Author's Note: Merry Christmas, everyone! Hope you like this newest fic. As much as I love my Eclare fix, I was kind of getting bored of all the Eclare Christmassy goodness that was going around, so I decided to write something a little different. I know it's probably not going to be canon as of a few months from now, but for now, we have no idea what's happening to Fitz, so what I say goes.
I dedicate this to Lady Azura, whose love of Fitzy-Boy knows no bounds. Seriously, guys, read her fic "Broken Glass". It's just terrific. One of the few stories I have on Story Alert, and one of my favorites in Degrassi fanfiction. I also recommend "Playing With Fire" and "Monster", which are great insights into the person I believe that Fitz is- an insecure, troubled boy whose been dealt a few bad hands in life, and it made him a little mean.
In this fic, I took the liberty of using her OCs Abigail and Phil, which I hope she will not take offense to. I tried to stay as true to her writing of these characters as I possibly could. I also feature the character of Megan Fitzgerald, an OC of mine who is featured as a main character in my other Fitz-centric story, "Shame".
I don't own Degrassi, but I do own my OCs, so don't use them.
And don't use Abigail and Phil, either, because they belong to Lady Azura. I hope she enjoys this fic so much that she doesn't mind the temporary high-jacking of her OCs. =)
I.
His mother was the only person who was ever there for him, and the only person he ever trusted entirely.
She was seventeen when she had him- all alone in the hospital, by the way, without any parents or family or even the baby's own father. No, that would be too much to hope for. Her parents were too busy saying rosaries and Hail Marys to beg the Heavenly Father's forgiveness for having such a sinful daughter- after they had kicked her out of the house and refused to have anything to do with her, of course.
And the baby's father? Well, let's just say that he had better things to do- like work on his muscle cars and get stoned in the basement bedroom at his parents' house- than be present at the birth of his firstborn son.
All throughout his life, she's worked her ass off for the two of them. For him. She could have aborted him, or given him to some nice rich old couple who were already pushing the nursing home by the time he graduated high school, or shit, even tossed him in a dumpster as soon as he popped out. But no- she kept him and raised him after being knocked up at seventeen years old, and was the best mother that he could ever have had. She worked two, three jobs, just to keep a roof over their heads and clothes on his back.
Just for him, his mother gave up her entire life. And not only that, but he made her life extra hard by being just a rotten little shit- because that's what he knows he is, honestly. A terrible, horrible, soulless little bastard.
He's made her life so hard.
So while Fitz would never admit how much he loves her, he does- more than he could even express, even if he was the type to try.
II.
Even after his mother gets married, she's still the only person he loves.
His stepfather? Yeah, right. As if Phil could EVER be "Daddy" material. No, he's too busy smacking Fitz one way and down the other to ever try and pull out some of that father-son bullshit that they always show on those AT&T commercials.
Not that his mother knows about that, anyway. Because although his stepfather has spent the better part of his marriage to his mother smacking around her son, Fitz has never seen him raise a hand to his mother in any way, and rarely ever raises his voice. He'll sit in his armchair all day long drinking beer and watching whatever trash cable they can get with their shitty television, complaining that it's not his fault he doesn't have a job, but as far as her son can tell (and he looks hard), the only pain he's ever caused Abigail Fitzgerald is the kind in her ass.
And Fitz always grew up scared of the thought of what might happen if that pain became a little less metaphorical.
So as much as he hated his stepfather, he put up with Phil's fists, if it meant that the man would never touch his mother like that.
Honestly, it was bad enough listening to him fuck her.
III.
Some few odd weeks after Phil takes off with the case of beer he had in the fridge and this month's rent money, his mother finds out she's pregnant. For awhile she talks about the possibility of Phil coming back, but they both know she's full of shit. He's never coming back, he got what he wanted from her, and now he's off to find some other woman whose younger, thinner, and doesn't have baggage to deal with.
Besides, they wouldn't even know where to begin looking, if either of them had the slightest interest in finding out where he went.
A few months later, his little sister Megan is born, and while Fitz doesn't really like her all that much- what's there to like about an ugly little brat who always smells like shit and cries nonstop?- he has to admit that as much as he used to wish for a Daddy when he was a very little boy, he is glad that Phil is long gone by the time Megan's here.
Because while he'd never admit it, he couldn't stand the thought of Phil- or anyone else, for that matter- ever raising a hand to her.
I mean, how could anyone ever hit a kid, much less some puny little baby?
What did they ever do to you?
IV.
Later, though, he would be surprised at how much Megan would grow on him.
Sure, she was annoying and smelly, but she made him feel…well, good.
And not in the way that getting drunk or stoned or having sex with some slut at the Ravine made him feel good.
No, this was the crazy thing. Megan just made him feel good by being him. With her, all he had to do was make some silly face, or make a farting noise with his hands, or just stick his tongue out at her, and she'd crack up laughing like he was Adam Sandler or something. She followed him around everywhere, and as much as it irritated him, he secretly liked the attention.
Megan was the only person who ever liked him for him- nothing more, nothing less.
V.
As soon as he got out of prison, he would spend a lot of his time around the house, not really sure what to do with himself.
