gone ✧*｡ luke a.u.

25: august 4 2011

"My husband? Seriously? I don't give a fuck about him anymore, you know that."

"Of course you do," Jack murmured. "That's why hearing about him makes you so mad, why you're always high while he's around . . ."

"Fuck off. Stop pretending you know everything."

He snorted. "I do know everything," he said. There was a thump, and then he laughed. "Ouch."

"Seriously? Fuck yourself."

"Come on, Morgan. Just me why you're so fucking angry, please."

"I'm angry about everything."

"Tell me about him, then." Jack was basically pleading with her now. "Please, Morgan. Just let me in, for fuck's sakes."

"Jesus. Give it a rest." She groaned loudly, exaggeratedly. "It's nothing. He's never fucking home, anyway. Was never home after we lost Baby, is never home now. Too busy living the perfect dream life." Ellie heard the faint sound of a sizzle as the cigarette hit the ash tray, and the click of the lighter as Morgan went for another. "Pretty sure no one at those fancy conferences he attends even knows he has a wife. Guess he's too ashamed. Can't blame him. I would be too."

"Just leave if you hate it so much," Jack said quietly. "You don't have to stay here."

She laughed, but it was sad. "If I left I'd have nothing."

"You'd have me."

"I wouldn't have a home or a family or anything to keep me upright. No money, nothing."

"Can't I be your home?" He was whispering, and Ellie had to strain her ears to hear him. "Can't I be your family?"

"You're only twenty-three, Jack. You're just a kid . . . I can't stay with you and your family, and there's no way you can leave them without being in the exact same situation. Both of us have nothing without them. Even if they don't want us."

"How funny's that," he muttered, but he sounded bitter, not amused. "We're completely alone together."

~:~

Ellie lay awake long after Dan and Ro had gone to bed. Her mind refused to go to sleep, too filled with thoughts of the past twenty-four hours.

Soon after the argument came to a close she'd had to sprint upstairs before either Morgan or Jack could see her, and she had been shut in her room since. The thought of Ellie may have faded from Morgan's mind for now, but the moment she saw her again, Ellie knew Morgan's anger would come straight back to the surface, as if it had never left. Angry as always.

. . . after we lost Baby, Morgan had said to Jack, her voice bitter and sad. Was never home after we lost Baby, is never home now.

"Baby" was the name that had been applied to Morgan's stillborn child nine years ago, when Ellie was eight. Back then Morgan struggled with an alcohol addiction as well, although in those days Ellie didn't quite understand it. All she knew was the words she overheard from her father's phone calls -- depressed, drinking, not getting help.

When Morgan fell pregnant for the fourth time soon after Ellie's eighth birthday, when Roman was only one and still warbling his words, that stereotypical glow came to her, the glow that said, There is life within me, and it means something. She was happy.

The glow lasted for about six months. During that time, Morgan held off from alcohol completely, as if she finally understood the toxicity of her previous habits. She would even play dolls with Ellie in the afternoons after school, which she almost never did, ever.