Time Is An Illusion

[Tessie]

PAGE ONE:

TESS:

[Dylan and Darla; Trio's 5th year]

She had no idea how long she had been up here. In fact, she wasn't even sure why she was here in the first place. The plan had been to go straight from second period to the library, finish up that tricky little Potions essay she'd been set then begin some revision. That was the plan. But, as so often happened in her life, fate got in the way.

For some reason, as Darla Carolyn Achison, had been trudging up the many flights of steps and heard the deep toll of the mighty clock tower she had suddenly felt the compelling urge to heed it and go to the great building. It worried her a little, actually. Her mother, a lovely yet terminally flightey woman, used to often arrive home three or four hours later just as she and her brothers were beginning to panic because she'd suddenly felt 'called' to the river bank or some such place. Cruel as it may sound, Darla truly didn't want to end up like her mother.

Still, here she was, swinging her legs, back pressed against the cool stone, staring out through the semi-transparent material of the clockface to the grounds. Despite their lack of human life, Darla still found the activity down there fascinating. Everywhere her blue eyes fell she could see the signs of spring - a tiny rabbit, nose twitching as it hopped noiselessly through the grass, a butterfly flitting through the sky, flowers leaning longingly towards the beaming sun.

Now she really was beginning to sound like her mother. Darla started a little, shaking dark bangs from her eyes and averting her gaze from the outside. Too close to the clock face to make out the time from it, she instead lifted her wrist to check the watch read out. It took a moment for her eyes to focus, then another for her brain to process what it was seeing. She had been sat here, silent, motionless, content for almost an hour.

Darla cursed under her breath; there went her chance at a pass on her essay. Too late to do anything about it now. May as well just stay here and...

Too entranced to resist the urge, Darla lay back once more, eyes lingering on the world below that seemed so small and yet so close that she could reach out and grasp it.

((Yes, it's long, silly and rambly but meh, what are you gonna do?))


MEL:

ooc; Not reply. Muahahaha.

bic; There was only one thing that could turn Dylan Ackerley's world completely upside down. Only one thing that could take his life and what he'd percieved as the truth in it's big ugly fist and wrench it and squeeze it and tear it apart until it no longer even resembled its previous state. It was something different, something foreign, something that he couldn't quite get himself to accept, despite the overwhelming evidence in its favor. He just couldn't believe that this had happened, no matter what anyone said to him, especially his mother. She'd lied to him all these years, and against his better wishes, he was beginning to hate her, if only just a little.

After all, she had hid the fact that his father was alive.

And it just got more complicated from there. It wasn't like it was just the fact that his father was alive. Don't get me wrong, that's a pretty big fact and after almost thirteen years of believing that the person who gave him life was dead, it was a massive blow to his life, and one that was going to be hard to recover from. But it wasn't the biggest betrayal that his mother had for him. No, she had something much worse and much more devastating.

His father, one Tristan Ackerley, wasn't the man she'd led him to believe was his father.

I can imagine the confusion, after all, how could he not know that Tristan was his father and not the other man? Simply enough, Dylan had never met Tristan before this week. He hadn't even known that Tristan had existed and the only reason that he did was because Tristan showed up at Hogwarts, looking for Dumbledore, and ended up finding his son and ex-girlfriend. That was another blow to Dylan's world that he hadn't been able to sort out yet. His mother and Tristan had never even been married, not even engaged and for a few minutes, he had no idea how he'd ended up with the last name Ackerley if his mother was married to someone else when he was born. That was easily solved. His stepfather, and the man that he'd believed to be his father until now, was Tristan's uncle.

Yes, his mother had married the uncle of the man she really loved and then had her husband's nephew's son, and then paraded the child as the uncle's own.

Don't worry, he had a headache from trying to digest and sort all of these new revelations too, and he'd had almost a week to deal with it. His mother and his... father, though in his mind, the man was still Tristan and would stay that way for a long time, had tried several times to talk to him. They'd shown up at Hogwarts almost everyday and each time, he found an excuse to avoid them. Usually it was homework, or he avoided them all together, with help from a couple of his friends.

Which was what he was doing now. His friend Milan Summers was distracting his mother while Dylan made his escape and today, that ended up being the Clock Tower. He'd thought he would be alone up here, and that would give him even more time to try and sort out his thoughts about his parents and the new found feelings of hate towards them both, but life decided to throw a wrench in that plan.

