fic: better than nothing (feeling good, lynn)
Title: Better Than Nothing
Rating: R (language, disturbing imagery)
Characters: Lynn, Lester family, Echolls family
Fandoms: VM-centric, with a side TLW
Disclaimer: I don’t own the basics you recognize
Timeline: Pre-Feeling Good
Beta:
evie_0, who is so amazing and knows both fandoms and doesn't look at me oddly for my crossover crazy. Any mistakes here are completely my own, yo.
Notes: Seriously, Rob, stop moving your damn timelines around, okay? Especially the Fab Four timelines because, dude, it's annoying as fuck when the ages keep changing - especially when the years don't make sense.
Teaser: By the end, she doesn’t know what she feels guilty about anymore.
Why not believe in something
Something's got to be better than nothing
- Aqualung
It’s not all bad but it’s not good either.
There’s four years difference between them but it doesn’t matter because they look like twins in the right light, have the same features and the same build, are able to share clothes and toys and secrets. When they’re home alone with their father, they turn the radio on and sing, cling to each other as they spin, fingers tangling when they finally collapse to the threadbare carpet. Lynn has more height and Rebecca’s eyes are just a little bit deeper, but that’s about it.
They’re sure in the way that only children can be that this is how it’ll be forever.
Their mother drinks without hesitation until their father gets home every night, and then she drinks when she thinks he isn’t looking, half-heartedly telling Bill that he’s too young to drink when she catches him with her wine one night. Their father’s different sometimes, a little… off, but he always bends to kiss their foreheads when he gets home and before he goes in to deal with their mother, before he tries to talk to Bill again.
Sometimes they think he preferred where he was before he got home but if he does, he works hard not to show it.
The one time their mother loses her temper and slaps Rebecca, their father is there before they can even realize the enormity of it all, comforts them and then tears through the house, emptying every bottle he can find and throwing their mother’s clothes out of the closet and into the hall. Their mother’s gone the next morning and Bill looks unsure, leaves a week later but not completely, eyes guilty as he comes by every week to see his father.
Rebecca sometimes stands staring at the door as she chews her bottom lip.
Their father tries so hard and Bill drinks but loves them and Lynn dreams of not wanting her mother to come back.
Rebecca’s too shy, still waits for their mother to come home, and their father worries.
(Lynn’s good at pretending she doesn’t miss her mother.)
He spends an extra five minutes tucking her in every night while Lynn waits on the other side of the room, watching rough fingers smooth dark hair from a face, watches her until Rebecca finally falls asleep and he finally comes over to Lynn, tucks her in as well as he can, face heavy and eyes bleak.
I love you, he assures her and she only hopes he loves her as much as he loves Rebecca.
(All he does now is worry about Rebecca.)
They spend their time fighting.
In a few months, they go from always together to always fighting, Rebecca out of the house more than she isn’t, coming home late at night and avoiding Lynn and their father, shoulders hunched until she falls into bed.
Rebecca’s so quiet now that this is the only way Lynn can get any response out of her, by cutting at her, getting something in response- and something is better than nothing even if it’s something ugly. She knows Rebecca’s drinking and she knows she’s doing other things and they unnerve her so much she eventually stops trying to get her sister’s attention.
Sometimes when she gets home late, she finds her father sitting in the dark kitchen, eyes closed as he flicks a lighter that she’s never touched but has always known about. When he notices her, he always puts it up, clears his throat and asks about her day, asks how things are going with her sister, if she can help him with whatever he’s working on now.
She doesn’t know what to say so she says nothing, goes to bed.
Her father’s stronger than she is anyway.
Her father wants her to help him with Rebecca.
But she doesn’t know her sister anymore and Bill has stopped coming around, and she feels like she’s drowning. She feels like she slipped into the ocean, like she’s slowly being carried out, like the current keeps pulling her head under the surface and she can’t get her feet under her no matter how hard she tries.
When she leaves, it’s in the middle of the night while her father’s out looking for Rebecca for the thousandth time.
She goes to see if she can fit into Hollywood, because she’s always been good at acting.
(It makes sense at the time.)
Lynn doesn’t look back.
(But a part of her wishes her father would come and get her.)
She calls Bill only once, a few months later, finds out that her sister’s shacked up with someone named McCutcheon.
Rebecca’s six months along (and she hadn’t even known she was going to have a baby) and their father is frantic, wants the baby to be cared for properly and is willing to take the baby in himself if Rebecca would agree to it. Their father is convinced that her sister can’t care for a child, doesn’t have enough self-control, and that the McCutcheon guy won’t be around for long. Bill wants to know where she is because their father’s becoming desperate, needs her help and Bill’s getting worried because their father seems to be forgetting little things-
Lynn almost says yes, almost rushes home because she wants to press a hand against Rebecca’s stomach, see if she can feel anything. She wants to help her father and be there when the baby’s born, wants to count the fingers and the toes and spoil the baby when it comes. And maybe Rebecca will get better, will be… herself again.
(Maybe she’ll get her big sister back, her father will stop worrying… maybe Bill will come home… maybe... mom...)
But she’s going to be in a commercial and people say she's got potential.
So she hangs up and stops thinking about her family.
Aaron Echolls has a wife that he doesn’t seem to remember around Lynn and a daughter he talks about all day long, shows her pictures to Lynn between takes and laughs low and rich as he brags about how perfect she is. He loves the little girl so much it makes her heart flutter in her chest because he doesn’t seem to care how silly other people may find the adoration.
He’s a star, not the biggest but they say he’s the next big thing, and he laughs at her bad jokes.
His hand’s always feel a little too firm against her skin during filming and one day by the catering table, she kisses him cautiously as he’s telling her about how his daughter’s already riding her bike without training wheels.
Their affair is carried out in their trailers between takes, and when it hits the tabloids, she panics until Aaron assures her that he was already planning to divorce his wife, that he only married her because she gave him a daughter but it’s different with Lynn, the way Lynn makes him feel…
The way Lynn makes him happy.
By the time the movie is released, they’re on the red carpet together, Aaron’s palm warm (firm and steady) against her back. He takes her home with him, she lives there through the divorce proceedings and he still wins because Gina is one hell of a lawyer (she’s just Gina, as if she’s a family friend) and because he’s famous now and not just some other actor.
His daughter hates her and within a few months, the feeling is mutual.
But Aaron wants more kids and she thinks that she may want to have a baby because she thinks about it all the time and she knows she won’t choose one child over the other like her father did (not that she thinks about her father) and sometimes she thinks about her little niece, probably small and chubby.
She'll be a wonderful mother.
The tabloids say he’s cheating on her.
It’s not true, Lynn decides, and struggles to deal with his daughter while he’s out- while he’s out working.
He’s getting more offers than she is but that’s okay, she doesn’t care about that.
Then she misses her period and is ecstatic until she learns it was just a missed period, just stress as she tries to finish a movie because they’re about to run over in time. She ignores the tabloids and walks down the red carpet on Aaron’s arm, jaw aching as she smiles and laughs and tells the reporters that, yes, they’re planning a family and trying hard.
(That last one is the complete truth even if it's a joke at the same time.)
There are two miscarriages (both splashed across the tabloids with fake sympathy) before there’s finally a success.
This time, three months become four and then five and she starts breathing again because this is it, she’s sure of it.
She’s going to be a mother and she’s going to do a better job of it than her mother ever did.
(Her niece is so big now, she knows, but she never thinks about her, never lets herself.)
