A child's cry

[Xaver]

Xaver could feel Ginny's rise of emotions - and though he did not quite understand what they were, he understood he was the guilty charge and reason of their becoming.
"I know you want to guard him," he said, very quietly, gently releasing her hands. He drew in a breath, slowly,  his gaze skirting over his own hand, as it rested upon Cody's bedpost.
"You told me long ago. I have not forgotten. And if you are angry, my love, you are rightfully so."

He nodded, absently.
"He probably won't forget."
Xaver looked at Cody, then, his reserved, mellow gaze fixing on his son.
"And you will probably never see me again the same way, I know. But.. Do you understand, now, why I can't just give you simple answers, my son?" Xaver paused, and clenched his jaw, fighting the harsh emotions the same way he had, when he had been about to burst with them, with Kylie. "I don't have simple answers. I am always tiptoeing around the lines, trying to decipher between the right ones, and the disastrous ones because they are usually so connected... I don't have any easy answers. And there is a lot more going on, than you know about yet, do you understand that now?"

He bit his tongue.
Hard.
Shutting himself up.

He wasn't good at this, he concluded.
Not at all.

[Ginny Weasly]

Cody nodded, looking at his hands, "I'm sorry, Dad..." His voice was soft, quiet, and slightly fearful. He didn't look at Xaver, but closed his eyes, taking his time to process what he had seen.

Ginny kept her face blank, but her lips tightened. She nodded towards the door, indicating to Xaver she wanted to speak to him in another room.

[Xaver]

Slowly, Xaver shook his head. Sighing, as he caught Ginny's glance.
He swooped down over Cody, pushing away the fact that he was still uneasily light-headed, and planted a kiss upon Cody's forehead, ruffling the boy's hair.
"Don't be," he murmured, quietly, before withdrawing from him, turning, and padding slowly out the door, caught up in his own thoughts.

[Ginny Weasly]

Ginny smiled tightly at Cody, "Take your time getting dressed, angel baby." She closed his bedroom door behind her, and nodded towards her and Xaver's room. She entered, waiting for him to step in before she closed the door. Not hard, but definetly not gentle either.

"Why did you show him those things?!" She half whispered, keeping her voice down but wanting to yell.

[Xaver]

The door closed behind him, and Xaver knew, through the sudden intensity that lit up between them, confined within the room - Ginny's fury.
"Because he needed reasons for the 'no' we were giving him," he returned, his tones that same calm as before. "He is young, yes, but he has to begin to understand that things are rarely, if ever as they seem.. There are reasons for our answers, and reasons for our 'no's, and he needed to understand that I wasn't just keeping things from him because I could - but because there was a lot more out there than he even thinks about yet."
Xaver sighed.
"The world isn't straight, and he has to grow to work with that.."

[Ginny Weasly]

"He's just a baby, Xaver! He doesn't need to know anything yet!" Gnny raked a hand through her hair roughly, realizing she was still wearing her pajamas. She stalked over to her drawer, rooting through it to find clothes for the day.

"He's too young to know the ways of the world! He doesn't need to know that most evil lies within people!"

[Xaver]

"He is five, Love. Years older than I was, when my father had myself and my twin enrolled-- He's is old enough to learn. Old enough to begin to understand. And would you rather us teach him, and help him understand in ways that will leave him uncorrupted, or would you let him learn for himself? He's at that point where he is asking questions.."
Xaver watched her, as she moved to the dresser, becoming suddenly aware of his own self, then ignoring it again. His half-nakedness could, and would, wait, dammit.

"And I didn't show him much of anything too unruly. I kept that away.."

[Ginny Weasly]

"He doesn't need to know...that much..." Ginny's frenzied searching through her clothes stilled and she clutched a black sweater tightly. She looked at it, but didn't see it. All she could see was her son, her baby. In her eyes, he was still that infant.

He needed protected. He didn't need to know anything. Ginny threw the sweater back down and turned, "You didn't need to show him that much!"

[Xaver]

"Well, if you want the truth, I hadn't meant to show either of you that much. I hadn't been expecting most of the last parts to force their way into my current train of thought."
He turned from her, pulling open a drawer in the nearest dresser, and fishing inside, not really thinking about what he was doing - just doing it, for the matter of doing something, and not standing there looking like an idiot..
He pulled out some jeans as he turned back to her.

"What did I show him that really upset you? Because I know you saw everything just as he did. And that was how I meant it - I know you could feel, the way I felt then. And I know you could hear my old thoughts in those circumstances. Which memory was it that upset you?"
He pulled down his sweatpants now, refraining from looking at her in fear he would give away his own frustration, stripping down to his boxers. He tossed the sweatpants onto the bed, and stepped into the faded, dark-wash blue jeans he'd pulled out, hitching them up over the long, strong length of his legs, and buttoning them, the waist of the jeans resting over the toned muscle of his lower hips, much as the sweatpants had done.
He glanced over at her, as he fished for a shirt.

