chapter 7 - 来吧来吧我们结婚吧
It's early January. Houston doesn't exactly get freezing, but it's cold enough that you'd need a few layers going out—not that you're planning to. Still, the knock at your door has you catalouging everything you might need to escape from the apartment on short notice. You find yourself grateful that you keep most of your things packed away neatly, and carefully enough that you'll be able to tell if anything has been disturbed, but the knock is also insistent enough that you decide to deal with it first before gathering your emergency bags.
It's early January, so the window is closed, the heating's been turned on. You're still cold enough to grab some socks to slip on before you go open the door, which means you have a few more precious seconds before your life slips back onto the tracks you'd forgotten had been laid out for you.
It's early January, and there's a woman at your door holding an infant.
When you open the door, she looks up—though she pauses, as if you're not who she's expecting to see. She's got tight bleached-white curls dipped in hot bright pink ending right above her shoulders, the color contrasting with her brown skin. As she frowns, looking around the place, you note the snake bite piercings set under her lip, her brightly-colored sweater loose enough that you can see the black top underneath. The thrumming anxiety in her chest is not helping her at all. Weirdly enough, you can't sense anything under it, even when you try to dig deeper—it's like pressing down on fabric spread over a fan, the soft tight buzz giving way under your touch into nothing at all. The child she's holding tight against her chest is strangely pale compared to her—it's bundled up well, a few strands of bright yellow peeking out through the fabric.
Her eyes are the same searing shade as her highlights.
“You're Dante, right? Dante Strider?” she asks, and there's a lilt in her voice that sets you on edge. She's asking like she already knows, like she's reading off a script. It's a tone that lies easy on your own tongue, but hearing it directed at you is strange.
“Yeah,” you say, because what else can you say at this point? There's too many factors you can't account for, depending on how she found the address. Right now, for all intents and purposes, you are Dante Strider.
She looks around again, and you wordlessly open the door into your apartment. For a moment you panic, wonder if there's anything that you've forgotten to stash away in your last paranoia-induced clean-up session, but your place is—presentable, at the very least. Going by your own standards, you'd say it's the best it's looked since... ever.
She walks in, and you close the door behind you as she sits at the small table in the kitchen. Luckily you have two chairs. You sit down across from her, silent as she coos at the child in her arms.
Eventually she clears her throat, looks at you.
“So,” she starts, sheepish, “I'm guessin' you don't get a lotta guests. Sorry for intrudin' on you.”
“No biggie. Ain't polite to turn away a mother and child at your door.”
She laughs, short and sharp.
“You'd be surprised at how some boys act.”
“To be fair, it's not every day you gotta deal with suddenly bein' a father, either.”
She smiles, and rather than the half-way awkward, anxious one she'd been wearing, this one is sharp, bitter.
“Glad you catch on quick.”
“I'd say my quick wits were probably what hooked you in the first place, along with my boyish looks and rogueish smile, but I wouldn't actually know. Could just as well have tripped over my feet straight into your bed.”
The woman is quiet as you speak, her hands still cradling the child. You wonder what Dante has told her. What he left of himself with her, what he has left of his life. Of yours, if anything. Apparently not enough to try and find her again, you think, and feel a vague contempt make its nest in your stomach.
“Musta been real wasted, forgettin' a pretty lady like yourself,” you say, and hopefully it's regret she hears in your tone instead of disgust. And you still don't know her name, by the way. “Miss...?”
She sighs, looking up at the ceiling rather than you as she speaks. Her voice does not shake.
“At least you're honest about it. Lalonde. Roux Lalonde.”
“Miss Lalonde.”
The name seems familiar, but you can't place where you might have come across it. Roux shifts the child, rubs at her temple. She glances around the apartment, as if to appraise it. Eventually, she speaks again.
“Y'know, my ma wants me to drag you to the church and make you marry me.”
Another laugh, this one soft. Disbelief.
“And you?”
“Roux Strider don't exactly roll off the tongue, in my opinion. Plus, eighteen is a bit early to be promisin' t'spend the rest of your life with someone. Only reason I'm here in the first place is...”
She pauses and looks down at the kid. For a moment, you expect the full force of her feelings to hit you square in the jaw, but nothing of the sort happens. Just a contemplative silence between the two of you. It's the first you've experienced since you came here.
“My ma's...” she starts, taking a deep breath before continuing, “my ma's kickin' me out. Turns out it gets a lot harder to hide an alcohol problem when you're tryin' to raise a kid at home. Ain't that right, Dave?”
She directs the question at the child, who seems to be half-asleep. He doesn't respond, only gurgles a bit.
“I gotta go to rehab, but I don't... I don't trust her with my kid. Figured I should try 'n get the guy who's actually responsible for the li'l guy to do his job.”