Aaron’s daughter is less than amused when she finds out that the baby is the real deal this time, is only calmed when Aaron takes her on-set for a few days and shows her around. But when they get back, she’s still a little bitch and spends her spare time hanging around Aaron, glaring at Lynn across the room.
If Aaron notices it, he doesn’t care.
Then Bill shows up at the house needing money because their father is sick (something with his brain and blood pressure and how he needs help now with even little things) and then he tells her that their father was right- the McCutcheon guy left in the middle of the night right before she popped the baby out.
Rebecca ran off with the little girl a few months after that and they don’t know where she is now.
Lynn has a niece, a little niece that’s now a little girl, and she wonders what she looks like, if she looks like Rebecca.
Then Aaron gives him a handful of folded bills (“We don’t need any of the press psychos starting anything over this drunk, Lynn, and we can hire people to find your sister if that’s what you want- quietly, though.”) and her big brother that’s never been a brother to her turns and leaves, doesn’t look back.
She wonders if she should try to find her sister- but then she doesn’t think about it anymore.
She has her own life now, and it’s better than the one she escaped.
Lynn doesn’t learn until they find out it’s a boy that Aaron wanted more daughters, not sons.
But she already loves this baby.
She stretches out on the couch every night and places her palms flat against her belly and feels movement inside, this little body that’s going to come from her and he’ll be fine, okay, because she’ll never walk away from him like her mother did her (did Rebecca) and he’ll never have to doubt how much she loves him.
Aaron works more but she’s never completely alone anymore and the cravings are annoying but they’re worth it.
Lynn buys baby books and expensive furniture, chooses a sunny yellow and a rich blue as the nursery colors because they’re bright and she’s completely sure her son is going to like bright colors. She never thinks about Rebecca or the niece she’s never met.
Never thinks about her father or her brother.
Never thinks about Aunt Rebecca or Grandpa Lester or Uncle Bill.
They’re not her family anymore, Aaron is and this baby is and it’s all going to be perfect.
In the fuzzy moment when they hand her Logan, she thinks about her niece, wonders if she was this small when she was born. He’s tiny and he’s wrinkled and he can’t open his eyes but he curls a hand against her neck and right then, she starts to cry because he’s perfect and she has no idea how she’s survived her whole life without him.
She’s felt this kind of emotion before, when she was young with her sister, but it’s been a long time.
When they take him to the nursery, she cries a bit more but the nurses soothe her with stories about their own kids, give her tips and share stories as if she isn’t the famous Mrs. Echolls. She finally sleeps and, drugs still in her system, she dreams of her niece and her son playing together the way she and Rebecca used to do, little shapes that will grow up together and won’t fall apart the way she and Rebecca did. And she and Rebecca...
But then she wakes up and remembers that she hasn’t forgiven Rebecca yet.
(Not that she even knows what she’s angry about anymore.)
She pulls her son back into her arms, grinning when he stares back, eyes that squint at her intently and tiny hands with soft little nails curling around her fingers when she strokes a palm up and down his front the way her mother used to do before-
She stops herself then and instead presses a kiss against his forehead, breathing him in as she pulls him against her, allows him to curl up against her chest and make little noises that terrify and reassure her all at once.
Aaron’s off filming and by the time he comes to see their son, they’re ready to go home.
Logan’s perfect.
She knows that part of this is just her own maternal pride but it’s more than that, she decides, because when he decides he's going to walk, he tries until he gets it, shaky but able to get himself around as long as he doesn't get too excited. And he's already babbling as he follows her around the house, leans against a wall and bounces a bit as he peers up at her. When she’s sitting, he sets sticky palms against her leg, climbs up into her lap with whatever toy he’s brought with him to show her proudly.
He does the same with Aaron until he doesn’t, until he sees Aaron come into a room and makes an immediate beeline to her.
But Aaron’s not home to be with him the way Lynn is, so maybe he’s just getting shy.
When she finally visits her father at his rest home, Lynn’s father thinks she’s Rebecca.
He tells her all about how Lynn abandoned him and never looked back, tells her how grateful he is that Rebecca’s here to take care of him as he kisses her forehead and smoothes palms down her cheeks. She cries the whole time because this isn’t how her life is supposed to be now that she’s finally decided she wants to talk to him, wants to tell him that she has a son and that she loves him in a way that she can’t even explain.
She wants to bring Logan to see him while they can but this isn’t her father anymore and she doesn’t want Logan to get scared of this man who doesn’t know them, who talks about Rebecca as if she’s the one spending all of her money to take care of him, who sometimes starts shouting. She opens a new bottle of whatever she can find when she gets home from the weekly visits and ignores Aaron’s jibes at her father and she doesn’t want to take the chance of her son somehow remembering this stranger when he thinks about his grandfather.
(She doesn’t want to remember this man when she thinks about her father.)
So she tells him stories that he probably won’t even remember until she finally gives in and decides that she’ll regret it if she never lets them meet and maybe her father will realize who his grandson is, will have a few moments of joy.
Besides, she realizes, they’re running out of time.
But the next morning, her father’s dead (goes to sleep and is cold when they find him) and all she can give Logan are stories.
(She doesn't know when her life became a movie.)
Lynn’s father gives his lighter to Rebecca.
Rebecca, who didn’t come to be with him the last few weeks even though Lynn had tracked her down and tried to get her to come, who cries to her over the phone about how hard it is being her and how exhausting taking care of Shane is and how she needs money-
Money.
Rebecca finally calls Lynn after their father dies for money.
So she bars them from the funeral and doesn’t feel a flicker of guilt past the fury, past the burn of something like heartbreak as she stands alone because Aaron’s too busy to come with her and she doesn’t want to scare Logan with the graveyard. The press snaps pictures of her as she’s walking to her car, a woman ugly with bloodshot eyes and a wan face.
Lynn gets what’s left of his money and his other possessions from his time abroad but the lighter goes to Rebecca with words of comfort, a letter that’s an extra page longer than the one Lynn gets.
Rebecca gets the lighter and she opens a bottle of gin when she gets home from the will reading and cries because Rebecca didn’t do a fucking thing at the end, because Rebecca will always remember forehead kisses and all she’ll ever remember is a man who wasn’t her father.
Rebecca doesn’t deserve it, she decides as she digs out her anxiety pills and twists the bottle open.
She hears screaming and spills wine all over the counter, drops the bottle and is running before it shatters against the ground, rushes into the living room to find her husband looking frantic and Logan crying as he twists in his father’s grasp. Another step closer and she jerks in a breath at the bruise already spreading across one chubby cheek, pushes Aaron out of the way and lifts her son, dimly aware that she’s crying as she examines the mark.
“The coffee table- I turned away for a second-” Aaron tells her thickly, arms raised in an attempt to help but not actually touching their son, a faint green color to his face.
It looks like he hit the table, the angry line across his face but she swallows and then swallows again, pressing a palm against a small back and struggling to breathe, vision blurring as she spins and carries Logan to the kitchen, struggles to get something cold out of the freezer to help the swelling.
(Her father had put ice on Rebecca’s cheek after their mother hit her.)
Logan falls all the time with Aaron even though Logan always seems so sure on his feet and walked so early and Logan never acts like… like Aaron…
Lynn misses her father.
Lynn knows what she’s doing when she offers the money for the lighter.
Her big sister’s an addict, has been for years and doesn’t go out of her way to hide it, and she knows what Rebecca will use this money for but she wants the lighter, deserves it, knows every story her father told her about it and she needs it.
(Maybe it’ll help her.)
She’s at her sister’s house just long enough to hand her sister the cash, except-
She peeks around the house but sees no other movement, no sign of her niece.
