New Horizons (9/10)
Title: New Horizons
Fandom: Brothers and Sisters
Rating: R
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Length: ~15,000
Characters: Justin, Kitty, Kevin, Sarah, Nora, and Tommy
Icon: danielle_nahimi
Warning: Contains references to sexual abuse and rape.
Summary: In which Justin leaves rehab, and the family struggles to deal as something disturbing comes to light.
Chapter nine
In which everything is kind of going to be OK
By the time Kitty had finished carefully reapplying her makeup, her brothers and sister were all seated in the dining room and waiting for Nora to start carving the lamb. She felt, rather than saw, Sarah’s sympathetic gaze on her as she slipped into the seat between Kevin and Justin.
Kevin reached across and squeezed her hand. Justin’s head was bowed, as if he were praying, and she found herself wondering whether her earlier sobs and whimpers had reminded him of Iraq. He had talked to her once when - she realised long afterwards - he was high as a kite and couldn’t stop the words from spilling out of him. He had spoken about the sounds of a military hospital at night and his own inability to meet the needs of the wounded, desperate men and women far from home and how he almost hated them sometimes for not being pacified by the drugs that were all he had to offer.
We’re all broken, Kitty thought, and looked uncertainly at Tommy and Sarah who were poised symmetrically in perfect tension on the edges of their dining chairs. Tommy was fiddling with his wine glass, and staring at the swirling red liquid as if held the answers to the mysteries of the universe.
She broke the silence. “I’m sorry that you guys found out like this. I had planned to tell you myself, over dinner, but then my nutty interfered.”
Kitty wondered what Tommy’s face had looked like when he had been told, and who had had to do it. Of all her siblings he was the one who seemed most remote from her, and she was suddenly, irrationally afraid that he was the one who would blame her for this. She shivered.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Kitty,” said Kevin. “Of course it’s up to you what you share with people. Don’t even give it a second though.” He raised his eyebrow at Sarah, but she studiously avoided meeting his gaze.
“Of course it is, Kitty,” Nora echoed. She glanced sternly round the table, as if seeking objections.
Tommy looked up from his glass, and she saw with wonder that he had tears in his eyes. “I’m so sorry, Kitty. This is all my fault.”
“Your fault?”
“How could this possibly be your fault?”
Kevin and Nora had spoken at the same time.
“I think I remember that Homecoming, and I’m pretty sure that I was supposed to come pick you up from somewhere and I totally lunched it out because I was with my buddies and you had to walk home and you broke a heel and ended the night in your stocking feet. I still remember the hellacious row I got from Dad.” Tommy’s voice cracked. “I’m so sorry, Kitty. If I hadn’t been so fucking preoccupied with being too Joe Cool to go and pick up my sister...”
“Um, I think that was me, Tommy.” Sarah’s voice was dry. “And the only damage caused was to a black patent stiletto boot and a cheap pair of nylons. While Dad may have deplored the fact that I had to walk home alone, I’m sure he was glad that your thoughtlessness managed to kill one of what he called my ‘hooker boots’.”
Tommy slumped back in his seat in relief and swallowed a huge gulp of wine. Kevin grinned. “There was a certain Pretty Woman dimension to those boots, Sar.”
She raised her wine glass. “Agreed. But who wouldn’t want to be a prostitute if it meant hanging out in the Beverley Wilshire in Armani and Gucci with rich guys looking for love instead of wearing sticky pleather and waiting to be beaten or ra-.” Sarah cut herself off. “I’m sorry, Kitty.”
“Don’t be.” Kitty sounded completely assured. “All earlier-this-evening evidence to the contrary, I really am fine and am going to get even finer. My therapist,“ she smiled at Kevin, “is awesome and constantly telling me not to minimise this experience, but as bad as it was I’m confident that I’ll make my peace with it. In the meantime, please don’t walk on eggshells around me.”
“As weird as it is having you sound like an After School Special, Kitty, I’m really proud of you.” Kevin raised his glass to her. “To Kitty, and everything being OK”.
“To being OK,” chorused the rest of the family.
“Thank you,” said Kitty, feeling indescribably fond her family and not all of it being attributable to the buzz she was getting from the Merlot that Nora had served with dinner. “And,” she said, turning to Kevin, “if you want to hear after school special then you should talk to Justin. He got wise beyond his years in New Horizons.”
“It wasn’t…” Justin stopped mid-sentence, his face unreadable. Pushing back his chair abruptly, he got up from the table and stalked into the kitchen. The rest of the family exchanged confused looks.
“Let me,” said Kitty, as Nora started to get up from her seat.
Justin was sitting at the breakfast bar, staring at the copy of Lucky that had precipitated his and Kitty’s conversation. She pulled out the stool next to him and sat down. “What’s going on, Justin?”
“I can’t tell you.” Justin sounded muffled. “I just need a couple of minutes to clear my head and then I’ll come back to the table.”
“Clear your head of what?” Kitty looked with confusion and exasperation at her youngest brother.
Justin groaned. “Kitty, you’re just the last person that I should be talking to about this. Just let it alone, ok?”
Kitty smoothed the skirt of her dress. “Justin, you can tell me anything. I’m really doing fine, in no part thanks to you and the excellent advice you gave me the other day.”
