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Because of you
I try my hardest just to forget everything
Because of you
I don't know how to let anyone else in
Because of you
I'm ashamed of my life because it's empty
Because of you
I am afraid
I'm forced to fake
A smile, a laugh everyday of my life
My heart can't possibly break
When it wasn't even whole to start with
I watched you die
I heard you cry every night in your sleep
I was so young
You should have known better than to lean on me
His name was Stephen.
I was three when he was born, and even then, I remember wanting to protect him. It's my first clear memory, sitting on the bench in the hall, next to Mary--my sister--while she held him. He opened his eyes, and he looked right at me, and he had my eyes. It was love at first sight. Mary bossed me horribly, trying to play little Mother from her grand old age of eight, telling me not to touch, not to try and hold him, to stop telling him stories like he could understand, but I ignored her as usual. You would have thought he was my personal property. When he took his first steps, they were to try and follow me. His first word was "James." That was my name, then, the one they christened me with. Granted, it came out more "Dame" but I didn't care.
When he threw us out, called her witch and whore and me Satan's spawn, Stephen was five. He didn't understand. He was afraid of the place we ran to, afraid of the men with their hard eyes and the women with their loud laughs and gin on their breath. My mother cried for three days, and Mary lost her virginity against a wall in an alley the first week we were there. There was just me, the man of the family. Just me to protect him, to keep him away from clutching hands. Just me to make up stories in the dark, huddled on the floor under a single blanket. Just me to make sure he ate enough. Just me to fight the older kids who tried to take anything he had, to take the whippings and the bloody nose. Me to teach him how to read, to do his sums. To learn his Bible. To teach him to pray. Eventually, just me to teach him to fight, to defend himself when work took me away.
Me to take it when "gentleman" come slumming started noticing our eyes. Me to step up, to try and spare him that however I could when my mother cried that there was no food. And when that failed, me to show him it didn't have to hurt...that it could be about love and gentleness and relief. We were already damned, whore's get, witch's spawn. What did one more sin matter?
I wanted to get him out, back to the world I remembered, the one we came from, the one he'd forgotten. Where it wasn't cold and we weren't hungry and people didn't expect you to fall on your knees to scramble for coins to buy your daily bread. Where there were lessons every day instead of forced Bible readings under cold eyes of those who told you that you were damned once a week, and a garden to play in, and maybe church was boring, but it was at least warm and you got to sit instead of stand thrust among everyone else in a cold room. Me and him, against the world, doing our best to protect Mother and Mary from the men who came to the house every day and night, make sure no one got too rough, make sure they all paid. I got him a job at the stables, a real job with real wages, and he never knew how, and that was how I wanted it.
Then came the Great Fire, and they were trapped, Mother and Mary, in the house while we were at work, and then it really was just us, and there wasn't anything to tie us there, no one to protect except each other. We talked about a merchant ship, seeing the world. We were hard workers, good fighters, clever and nimble and strong enough to do whatever was needed. A ship's captain hired us on, said we'd leave in one week. We needed money for provisions. He went to his job, I went to one of my myriad odd employments. A horse was spooked. He got kicked in the chest. They sent for me to say goodbye. I didn't know what I was, what I could do, what my blood could do.
A week later I sailed for Japan, alone, and developed a taste for whiskey. I have married. I have loved. I have lost. I have watched people run screaming in terror from what I am, seen a wife commit suicide by alcohol for ever letting me touch her. I have been betrayed. I have been adored. And through it all, I have been alone. I have kept myself apart. A shadow. A ghost. Brushing over lives, and moving on, because when I look in the mirror, I see his eyes. I remember the one person I could have saved if I had known what I was, what I could do. The one person I loved more than anyone, anything, else in the world. The other part of me, bound so tightly I still see him in my dreams 345 years later. The one I failed to protect, in the end. And every time I walk away, I know he's disappointed. I know I failed him in my fear. I know this isn't what he'd want for me, this emptiness, walking the world with a ghost in tow. I know that, and so I try. To find a way to have the life he would have wanted me to have, the life I wanted him to have. The one I have to live for both of us. And I fail again and again, too afraid of feeling that again, of opening myself that way again, of letting someone in that way again. And then I try again. For him.
His name was Stephen.
