bad blood (Cyn!)

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"A petition?" Maggie raised an eyebrow, surprised. Who would ever want to keep that support group going? It encouraged dabbling with the occult, and violence. Demonism and violence were nothing they needed right now, especially with a murderer on the loose. Maggie had written an opinion piece and gotten enough attention from the right people to shut the place down. "from who?"

She should have known the answer before it was handed to her. Her eyes narrowed in on the first name. "Tara."

Why would her daughter do that to her? After everything she had done for her. Maggie felt hurt. And she was going to tell her that to her face.

So, when Tara made her way home after she got through with her article for the next issue of the Grapevine. Tara had a pretty good day, since she had gotten enough signatures that day to return the petition over lunch. It had really helped that Brayden was willing to sign. As soon as he did, the other signatures came pretty fast.

When she got home and saw her mother standing in front of the building they now lived in, though, Tara stopped in her tracks. She hadn't waited for her dad today. Now, she wished she had. She didn't want to speak to her. She hadn't even really seen her mom since she left. And now, taking a good look for the first time, Tara felt like crying. Fumbling in her pocket for her key, she looked up at her mom. "You're in my way. I need to go get Chris." she spoke coldly, arms folded, a glare sent in her mother's direction.

"Your father can go get him. I think I know my husband better than that." Maggie replied, shaking her head. Danny wouldn't just throw that responsibility on her, she didn't think. At least, she'd never let him when they were married.

"ex-husband, Margaret. Get it right" Tara corrected her. She was the one who left, she was not allowed to call him her husband.

Maggie blinked "what did you just call me?"

"you heard me. Now move" she said, attempting to get past her so she could enter the building. All she wanted was away from her mother. She wasn't ready for this. She was angry, very angry with her mother. Sure, she had never acted like this towards her before. So shouldn't that tell her something?

"No, Tara, wait. Please. We haven't talked in so long."

Tara stopped and looked at her. Was she really going to try and make things better? Tara loved her mother very much. Maybe she should listen. She looked in the older woman's eyes with uncertainty in her face.

"Come on, Tiger" Maggie coaxed, using the nickname she had called Tara by since she was little

For the first time in months, a hint of a smile appeared on Tara's face. Fighting it back, Tara was determined not to trust her that easily. "All right," she finally relented, taking her hand off of the door handle.

"Good. Now maybe you can explain yourself"

Tara was stunned. "Wait, what?" It was her that should be explaining! She wasn't the one who left.

Maggie handed her the petition. Tara looked it over and looked up at her. Maggie was giving her a motherly disapppointed scowl. "I can't believe you would do this to me. I am your mother!"

Suddenly, all of the anger that she had set aside for the moment resurfaced. "Are you kidding?!" she shook her head. "You left us. You didn't even show up at my birthday party! And now you're yelling at me over my petition?? This is YOUR fault! And guess what, mom! This petition is the least of your worries!"

"Tara Rae Maxwell, how dare you talk to me like that! I knew that living with your father would not be a good idea. Maybe I should ask for custody, get you straightened out. He's already moved you into the dangerous part of town with that psycho murderer around here."

"No. I WILL talk to you like that! Because guess what? You're not my mother! Not anymore! You're just the bitch who used to care about me! I NEVER want to live with you! Never! I wish I would get killed, just so I don't have to be around you!"

[Danny Maxwell]

Danny didn't expect much at all when he got home. Usually, the apartment was relatively quiet when he got there, but with only the three of them, it was just how it was. Unless Chris was bouncing off the walls or watching TV, it was pretty quiet. And right now, Chris was in his arms. Chris hadn't been feeling that well that morning, but he wasn't so bad that he thought he couldn't tough out preschool. Though, he received a call earlier that he was spending his time with the nurse. So, he'd picked him up and dropped by the store to pick up some kind of cold medicine to help the kid and hopefully get him to rest. And by the time he got back home, he had a sleepy, grouchy kid in his arms that didn't want to do anything but sit there and grump at him. He pulled him out of the car, only to be whined at that he didn't want to be carried. But, he knew full well he would say he didn't want to walk if he put him down too. So, he carried the pouting kid up to the apartment and opened the door, just in time to hear Tara's yelling.