She smiles at you again. There's that sharp thing under it again, but it's pointed straight at you this time. The corner of her mouth is a knife at your throat, inches away from a cut you're not even sure you'd notice.
You look at the child. Your brother's child. It's only a few weeks old. A child he has abandoned, if he even knows it exists.
boo fucking hoo, man. just say you aren't the guy she's looking for. you've been playing along for no fucking reason, just say you can't.
“I can take care of the kid for ya,” you say, surprising her along with yourself, “at least while you're in.”
“That's—” she flounders for a moment, as if she wasn't actually expecting Dante Strider to help her with his kid, “that'd mean a lot, thank you—it's—you're sure?”
“If you don't want me around after, I can just do alimony payments or somethin'. Dunno how it'll work if we ain't been married, but...”
She seems to regain a bit of her composure at that.
“Really, I'll be out of your hair soon as possible. No use trying to hold on to a man who doesn't want to be tied down.”
No, you think, something deep in your gut starting to churn. It's your fault this woman has come looking for your brother in the wrong place entirely. You can clean up your own messes. Dante does not need to know about this at all.
“Didn't know my real dad myself. Figure I can at least let my kid have that.”
It rolls out of your mouth like sickly sweet syrup, sticking at your gums and leaving the back of your throat sour. Left speechless for a moment, her eyes are wide as she tries to find something to say.
“You...” she starts, and then the smile returns, soft in a way you haven't seen before, “you really are somethin', huh.”
“I try,” you say.
The grin on your face, halfway between smirk and awkward admission, is a practiced one. You wonder how long you can keep it up.
⁙
After the initial conversation, you offer Roux something to drink. She perks up at that, but you don't have anything alcoholic, so she accepts your offering of shitty instant coffee instead. Dave wakes up at that, and starts crying your damn ears off until Roux starts nursing him. It's slightly awkward, but you assure her you can handle seeing a tit or two, even if you can't remember seeing hers before. You don't really know what to do in the meanwhile, though, so you just end up staring at the wall behind her as she's feeding him.
You wonder how long you can actually keep it up. She said she would be going to rehab, so you're guessing it would be around a month or two of taking care of the kid on your own. Roux doesn't seem like the kind of person to leave someone alone with her child for any amount of time without an itemized list of things you'll need to do, which suits you fine. You can follow instructions.
When the kid's nice and full again, he goes right back to sleeping. guess it takes a lot of energy to cry that fuckin' loud. Roux turns back to her cup of coffee, grimacing when she takes a sip.
“Eugh. Thermodynamics,” she says.
“Better'n shit not cooling down at all, I reckon,” you respond, standing up to make yourself some more coffee, “want another cup?”
“As long as it's on the house,” she smirks.
You grab her cup on the way and put the kettle on. As you do, she starts talking.
“I've been thinking about it, you know. Where I knew you from. And I did figure it out, in the end. I don't know if you remember, but I'm... pretty sure we were in high school together. Before my family moved back to Louisiana and all. Always thought your name was cool, even if we didn't actually talk a lot.”
Roux pauses for a moment.
“Your sister, she—is she doin' alright? Didn't really know her, either, but...”
In the way her voice softens, you hear the echo of a bright smile you only faintly remember on your brother's face.
Ice runs through your veins. You hope to hell and back that she doesn't notice how you tense up, that she doesn't start noticing every little discrepancy between you and Dante now that she's remembering you. If she actually knew Dante—
But she hasn't said anything. Would you have recognized your own face, changed by the years? It could just as well be a bluff, trying to suss out if you are who you're pretending to be. If so, there's only one line of attack left for you, one that you hope he would have been as adamant on as you.
You turn towards her, coffee cups in hand. She's looking over her shoulder at you.
“My brother's doin' fine, yeah. Don't meet up with him a lot, but. We talk.”
“Oh! That's—” her face lights up in surprise, and then, again, the echo of that smile, “I'm glad t'hear it.”
You hope to hell she doesn't try to dig deeper.
⁙
When she's finished the cup, she excuses herself—she has to go get her things if she's going to be staying here for longer than just a few hours, especially with Dave in tow. You suppose that's true, but she leaves before you can make up your mind on whether Dante would offer to help her or not.
Roux comes back around about two hours later with two full bags of clothes, groceries, and toys in each hand along with detailed lists on what to do with regards to feeding the kid, how to make sure he sleeps well, and another million things that you file away neatly in the back of your brain. She makes you promise to get him a crib, but then shakes her head and says that she needs to do it herself, that she can't offload that onto someone else.
With the way she's acting, you quickly understand there's a reason why she wanted to leave so quickly. There's the unmistakable smell of wine around her. Still, the energy she pours into the kid is frankly astounding, for someone so far from sober.
