Title: "But I Love You"
Rating: T for deep themes
Genre: friendship, hurt/comfort
Character(s): Bree, Leo
Pairing(s): none
Summary: "Do you love me? I know you do. And that is good; because I love myself, too." [[Company fic to daphrose's story, "I Hate Me Too"]]
Notes: I have permission! daphrose has graciously allowed her readers to write a sequel to her story, and because it appealed to me and I actually got an idea, here we are. :D
If you've read her story, "I Hate Me Too" (and if you hadn't, try to check it out because it's good), you'll know that themes of depression and angst are present, so please be forewarned. Also, regarding the poem you'd find in here, it's an inversion of what was written in her story, so it's partly hers and partly mine. (It's hybrid poetry, whoo!)
This is set sometime between Three Minus Bree and Which Father Knows Best? because I decided to work with the 'recent mistake' bit that was in daphrose's story for this variation.
Other than that, I hope you'd enjoy this!
Bree stared at the wall while she lied on the bed. There was something oddly relaxing to it, to the blankness and to the silence. Her eyes traced the space, observing the curves, the marks and the bumps on the cement that had been painted faintly peach. Once or twice, a random contemplation would come into her mind, but for the most part her thoughts remained stagnant. There were many things she knew she had to sort out, things she had to deal with, things she needed to fix that lied in the deep, but she decided to leave them sunken for now.
All she wanted was the silence.
She lifted her hand up to touch a bump on the wall. She slowly ran a finger over it, back and forth, again and again. It felt weird and out of place. Whereas its surroundings were glossy and smooth, the bump, despite being small, was tough and stubborn. She wondered if she should chip it out. That way, the wall would look a bit more consistent and flawless. However, it came to her that taking it off would also mar the paint and might even result on a gaping hole on the wall. Her parents were not going to like that.
Bree guiltily lowered down her hand and placed it on the notebook lying next to her.
She had already done enough damage as it was.
That was the reason why she couldn't come back to the lab yet – she messed up everything. And not just the big things there, but she seemed to mess up even the small ones around the house. She couldn't even do chores right. Oftentimes, she didn't feel motivated to do any of them, and on those occasions that she did, she didn't do them the way they were supposed to be done. Her stepmother was always very patient with her, but she knew one day that tolerance would run out.
Maybe it had run out. It probably did a long time ago.
Why did she have to be so lazy?
Her grades were also sliding. Mr. Osmond just handed their quizzes back earlier, and she had a D. Before she left out of the classroom with everybody, her chemistry teacher had suggested that she ask Chase for help since he was doing extremely well in AP Chemistry. Maybe your little brother can help you bump up your grade, he had said with a smile. You're going to need all the preparations, especially with the finals coming up.
She knew what that D really stood for. That meant she didn't even have the brains to study on her own and understand the lessons. She didn't know why things had changed; she used to be much better at school. She used to bring home grades that made her parents beam at her, their eyes gleaming with pride as they looked on at what she had achieved.
What would they say when they see that grade? How would they regard her?
With disappointment. Again, a voice in the back of her head told her scornfully. Of course.
How awful. She was a lazy, dense, no-good doer of a fallen hero.
I'm so useless.
Bree could feel the tears coming, but she staunchly refused them. She needed to be brave. She could at least be good at that. If not, she could at least fake being strong.
She lifted her eyes up at the bump on the wall and then touched it again. Maybe it wasn't such a bad flaw. She smiled weakly when she thought how it added character to an otherwise boring wall. Plus, there were others like it in there. Some were smaller, some were bigger, but it wasn't alone.
Bree left it be, tucking her hand instead under the pillow.
A soft knock on the door called to her attention a few minutes later. As she slowly sat up, she saw the door opening gradually until Leo poked his head in. "Uh, Bree?" he began, but then stopped.
Bree saw hesitation in his eyes the longer she stared at him. From that, she was able to tell the reason for his coming there. She sighed. "Leo, I told you. I don't want to talk about it," she said.
"Well…" Leo looked unsure at first. Then, he decided to open the door so he could step in. He did so uncomfortably as he struggled to hold up the large presentation board on his left and a folder, his tablet, and a plastic bag that seemed to contain various art supplies on his right.
Bree's eyebrows wrinkled at this as she swung her feet over to the floor.
"I was actually wondering if you could help me with a project?" Leo asked. "This will count for fifty percent of my finals."
