Closed call me a monster

[Rowan Baros]

Rowan sat with her head in her hands staring at the tiled floor of the bathroom. She couldn't say how long she'd been sitting there, if she was honest, since she barely remembered the walk up, but she'd been showered, dried off and now she just sat almost staring off into space. It wasn't as though she was completely unaware about any of it either, she knew where she was, now, she just did not necessarily have the brain power to complete understand what she wanted to say. Leda asked her what was going on as she'd stepped out of the shower feeling about ten times better than she had when she'd stepped into it, but everything that had been in her brain had subsequently just left her brain just as quickly and now she sort of just stared at the ground because she didn't really know what to say about any of it.

How did one tell another person that they were a monster, that she'd done some horrible things in the last ten years and now they had finally caught up with her and she didn't know how to handle it. It was something she had been thinking about for days, and now it sort of just sat with her. She'd changed her name on everything, left it all to Elio, and she hadn't even been to see Honey, not since she'd dropped Priscilla off. She didn't want to talk to Zennon, because she didn't know how to and she felt like he wouldn't really understand. The stuff with Sam had been so different, they were never really in love with each other, she didn't think her brother had ever felt about anyone the way she felt about Elio. She didn't think she would ever feel about anyone the way she felt about Elio either - and she just didn't know how to put any of this into words, and so instead, she just... sighed, and she shook her head, and then, after that, she cried, because she didn't know what else she was supposed to do. She'd ruined everything. She didn't think she could ever make anything right ever again.

@Leda Layton ​

 

[Leda Layton]

After Leda had left Mervyn and Monty attending to the triplets and a much-needed cup of tea, she'd finally managed to get Rowan into the shower. Not daring to leave her on her own in fear that she'd come back minutes later to have found her fallen and injuring herself in her drunken state, the redhead had proceeded to feed Zennon's sister everything she'd needed through the frosted glass door, including a fresh towel once she'd finished. For a moment, Leda considered Rowan to be like one of her own daughters, someone who just needed her to be there for the bare necessities that she may well have struggled to do on her own that night. Leda had dressed her in some of her spare pajamas, green ones this time, if only because she wasn't going to risk the red or blue pair making the situation worse, before sitting Rowan down on one of the small stools in the bathroom that the triplets would use, while Leda would brush out their hair, much as Leda was doing right now.

Rowan hadn't really given her any information to go off at all, but as she began crying again, the fresh wave of grief overtaking her once more, Leda lay down the hairbrush on the counter beside her. She'd been sat on the toilet behind Rowan, the height the perfect difference for her to detangle her knotty hair. Leda had never broken up with someone. In truth, she'd never really dated anyone either. She and Mervyn had been best friends for as long as she could remember, it just felt right when they made things legal for the sake of their jobs, houses, and family, too. She didn't know what it was like to have someone walk away from her, at least, not someone that she'd been dating. Leda could relate to the feeling of losing a loved one though, and Leda knew better than most what Rowan had been through in that regard. One day that person was in your life, and then they just weren't. Not having gotten an answer the last time Leda had questioned Rowan, she decided on a different tactic. "If you could tell Elio one thing right now, knowing he would hear it, what would you say?" Her response would in theory at least give Leda some perspective on what happened.​

 

[Monty Pendleton]

Monty stayed sitting out on the front step for some time. After cleaning his shoes (and the hems of his trousers, and his sleeve), he sipped the tea Mervyn had brought out for him, and by degrees he began to relax. His hands stopped shaking. The garden stopped moving. His racing mind slowed. Once the caffeine hit, the process would reverse, but for now, he was OK.

It was getting late. He didn't want to hand Rowan over and leave, but he didn't want to be another person Leda and Mervyn had to worry about, either. Perhaps he could still make himself useful somehow. Draining his mug, he went back inside. The house was oddly quiet, now; all the chaos of the evening had settled, and a sense of calm prevailed. Monty washed his mug and knocked on the living room door. Inside, he found Mervyn sitting on the settee, an open book on his lap and the triplets gathered sleepily around him.

"Sorry," Monty said. "Is there anything else I can do to help? Shall I go?"

"I think it's under control," was Mervyn's reply. "You going home? You OK?"

Monty nodded.

