A/N: I hoped you guys liked that little foray into Roach's family. I always liked their interactions and I'm trying to keep them all both in character while making them my own. I made Trysta older because it'll make her future relationship with Fool less creepy-pasta and now I can do some middle school girl plots, it's good to have a character in every age category.
Roach felt like he was in heaven. He was out, he was safe. Alice was safe too…well at least she was safer than before. He would have felt better being with her and keeping her safe. He hoped her parents were good people and not like Mommy and Daddy. His parents were nothing like Mommy and Daddy.
"Is this just real life or is it just a wonderful dream? Wait, this IV thing in my arm hurts so it's real life." Thought Roach as he lay in his bed with his eyes closed. He savored the clean smell of his new hospital bed and the softness of his hospital pillow. He didn't care about the pain of the IV in his arm or the stiches in his side from where he had been shot. He was alive and so was Alice. He hadn't seen Fool yet but he was confident that Fool was still alive too.
"Soup's on." Said a nurse as she put a tray of food next to his bed. Roach stretched as best he could and sat up. The food smelled delicious and it was all for him. He reached over to the table next to his bed for his notebook.
"Thank you." Wrote Roach being the polite good boy he was trained to be. The nurse gave him a sad smile.
"You're welcome, David Jr." said the nurse as she took the foil off of his food and cut his meat for him like he was a baby. He gave his meat a weary look…he didn't like meat. He ate rats in an effort to avoid eating people but every piece of meat seemed to take him back to the cellar when the Old Guard, the people who had been under the stairs longest, ate someone.
"Your family's coming to visit today…but I guess you already knew that…well enjoy!" said the nurse exiting quickly. Amanda's boy made her nervous. How did she talk to someone who couldn't talk back? he was just so…little...well he was six feet tall and fifteen years old but he had a sort of helplessness about him.
"Thank you God for the food I am about to eat and thank you for letting me escape and be alive and for letting Alice escape and be alive and let her family treat her right and let her have enough to eat and be allowed to go outside and please let her love me and please let my family like me and treat me well and please let Messenger and Headbanger, she wants to be called Anita again, let them and their baby be Ok and let the lady they live with treat them well and let Scribe and Molly be Ok in the crazy house and forgive me for making this prayer so long. Amen." Prayed Roach before he began to dig into his food. He ate fast, barely even tasting what he was eating.
"You're going to make yourself sick." Said Amanda as she entered her son's room. Roach sat up straighter and wiped his mouth. He watched her part in fear and part in fascination. He could see so much of himself in her.
"Hello Mother. It's nice to see you again. How are you?" wrote Roach trying to make pleasant conversation. He felt nervous. For a moment he was in his old room, from before he was Roach, and Mommy was getting ready to punish him for eating so fast. He felt the phantom pains of punishment crossing his body.
"I'm fine, David Jr., everything's Ok. Remember how I said I'd bring your brother and sisters by to visit you?" said Amanda. She saw the panicked look in his eyes and didn't draw attention to it. If she treated him like normal, and pretended that everything was normal, then it would be normal.
"Yeah." Said Roach. Amanda was startled by how clearly he said that; it was only a little garbled.
"Well they're out there in the hallway waiting to meet you again. Dot's been so excited about this day she's got a whole backpack full of stuff for you so you won't be bored here in the hospital. Do you want them to come in now?" Said Amanda taking in his room. It was permeated by the same sterility that the entire hospital was soaked in. She remembered the last patient to stay in this room…the sterility scrubbed any impression of a person out of the room as soon as they left.
"Yeah." Said Roach eating a bit more slowly now. He didn't mind sharing with his brother and sisters if they wanted some. Sharing food was the quickest way to friendship.
"So I'll just, um, let them in. Oh, and your dad's here too." said Amanda resisting the urge to run her hands through her hair in nervousness. Roach watched her intensely, blue eyes locking onto identical blue eyes. He knew it made people nervous; that's why he did it. He did everything he could to keep himself safe.
"David Jr.!" said Donna as she entered the room that housed her little brother. He looked terrible. He was too skinny, too pale, and had visible scars that hadn't healed right. In short he looked like he had been to hell and back.
"(Donna.)" said Roach. He propped himself up so he was sitting up straighter. Wow, she looked grown up now. He was still taller than her, though.
"You…it's you." Said Donna. His voice stopped her in her tracts. He…he could talk in a way.
"You still own me and Trysta that game of UNO." Wrote Roach. Back before he got stolen he and Trysta traded their desert for a hundred games of UNO against her. They got to ninety nine before that horrible day back in 1981.
"You remember that?" asked David Sr. from his position next to the door. It wasn't that he was trying to get away from his son…he just didn't know how to be near him.
