Hello lovlies. I've been gone for a really long time from the FF writing scene, and I apologize. I've left many of my readers for RH waiting such a long time, and that's not fair at all for you guys. I've just been extremely busy with life. So! A bit on this story. It was inspired by, Enough for Now by The Fray. If you've listened to a song by The Fray before, you'll understand how angsty each song leaves you feeling, and I just had to write this.
A mega big hug, many thanks, and buckets of cookies to my gorgeous beta reader, Falling to Fly.
I hope you guys like this! My take on Mr. Knight's involvement in putting Kendall in charge. And how Katie helps him through it.
Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I don't own Big Time Rush.
Enough for Now
"Breathing comes in pairs, except for twice. One begins and one's goodbye."-The Fray, Enough For Now.
It was about one in the morning when the first sound of shattering glass was heard. Considering the fact that the Knight family consisted of heavy sleepers, it wouldn't have been surprising if the noise had gone unnoticed… but it hadn't.
Katie's eyes open at the sharp noise piercing her eardrums, making her jolt directly up to a sitting position in her bed. She hadn't been asleep in the first place, so she didn't bother taking a couple moments to fully wake herself. How was she expected to sleep on a day like this, with everything that had been going on?
Quickly, she threw the sheets to the side and slipped her feet into her slippers. She shuffled across the room and made her way into the hall.
Katie flinched as another crash bounced off the walls in the hallway. She took a hesitant step towards the kitchen, skillfully dodging the overturned pieces of furniture and the small shards of glass scattered and embedded in the shaggy green carpeting. Harsh sobs and moans of heart-wrenching agony could be heard from the room in front of her. The sounds echoed all across the house. She was surprised that she was the only one who woke up. Maybe it was because she never went to sleep in the first place.
Katie stopped dead in her tracks when one of her mom's teacups went sailing past her head and hit the wall where she had been a mere second ago. She had to go in there.
She had to help him.
"K-Kendall?" She meant it to come out a bit more forceful, but her call was more like a frightened whisper. She sounded more vulnerable than her usual sarcastic self. Katie squeezed her eyes shut and swallowed the lump forming in her throat, when she heard the crashing come to a stop only to be replaced by ragged and shallow breathing, punctuated by quiet cries. Her hand groped for the wall as her knees gradually began to feel weak; her heart was fluttering in her chest at one hundred beats per second.
Was she really afraid to go in and talk to her own brother? The one who was her protector and best friend? Then again, this was the first time she had ever seen him act out like this. She wasn't used to the devastated image of her usually over-confidant and always optimistic brother. She had no idea how he might react to her trying to console him- or to her just being in the same room.
But she was Katie. She took risks when nobody else would. And Kendall needed this.
They both needed this.
Her red and sleep deprived eyes snapped open as she took a deep breath in, calming her nerves.
"Kendall?" She called out with a shaky voice, more powerful than before, "Kendall, I'm coming in." The harsh breathing continued so she didn't wait for an answer. Katie slowly padded forward, steering herself to the kitchen. Glass crunched under the soles of her fluffy blue slippers, making her presence more obvious. Katie entered the kitchen; squinting at the light that flooded in and attacked her dry eyes.
She blinked back the blurriness and looked around the dimly lit room. Her jaw went slack at the sight of the amount of damage that her older brother had caused in less than five minutes. Almost every single plate has been smashed; the glasses as well. Chairs were on the floor, some missing their legs. What was most disturbing though was the fact that every single family photo that had once been stuck to the refrigerator door by happy and bright magnets had been torn and thrown into the sink, water already beginning to fade and bleach the ink.
The faucet leaked drip by drip, filling the empty silence and only being accompanied by Kendall's quieting breathing.
Her gaze travelled lower and tears began to flood her eyes for the seventh time that day. Sitting there, under the sink with a lighter in one hand and a stack of photos in the other, his knees drawn up to his chest, was her older brother, old tears staining his flushed cheeks and shoulders shaking in an effort to keep his cries silent. She stepped forward one last time, closing the distance between them to about a foot.
"Kendall-" She started, but was quickly cut off by Kendall's tired and shaky voice, his eyes never leaving the photos in front of him.
"You know, you were his favorite. He always wanted a daughter." Kendall's eyes were dry, the redness bringing out the pale mossy green than he had inherited from their father. If there was one thing about Kendall that was easy to read, it was his eyes. You could tell every single emotion just from one simple glance.
"You wouldn't even be able to imagine the look on his face when Mom told him. I'd never seen him so happy before." His lips pulled into a small smile and he began to look distant as he lifted up his hand holding the lighter, clicking the igniter and setting a spark to light. He tilted the flame to the photo in front of his face and watched as it began to curl into itself while alight with fire. He threw backwards causing it to land in the sink.
Katie noticed that the pictures were all ones with their Dad in them.
The one he threw was a picture of when she was born. It was their mom in a hospital bed with proud looking Kendall sitting right next to her staring adoringly at the small pink bundle in his mom's arms. In her mother's arms was a little miniature version of herself, huge puppy dog eyes staring right into the camera's lens. And right at the bottom of the photo was her father's face peeking up, wanting to be a part of the moment. Kendall was right. Kyle Knight was absolutely beaming.
His eyes were scrunched up by his enormous smile and laugh lines added age to his face, defining his pale green eyes in the process. His sandy blonde hair looked like a mop on the top of his head, seeing as he was still in his early thirties. As he got older, he gradually cut it shorter.
Sometimes it would scare Katie how much Kendall resembled him. If it wasn't for her dad's extra bulk and muscles as well as his rough and wrinkled skin, she would've been constantly confusing the two.
