Author: Vona
Title: Cold
Rating: PG
Pairing: None
Summary: Set after The Uncertainty Principle. Ramsey thinks.
A.N. Special thanks to Ana for looking this over and giving me a critique! You rock!
Cold
Stephen Ramsey sighed loudly as he flopped backwards on the cold, flat cot that had been provided ever so kindly by the jail. The cell wasn't much to look at, the cot, a sink, and an aluminum chair the only thing adorning it. He was incredibly bored and slightly apologetic for the situation he'd gotten himself into. His lawyer had finagled bail from a judge, but as Ramsey had told the lawyer, no one would pay it. His parents, staying true to form, did not come to bail him out. They hardly even spoke to him. He'd dialed his mother's number first, apprehensively and he'd told her he'd been sent to jail. She hung up on him, as if it did not matter to her that her 16-year-old son had been sent to prison. In fact, it probably didn't matter to her. She hadn't even given him a chance to explain the situation. He eventually resorted to calling his father, a glimmer of hope that his dad would come and rescue him. Of course, he had listened to what Ramsey had said, told him how disappointed he was, and hung up on Ramsey just like his mother. So Ramsey was virtually alone in the dark corridors that Arcadia Prison offered him.
He was glad to be out of the handcuffs, they'd cut into his skin a little bit. He wasn't able to get rid of the red rims that circled his wrists, the only sign that the metal had been there. He'd been presented with an orange jumpsuit, so he'd be 'more comfortable during his stay'. He hated it when adults were that sarcastic, particularly the police staff. They probably didn't feel too bad about their behavior; after all, Ramsey had threatened the police chief and his daughter with a loaded gun. That hadn't been his intention. He'd wanted to practice shooting, to contemplate his life up to that point, and to make some decisions about the way things were going to turn out. He'd gotten tired of being the bully. He'd conformed into what other people had decided he was, and he hated himself for it. He had become that bully that he had hated in grade school, the very person he used to protect Adam Rove from. He vaguely remembered being friends with Adam, happier days when all they had to do was pretend to be in another world and they were. Things had changed drastically. Adam had become involved in his art, obsessed with it even, leaving Ramsey in the cold, the cold Ramsey had just thought he'd left behind. At first, Ramsey had chalked it up to Adam missing his mother, but then it became all Adam did and he no longer seemed to care about Ramsey. Ramsey had accepted it eventually and before he knew what had happened, they were in high school.
High school, the wonderful place where people came to socialize, not learn. High school was the place where everyone decided that each individual person needed to become a label, a sheep. There were the cool kids, the ones that tried to be the cool kids, the nerds, the druggies, the rejects, and of course, the bullies. Ramsey hadn't really fit into any of the molds, but he'd been an angry kid. So they decided he was a bully. Ramsey had let them decide who he was and now he was stuck inside Arcadia Prison alone.
High school was brutal, no question about it. Home was even more brutal. That was when he'd really been defined. His stepfather hated him. He watched Ramsey's every move, hoping to find him mess up so he could kick him out. His stepfather wanted to have his own family, including a wife, but he wanted only that. A wife, not a ready-made family. Ramsey's mother had been lonely and depressed after the divorce his parents had gone through, so she was ready to latch on to whatever loser happened by. She'd found him and suddenly, her son didn't matter so much anymore. As long as her husband was happy, she was happy. Ramsey wasn't part of the equation. He was just a horrible reminder of what had once been, a failure, and she wanted no part of it. Ramsey's father was the same way. Ramsey was a mistake, an accident, someone he didn't want to deal with. He didn't want children. Ramsey could come see him when Ramsey was grown and making his own living. Then, maybe they'd have something in common. Unfortunately, the road Ramsey was traveling wasn't anywhere close to what his father had envisioned, so the end result would never happen. Ramsey would be a screw up for the rest of his life. Ramsey had finally accepted that right around the time he'd accepted the label that people had given him.
Ramsey had watched himself go in a downward spiral towards malevolence. He'd watched it almost as if he were an outsider, an objective viewer who could do nothing to change the outcome of the life before him. He became fed up with school and everything around him. He'd felt safe in the woods, in his little shed, his real home. He could have target practice, something that calmed him considerably. Firing a gun was soothing; it connected him to life. He could hear everything around him when he had that gun in his hand, he felt no confusion. He was connected to nature. He would run there when things became too much for him to handle, when he couldn't be the bully anymore. He would become whomever he wanted to be when he was in the woods. But he always had to come out. He always had to return to real life, where he couldn't pretend anymore.
How ironic that the police chief's daughter would make him feel human? He'd beat up her friend and she'd looked at him with hate in her eyes. Then as a quick turnaround, she wanted to go to the dance with him. And suddenly, he was treated like a real person again. He was human. He wasn't just the bully. He had depth and personality and hope. For the first time in a long time, he had hope. Of course, that was gone now. Joan had made him feel real, not like he was just a casual observer into his own life. She probably got a lot of flack from her parents for dating the school bully. He was dangerous. That was the theory. He would hurt her in the end, even if she didn't think it would happen. But her bringing him into the reality hurt him. He could suddenly see that his life had spun out of control and he knew no way to fix it. No way but to kill someone. Everyone thought he was a fiend, why not prove them right? Why not make them regret treating him the way they treated him, make them all see what stuck up jerks they were? He'd wanted to shoot someone. He'd wanted to be in control again. He wanted to feel connected. Being forced into actuality had made him feel more discombobulated than he cared to admit. He wanted to be Stephen Ramsey again.
He hadn't intended to hurt Joan. He hadn't intended to hurt anyone that night. Perhaps it was fate or perhaps it was simply a cry for help from him. He'd been so lost. He'd felt himself sliding down to the end of the scale that measured good and evil. Every child began as good and he'd fallen so far down. Maybe prison would help him gather the broken pieces of who he was and put him back together again, better than ever, better than Humpty Dumpty had ever been. Maybe all the time he would have for reflection in a state penitentiary would save him from becoming a monster, someone completely evil, he had felt he was becoming. Sure, evil was all relative, but it was a truly horrid thing to face. When a person saw it, they knew. He'd looked in the mirror and seen it, a flash of a monster coming to the surface. Maybe with the seclusion from others, the ones that had forced him into the state he was in, he would be able to heal. Maybe it was better that no one posted bail for him. Because he'd been lost in the cold before, not a glimmer of heat could shine through, and here he was, contemplating his life like he should have long ago. Maybe he was finally safe. Maybe he was finally warm.