forthsofar | and sometimes family are the ones you'd choose

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newt

and sometimes family are the ones you'd choose

It isn't anybody's fault, not really. Not Neil's or Caleb's for being so happy in one another, or Nick's for having left, or Sabrina and Charlie's for having stayed. Not even her own, though at times that's a harder thing to believe. It's all of it, and none of it, and even though she's aware of a kind of coming out of the dark at last, it doesn't take much to sink her once again.

When everything was still raw and fresh, Nick gone a matter of hours rather than a long and still terrible stretch of days, Newt had invited her to come stay. To be with him and Kav and Charlie and the cats, to let herself be cared for. To accept, she thought then, made it feel real; a confirmation that something vital had broken and couldn't be repaired again. It had stayed on her mind anyway, something about it warm and glowing and kind in a way she knew she needed. When she said as much to Charlie a few days ago, the response had been immediate, instantaneous: It's not an invitation that expires, you know? Come stay.

She packed a bag and found a way to explain it to Neil, trying not to look for any kind of hurt or question in his eyes. It wasn't forever, and it wasn't his fault. It was just something she needed to do.

Today, she's spent much like the last few days; quiet and brittle, floating from one room to another. Sometimes alone, sometimes picking up the thread of an easy conversation, sometimes saying nothing as she just shares space with whoever's there. She'd fallen asleep on the couch, drifting off in the middle of a show she and Charlie had put on mostly for the noise and distraction of it, and wakes a short time later to the scent of someone cooking something in the next room. While she slept, one of the cats had curled up with her, a solid weight on the blanket by her legs, and as she gets up she's careful not to disturb him.

Dressed in leggings and a t-shirt she'd borrowed from Charlie, she pads into the kitchen to see who else is around.

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Newt has been baking all morning. Dough that had been resting over night is in the oven in a cast iron pot; while he waits on it, he works on another set of dough, ready to be baked tomorrow. It's not so much kneading, more a process of stretching and folding. He finds it useful on darker days; it's repetative and it gives him something to focus on that's not the workings of his own brain.

Rosie walks into the kitchen, and he looks up, smiling.

"Good sleep?"

It's Newt in there, his hands busy working the dough against the floured countertop, slow and methodical and steady. Just watching it is almost a little soothing. When he glances up, it's easier than she might have thought to return his smile--even if hers isn't quite as strong.

"It was," she says, nodding. "Deeper than I thought. I didn't even notice when one of the cats came to join me. Not Gally, one of the others. The one whose name Kavinsky's always better at pronouncing than I am." She moves closer, going to the side of the counter and leaning on a clean bit of it as she watches the easy, rhythmic sweep of Newt's hands. "Is that going to be another sourdough?"

"Good that. And, the way that Kavinsky and Charlie go through it," says Newt, grinning at her. "The tea in the pot should still be fresh, love. Help yourself. This is nearly done for this round, so pour me a fresh one too."

"Charlie and I had sandwiches made with some of the last loaf yesterday, so I understand why they love it so much." She makes the effort to answer his grin with a faint laugh. It's not very strong or bright, but it's there.

She picks up Newt's cup and takes it over to the sink, dumping out the cold dregs before she gets herself a mug from the cupboard. "Bread was never something I learned to make, back home," she says, pouring tea into both mugs and watching the steam curl up from the surface. "It was always easier to get it from the shops. Not that it was the same for you, I know that."

"It's the kind of thing we used to make back in the Glade," he says, his hands still busy as he watches her settle. "They provided us with the flour, but we kept the starter and we'd make fresh bread. Nothing better than bread day." He finishes what he's doing and covers the bowl with a dishcloth, turning to the sink to wash his hands. "I'll teach you while you're here, if you like?"

"I'd like that," she says, and means it.

As Newt washes up, she picks up her mug and drifts over to the table in the corner, nudging a chair out with her foot and sitting down. There's an ache welling up inside her, something both different and the same as the ever-present hurt of her grief and loss, and she sits with it a moment, weighing it, before she finds a way to put it into words.