"Yeah." Said Roach. His family gave an internal sigh of relief. At least that word came out almost normal.
"I thought you said he couldn't talk." Said Dot putting the get well soon cards she had made for him on his nightstand.
"I can talk I just don't talk well. I'm guessing you're Dot. Nice to meet you, I'm David Mathias Cullen Jr. but everyone calls me Roach." Wrote Roach. Donna read it aloud to them all.
"Are you really our brother?" asked Dot trying to hoist herself onto his hospital bed. Roach reached down and helped her onto the bed ignoring the fire in his side from his wound.
"Here, let me. You'll rip your stitches out." Said Amanda as she picked all fifty pounds of Dot up and helped her onto the bed. Roach scooted over and made room for the little girl…his little sister. Not Trysta. Why did they have another kid?
"Well, are you our brother for real or not?" asked Dot. Trysta inched her way out from behind her father. She hadn't seen him in ten years. He looked like a grown up…well also like a kid. He didn't look good…not good at all.
"Oh course he's your brother, Dorothea." Said Amanda sternly. Dot turned her head slowly; her small body seething with barely contained rage.
"Don't…call…me…Dorothea." Said Dot. Roach thought she looked a little like Daddy when he got one fo his headaches. He handed her his cookie in an attempt to calm her down.
"Well don't mind if I do." Said Dot reaching for his cookie before Donna and Amanda grabbed her chubby little arm.
"He weighs, like, a hundred pounds soaking wet. He needs it more than you do." Said Donna handing the cookie back to Roach. Roach put it back on his plate. He'd eat it later when he was hungrier.
"Well I weight fifty pounds." Said Dot crossing her arms. Roach smiled at her, she looked adorable. Maybe they wanted another girl child because Donna and Trysta were old to be adorable. Alice used to be adorable but now she was beautiful.
"I weight a hundred and ten pounds." Said Trysta quietly. Wow…she weighed more than her big brother.
"I only weight eighty eight pounds." Said Morgan patting his belly which was straining against his special family visit/ funeral dress shirt with the stupid itchy vest that made him look like a geek.
"Ha! David Jr. beat you." Said Dot triumphantly. She reached over into her shoulder bag and fished around in it for the chalk board she was planning on giving him.
"Why is everything always a contest with you kids?" asked Amanda in exasperation. She pulled up and chair and sat next to her son. She put her arm on the bed next to his. He was pale as a ghost.
"Because life's more fun that way." Said Trysta coming up next to her mother. She wanted to reach out and touch him to make sure he was real. She knew better than to do that; they had been warned about touching him. Not that Dot was listening during that particular lecture.
"Everybody in this family besides David Jr., your mother, and possibly Donna is entirely too fat." Said David Sr. jokingly. The four of his kids who could talk began to speak over each other in protest.
"So this is my family. I like them. They don't hurt each other. I think I'm gonna like my life now." Thought Roach as he looked around at them. He could see himself in them, looks wise anyway. Morgan looked a lot like him only with lighter hair, brown eyes, and he was fatter than Roach had ever been in his life. He was a lot shyer than Roach too. Not that Roach blamed the kid…he knew he was scary looking. At least he didn't smell as bad as he used to.
"…and this is for you. We thought that you'd like something to write with and we got the pretty colored chalk so you can draw when you get bored." Said Dot. Roach zoned back in and took the small chalk board and box of chalk from his little sister. Wow. He hadn't gotten a present in years. It made him feel all warm inside like someone had filled him with hot cocoa and marshmallows.
"Thank you. You are the nicest people I've met so far and I think I'm gonna like living with you guys." Wrote Roach. Dot stumbled over the words scrawled on the page before Amanda reached over and took the notebook from her and read what her not so little boy had written.
"Well of course we're nice; we're your real family. We've got to like you and you've got to like us." Said Dot in the most serious voice her six year old self was capable of.
"We don't have to like each other." Muttered Morgan from behind the six foot four two hundred and fifty pound frame of his father. That very same father turned around to glared at his second born son who was about to become mayor of his room for the next week unless he changed his tune.
"Morgan…don't test me." Said David Sr. not at all happy with Morgan. Roach watched his father waiting for something to happen. He knew what Daddy would do in this situation and he also knew his father wasn't Daddy.
"I'm just saying…" said Morgan. David Sr. wanted to yell at his son for acting like a little brat but he noticed the look on his oldest son's face and decided against it.
"Well if you don't have anything nice to say then don't say anything at all." Said Amanda. She could feel something building between the two of them and she knew that David Jr. couldn't handle a yelling match right then.
"Yeah, Morgan." Said Dot. She was rummaging through her shoulder bag and taking out some Berenstein Bears Big Chapter books for her big brother. He was an almost grown up so he'd want the big books and not the regular little kid books she read.
