This is Everything I Didn't Say {Duncan!Oneshot}

duncan {♔} bowers-fox

I wish I could’ve made you stay
And I’m the only one to blame
I know that it’s a little too late
But this is everything I didn’t say

The second his cannon sounds signals the beginning of some spiral into insanity, and immediately following a full second of complete denial I hear profanities fall from Cody’s mouth like a mid-July downpour. It was the precedent to the oncoming storm, and I immediately draw back into the corner of the room as I hear his feet stomping down the hall, a momentary pause causing anxiety to rise and catch in my chest, and silence falls across the house as the world seems to pause in its tracks.

My eyes flicker to Tweed, who’s still situated on the bed in which we spent the previous night, the only recollections of which flicker between her pulling me from the floor and tucking me in between the empty sheets and my whimpering plea for her to join me in the hopes that I wouldn’t toss against an empty bed on the night where I felt most alone. She had sat on the edge of the mattress at first, watching as I tossed and turned until I finally came to the conclusion that sleep was not going to make itself prominent in my mind, even though exhaustion had set in hours ago. My request for her to join me made itself known through a small whimper and a tug on her shirt, and without hesitation she clambered in beside me, sitting against the wall as I laid my head in her lap, her fingers running gently through the tussled mess of hair that sat upon my head, the signs of distress making themselves evident in tangled knots and bloodshot eyes that couldn’t seem to fall victim to sleep at the time in which it was most needed.

Fear flickered through my mind at the sight of Cody’s feet under the door, and from my spot pressed against the back wall I can just make out the faint words falling from his mouth in rapid procession, and though all of them are hurtful, they’re also all justified.

The door slams back against its rusted hinges, and Cody follows in behind it, making his way at an alarming pace towards me until I’m forced to step back even further until my back is pressed against the cool wall. Neither of us speak for a moment, silence hanging in the air like a bomb before its detonation, and I begin to count down the seconds until it goes off.

3,

2,

1.

“You’re a murderer, Duncan Bowers-Fox.”

He doesn’t say anything else for a moment, leaving his words to stand as a momentary distraction before he steps back and runs a hand through his hair. My shoulders begin to relax as the distance between us increases, and I begin to assume that all intentions of anger that tinged his vision were fading fast into the same bouts of depression that I was already lost in. We were supposed to be supporting each other, not turning against one another in the time we needed a shoulder to lean on most.

My words falter as I stare at the ground and at Tweed and really anywhere in the room that isn’t Cody, because I know that I was broken, but I didn’t want to see him fall apart as well.

“Cody, I--”

Even though I didn’t really know where I was going with my attempt at redemption past that point, he never gave me a chance to figure it out, for before I can process the string of actions that’s currently taking place he’s whirling around to face me, and his fist bunches in the fabric of my shirt as the impact of his hand firmly against my chest shoves me backwards into the wall I had just moved away from, the air rushing from my chest as I jolt forward.

My hands shake as I feebly bring them up to his shoulder in an attempt to push him away, but the firmness in his grip fades as I notice the shaking of his own breaths, and his gaze rises slowly to meet my own, and though I want nothing more than to look away, there’s something about the previously unseen intensity in his eyes that causes any thoughts of movement to be completely obliterated.

“You killed him.”

“He should be here.”

“You should be dead, Duncan.”

The momentary pause that followed his earlier words currently seemed like a blessing, as now he didn’t even give me a second to blink before he brings his fist up to eye level, and processing his chain of actions becomes improbable as his hand makes contact with my jaw, causing searing pain to shoot up as I shove him away. However, he was already on the task, stumbling backward away from me and turning on his heel, slamming the door behind him as he stormed out. I held my hand to my jaw as I turned to look at Tweed, and gratefully she was still asleep, curled about in the blankets that I so desperately wanted to bury myself in at the current moment.

I’ve abandoned many things before, but this will not be one of them. I owed it to myself—to Owen, to do this. My journals lay in ruins on the floor still, and I sat down on the floor and crossed my lanky legs over each other as I sifted through the pages, turning them over and desperately searching for one that was blank. Eventually I came upon one with only a note that I didn’t recall writing down.

