Correspondence ((Adam))

[Mackenzie Holden]

Right. Letters. Letters from the past three weeks. Letters that Mack would have never thought she would have received. Letters from Dixie. Letters from Dixie talking about how she feels miserable about leaving. “Well, serves her right,” Mack muttered as she plopped onto a rock on the shore of the lake before picking up a pebble and tossing it across the surface of the lake. There was a splash and then a tentacle reached up and snatched the pebble, only to toss it back toward Mack at an uncanny speed. Mack dodged the speeding pebble and looked behind her as it dented into the tree behind her. The tentacle danced in a mocking way and then sank below the surface of the water. Mack scowled as she remembered being flung into the lake by Kris and nearly being pulled under by that idiotic squid. Honestly, why would they allow the squid to be there when there were students around? There were things about Hogwarts that Mack had always failed to understand, but she still had two years to figure it all out. She had two years to figure a lot of things out. Well, not really, according to Tommy she had her future set in music. Only, lately, music hasn’t been something Mack would want to spend the rest of her life doing.

As much as Mack would have liked to keep thinking about her pathetic life of music, her mind kept wandering to Dixie’s letters. They were all about how she feels so guilty for leaving, and it was like she was slipping back into the way she was in her fifth year. Mack hoped deep down that it wasn’t happening again, but she would never admit that to her older sister. No matter how much they learned to get along. Mack ran her fingers through her hair as she looked down at her shoulder bag that was beside her. She reached down and picked it up, placing it on her lap, where she unbuckled it and reached inside. Her fingers felt the parchment of the envelope and she pulled out the most recent letter from her sister. She had read it and hadn’t had time to reply. Perhaps that was what she came outside to do. Mack wasn’t sure why she had gone outside, because she could have done it in the common room all the same. But Dixie kept telling her that she needed to get out, so here she was. Outside. Mack looked at the address on the envelope and shook her head. Paris. Sure enough, Dixie had gone to the one place she had wanted to go. It didn’t seem to be doing her any good either.

Mack set the letter down and reached into her bag to get a piece of parchment and a quill. The wind picked up, and somehow managed to blow that heavy letter away from her and back toward the castle. She gasped and jumped up from the rock to chase after it. She followed it up the hill and when she reached the top, it was already in the hands of someone else. “Adam,” she said breathlessly as she tried to calm her heavy breathing. She looked at the letter in his hands and then up at his eyes which were looking at the address in the top right corner, “I…” He looked up at her and Mack crossed her arms nervously; “…um… that’s from… she’s um…” Mack chuckled even more nervous now and looked down at her shoes, “Let’s start with hi… and can I have the letter back?”

[Professor Adam Greene]

It wasn't an easy fight. Adam had no clue how hard it would be to suppress the thoughts of Dixie when he had told himself that he would on the day he met Rae in the Room of Requirement. But he was still pushing on. Every day brought hard times. Adam would just close his eyes tightly, and count to three. It was so hard though, just because he wanted to be able to remember the good time. He didn't want to push Dixie from his life, but it was too late to stop that. If he wanted to move on, it was all necessary.

As he exited the dark and cool castle, it was nice to step into the warm sunlight. Spring was finally here, and Adam hoped it was for good. The winter had been cold for him in more than one way. Today, he just wanted to enjoy the nice weather and possible get some work done by the lake. He needed some alone time, just to be able to relax and clear his mind as best he could.

He had just gotten off the main path and was about to descend down the small hill to the lake when a loose piece of parchment flew toward him and stopped as it was flattened against his leg by the wind. Bending down to pick it up, Adam thought that the writing looked familiar. It ended up that it was an address that he saw on the one side of the folded paper. Oddly enough, it was addressed to Mackenzie. Adam thought it might have just been irony, but he was shocked even more when he saw that Dixie's name was listed for the return address. "P-P-Paris!" he stuttered out loud. Quickly, Adam turned over the paper and began reading. He was interrupted before he could read past the first line though, as Mackenzie, quite out of breath, had apparently known that the letter had blown away. "Paris. She's in Paris?" he questioned, still a bit shocked to find out. Unarguably, he handed the letter back to Mack, a look of bewilderment still plastered on his face as he shook his head back and forth. "Wow, I don't even know what to say," he commented, pretty much ignoring Mackenzie's 'hi'. "Is she alright?" he blurted out. It was useless now, trying to push the memories, questions, or mere thoughts of Dixie aside.

