Work Text:
Cold.
It wasn’t the normal cold you’d expect. It was the pure feeling of hopeless frozen fear.
Trapped.
Trapped was another way Mel Jones could describe it.
Misery, that was a good one.
Snow stuck everywhere. Tears. There was a sort of warmth coming from her side, but she couldn’t quite remember why. …Wait, remember? Was this a memory? It felt like one, but she couldn’t think of a time when she felt that cold… other than that time with her mothe-Nancy, but even then it felt even worse than that day.
She remembered the feeling of glass, yes there was glass, or was there? Did any of this even happen at all? It felt like a blur. A very cold, and very strange blur…
She sat up, a cold sweat running down her neck.
“F*ck.”
She tried to limit the profanity after Coraline was born, but sometimes it just slipped out. She rubbed her temples, What was that? It felt more real than a dream, but just out of reach. Mel looked over at her sleeping husband, good, she hadn’t woken him up. She was just about to walk into the bathroom and splash some water on her face when she heard a little girl crying. She cracked her door open. There sitting on the floor was her daughter. Coraline was curled up in a ball in front of her bedroom door. With the dead silence of the night still in the air, anyone could have heard the small whimpers and cries from the girl. Mel couldn’t remember the last time she had seen her daughter so distraught.
“ Coraline?” she whispered.
The young girl’s head shot up, tears streaming down her face.
“M-MOM! W-what are you doing up?” She was clearly shocked, probably at the fact that her mother had seen her crying with her knees to her chest on the floor looking like a-sad-little-doll-that-nobody-wanted.
“ Bad dream, I’m assuming you’re up because of a similar reason?” Coraline thought for a moment, then nodded. She sniffled, “ What was your’s about?’
“ I think I was stuck in a fridge or something, couldn’t really breathe, and I felt frozen solid. What was yours?” The younger of the two’s eyes widened. Seemingly a little confused at the idea that her mother might have remembered something from the situation two years ago.
She sputtered out, “ S-spiders. It was spiders. Really big ones. I was trapped…” Coraline trailed off.
Mel glanced at the clock on the wall,she sighed,” Come on, we both gotta get back to bed.”
“NO! Please. I-I can’t be alone right now… I just can’t…”
“So what’s your plan then, sit out here until you pass out?”
“Yeah,” Coraline looked down at the floor, expecting her mother to either walk away or scold her. She heard a thump next to her.
“ Well in that case I’m sitting here with you.”
The two sat in silence for a good five or six minutes. Mel looked at her daughter, who had found something very interesting to watch on the floor.
“Come here,” she scooped the kid into a tight squeeze. Hugs were a rare delicacy with Mel Jones, so you knew that when you got one, it was well deserved, and you had to make it last. It took Coraline a moment to realize her mother was hugging her, as soon as she figured that out, she quickly embraced her mother back.
“ Look, Coraline, I know I’m not the most affectionate mother in the world, heck I’m probably the worst at it, but I want you to know I really do love you. I’m sorry I can’t be there for you all the time. You’ve probably figured out that your father and I didn’t exactly pick the most stable jobs, but we’re just trying to make it work.”
“ Mom-I. I know, It’s just kinda hard to remember it all the time, you know? I’ll try to be less of a pain in the @$$ so you guys can work.”
“ You’re not a pain in the @$$, just sometimes it’s hard to get crap done. Also, who taught you that word?”
“ You did.”
“... Right.”
The younger daughter yawned, and buried her face in her mother’s shoulder. Mel rested her head on top of her daughter’s, they stayed like that for a while…
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The next morning Charlie woke up alone in his bedroom. After a brief moment of panic, he put on his glasses and looked outside his room. On the floor was his wife and daughter, cuddled up and absolutely passed out. He couldn’t help but smile as he looked as the two most important people in the world were right there. Before anyone noticed he grabbed his phone and took a rather quick photo of the pair, all snuggled up. He wouldn’t show that photo to anyone for years.