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With Brendan gone, he feels his energy leave too.

He looks at Laura and she looks back.

"You should have told me." He stated.

"You're right. I should have." She nods looking genuinely sorry.

"Swear to me that there isn't more." He doesn't think he can take anymore.

"I swear to you that's it." She states and she's so firm, so sure that he knows that it's the truth.

He drops to the bed and wipes his face. Closes his eyes. He let's himself fall to the mattress. He bounces a little. He could crawl under the covers and sleep for a week but not here. He's had enough of Cheryl's castle. Enough of Cheryl. More than enough of Brendan.

"Car loaded?" He asks sitting up. Last thing he wants to do is sit in a car with fucking Callum but it's a lesser evil than spending one more second in this place.

"Yeah." Laura replies frowning. She looks confused.

"Good. Give me a ten minutes to pack, get that twat of a boyfriend." She doesn't even argue the term. "And let's get the fuck out of here."

"Whatever you want." She says as she heads out the door.

He throws his clothes into the bag, there's a pair of soft jeans, his favourite pair peeking out so he drops his dress trousers and slides into his jeans. He unbuttons his shirt he digs in his bag for a t-shirt.

There's a prickle at the back of his neck. He can feel eyes on him. He whips around.

"Didn't think I'd just leave did you? Really Steven?" Brendan leaning against the doorframe.

"That's what you do isn't it?" He's lacking snap. It comes out tired, worn and that's not good enough. That's too close to getting past the wall of anger. Closer to his shredded heart and Brendan's not allowed to see that. Not allowed to pierce the veil he's surrounded himself in.

"Ready to hear what I have to say?"

"I don't care." He snaps. That's it. That's what he needs. He needs Brendan to push it because the more he does the more he strengthens his anger.

Brendan turns and shuts the door. Then turns back to him. It's all calm and controlled and that's not fucking fair because he's clinging on by his finger nails relying in anger to see him through and Brendan is in control. He grits his teeth, and clenches his fists.

"I don't believe that."

"Where do you get off eh?!"

"You wouldn't be this angry if you didn't care." Brendan states.

He's stuck between a rock and a hard place. He admits that he still cares, of course he fucking cares, and it's admitting Brendan's right. He denies it and he's denying everything he's put himself through because he cares.

"You do still care." Brendan is looking at him, checking him out. He looks down at his open shirt and wraps it around himself.

"So what if I do? Doesn't mean anything does it? I mean if I meant anything to you at all then you wouldn't have fucking left me."

"I didn't leave you."

"So what do you call the last eight years? I take it you didn't just become invisible. I mean I obviously just couldn't see you."

"Steven."

He hates it. He used to love it but now it's sticking nails into the last shreds of his soul.

"Will you fucking stop calling me that? It's fucking Ste now especially to you, you fucking bastard."

"Listen to me."

"Why the fuck should I? Because you ask me to? And who are you to me now? You fucking left me. You fucking kicked me out of your life so you don't have the right to walk back into mine. You've lost all rights. You decided this."

"I didn't have a choice."

"Oh someone held a gun to your head then? Add that one to the list of excuses shall I?"

"St…" Brendan whips around and faces the window, he takes a deep breath.

"You fucking made me think that we had a chance. That we could be…" He shakes his head. "You chucked me away. You kicked me to the curb like I was nothing."

"That's…"

"No shut up! You don't get to explain. You don't get to fucking justify it. You fucking destroyed me!" He screams.

The silence if deafening.

"Did you even think about me at all? Do you even consider me when you were deciding all this?"

"Of course I did."

He shakes his head. It's so much worse. Knowing that Brendan thought about him and still decided to leave him and stay gone.

"You…" He can't even get the words out. He shakes his head and bites his lip. "You…" He looks up, looks away.

"Steven." Brendan's hands are on his shoulders.

It snaps him back and he lashes out, has to get Brendan off him. He knocks Brendan hands away and moves back. Moves away because even being in the same room as him is too much. Breathing the same air is too much.

"You don't get to touch me."

Brendan holds his hands up in surrender. He should fucking surrender.

"Steven, please."

"Please, what?"

"Will you just listen?"

"No. I won't. I don't have to. You've destroyed my life Brendan. You ruined me. You don't just get to explain."

"It was an impossible choice…"

"Fucking shut up."

"No. No. You've said your piece."

"I haven't even fucking started."

Brendan roars in frustration. It's such a shocking noise. Such a blast from the past that it knocks him sideways.

"I'm trying to make you see… I never wanted to leave you."

"Well you did." He snaps back into it.

"I was trying to make it right."

