"Oh, you're going to be fine, little toad. I promise. You're going to go and find a family who will give you everything - everything we couldn't."
- Ethan Hardy, November 2015.
Chapter 1
Three years later.
An empty-calendar day awaits Ethan. It seems crucial to begin it, at the start of dawn, with some form of productivity. A black coffee materialises onto the stainless kitchen counter and he pulls open the crooked blinds. The interior of his flat is sunlit, marinated with the scent of caffeine, and echoey with silence.
One good morning text waits for him. Two incipient letters wormed through the postbox onto the coir doormat. Ethan pulls out the phone, presses the passcode into it, and replies to the text gratefully. A mental pact is made to call her later. A pleasant distraction from the many hours of nothing he'll have to endure - Ethan is aware he is rather different from most people after having this thought, as most relish the chance to lavish in laziness. It's like there's a clock in his brain. He can't waste an hour.
If an empty flat isn't solitary enough, one at remotely four in the morning is positively eliciting the feeling that he's the last man on earth. He turns on the radio, as to not feel the gaping gap of being alone so intensely, and takes out his overused iron. And so the dull beginning to his day truly commences.
The iron presses creases out of dress shirts, working them out meticulously. He folds the garments cautiously and rests them on the sofa arm. On the last pair of trousers, it topples the pile, and they fall like a tired toddler in a mess on the sofa. Ethan lets himself sigh.
He pulls his weary self from the empty living room, longing to fall right back into his rumpled bed sheets. In the doorway of his room, dissimulated by lack of light, his legs bump labelled cardboard boxes. Fastened with brown sellotape, he recognises his own neat scrawl and expels a breath. That's a chunk of his life, packed into a box.
Much persuasion had been used on him in order for him to even entertain the notion of moving out. They say it'll help ease feelings of grief. Ethan thinks they're wrong, but he isn't fond of arguments when the persuaders (Charlie, mainly, and Alicia with unsubtle digs from Connie) were simply doing their best.
They just don't understand. The flat size might be astronomically immense, empty and glaring. The walls might be painted with a thin layer of cream to hide the glaring pink. Rent might be pricey and he may be paying for a bedroom that isn't used anymore. Yet moving is wrong. He's not ready to say goodbye to this place just yet.
A familiar ringing of his phone is a decent distraction. Ethan lets it go off for a ring and a half, in a bid to hide desperation which would surely show if he were to answer it straight away, afore pressing it between his ear and shoulder.
"Can't sleep?"
"Hello, Alicia," he says, and finds himself immediately hoisted from solitude. "No. Insomniac hours, I'm afraid this is my prime. What's your excuse?"
"Well, actually. There was a fascinating case on cystic fibrosis that was forwarded onto me by Robyn, and I had to research it."
Ethan finds solace in being able to laugh. "Right. Now give me the real reason - I'll have you know that I'm not that easy to fool." Clever as she might be, Alicia is marginally the sort to deprive herself of beloved sleep for unnecessary research.
"Alright, I had a bad dream. Monsters and that. Enclosed hallway. Distract me, will you?"
He is happy to oblige for both of their sakes.
Bubbly water wets the half-rolled sleeves of his sleeping shirt. Draining the sink, he continues to listen to the detailed theory that Alicia prattles on about. Something about fate being non-existent. Coincidences rule, and he agrees; the mere thought that there's a plan for every human is enough to make him smirk. He disagrees with the notion that everything is planned.
"I don't believe that it all transpires for a reason. Additionally that everything is planned by predominant forces," Ethan says, drying the rim of a glass. "Say an ant is stepped on. The purpose of that? Grief throughout the colony? There's no preponderant good, no plan, for a dead ant."
"It's unnecessary, you're right. Some tragedies shouldn't happen. If it were down to me, we'd be devoid of bad experiences."
"Though some could argue that it's the bad experiences that shape us."
"I suppose," Alicia says, and he knows that he's got her thinking now. He switches the battery saver on his phone with semi-slippery hands. "Though do you ever wonder who you'd be if bad things hadn't happened?"
"Probably forevermore the same person. Never weathered or cynical. Naive and awkward."
"Different, then. Myself, too, perhaps. You know, I misunderstand the idea that everything happens for a reason, like you - I think it happens, and we cope with it, making gold from it. Then again, I can't help but sway toward thinking that you can't have the sunshine without the rain. Perhaps the bad happens so we can appreciate the good."
"I don't know. I think it's a matter of perspective and situation. For instance, the melting of an ice-cream. It makes no difference in the long term, virtually pointless, deriving someone of a snack."
Alicia hums from the other end.
"Or, something like, I don't know, crashing your car into a tree whilst driving tipsy. A life lesson. A punishment for potentially deadly incidents. Did that happen for a reason, or was it just an accident? It could've ended so badly."