Throughout the following days, you see why she's been doing all this; she's desperately trying to avoid facing the problem by off-loading all her energy into something else. Whenever she isn't trying to make sure you're holding the kid right-side-up just to grab him anyway and saying you clearly can't do it right, whenever she isn't using your computer to look up expensive childcare shit you can't afford, whenever she isn't trying to convince you what school he needs to go to in seven years' time, she's drinking. She spends more of your money on booze than you've used on groceries in the past month.
You surprise yourself by the way you manage to hold back—you've never really been the type to stay dry, but seeing someone pouring their life down the drain like this up close and personal for the second time is... sobering, for lack of a better word. You see how Dante and her would end up together without either of them remembering the other.
You don't particularly mind the change in pace, even so. It's something to do—you find yourself arguing back and forth with Roux with an easiness that has eluded much of your interactions with anyone else in the past year. Maybe it has something to do with the way you don't have the constant thrum of her heartbeat running through your ears; it leaves a silence between you that's easy to fill, and easier to exist in.
One afternoon, Dave finally sleeping for once, the two of you are sitting in the sofa. There's an album that you have no memory of buying playing, low enough that you can't make out much other than the beat and the soft synth chords of the song playing. Roux put it on, flashing it to you with a smile. She'd said it was one of her favourites. Neneh Cherry, that's the artist, letters in dark red cross-stitch on the cover. Homebrew, you think it was called.
“So what's with the puppet?” Roux asks, gesturing at Cal hanging over your shoulders with the fourth can of cider she's been drinking this past afternoon. You wonder, lazily, whether she kept drinking after she knew she was pregnant, or if she's trying to catch up with months of alcohol left untouched.
“It's part of a long-term art project,” you say, completely deadpan as you take Cal's hand and wave at her with it, “trying to see how much people actually confront others on harmless, yet consistent behaviour that's outside the norm. This guy's been following me everywhere for months now.”
She snorts, taking another sip of the drink.
“And? Do they?” she asks, sharp eyes dulled by the drink. You wonder what she'd be doing, if all of this hadn't happened. Mind like a razor, dulled by choice.
“What,” you say, letting Cal's hand drop. THANKS FOR THAT, ASSHOLE. YOU DON'T LET ME DO ANYTHING FUN ANYMORE.
“Confront you, I mean.”
“Nah,” you say, “they mostly just pretend he ain't there. Starting to think I need to escalate shit. Bring him in during meetings and do all my reports ventriloquist-style, that kind of thing.”
She cracks a laugh. It's slow and rolling. Cal, too, laughs, orange waves brushing against you.
“Better watch out,” she says, after a moment, “never know when they stop considering it harmless.”
You go quiet at that. How much can you tell her? How much would she understand? Her eyes, bright bright bright pink, track you lazily.
Not yet, you think. You don't know that things will stay this way.
⁙
As the days pass, the easiness becomes... a bit too easy.
She hits on you. A lot. It comes to a head one night when you're on the folded out sofa, back facing where she's lying next to you, and you feel her hand run across your back. You shiver involuntarily, and the hand stops on your shoulder, warmth radiating off it like asphalt on a hot day.
You don't know what to say, so you don't say anything. She hesitates, and lets another moment pass before continuing, and again a shiver runs through you, one that has your arm tensing up under her touch.
She stops, again, and she must be frustrated—she lets out a heavy breath, warm air against your back. Her hand retreats again, and you can feel her shift behind you.
“Dante,” she says, low and whispered, “what's wrong?”
You tense up. You have no idea what to say.
“Listen,” you say, “I'm not—I can't—”
She sighs, interrupting you before you get to blurt out whatever would have gotten her off you.
“Yeah, I figured,” she says, “I'm sorry.”
You breathe out a bit shakily. The silence between you is heavy, and you wish, for a moment, that Dave would wake up, just so you could have something to do. You do fall asleep eventually, though.
The next morning is awkward, because there's little else it can be. You wake up before her, make a cup of instant coffee. You burn your tongue on it, but that's alright. It's fine.
When she stumbles out of bed, yawning and reaching for the can left on the table from last night, you've already made your decision.
“You need to go.”
Her eyes are wide, just for a moment, but after that she doesn't even seem surprised. She sits down on the edge of the sofa, back turned to you. Dave's still sleeping.
“Just...” she breathes out, and you can hear she's trying not to cry, “take care of him, alright?”
Your tongue still hurts.
“I will.”
⁙
The thought comes later that same week after she's checked herself in, holding the kid as you sit on the sofa.
If this is your brother's kid, you might have a chance at fixing what he fucked up. Sure, it might take a bit longer than if you just tried to find him again, but at least you won't have to deal with the look in his eyes when he sees what he's made you into. You've got a way out now, even if it's going to be a while before you can take it.
