lennon le roux. d1. fin

You were a unique child in a place like One. Smart but not strong. Clever but not cruel. You were a spineless son, who sat under trees instead of climbing them and spent more time in the family library than the gym. You were shy and easily pushed around, horribly bland compared to the names you rubbed shoulders with.

And so you were prepared to settle down somewhere quiet, somewhere out of the way, where you could be with your books and your maps and you could sit in silence and try to learn a little more about the world.

But then Eurydice Le Roux waltzed into your life, during one blistering summer, and everything shifted slightly.

It was like she belonged there, in the beginning. It was like she had found a gap in your life that you hadn't even noticed and she decided to take its place. She was the sun, and she was golden and she was everything. You were head over heels the moment you saw her and did almost anything to get her attention.

In retrospect, it must've been pathetic to watch. Her family was so prestigious, so powerful, and here you were, little Lennon Bricke, the son of hardworking nobodies, but nobodies nonetheless. You didn't even deserve the time of day from her. You don't know what she saw in you.

Maybe you really loved each other once, instead of just having a quick and fleeting infatuation. You think that you loved her, truly, in the beginning, when you were both a little younger and a little freer, when the pressure on your shoulders' was a little lighter. You think that you still love her now, no matter how much it hurts. You think that maybe she loved you once.

You can't really tell anymore.

Still, when you asked her to marry you, you couldn't help but feel like she was settling. You still wonder if you were her one act of rebellion.

But eventually the children came, a whole legion of them, and the house was never quiet anymore. You tried your best to be the father they needed, but you were too soft with them right from the start, you know that. You patched up their scraped knees and kissed their foreheads and tried to protect them from the vicious lifestyle that you knew their surname would bring them.

You're sure that Isaiah and John hated you for it. They expected your children to be careers, the best of the best, just like their own. There was a reputation in One to uphold, but you couldn't help but wipe their tears away and help them with their homework. They were your flesh and blood, your children for fuck's sake, and you couldn't stand by and watch them grow up to be monsters.

You don't know when you realized it was futile. Deep down, maybe you always knew that there was no stopping Eurydice or John or any of them. They had a vision, and they were stronger-willed than you, they had more pull than you could ever dream off. So you cowed easily, and it stung a little - how easily you gave up the reins of parenting.

And you felt guilty hiding away in the study, of course you did, you felt guilty for abandoning them and not even telling them why. Because you could still hear Harper's cries through the walls, and you had to force yourself to ignore every time little Cathy knocked on your door for a story at bedtime. But you still didn't do anything about it. You were ruining them, spoiling them, and you always thought that you were doing it out of a place of love. You know now that you were just delaying the inevitable.

Eurydice was more than capable of raising them and training them and molding them into whatever it was she wanted. She could change them in the way that she tried and failed to change you.

You thought that it would make her happy, in ways you knew you couldn't anymore. Or maybe in ways you never had.

You don't quite remember when you realized that you didn't know your own children anymore. They became strangers, slowly, over the course of several years as you threw yourself into your work instead of their lives. You still saw them, you made sure of that, no matter how many times Emmett snuck out or Tatton skipped lessons. You still loved them after all, so much that it hurt, but you wanted the best for them.

And you were never the best.

You never tried to refute it, and maybe you're a coward for that. Your heart was always too big and your mind always too wide. Emmett volunteered and you told yourself it was because that's what he wanted. It's what Eurydice trained him for. You ruined him and then she fixed him, hardened over the little boy who used to ride on your shoulders and laugh.

You sat by yourself and watched him die in silence.

That was your fault. That was that little weakness in him that you nurtured and babied and let him keep close. You killed your son, you did, and you're too selfish to save the rest of them. If you had just let the Le Rouxes groom their new legacies, if you hadn't been so willing to compromise with them, you think they would be a lot stronger.

You can't leave them though. You can't. And so you go back to your books, to your writing and researching, and you turn a blind eye to the damage you've done, to all the damage you're still doing every time you look at them with anything other than sternness. You still let them get away with too much. You can't help it.

You love them.