Author Note: This is an emotionally difficult chapter and dialogue heavy. If you've read any other work of mine, I'm sure you know I don't always expertise in happy endings. I hope to write something realistic and poignant yet still enjoyable. None of these characters are perfect, and my hope is that by the end of the story, you can understand why their relationship worked and each of their motivations for falling for each other, as well as their motivations for their actions.

TW: sa mention, suicide mention

Savannah washed the few dishes she and her brother had used for breakfast, eyeing him from the island in her kitchen as he flipped through some college brochures, making notes in black ink occasionally. When she was done, she wiped her hands off with a towel near the sink and took a sip of coffee before leaning on the counter and watching Sebastian intently. He must have felt a coldness in the room, or warmth, because he put the pen between his teeth and looked up at the woman, his brow raised.

"When are you guys visiting,' Savannah pointed at the brochures.

Sebastian shrugged. He needed to make a decision between the two schools shortly, but he needed to be accepted first. He had no doubt he would be accepted, but it seemed overzealous to visit without a guarantee. "Sometime in the early spring, I'm thinking."

Savannah nodded. "I'd offer to join the trip, but I already practically live on a college campus.I don't think I'd be missing much."

The boy shrugged, nothing to say. It was, likely, going to be a trip between his mother and himself, which promised silence, but if Savannah joined the duo, he was sure some fighting would ensue despite the fact that he thought their mother was relatively passive (at least when held to the contrast of the three other family members).

"So, what made you come up here? You just wanted to get out of Lima for the weekend? Or hang out with your cool, older sister."

"You invited me, Savannah,' Sebastian said with a near drawl at the end of each word. He didn't intend on offending her and readily compensated for it when he saw a slight deflation in her countenance though she recovered quickly. "And if I'm here, I'm not at tennis practice, so there's that,' he offered playfully. "I haven't seen you since Christmas."

"And here we are in February,' she said with a smirk, her pink lips spread wide across her face. "An early birthday present… for us both."

"Happy early birthday, Savannah."

"Happy early birthday to you too,' she was beaming. "I did want to apologize for Christmas night and kind of not talking much right after that… I've been trying to get a hold of you at least once a week, but,' she brushed her hair from her face. "It was just a lot."

Sebastian shrugged. "It's..,' then he thought. "We grew up together. I don't expect anything different than what happened that night. You don't have to apologize."

"He just gets under my skin, and she just sits there,' Savannah pushed for some condonement, but Sebastian was stoic in his resolve. He knew now more than ever how susceptible he was to the opinions of others, and if he let Savannah into his head with her preconceptions about their parents, he knew she would be parasitic. She had already begun her work on him, and he wanted to think of other things and talk about other things.

"You have every right to feel that way,' he shrugged and pushed the college pamphlets to the side. "What are you doing for your birthday this year?"

"My old roommate's family has a house out in Nantucket… I might spend a weekend there with her."

"Sounds cold,' Sebastian lamented before thinking for a few seconds. "I thought things were tense after she moved out earlier this school year,' he traced his fingers around the pattern of the granite.

"She thought she was doing the right thing,' Savannah shrugged. The roommate had been the one to phone the ambulance when Savannah's blood alcohol level had spiked and the one to call Emmett, thus the relationship had deteriorated quickly, and Savannah had gone to living alone. "I don't want to hold a grudge. Good friends are hard to come by. I really love her, so,' she shrugged.

"I was thinking of throwing a party, but,' Sebastian digressed. "We always throw a party."

"Eighteen is a big birthday. I'd say you can come up here, but,' she crossed her arms and placed her chin into the palm of her hand. "You'll want to be with your friends, I'm sure."

"They'll want to be with me,' he said sarcastically.

Savannah nodded in thought before beginning to leave the kitchen area. She turned before she hit the hallway. "What do you want to do today?"

Sebastian looked over his shoulder. "You want to drive down to Cincinnati?"

Savannah smiled brightly. "I would love to go to Cincinnati. Let me shower."

Savannah insisted on driving, and though Sebastian's knees were a bit long for her passenger seat, he didn't argue with her for long. He preferred to drive, but what could he say in the face of the person with the biggest will he had ever met. She was a J.D., just like their father, and she was damn good at getting what she wanted when she wanted it. The drive wasn't terribly long, a little over an hour and a half, so he sucked it up and complained in his head.

"So, Sebastian, I have a question."

"I have a feeling I'm going to be annoyed in about twenty-five seconds."

Savannah's fingers tightened around the wheel as she giggled. "No, no… hopefully not? – do you have a girlfriend? You must, you must. You're the most handsome boy on the planet."

"Here we go."

