance at some point in our lives, the "I'll never do that!" type of reactions, and when we DO find ourselves in those situations, our song and dance changes very quickly. Matt may be a sweet kid, but he's still adjusting to his new disability, the murder of his dad, and whatever the fuck Stick did to him. For those ill-equipped to handle that is gonna be a huge wakeup call for them.
Re: OP here
(Anonymous) 2015-09-28 01:45 pm (UTC)(link)Esther will call Helen out on 'in general I think X, but not really when it's about me' quite soon, in fact. I have a very specific arc planned for Helen (and her husband George) that I hope you'll enjoy.
Re: Fill: Somewhere to Belong [1b/]
(Anonymous) 2015-09-29 12:12 pm (UTC)(link)Re: Fill: Somewhere to Belong [1b/]
(Anonymous) 2015-10-26 06:49 am (UTC)(link)