The Spaces in Between
Commission for @chaddiecakes that took entirely too long, hey-oh.
Title from the How to Destroy Angels song.
It was a rare day off for the Lantos household, or specifically the women. Jin took the time to check up on the production and readings at the plant. He trusted Heru to tend to the house, and Tama to – not behave, but just be Tama. While like a sparrow, Tama made her nest; she’d fly back home, coming through the door filthy, askew and completely happy.
Today, her wings were clipped. Heru wanted her to stay inside to help with chores. Tama reacted as expected: put out, frustrated. Why shouldn’t she be allowed outside? Her father let her out all the time. And he liked the mess fine, last she noted. He knew where everything was, how the chaos operated for them both. Why didn’t Heru see that? Everything had its place; Heru insisted on uprooting everything.
Always with the cold logic, always with the reason; never with the heart, never with the instinct.
Heru came in like the dark, unknown and unfathomable. She dressed in blacks, a specter that was just beyond Tama’s reach mentally and physically. She gritted her teeth; it could be worse. She didn’t want it to be worse; she wanted it to be clean. Spotless, in order and in place; chaos had never been her strong point. She grabbed at something, looking—
“Put that down.”
Tama glared at her for all she was worth, as subtle as she could be. Which was to say: not at all. She looked pouty, petulant like a reprimanded child who was having her favorite toy taken away. Heru looked at what she had: a random electronic, disassembled and mining parts for scrap.
“Tama, it needs to be put away,” Heru started. She didn’t know where Tama kept a workshop, but it was filthy and needed to be out of sight. She eyed another item, a sort of figurine or token. Heru scrunched her nose at it in distaste. “There’s nothing wrong with keeping things tidy, after all.”
“I like the mess just fine,” Tama huffed. Her tone was sharp, matched with the heavy stomping of her boots. Before Heru could react, Tama snatched the items from her stepmother, pulling them into her negligible chest. They were her things; this was her house; Jin was her father.
The sky was dark outside, tense as the air between them. Heru sighed, exasperation heavy in her controlled expression. “Tama, please cooperate. I just want the house to be clean.”
“Dad doesn’t mind the mess and neither do I,” she said, low and bitter. “Why don’t you just deal with it.”
The level of disrespect she had for her stepmother was equal to the level of dislike. Her stepmother was the opposite of her: controlled, calculating, deliberate. Tama knew how her stepmother looked at her, disapproving of her haphazard lifestyle and grungy appearance. She would try to encourage Tama to tidy up, to put herself together; everything was changes Tama never wanted.
She wanted her father to be happy. Was he really happy with this woman?
She wasn’t.
“Tama, why does everything have to be a fight between us?” Heru started, trying to appeal to reason. “Please. I just want this house to be presentable, for us to get along—“
“Stop that.”
If looks could hurt, the glare Tama had sent would’ve singed Heru.
“Stop trying to act like you’re my mom already! Just,” Tama tried to catch her words. “Stop. Disappear. Leave me alone.”
The girl darted upstairs to put her things away. Heru watched as she heard the sound of rustling and she followed soon after, teeth gritted. That girl, that girl, that goddamned little bi—
She stopped herself on the spiral staircase, hand to her mouth. It tasted like oil and sick. A weight sank into her stomach, heavy as poison. She heard the sound of a window opening; damn that girl. She was left to clean the mess alone. It was starting to rumble outside and she’d come in, wet and filthy like a mangy dog.
The sky outside was appropriate, an inky mire with no definite horizon line.
Wouldn’t it be easier if she were gone –
Heru gritted her teeth, blood cold like the sweat on her brow. Her belly tightened, abdominal muscles clenching as fear dared to set in. She shook her head, taking to pacing; action cut off thought, refocusing. Her self-control had loosened like an improperly laced corset as she inhaled sharply, pulling the laces back together. She couldn’t let the leash slack, not after all these years. Her fingers knotted in her hair, nails pressed into her scalp like a threat. She could work through this, through this anger; banish it outside with the dust mites and filth.
Anxiety kept her firmly in the same ten paces she kept working into the floor, shoes scuffing. It bubbled through her ribs, up her spinal column: a voice, barely above a whisper. Everything from her teeth to her arteries tightened, constricting, keeping the thoughts at bay like wolves to a shotgun. She turned back to her and Jin’s bedroom, making a beeline to the ebony wood vanity.
It was decorated with salves, perfumes and makeup. The bottles and containers were set in neat rows, little soldiers awaiting their daily routine. And she knocked them over like chess pieces, every vial shattering on the floor. Every thought pelted at her like the rain, rotting through her.
An ungrateful, homely little brat-
It’s easier if she were gone-
You’re just a replacement-
She’s never going to love you—
“What does it matter,” said Heru to the wood and her clenched hands. She snapped her head up to her reflection. No one would recognize her, not with the crazed terror in her eyes or the splayed hair out of place. Her jaws were firm like cut marble, words cutting a promise to her and the void in their joined tongue. “What matters is that I care for her like a daughter. What matters is I care for my husband like a wife should. I don’t need her to love me.”
Her heart ached at such a cold statement. “Not outwardly.”
She held her chest, trying to protect her heart from a miasmic darkness that wanted to consume her very core. The vanity creaked as her nails pressed into the wood, keratin breaking into splinters. She breathed heavily, shaking.
We could make this so much easier.
She ground her teeth. “I don’t want easy,” she spat, punctuating each word like a hammer to a row of nails. “I want efficient. I want logic. I want order.”
You are weak; all humans are. The words bubbled through her like sludge. Why do you fight your base instincts.
She could feel swimming in her stomach. It won’t bring back—
“Shut up!”
The silence that settled between the void and her matched the aftermath of a bomb. Dust settled as the wind from the storm brewed outside, scattering dust and dirt. She shook, a willow tree standing tall in a typhoon as the fronds whipped itself in the frenzied wind. She exhaled and rose up slowly, tilting her head up high. She focused on the exchange of air in her lungs, the feeling of her heart pumping blood, and the tight curling of her toes. She opened a drawer and pulled out a handkerchief, wiping her brow line as she stared down her reflection.
She was tired, eyes heavy and black as they threatened to sag off her sharp cheekbones. She was almost pitiful; she closed her eyes to the stranger in the glass. She breathed one more time and reopened, the dark circles now of work and drive, her hands worked to exhaustion for a purpose. The air shifted around her, the howling of the wind and rain background noise; the storm would blow over in due time.
The voices receded into her core, into the back of her tongue, nesting and waiting.