There was someone else that had the idea of going to the Clock Tower on this afternoon.

And surprisingly, he wasn't annoyed that she was there. He liked Darla well enough, she was a nice person and he had nothing against her, and he should have been annoyed that she was there, because her being there put a major kink in his plans to be alone, but he couldn't bring himself to be annoyed. It was one of the odder things that had happened to him recently and with last week's shock, that was saying a lot.

"Hey, Darla," Dylan said, sitting down next to her.


TESS:

((Wow, that really makes my head hurt...))

A songbird sat in its nest. A pupil lay on the lawn. Smoke billowed from Hagrid's cottage. A bunch of older students stood round the Courtyard. All such simple, everyday occurances, all so simple and mundane yet so very isolated from one another, that when all were put together in a strange montage viewed from her ariel position, they seemed somehow, well, magic.

As this thought entered her mind, Darla suddenly became aware of another's presense. For a moment she was startled and wondered how on earth they could have climbed all those steos without her hearing them - then remembered how lost she's been in the life below and felt mildly foolish. Lifting her head at the sound of her name, Darla was mildly surprised to see Dylan Ackerley now sitting beside her. The warm sunlight rushing in through the material of the clock face bathed one side of his face in a dancing brightness but left the other in shadow.

Another thing about herself that worried Darla was her ability to understand people. No, that was the wrong word. More like... sense them. What was it Professor Trelawney said? Reading their aura. Yeah, something like that. Again, her mother had it. Some nights she'd come home, sit down and launch into some story about how on the ride home she'd seen some woman giving off the most terrible vibes and ended up having an indepth discussion with her about her failing marriage.

Right now, Darla was getting enough bad vibes off of Dylan to give her a bit of a headache. She frowned slightly, tilting her head back as she rummaged through her head for info on the boy. He was in her year so obviously she'd seen him around and he was in a good deal of her classes too. They'd chatted occasionally and she could recall one occasion when they'd even shared a table and worked together on a Potions essay. He was well off, she knew that, and an only child to boot. He was smart - smarter than her, at any rate - and seemed to have a knack for healing. And - she could almost hear the metaphorical light bulb in her head swish into life as realisation dawned - he was going through some sort of family crisis. Few people knew what it was and those that did weren't sharing but rumours were rife. Darla didn't care for such things as gossip but some of her slightly less concerned friends had already filled her in.

She sat back again, now pretty confident she knew exactly what he was doing here. Darla had become pretty good at hiding from her own problems; hell, you had to be a good hider to find some space for just you in a house full of six people not large enough to hold you all. Sympathy eminated from her and a part of her wished to let Dylan know how much she was feeling his pain. Even so, she was loathe to do so incase she came across as ingenuine or only wanting to hear the latest gossip. After hearing her mother's tongue slip so very many times and discovering the trouble it could cause, always Darla referred to her own quote to live by, spoken by Shirdi Sai Baba saying, "Before you speak, ask yourself: is it kind, is it necessary, is it true, does it improve on the silence?"

Though broaching that particular subject may abide by the first and third sections, she knew it to be unnecessary and would probably just cause an awkwardness between the two of them she'd rather not have. So, she went for a far safer option. "Hey Dylan," she replied, smiling slightly at him. "How are you?"


MEL:

ooc; Cha, I know.

bic; Well, to be completely honest, he was nothing that resembled alright or fine or okay and was everything that had to do with being awful, angry, hurt, and confused.

But there was no way he could even begin to tell her why he was all of those things. He could barely even understand the twist that life had thrown at him-how had he not know about Tristan? how could his mother hide something that big from him for so long?- and it was going to be a while before he could even sort everything out, catalogize everything, and then begin to understand it all.

The biggest problem so far was being able to wrap his mind around that his father was alive.

But the point was, that he had to be able to understand it before he could begin to tell her what was bothering him. And if Milan said was true, then it was very possible that most of the school already knew the basics of what had happened. There had been a crowd of people when he'd run into Tristan in the hallway, and they'd stared at each for so long, unable to comprehende why they looked so much alike before Isolde had shown up, how she even knew to be there was another mystery that Dylan hadn't been able to solve yet, and directed the two men to an empty classroom.

Any idiot, besides Dylan apparently, had immediately recognized Tristan as his father, and when someone mentioned that Dylan's father had died when he was two, gossip naturally took off from there. No doubt girls like Noelle Summers and Bianca Rosier were having a field day with this new development.

