Lyrics to I Hate Everything About You by Three Days Grace
Every time we lie awake
After every hit we take
Every feeling that I get
But I haven't missed you yet
Every roommate gets awake
By every silent scream we make
All the feelings that I get
But I still don't miss you yet
Only when I stop to think about it
I hate everything about you
Why do I love you?
You hate everything about me
Why do you love me?
Memories of the Past, Chapter I
May 17th, 2016 - Royal Woods, Michigan
Lincoln stood still, arms extended so that his fashionista of a sister could finish sewing the dress he was dummy-ing for. It didn't help that it was long, nor that the others were off doing their own activities around or outside the house. Lincoln had been doing it for Leni for about a year now, but even then, he was no expert in fashion like her. He questioned her taste mentally, but it was all girly stuff that he did not simply relate or understand, so he was never one to talk.
It was around the afternoon while Leni had finished the touches. The dress in question was a unique one; a violet-colored sun dress with actual feathers laced at the bottom. Leni was stitching custom pockets into the sides, prioritizing them for her phone, should she ever wear it.
Lincoln's arms tired as he tried his best to keep holding the dress up, otherwise it would be sagging around his ankles. Leni's stool for this occasion and emergency was being used by Lana, who had borrowed it before they started, and Leni being Leni, had allowed her tomboy sibling to take it.
"Can we speed this up?" Lincoln moaned painfully. "My hands feel like jelly."
"Oh? I thought they were flesh and bone," the ditzy blonde replied.
"No, it's..." Lincoln then sighed, smiling. Leni was not the sharpest tool in the shed, but her innocence compensated for her lack of intelligence. She was also the sweetest, kindest and caring sister that sometimes he felt he didn't deserve. But how could he say something of the sort, considering his age of eleven years old? Maybe... Maybe it was his sister's, specifically the older ones, who rubbed off their collective maturity onto him.
Lincoln Loud was the only boy, in a family of thirteen members, eleven of them being children. Yes, ten of them were girls.
There was Lori, the oldest of the eleven children. She was the one who was usually left in charge of them when their parents, Lynn Loud Sr and Rita Loud, would be at work or out on a special occasion. Lori had a scary-strict trait to her name, which was the common one she was known for among the others. She was a blonde seventeen-year-old, who sported a light blue tank top and brown shorts most of the time. She was the epitome of the normal teenage girl who was usually on her phone almost every minute of every day. Currently, Lori was in a happy relationship with Roberto Santiago, nicknamed Bobby Boo-Boo Bear, in which their six-month anniversary was vastly approaching.
Leni, sweet, innocent, but lacking in intelligence, was sixteen. She, too, was a blonde, having longer hair than Lori. Her choice attire was a light-green dress with sandals with the additional accessories of both red earrings and white sunglasses, as if she was going to the beach instead of school. She was a junior who barely passed with flying colors her previous year, tutored heavily by both parents. Leni found herself to be a huge fan of the fashion world, built up from her love of clothes shopping.
Luna was the punk rocker with quite a passion for music, mainly rock genres, like alternative rock, punk rock, classic rock, and even enjoyed some metal. She had heard of countless bands, ranging from AC/DC to Sum 41. She did concerts quite often, to the point it might have become second nature. Luna was part of a band under the name Red Zone, which consisted of her and her two friends Tabitha Sinclair and Chester Munk. Apart from a sensational passion for music, she loved most things British, which came directly from her father. Currently, her idol happened to be Mick Swagger, a veteran singer with a huge fan base attached to the name. And Luna had a big dream to meet him, if it wasn't coinciding with her other one where she wanted to land a big contract. Luna was able to be identified with a purple shirt with its sleeve having been cut, with a white skull taking up the center space, and a striped skirt the same color.
Luan had a knack for comedy, but she would usually end up going too far. Her pranks, which was one prank too many, were more of the painful variety than humorous. But maybe that was because she found humor in pain, as if she were secretly a sadist in the form of a fourteen-year-old girl with a ponytail and a widow's peak. When it wasn't pulling pranks on everyone in the household, she would be either telling jokes around to her siblings or practicing it with her wooden dummy known as Mr. Coconuts. Currently, Luan had a crush on a fellow student named Benny, but she hadn't gotten past her nervousness yet.
Lynn, the thirteen-year-old of the family, was the athletic sister of the bunch, with a fixation of all things sports and fighting. She did karate, she was excellent at basketball, you name it and she'd be good at it, but only as good as those alongside her. Lynn had a flaw in her personality; she deemed herself superior to everyone in this department, and it would get annoying often. She was also one to rough-house, almost as bad as Luan with her pranks. Vases broken, chairs knocked over, and the while nine yards were to suggest Lynn was behind the mess left in her wake. She dressed in Jersey shirts and shorts often, her favorite color being red. No one ever asked each other why red specifically, but they felt they knew. Oh, and that kind spooked them.