"Make what right?" He can't help himself. He should be kicking him out the door but instead he's asking questions.

"Everything. I was trying to make everything right."

"Well nice job." He gives him a sarcastic clap. "I have to admit I really appreciate all your effort."

"Steven stop."

"No. Come on explain to me how you've made anything right? Because it's got to be good hasn't it? I mean you've made my life so much better."

"I was trying to." Brendan runs his hands through his hair. "I hit you."

"Like you've never done that before."

"That's the point. I hit you, again. You didn't deserve it. Never deserved it. How could I…"

"Oh no. You do not get to fucking blame me!"

"I'm not blaming you."

"If the next words out of your mouth are 'how could I stay when I did that' I swear on my kids lives I will fucking murder you because I've forgiven you. I always fucking forgive you and you know that."

"You shouldn't."

He smacks his hand against the post of the bed. He shakes his head in denial. Not this, any reason under the sun but this because then it's his fault and he wasn't the one who killed Seamus and he wasn't the one who killed Danny and he wasn't the one who cut him out, tried to erase him from his life…

"Get out."

"I need…"

"I don't care what you need! You didn't care about what I needed! You didn't care about me."

"I love you."

"Words Brendan. Just fucking words that you say to get me to listen well I'm not that naïve anymore. That isn't a fucking get out clause. You don't get to say that because you think it'll shut me up and let you say your piece because I don't give a shit Brendan…" He's so calm it's scary. "I love you beyond doubt, beyond reason. I love you more than anything in this world except my kids and you didn't care enough about me to even let me visit you, to read any of my letters, you didn't care what happened to me."

"I was giving you your life back."

"What life?! What life did I have without you?!"

The silence is back. The air in the room is like thick syrup and like every twitch of his muscles is meeting resistance.

"I…" Brendan starts, looks up then away.

"You didn't think about it did you? You didn't think what losing you would do to me. Well take a good look." He gestures his arms out. "This is what you did to me. This is what loving you did to me."

Brendan can't see what he's looking at. He can't see the cuts, the tears, the shred of his insides. The pieces of his heart, he can't see the damage because it's all inside.

"You destroyed me." It's barely above a whisper, but it's firmer than granite.

Brendan closes his eyes, screws up his face a little then rubs at his temple.

"You're still alive." He states like that's enough.

"So? So what? So you wanted me to top myself…"

"No!" Brendan cuts him off but he's not having that.

"Would that have proved my love? If I'd finally taken enough drugs to finish me off? That what you wanted?"

"No, Steven, never."

"Well I didn't did I? Does that mean I didn't love you? Because I didn't kill myself without you there. Thanks. Really Brendan. Thank you because I know now what I needed to do."

"I…"

"Well I'm not that pathetic. I'm not that weak. I needed you but I'm not so hopeless, not so helpless without you that I can't survive. I lived twenty years through everything Terry and me Mam could throw at me, I lived through everything you did to me. And yeah you broke me, you ripped my insides out but I'm better than topping myself to prove my love to someone who didn't love me enough to stay." He takes a deep breath. "You had me forever all you had to do was stay."

"I wanted to. God you don't know how much…"

"No I don't because you never fucking told me. You cut me off, cut me out. You dropped me. Cut all the strings, all ties and fucking left me to it."

"It wasn't fucking like that." Brendan's losing his control because he hates not being able to control things. Hates not being able to force him to do what he wants well fuck him because he has no control over him anymore. He can't make him do anything anymore. And it firms his position.

"Really? Because from where I'm standing that's exactly what it was like."

"It was out of control. Sea… He was dead. The police were right outside the fucking door. Cheryl was in fucking bits, she's not like us."

"Us?! I'm nothing like you."

"Listen to me."

"No. I don't have to. I don't have to listen to you trying to justify what you did. Why you did it. The bottom line is that you chose to leave me."

"I'd take a bullet for either of you. I had to take that one for Cheryl. I would have done the same for you. I would do anything for you."

"Except stay."

"Ahhh! Steven you know I couldn't. I had to get sent down." The rage is there but it doesn't scare him because really what else could Brendan do to him that he hasn't already done. There's nothing because killing him, well that'd be a mercy kill. That would put him out of his misery and he's not convinced he wouldn't kill Brendan first anyway.

"That's not what this is about."

Brendan stops, looks at him, confusion written across his face. He really can't see it.

He shakes his head, a sick smile comes to him. Brendan really can't see.

He walks closer.

"You cut me out of your life. You decided that. You didn't give me any say in anything. I poured my fucking heart out to you and you still cut me out. You left me. So say what you like."

"I…"

"Come on. Come on Brendan, tell me I'm wrong. Tell me you didn't do that."