[Ginny Weasly]

"The fish hook, for starters." Ginny turned again, pulling out random shirts and other items, flinging them aside, out of her drawer as she searched for normal clothes. Nothing looked right to her at the moment.

"And what about that thing with Aaro? Does he need to know that?" She was frustrated, and angry. Her baby's innocence was at stake.

"He never knew about Kylie either...he didn't need to see her screaming at you."

She pulled off the t-shirt she had worn to bed, gripping the bottom and pulling it up and off, flinging it to the side. She kept her back to him as she pulled on a bra and a dark shirt with longsleeves. She pulled her hair out from under it, the red contrasting deeply with the dark colors as her hair swung against her back. She still didn't face him.

"He's just a...baby!"

[Xaver]

The fish hook.
Oh. Yeah.

Xaver stilled, however, his gaze fixing upon the smooth skin of her back, and shoulders, as she dressed.

"The memories of Aaro and Kylie I wished neither of you to see," he said quietly, his low tones sharp, and even, as he turned back to the drawer, pulling out a clean shirt of his own. He slipped into it, the navy shaded material cool, and crisp, biting at his skin, of which had grown so accustomed to the warmth.
"That was not of my control. But it was a good enough reminder of how unstable I still am. So I assure you," he slammed the drawer shut, planting his hands upon the slate texture of the wood, "that letting my guard down, and others into my thoughts any time soon, will be the last of any ideas I'll be coming up with."

[Ginny Weasly]

"It's not like you let us in on what you're thinking anyway!" Ginny snapped, turning and pushing her hair up on each side of her head, pressing her temples and closing her eyes for a moment. She opened them and starred at him, her hands dropping from her head to her sides, making her hair fall over her face. She did nothing to move it, except tilting her head slightly to the side so she could see.

And she looked at him for a long moment. She was angry at him, but for some reason felt like she had done something wrong. Maybe she shouldn't have let him handle it. Maybe she should have simply told Cody he was grounded and not let him ask those questions.
Maybe she shouldn't want to protect Cody so much.

But still, her anger meant something, right? She was right, Xaver didn't tell Ginny much of what he really felt about somethings. He edited his comments to keep her from worrying. She knew that, she knew he played down on his frustration at being gone and not remembering.

She remembered, though. She had been aware of each second that had passed with him gone. She had almost killed herself, literally. And it had been Cody who saved her.
Her angel, her baby.

Protection of her child was an instinct she couldn't push down it seemed.

[Xaver]

She was right, and he knew it.
It was perhaps that, that seemed more suffocating than all the other factors.

Xaver was not much of a liar - and definately not one when it came to those he cared about. And Ginny, and Cody - they were the center of his world. The core of him. There was no way he could try to falsify anything, and let himself get away with it, let alone put it past Ginny - but many times, he knew, he had told her things.. But avoided the whole truth.

"It's because it SCARES me, alright?!"
Xaver whirled away from the dresser, turning on his heel to face her. His tones were louder than he usually let them - but that, in all actuality, was a good sign. In Xaver's own twisted way.
"I can't even figure out half of the things that run through my mind, anymore! I am a MESS, Ginny. I can barely take living in my own head. There's pain, and thoughts I don't remember, and I can't decipher what's real, and what's not.. Letting you guys in, to see that? To see what kind of REAL pathetic monster I am?! NO, has been the only way I have been able to hide the fact that I haven't thought, or felt like I was good enough to be a PART of your world, let alone be a focus of it!"

[Ginny Weasly]

"If you weren't good enough, do you think I would have had your son?! Do you think I would have kept him, and raised him and loved him?! HELL no! You are more important thatn you'd like to realize!"
Ginny was yelling back, scowling darkly.
"Stop being so da*n selfish about it and grow up! Start thinking about what you really mean to me! To Cody! And stop worrying if you deserve it!"

She was holding a shirt, had balled it up. Now she threw it at him, hitting him in the chest, "Open your da*n eyes!"

[Xaver]

"Well I'm sorry if I'm a bit selfish about the crap in my head, but it's kind of impossible to not be when there's no bloody way to make sense of anything, let alone THINK about trying to explain it."
That, was perhaps the piece of this mess that bugged him the most.. He couldn't figure anything out. And it had taken. So. Long. He hated it.

"Well maybe THAT'S JUST IT, ISN'T IT?!"
He caught the shirt, when it hit his chest, and threw it to the floor.
"Maybe if HE could open his eyes, and if he KNEW the kind of person his father has been for most of his life, I... Wouldn't mean so much to either of you!! THEN, at least, he'll be safe, won't he? Because you d**n well know that the only thing I seem to be good at, anyway, is murder." Xaver was no longer looking at her. He slammed the other drawer, his pant drawer, shut.