None of them knew the full extent of the drama, like the fact that his stepfather was his great-uncle, but it was enough to learn that one of their fellow student's father was alive when he was thought to be dead for so long. And that just led back to how his mother could let him think for so long that his father was dead? Better yet, how could she stand to let her son think that his father was someone different than who he really was? Or even better, how had Dylan come into existance if his mother was married to someone else?

Oh, nevermind. That was not something he ever wanted to think about.

Despite everything that had happened, Dylan managed to smile back at her, and it was completely genuine. "I've been better," he said honestly. Hey, he might not be able to share with her about why he wasn't okay, but he could at least be honest with the not okay part. "A lot better, actually," he added with a dry laugh.

"Parents suck, you know?"


TESS:

Darla tilted her head to one side, automatically assuming her Sympathy Face. This was a highly refined and well-used facial expression she had mastered after years of being people's shoulder to cry on. Girl trouble, boy trouble, professor frustrations, homework worries, friend issues... She'd heard them all and dealt with every single one in a logical, calm manner. After all, earth shattering as they may seem to the person concerned they usually weren't that important in the grand scheme of things.

But somehow she doubted this was the case for Dylan. Maybe it was the seeming absurdity of the circling rumours, or the fact that his mother had been visiting the castle so often but there was no doubt - something serious was going on. Something life changing. She could tell just by looking at the boy that a change had occured within him; there was a new air of disillusionment there that she had never sensed before. But he was also strong. She'd seen people in far less serious scenarios than this break down for hours yet not once had she seen him show any signs of being unable to cope. It impressed her, and even made her respect him in a way.

"I've been better. A lot better, actually."

Well, she'd worked that out. Still, Darla remembered her rule and said nothing, just gave a little nod to show she understood and still cared. A dark curl fell in front of her eyes and she pushed it back again with one hand, catching sight out of the clockface from the corner of her eye. This was the longest time so far she'd been able to resist the urge to look down at the world below. It seemed Dylan's presense was a good influence on her - forcing her to focus, rather than letting her mind wander again.

"Parents suck, you know?"

That comment was a tad unexpected. Not that she'd expected him to begin suddenly blurting out his secrets or something but this just wasn't the kind of prelude she'd anticipated. Probably what surprised her most was that she did know, very well, about the infinite suckiness of parents. After all, hadn't her own dad left when she was born? And wasn't her mother, though a very warm loving woman, far from the taditional matriarchal figure with her unintentional neglect and flightiness and head never leaving the clouds she floated in?

Even so, Darla wasn't sure how to share this with him. Growing up in a house full of boys, she'd never been sure how to express her emotions properly, instead keeping most of them pent up inside her. Maybe not the healthiest option but at least it stopped all hell breaking loose in the holidays.

"Yeah, I guess they do sometimes," she said slowly, remaining cautious as she still had no idea what this was actually about. "But they do try their best, don't they? And even though they end up messing you up, doesn't everyones? Fact of the matter is, most of the time, they could be a lot worse."


MEL:

"Fact of the matter is, most of the time, they could be a lot worse."

If someone could show him how his situation with his parents could get any worse, then please point it out now and save him the trouble of finding and stressing over it later. Better to just deal with everything right here and now than to discover little bits and pieces along the way. He wanted to get this over and done with and he knew that it was going to take a long time to sort out the issues life had thrown at him but at least when that time came, he would be done with it. Not almost done with another nasty twist thrown at him.

And really, while we're on it, he really doubted that what his mother had done for (or to, as he prefered) him had been her best. Really, there was no possible reason for her keeping him away from Tristan besides an old grudge. None at all. He'd searched his mind and from what snippets of explanation that he'd gotten, all that he could come up with was that she kept Tristan's son away from him because she had a grudge. That was not what Dylan would consider the best she could do. The best would have included at least telling him that Tristan was his father and perhaps that he was even alive, instead of hiding the truth from him and hoping that he never found out.

And yeah, he was pretty messed up right now. Finding out that his father was alive and not who he'd been led to believe for the fifteen years that he'd been alive, it was hard not to be messed up, but he really did not think that anyone else in Hogwarts had gone through what he was going through, or was even going to go through anything like it. It made him different, and while most people would have welcomed that, he hated it because he'd spent a childhood of being different already. For once, he just wanted a little normal, and not crazy.