"Tara!" He exclaimed and while he understood her anger, that was no way to approach it. He didn't know what Maggie was doing there, but yelling back and forth with their daughter wasn't going to smooth anything over. And really, he didn't want to hear Tara talking about wanting her mother dead. Danny might have been angry with her, but he didn't want his kids to hate her. He would rather that they had a good relationship with their mother. But he definitely didn't believe she wanted her dead. "To your room and calm down." Someone needed to take charge of the situation. Glancing back to Maggie, he frowned. "You just stay there. I need to put our son to bed."

And luckily, the kid wasn't feeling well and tired because Danny hadn't waited to give him the medicine as soon as he bought it, because normally he'd be squirming and running over to Maggie quickly or getting upset at the yelling. Instead, he just kind of waved at her and put his head back down on Danny's shoulder. Frustrated with his daughter and his ex, he walked past, expecting Tara to listen to him, not sure what Maggie would do, and walked into his son's room to lay him down.

[Deleted]

"I've been trying" Tara snapped back at him. She didn't mean to take it out on him. But she had been trying to get inside ever since she got there and saw her mom there. As soon as he went inside, she started to follow, falling silent after that last remark. It was Maggie who tried once more.

"Tara--" she touched her shoulder, and that is when Tara hauled off and pushed her. "Don't touch me!" she yelled, glaring at her. "I hate you" as soon as it was growled, she ran inside and in her room. She didn't mind at all that he had sent her there. It was where she would have gone had Maggie allowed her to go inside. As soon as she was in her room, the door was locked, headphones were on her head and she was blasting death metal into her ears--just the kind of music her mother hated.

The petition had been dropped on her way inside. Maggie sighed and picked it up. She waited, unsure of why she was. She hadn't even acknowledged her son. She was too upset with Tara. Holding onto the petition, she folded her arms as she waited outside for her hus-ex husband.

[Danny Maxwell]

Danny knew he'd have to talk to Tara about it. Not only the things she said, but the pushing couldn't happen. But right now, he needed to put the kid to bed, then he would deal with them one at a time. Of course, he didn't think he should have to deal with his ex, given that she was a grown woman that needed to be getting along with her daughter not fighting with her. He expected Tara not to be completely mature. She was still a kid. He had to expect her to get angry and to say things she probably didn't mean. And he'd scold her for them and try to talk it out, but at the end of the day, she was the child and they were the parents. He had that figured out by now and he wasn't sure why Maggie insisted on fighting.

Once Chris was in bed, he switched on the TV in the kid's room so he wouldn't be woken up by anything outside of his room and shut the door. With that, he walked back to the front door and opened it up. "Do you want to come in?" He asked, though there was very little friendliness to his tone. But he wasn't going to make her stand outside either. And figuring she probably would, he stepped back, holding the door open.

[Deleted]

Did she? Maggie wasn't so sure. She gave Danny the look of uncertainty that Tara had given her earlier. If anything, Tara's facial expressions came from Maggie. That was at least one reminder that she was, in fact, her daughter. But, he was holding the door open for her, so she gave a nod and stepped inside. She looked around as soon as she did. This is what he had moved to? She considered it a real downgrade. The blond looked around before looking up at him. When she did, she unfolded her arms and handed him the petition.

"Apparently, rather than spending the entire day at school, our daughter decided to leave to deliver this" she informed him. "The support group, as she calls it, is on Baythurst. What on earth was she doing all the way over there? You're supposed to be keeping an eye on her instead of just letting her wander all over Toronto. And this is one issue that she needs to stay out of. We're closing this place to keep the city safe. With everything that's going on, this is something that needs to be done. The only reason she's fighting it is because I wrote the article that got it shut down. She's not being smart at all. And since, she's not going to listen to me, then you get to talk to her." Maggie wasn't about to beat around the bush about why she was there. She was going to get directly to the point, just as she had done with Tara. Hopefully, this time, she'd get a better response.

[Danny Maxwell]

He sighed at the look, but waited for her to walk in before he shut the door behind her. When she handed him the petition, he wasn't that surprised. It was Tara. Why would he be that surprised about a petition? Though, as she went on about it, he sighed. Great. But it was when she got on him about her wandering Toronto, he frowned. Given that he was the one taking care of both of their kids, he wasn't about to take that from her. He did watch his daughter, the best that he could watch a teenage girl as one parent and without completely suffocating her.

