Joshaya one shots

Worst Nightmare

Have you ever just wanted it all to stop? The fighting, the screaming, the name calling, the glass shattering. All of it. But of course, you can't be the one to stop it because then you'll get thrown into the middle of it all, and that was exactly what your mother was trying to prevent from happening. So all you could do was sit with your back leaning against the door, hoping and praying that it all just stopped.

You knew that your attempt to shut the voices out was only in vain, as well as the false hope that your father will eventually give up and retreat to his room for the rest of the night. That he won't get past your mother and come into your room next. He would eventually, and you would try and fight back, but it would only end up in another losing battle.

You wanted to fight back so much, that you tried for a while, but it only ended up in disaster. The way he hit you cut deep, but the words he spoke cut deeper. You almost wished that he would hit you all the time because the physical stuff you could deal with, but the emotional damage that he left in his wake would forever be there.

You didn't even try to wipe the tears away from your eyes as you let the fall freely and continued to listen to the conversation. He got like this whenever he drank too much. And he would always be fine the next morning, apologizing with gifts and hugs, crying as he told you that he didn't mean any of it and how sorry he was. It was getting old, almost as much as the words that flew easily from his mouth.

You wondered what the argument was about this time? You had barely gotten through the door when you were met with a push towards the door. The names he called you flew from his mouth like it was a second language he was fluent in. Your mother barely had time to get in front of you before his hand came down and hit her across the face instead of you. She yelled at you to go to your room and stay there until she came to get you.

You wanted so badly to call him names back. To push him and yell for him to get the hell away from you and your mother, but the words were pushed back into silence as you remembered the last time you had fought back. You had ended up staying home from school for the next few days with the excuse that you were sick. No way you could have gone into school looking like that.

If you ever remember having a night like this, then you had a lot in common with Maya Hart, who was trying to gain the courage to pick herself up off the floor and do something. Anything that would get her mother out of the mess that she was in now.

She wondered briefly if her father had found out about her mother and Shawn. Normally she wouldn't have condoned her mother's poorly excused affair, but Shawn was a good man. Way better than the piece of garbage that was currently railing into her mother in their living room at the moment. Shawn didn't know the whole story, and she understood why her mother wouldn't tell him.

It wasn't an ongoing affair, it was something that kindled between the two during her mother's late nights of working at the diner and Shawn's late nights getting back from a job as he would stop by and sit to have a bite. They started leaning on each other as friends and then it became something more. Her mother kept trying to make plans to leave her failed marriage so the two of them could start over with Shawn, but her father was a brutal man, and she wondered briefly if they would be allowed to walk out of this apartment alive.

Shawn knew the marriage was failing, but he didn't know why or just exactly what Kermit did to the two during his post-late bar nights with his buddies. Her mother would be scared for Shawn's safety if he ever found out, and so was Maya.

The fighting stopped for a moment, and there was nothing but silence. Rather that was a good thing or not, she didn't know. And she was too much of a coward to open the door and face the threat head-on. She couldn't help but laugh at the irony of it all. She would be willing to stand in the face of the danger of anything or anyone else, but not her father. Somehow she let her father intimidate her into standing down. She was disgusted with herself.