It was hard for him to fall asleep. As weird as it was, he was used to falling asleep in a jail cell where the lights are always on and there is noise 24/7, so when he returned home, it was a bit of a reality shock to find out that his apartment was silent after 9 PM, and that all the lights were turned off.
Sometimes, he would lie awake for hours in his bed, fully clothed and on top of the covers. Other nights he would sit on the fire escape right outside, smoking a cigarette he stole out of his mom's purse and just watching the sky- something he hadn't seen all those godforsaken months he was locked inside that hellhole.
Then there are the times when he tiptoes down the hallway, and as quietly as the shadow he casts in the dim light, he slips into his mother's bedroom and watches her and Megan sleep.
His mother sleeps hard, and she should- she works hard enough. She sleeps all sprawled out in the bed she once shared with Phil, the one right across the wall from him. When Phil was still living with them, Fitz could hear every noise they made together in this bed- every spring in the mattress, every bang of the headboard, every pant his mother made while that pig of a husband worked his way over her and called, "fuck, yeah, baby, fuck, harder, that's it, fuck, ahhh, fuck, baby…"
Jesus Christ, did he think they were auditioning for the Oscars of porn?
Just the memory of it is enough to make dream of his former stepfather walking through the door, and this time, Fitz would give him a piece of his motherfucking mind. He wasn't the small child cowering in the kitchen corner, folded into himself like a goddam dishrag anymore.
You're the man of the house, Mark. My man, and the only man I need. Got it, handsome?
His mother had told him that all the time when he was a little boy:
You're the man of the house.
Right.
Because look at him now. A high school dropout. An ex-felon. A parolee. A thug. A nobody. Just another loser, doomed to living off of food stamps and welfare and other humiliating hand-outs. No pride, no dignity, no self-respect. No life, except one doomed to being a bug on a windshield for the rest of his days.
All that work his mother had done, putting in almost 80 hours a week from her three different jobs, raising two kids solo as a high school dropout making minimum wage.
And for what? So her son could brag about the quality of the food at Williamsburg Correctional Facility? So he could have the opportunity to write, on every single job application he would ever fill out for the rest of his life, the name and number of his parole officer? So he could work minimum wage jobs for the rest of his life, without a high school diploma?
Then there was Megan.
Smelly, yowling, sweet little Megan. His baby sister. Old enough to think he was the greatest person ever in the world, but young enough to be totally ignorant as to what a fuck-up and waste of human existence he was.
There were times when he would stand by her crib for hours, just watching her. Her fingers curling and uncurling in her sleep like a sea anemone, drool leaking from her open mouth onto the mattress, that tattered green blanket with the ducks on it that she carried EVERYWHERE and would go apeshit if she was without for, oh, half a millisecond. Her warm, still, chubby baby body, so sure and protected and vulnerable in her sleep, and her face so peaceful and innocent that it makes him feel sick.
Sick with everything- his life, his problems, his failures, and most of all, sick to death of himself.
They deserved a whole lot more than him.
It was nights like these when his thoughts would very sanely turn to the gun that his mother kept in her underwear drawer.
VI.
He never consciously made a plan for himself- he'll kill himself when the snow starts to melt, or the first of the month, or anything like that. It was more like an afterthought; if he's going to be this way for the rest of his life, than it really isn't worth living.
So why bother living it at all?
One night got particularly bad for him. His mother was working late and Megan was with him, watching Dora the Explorer on TV. While she was totally absorbed in listening to Dora ask her to point out Swiper the Fox, he took the bottle of gin out of his mother's cabinet and poured it straight.
He didn't mean to, but before he knew it he'd downed nearly half the thing, and by the time Megan fell asleep midway through Dora's little adventure through the jungle, he was sitting on his bed in the darkness of his bedroom, the bottle of gin in one hand and the gun resting in his lap.
Like he said- Fitz never made an actual plan to kill himself. He figured that he'd died a long time ago, and now he was just a zombie, sleepwalking through life.
So what was the point of going through the motions, if you were already dead?
His mind completely blank, he put the bottle down, picked up the gun, put it in his mouth.
And put his hand on the trigger.
VI.
If you asked Fitz today, he couldn't tell you why he didn't just pull the damn thing, letting his brains spew all over the thin, dingy wall of his bedroom.
Because, really, he has no idea why he didn't do it.
No, he didn't have an epiphany. An It's A Wonderful Life moment where he realized that yes, life is indeed worth living.
No, he didn't break down and have a Jesus moment, one that had him screaming "I see the light!" while Della Reese glowed and praised God in the background.
And no, there wasn't an emotional scene where he just simply broke down crying, begging for mercy, relief, redemption, hope…something.
He just heard Megan calling his name- "MOK! MOK!", because that was all she could manage at her age- and when she did, he simply took the gun out of his mouth and put it back on his bed alongside the bottle, walking calmly and steadily into the room where his sister was and sitting next to her, watching Dora the Explorer as if nothing had ever happened.
VII.