But really, he could not see how this could get any worse, unless by some messed up twist, Isolde turned out not to be his mother. Oh, God, that was not even a possibility that he wanted to consider. Finding a father (a real live, breathing father) was bad enough. Finding that he wasn't his mother's son just might kill him. Isolde was his mother. She had to be. She might be crazy, and utter shite at being a mother, but she was his and that was one constant that he had to be able to depend on if he was going to handle Tristan.

"This is probably going to sound really pessimistic, but I sincerely doubt that my parents could get any worse. Unless fate, or life, or whatever, really, really hates me, I'm pretty sure that they just cannot get any worse. And... Merlin and Aggripa, I don't think I can handle this. She bloody didn't even tell me--" Dylan stopped, realizing that he was starting to give away more than he wanted.

"Forget that... I don't even know what I'm saying."


TESS:

Paranoid as it may sound, Darla was pretty sure she had some kind of gift for these things.

How otherwise could it be that, time and time again, she would meet up with some person - anyone, from one of her best friends to someone she'd never even spoken to before - and end up having them spill their deepest darkest secrets and weep for a good half an hour on her shoulder? It was quite bizarre, really, how often she was called upon to deal with other people's traumas. Occasionally it irked her that, happy as they were to use her as their agony aunt, not a one of them ever seemed concerned with how she was feeling but at the end of the day she just put that down to one of the disadvantages of being such a nice person. It wasn't even that she had so many terrible things in her life. She'd just like to be asked every now and then, that was all.

Darla cocked her head to one side, suddenly hit by that realisation but not showing it in her face. She could ponder over the mysteries of agony aunthood later - right now she had an obviously rather emotionally distressed boy on her hands who clearly needed her help, or at least someone to listen.

She sat in silence for moment, letting him settle after the little outburst. Her eyes searched his face, usually so attractive yet currently twisted with anxiety, looking for some kind of clue as to what was going on. It was about his parents, obviously. Specifically his mother, perhaps. Something she'd kept hidden from him.

"Well," said Darla slowly, again painfully aware of how delicately she must tread. He was in a very difficult place right now, and she knew that just by saying the wrong thing he could end up reatreating completely back into himself and she'd never be able to coax him out again. It occured to her briefly that her behaviour could be interpreted as nosy or even selfish, but really she was genuinely concerned with Dylan and his problems. After all, a problem shared is a problem halved, right? It's just that people don't always particularly want to share their problems.

"Maybe," she licked her lips, studying his reaction closely, "Maybe she thought it was for the best? Y'know, trying to protect you?"


MEL:

"Protect me from what?"

Dylan knew that he was on a slippery slope. Once he got started, he knew that he would not be able to stop ranting about what his mother (and father, he supposed) had done that had thrown such a major kink in his life. That question, simple as it was, was the beginning of the slope and now that he was here, he didn't feel the overpowering need that had been there before to stop. He needed to get this out. Forget understanding it. He was going to go insane if he kept it in any longer.

"He's my father for Merlin's sake and she kept him away from me. She denied me a father and then she lied to me about who he really was. I thought my father was dead. He died when I was two, she swore that he did."

He sighed, running his hand through his hair. "Her husband died when I was two but that man wasn't my father. He was my stepfather. And get this, my great-uncle. My mother married my father's uncle and then tried to pass me off as his. She lied to everyone. My father, my stepfather, me, everyone she's ever come in contact to."

He was already telling her more than he had ever thought to. But he just trusted her, for some reason. She would listen to him and not spread everything he said to the first person who asked. He was sure of it without even asking.

"I've met him. He isn't insane like she said. Yeah, she mentioned him to me once, when I was like seven. And all she said was that I had a crazy cousin, yeah, she called him a cousin, and that his name was Tristan and that if me and him ever met, I was not to talk to him and leave as quickly as possible. She convienently left out the he's my bloody father part."

Dylan stopped and looked at Darla. "Sorry, that's a lot to absorb in a few minutes."


TESS:

"No, no, I think I'm keeping up," Darla assured him, blinking quickly as her mind raced to catch up with her ears. It had been a lot to take in but she acknowledged that if she didn't grasp it all now and try to understand it he'd just close up again.

