Final Chapter [Cait:JB:Blaire/Ruth!blitz]

They pieced me back together in the only way they knew how, wrapping bandages around my head to stop the nauseating stench of blood so that I did not faint once more. They did not realise the fruitlessness of such lengths. I don’t want to live. I don’t want to belong to a world where Blaire no longer exists. I wish to vocalise these thoughts to the burly hands that carry me to the Justice Building entrance, but my throat refuses to open, and nothing more than painful retches escape my strained oesophagus.

Internal injuries are the hardest to mend, for no amount of bandages or prescription medications would ever suffice in piecing the fragments of a broken heart back together. Never had the burden of a single organ weighed so heavily on my chest. I don’t want to live. I do not want the tangible monster living within to continue to tie me to a world I no longer love. I wish to reach into my chest and hold the wretched thing, oozing grotesque shades of red – red, the colour of death, the colour of Septimus – and wash my stained fingers with yellow, so that Blaire will always be in my reach.

But I cannot rip the fluttering organ from my body and cast it far away like I so desire. It wasn’t enough to try, either. The loss of another Sycamore would not save Blaire.

Blaire.

Blaire and Ruth.

They are words that possess a meaning much larger than the 13 letters they are composed of. Words like art, each vowel and consonant selected with elegance and care to write a phrase that held more emotion than any of the empty stares cast around Sycamore House. Words like magic.

Words. Words that will never be spoken in the same sense as they once were. When people say ‘Blaire and Ruth’ they will not associate the words with the thought of two inseparable twins with faces made of porcelain and smiles that held a thousand secrets beneath the faked authenticity of the gesture. The images conjured will instead be of a dead boy with bruises and cuts and severed limbs – glazed eyes holding no resemblance of the boy he once was – and a broken girl standing on the brink of insanity – trapped, fearful and undoubtedly alone.

When the door is flung open, I immediately fear the beginning of the end when the absence of arms around my shoulders guiding me to safety registers in my mind. For once, I am forced to depend upon myself, and the thought is so dizzying that with the blood pounding in my head mixed with the overwhelming sight of Blaire – worn down, dejected, and above all, alive – I begin to fall for the second time today.

I do not hit the ground.

The stabilisation of thoughts comes after a moment of confusion, and when the dancing floaters dissipate, it is Blaire who catches me. He would never let me fall. It is Blaire who holds me in an embrace that reminds me of blistering Winter nights spent huddled beneath quilted bedsheets together - when the winds that battered our run-down home were too cold to withstand alone. We stay, unable to speak nor move, for the suffocating reality of the moment is too calamitous. This may be the last time I see him. When he hugs me, I can do nothing more than collapse into his arms – his strong, stable arms that promise safety and a future that I cannot help but think no longer exists for us.

Blaire and Ruth. Ruth and Blaire. Together. Always.

Beneath his grip, I shudder, and when the tears niggling at the corners of my eyes finally fall upon his yellow-stained shirt, I do not try to stop them. Today, I was allowed to be weak. Today, I did not have to prove to Blaire that I was so much more than a little girl. Today, Blaire was leaving me alone to fend for myself for the first time in fifteen years, and I would not disallow myself the luxury of pain.

The time for proving strength would come in the dreaded days following his inevitable passing. For now, I cry, clutching to my lifeline, my kin, my brother, fearing the moment I will have to let go.

‘Ruth.’

Blaire.

‘Please.

I don’t want to listen.

‘I’m sorry.’

Please stop, don’t make me promise.

‘But you have to promise.’

But I can’t.

‘Okay?’



Oh Blaire. How did we end up here? How did it come to this? How did it occur that Blaire was the one believing in the optimistic hope of a future whilst I was still trapped on Page 1, the Reaping, dreading the coming pages, for there was no way any of this could get better. He knew that, and for the first time, I was beginning to see things in the same way as him.

I do not know which is more terrifying – the fact that Blaire was right all along when I refused to listen, refused to see the world as cruel, or that the end of the optimistic dream I had once believed so heavily in was upon me, bringing with it The End of Ruth, just as it brought The End of Blaire and Ruth.

I cannot speak. When I open my mouth, I am only overcome with a fresh surge of paralysing fear as unspoken words catch in my throat, choking me, mocking me.

I’m not strong.

I am weak.

Blaire strokes my head and the action soothes somewhat; for a moment, we are still in the gardens of Sycamore – gardens where I would tell Blaire about the life cycle of a butterfly as he ran his calloused fingers through my thick, black hair; gardens where I would hold a blade of grass to the clouded sun and show him the different shades of chlorophyll trapped within the miniature frond. When the rain fell lightly upon our heads, we would watch together as the droplets reached the open stretches of land that could be seen from every direction, despite Blaire’s hatred for such childish past-times. The way in which rain fell mimicked my own tears that fell too often upon my tattered clothes, and the beauty of the weatherly occurrence almost made me believe that crying, too, was beautiful. We possessed the ability to run away from our makeshift home at any given point, untrapped by the constraints of four white-washed walls that seem to absorb all the happiness from the room. In the garden was where I was at home, and when my face lit up with the changes in the weather, Blaire’s did so too, for my happiness was his. Now, there is no such reassurance – only the slight squeeze of Blaire’s hand within my own softer palm. Our fingers intertwine and I clutch to their familiar feel – his short, cuddly fingers meeting my thin, slender fingers in a harmonious show of affection that spoke louder than the words tumbling from his mouth. A reminder of home.

Blaire’s ugly outcry brings with it a waterfall of tears I didn’t know he was capable of, the wet drops of undisguised emotion splashing unmercilessly across my shaking frame. Our cries mix with each other’s and there is something beautiful about the way in which the tears fall to the ground, like shattered dreams and broken promises all crumbling to ruins with the downfall of a once-beautiful world. They reflect the raindrops of happier childhood memories, and I can almost hear the downpour ringing in my ears above the whispered words that fill the prison cell we are confined to.

I am weak, and all I can think is

‘i’m sorry i’m sorry i’m sorry i’m so pathetic i’m so sorry blaire this is my fault but how? i’m sorry you can’t leave i love you i love you i’m sorry don’t go’

but his words are more important than my own conflicting emotions and so I hang on to every last syllable, despite the aching in my chest that reminds me of the burden of a broken heart.


‘Promise you will be okay.’


‘Please, I can’t – I just – ’


‘I’m sorry.’


‘I love you.’


Through the tears I feel his breath against my shoulder blade, and I have to reply, I have to.

I have to.


‘Bl – ’

It’s so hard to speak.

‘Blaire.’

I need to do this.

‘I – ’

I can’t promise I’ll be okay.

‘I don’t know.’

I don’t know.

‘Blaire.’

I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m so sorry Blaire.

‘Promise you won’t leave me.’



It is selfish and cruel and heartbreaking. But I need reassurance.

‘Promise you won’t leave me. Promise – promise it will be okay.’

'Promise for me.'

It is all I can manage.