[Mackenzie Holden]

Mack took the letter and glanced at it. Right, it was the snippy letter. She wondered how far he had read, but she didn’t have time to ask when Adam was immediately asking her a question. “Yeah, she’s in Paris.” She answered in a quiet tone of voice as she slipped the letter into her back pocket. Mack looked up at him again, “It was the one place she wanted to go. Fashion and all, she was actually thinking about going there over the summer. Everything just… must have pushed it along much earlier than she expected it to.” She couldn’t help but feel like she was stuck in the middle of something. Here she was, talking to Adam about Dixie, and then in all those letters she was talking to Dixie about Adam. There was going to be questions that were inevitable from both sides. Mack ran her fingers through her hair again, a nervous habit of hers. She felt so out of place, but she knew she couldn’t just walk away. Adam deserved more than that. Mack breathed in at his next question. Was she alright? Mack motioned for Adam to follow her down the hill, trying to think of an answer to that question. It wasn’t meant to be a difficult one, she knew, but it was a difficult one. Dixie was all over the place, but Mack didn’t want to tell Adam that.

Once they were down the hill and Mack was sitting on the rock again, she put the letter into her bag and turned to look at Adam again. “I’m not sure,” she answered slowly, “I know that isn’t what you want to hear, because she hated that answer coming from me about you. She’s… living and she’s adjusting. But…” Mack stopped herself from saying the next thing she was going to say. She could just tell him how dreadful Dixie was feeling, but she didn’t think it would be too good of a choice. “She misses you.” Mack shrugged and pulled out the letter again, unfolded it, and read through it quickly. She cleared her throat and began, “I missed Hogwarts (still do), you, and Adam most of all (I STILL DO!)…” Mack looked up at Adam again, “You know, this is all your fault.” She suddenly said as she threw the letter into her shoulder bag again and stood from the rock so she could stand in front of him. “If you hadn’t pushed her away so damn persistently, she wouldn’t have left!” Mack’s voice was rising and tears were welling in her eyes. “’Dixie’s a great girl, I would never do anything to hurt her.’ Didn’t you say that, Adam?! Didn’t you?! Where’d the meaning go?! WHERE DID IT GO?!” Mack was screaming by now and the tears were pouring down her cheeks. She didn’t mean to be taking it all out on him, and the moment she realized it was unfair and probably hurting him, she put her head in her hands and took a few deep breaths.

After a second of silence, Mack looked up at Adam; “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean… it’s not your fault. I shouldn’t have said that. I’m just… I miss her so much and I don’t know when she’s coming back! She says she is, she does, and I believe her but I need her. I need her now, and she isn’t here. She isn’t here to help me through all of this…” Mack wiped at her tears and covered her face, taking a few more deep breaths. “She’s coming back, Adam, this I know for sure. She’s said so in her letters. She won’t tell me when, and she won’t even tell me if she’ll be coming to Manchester or living somewhere else or if she even plans on contacting anyone in our family… or outside our family.” Mack looked at Adam again and sank back onto the rock, holding her head in her hands with her arms propped up on her legs. “She wanted me to tell her she wasn’t selfish, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell her that she was. Because she was… she was selfish, but does that make me selfish? To wish she had dealt with all the pain that she was going through in order to stick around for me?” She looked up at him with a hurt look on her face, “Does that make us selfish? What makes everything okay? What does everything turn out to be good for? Why did she leave? I know you can't answer these questions... so I don't know why I'm asking.”

[Professor Adam Greene]

Adam almost sensed a bit of surprise in Mack's face, and he wasn't sure if she was going to start to yell at him or what. She didn't answer his question right away, but she did motion for him to follow her down the hill. He was stuck in shock for another second as he tried to fathom the idea of Dixie in Paris. Then, he snapped out of it and followed Mack. As she found a seat on a rock, Adam just stood with his hands in his pockets, chewing nervously on his lip. Paris. He wasn't sure why it surprised him so much, but in a way, it just made the thought of her not being there finally seem more realistic. Until then, he had refused to accept the reality. But now, it literally blew right into him, and in a minute, Adam was finally accepting the face that she was gone. Gone... in Paris.