Okay, it was official: you really didn't know anything about your schoolmates. Even if you thought you had someone totally sussed they were still capable of taking you completely by surprise and turning your opinion of them upside down in just a few short sentences. This was exactly what Dylan had just done to her. He had always seemed a nice, normal, well-adjusted, friendly boy but after hearing all this she found it a wonder he wasn't a complete basket case. Yes, rare as it was, she could admit she was wrong - it really probably couldn't be worse.

She pushed her dark hair back, running her fingers through it as the last of the information was processed by her brain. Brow furrowing slightly, she turned her gaze back to Dylan. "So, has your mum told you why she lied to you?"


MEL:

Dylan gave a dry laugh and shook his head. "No, she hasn't," he answered simply.

God knows he was curious about why his mum decided to lie to him about his father. There had to be a decent reason, she wasn't the sort to be mean and vindictive like that and she certainly wasn't insane, but he couldn't think of anything that made sense. All he knew was that she'd lied to him about who his father was and then when her husband died, she never sought out his father like she should've done. There wouldn't be anything standing between them now that Dylan's stepfather was dead, but she chose to pack the both of them up and head for Ireland rather than going to find Tristan.

There was the possibility that Tristan had done something to make Isolde think that he didn't want a son, though Dylan shuddered to think that. He'd spent most of his life without a father, and the memories he'd had of his stepfather were sketchy at best, and the idea of his real father wanting nothing to do with him was just plain depressing. He wanted to believe that he was wanted from both his parents, just kept apart from his father by circumstance.

"But that could be because I've been avoiding her," Dylan added, feeling the need to say that so Darla wouldn't think that his mother was really mean or something. She probably did want to tell him why she'd done it, but he couldn't bring himself to face her.

"Which is sort of what I'm doing now," he said with a sort of guilty look. "She's here, at Hogwarts my friend said, and so is my dad, but I don't know... I can't see them. I can't hear their reasons because I don't think I could handle it if was something really depressing like Tristan'd hated me or my mother only kept me because she felt a duty to raise her child, not because she wanted to."


TESS:

"Right..." said Darla slowly as she continued to absorb his story. It was interesting, she found, the way that people were so unwilling to share their problems inititally, but get them started and it took only the lightest of proddings and they'd be going for hours. See, a lot of the time, people didn't even want the listener to solve their problems for them. The just wanted someone to listen to them. Fixing it was just a potential bonus.

"Avoiding her. Yeah, I can totally understand that. You'd just had this huge great bombshell rained down on you. No one could expect you to be just fine about it. You need some time to deal, fair enough. That's what I'm here for."

And she meant that. Darla was a very strong believer in fate. Things didn't just happen by conicidence. Human beings didn't just happen to evolve from apes. The eco-system didn't just happen to work. These things and everything else, no matter how minute or small they may seem, happened for a reason. As far as she was concerned, it was fate that had torn Dylan's parents apart before hurling them back togedther again and it was fate that had brought him up here today to where she, the infamous listener and problem solver, just happened to be spending her time.

Darla listened some more, nodding her head. She could understand what he was going through, in some respect at least. Her dad had left not long after Darla was born. For most of her life she'd wondered if she was the reason he'd gone until it eventually dawned on her that she didn't care. He'd walked out on her. He'd not cared enough to even try to stay in contact. He'd left her mother all on her own. He hadn't wanted to know. So screw him.

Still, this wasn't the kind of advice she was going to give Dylan, mainly because his dad obviously did care or else he wouldn't have come back. Besides, it was clear this wasn't anywhere near as straight forward as her case of responsibility freak out. Maybe his father had a genuinely valid reason for walking out. Or maybe he was just an ass hole. Either way, it was worth finding out for sure.

"Well," she said gently. "I doubt either of those are true, or else why would he have come back? And even if they felt like that back then, they don't now. They both love you and that's a good thing. Maybe it's worth listening to what they have to say, rather than torturing yourself with what ifs."

Though this was the sensible, logical reaction to take, Darla recognised it was nowhere near as easy as that. If it was, half the wars in the world wouldn't have been fought and half of the divorcees would still be together. The sad fact of it was, when human beings were hurting, they were possibly the least rational creatures on the planet.


MEL:

"What you're here for?" Dylan repeated, quirking an eyebrow at her. He'd agreed with her up until that statement. Yes, no one should expect him to be okay with finding out his dad was alive right away and yes, he did need time to deal with it and get everything sorted out but why did that mean she needed to be there?