Lincoln, the only son of the whole brigade, had it easier than you'd believe. Sure, living with ten girls was a hailstorm on its own, with what the common property and space fights, boundaries, and multiple things regular siblings would fight over. And those fights and arguments came about as common as the sun that shone in the days of their young lives, and even though they would be on bad terms, they would always wind up making back up for themselves and each other, for what did family mean if there wasn't any sort of love and friendship that held up the powerful bonds? Lincoln had picked up some critical stuff from his older sisters, mostly thing that helped him be more mature and observant about people. He was, overall, a nice guy most of the time, abd as mature as he was, the little boy had a lot to learn, and he would learn more about life so that he could pass it down to the younger ones. Even his choice of fashion, an orange polo shirt and some blue jeans, made him seem like a formal fellow.
The one thing that made him different happened to be his white hair, which was an unexplained phenomenon to the family. But while it made him that way, he felt it was personally unique, and he didn't mind it, once he had grown out of the playful teasing from many classmates between kindergarten and now. Out of all of them, he had only made one best friend, the good old Clyde McBride, an adopted child of African-American descent, who was loved and cared for by Howard and Harold McBride, a warm, gay couple that Lincoln had met a few times already. Lincoln and Clyde were a nerdy and inseparable duo, when combined, would come to call themselves as one, Clincoln McCloud.
Lucy was a goth girl, a rather strange personality for at her age, which happened to be of only eight years. Black and white were her colors all the time, along with traits that made her quiet and creepy, not to mention the addition of her love of supernatural and spooky stuff, whether it be horror stories and media, or sometimes actually associating with such activities, like pretending to be a dead body, or practicing some sort of dark ritual, or even reading some Edgar Allan Poe stuff. Lucy was in general, a truly scary person on the surface, but beneath that pale skin, she had a beating heart alright, and even though she was not one to show emotion all too much, she'd smile like the angel she was, happy to be, even if these mortals dared to sometimes hog the television. Not like she could really see, what with her black bangs covering up much of her eyesight, which always hid the perfect light-blue eyes away from the light that dared touch her skin.
Lana and Lola were twins, a pair of six-year-olds in nature- And that was all they had in common, for they happened to be exact opposites. Lola was a diva, a regular participant at beauty pageants. To see her in a pink dress, or something of that color, would be ordinary like day and night. You'd never see her dirty, but you could probably, and very likely, catch her engaging in fishy, shady activity. Despite looking like sweet and innocent, she was a brat, and one might even say she was spoiled.
On the other hand, Lana was a full-on tomboy. A red hat and overalls gave that vibe out to the world, but Lana had never minded it. Not once. And especially when she had a pet she considered to be her best friend. The pet in question was a frog she had come to call Hops. And Hops, being a frog who jumped, ate, and whatever else frogs did, had seen Lana as the one tiny person of all thirteen humans he always saw daily, as his gentle, loving caretaker. But Hops was not the only animal Lana had. There was more that she owned and loved, with most of them being in their own cages and tanks. She had so many that it might've been a zoo at most. Lola had shown her disgust at them usually, but Lana figured that Lola needed to warm up to them. Apart from the tomboy's love of the wildlife, she happened to know a few things about cars and plumbing. This made her handy when the family van had trouble, or when Lynn clogged the toilet after a triple-meater supreme.
The next child was Lisa, who was by far the most gifted child of them all. Gifted in terms of intelligence. Lisa happened to be a braniac, a four-year-old with an advanced brain that no one could really explain it, but it became natural for them, even as unnatural as it was. The upside was that she was there to play tutor for a majority of her siblings, mostly for Leni. That usually kept the parents clear for the task, but Lisa wasn't simply just homework assistance. Her department was science, and she mastered with chemicals before she knew it. Science was her calling, and it wasn't just chemistry that she did. Biology, and technology were the other two things she excelled, but even then... There was still that thing. That one thing where she felt like her intelligence was far too excessive and advanced for her family. And she had given it quite some thought. She wondered why she wound up like that, and if it made them feel like she was not like them. A special person among average joes, who wouldn't say otherwise?
Lily was the recent addition to the Loud family, only having been a little over a year. She had only begun to walk these past couple of days, footage filmed and posted by most of the family members.
