Who: Ally and Patrick
What: Emotional Meltdown 101
Where: Patrick's front porch
When: Today



While King’s Cross was always a busy station, nothing would compare to the hectic mornings of September first. Ally had been sitting on a bench between platforms eight and nine for the last three hours watching trains come and go. Reminiscing of the days when all she had to worry about was making it to the Hogwarts Express on time and doing her homework. Helping others, making sure she did right by the role of prefect and Headgirl. She never thought life was so simple then, but now she ached to be back in school.

To be anywhere than here, she thought watching yet another train leave the station. How easy it would be to just board one. Leave this entire mess behind and never look back. Allyson felt like her entire family was falling apart before her eyes and she couldn’t bare to witness anymore. Her father was dead. Her mother was, well her mother. Not much had changed in that respect, Ally was just choosing not to ignore it anymore. Her sister was being selfish and foolish, turning her back on everything all the while painting her a terrible person. She still had hope in Patrick, yet she hadn’t spoken to him since telling him vaguely what happened, terrified he would turn his back on her too.

She still had Sam though. Roger and the twins. They were her life now. Except she couldn’t even talk to her husband about this. How was she supposed to explain to him how she felt. Tell him she was right and Giada was wrong, when from the outside the situations looked the same. It wasn’t her fault she wasn’t forced to choose, and even if--- She would never have turned her back on her family. She would have made it work. And if it didn’t work, then it wasn’t meant to be, right? If you were meant to be with someone, they wouldn’t rip you away from your family, would they?

He wouldn’t understand. And Ally felt like she was trapped by his undying and unconditional love. A tear fell as she looked at the ticket in her hand briefly before shoving it into her pocket. 11:45 to Aberdeen. Technically this was her train, she could easily walk the few yards over to the platform and make it in plenty of time. She stared at the train until another whistle startled her from her thoughts. What if she was wrong? Wrong about Giada. Or worse, wrong about Sam.

She stood from her seat and let her feet guide her to where they willed. She found herself outside Patrick’s door not too long later. She fidgeted while she waited for him to open the door gnawing at her lip. After a moment she turned on her heel. No, she couldn’t do this. Talking to Patrick, that would take everything to another level she wasn’t sure she was ready for.

Patrick actually wasn’t home, but was on his way back from the corner store. He’d lost a bet to Lyssandra about how tall Patrick Abner was, and he’d been sentenced to fetch them all the snack food they desired. He’d scowled the entire way there, and the entire way back, sure that his frown would cause great laughter from his children to erupt. He’d never imagined himself to be someone who would willingly make a full out of himself for someone else’s amusement, but Emily and Patrick Jr. simply caused his dad instinct to come out in full force. Though, with his own family’s recent developments, Patrick was surprised he actually had the ability to be a warm and loving parent.

“Ally!” he let out in surprise as he neared the steps to their home. Patrick twisted the handle of his bags tightly around his hand and put his free hand out to stop his sister from leaving. She seemed to be in an awful rush and after years and years of having to stop his little sisters’ tears, Patrick was an expert at diagnosing what was going to be a crying-on-shoulder evening.

His hand stayed on her arm and his eyebrows furrowed, “What’s wrong?”

Ally wrenched away from her brother. She hadn’t meant to, but she was not in the mood to be touched, or stopped. She had decided she wanted to leave, had changed her mind she didn’t want to talk to him anymore. Patrick had seen her face though, there would be no escape without talking. She loved him for it and hated him for it at the same time.

Noticing the bag in his hand, Ally realized she may be interrupting family time. Patrick had a family now too. Suddenly the tears that she had worked so hard to stop, fell over again as Patrick asked her what was wrong. Where did she even begin to tell him? She covered her face with her hand.

“Patrick. I’m sorry.” She managed after a few moments. “I can’t-- I can’t do this anymore. I just. I need to go. I shouldn’t have come here.”

This was not---”Hold it, hold on,” Patrick said, putting his hands up to show Ally that she was free to go, but that he didn’t particularly think she should. He knew his sisters had been going through a rough patch, and while he didn’t like getting into the middle of fights or conflicts (Lyssandra called him a hippie) he knew that as the oldest sibling it was some sort of duty of his to get involved.

The new information that Allyson had revealed about their mother, about Giada...it had shaken Patrick to the core. It was as if any memories he may have had of their family in the ‘good times’ before Giada had been disowned were just as cracked and fractured as any moments after. He didn’t know what to think about any of it, all he had managed to do was yell at their mother and...he dropped his shoulders.

“Just talk to me, okay?” he said, gesturing to the front steps of his home. He hadn’t gotten up the nerve to talk to Allyson about any of this mess because he honestly didn’t know what to make of his sister’s years of secrecy. Part of him understood it, but there were still so many questions to be answered. “Just---sit.”