"Answer me,' she pleaded in a sing-song voice.

"No,' Sebastian sang back.

"Ah, so you do,' Savannah said as she switched lanes haphazardly.

"I.. have a friend,' he managed to get out.

"Oh, tell me everything,' Savannah responded quickly with excitement, but her brother was unsure of what to say. He wasn't entirely sure of what Savannah would think of Mercedes nor was he interested in the latter's intersectionalities becoming a bonding point for him and his sister.

"We go to school together. We've been hanging out for a few months. She confessed her feelings for me right after Christmas, and now we're,' he shrugged, blood drawing to his face. "I think we're dating,' Sebastian sighed, breath moving past his teeth. "I'm not sure,' and he crossed his hands in his lap.

"Okay,' Savannah said slowly. "Exciting… this sounds exciting… why don't you seem excited?"

He shrugged again. "I don't know,' looking out the window in contemplation. "I think I expected to feel something different,' he sat up in his seat and frowned. "Not saying I thought a Biblical bush was going to burn, and God was going to set everything straight for me, but,' Sebastian sighed. "I'm not sure I'm the type of person who should have anyone close to them."

Savannah nodded patiently. "I know the feeling… you can't waste away in self-hatred, Sebastian, or not do the things you want because you don't feel you deserve them."

"No, it really has nothing to do with what I do or don't deserve. It has everything to do with the fact that I'm most likely a terrible person, and I'm not going to sit here and pretend I'm not."

"You're not a bad person; why are you convinced that you're a bad person?"

He shook his head, knowing she wouldn't understand or that she would try to justify him. "I think I'm better than everyone. I think I know more than everyone. I want to succeed at the cost of others. I hate most people. I think they're stupid. I got called a 'user' the other week, and I didn't flinch, because I knew she was right. If there are good qualities in me, they're only there because I thought they should be."

"Listen to me,' Savannah cut her eyes over at the boy. "You're not crazy or a sociopath or whatever they're teaching you at school. You are a normal seventeen-year-old boy. You're just becoming a man in two weeks. You are a child who grew up in a household where if you weren't perfect, you were flawed, and you hate everything about yourself that you think is weak, and you hate everything that you think makes other people weak, but those weaknesses make you human, Sebastian. The fact that you're even viewing these things as a problem is proof that you're not this horrible person that you've contrived in your own head… why do you let Emmett get to you?"

"It's not just dad, Savannah."

"It's just dad, Sebastian,' she said, fury at the back of her whispered aching. "Do you not remember him making you run with him in the mornings before school? Do you remember that morning you were so nauseated you passed out at breakfast, and he left because he was running late for work? You were six-years-old, you were a child, so don't fucking sit here and say that you're broken or evil or bad. You have parents that don't give a fuck about you, and they raised someone who doesn't give a fuck about other people, I'm sorry,' she looked over at him with a pathetic shrug. "So, you can understand my frustration when I've been trying for years to tell you this—"

"Because you don't say it the right way, Savannah. It's like the pot calling the kettle black. You're a fucking alcoholic, and I love you, but they got stricter with me because of you… I'm not saying it's your fault, obviously it's not your fault, but—"

"Sebastian, you know nothing about anything you're talking about. We used to live in Seattle, I don't know if you remember that, you were a baby. You couldn't have even been four by the time we moved. Do you want to know why we moved? Our uncle, our dad's brother, tried to rape our mom. She spent a week in the hospital, and do you know what your dad did? Nothing. He never pressed charges, he never talked to me about what I heard that night, he never got therapy for our mom. I heard him talking to our grandfather and together they decided that the best thing for their law office to do was to demerge the company and for us to leave Seattle, so that's why we came back to Ohio, so mom could be with Aunt Sarah, and that's why mom doesn't leave the house. She came here, started the yoga business, quit because she is debilitatingly depressed, and now she just sits at home rotting away with her soulless husband. Did they tell you any of that? I didn't think so. So, the next time you want to ask me about why I am the way I am or you're not sure why you are the way you are, I want you to remember the smoke and mirrors it takes to make this family run, Sebastian."

"What,' he was breathless. He raised his hand from its place in the door in submission. "What do I get from knowing that, Savannah?"

"The truth,' she began to roll down the window as she placed a cigarette between her teeth. "Since no one seems to be giving it to you."

She continued: "Our dad has never given a fuck about you, and he has never given a fuck about me. He has only ever cared about how we looked next to him. If I were to come home anything more than one hundred and thirty pounds, do you think I'd be on the family Christmas card? You've got to be fucking joking."

