It All Falls Down
This chapter deals with some heavy subjects. It isn’t gore, but it does step into some of the details surrounding very violent death. There is comfort and solace in this chapter as well.
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I was barely paying attention to what I was doing. There was this loud ringing in my ears as I moved about the room, pulling clothes off of hangers and putting them back on again.
“Mom,” Collin said, trying to grab my shoulder. There was the sound of thumping up the stairs as, inevitably, the others followed. “Mom. Please.”
“Need to keep busy,” I said, my voice breathy. “Need to keep busy. We can pick out outfits for tomorrow. Brush teeth, brush hair- we can definitely brush hair.”
“Mama,” Lucy said from one of the twins’ bed- I couldn’t really tell whose right now. “Mama, sit, you look sick.”
“Sylvia.” Aegis was the first one in the room. It was too small for all of us- too cramped. I felt the walls closing in. “Sylvia, you need to sit down, you need to go-“
“No,” I said, shaking off his hand and Dylan’s. “No no no no no, no. I need, need to keep busy.” I grabbed one of Dylan’s new shirts and laid it on the bed with shaking fingers. “Keep busy, keep busy. That’s how I did this then, and now.”
“Has she ever been like this before?” Someone asked. I couldn’t tell who.
“Only once,” Dylan said. “That was when… what’s-his-stupid-face left.”
“It wasn’t this bad,” Collin said. They all sounded far away. “Nothing’s ever been this bad, that I can remember.”
“Come here, Lucy.” Jade? “Come here. Mama’s okay, she’s just scared.”
Was Lucy crying? Was I crying? Someone was crying.
“Sylvia, stop moving,” Aegis said, trying to catch me as I pushed past into the hall.
“No.” I threw his arm off of me. “No. No. I can’t think. Stop. I need to keep moving.” I went into the bathroom and dumped a drawer of things out on the ground- time to organize. I could organize. I used to re-organize the bathrooms ten years ago. Kept the house sparkling clean, and it kept the memories at bay.
“Did your mom tell you anything about what happened?” That was most likely Ivy.
“Just what you probably know,” Collin said. “She went to dinner with Grandma, Grandpa, and… and our mom and dad. They had to drive home separately. Mom got stuck at a light, and then there were ambulances and police and she had to go to the hospital because our mom was-“
“Hang on.” Aegis. I knew his voice. “Hang on- were the cops already there?”
“I… I don’t know, she didn’t say.”
“How did she tell you, exactly?”
“That’s basically it. She got there, and then there were cops-“
“Oh, fuck.”
The door to the bathroom banged open and, in the same second, Aegis was holding me. Really holding me, the way nobody had held me in a long time.
There was nothing I could do. Nothing my old tactics could do to hold it all back. It was a tidal wave crashing at a small, wooden gate, and I couldn’t even see what I was doing anyway, because the edges of my vision were black and I was holding my breath, trying so hard to keep it all in.
“Sylvia,” Aegis breathed against me. I was wrapped up against his chest, his arms totally eclipsing me. “All the fucking pieces were laid out in front of me, and I’m so sorry I didn’t put it together.”
The house was silent, but I could hear screams- my screams. My own screams from ten years ago, always echoing at the back of my mind. What movies don’t tell you is that there is no one there with you. That cut to black, that scene transition from when the hero finds their loved ones in literal pieces across the road, blood everywhere, their blood, your shared blood. In reality, there’s no fade to black. No cut to transition. The hero has to do it all by herself, and she’s not a hero, she’s just some random stupid eighteen year old driving a car that she wasn’t supposed to have for more than a year because it was just her first car, and it’s full of all of the presents we bought in advance for the stupid fool’s sister, because she had her whole life ahead of her and all these dreams and hopes, and now she’s lying broken, but her breathing’s coming out in labored bursts and she’s begging the stupid fool who isn’t a hero to call someone, please, save the babies, all with her last, desperate breaths, because she was the real fucking hero of the story, and no one knew or remembered because she was gone, gone, gone-
I was dry heaving. I couldn’t actually tell if that had all been in my head, or if I’d said it out loud, or if I was even still speaking. My whole body crumpled against Aegis, because no one had held me in so long, not since that day when Rudy Rodriguez showed up on the scene, because he was the first one. The FBI were tracking a crazed, illegal werewolf, and boy, had they found him. Rudy was the one who arrived on scene first, and he was the one who found me sitting in the middle of that long, empty road, because part of town had been closed down and we’d gone the long way.