(Rebecca tells her bluntly that she’s at school.)
So she leaves and doesn’t look back, goes home to find small marks on her son’s arm where a large hand had grabbed at some point while she had been gone.
Puts him to bed and sits staring at the lighter until she gives up and gets herself a highball.
Tomorrow, she’ll figure this all out tomorrow.
Rebecca dies.
Lynn finds out as she’s getting her make-up done, learns they found her in a bathroom and that she was already cold, already gone, long before they actually got to her. The picture plays out in her mind as lights flash in her face a few hours later, as she walks down the red carpet on Aaron’s arm in a dazzling gold dress, wonders with a silent hysteria what her sister was wearing when her heart stopped and she-
She doesn’t want to ruin her make-up so she tries not think about Rebecca and instead ends up thinking about her sister all night long, throat closing a little bit more as she fights to breathe, feeling something pulling her down.
She doesn’t go to the funeral and the movie’s such good press that nobody cares (that her big sister’s dead) and it’s another week before she’s able to ask where Shane is and finds out that Rebecca gave her up a while before she died (just a few weeks after their father died), that she’s staying with a friend of Bill’s for the time being.
She thinks about it for a moment one night, finding her niece and bringing her home, taking her in like her own, letting Logan have a big sister that doesn’t constantly tease him in that too nasty way like Trina does, something of Rebecca’s to hold onto...
Then she glances up and sees Logan sitting quietly by his father across the room and she quickly washes down the bitter taste with another glass-
(She remembers spinning with her sister when she was Logan’s age, gripping Rebecca’s hands when they tumbled to the ground as their father smiled slightly and watched over them with heavy eyes that lightened a bit when he looked at them.)
-and she doesn’t know when she lost her balance.
Lynn knows she’s drowning.
The guilt’s bubbling up inside her with the booze and the pills, and she tells herself every night when she goes to sleep that she’ll wake up and do what she has to do. She’ll pour the bottles out into the sink and she’ll get rid of Aaron, she’ll take care of her son and he’ll forgive her. He’ll grow up, he’ll… do something with his life (she doesn’t care what so long as he’s happy and healthy), and he’ll find someone who makes him happy who won’t destroy him in the process and maybe he’ll have kids that he’ll take care of the way she can’t care of him…
The scenarios fill her head all night but she wakes up and she thinks of Rebecca- and she decides she’ll do it tomorrow because she isn’t strong enough yet, because she just needs more time.
She misses her mother who never looked back and her brother who loved her (still loves her) but drank because it was what he learned, what stuck for him. Her sister who stole her father but didn’t love him (at least not enough) and she wishes that she had talked to her just one more time, just a few tear-choked words over the phone that she’ll never say.
She misses her father who was miserable but still managed to do something, to do what he had to do even though he had loved her mother, who chose his children over his wife and still lost them all anyway.
But she still has no idea what happened to her mother and her sister’s dead and her brother thinks she’s more pathetic than he is… her father’s dead, was gone before he finally died…
(One day, Logan is going to hate her.)
Bill doesn’t speak to her, has no reason to unless he needs money.
Rebecca’s dead.
So she tries to stay with Logan and tries to stop leaving him alone with Aaron but she keeps slipping and every time she turns away, there’s a new little mark, a new little bruise and the only time he doesn’t have any is when Aaron is off filming something. When Aaron’s gone, Logan perks up, bounces around the house and relaxes until he finds out that his father’s coming home at which point he starts throwing his stuffed animals around and walks around like some caged animal.
Pulls his sleeves over his hands as he greets Aaron enthusiastically, smile just a little too desperate.
Her father’s dead and he would have known what to do now, would have-
When she puts Logan to bed every night, she opens a new bottle, swallows down one glass and then another and then another, thumb rubbing back and forth across her father’s lighter and waiting for it to help, for it to tell her what to do.
Shane has their father’s eyes, deep and strong, and she has that expressive mouth that they all seem to have.
Shane looks like Rebecca.
Shane’s hair is black instead of brown and her eyes are a different color but she looks like Rebecca, a thin frame that looks too frail. Her hair’s a mess and when Lynn notices the bruise that peeks from under dark bangs, she realizes that it’s a mess for a reason and she looks at long sleeves and feels sick enough that she pulls out a glass and sloshes liquid into it.
Shane needs a place to stay and Lynn has the room but no, no, she can’t.
It’s too much at once.
Lynn’s still reeling from her father and her sister and how they left her and Aaron and the bruises on her son and things keep being added before she can figure things out and she wonders if Shane moved around the way Logan did when she was pregnant with him-
She wonders if Shane even knows her mother’s dead and washes down the now familiar bitter taste in her throat because she still doesn’t know if her own mother’s even alive.
So she gets rid of Shane and tries to figure things out, tries to understand what she needs to do and Shane’s strong enough to survive on her own because she already has been surviving on her own, hasn’t she?
Lynn nearly loses her son.
She’s half-asleep and hears screaming from somewhere in the house and a noise that she doesn’t understand that somehow still causes prickles of panic under her skin and falls out of bed and is so panicked that she doesn't even think of running away from it. Out of the bedroom and down the hall and she grabs at the blur she sees and yanks and they topple down to the floor together, her and her husband, and the belt’s biting into her palms as he tries to get it back so he can keep-
It takes a few tries, but she finally staggers to her feet and picks up her son and carries him to her bathroom, washes him off only to panic halfway through because even that is causing him pain. At last, she wraps him up, puts him into bed and shakes while he stares at her tiredly until he finally falls asleep, head dropping back to the pillow.
When she comes downstairs because she needs something to drink (she needs it, needs to open a bottle and pour a glass and drink it down, she needs it) Gina’s there with a cigarette pinched between her lips and a green tint to her skin, hand shaking as she tries to get the damn thing lit.
So she takes her drink back up with her and sits while she nurses it, ice clinking as she listens to Logan breathe.
Logan doesn’t have many friends.
He has people who use his parents’ money, who come to his birthday parties and gape up at Aaron while Logan clings to them and takes what he can from the experience because he’d rather have people that hurt him than no one.
Lynn knows he doesn’t have any friends, tries and fails to get him some.
When she finally convinces Aaron to move, it’s about Logan, about finding a new place where nobody knows that she’s a bad mother, meeting new kids who’ll like him because they like him. But her son’s so… intense, and he latches onto anyone who gets close and it upsets people, irritates them even if they don’t understand why.
She makes up a new house while Aaron finds new conquests, comes home smelling too clean.
She tries to meet the neighbors and mingle as well as she can even though it’s been a long time since she did.
She gets lucky.
The Kanes are new money, they’re fascinated with the Hollywood life, and it’s all she needs because they have two kids that attach themselves to Logan within a few seconds and she holds her breath and waits. They don’t just play with him when they want something and they spend time with him when they don’t need to and then the Mars girl joins in and everything seems to click into place.
And she tries, really tries, because she wants this for Logan.
It works, somehow, and she keeps holding her breath, waiting for it all to come down but things stay right and stable and she breathes and she drinks to keep herself calm and Logan’s already calming down, has stopped getting quite so upset with Trina and isn’t so damn jittery anymore.
And this might be it…
She might have finally done something right.
For a while, Logan doesn’t cause a scene.
He’s home only when he knows she is, spends all of his time with the Kane siblings and the Mars girl, and when he comes home every night, he tells her everything about his day, tells his mother about the family he’s somehow dug out for himself. Aaron pushes when he’s home, aggravates Logan with jibes and insults as if he can’t help himself, is rewarded when Logan loses control and pushes back and she starts drinking right then before she can hear anything else.