Allyson froze, unable to move anymore. She loved Patrick. Idolized him for years, and when it came down to it, she would do almost anything he asked of her. Her knees buckled when he told her to sit and she found herself sitting on the stoop outside her brother’s front door. Her hands trembled while she stared at them unable to look at Patrick. Until her eyes landed on her wedding ring, then she shoved her hands between her knees and stared at the ground.

“Everything is ruined.” Her voice was barely above a whisper. She had said it before, nothing new. Last time it was in a panic, her fight with Giada still so fresh she had yet to feel the sting. This time, she felt the words in her bones.

“She shouldn’t have turned her back on us Patrick. We are her family. I wouldn’t--- I don’t think I would have---” Stuttering over her words, Ally twisted her ring around her finger. The thoughts crossed her mind hundreds of times, but saying them aloud, admitting them to Patrick. There was power in words, she knew keeping them to herself was eating her from the inside out, but what would they do if she let them out. “I am not to blame because I wasn’t forced to choose. That should not rest on my shoulders. But if it came down to that, if marrying Sam meant losing you, and dad and Giada. If I had to lose my family to start one of my own, I don’t believe I would have.”

It hurt to say those words, physically hurt. Allyson hadn’t thought it possible to feel so hurt from something she had said herself. She pulled her ring from her finger and rubbed her thumb over the inscription on inside of the band. “What does that say about me? What does that leave me with?” She asked finally looking up to meet her brother’s eye. “Giada hates me for telling her the truth, mother never wanted me like she wanted Giada. Dad is dead. I can’t even imagine what you must think of me now.” Ally pulled her gaze from Patrick with her last sentence. “And my husband. My sweet sweet husband hasn’t an idea, because how am I suppose to explain to him that this is any different when it is not?”

This was----not what Patrick had been expecting. He had been waiting for Ally to cry about missing Giada, missing the store, he had been expecting---not this. He blinked rapidly at his sister, trying to piece it all together. Patrick had always felt great twinges of guilt about Giada’s disownment from their family as he had been the one to introduce her to the music that she loved so much. It was something that they’d bonded over, and as a teenager it had fun to rile up his parents with that racket blasting from his room. He had never thought it would escalate to Giada being torn off the tapestry, it had never made sense that she had taken on so much of the family weight when he and Ally seemingly got off scot free.

It made sense now. It didn’t seem right---but it made sense. Their father had been fair to them, but he had allowed their manic mother to do as she wished with Giada.

Patrick sat down on the step beside Ally, dropping his groceries to the cement. He ran his hand over his face as he let out a breath and propped his elbows on his knees to think. They were quiet for a while, as Patrick needed to gather his thoughts and he figured Ally could use the time to catch her breath. He shut his eyes and shook his head slightly.

“You’re not right,” he said solemnly, turning to his sister. Patrick frowned. “Giada didn’t turn her back on us, she never cut us out of her life, not before now. We allowed our parents to dismiss her like she was some item to be put up for auction. Would you ever put that sort of pressure and demands on Lynn, your own daughter?”

He looked straight ahead, feeling the shame and selfish-feelings that he’d stored away for so long beginning to dredge out. It was so easy to turn the other cheek, but a large part of him admired Giada for taking the chance and breaking away from these barbaric ideals, knowing that he would strangle a man that ever attempted to place his precious daughter up for barter. He couldn’t blame his sister for living the life she wanted to live.

“You would’ve chosen Sam,” Patrick said with a sense of finality, he tilted his head to look back at his sister. “He’s the love of your life, no one could have locked you up in a tower and expected you to stay there when he was calling out your name.” Just like he’d dealt with his mother’s wails about the Vance bloodline being broken with his marrying of Lyssandra. It had been terrifying to think of, but he’d done it because he’d found the right woman for himself. “I loved Dad too, Ally, but he wasn’t perfect. They had no right to dictate our lives and you shouldn’t question yours or-----judge Giada’s.”

Ally bristled at Patrick’s words. “Giada turned her back on me when I needed her most.” She flipped her ring between her fingers, refusing to look at her brother. His words had hurt too. Apparently he found her at fault too. “She didn’t want to go to dad’s funeral because he listened to mum and disowned her. Fine. She couldn’t stand another moment dealing with mum. Fine. But I wanted her there. I needed her. I needed my sister to stand beside me in the most heartbreaking moment of my life. If that makes me selfish, fine but after everything I have done for her, I don’t believe it was too much to ask.”

At this point her tears had stopped as a her sadness and hurt faded resignation. “I stood next to her at her wedding, I took her inheritance and helped her buy the store. I have held my tongue for years and never treated her any differently even though sometimes it really hurt. And the one time I need her--- She still holds it against me that I didn’t have to choose. That I supposedly had the easier life. I can’t compete against things I can’t change.”

