eilidhink:
sniperares:
He never spoke of these things. Sharing his past and talking about a family he never wanted to see again—those were things better left buried and forgotten, where they could cause him less pain. True, he had yet to heal from the pain he shoved aside, but not thinking about it all was so much easier. It made him feel free.
So why was it, that when she asked him, he had a strong desire to answer? He didn’t even think. Words came spilling out of him and, while mostly broken into pieces and lacking in major details, he felt that maybe she would be smart enough to fill in the holes. That was maybe why he spoke. It was easier to tell if the details were a blur rather than clear and precise.
“I was a kid,” he began, hands trembling. “Not old enough to no better, but I should have… I should have said or done something, but instead I let her—“ He stopped himself short. Reaching forward, he placed the bottle on the table and sat back again, one hand pinched the bridge of his nose and the other rubbed against his jeans. It was a nervous habit. “She was a lot like you. Confident, charming, outspoken… Beautiful too, or at least that’s what everyone always said. I didn’t know. All I knew was that it didn’t seem right, the things she did. I should have said something to anyone, but I was so fucking afraid of what would happen.”
“I didn’t think anyone would give a fuck anyway. Parents were always looking for their next job or too busy doing something else,” he continued. “I tried to tell them once and they didn’t believe me then, so I didn’t try again. The only one that did anything about it was my brother.”
He stopped short. Anthony was an even sorer subject for him. He couldn’t talk about his brother, not when he wasn’t able to see him or talk to him in person anymore. That pain was still too new. He spent years covering up his childhood hurts, but losing Anthony? That was pain on another level.
“It was all my fault anyway.”
It took a moment for the pieces to fall into place, for Eilidh’s mind to accept what she was hearing and to understand it, but as they did, the room seemed to shrink around them, the air vanishing and the light fading. Eilidh had to stand up, but her body wouldn’t let her leave; instead, she paced, one arm wrapped around herself, one hand in her hair, feeling like she had to throw something or scream or throw up or all three.
She was thinking about Neal. How could she not? About how she had fought back. About how different it all would have been if she had been a child, or more of a child than she was, if he had been an adult. She hated him, still, with a dark anger that she hated to feel but couldn’t seem to let go. She hated people like him. Who did the things he did.
Like Jason’s aunt. The aunt he saw when he looked at her.
When she reached the wall across from him, Eilidh stopped and leaned against it, letting it hold her up. Her knees felt weak, and she realized she was barely breathing.
“Is that what you think of me? You think I’d…” her voice came out like a sob, wanting to be angry and self-righteous but sounding more hurt than anything. He had never hurt her like this, and he hadn’t even been trying to. I wouldn’t, she screamed inside. How could you think I would? I’m not like him, I’m not like them, they hurt me, too. She couldn’t look at him, knowing if she did she would only see the child he had been and that seeing that would make her fall apart.
It was all my fault anyway. If he had been anyone else, she would have held him, comforted him, told him in a steady voice how wrong he was. If he was someone else, if she was someone else, if he hadn’t just told her that she reminded him of…
But she couldn’t let him say those things. She couldn’t let him think those things. Whatever he thought about her and however much it hurt, there was a part of her that knew he was trying to protect himself. Hadn’t she spent most of her life doing the same? Walking around with her claws out to anyone who made her think of him, letting the anger keep her safe?
“Don’t say that,” she finally answered, in a small voice that he might not even hear if he didn’t want to listen. “You were a fuckin’ child. It wasnae your fault what she did any more than it was my fault when somebody tried to do it to me. Less. I was big enough to fight back.”
Eilidh didn’t want to be there anymore. It was all too much, and she didn’t know how to feel, or how to name and control all the feelings that were storming through her. He didn’t want her here, he never had, and she wanted to leave, but she knew that if she tried to walk to the door, her legs wouldn’t support her. So she stayed where she was, blinking away tears, letting the wall keep her steady until she could move on her own.
The silence that followed her words was deafening in its uncertainty. He wasn’t sure whether he should ask her to leave or plead for her not to leave him alone with too many bottles of alcohol and a penchant for punishment. It felt like running out of air and knowing the one thing that would help you breathe is within your grasp, but choosing not to reach out for it. He was his own worst enemy, and he had known all along.
Burying his face in his hands, he leaned forward and braced himself on his knees. He couldn’t look at her, so he chose not to see. His heart was pounding and his stomach was churning and all he could think was that she was wrong and he could have told someone, but like a record his mind was skipping back to her own confession, her words echoing in his head about her own trials. She barely admitted any details, but he heard enough and he felt all the worse for it.
Dom had told him before that Eilidh would never be the type to do what his aunt had done. He said that EIlidh was a kind soul and that her heart was bigger than most others. If he needed any proof, the bartender should have been it. The man was nearly as anti-social as Jason himself, but for whatever reason he had taken a liking to Eilidh. Jason had pinned the reason for his change on his assumption of Eilidh’s personality, but perhaps that wasn’t all it.
He was confused more now than he ever had been before. For all the glaring differences between his present and his past, he couldn’t get over how angry and scared he still felt. Forgetting her words, he still felt like the child he was then, and when he spoke he knew he would sound it.
Unable to remain seated, he pushed himself up off the couch and walked to the opposite side of the room. His living area combined with the kitchen and he made his way to the sink. Immediately his hands gripped tightly to the counter and he leaned over it. He needed to say something. He couldn’t keep letting her see him like this.
“I’m sorry,” he apologized. His voice came out much stronger than he anticipated, so he chanced turning to face her. He looked over her form and some emotion he couldn’t pin down made his chest feel tight. “I shouldn’t have…” He paused. “None of this should have come out. Dom told me I couldn’t keep putting my shit on you, but I… I didn’t know what else to do with it. It’s fucking stupid. I’m sorry.”
Apologies were foreign to him, but it felt appropriate. His shit dug up some of her own and he wasn’t a complete asshole. Had he known her own situation, he wasn’t sure how he would have reacted, but he hoped it would have been less himself and more someone with an ounce of sympathy.