He liked her and all, and spending time with her was nice, even if he was spending the entire time ranting about how sucky his parents were, but seriously, what was she talking about?

"Could you explain that to me, cause... that made no sense." Just what he needed, more things that didn't make any sense.

She had a point. He should talk to them and find out the whole story for better or worse but that was so hard. It shouldn't be that hard to talk to his parents, at least not his mum. He'd known her his entire life, she'd always been there. Talking to her was not supposed to be hard. His dad would be understandable, he had just met the man. Even if they weren't related, Dylan would have a hard time talking to him. He didn't connect well with strangers.

"See, I... I'm pretty sure he either didn't know I existed or thought I was someone else." Dylan said, almost reluctantly. It hurt just saying that his dad didn't know he existed because that meant his mother had lied and backstabbed him even more and that wasn't something he wanted. "He sounded so shocked when she told me who he was, like he couldn't believe that he'd fathered a child."

He stopped and ran his hand through his hair. "So he couldn't have come back because he loved me if he didn't know I existed. And no one loves another person after a five minute meeting, even if they are parent and child. That just doesn't happen. I have no idea how he feels about me. He could very well not like me because of what my mother did, because he didn't seem that happy or excited to see her either."

Dylan sighed. "I kind of wish I hadn't run into him. It would be so much easier."


TESS:

Ah. Maybe bringing in the whole there's no such thing as chance argument hadn't been such a good idea to use around someone who had just had his world pretty much ripped apart "by chance." It was pretty clear from his expression he didn't like what she was implying. Maybe he was one of those people who hated the idea of not being in control of their own destiny, or who believed coincidences were, simply, coincidences.

"I just mean," said Darla plainly, making it clear that should he disagree with her she didn't feel it was anything worth arguing over, "Maybe it's not a coincidence that I happened to be up here when you needed someone to talk to. Maybe, I don't know, it happened for a reason."

She turned her attention back to his problem, nodding slowly as he brought up yet another valid point. Damn, this boy was very good at bursting his own bubble. Every time she seemed to have worked it out, he'd bring up another reason why things weren't as simple as they seemed. It was understandable, of course. Everyone had that little voice in the back of their head telling them they were ugly or alone or unloved or any number of other things. She respected that he was able to share with her these thoughts and so together they could destroy those feelings.

"Well, then I guess you really can't know how he feels," said Darla truthfully. Much as she liked problem solving, she hated giving people false hope. Something told her that Dylan's father really did care about him - it was, again, one of those feelings she occasionally got - but there was still a possibility that he really had just abandoned them and didn't care. "It's possible that even if he didn't know you existed before, now that he does he may want to get to know you and build a relationship. If he doesn't, his loss. I guess none of this can be easy for him, either. Or any of you for that matter," she added thoughtfully, briefly wondering just how deep this went and how many lives had been altered by the love of these two people.

She gave him a sad, sympathetic smile and, without really thinking about it, reached over and placed her hand over his. "I know. But just because it would be easier, doesn't necessarily make it better."


MEL:

Dylan raised an eyebrow at her. "Do you believe in all that stuff?" he asked curiously, forgetting for the moment that he was having a minor--and by minor I really mean major--breakdown about his family situation and who wouldn't, going from being an only child of a widow to the son of a random man you met in the hallway on your way to class.

"I mean like, destiny and fate and stuff. You really believe that things happen for a reason and there's a pattern?" If he sounded distasteful or annoyed with his question, he didn't mean to. His mother was a no-nonsense sort of woman and he'd learned from her that things just happened for the sake of happening and there was no rhyme or reason to them and now Darla, a girl he liked a lot, was saying that she believed things happened for a reason and that intrigued him.

He liked that she was the fate-fearing sort.

"Yeah, I know," Dylan admitted, hanging his head. He knew that presuming that Tristan hated him or didn't want him without ever speaking to the man that was his father was irrational and stupid but he couldn't help it. After thirteen years of no father, he wasn't sure if he even wanted one. Well, he did, but not if it meant that things would change between him and his mother. He liked the way things were between him and his mum. He liked them a lot. And if Tristan showing up changed all that because he wanted and loved his son, then Dylan wasn't sure he wanted Tristan around.

"It's just... he's going to mess things up. I know he is. No matter what stand he takes, everything's going to go down the hole. Because if he wants to stick around and get to know me because he didn't know about me, I have to be angry with my mum because she lied to us both and that was a really big and unfair lie.