Mack finally spoke, again pulling Adam's train of thought back to their conversation. Her answer though was rather less than helpful though, and Adam said nothing at first. From what Mack said though, Adam was able to deduce that Dixie had apparently asked about him as well. Then, Mack added that Dixie missed him. He expected that, right? Wouldn't it have been more of a shock if she hadn't said something like that? Still, the thought just seemed to make things more complicated. Wouldn't it just be easier if Dixie didn't miss him? He was moving on now, or at least he had vowed to Rae that he would. And then Mack has to go and tell him something like that, not that he faulted her or anything. Heck, she was just the messenger, which happened almost by chance. "Sh..." he started, but was cut off by Mack, who had finished reading from the letter as she shot an accusation at Adam. Mack's voice began to elevate, as well, it appeared her emotions were too. Finally, she was screaming at Adam, and he couldn't even find it in him to defend himself. Instead, he took every word that Mack shot at him, knowing that he probably deserved it. There he was, ready to move on, and Dixie was miserable. Not only had he pushed her away, but he had been willing to try to push the entire situation from his memory as well. He was willing to push away what he had fought so hard to regain. What was he doing? No... no... no, he thought. It wasn't my fault. It's not my fault.

In Adam's silence, Mack continued, this time a little more clam. She actually apologized for accusing him, but by this point, he wasn't so sure she was wrong in doing so. He really didn't know if it was anybody's fault. It was all just a crappy situation that he was sick of playing over and over again in his mind. At this point, he just wanted everything to be normal, but he had almost began to wonder if he even knew what normal was, or if it ever even existed between he and Dixie. Mack had moved on to another aspect of the topic, and Adam tried to listen as she asked him a list of questions. "Honestly, I don't even know what to say Mack. Maybe, an 'I'm sorry' to start, but I just don't know. Gosh! Why does this have to be so complicated?" He kicked a small pebble into the lake and it disappeared with a small 'plop', leaving rings of ripples. "It's just... why couldn't she have told me in person? I know I was stupid, but we could have worked through it. And now, I mean, she hasn't even written me. I know I didn't try as hard as I could have to find her, but I wasn't the one who left. To be truthful, Mack, it's a lot of people's faults if you really think about it. All of us, well maybe not you I mean, did stupid things. I just want it all to be better though. Do you think it can all be better?" Adam didn't even think on the fact that he failed to answer any of Mack's questions and that he only gave her questions and thoughts in return.

[Mackenzie Holden]

Mack ran her fingers through her blonde hair as her eyes closed tiredly. All of this was a huge mess and Mack didn’t want to do it. But she was. She was blaming Dixie entirely. She might have told Adam she thought it was his fault, but she knew that it was entirely Dixie’s. How could Dixie have been so selfish? Sure, Mack had grown up with Dixie and her selfish ways but this was over the top. Dixie had always complained about not having anyone care about her the way Jack cared about Mack or Hank cared about Pam, and once she got it – the first threat of losing that one someone… and Dixie ran. Mack was stronger than that, and she had wanted to tell Dixie this; tell her that she was a huge baby when it came to love or trust for that matter, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t bring herself to do it. Especially since Dixie’s letters were full of misery and regret. Mack was just counting the days until Dixie showed up in the living room at Laurie Manor with quiet lips and no vocal chords. The last time that happened… well… it wasn’t pretty. Mack looked up at Adam as he spoke and then let out a sigh when he mentioned it being complicated. “Life is never easy, Adam. If things were easy to get then life wouldn’t be worth it.” Even as the words left her mouth, Mack knew she wished it weren’t that way at all. She watched the ripples form from the pebble he had kicked into the lake before he started his own list of questions. Thankfully, his questions weren’t like hers where they were unanswerable. Mack knew the answers to these questions.

“One thing at a time,” she rose from the rock again and crossed her arms as she looked out over the lake, “For as long as I’ve known Dixie, for as long as I’ve envied her and watched her with jealous eyes because of all she received, there was always one thing she didn’t get that she wanted. When she was younger it wasn’t something she needed, or at least she didn’t realize she needed it. She’s always been afraid of getting something really good and then losing it because of something she did. She sees it as failure, as something that is unacceptable. To lose something so grand and so great is a sin to her.” Mack paused as she kicked a pebble with her toe. She wondered if Adam thought she was pulling this out of thin air, because she obviously didn’t know Dixie all that well and she hadn’t made any efforts to get to know her. “I, as a child, watched Dixie so often I began to analyze her movements, her tantrums, everything she did or said. If she brushed something aside at a birthday party but didn’t bother to dump it into our butler’s hands it was because she really liked the gift but couldn’t possibly fathom the idea of letting other people know she was pleased.” Mack didn’t look at Adam, instead she kept her eyes on the horizon past the lake as she continued to think about how she would explain why exactly Dixie hadn’t told him in person. “Dixie went through her first four years at Hogwarts rather bossy, but alone without anyone she could ever think of trusting. Her fifth year was where she went completely downhill and trusting anyone after Bethlem was an impossible idea. Then you came along and you were this great and grand thing that she was afraid of losing. So, after the accident and after the memories being lost Dixie pushed herself to make sure she wouldn’t lose you,” now Mack looked at Adam, “but you didn’t think it was fair. So, you told her to leave you alone and live her life. She thought that was what you wanted and even though it would mean leaving the one person she’s ever trusted enough to actually love, she did it because it was what you wanted. She didn’t tell you in person, because she knew that if you said the one word that she so wanted you to say… she wouldn’t go. Dixie’s clever, she found a way to avoid the one word that you would inevitably say if she told you she was going in person. She did it through letter.”

