#quieter

thanks for tagging me @werewolfenthusiast

Wormtail’s ears perked up when he heard his lover’s name for the first time in ten years.

He was curled up on Weasley's bed. 

Weasley had just entered the room with Potter, Finnigan, and Thomas.

"…Quirrel's so lame, defense against the dark arts sounds so cool and then…it's just an hour of listening to a guy mutter about water monitors!"

His small rodent heart stopped dead for a moment.

"Told you, that class is crap every other year, Percy's always complaining about it. Bill thought it was fun actually, he said they got professors that didn't give any about teaching so often even first years usually get away with skiving off. I think Quirrell'd just assume you kicked the bucket and send a search part after ya if you never show up, though."

Quirrell. Quirinus? At Hogwart? Maybe it was just a relative of his, maybe his old beloved wasn’t truly here. But he had to check, he just had to. How good it would be to find someone he could be his human self with.

He couldn't help the squeak that rose in his little throat.

"Scabbers, you're a mouse, be quiet like one!" Weasley chastied.

"Isn't he a rat?" 

"Same thing." 

Weasley threw himself onto the bed, making Wormtail's stomach clench as he bounced. Then Weasley kicked up his feet, and grabbed a Martin Migg's comic off his nightstand.

He knew what he had to do.

He would have to creep out during the night, and search for Quirnius while Weasley was asleep. 

Maybe if he found his old lover, he wouldn't have to live in the blasted Rat's body for the rest of his life. 

Yes, it could be perfect…

He would have to take a nap first, though.

The context in which he starts to think about it is one where they've pursued a newly mutated sumo gerbil (yes, seriously) back to the petshop where it was trying to break in so it could "go home". When the unstable mutation wears off it's happy to be shut back in its cage and Donatello thinks he recognises the petshop as the one where the turtles were originally sold.

For the gerbil being given sudden sapience isn't a gift or the beginning of its existence as a person, it's a weird and scary thing that left it adrift in a world it didn't understand and that didn't understand it. Having it wear off is a happy ending. After all, if a human was turned into a dragon and given massively expanded intelligence, a thousand year lifespan, and the power of flight and fire, but still wanted to go back to being human that would be understandable.

Donatello remembers being a turtle - his sense of his own identity doesn't start with sapience - so seeing another animal unmutate and be happy when he's unhappy with nearly but not quite fitting into the human world makes him thoughtful.

Forget that this is a 20/21 year old. This is a guy who has had a good year, in season 5. He’s gone from being listless and feeling left behind by his friends who have gone to college to having a good job. Not just a job, a career path. His skills have been *noticed*. He’s gotten a promotion, a pay bump, and the respect of his boss. He’s gotten out of his abusive parents’ basement. He is flying high and feeling good. And he proposes, because it’s not going to be the end of the world. He proposes to Anya because he doesn’t just have faith Buffy will save them all again - he knows it. Just like he knows the sun will rise tomorrow, he knows Buffy will save the world.

And then she does, but she dies doing it. One of the people Xander loves most, one of the only people I think he legitimately considers family, dies. Dies saving them. And they all just… stop. Willow, Xander, Giles, Dawn… they stop. They are existing but not living. And it’s grief and it’s guilt and it’s the promise that they’re going to get Buffy back that keeps them in stasis. And Xander doesn’t want to tell the gang he got engaged, not when it’s the gang minus Buffy, not when they plan to make the gang whole again soon. They get her back, and it’s not time now, either, because Buffy is back but she’s also not herself. She’s hurting and quiet and separate from them in a way that was never true before. They brought Buffy back, but the gang isn’t whole. Not yet. And then he feels compelled to tell them all that he’s engaged, when the Buffy who came back starts to feel like normalcy, when everyone is together and he sees this amazing woman he wants to spend the rest of his life with.

But then the rest of the year happens. He felt sure footed when he proposed; Xander knew who he was and where he was going. But since then, it’s been one blow after another. Buffy’s death, learning they ripped her from heaven, Tara and Willow breaking up, Willow struggling with magic… Everything is whispering to him the good times don’t last. He doesn’t get to keep the good things in his life. Not Buffy, not Willow. Not Anya. Xander came so far from being that abused kid hiding from his father in his basement, or camping out in the back yard on Christmas; but he starts feeling dragged back down in it. He is the screw up. He is the problem. He could be his father, might be like his father, is like his father. He could hurt the one person he wants to spend the rest of his life with - he is going to be the death of her. Anya starts planning their wedding, and every family member he has pushes this funhouse mirror closer and closer until it feels like it’s just a mirror. Like it’s reflecting his reality.

i hope it’s quieter - i want to spend two minutes at something i’m not looking forward to “and i need absolute silence here” it’s a trick that needs focus, and not the cheering screaming shouting of the nearby high school on the, i guess, one time a day they’re let out to gambol in the fields and rough-house. before meandering home without sheepdogs. doesn’t school end early now? 1pm instead of 3?

The quieter you become, the more you can hear❣️

-Ram Dass

From the Motivation app: https:// @motivationapp

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