"Then you consider something like a… sexual assault, or a murder. And those would feel like there was no point to them."
"I suppose if we can convince ourselves that the bad happened for a reason, it makes us less angry at the universe. We can label it as a life experience."
"I'm still angry."
"So am I," Ethan says, and drains the sink. Bubbly water disappears down the plughole, a distorted version of his bed-tousled and sleepless self-reflected against a spoon.
"You reckon the world has a plan for us, though?"
A laugh escapes. Cynical to the core, he is. Nowadays anyway. "No. No way," he notes a silence after he says that, and bites his pride back. "Well, possibly." It lacks any conviction.
Obviously, she's disappointed but she does a good enough job at hiding it.
"Anyway, how's the washing up going?"
"Fine. You sped it up for me."
"Glad to know my rambles have a purpose."
"They do. Though, mind if we tackle something more light-hearted next time? I'm afraid it is just too early in the day to start it off on a bad foot. If we start off angry at the universe, surely it should do its worst to punish us by sticking us in traffic or something." And, additionally, he'd rather keep her in an upbeat mood.
"True. I'll keep it lighter. Best not upset it. Let's move on."
"Yeah, let's."
Whilst she chatters on, sounding so close that he can fool himself that she's right by him, stood barefoot on cream carpet wrapped in a comfy nightie, he busies himself. Scooping clothes into his bedroom, sweeping, the flat sparkling.
Ethan switches on a light, the bulb flickering a few times before flooding the hallway with effulgence. He basks in the light. A couple framed photographs hang on the wall, a mirror smudged with grubby fingerprints in need of a good rub. Cardboard boxes line the skirting board.
Without meaning to, a sigh slips out. It's enough to alert Alicia the same way a sudden groan would.
"You're getting down about the move, aren't you?"
"No, no. Just tired." She doesn't reply to his lie. "Bit premature to start grieving for this place anyway, I reckon. What with the fact that I've barely found a new home yet."
"You're meant to be looking!"
"I have been," Ethan says, the same way a procrastinating teenager would lie to their parents about something. "I've been looking at every spare chance I've got."
"Listen, moving out of that place is what's best for you. Even Charlie agreed. God, even Connie did. Did you at least have a good look through those brochures I brought you?"
Ethan eyes them, resting on the teeny table by the front door, home to sundry homeless junk. He picks them up and drops them into the waste paper bin with a satisfying clunk. Goodbye, brochures with ecstatic smiling couples receiving the key to their great fabby new house and life. He can't relate to them and their bliss which isn't reliant on anti-depressants.
"I had a good read, yes."
A stack of mismatched mail reposes on a hessian mat, a ring of a coffee stain hidden by it. Keys rest adjacent to it, and a half-finished can of energy drink sits atop of his bank cards. It's a sorry sight, a shameful part of his home which the lesser spotted guest is forced to look at. He doesn't have a miscellaneous (ie random shit) drawer like most households have - he has a messy table with a leg coming loose where he stores his crap. It's where his customary meticulous organization comes to die.
Swiping the letters into his grasp, he leafs through them whilst Alicia continues to talk. Car insurance, water bill, more expenses he'll need a loan taken out to pay off. Ethan tears a leaflet into strips, paper landing on the waste paper bin below, and he examines a letter from an unknown sender.
Ruth Hills.
Addressed not to him, but his older brother.
Arguably, when dead, privacy becomes a moot point. Cal never relished Ethan intervening in private matters but unfortunately, curiosity won the battle instead of respecting the privacy of the dead. Ethan sticks a finger through the seam of the envelope flap and ruptures it, ravished by the desire to know what lies inside.
When he's read it - twice, no less, drinking in the words, holding it under a strip of light - the confusion doesn't lift. It stays, heavy, a cloud over his head. The letter falls from his fingers, landing on the same mat that hurts his bare feet most days. He stares at it like an intruder.
"Uh, Ethan? Has the phone line cut out, or are you in a daydream?"
Familiar black frames rest on the hessian mat alongside the forgotten post. He takes them, drops to his knees and picks the letter up again. Glasses pushed on, he reads the first line with better, clearer vision. A beloved name, sinking into his brain, and an unknown one, panicking the same brain with confusion.
"Ethan?"
"I'm sorry, Alicia, I have to go," he hangs up the line, phone forgotten. Cradling the letter in his hands, he knows that his curiosity won't be satiated until he finds out exactly what this means.
He supposes he can't move out of this flat until he has. Time is truly of the essence. Like a hypocrite, he commences to wonder if the world does have a plan for him after all.
a/n: new fic! hope you enjoyed the first chapter; i'll be continuing with other fics but i wanted something new to focus on for a bit :)
also i changed my username from panic-at-casualty to pxnic-at-mxdnight to now panicpeachpit, thought i oughta mention it haha