“Excellent advice?” Justin’s incredulity verged on mockery. “Kitty, I just told you the same tired crap that Dr. Holden told all of the girls in group. All that Pollyanna bullshit about healing and learning and growing. It’s really not fucking like that at all.”
“What do you mean?” Kitty felt a wave of irritation. “How do you know what it’s like?”
“In Iraq..” Justin cut himself off.
“In Iraq, what?” Kitty studied Justin’s profile, his head bent.
He sighed. “I was with a unit doing a hearts and minds patrol in Fallujah. It wasn’t during actual combat, and we were supposed to be maintaining the curfew. I was there to deal with any emergent civilian medical issues.”
He looked up, eyes darkened by his memories. Kitty nodded.
“There was this tiny kid standing outside one of the houses. He had a long cut on his leg, which just needed butterfly strips, so I took his hand and brought him inside with a couple of the unit. His Mom went completely fucking berserk, and grabbed him away from me. She was screaming at us and pushing him behind her as though she was afraid we were going to hurt him. By the time the translator double-timed it to us she was in a total frenzy.”
Justin met Kitty’s eyes, and she realised with a jolt that he was crying. “She had a daughter there too, who looked about the same age as Paige. It was creepy as fuck but she didn’t make a single sound, even when her Mom kicked off. She just sat there, looking straight ahead, without moving a muscle. Didn’t even look at us.”
Justin was sobbing properly now, and Kitty could only just make out the words. “The translator appeared and she looked at us like we were dipshits and hustled us out of the house. It took her an hour to calm the woman down, and when she came outside she told us that the woman and her daughter had been raped by a gang of soldiers. The little boy’s laceration was caused by them throwing him in the wardrobe when the soldiers burst through the door. Kitty, I don’t even know if they were ours or not.”
Justin’s tears had slowed down, and he blew his nose on the tissue Kitty handed him. We probably need to buy more of these, Kitty thought, what with all the crying around here.
“The very, very worst part is, Kit, that the translator put herself between us and the road when she was telling us all of this.” Kitty raised her eyebrow in silent query.
“Translators are supposed to make sure that soldiers are between them and the greatest danger. Where we were standing, theoretically, there was a greater risk of getting sniped from the road than the woman’s house. I didn’t realise how off it was until afterwards, and then the penny dropped: the translator didn’t know if we’d raped the woman and her little girl or, if it wasn’t us, whether we thought that was just one of the spoils of war. She was scared that we might hurt her, even though she was wearing the same uniform as us.”
Justin didn’t tell Kitty about the research he had done afterwards; how he had discovered that women in his army, in all armies, were raped and molested by their own comrades in arms.
“Justin, I wasn’t gang raped by a bunch of soldiers in the middle of a warzone. I didn’t see my child get hurt.” Kitty stroked Justin’s arm, like you would pet a cat. Her nerves were jangling after the story he had just told and that was about as much physical contact as she could bear.
“I know, Kit.” Justin looked nauseated. “I try to think about the details as little as humanly possible, but I know that it wasn’t the same for you. It’s just that it wasn’t different enough and you seem to think a few sessions of therapy will make everything A-OK.”
“I really don’t, Justin.” He recognised that tone of voice from Red, White & Blue. It meant that Kitty was about to smack him down. “This past few weeks have been awful. I feel like I’m drowning in memories and horrible sensations. Every time my own brothers touch me I feel like I’m going to be sick. I spent a good half hour sobbing on Mom’s shoulder today. I know that this isn’t all going to vanish in a puff of smoke, but I need to believe that I’m going to prevail. And, Justin, until you’ve washed your rapist’s come out of your hair, maybe you can spare me on what a miserable experience it is.”
“That’s really fucking unfair, Kitty!”
“Is it?” Kitty suddenly looked unsure of herself. It had been nice to feel the familiar rush of adrenaline that came from creating a tart riposte, but that was ebbing away now in the face of Justin’s pained expression. “Justin, did you ever talk about any of this in group?”
“No, it wasn’t until I was talking to you the other day that it all came back.” Justin looked down at the counter. “Kitty, I’m sorry I just gave you all those pat answers when you told me about Brent Wallace. I could just feel myself shutting down and it wasn’t until I was howling in the shower that I realised what was going on.”
“Is it not supposed to be me sobbing in the shower? I’ve seen all those terrible Lifetime rape movies.” Kitty was rewarded by a smile from Justin. She looked at him soberly. “Firstly, your ‘pat answers’ were actually incredibly helpful and just what I needed to hear. Dr. Holden is clearly no dummy. Secondly, because she is no dummy, I really think you should talk about this with her in your next session. That experience in Fallujah sounds incredibly traumatic.”
“Yeah, I think I will.”
The two of them sat together in the kitchen in what, Kitty realised, was the first moment of comfortable silence she had shared with a member of her family since Justin came home.
Justin held out his hand to her. Kitty looked at it in confusion. “Shake? As you’re not quite in the hugging place right now?”
Kitty smiled and wrapped her arms around Justin. They sat together for a minute, and although Kitty’s skin was prickling there was something so reassuring about the familiar smell of her baby brother. He spoke into her hair, so quietly that she nearly missed it. “Kitty, I’m really sorry.”
She knew he meant for everything. “Yeah,” she said. “Me too.”
( Part ten)