So many small little things that had all come together to create my worst nightmare, leading to me covered in blood, holding my dying sister desperately clinging to life for the babies she loved more than life itself, destined to be born prematurely, made a little stronger by the werewolf venom coursing through her veins. Strong enough to survive and grow up and be stuck with that stupid fool who was never meant to be the hero of the story, who couldn’t be the hero of the story.
“Sylvia,” Aegis was saying softly, over and over. His arms were so tight around my torso, his legs on either side of me, completely eclipsing me, and it was the warmest I had ever been, the safest. “Sylvia. Come back. It’s all over. We know now. It’s all over.”
“It’s not,” I whispered. My throat was raw; I must’ve been saying at least some of that out loud. “It’s never over. I keep failing every single day. I’m failing her babies, failing her legacy. I have her greatest loves, her greatest treasures, and I’ve let them down so many times. I let her down. I’ve tried so hard to make a family, but we’ve struggled so hard, and for what? I’m a failure.”
“No you haven’t,” Aegis said, but suddenly he pulled away from me, and I was momentarily heartbroken, because I just wanted so bad to be held-
And then there were three smaller people crushing me all at once. We nearly collapsed on the floor of the bathroom, and I realized that Dylan, Collin, and Lucy were all crying too.
“I’m sorry, mom,” Collin said, gripping me. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“Why?” I said. I grabbed them, and I felt that feeling return, because for ten years, they were the only things keeping me together. “You haven’t failed.”
“I blamed you. I’m sorry.”
“It’s my fault. I let you down.”
“No,” Dylan said, gripping me. “No, you didn’t. We just didn’t get it.”
“Mama,” Lucy sobbed. “Mama, I don’t want you to be sad. I’m so happy you’re my Mama, please don’t be sad!”
“I don’t deserve you,” I whispered.
We sat there and cried, going in circles over and over, and then there was a sudden new weight on our little group. It was Ivy, I realized, because the shadows at the edges of my vision were beginning to clear up. She was crying, now, too.
“I never knew,” she said, voice cracking. “I’m so sorry, Sylvia. I’m so stupid. I should’ve realized something was wrong, but I never could have guessed. I’m so stupid.”
Jade came next, and she said nothing, her black hair draping over us, still speckled with flour and sugar and who knew what. Tears made tracks through the white powder.
“I think if we joined in,” I heard Paul say, his voice thick, “we might accidentally break the bathtub.”
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It was a while until we all calmed down enough to actually leave the bathroom. By that point, there was no going to bed, and I gave the night up for lost and we all moved to sit outside in that cool fall air, covered in whatever blankets we scrounged from around the house and drinking hot chocolate. Lucy was cuddled up on my chest, eyes drifting shut, but her fists were tightened around my sweater. Collin had his head on my left shoulder shoulder, awkwardly, because he was a bit too tall now, and Dylan was leaning against the other.
We all sat on that back patio and looked out at the stars. I felt lighter than I had in years, but somehow, way, way more tired.
“Rudy must’ve alluded to this so many times,” Aegis said quietly. He was watching me, the only one of us not looking up at the stars. “I feel like a moron.”
“I can’t believe he never told anyone. I asked him not to, but now I feel dumb for doing that to him.”
“I feel like the worst friend on the planet.” Ivy was curled up in her chair, eyes on the stars. Like the rest of us, her eyes were puffy. “You haven’t failed anyone, you know that, right?”
“I think I’ve made a lot of mistakes,” I said dryly.
“You always tell us we didn’t come with manuals,” Collin reminded me.
“No, you sure as heck didn’t.”
“How did you even do it?” Paul asked, shaking his head. “I try to picture me becoming a dad at eighteen, and that’s a scary thought.”