But Logan’s happy and she hopes and prays this will last as long as he needs it to.
For a while, it seems like it will and she watches her son live for the first time, telling her about stupid pranks with his three best friends while he keeps an eye on her, takes care of her as she drinks and waits for something to go wrong. When Aaron’s off filming, things feel perfect and her son’s happy and, oh god, please don’t let him lose this, please let this last until he doesn’t need it anymore, until he’s free of the two of them.
He tells her one night while the house is quiet (Aaron is home but he’s off somewhere but she doesn’t care because her son is talking to her) that he knows his girlfriend is cheating on him and she hates that he seems to think that this is just how the real world works, that he’ll put up with this-
(But she does, she puts up with it, and she wonders if this is normal, if this is how it really is.)
Her fingers itch to lift her glass up then but she resists because she doesn’t want to ruin this, ruin him sitting and talking to her, sharing his secrets even though she knows she doesn’t deserve it.
She comforts him as well as she can, assures him that things will work out.
And then it’s over.
Lynn decides that she’ll be the one to tell Logan after they find Lilly Kane bleeding by her pool, quickly takes a few sips to numb herself down before she goes upstairs- and then she has a few more because she doesn’t want to tell him, doesn’t want to know what’s going to happen now even though she does.
Logan’s going to start pushing again just to push (just to get something) and she knows what’s going to follow.
By the time she gets up there, he already knows, is sitting hunched on the bed as the news moves across the television, as he stares at her with open eyes and something desperate on his face, stares at her in a way that's starved.
But Lynn has nothing to say so she goes back downstairs and she opens another bottle.
Because Logan’s stronger than she is anyway.
Logan antagonizes his father, constantly grating against Aaron’s temper as her son watches her, waits for her.
Something’s slipped and she doesn’t know what exactly, only knows that her son’s beginning to look like Rebecca did, scrapes at Aaron even when he tries not to, glances at her the whole time while she opens a bottle and spills some into a glass and sips it down as well as she can past the shaking. When Aaron isn’t around, he goes after everyone else, gets into fights and insults teachers until Aaron comes back to clean it up and they all go home together as a family.
(She can swallow the pills dry but she never does.)
She hears him in the bathroom one time early in the morning, gets up to peer in and watch him, finds him standing in front of the mirror and pushing fingers into a bruise as if he’s trying to study how it feels. Then she remembers Rebecca in a bathroom and turns away, digs out orange plastic bottles and pops them open to spill the contents into her palm.
(She wonders if her son’s trying to kill himself and absently wishes he would just get it over with, that he doesn’t hold on and suffer like Rebecca and her father did.)
After a while, it all feels normal when the current pulls her under the surface.
Eventually the shaking stops.
Lynn knows, inside where she hates herself, that this isn’t how it should be.
She drinks the most when he’s bruised and he takes care of her when she’s at her worst, sits nearby and watches her nervously, body moving carefully but too devoted to go away and nurse his wounds in private. It always happens the same way and she wonders if this is the worst part of it, watching from what feels like a distance as he tries to take care of her.
Logan looks more like Rebecca (more like her father) every day.
At first, she thinks it’s just the features, the looks he got from her that she could always find in her own family, the ones that have always been there but seem to get stronger every day. She knows it’s the maturity, that the last bit of baby fat is fading and what’s left are strong angles and stronger features.
But it’s more than that, and she hates that she knows what it is.
Logan has Rebecca’s eyes, eyes that are deep because although he’s good at hiding, he never hides anything from her.
Logan has her father’s eyes like Rebecca did, how deep they are, the way they stare at her and pin her down. He loves her and she knows it the same way that she knows that one day he’ll hate her. He’ll look at her one day and he’ll see her and he’ll hate what he sees, and she doesn’t know how she’s going to survive that.
Unless… she’s dead by then.
Logan doesn’t look like Logan anymore.
Sometimes she looks and she sees Aaron, a desperate anger that had been banked for a while but is now being stoked, anger that he’s clinging to in some attempt to keep his head above the water, anger that he’s throwing out to get something in return. He’s angry until the life drains out of him and he seems to go limp, until he drops his head down and takes frantic breaths as if he can’t get the air into his lungs anymore. He looks like Rebecca in those moments and she panics but can’t say anything because she’s swallowing down whatever she has available.
Sometimes he looks like Shane, like the scrawny girl who showed up desperate and was dragged away angry, and this resemblance is the weakest and the strongest because Logan’s had bruises where dark bangs covered Shane’s and they both have the same eyes and the same expressive mouth.
Sometimes he looks like her father when he stares at her, waits for her to do something, to help him.
Lynn doesn’t even know what she feels the most guilt for anymore.
Aaron bleeds just like their (her) son does, smears her hands red as Logan stands in the background.
For a moment, she’s scared he’s going to die and she doesn’t want him to, not until he suffers-
All she has is Logan and one day he’ll hate her so she doesn’t even have him and she’s angry, face flushed and heart beating fast and her sister’s dead and her father’s gone and she has nothing left to lose and she’s going to lose her last bit of air any minute now, she can feel it-
So why not take Aaron with her, pull him down as she goes under?
Lynn’s thought about PIs for a while (like she’s thought about dumping bottles out in a sink and walking away from Aaron) but now she finally gets them and tells them everything, uses what they give, pays them in cash (like she did Rebecca years before) and watches the words get splashed across the pages in bright red like her miscarriages and the movie premieres and the comments about how she’s “showing her age” but Aaron apparently still looks perfect.
They never talk about bruises or belts, or dead fathers or dead sisters or angry brothers that hate her and she would put those out, too, but she’s scared and she can’t and she almost does anyway but how would Logan handle that?
(Another private investigator tracks down a girl in West Hollywood, finds her an address and a phone number.)
Lynn rewrites her will while Aaron’s still in the hospital.
She leaves Logan what she has of her money and all but one of her possessions and leaves Shane a lighter that Rebecca should have given her but never will, and she wants to give that to Logan (it means so much to him) but maybe-
There’s a tiny hope, something weak that ignites as she stares down at the lighter that never helped her and she hates it but is unwilling to drown it now that there’s something, even if it’s something that makes the guilt twist up inside her-
But it’s something, and something’s better than nothing so she signs her name, smiles at Barry and enjoys watching her husband bleed.
Lynn knows it’s over when she sees his face.
Something fragile only recently found splinters again and she feels it, feels the air leave her lungs as Logan looks on quietly, unhappily, tries to pull anger into his eyes and can’t but she does, a burst of fury that ignites fast and burns hard.
Then he tells her she’ll lose everything and she already has but she’s terrified anyway because what does it mean if she does- she’s never looked back because she’s always tried to keep it, never told her secrets and never tried to talk to Rebecca again and she’s given up everything for this, walked away from everything and-
She glances at Logan past the anger and the resemblance (she doesn’t know who she’s staring at) is devastating, crushes the anger with guilt that takes her down all at once, leaves her unable to breathe and she can’t do it anymore because even the anger she had tried to survive on the last two weeks hurts and she almost prefers nothing to this-
(She wonders how Logan keeps it going, how he feeds it, how hard he must work to survive on it and nothing else.)
Lynn leaves and walks away and swallows down what she can find and puts on the radio-
(But none of the stations plays any of the songs she remembers dancing to when she was younger.)
-and writes a letter and puts her lighter on the desk to hold it down but she doesn’t look back-
(It’s too late to change anything now anyway.)