"I'm supposed to be watching her? She's a teenage girl. I have a job. I can't see her every second of the day. I'll talk to her about skipping, but you're not turning this around on me." He retorted quickly. "How many kids are you taking care of again?" And really, he was a little disappointed that she seemed to come this way just to lecture Tara about a damn petition. She wasn't going to mend her relationship with her that way. Danny thought that would be what she wanted, but he felt like he had been wrong by it.

[Deleted]

Maggie glared. "Don't start with me," she warned. She felt like he wasn't doing his job well as a father. She wasn't focused on the fact that she wasn't doing her job at all. Oh, no. That wasn't the point here. She wasn't about to take the blame for any of it. Maggie never did. Those who didn't know the couple before she left were put under the impression that she was in a terrible marriage and the only way to end it was by leaving with her editor. Because, that was the way she portrayed it. It didn't matter that she had cheated. Not to her, anyways. It was all him. But he wanted to pin it on her.

"I could very well go to the court and file a custody suit" she informed him. Of course, that would mean actually filing for divorce. She had never actually gotten around to doing that. "Courts like to see kids with their mother. They'd place them with me in a heartbeat. And then we wouldn't have this problem." Of course, then she'd have a mouthy teenager to contend with. But there were ways to fix that problem. She could always send Tara to a boot camp.

[Danny Maxwell]

Danny glared at the idea of losing custody to her. It wasn't that he didn't want the kids with her. He'd rather they also spent time with her, but he wasn't going to give them up. She was the one that left them there, there was no way he was going to lose custody of them. But he knew that she could fight him for it and there was a standard of women generally getting custody regardless. He didn't think it was fair and in this case, definitely not. He was taking care of his kids fine. He might not be able to stop Tara from getting into trouble constantly, but she was a teenager. And it wasn't as if she was going to jail or getting expelled. She did... teenager things.

"No, we'd have a worse problem. Don't forget who left them. If you want in their lives, the door is always open. And you can bitch about Tara not wanting to talk all you want, but in case you've forgotten him, Chris wants to see you." He knew a lot of work needed to be done when it came to Tara getting along with her mother. Though, it wasn't as if Maggie was doing anything to really help it along. But, Chris was still there. And he was too young to be holding anything against her, really. He just wanted his mom when he couldn't have her.

[Deleted]

Maggie rolled her eyes. She didn't leave them, she simply didn't take them with her. That wasn't the same, was it? She didn't think so. The day she left, she considered taking Chris with her. But it wouldn't have been fair to him. Pulling him away from his sister like that. And there was no way that Tara would have gone with her. So, at the time, she had done what was best for them. Or, so she thought.

"Chris is too young to understand. He'd see me and the second I leave, he'll be heartbroken. No, I won't do that to him" Because, refusing to see her son wasn't heartbreaking. Nope, not at all. She was thinking of the four year old, really. She always considered herself to be a good mother. This was another example of that.

"Things need to get more stabilized first. For Chris's sake." And, to be honest, for her sake too. For the first time in fifteen years, she was doing what Maggie wanted.

[Danny Maxwell]

Why was he even surprised? Danny still looked astonished though at her excuses. He was too young to understand? Sure, he didn't really understand, but he wasn't the first four year old to have to deal with divorcing parents. He could handle it and it would have been better to see his mother than not at all. He didn't want Chris without her; because at the end of the day, she was still his mom. And he hated to see him heartbroken over not getting to spend time with her. And she was crazy to think that he wasn't more upset over that.

"No, you know what leaves him heartbroken? Never seeing you leaves him heartbroken! Me having to tell him I don't know when he'll get to see his mother again; that's what hurts him. He would much rather see you sometimes than not at all." Danny didn't know what was so hard to understand about that. He wasn't even standing in her way of seeing him. He never had. He kept the door open for her to see her kids, she just didn't take it when it came to Chris. "Stabilized? What the hell is that supposed to mean, even?"

[Deleted]

"So you don't tell him you don't know! You're just trying to upset him, aren't you? Soon. You tell him soon." That was always Maggie's response when she was asked when something would be done and it wasn't real high on her list of priorities. Just like when she didn't want to talk to someone on the phone, she would tell them she was in the middle of an emergency. Which, she was getting close to using that excuse here. His next question got a head shake from her.

"You know what it means, Dan. For the first time in a long time, I don't really know where I'm going in life. I need to figure it out, and I need to find myself." She didn't even know if she was going to stay with the man she had left him for. She was like a little kid in a candy store. She was tasting freedom, and she wasn't sure where she wanted to go or what she wanted to do.