[Locked to Nathan and Peter (any verse)]
Say what else you like, but please don't say I can't understand. I understand far too many things far too well.
ooc: Lyrics -- "Because of You" by Kelly Clarkson
I try my hardest just to forget everything
Because of you
I don't know how to let anyone else in
Because of you
I'm ashamed of my life because it's empty
Because of you
I am afraid
I'm forced to fake
A smile, a laugh everyday of my life
My heart can't possibly break
When it wasn't even whole to start with
I watched you die
I heard you cry every night in your sleep
I was so young
You should have known better than to lean on me
His name was Stephen.
I was three when he was born, and even then, I remember wanting to protect him. It's my first clear memory, sitting on the bench in the hall, next to Mary--my sister--while she held him. He opened his eyes, and he looked right at me, and he had my eyes. It was love at first sight. Mary bossed me horribly, trying to play little Mother from her grand old age of eight, telling me not to touch, not to try and hold him, to stop telling him stories like he could understand, but I ignored her as usual. You would have thought he was my personal property. When he took his first steps, they were to try and follow me. His first word was "James." That was my name, then, the one they christened me with. Granted, it came out more "Dame" but I didn't care.
When he threw us out, called her witch and whore and me Satan's spawn, Stephen was five. He didn't understand. He was afraid of the place we ran to, afraid of the men with their hard eyes and the women with their loud laughs and gin on their breath. My mother cried for three days, and Mary lost her virginity against a wall in an alley the first week we were there. There was just me, the man of the family. Just me to protect him, to keep him away from clutching hands. Just me to make up stories in the dark, huddled on the floor under a single blanket. Just me to make sure he ate enough. Just me to fight the older kids who tried to take anything he had, to take the whippings and the bloody nose. Me to teach him how to read, to do his sums. To learn his Bible. To teach him to pray. Eventually, just me to teach him to fight, to defend himself when work took me away.
Me to take it when "gentleman" come slumming started noticing our eyes. Me to step up, to try and spare him that however I could when my mother cried that there was no food. And when that failed, me to show him it didn't have to hurt...that it could be about love and gentleness and relief. We were already damned, whore's get, witch's spawn. What did one more sin matter?
I wanted to get him out, back to the world I remembered, the one we came from, the one he'd forgotten. Where it wasn't cold and we weren't hungry and people didn't expect you to fall on your knees to scramble for coins to buy your daily bread. Where there were lessons every day instead of forced Bible readings under cold eyes of those who told you that you were damned once a week, and a garden to play in, and maybe church was boring, but it was at least warm and you got to sit instead of stand thrust among everyone else in a cold room. Me and him, against the world, doing our best to protect Mother and Mary from the men who came to the house every day and night, make sure no one got too rough, make sure they all paid. I got him a job at the stables, a real job with real wages, and he never knew how, and that was how I wanted it.
Then came the Great Fire, and they were trapped, Mother and Mary, in the house while we were at work, and then it really was just us, and there wasn't anything to tie us there, no one to protect except each other. We talked about a merchant ship, seeing the world. We were hard workers, good fighters, clever and nimble and strong enough to do whatever was needed. A ship's captain hired us on, said we'd leave in one week. We needed money for provisions. He went to his job, I went to one of my myriad odd employments. A horse was spooked. He got kicked in the chest. They sent for me to say goodbye. I didn't know what I was, what I could do, what my blood could do.
A week later I sailed for Japan, alone, and developed a taste for whiskey. I have married. I have loved. I have lost. I have watched people run screaming in terror from what I am, seen a wife commit suicide by alcohol for ever letting me touch her. I have been betrayed. I have been adored. And through it all, I have been alone. I have kept myself apart. A shadow. A ghost. Brushing over lives, and moving on, because when I look in the mirror, I see his eyes. I remember the one person I could have saved if I had known what I was, what I could do. The one person I loved more than anyone, anything, else in the world. The other part of me, bound so tightly I still see him in my dreams 345 years later. The one I failed to protect, in the end. And every time I walk away, I know he's disappointed. I know I failed him in my fear. I know this isn't what he'd want for me, this emptiness, walking the world with a ghost in tow. I know that, and so I try. To find a way to have the life he would have wanted me to have, the life I wanted him to have. The one I have to live for both of us. And I fail again and again, too afraid of feeling that again, of opening myself that way again, of letting someone in that way again. And then I try again. For him.
His name was Stephen.
[Locked to Nathan and Peter (any verse)]
Say what else you like, but please don't say I can't understand. I understand far too many things far too well.
ooc: Lyrics -- "Because of You" by Kelly Clarkson