"You take care. And thanks, by the way - for bringing her. You did the right thing."

He'd done the only thing he could think of - but he was incredibly grateful to hear this all the same. With a wave goodbye to the children, he showed himself out of the house. Now what? He didn't really want to go home. If he went home, he'd sit and think about Rowan, and all the ways he might have handled the situation better. But he didn't have anywhere else to be. The world felt very empty all of a sudden, and so very vast.

He picked a direction, and started to walk.

 

[Rowan Baros]

Rowan felt Leda's question echo in her mind as she sat there, the weight of everything pressing down on her. She squeezed her eyes shut, tears still streaming down her face, and tried to find the words that had been so elusive. "If I could tell Elio one thing...," she began, her voice trembling. She took a deep breath, feeling the knot in her chest tighten. "I would tell him that I'm sorry. Sorry for everything I did, for everything I didn't do. That I miss him so much it hurts, and that even though I messed up, I never stopped loving him. I just... I want him to know that I regret every mistake, every hurtful word. And if I could go back and change it all, I would in a heartbeat."

She paused, her body shaking with the effort of holding back sobs. "I know I don't deserve forgiveness, but I wish he could understand how much he means to me. How lost I am without him. And... if there's any chance, any small chance that we could fix this, I'd do anything. Anything to make it right." Rowan's tears flowed freely now, her emotions laid bare. She looked up at Leda, seeking some form of comfort, some reassurance that it wasn't too late to make things right. "I just want him to know that I'm not giving up, even if it feels like I've already lost everything." She didn't want to go back to the way things were, but she didn't want to see him, she didn't want to know how he really felt about her, because he'd made that clear enough already. She had given him everything she had because she was trying to make up for everything she had taken from him over the last ten years, they'd never really fit together.​

 

[Leda Layton]

Despite hoping that Leda would have a better understanding of how things had come to be with her question, the redhead felt none the wiser as she listened to Rowan pouring out her apologies. Leda did know what it was like to lose someone so close to you that you no longer understood where that left you, alone and figuring out the world with new eyes, however, it wasn't the same thing as losing your boyfriend. Even Rowan, she knew, understood that. Even if perhaps she didn't realise it just yet. Leda continued to brush Rowan's hair, slightly tugging at the knots with a little less compassion than she had been, as though she could yank Rowan back into reality just a little bit. Leda wasn't sure however whether she'd noticed, and she continued to listen in silence as Zennon's sister spoke, waiting until she'd finished before figuring out how to respond to her.

"Regret doesn't get you very far," Leda recalled her own seventh year, regret was peeking around every corner when she was processing the events back then. "Besides, you can't tell me that in over ten years, Elio did nothing worthy of an apology either. It would be pointless and unrealistic to shoulder all the responsibility." Leda continued to scoop her hair backward with the brush so that she could begin to braid it. Although she didn't voice it, the main thing Leda thought Rowan should take responsibility for was assuming that she could happily date a gay guy for her entire life. Even the former Slytherin knew better than to assume their relationship would have worked forever. She glanced over towards Rowan, the tears streaming down her cheeks, "You want to fix things, but what if this is how you fix it. The problem was never your relationship, it's that that wasn't sustainable if you wanted to be properly happy," she added, "and you're fixing your happiness by walking away." Leda was now finishing tying off the braid, glad that if Rowan continued to wave hello to her dinner at least her hair would stay clean. "There's more to life than annoying boys anyway. Why are you letting someone else tell you how to feel?"​

 

[Rowan Baros]

Admin ID #92605​

"He called me a monster, and it's true, I am one. I knew ages ago it wasn't going to work but I just... I thought maybe if I just didn't say anything, maybe I could... I don't know," she said, hands going to her face again as Leda continued with her hair. She was probably right, there was a lot that Rowan probably didn't need to take responsibility for, but the point was that it had all started because of Rowan. Well, most of it. It was true that they'd gotten back together the first time because he'd asked her to stay and she could never say no to him. That was part of the problem with them, he couldn't say no to her really and she couldn't say not to him either. They kept breaking each other so they could put each other back together in a way that fit the best, but then they would start growing in different directions again and so they'd just repeat the process until this apparently - the final chapter. But somehow this felt different this time. She'd needed to push him so far out of her life that they wouldn't snap back together like they always did. She needed him to think she didn't want anything to do with him so he wouldn't come back to her. She needed to believe he thought all the things he said to her were true so that she wouldn't go looking for him. Maybe that was the problem.

