"Why do you hate me?"
The words lingered in the air like a bad smell. As soon as Ryan heard them leave his mouth, he wanted to shove them back inside and retreat into the temporary safety of his bedroom. He'd once tricked himself for just long enough into believing that his duvet was able to protect him from any outside threats, as if there was a force-field surrounding it that zapped any monster that tried to tiptoe near him. It worked against the fictional monsters underneath his bed and inside his wardrobe, but it did nothing against the real monster standing right in font of him and wearing his mum's face as a mask. It sat blank and empty, void of any emotion or reaction, and made of pink and yellow plastic. He hadn't seen his real mum since the day his sister died.
"Why do you think?"
His mum used to smile. They used to cook together, and dance around the kitchen to an old CD that had been unearthed from behind the bookshelf. Chloe would be in the living room, watching brightly coloured cartoons, but still too young to get up and join them. It was a rare moment where Ryan and his mum got to spend quality time together, just the two of them, like the days before Chloe was born. She taught him how to cook spaghetti, and she let him sprinkle in the various spices as she held him up on her hip. He'd tip a bit too much in, but she'd just laugh and say he was a natural born Jamie Oliver. He didn't know what that meant, but it seemed to make her happy, so he laughed along with her. Chloe would get a few spoonfuls of pasta, while he ate from a plastic plate and sat on the sofa like a big boy. The three of them would watch Eastenders together, and neither of the children complained about how boring it was. They ate in contented silence, until one or both of them began to fall asleep, and Sarah would carry them off to bed. Ryan remembered the soothing sounds of his mum's singing, as she lulled them both to sleep.
He hadn't heard her sing for years.
"Chloe's death wasn't my fault." It was a shame he couldn't muster enough conviction in his voice; not that it would have made much difference. His mum shot him a deadly look, the same one she always gave whenever he dared mention Chloe's name. That name was banned in their household, along with any photos of his sister. He remembered the day she'd burned them all, in a fire that had crackled from inside the kitchen bin and choked the room in black smoke. Ryan was only six at the time, but it was he who had filled up a bucket of water from the sink and threw it over the scorching pile of photographs. Fireman Sam had taught him that water could put out fires if you couldn't find a fire extinguisher, and since their landlord had obviously forgotten to supply them with one, Ryan chose the next best thing. He'd always thought that putting out fires made anyone look instantly cool and heroic, but he found it to be much scarier in real life than it was on TV. It made him shake like a leaf and he had rubbed vigorously at his eyes to stop the tears from spilling out of them. His mum had just stood back, staring at nothing and barely registering his presence at all or what he'd just done. Once the fire was out, and the smoke alarms had ceased their incessant ringing, she simply turned around and walked into her bedroom. Ryan stood silently next to the bin, and didn't bother her for the rest of the night.
He only managed to save one photograph in the end; it was of all three of them, out in the communal park down the road from their old place, where the local library sat in the background. He didn't know who had taken the photo, but his mum was in the middle with a bright smile on her face, with him and Chloe standing on each side. She was only two at the time, wearing a baby pink dress, while he was in nothing but the blue dungarees he had once refused to take off. They had a row of yellow ducks lining the front pocket. His mum had her arms around them, but Ryan wasn't smiling. His hands were covering his mouth, but it was clear in his eyes that he was nervous. Ryan had always been a nervous child, but no one had really known why.
"Who's fault was it, then?" Her voice was dangerously low. It was a pointed question, daring him to answer, and the words caught in Ryan's throat once more until he swallowed them back down.
"No one's," he replied quietly. That had been the answer he'd stuck to ever since the day he'd answered wrong. He had been eight, nearly nine, and the two had been arguing with each other all night over something as stupid as the TV. The remote had broken, or the batteries had run out, and Sarah was taking her frustration out on him by screaming about how expensive it was to raise a child.
"I can't even afford to buy a new fucking remote because I'm spending the pittance I get on food for you," she was saying, the last syllable dripping with venom. "And you don't fucking appreciate it either!"
"I'm not the one who broke the remote!" Ryan wasn't one to talk back to his mum, but her venting was starting to get on his nerves. She always did this, always blamed him for every tiny problem in her life because she had no one else to blame things on. When he was younger, he'd just sit and tune out the vicious comments of "I was happier without you" that were usually brought out after a drink or two. Nowadays, however, the anger was starting to overwhelm his endless patience and it was becoming harder and harder to keep it bottled down.
"Shut up!" she shouted. "Don't you fucking yell at me!"
"But it's not fair, I'm always getting blamed! I didn't even do anything, and you're screaming at me!" Ryan didn't yet know the difference between anger and stress, because they both seemed to express themselves in the same way. His brief outburst quickly dissolved into tears, complete with panicky sobs and heaving breaths that made him hiccup. His mum hated crying, which only seemed to make him cry harder because he knew exactly what was coming. He felt her hands on his shoulders, shaking him to stop.
"Don't you dare try to turn this on me," she screeched. "You've got nothing to cry about when I should be the one crying." She let him go with a harshness that sent him toppling to the ground. "I should be the one sobbing and shaking and blubbering like a baby, is that what you want!?" She started to mimic his sobs, which scared him shitless. They were so loud and grating and made the walls feel like they were closing in on him. "You killed my fucking daughter, and you try to make yourself the one who's hard done by?! Trying to act like the poor, innocent victim who's done nothing wrong in his life, and making me out to be the bad guy?!" Ryan cowered on the floor, struggling and failing to stop crying. He stared up at his mother with a searing hatred he'd never felt before in his life, no matter how many times she's screamed at him, shoved him, hit him, because every single time he had believed her when she'd said he deserved it.
Not this time. For a brief second, he saw his mother for exactly who she was.
"I didn't kill Chloe," he said. "You did."
Ryan's memory about that night was fuzzy, for reasons he didn't quite understand. At no point did he end up unconscious or concussed, but whenever he tried to recall the details of that night, he was simply met with blank spots in his memory. He remembered the remote in his mum's hands, and the way it smashed against the wall as he ducked out of the way just in time to stop it from hitting him. He was used to dodging things, what with all the empty bottles of beer his mum threw against the walls when she was drunk, but the clatter of the broken remote against the hardwood floor struck a bolt of fear through his heart that was stronger than any glass bottle. It marked the moment his memories failed him, until they woke back up inside a police station with a thick coat around his shoulders. A neighbour must have finally alerted the police to a domestic disturbance at their flat, but if the police did anything about it, Ryan never found out. His mum had always been good at talking her way out of things, to the point where she usually ended up convincing herself of whatever lies she spewed out to onlookers.
It was how she'd convinced both of them that Chloe's death was Ryan's fault.
AN: Sooo… I haven't posted a TDG fanfiction in YEARS. I removed my last fic (called Friend, Please) about a year ago when it got discovered by people irl and since then I basically moved away from writing for TDG and forgot all about ffnet entirely. In the last year or so, I finally remembered my log in info and now I've decided to post again. I found this old draft of a fic I wrote when I started changing around Ryan's backstory a bit to make it more interesting to me, and it eventually got so out of hand that he ended up with a second sister lmao. I know full well I'm the only person who cares about any of this, and I'm definitely a few years too late to get any reads, but I don't care! I just wanted to post for my own fun, and also clear out my drafts. I wrote this a few years ago, so the writing hasn't improved much since I last posted on here lol. If you remember me from my old fic, then hi! Welcome back!