Sebastian stared out the window for a long time, thinking about how many times he had put misplaced anger onto his mother and how thoughtless he had been towards her. He thought about how much he had always loved his father, how much he wanted to be like him and have the things he had, and though the glory had washed away over time, he had never seen his father as someone not worth idolizing. Now, Sebastian wasn't even sure how he was going to go back home and face either of them.

"I think he tried to make us strong,' eventually Sebastian came to the only solution that made sense.

"I'm worse for it,' Savannah said, ashing the cigarette but letting the window stay down, blowing chill air through the car. "I think you might turn out okay though."

"It's a lot of weight."

Savannah thought for a few seconds before pushing her hair out of her face. "Tell me about your girlfriend, Sebastian,' she said, trying to ease the tension in the car.

"She's… so funny. I really love her laugh, and she looks at me like I'm worth a million dollars. Hangs onto every word I say. She makes me want to change everything. She's actually the reason that I think… everything has been so difficult lately."

"What do you mean?"

"We went to a game together, and while we were there, the guys and the girls were just ridiculing her in this… covert way. She thought they were being nice to her, and this was someone I had brought. She was an extension of me, and I have this ego, right? I have this popularity. They treat me like the ringleader, and the disrespect for her was just so immense that it overshadowed any respect or fear of me, and I had no control of the situation. None whatsoever. It was like looking from the outside in for the first time, because I knew this girl, and I knew she was amazing and terrific and smart and funny, and I knew what she found funny funny, and I'd been to her house, and I remember asking her to vote for me as class president in seventh grade, and I wanted to impress her, but they just saw her as a nobody, and I knew I was just like them— I knew if I was in their position, I would've acted the same way. Probably worse. I don't even know if I would have been 'covert' about it— I would've ridiculed her in front of everyone, and then laughed about it. So, of course I got distant. I got weird; I was freaked the fuck out. They started to turn on me because I was with her,' Sebastian brought his hand to his face, covering his mouth so the rest of his speech was slightly muffled, almost as if it were a secret he couldn't believe he was uttering out loud.

"And now we have this secret relationship, and I don't know if it would have ever started had I not been so eager to prove that whatever they were, I wasn't, because when I told her what actually happened that night, how their niceties were, just, fake, she asked me why I would have ever brought her into that situation, and the way she looked at me is the exact same way dad looks at me. She was… so disappointed and disgusted, and… I don't know. I don't know. She's the first person ever that I truly wanted their praise, other than dad, and it was because she saw me. Caught me in a scheme. I don't know who I am, Savannah. I don't really know what I want. I don't know that I can give her what she wants."

"Maybe I'm having some difficulty understanding why they don't care for her."

"Well, she's black, that would probably be a part of it,' he sucked his teeth and looked over at his sister. "She's no Cindy Crawford… I think she's precious, but… I don't see her in that way. It never mattered to me what she looked like. I'm just in love with the way she sees the world. I want to be there when she sees everything."

"Things are changing, Sebastian,' Savannah said with a meaningful shrug. "The color of her skin may not be a problem for you after some time. I'm sure by the time you go to college, it won't even be a second thought… you said she's smart and funny… Just let yourself be loved and known, and who cares about those jerks?"

"That is easier said than done,' Sebastian said, looking back out the window. "She doesn't know anything about me, and I know it's my intention to keep it that way, and that's probably wrong. You can tell me it's wrong, but I've already been a basket case around her, and I don't want to give her that. I want to be strong and dependable and supportive. I don't want her to know our father is more than willing to slap us in public or that our mom was almost kicked off the PTA for showing up intoxicated to a fundraiser. I want her to think I'm a good person, I want her to make me a good person."

"That's not her job."

"Is it not? Because we're not getting married, we're not living happily ever after. I don't even know what that would look like or if I even get to have that, but I do know that Emmett and Tierney aren't paying for a wedding or including me in a will if the woman I walk down the aisle doesn't look like Kate Moss, so what am I getting out of this relationship, Savannah? She had tears in her eyes, and she was begging me, and I told her I would be her man, so I would hate to find out I'm not going to be better for it."

"Are you listening to yourself? This sounds sociopathic. Do you even like her?"

"I love her. Am I in love with her? No. I don't see that as being something I'm capable of, if we're being honest."

"You don't see yourself being able to be in love with her or at all?"

"At all."

"That would be the worst thing they could take from you, Sebastian. It'll come. You're young, but you can't use her or treat her as a stepping stone. She seems… good. You aren't going to understand everything in this life, okay? You definitely won't at seventeen, but you need to get this, and you need to get this now— you reap exactly what you sow. You can't look at people transactionally. She's not here to make you a better person, and in exchange, you give her a boyfriend. I know you're a kid, and these things are hard to wrap your mind around, but you're meant to love her, and she's meant to love you, and when you're young, it's all in. That's the fun of it really… whatever you're doing, you need to stop it."