"Did it hurt this much for you and Kavinsky?" she asks softly, waiting until Newt's shut off the water before she speaks. "When Al was...when he left. I keep waiting for it to stop, and it doesn't."

Newt waits until he's settled down at the table, hands curled around his cup. He thinks about this for a moment. "It hurt a lot. More than almost anything else in my life has hurt. We loved him and then he was just...gone. And this place doesn't really let you have closure. When someone's gone, they're just gone."

"It doesn't," she says, shaking her head, looking down at her mug for a long moment before she raises it to take a sip. "That's the cruelest part of all. I had so many things I wanted to say, or...needed to, and now I never have the chance."

On the worst days, the times she's been as low as she felt that night on the beach--or lower--Rosie's wondered if any of them would have been worth saying at all. If it would have changed anything for the better, or only shifted the pain to some other bit of her heart. She'll never know, and even now Rosie can't tell if that's a good thing or not.

"Even if he came back, and almost no one ever comes back, it's not..." She sniffles. "There's no guarantee he'd remember having been here before."

"We used to post a lot of letters in the Postbox," says Newt, sipping his tea. "And Al's been gone for longer than we had him, but Kavinsky still wears his sweaters a lot." He smiles. "I was...in love with someone before I got here, too. You never really get used to loss, love, but it does take a shape you can live with."

"That thing in the park?" she asks when he mentions the Postbox. "I always thought it was...I don't know, some strange sculpture or something." She nods, another faint smile flickering on her face when the sweaters come up. "I took a few of Nick's, just before we all left the apartment for the last time." Her voice frays on the final two words, and she takes another sip of tea, hoping to steady it again. "Just to keep, but maybe...it could be worth wearing them sometimes. Even if it's only around the house."

Rosie's quiet again for a moment or two, sitting there at the table with her hands curled around her mug. Just being here, in a house full of love and care and with some of the people she's grown to trust most in her time in Darrow, is helping; reminding her of everything she still has. It also sharpens the image of what she's already lost, but so has everything else.

"He made me feel like I was something special," she says. "I knew I wasn't extraordinary, or magical, not compared to him or Sabrina, that was different. But he'd look at me sometimes, and it was as though he was seeing something just as good."

"Kavinsky's friend Poison put it there," says Newt. "To communicate with people from home. I don't pretend to know if it works, but it's Darrow, so why not, right?" He studies her for a long moment. "Who told you you weren't extraordinary, Rosie Wilson?"

She's about to agree with him--Darrow is Darrow, and if its magic means the Postbox works, or doesn't, or some strange limbo between the two, it's a mystery just like everything else--but then Newt stops and studies her, thinking, and she stays quiet. When he speaks again, Rosie has to duck her head and blink back the tears that suddenly sting her eyes.

"Nobody told me," she says, looking up at him as she chews faintly on her lower lip. "It's just hard not to think so, sometimes. Knowing there's people here who can do all sorts of things, and all I am is boring old Rosie."

"Well, someone should have shucking told you," he says, gently, nudging her with his foot and giving her a crooked smile. "Would you tell Charlie he was ordinary?"

"No," she says immediately, automatically. "Which I know is the point, or I think is the point, why think something of yourself if you wouldn't think it of anyone else." Rosie sighs, taking a sip of her tea. "I wish I could stop myself."

"Practise makes perfect, sweetheart," he says, with a flicker of a smile at the corner of his mouth. "It took me a long time to train Kavinsky to at least see...some of the value in himself. It was a pretty uphill battle there for a while. Might have been easier if Al had stuck around."

He means it all to be kind, even sympathetic, but it hits vaguely at some of the things that had been on her mind ever since the end of June; since seeing David again, and mulling over how far she'd strayed in the last year from who she always expected to be. Most days, it felt like growth--but not all of them.

"How did you figure out everything, after Al..." She laughs once, soft and mirthless, taking a sip of her tea. "Left feels too polite, and vanished makes it sound like a stupid magic trick. Disappeared. How did you and Kavinsky work out how to...be, once one of the people in your relationship wasn't there any longer?"

