Ruth had spent her life fighting. Fighting tooth and nail for her family. fighting to keep them safe.
She had carried the weight of the world, and then she had met him: Grant.
He made her safe.
Suddenly she hadn't needed to fight, she was safe. They had settled down and had children.
She had enjoyed stopping.
Life disagreed, though, it had stripped her of her family, one by one. Every time she thought it would leave her with someone, it kicked her again, and all she could do was ask why. What had she done to deserve this?
Now she sits in her room, clutching the locket. It holds her heart, her soul—her family. More importantly, it holds the faces of the people who have long since gone: dead or lost to her. It holds the faces of her husband, her sons, and now holds John. She runs her thumb over the small portrait, the child with bright fire red hair and missing teeth.
He'd been happy.
They all had.
She had loved that day. It was the last photo taken of the family as a whole, and it had a naturalness to it. Jeff had hated it, he wanted a nice, 'proper' family photo for Lucy, but she had loved it. It had her boys being themselves: Alan sleeping, Gordon being restrained by his mother for the photo, being made to stay still too long. Scott and Virgil had been separated, a desperate and futile attempt to stop them plotting; they were awful for causing trouble. The original terrible two, Alan and Gordon for all their effort simply had nothing on them; Scott and Virgil had done it first, they were just following in their footsteps.
And then there was John. She wondered briefly where it all went so wrong. She had failed him; somewhere along the way, he had changed, shifted. The little boy who grinned as he listened to his father's tales of space had turned into a man who was now fleeing his family after attempting, and technically succeeding, in killing his brother.
How?
How?
She shut the locket, clutching it close as she clung on to the memories of the boy with fire red hair and missing teeth, the boy who drove his father mad with questions, because he always needed to know more.