“Actions speak louder than words.”

It was a saying my older brothers taunted me with every time I had previously buried my face in journals as they stood behind me with crossed arms and sarcastic tones. A minute more of studying the handwriting brought the realization that I had never written the note myself, but that the font matched that more of Owen’s than my own or even Cody’s.

I smoothed the page out on the floor and pulled the empty binding of an old, leather journal to place underneath it as I fished awkwardly through the desk drawers in an attempt to find a pen.

-journal entry #11 start time 10:32 on the morning of Owen’s death

Dear Owen,

You’re gone, now. And with every repeat of your cannon that resounds in my mind there’s another regret to follow it. There were a lot of things I should have told you that afternoon in the justice building, but for once I fell short. The words that so often filtered through my mind and escaped through my fingertips cut themselves off at the sheer shock that you had induced with your kindness and sincerity. So, Owen Bowers-Fox, this is everything I didn’t say.

I never told you that I realized that you stayed awake until I wandered home every night. I ignored every small sigh of relief that fell from your lips in what you figured to be a silent confirmation of my safety. I meant to mention it nonchalantly when silence overtook our awkward morning conversations, but the time never seemed right to tell you that I appreciated it. Some part of my bitter heart realized that I was cared for, even if I refused to admit it. I suppose that pretending I wasn’t cared for somehow deemed my reasons for pushing you away honorable, but I guess I never really stopped to think my thought process through.

I didn’t care to, for I didn’t want to face the fact that maybe just this once, I was wrong. The writer isn’t supposed to be wrong, you see, for I was supposed to go from facts and only that which was true, not only that which I wanted to believe.

I couldn’t shake off my own wants, Owen.

I wanted to pretend that you didn’t care, that every single good intention and selfless act was somehow not actually thought of with my best regards in mind, but I suppose it was.

I was wrong.

I wasn’t supposed to be wrong.

I was going to be some kind of hero and yet I had you pegged for the villain, when in fact the roles were actually reversed, and now I stand alone in the middle of the wreckage, left only with Cody and the anger that sat deep within his heart and myself. (I don’t even know what to say about my own state at this point, only that it seems to be that I’m breaking and there’s no one around to piece me together anymore).

Please come back. We’re falling apart Owen, lost somewhere between terrified and enraged, and I sit further against the former end of the scale rather than the latter.

I ripped my journals apart on the night you left, and I haven’t bothered to pick them up yet. In fact, they’re all strewn about me now, pages upon pages of scrawled words that no longer meant a thing. The page I’m writing on now has a note on it, as many do, but this one’s special, for it wasn’t my words that were written upon it, but yours. You told me that actions speak louder than words, and though the phrase had been tossed about by both you and Cody multiple times, but I had always tossed them aside because I had embedded it in my mind that there was simply nothing that could outweigh words.

You spoke two words that carried more importance than every single one I had written down up to that point, and no matter what I say following this will never carry as much weight as they did.

Your words accompanied an action that saved a life, and I didn’t deserve it.

I’m a lost cause Owen, and you gave your life for me.

Why?

If I could ask you one more thing, it’d be that. Why? Why would you give your life for a boy who didn’t mean a thing to the world? What importance did you see in me that made me worthy of living to see a life without you?

It’s not a pretty world, Owen Bowers-Fox, and I don’t want to live in it anymore.

I fold the paper in half before scrambling to my feet, falling forward to his bed and lifting up the pillow, placing the wrinkled piece of paper beneath it before laying the pillow back on top. Maybe it would be found by someone, Tweed, Cody, my mother or father, but it didn’t really matter. Everything that failed to make itself known when I still had the chance to look my brother in the eyes had faded into a shout into the void, with no chance of being heard by the one who needed to hear it most.

A lot of regrets made themselves known on the afternoon that the world lost Owen Bowers-Fox, and my still being alive to see it was one of them.

Taking every breath away
With all of the mistakes I’ve made
From all the letters that I’ve saved
This is everything I didn’t say