"And if he sticks around for my mum and not just for me, that's going to change things between me and her because she's going to spend time with him and I'm selfish, I'll admit it. I want my mummy all to myself.

"Or he could hate us both and walk out now and never want to see either one of us again, and that would just suck a lot too because then my mum'll be all depressed because I know she has--had--to love him enough to cheat on her husband with him and I'll be depressed because my dad'll hate me."

Dylan turned his palm upwards and gripped the hand she'd placed on his. "I don't really want things to change, is that so awful of me?"


TESS:

Darla blinked in surprise at his reaction. Her whole life, she had been brought up to know that everything happened for a reason, there was no such thing as chance, even if things looked bad now there would always turn out to be some benefit or reason for it being like that. The idea that this hadn't even occurred to someone else - as it seemed to be with Dylan - shocked her somewhat.

"Well, yeah. Absolutely," she admitted, hoping he wouldn't freak out. She was really, genuinely enjoying getting to know Dylan and the last thing she wanted was for him to be put off speaking to her because of something like this. "I mean, it's pretty much the only thing keeping me sane. How else can you get through some of the crap that comes with life without knowing that things will get better and, at the end of it all, there is a reason that you have to deal with this?"

She stopped, feeling silly. Not only had she just spouted a whole load of dreamy, hippy type twaddle that made her sound really weird, she'd just in a way tried to force her own ideas upon Dylan's situation. Just because she believed in fate, it didn't mean Dylan had to start thinking that this whole father encounter"meant something" and had "happened for a reason."

Darla listened as he unloaded his fears for the future and she couldn't help but feel sorry for him. All of those worries and concerns, the uncertainty, the possibilities racing through his mind. She didn't envy him. He was at a very difficult place in his life and the decisions he made now (or that the other members of his family made) could end up affecting him for the rest of his life.

"No, no of course it's not awful," she assured him, shaking her head slightly. "No one ever wants things to change. Not really. It's what you do afterwards that counts. And that part is entirely up to you. You could spend hours worrying about the future or you could just go with it and see what happens. And you could hide up here in a clock tower with me, or you could go down and find your father or your mother or whatever and talk things through. It's completely and utterly your choice."


MEL:

"Well, yeah. Absolutely."

Okay, then. Dylan smiled suddenly and laughed softly to himself. It was so simple the way she said it. Just leave everything up to fate and go with the flow of things because there was a reason for it. It sounded so simple when she said it. And it probably was for her. Not so much for him. That was probably his mum's fault too.

"God, you make it sound so simple," he murmured, looking at her with a warm sort of look as to tell her that he wasn't laughing at her, just at the irony of the whole thing. "And it probably is. I'm crazy and anal like that. I complicate things," he paused and laughed again. "Clearly." His mother cheated on his stepfather and had him. He complicated a lot of things just by existing.

Dylan knew that he had to talk to his mum and Tristan eventually. He knew that. It was unavoidable seeing as he lived with his mum and you know, loved her and all and Tristan because they had to at least get the record straight between the two of them. But couldn't he put that off for as long as possible?

"Okay, how about I spend at least another hour up here with you and you distract me," Dylan said, giving her a smile. "And then I go find my mum and Tristan and talk with them. Does that sound like a decent enough plan?"

[Tessie]

PAGE TWO:

TESS:

Darla found herself laughing to, shaking her head slightly so that her hair fell in front of her eyes. Through long wisps of black hair, she looked up at him bright blue eyes.

"Well, for me it kind of is," she responded with a slight shrug. "But then it always has been. I was raised that way. Whereas I doubt anyone could accuse you of complicating things right now - I have difficulty even comprehending a more complex situation to be in," she mused, a slight smile on her lips. Then it faded slightly and a look of sincerity took its place. "But I've got to say, I think you're handling it really, really well. Seriously."

Seeing him smile like that made Darla respond in kind without even really realizing it. There was something so easy and almost child-like about his smile it made her feel at ease. She nodded, a little more enthusiastically than she'd originally intended. "Makes sense to me. I'd like that quite a lot, I think. That is, if you don't get bored with me in that time."


MEL:

Dylan laughed again and shook his head. "Don't me wrong, I love my mum and she did an pretty good job with raising me, I think, considering she did it all on her own, but she definitely could've installed a little more of the optimism thing. She's cynical a lot, and a hardass, and I picked that up early, I guess."