Besides, you think, you never were supposed to be the good one.
⁙
You move from the apartment almost immediately. You cannot have her find out that you aren't Dante. A good while is spent trying to obscure as many of your dealings as possible. In the process, you figure out that Dante Strider has moved out formally now—there's a place out in Austin that's been listed under his name in the last month. Just as well that you weren't planning to stay in the old place any longer—it might have gotten in the way if he figured out he wasn't technically moving out from your foster parent's home rather a small shitty apartment in Houston. The system you've set up is going to have to change, too—though it'll be a lot easier now, since the bank you've set up your dummy Dante account with has switched to online banking.
The least risky thing to avoid Roux finding you again would be to get a place under your own legal name. You haven't actually changed it, so if she's under the assumption you have done so and she doesn't remember it, she'll be looking for a man's name. It's going to suck, sure, but you can make it work. Just say you're letting your brother stay there, something along those lines. You make the most out of making yourself go unremarked, even with the baby in tow. You do switch your legal name, though, too, in a fit of paranoia—you can't be sure she won't remember it eventually, or if she'll look you up in the schoolbook or something like that.
You quit the office job pretty soon after, too. They're all sympathetic as you explain the vague details—young father, want to be there for your family, you've found that your time there has been of great value and given you irreplacable experience and is sure to bring you great help in the future, but for now you want to step back. You have the feeling none of them will remember you after a year, or at least not without prompting.
It eats a good chunk of your savings, but at least you manage to get semi-regular short projects from unrelated clients to soften some of that initial blow. You can work on them fine from the apartment, but keeping the kid alive keeps you from working as fast as you'd like, and in frustration you keep scrapping anything you've managed to accomplish.
A few desperate nights you stay up, hours spent looking at your brother's account, frozen between keeping yourself as removed as possible and having something to tide you by until you can get the kid into kindergarten. The apartment ends up a lot messier than during Roux's stay, if only because you've only had time to get shit out of the boxes instead of having shit hidden away. You do put up the same kind of surveillance system as you had previously, though it's less motivated by paranoia this time; it's just what you're used to by now.
Dave is... a child. He clings to Cal, probably because he's the only soft thing in the apartment. You don't know what to get a kid, but you've brought the things Roux bought with you, and he seems entertained enough by the puppet that you probably won't need to bother with much else—at least for the next while. Still, as the months pass and he grows, you find it increasingly difficult to keep his attention with just the puppet and soft toys—he starts grabbing at more and more of your stuff, stuff that's emphatically not safe for children to handle. Not that he'd know this, you think, extracting the sword he's grabbed by the scabbard from his vice-like grip.
You find that putting on music keeps him preoccupied most of the time, at least until the CD loops. Video games are a bit better; you spend hours on games that you've already beat a million times just on the insistence of the little guy. He stares at the screen like there's nothing else in the world.
He babbles a lot. While you feel weird talking to someone that can't even say anything yet, you know it's worse if he doesn't learn to talk at all. You narrate most of what you do as if you're commentating some kind of sport, which it just well might be with the deep fascination he has with everything you do.
“Dada,” he says one day, eyes glued to the television where you're playing through a course in Pokemon Snap because that's the only thing he's wanted to look at for the past week, and you stop in your tracks.
“Nah, li'l man,” you say, breath hitching in your throat, “I'm your Bro. Your dad's fucked off somewhere.”
“Bo,” he echoes, still looking at the screen. He inexpertly aims for your knee, then pats it with a strength you didn't realize he had.
“Yeah,” you say. You can't speak the rest of the day.
⁙
The boy in your home is not yours. This is indisputable. He is not of your blood. No family of yours still exists. Dante is dead, cast down into the pits of flames by your arrogance and hubris. Into the cold. No Virgil, No Beatrice. Your brother is dead because of you, thinking that you could have saved both of you when you knew that one always has to die for the other to survive.
You have killed your brother.
The boy in your home is a ghost.
The child insists on the motions of humanity even so, and you cannot help but indulge it—this, at least, you know. The motions. A game played out by the things that haunt this place, rules unspoken because your tongue has been cut off long ago.
The calculations are simple.
He cries because he is hungry.
You feed him.
He cries because he is cold.
You clothe him.
He cries because he is alone.
You cannot hold him.
Holding him means cold skin against cold skin, rotting flesh against something kept eternally, ethereally freezing. It is death against death.
Holding him means trying not to wrap your hands around his throat.
Better to let the child exist in the edge of your vision, letting the soft touch of something that was only brought to life through your death stay out of reach. This weird household of things left to die, of things unliving, will stay in stasis until nothing is left.