And this family, despite the amount of members that composed it, was a mainly happy family on the outside, appearing that way to their neighbors and friends and external family members. But there had been one thing, if ever you needed to learn about this family, that was crucial to know; this family wasn't a full-on blood family. To detail, it was two halves of divorced families that came together to form this unison of Louds. Lynn Loud Sr and his daughters Luna, Luan, Lynn, Lisa and Lincoln, integrated with Rita Reagan and her own, Lori, Leni, Lucy and the twins Lana and Lola. Lily was the only child born to both of the parents, as far as it had gone. The blonde girls had yet to adapt to the new last name, but it would take some time to do it. A few steps already in, but they'd eventually get it right.
For the time being, apart from the pending commodity, the two halves of the kids were still on the basis of getting along with each other, seamlessly and awkwardly initiating small talk when they crossed each other, but never at the table. On the other hand, Lisa Loud had taken to learning about her stepsisters, building basic profiles and from there, went for the more characteristic details, as uncommonly smart as she was for an average four-year-old.
And a walk on a normal day around the house meant watching the young make a mess of things, and the elder teens argue about, either at each other or with someone on the cell, if they weren't minding their own business for the teen girls they were. There really wasn't bad blood between any of them yet, but the closest thing to a notable rivalry to date was between Lynn and Lucy, the only two girls not blood related to each other who had to put up with each other and share a room. And not to mention Lucy was a dark-brooding witchcraft fanatic, as Lynn would put it, a creepy girl with a tone of pale skin that didn't help her case.
Currently, Lori Loud was the only teenager with a valid driver's license, the key to rides anywhere from or to home, which meant-
Luna tried it again, she had nothing left to lose, but Lori, face glued to her cellphone, made a rancid face and tisked, "no, find your own ride, I'm not a taxi cabbie on standby!"
"But dad said-" Luna wasn't going down without a fight.
"A drive at the far end of town to meet someone is a waste of gas, so no!" Lori decided. "Take the bus or walk it, now get out of my room!"
Leni, just glaring at one another with her lips spread apart to form a small O, wished Lori wasn't as harsh as she was and felt bad for Luna. Said nothing to either and kept her spectator title intact. Like her, Lincoln had said nothing but felt his arms grow even more weary.
"Ugh, why do you even have a licence if you won't bother?!"
Lori looked up from her phone. "And why don't you?"
"I'M FIFTEEN!"
Lori shrugged her shoulders, didn't care or bothered to remember the ages of her new stepsisters. "You can literally get a permit, you idiot!"
"MAYBE IF YOU DROVE ME TO THE DMV-"
"OH, MY GOD, CAN YOU NOT DO THIS RIGHT NOW?!" Lori barked, nearly straining her voice in the process.
Leni let her presence be known. "Um, Lori, I think you should let her-"
"STAY OUT OF THIS!" both girls shouted back at her.
The thin needle in her fingers had come loose, dropped to the ground with a soft, faint sound. "L-Lori-" she pleaded to her older sister to see sense. "Luna, there's no need to fight."
The albino child voiced his opinion behind Leni. "I think we should calm down-"
"You watch your mouth," Lori warned him, "you're not my brother, so-"
"Hey, enough of your bitchiness, we don't need that from you!" Luna flared up. "Lincoln, come on, let's just get outta her hair."
"B-but-" he reluctantly stammered.
"Just go, Lincy..." Leni slipped off the dress he had been helping her with and just tossed it down at her feet. The sadness in her voice had proven that the hostility had prevailed over the name of love and peace, and he sensed it and had come to hate it, but had no solution so that either party could overcome and solve this issue.
"That's right... Fuck right off," Lori continued, centering back on her cell again. "Leni, lock the door."
"Y-yeah..." She complied, namely out of fear of getting on Lori's bad side, but she understood where Lori's inferno had come from.
Luna had dashed into her own room in a sulking manner with her brother in tow. Luan, practicing a skit with Mr. Coconuts, had stopped mid-joke and glared at her angry sister. "The nerve of that bitch!" Luna cursed, smiting Lori's good name. "Get a permit, she said! How dare she, telling me to learn to drive myself? As if she's willing to share dad's van, what a load of bull! She's not even a Loud!"
Lincoln closed the door in on them to prevent the others from listening in. "Inside voices!"
"Oh, I'm just about sick to death of that entitled, stuck-up princess who acts like she's got some exclusive power! Just you wait until she comes begging us for something she doesn't have, and that'll be the freaking day, mate!"
"What happened?" Luan put her ventriloquist dummy down to give Luna all her attention. "Lincoln?"