He nodded in agreement. It was one confusing pickle that he was caught up in, merely because of the fact that he'd been born. Nothing more. Everything else was his mum's and Tristan's--dad's, damnit, call him dad once in a while--crap. He was just born into it all. Dylan shrugged. "I dunno. You don't think I complicate things just a little? I mean, I'm a big part of why Tris--my dad is fighting with my mum," he pointed out.

"Oh? This is handling it well?" he asked. It seemed more like he was freaking out and freezing out his parents at the same time. "I should be bombarded with crap more often then," he joked.

Dylan flashed her a quick smile and shook his head firmly. "I doubt I could get bored with you," he replied, softly. "You are far too interesting for that to happen."


TESS:

"My mum's the exact opposite," admitted Darla with a fond laugh. "Ever the optimist with her head in the clouds just hoping everything will turn out okay in the end. Poor thing, lives in a bit of a dream world," she added, in a more somber tone, the smile fading from her lips. In truth, she worried about her mother. Darla was, after all, the youngest, meaning when she left that her mother would be all on her own. After raising six kids in one house, that wasn't going to be easy for her. Especially since she seemed to be getting even flightier by the day.

"Of course your not. It's not your fault you were born, is it?" stated Darla, matter of fact as ever. If there was one thing she was good at, it was rational thinking. That came after years of growing up with a group of boys all skilled in making a big deal out of nothing, having fights all over so and so having borrowed their favourite broomstick and not looking after it etc. The amount of brawls she'd broken up over the years just with a few logical words was, in fact, ridiculous. She smiled. It was brave of him, to joke about something this serious. She respected it. "Damn right it is. I've seen a lot of kids crumble under much less than you've had to deal with."

Darla leaned back, folding her arms across her chest with a wry smile upon her pale face. "Mr Ackerley, if I didn't know any better I would say you are flirting with me."


MEL:

"I think my mum would kill someone if she had to live in a dream world," Dylan said with a rueful smile. She was a spitefire, his mother. She did her own thing and the world be damned if they didn't agree with it. She didn't really think things all the way through much either. Obviously since she'd thought it a good idea to lie to her son about who his father was and then lie to the father as well.

"She's a realist. If there's something that's awkward, she won't hesitate in mentioning it a hundred times, each one nastier then before," he shrugged. "Made growing up with her really fun, believe me." Not really, especially with the great bed-wetting incident of '85.

"Well... no," Dylan admitted. Of course he couldn't control his being born. That lay more in his mum and Tristan--dad's, damnit--area of fault. But that didn't mean he didn't complicate the situation anymore by just being there. Cause he did. He knew that he did. Because now in addition to being left for his uncle, Tristan now had being kept from his son to hold against Isolde. "But I still complicate things."

Dylan shrugged again. "It doesn't really feel like handling it well though. More like freaking out with a little bit of complete meltdown thrown in just for shits and giggles."

Flirting with her? Yeah, he supposed that he was. She was pretty and fun to be around and she'd managed to get him to actually talk about his parents, which no one had done before. Flirting with her, yeah he could accept that. "And what makes you so sure you know better?" he challenged, matching her smile.


TESS:

"She sounds like quite the fire-cracker," smiled Darla. "My mum says hurtful things sometimes but that's just because she never really thinks stuff through - things come out of her mouth before running past her brain. She's a good person, though. It hasn't been easy for her, raising all those boys and me," she added truthfully.

"I'll bet," she said humorously, raising an eyebrow at him. After years of being raised in a house with few rules and no real authority figure, the idea of being raised with someone so very straight froward and realistic was entirely alien to her.

She raised her head again, shaking it slightly. "But that's the thing - freaking out and a little meltdown is one thing, being able to joke about it not long after it's happened is a completely different one. When you arrived here not so long ago I was worried I may be trying to convince you not to hurl yourself out of the clock tower, not discussing the ways and whys of the world."

Darla giggled slightly. Now this was the Dylan Ackerly she'd heard about - and the idea of him flirting her was not exactly an upsetting one. He was sweet, good-looking and a pretty cool guy, even when his whole world was crumbling in pieces. Her mama always used to say that when you see a person for who they really are it will be when they're at their most vulnerable. "Why? Are you telling me I'm wrong?"


OoC: It's all yours, Mel.