2. mirrorball (a taylor swift au)

-chapter two-

"Alright everyone! We're going to go around the circle and say one interesting thing about ourselves. It can be anything that you feel is interesting, whether it's what you had for dinner last night, or how you're great at maths, or what you did last week. " Ellie wasn't nervous now that she had Margot. Ellie hadn't met a kid who had a similar story to her, and it was reassuring to know that she wasn't the only one out there with birth parents that didn't treat her right. She was sitting cross legged on the floor, sitting beside Margot. She was surprised at just how many other kids there were in the circle, but it made her sad that they'd all been treated like she had been. Kids didn't deserve that. Kids didn't deserve to know pain and hurt the way that she had.
"Ellie, do you want to go first?" Lydia asked. "You get to hold the magic ball while you talk," she smiled. Ellie nodded even though she didn't really want to go first. Taylor would love to hear she'd been fearless and gone first out of everyone.  So Lydia through her the magic ball. It was sparkly - it was lots and lots of little glass squares all stuck together in neat rows. Ellie hadn't seen one before - but she'd heard Taylor talking about them.
"Hi. I'm Ellie... I'm nine years old and an interesting thing about me is..." Ellie could think of lots of little interesting things about herself. Like how she'd seen her birth mother's dead body or how she had a scar on her foot from when he birth father got too angry or how she didn't like showers or how she could only drink water out of a drink bottle... there were so many things she could say. But she didn't say any of them. Because Taylor had told her that there were lots more important things about her. There were so many other things that made her Ellie, not just those monsters.
"I... I helped my Mom come up with some of the dance moves for her tour."
"Woah," Margot audibly exclaimed. "That's like the coolest interesting fact ever, Ellie."
Lydia smiled. "It sure is! That must have been so fun! Alright Margot, it's your turn next. Ellie, could you pass the magic ball onto Margot?"
Ellie passed the ball to Margot with a smile, proud of herself. She'd spoken up! She'd never done that at school - she'd never raised her hand or spoken... but she'd done it today.
"I'm Margot and I'm nine and three quarters." She giggled. "My Daddy has a dessert on his menu that's named after me."
"What is it?" Ellie asked.
"It's a caramel ice cream with chocolate mousse andddd a little tart thingy. It's really yum. It's really fancy too. He always serves mine with extra chocolate," she giggled.

Taylor hadn't expected to get into the nitty gritty details about how it felt to be the parents in the situations they were involved in. She hadn't expected to be talking all about their thoughts and personal stories like they were.
"I think there's a lot of focus about the kids and what the kids have been through, and there's not so much of a concern towards the parent helping them through the situation." Kirsten acknowledged. Taylor watched as many of the adults in the room nodded, and felt a sense of validation that it was hard being a parent.
"Of course, parenting itself is hard, but when you're raising a child that has been through some sort of nightmare that you couldn't even begin to imagine... at the hands of other adults. I have a daughter who I gave birth to, but I also have a son who was beaten every time he spoke out of hand, and raising them is completely different." She paused, glancing down at a sheet of paper.
"Derek, what's something that you do with Violet that you couldn't do with Margot when you first brought her home?"

Taylor wasn't overly fond of the questions, and felt like she was back in Highschool again.
"Margot was absolutely terrified of being on her own," Derek admitted. "At night, we'd have to take turns sleeping beside her. She had to feel one of us touching her at all times, just to feel safe. It was normal for us, and it's only in this past year that she's been to school and gotten some independence that she's realised that she will survive being on her own." He paused, running his hands through his hair. The sun was shining through a crack in the curtain, and was making his burnt sienna skin glow, lighting up his eyes. She liked his eyes.