Why are you letting someone else tell you how to feel? Rowan took a deep breath. "Because for years, he was the only person who could," she said, coming to a time in her life she preferred not to talk about in polite company. "There was a long, long time there where I thought I would never feel anything again. After Elsie and my dad died, that felt like it for me. The end of the world." She'd been sixteen years old, she had never had a moment free of her sister and then all of a sudden every single moment of her time was free of her sister. It had hit her like losing a limb. Only worse, because she could never fix it. You could regrow limbs in some cases, get prosthetics if you needed to, but she could never get something to replace Elsie. Except... for a little while, she'd had him. He told her how she felt when she wasn't quite sure anymore, reminded her that life was more than the sixth year boys dorm. Let her grieve in the way she'd needed to. Mourn an incomprehensible loss. "I didn't know how to feel without him."​

 

[Leda Layton]

For whatever reasons Rowan had stayed, Leda thought she already knew the consequences and the damage involved with that decision. She didn't need Leda to point it out. As Rowan began to tell her how Elio had helped her feel again after everything that happened with Elsie and their father, Leda decided there and then that fourteen years after a similar event of her own, what she had been through would finally be put into words. Leda got up from her seat and moved to crouch in front of Rowan, so that she could tell she was being serious rather than hiding behind her. "When Olive died, I was the same." she began, "My seventh year at school was the hardest year of my life and no one tells you what it's like to just carry on as normal. One day someone is in your life, and then they're gone, and no amount of preparation makes you ready for something like that," It wouldn't have mattered even if Leda had known how to deal with it, she still would have felt what she'd felt. "But you know who found me?" she asked Rowan, eyes fixed on her face regardless of whether she tried to hide behind her hands. "Zennon. Mervyn and I were always close, but it was Zennon who got me to concentrate on what was in front of me. I was Head Girl. I was the Editor of our school paper. None of that mattered when Olive left, and I was ready to throw all of that away. Zennon made me realise that just because Olive was gone didn't mean the others in my life were too. I still had him, Mervyn, Sapphire, Luna, Liam, Jake, Minnie, Wendall, Ten, Felix" she reeled off the names of those she'd worked with or befriended over the years, and while she knew she perhaps hadn't been a typical friend to any of them, they'd always meant something to her. "I wouldn't be a writer now if Zennon hadn't convinced me not to leave Hogwarts Monthly, and writing became my outlet for telling the truth. For all I know I could have been a professional Beater by now," she grinned, having wondered on occasion whether she would have made a fine one. "There was nothing wrong with allowing Elio to be a large part of your life when your grapple fell off the rock, but it's what you do with the strength you find from that person that matters most of all. Don't forget who else has been there for you, and don't waste your efforts on doing anything that doesn't make you happy."​

 

[Rowan Baros]

Rowan felt Leda move, crouching in front of her, and something inside her told her she needed to look up right now, and look at Leda's face and so that was what she did. She listened with big, tear filled eyes as Leda said her piece, unable to take her eyes away from her brother's best friend's face. The problem was, she had always been so wrapped up in herself and in Elio that most other friendships had simply slipped away. One name did come to mind though, Ilija, and then she remembered that he'd lied to her when he'd told her that things would work out. He'd said she could fix it and now here she was sitting on the lid of Leda's and Mervyn's toilet and she could barely pull to stings of thought together. She was so out of it she sometimes wondered if she might not have been floating instead and she had this other life that no one could touch that still included Honey and Elio - only she knew it wasn't real because she couldn't feel it. All she could feel was a certain numbness. What if she never managed to ever see Elio again? He'd been a huge part of her life for so long she wasn't sure she knew how to function without him. She swallowed, maybe she was just going to have to learn to live without him. She hoped to the gods that wasn't the case, but maybe she just didn't have any other choice. Maybe this was just how it had to be. "Ilija," she said, the way his name formed on her mouth more like a cry than a word. "He said I could fix this, he said I cared about people, but..." that wasn't what Elio had said, Elio had called her cruel.​