⁙
The kid's sobbing, softly, and you almost jump out of your skin because fuck, how do you forget a kid, the little shit's almost a year and a half old at this point and you still haven't gotten the hang of taking care of him; you still don't know how you managed the last few months, everything running into itself in a blur of an episode you can barely stand to think about. Better not to, in case it gets to you again.
You quickly make your way over to where the kid's sitting on the floor, and you survey the scene of the crime—he's holding his hand, and you can already see from where you're standing that he's bleeding. He must have cut his hand on something. Your eyes fall on the shuriken lying on the ground. It's one of the ones you keep chucking into the walls when you zone out, and you swear at yourself for not remembering to pull them out again. You knew those were a fucking disaster waiting to happen.
Still, the kid's taking it like a champ—he's barely crying, even as you scoop him up and try to find something to wrap the kid's hand in. First aid kit's in the bathroom, you remember, and with one and a half hand you manage to get his palm bandaged up.
“See,” you say, testing out the tightness of the wrapping so you don't fuck his hand up more, “that's why we don't play with any of Bro's stuff.”
Dave doesn't say anything.
At least the kid's quiet, you think, leaving him with Cal. He latches onto the puppet with a vigour you didn't know he had in him.
⁙
Teething is a fucking nightmare. If you weren't already hurtling down the path you'd set for yourself the moment you knew the kid was Dante's, this would be the final nail in the coffin—no way you'd get another one after this.
⁙
In the end, you don't have to take out anything from your brother's account, because you manage to pull through on one of the projects just before you get the kid enrolled in kindergarten. You go out that night, decide to get some actual god damn cuisine. Too bad Dave hasn't really gotten the hang of eating properly yet, seeing as he's a toddler and all. It's take-out, you guess, ending up at some place you vaguely remember being alright with the kid hanging onto you. You bring the food back to the apartment, sit your ass down in the futon. It's decent chow. Kid's quiet, mostly, which is the best you can hope for.
⁙
You keep thinking about blood. Accidental cuts, wiped away into clothes stained with sweat. Orange-yellow water going down into the sink, cloying smells burned into your brain.
You think about flesh, soft fingers against marred rough hands, nails left to grow for too long because you forget and he doesn't know how to do it himself yet.
You think about things like these, of concrete with dry yellow grass dying after it's broken through to the sun, head against the pavement. Someone is laughing, the sound running through your mind like a siren. You see your own head, lying in the grass—it's not you, though, because you're someone else, anything that might have tied you to that body has been cut. Dante's kicking around your head like a soccer ball. You laugh, because he's laughing.
But you're still here. You're not the blank stare in the eyes of your head, you aren't the cold body stiffening with every second it lies on the ground.
You're still here.
That hurts more than flesh tearing, hurts more than the crack of steel against bone, hurts more than the blank nothing.
You cry, the tears cold on your face, and Dave starts crying too, standing next to the body and kicking it. Like a toy that's broken. A child's tantrum, trying to figure out what made you stop working.
The blanket's rough against your hands, and as your eyes adjust to the dark you hear something from the bedroom. Dave, you think distantly, listening to a child's quiet hiccups. The ache is bone-deep, but you can't comfort him. If you show him kindness, he will cling to it without realizing it's a shackle that is going to drown him. Better to throw him in and let him learn how to swim by necessity.
Can it with the pretentious metaphors for a fucking second. You have to make sure the kid doesn't choke on his own spit first.
⁙
You don't remember much of the time when Dave starts school. There's meetings, a lot of them, most of which you barely recall and don't really care to try.
No one needs to know you. You let the kid play with whoever he likes, but he ends up staying at home more than not. That's his choice, you suppose. You stay distant from any of the parents in his class—no one needs to know you, and you sure as hell don't need to know anyone. During the day, you either sleep or work on projects you've gotten freelancing, and during the night you have gigs more often than not. You've garnered a reputation throughout the years. Still, it's structured well enough that you're largely only away when Dave's asleep.
You can't exist outside of the apartment, not to him. You're already a corpse.
⁙
In 2009, you stumble across posters for a movie titled The Human Centipede. The title seems familiar to you, but nothing else about it catches your eye. It's pretty funny, though. You go watch it in the nearest cinema one evening, Dave long gone to bed.
The familiarity of the phrase human centipede bugs you—hah—for weeks afterwards. You don't remember what the hell it reminds you of, though, so it must not have been that important.
⁙
Dave's creative. You let him have one of your old laptops when he's around eight, one you had planned for some shitty backup system or something and scrapped almost immediately, and it takes him about a week to start drawing shitty little digital doodles. He asks you how to print stuff out at some point, and you hook his computer up to the printer you've been doing fraud with for the past 9 years and show him how to configure it. At the end of the process, he's got his grubby kid hands on a physical copy of one of his MS Paint messes, and he's looking at it like it's the only thing in the world that matters.
