Friday: Fears and Assumptions
A/N: As this date is a bigger deal in the Charmedverse, I'm going step back from the specific prompt and illustrate my character's attitude towards fear. And how others see her, which is connected to that.
Starting the summer she was eight, Prue refused to take swimming lessons. Grams, who would have pushed about anything else, looked at her steadily for a moment, and then nodded her okay. She'd read, mostly chapter books about horses, watched three-year-old Phoebe just closely enough that the toddler didn't get into too much trouble, and on the days when the fog rolled in enough to dowse the heat, she'd join Andy and the other neighborhood kids their age and they'd bounce around a basketball. She loved the feeling of control that came from her ability to direct that large orange sphere. She wasn't an all-star, but she was good, and tough, and it was wonderful to be able to focus on that when Piper, and then both Piper and Phoebe, would come home chattering each summer day about who had swum fastest, who had held their breath under the longest, who was learning to dive.
She'd shown them, on the weekends, what she'd learned how to do, with a ball Andy had lent her. And they had been in genuine awe of her ability to dribble, to dunk, to dodge around any defense they, giggling, had tried to provide. But there was something in their eyes which told her, even at nine or ten, that they weren't completely fooled. That first Friday the Thirteenth after they had their powers back, when Piper had said, "Ever since Mom drowned, you've been terrified of the water ... we've always known that was the reason," she thinks, It wasn't the whole reason.
Later, after Barbas was vanquished, Phoebe hugged her fiercely and said, "I don't know what I would do if I ever lost you." And through her relief and renewed loving confidence she thought, That was the rest.
Starting the summer she was eight, Prue refused to take swimming lessons. Grams, who would have pushed about anything else, looked at her steadily for a moment, and then nodded her okay. She'd read, mostly chapter books about horses, watched three-year-old Phoebe just closely enough that the toddler didn't get into too much trouble, and on the days when the fog rolled in enough to dowse the heat, she'd join Andy and the other neighborhood kids their age and they'd bounce around a basketball. She loved the feeling of control that came from her ability to direct that large orange sphere. She wasn't an all-star, but she was good, and tough, and it was wonderful to be able to focus on that when Piper, and then both Piper and Phoebe, would come home chattering each summer day about who had swum fastest, who had held their breath under the longest, who was learning to dive.
She'd shown them, on the weekends, what she'd learned how to do, with a ball Andy had lent her. And they had been in genuine awe of her ability to dribble, to dunk, to dodge around any defense they, giggling, had tried to provide. But there was something in their eyes which told her, even at nine or ten, that they weren't completely fooled. That first Friday the Thirteenth after they had their powers back, when Piper had said, "Ever since Mom drowned, you've been terrified of the water ... we've always known that was the reason," she thinks, It wasn't the whole reason.
Later, after Barbas was vanquished, Phoebe hugged her fiercely and said, "I don't know what I would do if I ever lost you." And through her relief and renewed loving confidence she thought, That was the rest.