"I don't know what I'm doing,' he said in exasperation. "Everyone acts like I've got the recipe for success."

"That's a weight you put onto yourself. You don't need to be perfect, but you need to be better."

He rolled his eyes, having heard those exact words from Mercedes. Sebastian sunk into the seat, shocked the sun seemed to be setting already as they moved closer to the city.

"If you have this fear that you're a bad person, you should do everything in your ability to be a good person, and do the right thing. Bad apples ruin the bunch. She's not going to just brandish you with all her good traits and her positive outlook on life, you know that right? That's not the magical door in the wardrobe… I don't know that this relationship sounds good or right or healthy to me, but I think you're in your head about it a lot… Listen… I just think there's a chance you end up on the other side of it, really disappointed you didn't let yourself be known because you were afraid. Hiding yourself and transforming into someone new isn't what makes you a good person. You need to blossom out of what you were given, are you listening?"

"Yep."

Savannah thought for a second, taking an exit that brought them closer to the city center. "Do you think that once you've found yourself, you're afraid she'll look at you with that same look of disappointment and disgust?"

"No, no… I'm not scared of who I'll be once everything makes sense to me. I'm afraid of everything between now and then… everything is just happening at one time."

"That's senior year of high school for you. You will be okay. I'm not going to let anything bad happen to you. She's just a girl. Your friends are just kids at a school. The home you live in is just a house. You have me. Always."

"Everyone always says once you get out of high school you realize how insignificant it all was, but… everything is happening all the time. I don't even know how I'm going to make it to graduation."

Savannah looked over at the boy, his sorrow radiating in the vehicle. "Hey, look at me… you will know what the right decisions are. You don't have to lose your friends or your girlfriend or anything to have everything, but something will have to change. You're thinking about it now. That's a good thing. I love you, you know that, and I'm proud of you,' she moved her empty hand to the base of his neck, rubbing it softly as her finger tips grazed through the bottom of his hair. "You didn't deserve the parents you got, but you got them. There are people who wish they had their lives, because they have parents who are just like ours, and they don't have electricity or food or nice clothes. You have hope for the future, Sebastian, and that's a gift… it's really not all so heavy."

Sebastian tilted his head, releasing himself from his sister's hand. "If you have all the answers, Savannah, what's the point of drinking yourself into a stupor on the weekends?"

"You're being mean."

He shrugged wryly, almost beginning to laugh as he looked down at his hands. "Maybe. I'm just not able to understand how you have all this great advice for me, and you still aren't coping well in life on the outside."

Savannah pulled into the parking lot of the city's mall, choosing a spot in the back of the expansive area. As she put the car into park, she looked over at the boy fully for the first time since they'd left Columbus. "These are all the things I wish someone had told me ten years ago. I wish someone loved me enough to tell me that what happened when I was a child was going to ruin the rest of my life if I let it, and I've let it, Sebastian,' Savannah gave a weak, frail shrug, tears beginning to fill her eyes. "Me telling you all of this is easier than me actually believing any of it, and maybe it's bad, but,' she wiped her eyes. "You're still young enough that maybe some of this will stick and make a core memory for you, or maybe you'll look at me and decide you don't want to be like me,' she shrugged again, sitting back into her seat and looking out of her own window.

"I know you probably think I'm pathetic and always crying, but life has been hard for me, and it will be hard for you too if you don't start looking at things with new eyes today."

"I just need some help,' Sebastian said, shoving his hands into his pockets. Savannah had turned the heat off, and the temperature was dropping inside the car rapidly.

"You have me."

Sebastian looked over at Savannah with a sad but knowing look which pushed her to crying fully. Sebastian's stomach tightened, and he felt deeply uncomfortable, unable to soothe her and unwilling to patronize her with a pat on the back or a knee on the shoulder. He sat quietly for a minute or two until Savannah had wiped her eyes.

"You could go to therapy… or…' she rambled before breathing in sharply and removing her keys from the ignition and placing them into her lap. "I just wish I had been there for you."

"You tried,' he admitted softly. In truth, Savannah had been living her own life for a majority of Sebastian's life, but in his teen years, she had been more adamant about trying to reach out, though her messages usually went ignored. He blamed her for the distance, she had made knowing her nearly unbearable, but it wasn't entirely her fault they didn't talk to each other. He ignored her for years.

"I always wanted to be close with you. I was so heart broken when I left, because I knew who I was leaving you to, and if I could have brought you with me, I would have, because I would have taken such great care of you. You wouldn't be doing tennis now, which I know you hate, and you wouldn't be so scared of turning out like our parents, because I would have just loved you."