"We were..." He thinks it through before he starts. "We had kind of a messy start. I was with both of them separately and Al disappeared briefly and Kavinsky was...Kavinsky, so it took us a while until it was the three of us together. Watching them fall for each other made it worth it, though."

"But that's not what I'm asking," she says, trying so hard not to make it come out sharp and miserable. "I don't mean when he was here, or...back, after he'd gone once before, I mean when he didn't come back. When it was just you and Kavinsky, how you managed the way things changed."

Rosie takes a long, trembling breath, feeling the clog in her nose that always seems to come just before she starts crying. "Because things have to change now, and I don't know how to do it."

Newt's not at all wounded by the tone of her voice; he can understand all the boiling hurt she must be feeling.

"It was...Rough," he admits. "But we were different for you two. The was only two of us, so we just had to figure ourselves out. We didn't have anyone else's feelings to worry about." His eyes narrow slightly, his head tilting as he considers her. "What do you want, Rosie? If everything turns out the way that it feels it's supposed to."

"That does change things," she says. "It being two instead of three." It doesn't alleviate her sense that things would be smoother, less off-balance and fraught, if she'd been the one to vanish instead.

Rosie doesn't have to think about the answer to his question, but she stays quiet for a minute because of that, how immediate and sudden her reply wanted to be. If it was Charlie or Sabrina--and especially if it had been Nick--she might have tempered things, or lied, or found some way of deflecting. When Newt looks at her like that, open and considering and caring most of all, she knows she has to be honest.

"I want to be more than somebody else's Rosie." She can feel her stomach twist, sickening and painful, just from letting it out. "I want to feel like I'm not secondary, that...and they all tried, I'm not saying they didn't. Nick, especially. I know he loved me."

Newt nods at that.

"So what has to change to make that happen?" says Newt. "Seems to me that all of this will be easier if you have it straight in your head before you try to talk to the other two about it, love."

"I need to be brave enough to talk to them about it, too," she murmurs, and that feels like the hardest part of all. Saying anything feels as though it has as much chance of fixing the things she needs to have fixed as it does of smashing them entirely. With things already so fragile, that risk feels even more like something she shouldn't take on.

Neither of them are here now, though; it's only her and Newt, and Rosie takes the space that gives her to think about what she's been asked. "Before anything, I think I have to decide what I should be to Sabrina now. What I'm ready to be. Charlie and I are practically family, that's not going to change, but...when Nick was here, it was easier to be with Sabrina sometimes and not think about it? Which sounds awful, I know it sounds awful."

"It sounds like you're young and you don't necessarily know what you want," he says, leaning forward to freshen both cups of tea from the poet. "I'm guessing you'd never been with a girl before Sabrina. That's another way you're different from me and Kavinsky. Not Al, though."

"I hadn't until Sabrina, you're right," she says, nodding her thanks as he freshens up her mug. "There was a moment ages ago when I knew Eponine had a crush, and I thought maybe, but it never went anywhere in particular. But then there was Sabrina, and it did go someplace, sometimes."

Rosie curls her hands around her mug, letting the warmth seep into her palms. "I'm betting it wasn't this difficult for Al, working everything out."

"You'd be surprised how long it took him to get used to the idea of being with Kavinsky," he says. "Like, when it was me, it was okay, because it was the person, you know? Not any big revelation about his sexuality. "But when it was Kavinsky, too?" He raises his eyebrows and takes a sip of his tea. "So what you've got to figure out is whether its a revelation or not."

Rosie nods and sips her tea, inwardly relieved that it hadn't been as easy as she'd assumed--easier for him than it's felt for her at times, certainly, but not simple. It's rude to be comforted by that, but she is.

"I don't think it's a revelation," she says slowly, choosing her words as carefully as she can. It won't be enough, but she tries. "But I'm not sure if it's the person, either. I don't know where that leaves me."

"I know it shucking sucks, sweetheart, but nobody can actually help you with that," he says, sipping his tea. "You've got to figure that out on your own and then you've got to talk to them about it."

"What if what I figure out ruins everything we have left?" she says, finally asking the thing that's been lurking at the back of her mind ever since the sharp initial pain of Nick's disappearance had faded to a duller ache. It's a thought she's tried to ignore, and barely ever succeeded.