"Lori doesn't want to give Luna a ride to her friend's house," he explained.
"That's totally unfair!" Luan protested. "Did she not understand what dad told her? Or does she not care? I think we need to tell dad."
"You think that'll make her obey us?" Luna had crossed her arms.
"She'll have to listen to him, and our stepmom if he mentions it to her," Luan reasoned. "I'm sure she will."
"And what if she doesn't?" Luna dropped her arms and sighed. "I made him that promise, Luan. As long as those other girls cooperated, we'd all have no trouble getting along, but the lousy bitch-" Luna silenced herself in Lincoln's presence. "Uh, sorry, little bro."
"We'll have to wait until he gets home," Luan reached, nodding to both her siblings. "It'd be better if you stayed here to cool off."
"I'll be in my own room if you need me, Luna," Lincoln said, excusing himself calmly after gently caressing Luna's shoulder with a pat.
"Thanks, Linc," she expressed, now seated on the bottom side of their bunker bed. "But I'll be fine, no need to worry about me."
He heard those words again as he made his way back into the closet that had been modified as a room, yearning to get his mind off by reading some of the many comics he currently owned, a majority of them being Ace Savvy titles. Multiple volumes to date. Limited runs, one-shots, holiday specials, and a horrible crossover with another series as well. And he would read them in his underwear, the door closed, and during the crisis out in the hall, which usually alluded to the younglings causing havoc, and maybe Lynn breaking something else with an out-of-control soccer ball once more.
But today was a rather strange day for some reason. A faint cold shiver, from the lonesome atmosphere, had set him off, and the very few hairs on the back of his neck had wiggled about in an odd manner, as if they sought to dance and be known. Something had been off, but he supposed it was just him and the day that proved to be slow but radiating with a negative aura as he had just seen in hot display. He wasn't feeling the gaming this time around. Not with Clyde or any of their few friends they had. Just a need to sync in with the quietness, the silence of a nameless dead that he felt within the room. And surely, he had then realized that he heard no sound from the hall. No Lola running from mud-covered Lana. No Lisa footsteps scuffling from one room to another. No baby Lily crying about, meaning she was still sound asleep in her crib. And definitely no continuation of Lori versus Luna. But there was that, a simple nothing that he could not believe, so here he was, peeking his head out and hoped to find at least one person moving out there.
And nothing, no one was stirring. "Uh... Hello?"
And it was just like before, when only half the amount lived in these thin walls, a heavenly paradise not to be overcrowded as such. A day in the life of Lincoln Loud, with special guests stars, a line-up of blonde girls of all ages and sizes, tp forever be like this, actually meaning several long years until he moved out.
The silence in front of him was just too strange. "Olly..."
Savor this moment, Lincoln... It'll never get this quiet again, he told himself, believing it to be the case. And if he could ever see into the future, he would have not only disagreed, but would have accepted the endless noise over the silence fated in their lives shortly, spiraling from an event that was fated to occur later today. They'll all be noisy and will be fighting each other and-
Luna emerged from her room, running downstairs without ever noticing her brother, and when Luan had taken her lead, Lincoln followed them, forgetting that he was still only in underwear and socks at the time.
Luna retreated into her parents' bedroom and helped herself to a single cigarette from its carton on her father's bedside nightstand. It wasn't a healthy habit, but no such example had been set. Maybe if those weren't out there like they'd been now... Luna only plucked it in between her lips as Luan protested against lung cancer, trying to dissuade Luna persistently. "Shut up and find a lighter. I know dad's gotta have one around."
"Ugh, listen to what I'm saying!" Luan argued. "It's not good for you, please-"
Lincoln peeked into the bedroom. "What's going on?"
"It- Uh, nothing, Lincoln," Luan lied, but not having the proper tone of voice to match the ease she hoped to convey. "Luna's still mad-"
"Yeah, make it sound like it's something I'll soon get over..." Luna looked around the room, scavenging through every drawer she came across, and found no lighter, not even matches. "Shit, c'mon..."
"Luna!" Luan squealed. "Language!"
"Whatever," Luna went, rushing out of the bedroom and into the kitchen. She improvised greatly by turning on the stove and lighting the cigarette with the tiny blue flames that went live momentarily before she switched the stove off. "You're not stopping the likes of me, hmph!"
"I'm telling dad!"
Luna didn't care, in fact, saw it as an opportunity to have herself being heard by him once he had finished scolding her for taking up a dirty habit. Luna let out another puff of tobacco smoke to clean her lungs and repeat the process anew, taking to the backyard. Luan and Lincoln were persistent for Luna's sake, moving out after her. All three stepped out onto the porch, Luna setting her arms across the wooden railing. "Not one of you wants to ask?"