-and she follows her sister down.
Rating: R (language, disturbing imagery)
Characters: Lynn, Lester family, Echolls family
Fandoms: VM-centric, with a side TLW
Disclaimer: I don’t own the basics you recognize
Timeline: Pre-Feeling Good
Beta:
evie_0, who is so amazing and knows both fandoms and doesn't look at me oddly for my crossover crazy. Any mistakes here are completely my own, yo.
Notes: Seriously, Rob, stop moving your damn timelines around, okay? Especially the Fab Four timelines because, dude, it's annoying as fuck when the ages keep changing - especially when the years don't make sense.
Teaser: By the end, she doesn’t know what she feels guilty about anymore.
Why not believe in something
Something's got to be better than nothing
- Aqualung
It’s not all bad but it’s not good either.
There’s four years difference between them but it doesn’t matter because they look like twins in the right light, have the same features and the same build, are able to share clothes and toys and secrets. When they’re home alone with their father, they turn the radio on and sing, cling to each other as they spin, fingers tangling when they finally collapse to the threadbare carpet. Lynn has more height and Rebecca’s eyes are just a little bit deeper, but that’s about it.
They’re sure in the way that only children can be that this is how it’ll be forever.
Their mother drinks without hesitation until their father gets home every night, and then she drinks when she thinks he isn’t looking, half-heartedly telling Bill that he’s too young to drink when she catches him with her wine one night. Their father’s different sometimes, a little… off, but he always bends to kiss their foreheads when he gets home and before he goes in to deal with their mother, before he tries to talk to Bill again.
Sometimes they think he preferred where he was before he got home but if he does, he works hard not to show it.
The one time their mother loses her temper and slaps Rebecca, their father is there before they can even realize the enormity of it all, comforts them and then tears through the house, emptying every bottle he can find and throwing their mother’s clothes out of the closet and into the hall. Their mother’s gone the next morning and Bill looks unsure, leaves a week later but not completely, eyes guilty as he comes by every week to see his father.
Rebecca sometimes stands staring at the door as she chews her bottom lip.
Their father tries so hard and Bill drinks but loves them and Lynn dreams of not wanting her mother to come back.
Rebecca’s too shy, still waits for their mother to come home, and their father worries.
(Lynn’s good at pretending she doesn’t miss her mother.)
He spends an extra five minutes tucking her in every night while Lynn waits on the other side of the room, watching rough fingers smooth dark hair from a face, watches her until Rebecca finally falls asleep and he finally comes over to Lynn, tucks her in as well as he can, face heavy and eyes bleak.
I love you, he assures her and she only hopes he loves her as much as he loves Rebecca.
(All he does now is worry about Rebecca.)
They spend their time fighting.
In a few months, they go from always together to always fighting, Rebecca out of the house more than she isn’t, coming home late at night and avoiding Lynn and their father, shoulders hunched until she falls into bed.
Rebecca’s so quiet now that this is the only way Lynn can get any response out of her, by cutting at her, getting something in response- and something is better than nothing even if it’s something ugly. She knows Rebecca’s drinking and she knows she’s doing other things and they unnerve her so much she eventually stops trying to get her sister’s attention.
Sometimes when she gets home late, she finds her father sitting in the dark kitchen, eyes closed as he flicks a lighter that she’s never touched but has always known about. When he notices her, he always puts it up, clears his throat and asks about her day, asks how things are going with her sister, if she can help him with whatever he’s working on now.
She doesn’t know what to say so she says nothing, goes to bed.
Her father’s stronger than she is anyway.
Her father wants her to help him with Rebecca.
But she doesn’t know her sister anymore and Bill has stopped coming around, and she feels like she’s drowning. She feels like she slipped into the ocean, like she’s slowly being carried out, like the current keeps pulling her head under the surface and she can’t get her feet under her no matter how hard she tries.
When she leaves, it’s in the middle of the night while her father’s out looking for Rebecca for the thousandth time.
She goes to see if she can fit into Hollywood, because she’s always been good at acting.
(It makes sense at the time.)
Lynn doesn’t look back.
(But a part of her wishes her father would come and get her.)
She calls Bill only once, a few months later, finds out that her sister’s shacked up with someone named McCutcheon.
Rebecca’s six months along (and she hadn’t even known she was going to have a baby) and their father is frantic, wants the baby to be cared for properly and is willing to take the baby in himself if Rebecca would agree to it. Their father is convinced that her sister can’t care for a child, doesn’t have enough self-control, and that the McCutcheon guy won’t be around for long. Bill wants to know where she is because their father’s becoming desperate, needs her help and Bill’s getting worried because their father seems to be forgetting little things-
Lynn almost says yes, almost rushes home because she wants to press a hand against Rebecca’s stomach, see if she can feel anything. She wants to help her father and be there when the baby’s born, wants to count the fingers and the toes and spoil the baby when it comes. And maybe Rebecca will get better, will be… herself again.
(Maybe she’ll get her big sister back, her father will stop worrying… maybe Bill will come home… maybe... mom...)
But she’s going to be in a commercial and people say she's got potential.
So she hangs up and stops thinking about her family.
Aaron Echolls has a wife that he doesn’t seem to remember around Lynn and a daughter he talks about all day long, shows her pictures to Lynn between takes and laughs low and rich as he brags about how perfect she is. He loves the little girl so much it makes her heart flutter in her chest because he doesn’t seem to care how silly other people may find the adoration.
He’s a star, not the biggest but they say he’s the next big thing, and he laughs at her bad jokes.
His hand’s always feel a little too firm against her skin during filming and one day by the catering table, she kisses him cautiously as he’s telling her about how his daughter’s already riding her bike without training wheels.
Their affair is carried out in their trailers between takes, and when it hits the tabloids, she panics until Aaron assures her that he was already planning to divorce his wife, that he only married her because she gave him a daughter but it’s different with Lynn, the way Lynn makes him feel…
The way Lynn makes him happy.
By the time the movie is released, they’re on the red carpet together, Aaron’s palm warm (firm and steady) against her back. He takes her home with him, she lives there through the divorce proceedings and he still wins because Gina is one hell of a lawyer (she’s just Gina, as if she’s a family friend) and because he’s famous now and not just some other actor.
His daughter hates her and within a few months, the feeling is mutual.
But Aaron wants more kids and she thinks that she may want to have a baby because she thinks about it all the time and she knows she won’t choose one child over the other like her father did (not that she thinks about her father) and sometimes she thinks about her little niece, probably small and chubby.
She'll be a wonderful mother.
The tabloids say he’s cheating on her.
It’s not true, Lynn decides, and struggles to deal with his daughter while he’s out- while he’s out working.
He’s getting more offers than she is but that’s okay, she doesn’t care about that.
Then she misses her period and is ecstatic until she learns it was just a missed period, just stress as she tries to finish a movie because they’re about to run over in time. She ignores the tabloids and walks down the red carpet on Aaron’s arm, jaw aching as she smiles and laughs and tells the reporters that, yes, they’re planning a family and trying hard.
(That last one is the complete truth even if it's a joke at the same time.)
There are two miscarriages (both splashed across the tabloids with fake sympathy) before there’s finally a success.
This time, three months become four and then five and she starts breathing again because this is it, she’s sure of it.
She’s going to be a mother and she’s going to do a better job of it than her mother ever did.
(Her niece is so big now, she knows, but she never thinks about her, never lets herself.)