"I don't want to hurt them any more than we've all already been hurt."

"I know it sounds callous, but you've got to take care of yourself first, Rosie, love," says Newt, setting his cup down. "Whatever that looks like."

"That does sound callous," she says, but it's quiet and without heat; more resignation than anything else. It's another thing she can't help but notice, and wish she hadn't. "But I don't think you're wrong. I want you to be, but I don't think you are."

"Have you tried intellectualising what you want out of it?" he asks, tilting his head and studying her face for a long moment. "Instead of just sinking into the visceral reaction that's making you miserable."

Rosie shakes her head, making a small, negative sound along with the motion. She sees the way he looks at her, seeing her in a way that feels both sympathetic and complete, and rather than worry her answer's disappointed him she just has the sense of being understood.

"I've tried," she says. "But I never get very far. Or know where to start, some of the time. Everything's been so much, even before Nick left, I just keep going back to how awful I feel."

"You can practise on me, if you think it'd help," says Newt, draining the rest of his tea and setting down the cup. "If nothing else, I'm good for listening."

"It might help," she says, smiling a little as he downs the rest of his tea. "At least, it couldn't hurt."

Rosie goes quiet again, thinking, doing her best to consider it in some kind of abstract rather than the mire of sadness and uncertainty it had been for weeks. She hadn't been lying when she'd told him it was hard.

"I can't keep feeling like there's something I need to measure up to. Or make up for. And that's true no matter who I'm with, whether it's Sabrina or...not."

Newt nods, but doesn't saying anything, just watching her, waiting for her to get her thoughts together and keep talking.

Newt had promised to listen, and listen he does, sitting with her at the table. She half-expects him to interject when she pauses, jump in with some kind of advice or suggestion already, but all he does is wait. It fills her with gratitude and uncertainty in nearly equal parts.

"If Sabrina and I are going to be more than...occasional, if I decide I want to really, properly be in a relationship with her? It has to be an equal footing, like it is with her and Charlie. I'm not just someone else."

"That makes sense," says Newt, nodding, idly swirling what's left in his mug around. "Even if you and Charlie are never going to be together that doesn't mean it isn't the three of you in something together. On equal footing."

"Exactly," Rosie says. It's a relief to know she's made that much clear, at least, despite her earlier upset. "I need to feel like whatever Sabrina and I are to each other is just as important as she and Charlie are to each other, as a couple. And honestly, even though it's a different kind of love, a different definition, my friendship with Charlie also means just as much."

She takes another sip of her tea. It's not as good now, lukewarm as it is, but there's not much left anyway. "I think it's important all three of us are getting the things that make us happy out of...whatever happens to us now. What we become without Nick."

"So that's what you need to tell her," says Newt, setting down his empty mug. "It sounds like you know exactly what you need to say, love. You just need to get it done."

"I think you're right," she says. "No, I know you're right, and once it's done, it's done and we can...work on the things that happen next, whatever they are." Rosie looks up at him as he sets his mug down, her hands still wrapped around her own, holding onto it more for the sake of having the weight of something in her hands. It all sounds so much simpler, hearing it from him.

"I just don't want Sabrina to blame herself for the things that need to change. Or the reasons why. That I felt secondary, or thought saying no to something made me ordinary, or didn't know if I wanted her as more than just a friend. It's not that I hated what we used to have, but I can't...have it any longer."

"The things that we want change, love," he says, with a little smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "And that's okay. That's allowed. Kavinsky is a different person that he was when I met him. We've...grown into each other. I think that's normal."

Rosie nods. "I know I'm not the same person now as I'd been back home. Or when I first arrived here." She laughs, a small, bright sound that comes so easily after everything that she's momentarily surprised. "When I met you, and I was in that ridiculous dress, and look at us now."

Back home, she had always wanted to be different--more exciting, or off doing interesting things, or at the least making plans to when she was a little older. It had never struck her as easy, but it she'd never anticipated it being quite this hard. But the only thing to do was keep going.

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and sometimes family are the ones you'd choose

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