"Don't mind him, he's a jerk sometimes." Said Trysta
"I've lived with worse people, I'm sure he's fine." wrote Roach. What Morgan said made sense to him. lots of the people under the stairs were blood brothers and they hated each other. Mommy and Daddy were blood siblings and they hated each other. Why, way back in 1981 and before that he and Donna didn't exactly get along.
"If we can take him then so can you, big brother." Said Dot as she arranged the chapter books in order of being written. They were broken from their comfortable silence by a knock at the door.
"Go say hi to your friend." Said Mary-Ann O'Dell as she pushed her daughter Alice into the hospital room.
"Roach!" said Alice as she kept near the walls. There were too many people…too many. Roach seemed Ok but…the walls were safe. As long as she stayed near the wall she was safe.
"(Alice!)" said Roach attempting to get out of the bed. He was in pain but he didn't care. The only thing that mattered was his Alice.
"What's going on and why are you here?" asked Amanda and David Sr. more or less at once. This was supposed to be family only…this was their time.
"Allie wanted to see her friend and I just can't deny her anything." Said Mary-Ann putting her arms around her shaking daughter. She looked at Roach's siblings and they looked at her. It was a five person staring contest. They won.
"How did they even let you in? The only people allowed to visit him are family." Said an annoyed Amanda. Mary-Ann gave a shrug.
"Ronald and Debbie are distracting the people at the front desk." Said Mary-Ann. Alice nodded. She shrank back further into her so called real mother. Alice honestly didn't care if this woman was her mother or not. These new people didn't yell at her or hit her or anything like that. She missed Mommy and Daddy but not by much, these people were much better. All that was missing was Roach.
"That's…something." Said David Sr. looking at the skinny shaking brown haired girl. So this was the famous Alice. David Jr. did good for himself.
"Wow! You guys are cool for old people." Said Dot while Roach made shushing motions. Mary-Ann did not look amused.
"I'm only forty seven." Said Mary-Ann at the disrespectful child sitting on the hospital bed next to who she suspected was her daughter's boyfriend. The word love had come up a lot in her description of him.
"Is…" said Alice quietly. Everyone was staring at her. She didn't like that. She moved over to Roach's bed and Roach helped her climb in. She had a much easier time getting in than Dot, being taller and all.
"You go ahead and say whatever you have to say. What you have to say is valid. You are valid, Allie." Said Mary-Ann parroting back something she had read in a psychology book. Dot, Trytsa, and Morgan all made crazy symbols with their hands.
"Mary-Ann, Alice, this isn't a good time." said Amanda trying to be diplomatic. This was the first time their family was all together in ten years and she didn't need half of the O'Dell family to be a part of it even if David Jr. was in love with their daughter.
"Nonsense. Allie's been wanting to see him for days now and frankly I've been wanting to meet him too." said Mary-Ann coming over to his bed. Dot hoped she didn't try and get into the bed with them, it was crowded enough as it was.
"I understand that they care about each other but you of all people should know what a breach of most of the rules of basic adult etiquette this is." Said Amanda in the same voice she used when she explained to Dot that she couldn't wear Halloween costumes to school in December.
"Well I honestly didn't know you all would be visiting today. Besides, Allie really wanted to see him and make sure he was alive. She's had such a hard life that I can't just go around arbitrarily denying her the things that make her happy." Said Mary-Ann in the same tone she used when she pleaded with her oldest daughter to try and come in before two a.m. on a Friday night.
"I hardly think the fact that the fact that this is a family thing is arbitrary." Said David Sr. in the tone he used when his kids were on thin ice with him. The kids watched this almost argument go back and forth like a ping pong game.
"What does arbitrary mean?" whispered Alice to Roach. She leaned into him. He felt warm against her. His pale skin seemed to glow against the green of the hospital pajamas he was wearing.
"Your real mother means that the fact that this is a family thing isn't a good reason. I don't really care as long and you're here. I love you, you know that." Wrote Roach as his parents continued to have a non-argument with Alice's mother. Both sides were trying not to yell lest they upset the two PTSD riddled teenagers in the room.
"You really mean that? You didn't just say that because you were dying?" asked Alice quietly. Dot began to rock back and forth asking what they were talking about.
"I would never say that if I didn't mean it?" wrote Roach. He reached over and squeezed Alice's hand. She blushed and smiled a little. Dot pretended to stick her finger down her throat and made gagging noises.
"Dot, knock that off." said Amanda and David Sr. at once. Dot stopped that and sat up straight attempting to look like the model child.
"David Jr.'s got a girlfriend." Said Dot in a sing song voice. Morgan mimed vomiting while Trysta and Donna immediately began to crowd her with interest. One week in the outside world and he already had a girlfriend.