“That’s a scary thought for me, too,” Ivy muttered, and we all gave very tired snorts.
“We should’ve gone looking for you,” Jade said, her voice small. “We should’ve gone looking the second we all found out you were still alive.”
“I can’t imagine how that would’ve gone,” I said. “I wasn’t exactly all there. I was pouring myself into every aspect of keeping the twins alive as possible. Marie had to be flown out of town to a hospital, so I just… never went back home.”
“How long was Rudy around?” Aegis asked.
“In those early days? I don’t even know. He and his wife were around for a long, long time. They came… I think every day. I think sometimes, Rudy slept over. That period’s a bit foggy, which… I regret.” My throat tightened up. “I barely remember the boys during those early days. I don’t have any photos. Lord knows, taking pictures wasn’t really in my head at the time, and I wasn’t exactly calling up photography studios to put together family picture days. There’s so little from that time…”
“That’s why there are no picture books,” Dylan said. “I always wondered.”
“I was a bit… upset.”
“Who wouldn’t be?” Ivy commented.
We sat there for a long time, until the kids all finally drifted off in their seats. I tried to put Lucy in her bed, but she panicked when she woke up, and the boys were too anxious, so for the first time in years, I put the three of them in my bed, where the promptly all passed out before I even had a chance to climb in.
“I guess I’ll head out,” Ivy said. I walked them all out to the front porch. “Feels wrong to leave, now.”
“I can sleep on the couch, if you don’t want to be alone,” Aegis said. He looked dead serious. “You’re home, now. You’ll never be alone again.”
“It’s all right,” I said tiredly. “I think we might take a sick day tomorrow, though. Give us a little extra time to get all that stuff made, anyway.”
“Yeah,” Ivy said. “I’ll come by and visit during my shift, bring you some coffee.”
“I can bring some movies,” Jade said softly. “Maybe some games, a couple of my consoles. I have the newest ones, I bet the kids would love those.”
“Oh, that’d fix everything,” I laughed. “But you don’t have-“
“I’ll stay the night,” Aegis said, leaning an arm against the doorway. “Jade can bring some extra clothes for me tomorrow.”
She rolled her eyes. “Thanks for asking.”
He raised an eyebrow at her. “Please?”
“Yeah, all right, I guess.”
We all chuckled tiredly with laughter.
“I’ll open up the auto repair,” Paul said, nodding to Aegis. “You take a sick day too, boss. God knows you need it anyway.”
“And if Lawrence shows up?” Aegis asked, bemused.
“I’ll tell him you’ll yack into the pumpkin pie, just for him, if he goes sticking his face in your business.”
I wanted to tell Aegis to go home, but the words kept sticking in my throat. I let him walk back in through the door as everyone left, and every time I opened my mouth, I just closed it again, the words continually getting stuck together.
Aegis snagged a few blankets and dropped onto my couch, looking far too big, but also far too content.
“Sorry,” I said, unable to tell him to go home.
“I want to be here,” he said, leaning his head back. “You wake me up for anything, got it? Anything.”
“Don’t threaten me with a good time,” I said, before wishing I could stuff my shoe in my mouth. Like, seriously, flirting? Right now? Of all times?
But Aegis just snorted and gave me a look that made my tired stomach flip itself into knots. “Definitely wake me up for that.”
I threw my hands up and rolled my eyes. “For someone who’s never been with anyone, you’re way to good at making a girl get flustered.”
“Asking around, are you?”
I scowled. “No!”
“Right.” He settled into the couch. “I hoped you hadn’t changed your mind after all these years. Biggest regret I’ve ever had was never saying anything.”
I opened my mouth, then shut it, because I was too drained to actually fathom what he was very openly hinting at. Was it even a ‘hint’ if it was obvious? Oh, whatever. “Good night, Aegis.”
“Good night, Sylvia.”
And with that, I turned and headed up the stairs, where I was supposed to just somehow pretend that the guy I’d been dreaming about for way longer than a decade wasn’t currently spread out on my couch because he was that concerned about me.