"Ask what?" Luan shook her head simply. "When you started it? It doesn't matter, you've already started that..."
"It soothes me, guys," Luna confessed, "you should try it."
"Wha-?! Are you crazy?!" Luan angrily crossed her arms to show where she stood. "I would never touch that stuff, I don't even know why dad does it, but you... I never thought..."
"Well, gee, I'm sorry that this has been hard!" Luna spun around after staring blankly down over the lawn. "I'm sorry I stopped fulfilling the criteria of being best big sister, but I'm not gonna stop now, not gonna change just cause boo-hoo you miss the old me... Luan, face it, we're not just growing up, but we've been put in a hell of our own."
"Do you really... Need that to prove to yourself what you say?" Luan held her hand out to take the cigarette. "You're still a kid, not an adult yet."
Lincoln rapidly agreed when Luan looked to him to aid her verbally. "Luan's right, you're a guitar-playing maniac! What would Mick Swagger think of his young fans acting out?"
"Oh..." Luna removed the lung-killer from her lips. "You dorks aren't gonna let this go until I do first, eh?"
"As your siblings, we will not!" Luan expressed, now smiling when it looked like Luna was about to surrender. "And we will never make you feel alone either!"
"Eurgh... Fine, take it," she gave in, stretching her hand out for Lincoln to make contact with, taking away the small cylinder of death right to the trash. But the error of it had begun with him, where he knew not on how to put it out, and thus had only dropped it into the kitchen trashcan. This time, he got lucky, but one of these days, who knows? The boy might just start a fire carelessly...
"For the longest amount of time, I hated everything, how it all was for us, before the fire..." Luna kicked at the wall again from behind, still otherwise leaning against it, and the wall took no damage from her again. "When mom left us, that was it for me, the destruction of a happy family-"
Lynn was just next to her, arms crossed and back set upon the doorway, keeping it from automatically shutting due to the motion sensors at work. She bobbed her body back and forth, listening to Luna.
"I didn't cope with the sports like you, or with comedy like Luan, you know..." Luna went on, clenching her right hand over her chest. "I could always see it, the very day she went to work, kissed us all one at a time. That smile, Lynn, she put that on and she had never known that that day was the last time-"
Lynn silently let tears go down her cheek. "I miss mom, too..."
"God, why did it have to happen to us, Lynn? Why..." Luna bit her bottom lip. "Why does it still hurt me, after all these years, even when we faced an uglier reality after that?"
"I don't know what to tell you, Lunes," Lynn softly replied, sniffing away. "I thought it was done for us, but the fire..."
"Let's not..." Lynn wiped her face. "The past is the past, no reason to bring up these nightmare memories, Lunes."
"I know... And you're right, I really shouldn't dwell about it all, but it's inescapable..."
"All the more reason we need some serious group therapy, and not just us, but our stepmom's kids too. We're all in this together, the way dad intended for us."
"Yeah..." Luna had seen herself back in Lori and Leni's room. "I wonder how long it could have taken."
"Who knows?" Lynn moved her head up, seeing the elevator doors split apart to reveal Lana and Lola stepping out with content smiles on their faces. "But I'm glad that at least some of them are comfortable around us."
"You mean those two directly?"
"Duh."
"You're right, it only took all of this to properly unite us, just wish..." Luna opened her mouth to sigh. "I sure could use a cig right now."
"Oh, here we go," Lynn moaned with sarcasm, rolling her eyes. "That's not gonna work."
"What's not gonna work?" Lana reached ear range, missing much of their conversation.
"Nothing that concerns you, now..." Luna waved her arm from one side to the other, rotating at half circle. "I'm gonna go up for some training. Lynn, if you wouldn't mind?"
"Right, you need to learn my skills, as do the rest of you," Lynn nodded. "After you, big sister."
Luna paced towards the elevator, wiggling her fingers about before she got into the sparring with Lynn. And vastly recollected those moments that happened right before the fire. That was the last time, wasn't it? The last talk I've had with that Lori, and it was nothing more than a petty argument. Maybe next time...
Her eyes narrowed just as the elevator doors split apart. Next time.
AN: To rewrite the entire backstory arc around all eleven kids this time would be more longer and time consuming, especially when I know there's sufficient tale to tell for each of them. A coin was flipped and the winner of the flip decided this way; flashbacks set in each Loud sibling's POV throughout the earlier years. At any point in time, be it the past, present or future, flashbacks occur throughout, serving as the general theme of the arc.