He keeps asking you how to do it, but after the fourth time or so you figure he's got it down. You make him do it, watch over his shoulder as he goes through the steps.
After that, he mostly ends up sneaking out of his room to print stuff when he thinks you aren't looking. He leaves the pieces of paper scattered around, sometimes hanging them up using the shitty kunai you keep throwing at the wall when you can't find a solution to a problem in your projects. They start out as doodles, but they're quick to evolve into longer comics. Most of them are about whatever games you've been playing. A pretty decent one has Duke Nukem trying to master the art of skating under the tutelage of Tony Hawk, but he ends up breaking the board due to his massiv e muscels.
You can't tell if the use of Comic Sans is actual genuine enamourment with the font or the sign of a level of irony that you didn't know eight-year-olds were capable of, but either way, it earns a spot on the fridge. When he comes back home you give him a thumbs up, too, because that shit does, in fact, rock. After a second, he responds with his own thumbs up, and he retreats into his room.
You need to start training him. Gallows aren't built with kindness.
Even after you first put a knife in his hand, you still put his comics up on the fridge.
⁙
To: rhj@hwes.edu.com, jdd@hwes.edu.com
From: frt@hwes.edu.com
Subject: D. Strider
Dante Strider has not responded in any way regarding my inquiry into the upcoming parent-teacher conference.
How am I supposed to help this kid if his father barely ever responds to anything? As far as I can tell, he's the only family we can contact, but he's about as responsive as a brick wall.
Considering you know the man better than me, I'd appreciate some help with dealing with him.
Frederick T.
To: frt@hwes.edu.com, jdd@hwes.edu.com
From: rhj@hwes.edu.com
Subject: Re: D. Strider
Honestly I'd say you should just give up, the guy is never going to care about whatever we tell him, just focus on making sure the kid is doing okay in class
Frankly I'm surprised you even bother asking about this, but I guess since you're new you don't really get it yet, you need to figure out what battles with parents you're willing to fight and which ones you shouldn't spend your energy on
Strider is not someone we can do that with, we've tried for ages
He's going to show up, don't worry about that, just try not to escalate even if he's acting like a douche
Rachel J.
To: frt@hwes.edu.com, rhj@hwes.edu.com
From: jdd@hwes.edu.com
Subject: Re: Re: D. Strider
I second this. Strider might be a pain in the behind, but other than that there's frankly a lot worse you could end up dealing with. Doesn't mean you have to like him...
You definitely see where Dave has it from, though. Kid absolutely adores the man. Not a surprise that he acts like him, especially when he doesn't have a mom. If Strider actually praised the kid more it'd be fine. I guess some guys still can't shake the macho image even when they're supposed to raise a kid.
Joanne D.
To: frt@hwes.edu.com, jdd@hwes.edu.com
From: rhj@hwes.edu.com
Subject: Re: Re: Re: D. Strider
It's a mess, honestly, how are you going to expect a kid to grow up well when you won't ever give them positive reinforcement
Most dads get off scot-free, too, just because their wives take up all the slack, but with a guy like Strider who doesn't even try, well, let's just say it's a whole new kind of mess
Rachel J.
To: jdd@hwes.edu.com, rhj@hwes.edu.com
From: frt@hwes.edu.com
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: D. Strider
Please refrain from using the internal e-mail system for gossiping. It's unprofessional.
I do agree, though.
Frederick T.
⁙
The office is decent, if a bit on the small side. There's a plant on the desk, one that has clearly gone through many stages of being forgotten about only to be desperately revived; a last-minute attempt at keeping something cheerful in the place. The walls are painted in neutral green-grays, one of those shades that seem to drag any sort of possibility of joy out of the soul. It's frankly impressive how bleak it makes the atmosphere, but you doubt any kind of bright colors could survive in the drab air of a school office, anyway.
One of Dave's teachers—you think he must be new, since you haven't seen him before at any of these—clears his throat, bringing your attention back to him. He gestures at the chair, which you consider for about a second longer than entirely necessary. You don't need him thinking he can boss you around. Every move you make around others is calculated, made because you've considered every alternative, and scrapped anything you don't want to do. This has the frankly glorious side effect of pissing off about everyone who expects you to go by their rules when you're in their territory.
Fuck that noise. You're slouched halfway over the chair, trying to take as much space on the cheap piece of carpentry they're making you sit on for the next half an hour.
“So, Mr. Strider,” he starts, and he's immediately fucked up. You click at him, shaking your head in disappointment.