Katie was pulled out of her thoughts once again by the sound of Kendall clicking the lighter open and closed, staring at it as if it held some great secret; some impossible puzzle, and he was attempting to figure it out just by looking at it.
She decided to sit down on the ground, slowly lowering herself into the empty spot on Kendall's right. She sat close enough that their shoulders were touching, close enough that she could easily feel the shudder that ran through her brother's body at the sudden physical contact. He continued fumbling with the lighter.
Click.
Click.
Click.
Instead of grabbing the lighter and throwing it out in annoyance like she would've normally done, Katie took his hand which held the lighter and gripped it tight in both of her own. Even his hands were shaking in effort to keep his emotions at bay. To keep from falling apart in front of his younger sister.
Kendall avoided eye contact and stared forward, his eyes unseeing.
"When you were four," He began, causing Katie to look up at him from his hands, "Mom and Dad decided to take us on our first picnic. I was so excited. You were too, but you didn't care much except for the fact that you'd be able to run around and feed ducks." He chuckled and Katie smiled. She could recall this memory a little bit. She remembered begging her dad for a dime that she placed in the small coin slot, turning the dial until pieces of corn came pouring out of the short metal slide connected to the front. She remembered giggling and splitting up the corn, giving some to her brother, and running around when the ducks would peck at her after she had none left.
It was a great memory for her.
"You and I played with the ducks more than half of the day, while Mom and Dad sat back and talked..." He paused, his eyebrows furrowing and his mouth falling into a frown. "I remember looking over to them- to ask them if we could get a duck or something like that. I remember their exact facial expressions at that moment. Mom looked frustrated. Which was strange since Mom was never angry back then. And Dad… well, he looks just plain tired. During the whole time they were talking, Mom was waving her hands all around while Dad just sat back and nodded." His brow furrowed even further if it was possible. Katie started playing with his fingers, trying to provide comfort without interrupting him. She wanted to hear this story.
From her memory, that day had been non-stop fun- everything had gone perfectly and everyone was happy. But then again, she was four years old; she was oblivious to the badness in the world and to the problems that she soon learned had surrounded her family. That surrounded her own father.
"I decided to just ignore it, not wanting to spoil the day for anyone. We ate lunch, played games, talked about school… it was perfect. But I think the main reason that day is so important to me, is because… well, it's the day Dad told me that I was r-responsible for you g-guys-" Kendall's façade was beginning to break, he was losing his grip on the control that he had been attempting to keep ever since she had stepped into the kitchen.
"H-he told me after you t-two went into the car. H-he told me that if he was to ever n-not be there, that I-I would have to take care of you both. That I would have to be t-the man of the house." Tears began to well in his eyes and his shoulders started to shake even harder. His brow suddenly scrunched up in anger, his green irises alight with fury.
"H-how could he?" He ground out, his teeth grinding together while tears began to make their course down his cheeks, "How could h-he leave us!" Katie flinched when he gathered all of the remaining photos as well as the lighter and threw them with enough force to crack the cheap metal container as well as make a small dent in the wall. Pictures were swaying back and forth as they floated downwards, landing with a small tap, tap, tap, as the paper edges hit the white tiled kitchen floor.
Kendall was leaning forward, his mouth hanging open a bit as he just watched the pictures sail around him. His labored breathing was accompanied by Katie's small sniffles. She looked with sad yet curious eyes, waiting to see what he would do next. If he was going to keep breaking things, then she needed to get her mom out here with her. From what she had been through so far, she could handle an over-emotional Kendall… but a violent and destructive Kendall? She would need some parental support to get him to end his rampage.
In the end there was no need, since not a minute later Kendall's composure cracked and anger was replaced once again by immediate sorrow.
"Katie…" He finally sobbed, pulling his knees all the way up to his nose and burying his face in them. Katie sat there, stunned Kendall's sudden outburst of emotion. She quickly shook the surprise away and threw her arms around her brother, pulling him close until his head fell on her shoulder. "Katie, I'm n-not r-ready!" Harsh sobs clawed their way up his throat, leaving him gasping for air between cries. Katie just sat and let her shirt soak up his misery. She placed her own forehead on his chest, controlling her breathing so that she could keep from letting the dams loose in front of her shattered brother.
It was his turn now. She would be his shoulder to cry; the strong one. While he let his defenses down, she would be there to protect him, just like he did for her and their mom.
A weight had been building up on his shoulders the entire day; starting with the weight of the guilt, to the weight of carrying his father's stained wood coffin, to the weight of his mother crying on his arm, and finally to the weight of the tidal wave of emotions that had crashed into him.
Eventually this weight would crush him, but Katie would do everything in her power to alleviate some of that stress before it could get to that point. She sniffled into his musky grey sweater, slowly rubbing her brother's back in hopes that it would provide even the smallest amount of comfort.
"It's going to be okay, Kendall. Don't worry. It'll get better." Whether she was saying it to reassure just Kendall or herself as well, she wasn't sure. But she murmured small things like this throughout their time sitting on that floor.
They sat there for who knows how long, hanging onto each other for dear life. Kendall shared stories about their father that were happy reminders of how great a man he had been. How lucky they were to have had him as their father. And Katie listened attentively to each and every memory; laughing when she needed to, giving a supportive pat on the back when he paused and started tearing up again… She was there for him.
Until Kendall would be able to learn to deal with the pain and sadness on his own, she would be there for him and he would be there for her. They would carry the weight of their father's death together.
Short and sweet :) I left what the cause of his death was up to your imagination. One, because I couldn't make up my mind, and two, because I find it more fun when there are empty spaces that the reader can take and run with themselves.
Hopefully you enjoyed this!
Whatever the Aliens say,
TealMoose