Staring at the ring she finally let rest in the palm of her hand, she pondered Patrick’s words. He seem so sure that she would have walked away from everything she knew for Sam. So sure, yet he wasn’t even there for it. When he left at the end of her fifth year she was still half obsessed with Archie, half infatuated with Tony Chang and by the time he had returned, she was practically engaged Sam. How could he know that Sam was the love of her life when he never stuck around long enough to witness it. Not until recently anyways.

“If you say so Patrick.” Ally said after a heavy sigh, sliding her ring back in place. All she knew is that she spent the last few weeks waking up feeling like a fraud. If Sam was the love of her life she wouldn’t have spent the last three hours sitting at King’s Cross. If Sam was the love of her life, she certainly wouldn’t be having such a crisis right now, yet here she was.

“And she was at your wedding too. And she’s taken care of your children, and she never left your side when Sam was kidnapped for weeks,” Patrick retorted. “Giada’s always been there, the funeral wasn’t an attack on you. It was them, it was always about them, and it was a lot to ask of her.”

He had been frustrated with Giada when she didn’t show up to the funeral as well, but it wasn’t as if the girl was out shopping and getting a manicure. Patrick had endured enough lectures and hushed tones from both of his parents regarded being a proper heir and son to have an inkling of an idea of what Giada must have gone through. He of course had not had his ties completely severed with his parents, that he’d been left in his father’s good graces even if he had not properly performed as an heir, but...being disowned put a black cloud over your life that only a person who’d experienced it could really acknowledged. He’d had enough friends to know, and Patrick had always been grateful that he’d managed to slip through the cracks.

Patrick’s gaze turned hard at Ally’s dismissive sigh. She couldn’t continue on like this, for any of their sake’s. He’d already sat around and said nothing for too long and the guilt rode on him daily. Ally was obviously suffering from this fight, this lifelong anguish, and Giada had now cut herself off from either of them to stop anymore pain. It wasn’t right. They weren’t their parents, they weren’t of that era, not anymore.

“Giada’s adored you her entire life, Ally,” Patrick said sternly. “You’re her big sister and she idolized your every movement, you made her happy. I never had that with either of you and I think being mad at her for something that isn’t fundamentally right, something as loathsome as marrying to keep the bloodline instead of for love, it----you’re better than that, Ally. You deserve more and so does she.” He put a hand on his sister’s knee. “You say you don’t know if you’d be able to do it, to leave us, but you wouldn’t have lost us. We would’ve stayed by your side just like we stuck with Giada. I loved our father too, but he was wrong in how he treated our sister.”

Patrick wiped at his eyes quickly, “And I’m not even going to get started on how batshit insane our mother is,” he said weakly, trying to cut the tension.

Ally gnawed at her lip. Her loyalty to her father made it hard for her to admit her wrong. He wasn’t right, but it wasn’t necessarily his fault either. Patrick didn’t hear the fight she heard. He didn’t have all the information, but Allyson wasn’t sure that digging this up any further would do any good. Perhaps spending all this time defending the memory of Patrick Senior wasn’t worth the effort.

She needed to focus on the relationships she still had in front of her. She took a deep breath, trying to settle herself. Swallowing she pulled the hand that was on her knee into her own. What could she say? She didn’t want to turn into her mother. That would be the worst.

Hearing her brother talk about how Giada had grew up looking up to her. How could she be blind to something so monumental? Had her sister really looked at her in such a light? Then she turned around and tore her down just because her feelings had been hurt.

“I miss going to work and yelling at Giada for having the music too loud,” she admitted quietly. “I miss Giada. I don’t want her to hate me.” She was at a loss at what to do now. She had torn apart the store when she left. Used her harshest words. Where did you even begin to rectify that? Showing up and saying I’m sorry wasn’t going to cover it. “I don’t know what to do now.”

A great sigh of relief left Patrick. He didn’t know how much longer he could take trying to play the sensible bad guy of sorts, as his own children were able to walk all over him with the bat of an eye. He slung his arm around Ally and pulled her to his side, “You don’t have to do anything right now. You do it when you’re ready.”

He kissed his sister on the side of her head. Patrick had not always been the most involved of brothers, but he did care deeply for his family. He wish he’d have been able to do more for them, for Ally during these hard times as she bore their parents’ secrets, for Giada while she was thrown out of her childhood home for things that made no sense. He needed to do more, especially now that he was raising a family of his own. He needed to do more and he needed to do better.

“Come inside for a bit, the kids’ll be happier to see you than my ugly mug,” he said, standing and putting a hand out to his sister. “Besides, laughing at my expense cheers everyone up, yeah?”