Although he hated what a fucking cliché it sounded like, his time in prison, coupled with that night with his mother's gun, really made him wake up and get his shit together. Not all at once, but piece by piece; it's like he's a human jigsaw puzzle being put together in an old folks home by World War II veterans with cataracts- agonizingly slow, but still getting done.
While he was doing his time, he found his life had righted itself in little ways. He didn't become all Jesus-y and crap, but he DID finally dry out. He couldn't drink, so he had to sober up. He couldn't do anything bad, so he stayed out of trouble. He couldn't be a bully, because he was up against men who were much bigger and badder and more terrifying- and had done worse- than Fitz had ever done in his life. Sure, he was in a medium-security prison, so he wasn't living with murderers and child rapists and the like, but he was still with pretty scary people in general.
While he was on parole, he completed his GED program. Despite how pointless he thought everything was, he had no choice but to do it- he had nothing but time on his hands, and it was so freaking BORING doing nothing that this was a way to distract him from being stuck.
When his GED was completed and he finally had his diploma, his parole officer got him a job at a grocery store. He hated it, but realized that there were things FAR worse in life than being a bag boy at the A&P.
So while he didn't really believe in all that soul-searching, I'm-gonna-turn-my-life-around kinda crap, he DID clean his act up.
VIII.
Two years after he got out of jail, a cop showed up at his front door, and for the first time he can remember, it had nothing to do with him.
Instead, it was about Phil.
Apparently, he'd been killed in a car accident on some godforsaken highway in the middle of BFE. She was listed as the emergency contact and the next of kin, and since they weren't ever technically divorced, she was still entitled to death benefits.
He remembered his mother telling the man thank you, and to get the hell off of her porch.
He didn't want her to accept the money. After all, they hadn't heard from Phil in over three years. Since he left, he never called, sent money, or showed the slightest interest in wanting to be a father to his daughter. Even though it wasn't official until recently, he had been dead to them for a long time.
In the end, though, she had taken it. They needed the money, point blank, and money was money, even if it was what Fitz called "blood money".
"Besides," she had pointed out, "think of it as one thing that Phil actually did for us that was good."
"Yeah," he'd snorted back. "Dying. The only thing that bastard ever did right by us. You're right, Mom. Dying was the best fucking thing he could have ever done for his wife. For his own child. What a guy."
She'd glared at him, looking like she was ready to slap him across the face, but instead just withered like a dried-up flower.
"You know," she'd said, and Fitz had been startled to see tears forming in her eyes as her voice wavered, "you can really be so hateful sometimes, Mark."
"Ma," he'd said, his voice softening, "I'm sorry, alright? Just don't see why we have to take this. Phil gave us shit for almost ten years and then walked away from you and his own kid."
"He was your stepfather, Mark. Doesn't that mean anything to you?"
"Yeah. It means that he owes me nothing. And I don't owe him anything, either. He's not my father. He couldn't tell me what to do with my life when he was here, and now that he's dead, I don't need anything from him."
He never found out if his mother accepted the money or not. All he knows is that month, he put in his half of the money they owed for rent and utilities, and the bill collectors didn't call their place for a couple months after that.
IX.
One night, he's dicking around on Facerange- something he doesn't really do much, but he's off of work for the day and is bored as hell stuck inside during a January snowstorm- and then he sees something that nearly gives him the shock of his life.
A photo pops up on somebody's wall feed, and it takes him a full minute of staring in open-mouthed shock to realize that he's looking at Clare Edwards.
It takes him so long to realize her, since he hasn't seen her since Vegas night, nearly three years ago. Her hair is longer, pulled away from her face, which is more lined and worn than he remembers, and definitely less filled out.
Plus, there's something in her eyes that's definitely changed. That light that he saw in her, that open-hearted sweetness and innocent gleam in her eyes has dimmed, and there's something a little more dull there, more jaded and…older.
Plus, she's, like, humongously pregnant- really in the throes of "I could really drop this kind any day now" kind of pregnant- with one ringless hand resting on her enormous belly, as the other is swung around Eli Goldsworthy's shoulder.
Eli Goldsworthy's.
He can't believe it. He can't fucking believe it.
Miss Purity Ring Edwards, Miss Friendship Club and Chastity Belt and Little Miss Innocent. Clare fucking Edwards, one-half of the reason his life was the way it was, while the other smirked that infuriating smirk of his up at him, one hand on Clare's waist and the other pressed up against the huge baby bump.
He just couldn't get over it. The whole thing. The fact that she had this big belly, with a baby inside, and that it was, of all people's, Emo Boy's. After everything, all the shit that had gone down on Vegas Night and the past three years that had gone by, they were still together.
But what really got under his skin was the look on Emo-Boy's face. It was that same smirk that Fitz had seen a million times. It was the same one he'd gotten when Eli had given him his fake ID; the same one he'd given him when he'd picked that fight with him outside the convenience store; the same look he'd given him when he'd faced him in the hallway after he'd gotten out of his meeting with the judge; the same one that Fitz had seen right before he drank the poisoned cup on Vegas Night.
It was a look that clearly said, "I win."
And from the look on his face as he put his hand over Clare's belly, huge and stretched with their baby, Fitz just knew who'd really won their feud.