Aaron’s daughter is less than amused when she finds out that the baby is the real deal this time, is only calmed when Aaron takes her on-set for a few days and shows her around. But when they get back, she’s still a little bitch and spends her spare time hanging around Aaron, glaring at Lynn across the room.
If Aaron notices it, he doesn’t care.
Then Bill shows up at the house needing money because their father is sick (something with his brain and blood pressure and how he needs help now with even little things) and then he tells her that their father was right- the McCutcheon guy left in the middle of the night right before she popped the baby out.
Rebecca ran off with the little girl a few months after that and they don’t know where she is now.
Lynn has a niece, a little niece that’s now a little girl, and she wonders what she looks like, if she looks like Rebecca.
Then Aaron gives him a handful of folded bills (“We don’t need any of the press psychos starting anything over this drunk, Lynn, and we can hire people to find your sister if that’s what you want- quietly, though.”) and her big brother that’s never been a brother to her turns and leaves, doesn’t look back.
She wonders if she should try to find her sister- but then she doesn’t think about it anymore.
She has her own life now, and it’s better than the one she escaped.
Lynn doesn’t learn until they find out it’s a boy that Aaron wanted more daughters, not sons.
But she already loves this baby.
She stretches out on the couch every night and places her palms flat against her belly and feels movement inside, this little body that’s going to come from her and he’ll be fine, okay, because she’ll never walk away from him like her mother did her (did Rebecca) and he’ll never have to doubt how much she loves him.
Aaron works more but she’s never completely alone anymore and the cravings are annoying but they’re worth it.
Lynn buys baby books and expensive furniture, chooses a sunny yellow and a rich blue as the nursery colors because they’re bright and she’s completely sure her son is going to like bright colors. She never thinks about Rebecca or the niece she’s never met.
Never thinks about her father or her brother.
Never thinks about Aunt Rebecca or Grandpa Lester or Uncle Bill.
They’re not her family anymore, Aaron is and this baby is and it’s all going to be perfect.
In the fuzzy moment when they hand her Logan, she thinks about her niece, wonders if she was this small when she was born. He’s tiny and he’s wrinkled and he can’t open his eyes but he curls a hand against her neck and right then, she starts to cry because he’s perfect and she has no idea how she’s survived her whole life without him.
She’s felt this kind of emotion before, when she was young with her sister, but it’s been a long time.
When they take him to the nursery, she cries a bit more but the nurses soothe her with stories about their own kids, give her tips and share stories as if she isn’t the famous Mrs. Echolls. She finally sleeps and, drugs still in her system, she dreams of her niece and her son playing together the way she and Rebecca used to do, little shapes that will grow up together and won’t fall apart the way she and Rebecca did. And she and Rebecca...
But then she wakes up and remembers that she hasn’t forgiven Rebecca yet.
(Not that she even knows what she’s angry about anymore.)
She pulls her son back into her arms, grinning when he stares back, eyes that squint at her intently and tiny hands with soft little nails curling around her fingers when she strokes a palm up and down his front the way her mother used to do before-
She stops herself then and instead presses a kiss against his forehead, breathing him in as she pulls him against her, allows him to curl up against her chest and make little noises that terrify and reassure her all at once.
Aaron’s off filming and by the time he comes to see their son, they’re ready to go home.
Logan’s perfect.
She knows that part of this is just her own maternal pride but it’s more than that, she decides, because when he decides he's going to walk, he tries until he gets it, shaky but able to get himself around as long as he doesn't get too excited. And he's already babbling as he follows her around the house, leans against a wall and bounces a bit as he peers up at her. When she’s sitting, he sets sticky palms against her leg, climbs up into her lap with whatever toy he’s brought with him to show her proudly.
He does the same with Aaron until he doesn’t, until he sees Aaron come into a room and makes an immediate beeline to her.
But Aaron’s not home to be with him the way Lynn is, so maybe he’s just getting shy.
When she finally visits her father at his rest home, Lynn’s father thinks she’s Rebecca.
He tells her all about how Lynn abandoned him and never looked back, tells her how grateful he is that Rebecca’s here to take care of him as he kisses her forehead and smoothes palms down her cheeks. She cries the whole time because this isn’t how her life is supposed to be now that she’s finally decided she wants to talk to him, wants to tell him that she has a son and that she loves him in a way that she can’t even explain.
She wants to bring Logan to see him while they can but this isn’t her father anymore and she doesn’t want Logan to get scared of this man who doesn’t know them, who talks about Rebecca as if she’s the one spending all of her money to take care of him, who sometimes starts shouting. She opens a new bottle of whatever she can find when she gets home from the weekly visits and ignores Aaron’s jibes at her father and she doesn’t want to take the chance of her son somehow remembering this stranger when he thinks about his grandfather.
(She doesn’t want to remember this man when she thinks about her father.)
So she tells him stories that he probably won’t even remember until she finally gives in and decides that she’ll regret it if she never lets them meet and maybe her father will realize who his grandson is, will have a few moments of joy.
Besides, she realizes, they’re running out of time.
But the next morning, her father’s dead (goes to sleep and is cold when they find him) and all she can give Logan are stories.
(She doesn't know when her life became a movie.)
Lynn’s father gives his lighter to Rebecca.
Rebecca, who didn’t come to be with him the last few weeks even though Lynn had tracked her down and tried to get her to come, who cries to her over the phone about how hard it is being her and how exhausting taking care of Shane is and how she needs money-
Money.
Rebecca finally calls Lynn after their father dies for money.
So she bars them from the funeral and doesn’t feel a flicker of guilt past the fury, past the burn of something like heartbreak as she stands alone because Aaron’s too busy to come with her and she doesn’t want to scare Logan with the graveyard. The press snaps pictures of her as she’s walking to her car, a woman ugly with bloodshot eyes and a wan face.
Lynn gets what’s left of his money and his other possessions from his time abroad but the lighter goes to Rebecca with words of comfort, a letter that’s an extra page longer than the one Lynn gets.
Rebecca gets the lighter and she opens a bottle of gin when she gets home from the will reading and cries because Rebecca didn’t do a fucking thing at the end, because Rebecca will always remember forehead kisses and all she’ll ever remember is a man who wasn’t her father.
Rebecca doesn’t deserve it, she decides as she digs out her anxiety pills and twists the bottle open.
She hears screaming and spills wine all over the counter, drops the bottle and is running before it shatters against the ground, rushes into the living room to find her husband looking frantic and Logan crying as he twists in his father’s grasp. Another step closer and she jerks in a breath at the bruise already spreading across one chubby cheek, pushes Aaron out of the way and lifts her son, dimly aware that she’s crying as she examines the mark.
“The coffee table- I turned away for a second-” Aaron tells her thickly, arms raised in an attempt to help but not actually touching their son, a faint green color to his face.
It looks like he hit the table, the angry line across his face but she swallows and then swallows again, pressing a palm against a small back and struggling to breathe, vision blurring as she spins and carries Logan to the kitchen, struggles to get something cold out of the freezer to help the swelling.
(Her father had put ice on Rebecca’s cheek after their mother hit her.)
Logan falls all the time with Aaron even though Logan always seems so sure on his feet and walked so early and Logan never acts like… like Aaron…
Lynn misses her father.
Lynn knows what she’s doing when she offers the money for the lighter.
Her big sister’s an addict, has been for years and doesn’t go out of her way to hide it, and she knows what Rebecca will use this money for but she wants the lighter, deserves it, knows every story her father told her about it and she needs it.
(Maybe it’ll help her.)
She’s at her sister’s house just long enough to hand her sister the cash, except-
She peeks around the house but sees no other movement, no sign of her niece.
