[paranoid]

“Jack had a dinner with his father and Mimi the other night,” Sky says, apropos of nothing at all. She has her feet curled under peasant skirt she’s wearing, the toes of her converse sticking out.

“You don’t like it when he has family dinners?” the therapist asks, deciding to take the path Schuyler so clearly wants to take.

“No, it’s not that. I mean…he’s got a family. Appreciating them is good and so is spending time with them it’s just…I’m usually one of the topics of conversation. Either Mimi wants to talk about how wrong and disgusting and bad it is that Jack is dating me or…I don’t know. I mean, it’s not like I get a transcript of the evening’s conversation.”

“And you don’t enjoy being a topic of conversation at the Force table.”

“No,” Sky says with a sharp look. She sighs and crumbles back against the couch. “Jack ends up having to defend me, Mimi ends up hurt and I think Charles does this silent thing. I remind him too much of my mother. It puts Jack in this funk and I end up feeling guilty.”

“About what?”

Sky sighs again and rolls her eyes, raking her hands through her thick hair. Sometimes she thinks therapy is more trouble than it’s worth. “About dating Jack, about feeling the way I do about him…sometimes about being born.”

“Yet you continue to date him.”

“It’s not even really a choice…it’s—it’s not destiny because he’s destined to be with Mimi. We can’t stay away from each other though. We both know we shouldn’t be together and…” she trails off and shrugs slightly.

“I realize his family doesn’t approve but what of yours?”

“The only one left is my grandfather and I think he’s the only one that doesn’t care one way or the other. Mimi hates it. I don’t know why because I’m not competition for her. She’s something to Jack that I will never, ever be.” Sky pauses and tucks her hair behind her ears. “Sometimes I feel like I’m losing mind just dating him.”

“Why?”

Sky shakes her head, exhaling slowly. “He makes me go to these extremes of emotion. Love, fear, pain, paranoia. Jack brings them all out in me and I love that and I hate it and I don’t ever want it to end but I know it will.”

“What do you mean?”

“Everyone in my world is paired up. Two by two . They fell that way. Jack and Mimi were part of the two. They’ve been together since the beginning of time. Jack and I are…a blip. We’re bound to come to an end. Mimi will take my place and…I’m tired of talking about this.” Schuyler uncurls, feet touching the floor as if she were testing it for a moment before she stood up and started out the door.

“I’ll see you next week, Schuyler.”

Schuyler pauses and glances over her shoulder at the therapist. “Maybe.”

Inkblot

It’s the end of a long night, a function coordinated by the Council and required for all the young Blue Bloods. Schuyler took Oliver because she couldn’t go alone and there was no one else to go with. By default, Mimi got Jack and even if she hadn’t, Council Events are far too public for them to ever been seen doing more than dancing a couple of times or chatting when they pass each other in the room. Mimi had made sure they were seated on opposite sides and Oliver was the perfect escort but he wasn’t the man she wanted to be dancing with.

She hears the key turn in the lock before the door opens and she knows its Jack. He’s the only other one with a key even though Oliver has been after her to give him one for awhile. She’s just slipped out of her heels and lit some candles as he walks up behind her and presses a kiss to the back of her neck. He undoes her hair and his hand slides across her bare upper back. She knows she’s warm to the touch because she hasn’t fed in days and her temperature has spiked up as a result.

“You looked beautiful tonight,” he whispers into her hair and she smiles.
{as beautiful as her as beautiful as Mimi as beautiful as someone was ever actually an angel}

“I caught you watching a couple of times,” she smiles, her head still bowed. She holds perfectly still, as if by not moving she can capture this moment and shut it away. Sometimes he looks at her and her breath catches from all the way across the room. Sometimes she feels like he’s the only one in the entire room that really sees her.

“I wanted to strangle him. The way he touches you…” Jack says and there’s a growl in his voice that makes Schuyler want to do a little ‘he’s jealous he’s jealous’ dance.

“He’s just my familiar and you’re…” she lets it trail off because there isn’t a definition for what she and Jack are. Sometimes that hurts and sometimes she thinks its better that way.

His hand drifts to the buttons on the back of her dress and his fingers are nimble as they flit over them, unlooping them. Her arms come up to cross over her chest, holding the dress close to her body as his fingers glide down her spine. He stops at her shoulder blades, hand skipping up and losing contact with her skin for just a moment. Then the tips of his fingers are slipping over her shoulder blades and everything inside of her aches. This is where her wings would be, the wings she never had, the wings she never will and this is what separates her from everyone else. This is why they hide in her apartment and tuck into dark corners.

His lips brush against her skin as his whisper lingers there. “Mine.”

And with that one word, it doesn’t matter that she never had angel wings. It doesn’t matter that she never will and she doesn’t care that she’s half human. She’s Jack’s angel. It’s the only angel she wants to be.

[Mommy Issues][Locked]

She doesn’t know her mother, not really but she can give you physical details down to the number of freckles on her mother’s nose. She still visits her every Sunday and sits by her bed, her mother’s hot, dry hand clasped in her own. She tells her about school, her classes, her apartment, Oliver and even Jack. In a way, at least in this capacity, her mother is the perfect confidante. She can’t tell, she can’t scold and she can’t give disapproving looks but Sky wishes she could. She wishes her mother would wake up and tell her she’s ruining her life. When she was little, she used to ask her mother to wake up. She used to beg and cry and promise to be such a good girl if her Mommy would come home. She doesn’t do that anymore. In fact she never says a word about waking up or going home. Everything changed last year when she found out the truth about her mother. Gabrielle Van Alen is not in a coma for any medical reason. She’s there because she wants to be. She’s there because Schuyler’s father was killed and her baby girl wasn’t enough to keep her around. Sky has abandonment issues piled on top of the mommy issues.

Then just to muddy the waters, there’s that whisper in the back of her head that the only reason Jack has anything to do with her at all is because of the woman lying on the bed. It’s her he wanted in a thousand lives past and there are days that Sky can’t come up with a single reason that Jack would want her instead. Sky goes to visit her mother every single week but she doesn’t stay as long as she used to and she can’t really find it in her heart to feel guilty about that.