Mack was highly aware that she could have just told him the last half of what she had said, but she felt like she should tell him or at least try to explain to him who Dixie was when she was younger and how Mack became so insightful to her sister’s actions or thoughts. The truth was, Dixie’s predictable. At least for Mack she was. Mack finally turned to look at Adam, “As for your last question…” she shrugged a little, thinking this over. “The only person who can make it better is Dixie, and if I know my sister, she’ll crack and will return and avoid you and try to make everything better by staying away. Then it all relies on your shoulders. On whether or not you would be willing to, well, make it better after she makes it a mess again.” Mack knew it wouldn’t be an answer that he would want to hear. Heck, he probably was trying to move on and here was Mack tearing down all the hard work he might have done to try and get over the wench named Dixie.

[Professor Adam Greene]

Adam didn't really expect Mack to answer his questions, but she did. In fact, she seemed to have a lot to share with him about Dixie and her childhood. He would have said he knew Dixie quite well, or at least he had remembered getting to that point of where she was opening up to him, but still, Mack had lived with her. Even if Dixie didn't tell Mack things, Adam knew that Mack probably knew more than she thought she did about Dixie. For that reason, he listened closely. Sadly though, Mack's words only frustrated Adam more. It wasn't to the point of anger, but just another fuel for the emotions that he had been working so hard to control since Dixie's departure. He figured it probably wasn't the smartest thing, to try to cover up all the emotions and push through with his head down, avoiding the pain and such. However, he had become so numbed by everything, that he didn't know how else to respond. Mack's words were only reopening the wound that he had been trying to cover up and ignore. It was a wound that wasn't getting better, and probably wouldn't unless he and Dixie actually saw each other again and worked through the issues.

Adam started to shake his head, slowly at first, but increasing with speed. "No... no... " his words were silent and his eyes were staring somewhere else. "I'm sorry Mack, but I can't do this anymore." He turned to leave, not even planning to say another word, but then he turned, knowing that he owed her an explanation since she had been involuntarily made into a bridge between he and Dix. "I can't keep looking for this to all work itself out Mack. I can't keep hoping that it will all be better some day. I'm tired of being stuck here without Dixie, trying to sort through this all. I'm done trying. I'm moving on... giving up. I just can't take anymore." He hated himself with every word that left his lips, but he ignored his heart that was screaming at him. His mind had become so numb that he just spoke without hesitation. "If you write back, tell her I wish her the best." Is that it? Is that all you want to tell her? "I tried, Mack. I really did." You're pathetic. How can you say that you ever loved her. "I'm just not strong enough to do this anymore." Adam turned with a tear and made his way back to the castle.

[Mackenzie Holden]

Mack watched Adam’s response. She listened as he finally spoke. She watched him start to leave. And all the while she could only think, He’s better off. He continued to speak and Mack found herself waiting for him to just go. When he said she can tell Dixie that he wished her the best, Mack smirked. “You’re insane, if you think I’m going to tell her we talked. She’s a mess to begin with. You just… go live your life.” She turned and bent down to retrieve her shoulder bag and slipped it over her head onto her shoulder. He was talking again, telling her he tried, and then when she turned around he was heading toward the castle. Well, good for him. He could move on with his life and she could deal with her problems and Dixie could stop being so damned selfish and everything could go back to the way they were. At least, she would have liked them to go back to the way they were! Mack kicked the rock she had been sitting on before she pulled her hair out of the strap on her shoulder and making her way up the hill to the castle. Life sucked. End of story. There was no point to it. Mack couldn’t wait to get back into the studio and forget all the blasted worries that seemed to have crept up on her.