Bree continued to frown. She was going to ask him what he needed when something occurred to her. The expression on her face cleared. "Why don't you ask Chase? Or Adam?" she asked, trying not to sound as disheartened as possible; she still needed to fake strength. "You'll have a better chance at getting a good project done."
Leo pulled the presentation board up as it began to slip from his grasp. "I could, but they're not as good in putting things together as you," he said. "You know Mr. Bauer. He's big on presentation. It counts for almost half of the grade." He looked at her pleadingly. "I'd really appreciate it if you could help me with that."
Bree stared at him. Quite honestly, she didn't really know what help she could give. Her mood was shot, so that meant her ability to coordinate was shot, too. Also, she didn't think she could handle a disappointed look from him if she messed it up, which she just might do. Her little brother would probably be lenient and kind about it because of what he had found out about her.
That would be worse. She didn't want him to lie to her.
However, as much as she wanted to turn him away, she found that her pity over his state surpassed her fear a little bit more. I guess I could at least try being a helpful sister for once, she thought glumly. "Alright, fine," she said, standing up. "Turn on the lights."
Leo swiped his knuckle across the switch. Lights flooded the room, making it nice and bright because of the mixture of artificial and natural light, which came from the setting sun outside. Walking over to the floor beside the bed where his sister sat, he said, "I started on the header already. I have an outline on what goes where, but I wasn't really sure how not to make it look like an art supply store just threw up on my board. Since organizing is your forte, I'm leaving that part to you."
Bree reached for the outline when he handed it to her. "What's this for again?" she asked.
"Biology," Leo answered after sitting cross-legged beside her. "We're assigned different biomes to do a presentation on to show how much knowledge we've built up from the first time we discussed this lesson. I was assigned to do research on caves."
"Caves?"
"I wanted the frozen tundra, but Daryll Kensington beat me to it," Leo said, dismayed, as he opened up the presentation board in front of them.
"Oh."
"It's not as bad as I thought, to be honest," Leo continued as he laid out various sheets of paper around them so Bree could see. "Big D has the Planet Earth collection, and he let me use the video that talked about caves. It's actually got a lot of interesting stuff."
Bree only half listened to her brother as she consulted the outline and tried to put the board together mentally. One by one, she located the various pieces that needed to go on the display, all the while chiming in with an "Okay" or a "Hm" as Leo talked about the things he had found. She managed to do a little editing on what should go at the right side of the panel. She had even begun gluing up a picture and the information that went along with it. She felt good about that.
But then, minutes later, Leo said something about how his report would progress, where it would start and where it should end, and Bree realized that she had made a mistake with the picture and the information strip. She tried to peel it off the board again while her brother was distracted with a piece of papier-mâché, but the glue had hardened. She searched for a ruler or a box cutter to ease the paper off, but she realized that forcing it out would wrinkle it and would rip at what it was on.
"…and then, there's this cave where the water flowing out is white with—What is that?" Leo asked, peering into the board.
Bree glanced at him quickly before staring at what she had done. She could feel it coming, the lie. He was going to say it was okay, she didn't mean to do it. He was going to tell her it was fine and pretend like nothing happened, but then cover up her blunder later on when she's not around so she wouldn't feel like the failure she was. She kept her eyes ahead; she didn't want to hear and watch him lie to her.
Instead of saying anything, although, Leo picked up the outline with a frown as he compared it with the display. "Oh. Okay," he said. He returned to working on his personal project before saying, "I don't know why I always confuse stalagmites and stalactites. Sta-lag-mites are on the ground, sta-lac-tites are on the ceiling. So I guess I'm actually starting with stalactites."
Slightly bewildered by what he had said, Bree checked the picture and the paper.
Formation hanging from the ceiling. Stalactites.
"Anyways," Leo continued to ramble, "like I was saying, the water's white because of the sulfuric acid in it…"
The direction of the conversation stunned Bree for a moment. Soon, though, she decided to overcome the confusion and slight shock to continue on her task.
After fifteen minutes of editing and organizing, she began to feel overwhelmed. Her first mistake had caused her to doubt her decisions, degrading her already fragile confidence into something very pitiful. It was getting late, but she was moving too slow. Not only that, there were so many words and pictures and art tools scattered all around them that she was starting to feel that her chances of doing something dumb skyrocketed at every second. She felt like the bump on the wall – she was that one thing that blemished everything going good.
There were too much activity, too much room for faults, too much noise that it awakened her monsters. Her eyes watered as they pulled her towards the bottom.
