I'll Love You For A Lifetime [Heartstopper, Tara x Darcy]

Year 10: If the walls could speak

Tara's pov

Darcy.

The thing about Darcy is, she is made of dichotomies. She is loud, until you hear her silence. She is rude until you see her family. She makes no sense until you hear the way her brain works from her own lips. She is happy until she is rolling in the deep end, so deep that she can't breath, and it physically chokes your throat too because you love her so much.

Darcy had not been coming to school since the past two days and her phone was switched off. The last time we talked, she had told me she met Charlie Spring in a party she had been to. She was happy, so happy, I should have seen that the deep end was coming.

On the third day, she came to school, looking relatively normal. She talked like herself, she seemed okay, but when I asked her where she had been, she waved her hand and said nonchalantly, "hibernating."

We had our first class together. As Darcy's hand tried to write something down, it started trembling. I held her hand and pulled it under the desk and slipped my fingers along her skin, until they were stopped by a bump on her open palm. I frowned simultaneously as Darcy stiffened and looked down to find a scab forming over a deep gash on her palm. I looked up at her, my eyes wide open, but I said nothing.

When I brought up the injury again that day, I made sure no one else was close.

"It's nothing," she said at first, but I knew her way too well to know what it was.

"And what exactly is nothing?"

She squirmed and then, seeing I was not letting go of it that easily, said, "It was my dad. With a stick."

I stared at her in disbelief and when I found my words again said, "Why?"

"Discipline."

"Elaborate."

"He somehow knew I had been to a party full of people he despised with all his heart."

Her tone said plainly that she was twisting the story. This was the truth but not the entire truth.

"Tell me more," I said, trying to pry something out. I needed to know that my girl was safe where she was. If her father was such a monster, she was not walking back to her home today.

Darcy twiddled her thumbs in her lap.

"Darcy, love," I said, holding her hand under the table, "you have to talk to me. I need to...do something about this."

"You can't," she said, painly.

"Still, talk to me."

"Well, I-" she stopped, took a deep breath and started again, "I was in Vicky's bedroom having some small chat as I was getting bored in my own room..."

I imagined Vicky's dark little room, her curtains drawn as they usually were. She was most certainly buried under piles of blanket with a laptop balanced on it.

"...and we were talking about George..."

"Darcy," I drawled softly, "I had told you not to say anything without his permission."

"I know," she said, the corner of her lips turning down, "but it was an accident. I just called George 'him' and Vicky said she knew that he was trans and we started talking and stuff."

I closed my eyes.

"And we never realised that mom was listening," she said, her demeanor unwavering, but I knew her mind was in a whir.

"When dad came home, she told him and," she shrugged, "he reckoned it had been long we had been out in the wild and needed some taming."

Again, I imagined the siblings in a dimly lit room with their father. I could almost hear him saying in a soft voice, as if filled with remorse, "Children, it hurts me more than it hurts you. Please don't make me do it again." Chills ran down my spine.

She pursed her lips inside, her eyes wet with moisture, but not one drop fell out. "George has always been the best of us," she said, "he is smart and creative, and has never been a problem to anyone. I have gotten the stick treatment before, but he never has. But this- this - everything just fell apart for him in those few moments. I practically saw the last hope of being able to be himself die from his eyes. I don't know how he will cope with it."

Darcy stared into space as she spoke, as if she was trying to run away from the words she was speaking, as if a part of her wanted to believe she had crafted all of this in her fantasy. A mere dream. A nightmare.

"Darcy," I drawled out, using my finger to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear.

"Tara, can I - can I," she inhaled shakily, "Can I stay over at your place today? I don't feel very good about going home."

"Of course," I said, "Stay as long as you need to. Bring George if you want." My voice was shaking too, not with fear but with emotion. Her pain felt sharper in my chest than all the pain I had gone through in my lifetime.

Darcy nodded and then stood up and I saw all of her vulnerability vanishing in nanoseconds. Her wall was back on, and I felt so grateful that I was allowed behind it, even if it was for a few minutes. I thought about all the moments in which I had removed the wall, brick by brick, careful not to scare her away. It had been a long, slow process, but it was worth it. It was all worth it for Darcy.