“Big fuckin' ask to come up to a guy callin' him mister right out of the gate. It's D. Stride, man. Short for DJ Strides. The Strider. Bro if we're tight, sir if you wanna be a little bitch.”
He narrows his eyes at you. You hold up a fist aimed at Dave beside you, and there is a silent bunp between the two of you.
“Alright, Mr. Strider. I'm Frederick Tanner, Dave's new homeroom teacher.”
“Sure, Freddy. Nice ta meetya and all that bull. What's this all about,” you say, crossing your arms. “If it's just yer standard update, you can skip all that crap.”
“I really don't think there's a need for swearing, Strider,” he says, “and if I were to skip the standard update, I don't know how much there would be left for me to say.”
“Seems to me like you've got plenty t' say even when y'ain't tellin' me none.”
“Fine. We can just go straight to it, if that's what you'd prefer.”
His voice is already testy. You're getting to him.
You smirk.
“Hit me.”
It's the same bullshit you hear every year. Dave's not doing so hot, even if he's scraping by—if he were just a bit more engaged, he could be at the top of the class, or at least neatly in the middle. All that kind of crap. Dave interjects every so often when some of the teacher's lines hit a rhythm, Beastie Boys-esque in his execution. As the guy pointedly ignores him and goes off on a tangent, you huff out a laugh. Freddy immediately clams up.
“I really don't see how this is a joking matter,” he says, sharply, “to either of you.”
“Can't help that you're making it one,” you say, shrugging.
“Mr. Strider, Dave is severely lagging behind in his grades, and—”
“That's bull,” Dave interrupts, “system's set me up to fail. You think I have time to do homework when I'm dropping sick beats and doin' ninja shit?”
“Language,” Fred says, and then sighs, his voice softening again. “Please, Dave.”
Dave squirms in his chair, but doesn't say anything else. Freddy-boy pauses for a moment, turning to you.
“It doesn't help that you don't put any effort into his education, either,” he says, and there's a moment where the rhythm that's been building up stutters—he doesn't know if it was the right thing to say.
You hum tunelessly, cross your arms. Look at him square through your shades.
“Don't see why I should be pickin' up on your slack. Ain't my job to make him do math drills or whatever the hell. You can't do it in school hours, I ain't gonna make him lose sleep about doing it outside of 'em.”
Frederick bristles at that. He huffs, laces his fingers together and lets his hands rest on the desk. Lot of paperwork on there, probably behaviour reports or some shit.
“All I'm trying to say is that I suspect your prioritizing of his hobbies above helping him with schoolwork is probably the source of these issues. You really should take a more active part in teaching him as well.”
“Naw, ain't happenin',” you say, “way I see it, 's yer fault for not makin' the material engagin' enough for th' kids t' actually wanna learn it. Y'can't go forcin' the kid to do somethin' he doesn't care about.”
“Shit's basically a violation of the Geneva convention,” Dave says beside you.
Freddy or whatever the fuck his name is sighs. for the millionth fucking time, too. we get it already.
“Really, Mr. Strider, it isn't a question of making it engaging when he's flat-out refusing to—”
“'Engagement starts with attitude,' right?” you say, leaning the chair onto its back legs and gesturing at one of the posters on the wall, “don't see how that shouldn't apply t' y'all, too. Kids know when the teacher's sick and tired of 'em.”
“That's an accusation without any basis. All of my coworkers take their jobs seriously, they wouldn't—”
“Express any fuckin' emotion when somethin's gettin' on their nerves? Shit, their zen must be off the fuckin' charts—”
Do you want someone on our ass? You can't antagonize the kid's teachers this much.
Fredster visibly tries to get himself under control again, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. When he talks again, it's aimed at Dave.
“Listen, Dave, can you let me and your dad talk things out in private?”
“He isn't—” Dave starts, and you don't know if you can afford to let him finish.
“Get out, Dave,” you bark out, eyes straight on Fred the whole time. It takes the kid about half a second more to actually stand up and stroll out of the office, but not without glancing back over his shoulders at you when he's crossing over the threshold. The door closes with a click.
Fred looks at you. His frustration and weariness from before has been replaced with a look of shock, and he glances over at the door before adressing you again.
“Dante Strider, what the hell are you—”
“I ain't.”
“What?”
“His dad.”
There is the blankest expression you've ever seen on a face.
“His ma thought I was, so she left him with me, but... ”
Your body moves on its own, the tension slipping from your shoulders. You let the words fall from your mouth as they come to the front of your mind, not really registering what you're saying until you've finished. At least it's softening the asshole up.
“She hasn't come back. Probably drinkin' herself t' death somewhere—ain't none of my business. But someone's gotta take care of the kid. ”
Your voice has gone rough now, tired. A lot closer to how you actually feel. You rally against it, some still-burning embers left on your tongue, but none of the things you want to say come out. Instead, a simple question offers itself up.