"Really?" asked David Sr. a little bit of hope entering his voice. Girls. That was normal. Fifteen year old boys were supposed be interested in girls. Heck, he was a father when he was fifteen. Not that he wanted his son to be making babies any time soon…unless he really wanted to because he and Amanda would support that. The boy did come from a long line of teenage shotgun weddings.
"What's a girlfriend?" asked Alice quietly. She didn't like having all of the people look at her. At least they didn't have Mommy and Daddy's eyes. They could see into her soul, into every bad thing she had ever done or thought about doing.
"Don't read this one out loud. You love me and I love you too. That means I'm your boyfriend and you're my girlfriend and someday we'll get married." Wrote Roach. Married. Roach wanted nothing more than to spend his life with her. Alice wanted to spend her life with him…it's what she was supposed to want. He almost died for her.
"Oh, Ok. Roach explained it to me. I guess I'm his girlfriend now." Said Alice. Roach leaned back into the bed, his side was really hurting him now and he had a high tolerance for pain.
"Good for you, Allie. It's normal for a fourteen year old girl to have a boyfriend." Said Mary-Ann. She was genuinely happy for her youngest daughter. Obviously this boy cared about her with the whole almost dying for her thing and all.
"I'll go reserve the church for the wedding." Said David Sr. half joking half serious. He was married with a kid and another on the way when he was their age.
"I'll go home and do stuff." Said Morgan. They met him and talked for a while. Why couldn't they just go home now? It wasn't like he was going to be kidnapped again or anything like that.
"We'll go home later." said David Sr. in a tone that let his youngest son know that the discussion was over.
"Do you want to go home, Allie?" asked Mary-Ann in a soft voice usually reserved for babies and toddlers.
"…not really." Said Alice after a while. Her real mother didn't look angry. She just took a book out of her bag and sat down.
"Parenting your abused child?" read Morgan off the cover. Alice's parents must not have been good at it if they needed an instruction book.
"Amanda, you're welcome to borrow any of my books. Not to insult you or anything." Said Mary-Ann not out of any desire to humiliate the woman she considered a friend. She was just observing the fact that their boy was obviously in worse shape than Allie ever was.
"We'll manage just fine." Said Amanda watching her kids either sulk or bother David Jr. and Alice. Yep, nobody was bleeding or screaming or crying. All was right with the world.
"How come you can talk right and David Jr. can't?" said Dot scooting over to give her brother's girlfriend some more room.
"Roach tried calling for help one day so they had to teach him not to speak evil. They cut his tongue out and put him in the cellar with the bad boys. He got out and into the walls because he's not bad at all, he's really good.
"…that's really sad and scary." Said Dot shrinking away from them. She didn't want to think about the bad things like that.
"I'm sorry, David Jr." said Donna reaching over to hug him. Roach moved away from her and she went back to where she was. It wasn't that Roach disliked her; he just didn't like her touching him without giving him warning.
"Dang…life sucks" said Trysta for lack of anything else to say. How exactly did a person react to the story of how their big brother got his tongue cut out. There was a few second of silence.
"I'm Dot, by the way. That's Morgan, Trysta, Donna, mom, and dad." Said Dot reaching her hand out to Alice. Alice shook her hand quickly and then let go like it was made of lava.
"I'm Alice, Roach's girlfriend...but you already know that I guess…" Said Alice awkwardly
"Why does everyone call him Roach?" asked Trysta. It sounded more like an insult than an actual nickname.
"Because he's hard to kill. At least that's what he said." Said Alice trying not to remember the day when her best friend came out of her wall and told her that his new name was Roach and he needed to be sewn back together because he had been stabbed by the people under the stairs.
"When can we go home?" whined Morgan. He was tired and itchy and bored and stuff. He just wanted to be at home where he could pretend that everything was normal and there weren't people in this world that went around cutting other people's tongues out and eating other people and stuff. He just wanted things to be the way they were before all of this craziness.
"It is getting kind of late…and you do have work today…" said Amanda looking at the clock on the wall. She never wanted to leave. She wanted to make up for the ten years of lost time incase her son was taken from her again.
"I guess he's want some alone time with his girlfriend…." Said David Sr. also not wanting to leave. He hadn't said much directly to his son and that didn't mean he didn't care. He just didn't know what to say. The boy must have hated them. He and Amanda ruined David Jr.'s life.
"Do we have to go?" asked Dot. David Jr. was the best big brother ever even if he did look a little scary and he couldn't talk.
"I guess so…goodbye David Jr., Mary-Ann, and Alice." Said Amanda awkwardly. The kids all followed their parents out of the hospital room and into the big wide world their older brother had been denied for so many years.