[Danny Maxwell]

"Oh yeah, Maggie. That's what I'm doing. I'm just trying to make my son cry." He snapped back, sarcastically. He wasn't looking to hurt him and he wasn't about to start using soon the way that Maggie abused it. "No, because soon to a four year old means that day. I'm not going to switch to your definition of it." And he wasn't going to. Soon with her didn't happen quickly. And he wasn't about to lead his son along that way. "I'm not going to lie to him. He needs to know who to trust. He has more than enough instability in his life, not being able to believe my answers isn't going to be one of them." And he wasn't going to shift on that point. He would continue to tell him he didn't know if he didn't know. Though, he would much rather be able to tell him when he would see her. He missed his mom and why wouldn't he?

Danny shook his head at her next comment. "Find yourself? You can find yourself all you want. But, those kids of yours, they aren't going away. They're still a part of your life. So, it doesn't matter where you're working, living or who you're deciding to fuck this afternoon. They're still a part of where your life is going. Chris, especially, needs to see you more often." Or at all. He needed to see her even once in a while, rather than never, like it seemed to be going down right now.

[Deleted]

"Lying? Don't be dramatic" Maggie said scornfully with an eye roll. Telling Chris soon was not lying. As long as she saw him in the next year, then that would be soon. Now, if he added the word very in, then it would be lying. Because, she really couldn't promise a visit within that month. Maggie just never thought that it would be this hard being strapped with a toddler. She never had this much trouble when Tara was little. But she was younger then. Maggie had married young, before she really got a chance to see the world or do much at all. And she regretted it and resented Danny.

"You know, I'm still your wife. Can you not talk to me like one of your students? I know what I'm doing. You're just going to have to trust me on that." She would eventually come back to her family. She might even someday come back to her husband. "I need time and space, ok? There, I said it. You know how when a plane crashes, you're supposed to take care of yourself before helping anybody else? Well, this is that plane crash and I need to take care of Maggie. Like it or not, I'm going through a really hard time right now

[Danny Maxwell]

"He's four, he doesn't care about semantics. Soon means soon, not the Maggie equivalent of when I get around to it." It was lying as far as he was concerned. He wasn't old enough to understand and he shouldn't have to. No one should have to wait around and wonder when they'd see their mother again. It wasn't easy raising a toddler, especially not on his own. He didn't expect that to be the way things went. But, he hadn't seen any of this coming before, really. When they had Chris, he thought that they would have raised him together the same way that they had Tara. Not that he'd ever have given any of that up. His kids were the best thing that had ever happened to him. He didn't care how hard it was or how young he had been when he had his daughter. He loved them more than anything else and he couldn't imagine acting like she was. He didn't want to leave them for any extent of time, let alone just walk out without telling them goodbye. Of course, raising kids was tough. But, he wouldn't have changed that.

"Stop acting like you understand the world less than them,"

[/b] he remarked back. And hey, he wouldn't have been that harsh on his students. He liked them. It was what she continued to say that caused him to look at her like she really was insane, and to narrow his eyes. "Look at that, you didn't tell me sex with him was as traumatic as a plane crash. If I knew, I would have offered a hug." He said, sarcasm full in his tone before he held at his arms as if to hug her, but he was mocking her before he dropped them. "I just didn't think about how hard it was for you, abandoning your responsibilities as a parent, your husband and sleeping your way up the foodchain. I'm just being insensitive. You're right. Sex with the boss makes life so hard."[/blockquote]

[Deleted]

A glare was sent in his direction when he mocked her like that. Before, his arms had been the best thing for her. If she had a bad day, all she had to do was come home to his arms. Maggie had always loved his arms. She'd probably even accept a hug, if he was being sincere. Of course, she wasn't stupid. She knew he didn't mean any of it and it was all taunting. She should have offered an apology, though he probably wouldn't accept it. And if she was thinking of someone other than herself, then she would. But Maggie was only thinking of Maggie.

"You think this is easy for me? Do you really think I planned for all of this to happen? We were supposed to have the fairy tale ending. If you really think I just stopped loving you at the drop of a hat, you're wrong. But you were ready for me to leave your life. I mean, that's pretty obvious. Look how fast you moved here." she swallowed, blinking back tears. "This was a mistake," she finally muttered.