(Rebecca tells her bluntly that she’s at school.)
So she leaves and doesn’t look back, goes home to find small marks on her son’s arm where a large hand had grabbed at some point while she had been gone.
Puts him to bed and sits staring at the lighter until she gives up and gets herself a highball.
Tomorrow, she’ll figure this all out tomorrow.
Rebecca dies.
Lynn finds out as she’s getting her make-up done, learns they found her in a bathroom and that she was already cold, already gone, long before they actually got to her. The picture plays out in her mind as lights flash in her face a few hours later, as she walks down the red carpet on Aaron’s arm in a dazzling gold dress, wonders with a silent hysteria what her sister was wearing when her heart stopped and she-
She doesn’t want to ruin her make-up so she tries not think about Rebecca and instead ends up thinking about her sister all night long, throat closing a little bit more as she fights to breathe, feeling something pulling her down.
She doesn’t go to the funeral and the movie’s such good press that nobody cares (that her big sister’s dead) and it’s another week before she’s able to ask where Shane is and finds out that Rebecca gave her up a while before she died (just a few weeks after their father died), that she’s staying with a friend of Bill’s for the time being.
She thinks about it for a moment one night, finding her niece and bringing her home, taking her in like her own, letting Logan have a big sister that doesn’t constantly tease him in that too nasty way like Trina does, something of Rebecca’s to hold onto...
Then she glances up and sees Logan sitting quietly by his father across the room and she quickly washes down the bitter taste with another glass-
(She remembers spinning with her sister when she was Logan’s age, gripping Rebecca’s hands when they tumbled to the ground as their father smiled slightly and watched over them with heavy eyes that lightened a bit when he looked at them.)
-and she doesn’t know when she lost her balance.
Lynn knows she’s drowning.
The guilt’s bubbling up inside her with the booze and the pills, and she tells herself every night when she goes to sleep that she’ll wake up and do what she has to do. She’ll pour the bottles out into the sink and she’ll get rid of Aaron, she’ll take care of her son and he’ll forgive her. He’ll grow up, he’ll… do something with his life (she doesn’t care what so long as he’s happy and healthy), and he’ll find someone who makes him happy who won’t destroy him in the process and maybe he’ll have kids that he’ll take care of the way she can’t care of him…
The scenarios fill her head all night but she wakes up and she thinks of Rebecca- and she decides she’ll do it tomorrow because she isn’t strong enough yet, because she just needs more time.
She misses her mother who never looked back and her brother who loved her (still loves her) but drank because it was what he learned, what stuck for him. Her sister who stole her father but didn’t love him (at least not enough) and she wishes that she had talked to her just one more time, just a few tear-choked words over the phone that she’ll never say.
She misses her father who was miserable but still managed to do something, to do what he had to do even though he had loved her mother, who chose his children over his wife and still lost them all anyway.
But she still has no idea what happened to her mother and her sister’s dead and her brother thinks she’s more pathetic than he is… her father’s dead, was gone before he finally died…
(One day, Logan is going to hate her.)
Bill doesn’t speak to her, has no reason to unless he needs money.
Rebecca’s dead.
So she tries to stay with Logan and tries to stop leaving him alone with Aaron but she keeps slipping and every time she turns away, there’s a new little mark, a new little bruise and the only time he doesn’t have any is when Aaron is off filming something. When Aaron’s gone, Logan perks up, bounces around the house and relaxes until he finds out that his father’s coming home at which point he starts throwing his stuffed animals around and walks around like some caged animal.
Pulls his sleeves over his hands as he greets Aaron enthusiastically, smile just a little too desperate.
Her father’s dead and he would have known what to do now, would have-
When she puts Logan to bed every night, she opens a new bottle, swallows down one glass and then another and then another, thumb rubbing back and forth across her father’s lighter and waiting for it to help, for it to tell her what to do.
Shane has their father’s eyes, deep and strong, and she has that expressive mouth that they all seem to have.
Shane looks like Rebecca.
Shane’s hair is black instead of brown and her eyes are a different color but she looks like Rebecca, a thin frame that looks too frail. Her hair’s a mess and when Lynn notices the bruise that peeks from under dark bangs, she realizes that it’s a mess for a reason and she looks at long sleeves and feels sick enough that she pulls out a glass and sloshes liquid into it.
Shane needs a place to stay and Lynn has the room but no, no, she can’t.
It’s too much at once.
Lynn’s still reeling from her father and her sister and how they left her and Aaron and the bruises on her son and things keep being added before she can figure things out and she wonders if Shane moved around the way Logan did when she was pregnant with him-
She wonders if Shane even knows her mother’s dead and washes down the now familiar bitter taste in her throat because she still doesn’t know if her own mother’s even alive.
So she gets rid of Shane and tries to figure things out, tries to understand what she needs to do and Shane’s strong enough to survive on her own because she already has been surviving on her own, hasn’t she?
Lynn nearly loses her son.
She’s half-asleep and hears screaming from somewhere in the house and a noise that she doesn’t understand that somehow still causes prickles of panic under her skin and falls out of bed and is so panicked that she doesn't even think of running away from it. Out of the bedroom and down the hall and she grabs at the blur she sees and yanks and they topple down to the floor together, her and her husband, and the belt’s biting into her palms as he tries to get it back so he can keep-
It takes a few tries, but she finally staggers to her feet and picks up her son and carries him to her bathroom, washes him off only to panic halfway through because even that is causing him pain. At last, she wraps him up, puts him into bed and shakes while he stares at her tiredly until he finally falls asleep, head dropping back to the pillow.
When she comes downstairs because she needs something to drink (she needs it, needs to open a bottle and pour a glass and drink it down, she needs it) Gina’s there with a cigarette pinched between her lips and a green tint to her skin, hand shaking as she tries to get the damn thing lit.
So she takes her drink back up with her and sits while she nurses it, ice clinking as she listens to Logan breathe.
Logan doesn’t have many friends.
He has people who use his parents’ money, who come to his birthday parties and gape up at Aaron while Logan clings to them and takes what he can from the experience because he’d rather have people that hurt him than no one.
Lynn knows he doesn’t have any friends, tries and fails to get him some.
When she finally convinces Aaron to move, it’s about Logan, about finding a new place where nobody knows that she’s a bad mother, meeting new kids who’ll like him because they like him. But her son’s so… intense, and he latches onto anyone who gets close and it upsets people, irritates them even if they don’t understand why.
She makes up a new house while Aaron finds new conquests, comes home smelling too clean.
She tries to meet the neighbors and mingle as well as she can even though it’s been a long time since she did.
She gets lucky.
The Kanes are new money, they’re fascinated with the Hollywood life, and it’s all she needs because they have two kids that attach themselves to Logan within a few seconds and she holds her breath and waits. They don’t just play with him when they want something and they spend time with him when they don’t need to and then the Mars girl joins in and everything seems to click into place.
And she tries, really tries, because she wants this for Logan.
It works, somehow, and she keeps holding her breath, waiting for it all to come down but things stay right and stable and she breathes and she drinks to keep herself calm and Logan’s already calming down, has stopped getting quite so upset with Trina and isn’t so damn jittery anymore.
And this might be it…
She might have finally done something right.
For a while, Logan doesn’t cause a scene.
He’s home only when he knows she is, spends all of his time with the Kane siblings and the Mars girl, and when he comes home every night, he tells her everything about his day, tells his mother about the family he’s somehow dug out for himself. Aaron pushes when he’s home, aggravates Logan with jibes and insults as if he can’t help himself, is rewarded when Logan loses control and pushes back and she starts drinking right then before she can hear anything else.