He can't because that's what he did.

"I couldn't do it to you. I couldn't…" Brendan is quieter.

"You couldn't what?" He demands.

"I couldn't let you live your life like that."

It takes half a second for his brain to catch up with his ears. To process what he's hearing because he doesn't remember ever handing his life over to Brendan.

"Since when do you get to decide?! It's my life! Mine! I get to decide how I live it!"

"I didn't want you to..."

"It's not your fucking right to decide that for me!"

"I couldn't let you see me in there."

"You selfish prick. Here was me thinking that Cheryl was the selfish one but that, right there, makes it clear. You selfish bastard. You don't do that to someone you claim to love Brendan. You put their feelings, their needs alongside yours. So you didn't want to see me does that mean that you couldn't let me. Doesn't mean that you couldn't write to me. Doesn't mean that you had to send all my letters back, un-fucking-opened no less. Doesn't mean that you had to make yourself a black hole in my life where I didn't know what the fuck was going on… I tortured myself thinking about you in there because I know what prison is like, I know what it does to people, what it did to me and what it does to you so let's stop pretending that you did it for me. You did it for you."

Brendan cocks his head slightly then nods.

"You're right."

"I know I'm fucking right." And he wishes he wasn't. He wishes that Brendan was a better person. But what would it matter? He'd fallen for him despite that.

"But…"

"No but's. You did it for you."

"I couldn't let you…"

"You don't get it do you?" He tries to cut him off, shut him down.

"I couldn't let you waste your life on me!" Brendan shouts. "I love you too much to do that."

"That what you're calling it? Because that's not love Brendan that's control. That's you controlling, taking control of my life! You can't even see that can you? You don't even know the difference."

There's a pause and Brendan opens his arms out.

"I am what my father made me." He bows a little. Like that says it all. Like finding behind Seamus will ever be enough.

"Fuck that! Don't even fucking try it. What Seamus did was sick and twisted and I'm sorry that it happened but you had the chance to break his hold, break free and you can't keep using what he did as an excuse."

Brendan furrows his brow at him.

"You don't understand." Brendan states firmly, putting a wall between them and he can see it and that's not fucking fair because that's not his fault.

"Because it never happened to me?" He nods momently stuck, digs inside himself for the words. "I may not have been sexually abused Brendan but don't you think I know a bit about abuse. That I'm not so stupid as…"

"You're not stupid." Compliments really? Brendan's resorting to that tactic.

"I know I'm not." A bit academically challenged but he's world wise, much more now than before, but even then he hadn't exactly been innocent of the way the world works or the sick things people can do to each other. "People go through shit all the time and they work through it, put it behind them and move on and it's hard, it's fucking terrifying but it's possible if you want to. If you want to break free. He's dead. He's not even in the world anymore. He was dead when you decided to leave me, he was gone, so really Brendan you want to use that?"

Brendan looks completely shot, at a loss and it hurts to see him like that. To see him hurt, to hurt him but he was the one who brought it up. He was the one who tried to use Seamus as an excuse. And there's no denying that Seamus shaped a lot of Brendan but Brendan isn't Seamus. He's a good man under everything, a good man still capable of destruction.

"I would have stood by you, I did stand by you. I would have been there for you. You decided that I couldn't so don't ever think that this is about that."

"I don't want your pity."

"It's not fucking pity. It's understanding, something you seem incapable of. You can't see my side of this at all can you? You can't imagine what I went through."

Brendan is silent and he knows he can't understand so he needs to give him a little taste, just a little of what happened.

"You don't know that Amy had a speech prepared for the kids for when, not if, when I got myself killed." Course he doesn't.

Brendan is shaking his head like he doesn't want to hear it, well tough.

"She was waiting for a phone call, now I know that I should have died, then you'd believe that you, my love of you was that deeply embedded in my soul that I was killing myself. Well I'm sorry but I'm not that person. I couldn't let my kids grow up without a Dad because I'd been unlucky enough to meet you. I decided for myself that I couldn't do that to them."

"I… Steven…"

"Now I'm going home. I'm going back to my business that I built up to make sure my kids want for nothing. I'm going back to friends that have stuck by me, to a life I built out of what I had left. And believe me I won't be looking back."

"You can't go…"

"I can Brendan. I can do what I like because it's my life. So I hope you're very happy with your toy boy and your bitch of a sister and I hope that I never have to see you ever again."

"You love me." Brendan states weakly.

"I do but you didn't even tell me you were out so I know exactly how much you care about me. So goodbye Brendan. Have a nice life."

He zips up his bag, picks it up and heads for the door.