Gradually but steadily, they drowned her.
Leo, however, was quick to lend his sister a helping hand when he noticed her struggling. Like he had been doing from the beginning, he pulled her back to the surface using small acts. He had seen the lost gaze she casted at the chaos around them, so he collected pieces of paper here and there when she wasn't looking and tucked them back to the folder. He did this until the quantity was bearable enough.
He had originally begun talking because he didn't want her to feel obligated to interact with him, but he saw that it had done more bad than good. So, he eased off on the conversation, turning his attention instead on his art project.
Though it was taking some time for it to work, Leo didn't force it. He had learned from his earlier mistake of trying to get his sister to talk about what she was feeling like it wasn't something delicate.
The order and peace his actions brought about registered to Bree despite her not realizing it. She was able to breathe better, think clearer. Her nerves were still on a frenzy, especially the more she thought of how everything would end up looking, but they had calmed enough for her to be able to actually glue some things on the board albeit cautiously.
As she pressed down on a picture, Leo smiled. "Have you ever heard of the Lechuguilla Cave?" he asked.
Bree shook her head. "No."
"Oh, I think you'll like it." Leo placed down the cone-like structure he was painting to pick up his tablet. As he turned it on, he said, "According to my resources, it's one of the longest explored caves in the world. It didn't start out that way, though."
Bree looked at the tablet when Leo held it in front of her to show her a video. "Decades ago, people didn't think much of it," he said as they saw a person rappelling down to the cave. "Well, they thought it was just a small historic site that wasn't that big of a deal, but they still thought something of it. It used to be a mining place of some kind. For bat guano or something."
"What's guano?"
"Poop. Apparently, it's the best kind of fertilizer."
"Oh."
"So, at first, they thought there was all to it, right?" Leo continued. "But after a while, the mining for that stuff stopped, too. Now here sits this cave, tiny and full of dead ends – just nothing to offer."
Bree marveled at the footages of frost-like minerals that came next on the screen. The earthly deposits looked like branches of ice, glowing bright and shining like diamonds when light shone on them.
"But after explorers decided to look into it sometime in the mid to later 1980's, they saw that there was something more to this cave than they had thought," Leo said, hoping that his sister would understand why he was telling her these things. "What they thought was a small cave was actually a really big one, and what they thought was only somewhat good for the icky stuff, well, look at it. Deep inside is this really, really beautiful place that stretches on for miles and miles. Don't you think it's cool?"
Bree looked at the blue, serene pools of water shown at the video with amazement. She wished she could be there. "It's more than that," she said absently.
"Yeah. True." Leo closed his tablet as the credits rolled. He smiled. "Funny how that works, huh? Things and places you don't expect anything from are actually the ones that will floor you."
A small, sad smile pulled at Bree's lips, but it immediately shrunk back into nothing when she realized that she was not like that place. There was nothing good in her. All there would ever be was waste. There wouldn't be anything surprising, anything breathtaking. She used to have bionics that made a difference in the world, but what had she done with it? Wrecked it. Smashed it into fragments. Traded her priceless crystals for a handful of worthless mud.
She resumed her work with the board. Don't even think about it, she warned herself as her eyes began to sting. "Yeah," she said, trying not to choke out the word.
Seeing this, Leo decided to look around the room. When he saw an edge of the black tape-covered notebook peeking from the covers on the bed, he asked, "Bree? Do you mind if I look at that poem again?"
Bree blew an exasperated breath. "Leo, I told you, I don't want you getting involved," she said sternly, not stopping what she was doing. Furrowing her brows further, she asked, "And why do you want to look at it anyways?"
"It has a good rhyme scheme."
Bree looked at him with a frown.
Leo shrugged, unfazed by her anger. "It does," he said honestly.
Bree stared unhappily at him. Knowing that he was not going to let it go and knowing that that would only aggravate her more, she just rolled her eyes then said, "Fine. Do whatever. Just – no talking about it. The moment you do, you are out of this room."
Leo turned around to get the notebook. Once it was in his possession, he sat down and read through it.
Her little brother's silence bothered Bree that she was soon impelled to look back at him. Contrary to what she had anticipated, he seemed to be looking at it meritoriously rather than judgmentally. He even smiled as if he truly enjoyed what he was seeing.
Bree continued to spread glue on the information strip in front of her, unsure how to feel about his reaction.