But Logan’s happy and she hopes and prays this will last as long as he needs it to.
For a while, it seems like it will and she watches her son live for the first time, telling her about stupid pranks with his three best friends while he keeps an eye on her, takes care of her as she drinks and waits for something to go wrong. When Aaron’s off filming, things feel perfect and her son’s happy and, oh god, please don’t let him lose this, please let this last until he doesn’t need it anymore, until he’s free of the two of them.
He tells her one night while the house is quiet (Aaron is home but he’s off somewhere but she doesn’t care because her son is talking to her) that he knows his girlfriend is cheating on him and she hates that he seems to think that this is just how the real world works, that he’ll put up with this-
(But she does, she puts up with it, and she wonders if this is normal, if this is how it really is.)
Her fingers itch to lift her glass up then but she resists because she doesn’t want to ruin this, ruin him sitting and talking to her, sharing his secrets even though she knows she doesn’t deserve it.
She comforts him as well as she can, assures him that things will work out.
And then it’s over.
Lynn decides that she’ll be the one to tell Logan after they find Lilly Kane bleeding by her pool, quickly takes a few sips to numb herself down before she goes upstairs- and then she has a few more because she doesn’t want to tell him, doesn’t want to know what’s going to happen now even though she does.
Logan’s going to start pushing again just to push (just to get something) and she knows what’s going to follow.
By the time she gets up there, he already knows, is sitting hunched on the bed as the news moves across the television, as he stares at her with open eyes and something desperate on his face, stares at her in a way that's starved.
But Lynn has nothing to say so she goes back downstairs and she opens another bottle.
Because Logan’s stronger than she is anyway.
Logan antagonizes his father, constantly grating against Aaron’s temper as her son watches her, waits for her.
Something’s slipped and she doesn’t know what exactly, only knows that her son’s beginning to look like Rebecca did, scrapes at Aaron even when he tries not to, glances at her the whole time while she opens a bottle and spills some into a glass and sips it down as well as she can past the shaking. When Aaron isn’t around, he goes after everyone else, gets into fights and insults teachers until Aaron comes back to clean it up and they all go home together as a family.
(She can swallow the pills dry but she never does.)
She hears him in the bathroom one time early in the morning, gets up to peer in and watch him, finds him standing in front of the mirror and pushing fingers into a bruise as if he’s trying to study how it feels. Then she remembers Rebecca in a bathroom and turns away, digs out orange plastic bottles and pops them open to spill the contents into her palm.
(She wonders if her son’s trying to kill himself and absently wishes he would just get it over with, that he doesn’t hold on and suffer like Rebecca and her father did.)
After a while, it all feels normal when the current pulls her under the surface.
Eventually the shaking stops.
Lynn knows, inside where she hates herself, that this isn’t how it should be.
She drinks the most when he’s bruised and he takes care of her when she’s at her worst, sits nearby and watches her nervously, body moving carefully but too devoted to go away and nurse his wounds in private. It always happens the same way and she wonders if this is the worst part of it, watching from what feels like a distance as he tries to take care of her.
Logan looks more like Rebecca (more like her father) every day.
At first, she thinks it’s just the features, the looks he got from her that she could always find in her own family, the ones that have always been there but seem to get stronger every day. She knows it’s the maturity, that the last bit of baby fat is fading and what’s left are strong angles and stronger features.
But it’s more than that, and she hates that she knows what it is.
Logan has Rebecca’s eyes, eyes that are deep because although he’s good at hiding, he never hides anything from her.
Logan has her father’s eyes like Rebecca did, how deep they are, the way they stare at her and pin her down. He loves her and she knows it the same way that she knows that one day he’ll hate her. He’ll look at her one day and he’ll see her and he’ll hate what he sees, and she doesn’t know how she’s going to survive that.
Unless… she’s dead by then.
Logan doesn’t look like Logan anymore.
Sometimes she looks and she sees Aaron, a desperate anger that had been banked for a while but is now being stoked, anger that he’s clinging to in some attempt to keep his head above the water, anger that he’s throwing out to get something in return. He’s angry until the life drains out of him and he seems to go limp, until he drops his head down and takes frantic breaths as if he can’t get the air into his lungs anymore. He looks like Rebecca in those moments and she panics but can’t say anything because she’s swallowing down whatever she has available.
Sometimes he looks like Shane, like the scrawny girl who showed up desperate and was dragged away angry, and this resemblance is the weakest and the strongest because Logan’s had bruises where dark bangs covered Shane’s and they both have the same eyes and the same expressive mouth.
Sometimes he looks like her father when he stares at her, waits for her to do something, to help him.
Lynn doesn’t even know what she feels the most guilt for anymore.
Aaron bleeds just like their (her) son does, smears her hands red as Logan stands in the background.
For a moment, she’s scared he’s going to die and she doesn’t want him to, not until he suffers-
All she has is Logan and one day he’ll hate her so she doesn’t even have him and she’s angry, face flushed and heart beating fast and her sister’s dead and her father’s gone and she has nothing left to lose and she’s going to lose her last bit of air any minute now, she can feel it-
So why not take Aaron with her, pull him down as she goes under?
Lynn’s thought about PIs for a while (like she’s thought about dumping bottles out in a sink and walking away from Aaron) but now she finally gets them and tells them everything, uses what they give, pays them in cash (like she did Rebecca years before) and watches the words get splashed across the pages in bright red like her miscarriages and the movie premieres and the comments about how she’s “showing her age” but Aaron apparently still looks perfect.
They never talk about bruises or belts, or dead fathers or dead sisters or angry brothers that hate her and she would put those out, too, but she’s scared and she can’t and she almost does anyway but how would Logan handle that?
(Another private investigator tracks down a girl in West Hollywood, finds her an address and a phone number.)
Lynn rewrites her will while Aaron’s still in the hospital.
She leaves Logan what she has of her money and all but one of her possessions and leaves Shane a lighter that Rebecca should have given her but never will, and she wants to give that to Logan (it means so much to him) but maybe-
There’s a tiny hope, something weak that ignites as she stares down at the lighter that never helped her and she hates it but is unwilling to drown it now that there’s something, even if it’s something that makes the guilt twist up inside her-
But it’s something, and something’s better than nothing so she signs her name, smiles at Barry and enjoys watching her husband bleed.
Lynn knows it’s over when she sees his face.
Something fragile only recently found splinters again and she feels it, feels the air leave her lungs as Logan looks on quietly, unhappily, tries to pull anger into his eyes and can’t but she does, a burst of fury that ignites fast and burns hard.
Then he tells her she’ll lose everything and she already has but she’s terrified anyway because what does it mean if she does- she’s never looked back because she’s always tried to keep it, never told her secrets and never tried to talk to Rebecca again and she’s given up everything for this, walked away from everything and-
She glances at Logan past the anger and the resemblance (she doesn’t know who she’s staring at) is devastating, crushes the anger with guilt that takes her down all at once, leaves her unable to breathe and she can’t do it anymore because even the anger she had tried to survive on the last two weeks hurts and she almost prefers nothing to this-
(She wonders how Logan keeps it going, how he feeds it, how hard he must work to survive on it and nothing else.)
Lynn leaves and walks away and swallows down what she can find and puts on the radio-
(But none of the stations plays any of the songs she remembers dancing to when she was younger.)
-and writes a letter and puts her lighter on the desk to hold it down but she doesn’t look back-
(It’s too late to change anything now anyway.)
-and she follows her sister down.