"Tennis is fine,' Sebastian said with a breath. He felt small next to Savannah's guilt, and he was unsure what he thought would come of their weekend together. Surely, they were closer for it, but each time he spent time with her, he felt worse afterwards, and he was tired of feeling bad. As for his parents, he couldn't put a finger on what he thought— he had always thought his dad was awful, a taskmaster, but he had never seen him as unloving or uncaring— just trying to raise successful children. As for his mother, he'd thought she was icy and aloof, usually in a pill haze or wine daze, but not bad… lethargic… unwilling to change her life or the life of her children, and as for Savannah: he had blamed her for a long, long time. He never understood her anger, but he was beginning to which he was confident was her intention all along.

"I don't know, Savannah. Sometimes I think you just want someone to join your crusade against our parents."

"Do you think I was lying to you about our mother being assaulted, because—"

"No, no. Stop. I'm not saying you're lying. I'm saying would you be this interested in talking to me, if you weren't trying to convince me they were bad people."

"We wouldn't be jump starting our relationship at seventeen and twenty-nine if our parents weren't bad people, Sebastian. What are you saying? I'm not perfect,' she campaigned. "But I love you. I'll talk to you about whatever you want, we don't have to talk about them, but when you're opening up to me, and you have these questions about identity, what am I supposed to say? It's a direct result of our childhood."

"You weren't there, Savannah. You were never there. You left for years, and the only reason you're back now is because you almost died, and I don't know if you saw the light, but I lived with them for ten years after you went away, and they were worried sick about you and worried I was going to become like you, so I can't hate them even if I want to, because they were there and you weren't. Sure, you called every few months, but what was I supposed to do with that? Tell you I was fine except for the fact that I haven't seen mom in three weeks?"

"I would have killed myself if I stayed in that house, Sebastian."

Sebastian sighed, and looked down, his head shaking back and forth. "We were always going to be who we are, it didn't matter… you say you love me, but you don't know me. You want someone to feel bad with you, but honestly, Savannah: I want to forget everything they've ever done to me. I don't want to rise from the ashes of what they left behind. I just want to get over it."

"That's not how it works, Sebastian."

"For you. And we can all see whatever you're doing isn't working either, so how are you going to sit in this car and tell me how to live my life?"

"You're…' Savannah looked up at the roof of the car, rolling her eyes and giving a dry chuckle. "They did their work on you,' she said before crossing her fingers over her lap and looking at the boy. "What's your gameplan? You're going to date this girl, suck all the life out of her, forget that you were emotionally abused your entire life, physically too, some would say, and then do what? Marry this Kate Upton type? Waltz at your wedding? Claim you had a great upbringing and then throw yourself into philanthropy and pro-bono work?"

"That doesn't sound too bad, now does it?"

"You sound like a child to me,' Savannah sucked her teeth. "And you act like one,' she paused, gathering her thoughts. "But I know you're angry, and you have every right to be. You were a child, and I never tried hard enough to protect you or check up on you. I can take responsibility for that, and you're absolutely right— I want you to know who and what our parents are, so that I'm not the only one who has all this sadness and regret, but I don't want to give it to you if it's not there, Sebastian, but clearly it is. Clearly they fucked you up too, and you don't have to be an island. You don't have to do the same harm to others that was done to you. If you don't want me in your life, you can say that, and it would hurt me, but I would respect it, but please do not blame me for going to college and then going to law school and starting my life. I didn't leave you, it was just time for me to go, and I should have done more to take care of you, but I'm here now."

"I want you in my life, Savannah, you're my sister, but the only thing we have in common is the one thing I'm just… not ready to discuss with anyone and especially not you, okay? These conversations are hard for me,' he confessed.

"I know,' Savannah quipped with empathy.

"I would have rather talked about my relationship or… fucking hockey, baseball, basketball, tennis— if you want to help me, tell me practical things. I don't need or want to know that I'm this or that because our parents didn't love us or because our uncle is a rapist or because we're completely estranged from half of our family. I just want to know what I should do today."

"Okay,' Savannah whispered.

Sebastian opened his car door and got out, the cool air hitting him like a brick even though the car had been cold itself. Savannah followed after him, putting her keys into her purse and fishing a pair of gloves out of her bag. They walked side by side to the food court opening, both looking quite small opposite the giant building, and neither said a word.

"I need some retail therapy after that conversation."

Sebastian nodded, the smell of pizza and Chinese food wafting in and out of his nose. They neared a department store, and Savannah turned around to face him with a devious smirk.

"It's almost Valentine's Day, you should get your girlfriend something."