Or maybe, the same scornful voice within her said, he's smiling because the poem's funny. You didn't write it right.
"It's been a while since I've written anything," Leo said, pulling a blank paper from underneath a pile. He gestured at her notebook with a pencil he picked up. "Do you mind if I borrow some lines from this?"
"Are you going to show Mr. Davenport and Tasha the poem?"
"No," Leo said. "It's staying in here."
Bree huffed. "Fine," she said.
The sound of pencil strokes against paper filled the room. For some reason, it both eased Bree out of her frustration and built up nervousness in her. She wondered what he was writing. Was he writing about himself, too? Did he feel horrible about himself like she had? Did she cause him to think this way?
Bree wished he didn't. Despite her irritation at his attempts, she knew that he was doing all of it out of the goodness of his heart. He cared about her. He was a good person. Even with his flaws…
Something twisted strongly in her chest, causing a lump to form on her throat and so much tears to well in her eyes that she had to wipe them away before they rolled down her cheeks. …Even with his flaws, he is a good person. Just like you.
Leo sighed contentedly. "Alright. This is done," he said with a grin as he went through his work for the fifth time. He looked at Bree straight in the eye. "Now, before you make good on what you said, just hear me out," he said. "I promise I will not mention seeing your poem at all to anybody—even to you, in the future, if you want—if you help me with my poem and read it back to me like you mean it."
Bree stared at him blankly, feeling quite unsure and also self-conscious because more tears threatened to come up to her eyes.
Instead of saying anything about that, Leo just pressed, "Deal?"
Bree wanted to answer, but she was absolute her voice would only break. Leo probably already knew that she had been crying, but she didn't want to give him a strong confirmation of it. So, she just held out her hand for the paper.
Leo gave it over to her.
When Bree read the first four verses, all control she had vanished. The words on the paper seemed to have lifted something off her, and the light feeling caused her to allow the tears to come.
Leo smiled when she looked at him. "Come on, Bree," he encouraged her. "Read it to me like you mean it."
Bree gathered a breath before looking down at the paper. She swallowed hard, just so she could talk, and read the words out loud:
"Do you love me?
I know you do.
And that is good;
Because I love myself, too
It's just a lie
When I'm told, 'I hate you.'
Really, it's fine
That's not the truth
Don't hide behind the mask
Your actions speak for you
Just tell me how it is—
That you love me, too
I laugh at stupid things
But hey—we've all lost a few screws
I still respect myself
I still love myself, too
Even if I don't spend a second
On makeup and shampoo
I'll still be beautiful
I'll still like myself, too
When I tried being myself
Some people only withdrew
So I step away from them
My happiness doesn't depend on what they do."
Bree wiped her cheeks to dry them as she hiccupped a sob. Then, she continued:
"There are things I can't change
No matter how much I want to
But I'll try my best to overcome my flaws
While loving myself, too
I won't let anyone hurt me
I'll stick to what is true
They won't bring me down
Because I love myself, I do
Don't spare my feelings;
Give me what is due
But just be honest that,
In the end, you love me, too
I can be an awful person
I can't find my breakthrough
But it's okay, I'll do better—
And I'll forgive myself, too
This is the reason why
I won't put myself down like I used to:
I now know I'm important
I now know I should love me, too
So many mistakes in my life
That I can't seem to undo
Just say you love me
And I'll start anew."
"Now this one, I thought I could read," Leo said with a smile. "I know you don't want us to know—well, I kind of forced it out of you. But, Bree, it's the lies that hurt so much, because the cold, hard truth is that we love you."
Bree's head hung low as she continued to cry. The waters had dried, and now the doubt, the loneliness, and the overpowering sense of worthlessness were dying. The monsters that had harmed her were struggling to breathe. They were reaching out to her pleadingly, desperately, and the weak part of her inclined her to help them, to bring them back to life. But the warmth and weightlessness brought about by knowing she was loved stopped her short. She had happiness and forgiveness at her side now; she needed nothing else.
Leo then gathered his sister in his arms. "Come here," he said as he held her close, her shoulders hitching as she sobbed on his shoulder. He was set on making a joke to lighten the situation more, but he realized that his being there for her was enough. "Don't worry. We're going to get your chip back," he promised her.
Bree believed him; she knew they would.
But for now, she was content with being a normal girl who, though powerless, was learning that she was worth many great things.
Planet Earth belongs to BBC, not me.
Reviews are appreciated. :)