“How old are you, Fred?”
Why the fuck are you asking him this? This is stupid. You don't care about this asshole.
dude, you've gotta play on their fuckin' pathos. trust me on this
“27. I've just started working here.”
“Guessin' you don't have any kids.”
“No,” Fred says, and he's starting to sound suspicious of this sudden change in subject matter.
“'M 29 years old. Turnin' 30 this year. Feel old as balls.” You aren't. You're 28. “Dave's—” 10, 11 in December, “—10. You do the math.”
Fred makes an expression you can't place. It pisses you off.
“I ain't askin' for your sympathy, alright? Just sayin' that I'm raisin' him the best I can, so you better be doin' the same fuckin' thing.”
“Dante, I can assure you, we're doing our best as well, but it doesn't help when you refuse to—”
You've had enough of this. This isn't turning into some fucking sad jerk-off session, not if you have any say in it. hey, it was going good, what the hell—You stand up, slam your hand on the table. Pinpricks spread across your palm. Freddy-boy flinches back.
“Listen,” you say, leaning in close over the desk, “I bet you do a lotta good stuff here. I get you're a real stickler for the rules and all that. Probably got those kids all lined up in your little fuckin' spreadsheets, keepin' real close tabs on em. But there's gonna be kids that are a lot fuckin' worse off. There's gonna be parents a lot fuckin' meaner'n I am.”
Your voice drops low, not quite a whisper.
“And you're gonna appreciate it when they're mean, when they rip into you like it's fuckin' Christmas Eve and you're a present from Santa, 'cause the worst kids ain't gonna be the ones that act out. It's gonna be the ones that go quiet and kill themselves three days after school's out. And they're a lot fuckin' harder to spot, 'cause they're gonna have nice parents that smile and nod because they can't fuckin' afford to have people noticin' shit.”
“So you better do your fuckin' job right,” you hiss out, “because you're gonna wish I'm the worst piece of shit that sets foot in your office.”
Frederick does not respond. He looks terrified.
You pull back, the echoes of the rapid snare of his heart still running through your mind.
“We're done here.”
You leave with Dave in tow. He grumbles about it all the whole drive home.
⁙
You think about it a lot. Dave taking one of the swords—or one of the knives, he still can't hold the swords properly—and...
Well, hurting you, for one. Doing something to you. Anything that shows that he isn't so afraid of you he won't ever raise a hand to strike you. Or that he's afraid enough that he thinks it's his only way out.
A selfish part of you wants him to realize what you're trying to mold him into.
It might make him feel better, if he hurt you. Maybe it wouldn't. He's a sensitive soul—you've made him soft, you think sometimes, letting him have as much freedom as he does.
If he did something, anything, you'd at least know he was ready. But he keeps to himself, holed up in his room, and even if he does go on rants near you, he rarely actually talks back at you. He doesn't like you, sure, but you don't know that he'll confront you about it.
You have to make sure of that.
⁙
Dave turns 13, and you're stuck in another loop of—something, something that keeps scratching at the back of your brain.
He gets a couple of packages in the mail. You hand it to him wordlessly, and though he doesn't respond further than a “thanks, Bro,” and a thumbs up, you can tell they're something he's been looking forward to. They're probably from his friends—he spends hours in his room tapping away at his keyboard, and you're sure he isn't writing novel-length fiction.
⁙
The 13th of April, 2013, something in your mind wakes up screaming that the world is supposed to end. You grumble, try to push it back down. The day is spent trying to figure out why every muscle in your body is tensed for something, but you don't get to the bottom of it. You get the kid to tag along for a spar he's only half-paying attention to. It's his friend's birthday, which they were apparently planning something for—some game, you think. You let him go back down early.
Whatever it is, it passes by quietly and in the privacy of Dave's room. You can't help the feeling that something's wrong with this. You drag him out, at some point, and your memory goes hazy after that. You think something must have happened, though, because he barely goes out the next few days.
⁙
The 3rd of December, 2014, is not particularly memorable in any way. Dave turns 14. You go out for dinner.
⁙
The 13th of April, 2015, you remember with sudden clarity the vision of your brother decapitating you—the first one, the one that made you realize something had to be done. The face of your brother, though, seems to shift constantly; one moment it's Dante, the other it's Dave, then fluctuating back.
Like some kind of weird Animorph, you think, distantly, and laugh to yourself.
You knew, sure—there's a reason you kept this up—but having the reminder thrust onto you like a deadline long passed by only makes the past years seem that much more empty. What have you accomplished? Nothing of note. Nothing that hints that you're any closer to your goal.
For the first time in years, you think of contacting your brother.