Rip - Becoming Whole

Hot and Cold

Well since I was told long chapters are okay, here is another one! :-)

Rip was cold. Freezing cold in fact. 'Of all the nights his uncle could have chosen to sit on that bloody balcony with his grandfather and overanalyse their relationship it had to be this one,' Rip thought miserably, as he was lying under his comforter, fully clothed, shivering and teeth chattering, and trying to heat up his aching hands by blowing air into them. The bed he had climbed into was freezing too. The whole room was like an ice box. In hindsight, leaving the window open for the cat while he was out had not been a good idea.

Rip didn't know what he wanted his mind to focus on, the fact that his uncle had so vehemently declared he loved him or the fact that the only reason he was lying here in this bed in the first place and hadn't been left to rot in that godforsaken home, the fact that the only reason his uncle had decided to bring him here and keep him as well despite all the trouble he had caused him, was 'what was best for the ranch'.

'Finding out would destroy him', he had heard his uncle say. 'What a ridiculous thing to say,' Rip thought. After everything he's been through, after everything they've been through together, all those hours they had spent together in that therapist's office, everything his uncle knew about him, this is what his uncle thought would destroy him? Seriously? Did he know him at all, Rip wondered? 

Yes of course it hurt. Initially when he heard him say it, he felt like swinging himself up onto that roof and laying into his uncle for being such a cold-hearted arsehole. It stung, of course it did. It had brought him straight back to that day, when he turned up at the ranch, sick to his stomach because of what he had done, but it also confirmed what he had always known, that in those days at least, he had been indeed unwanted.

More recently he had started to doubt his memory and was wondering if what he remembered from that day really happened. He had talked to Isabelle about it. They talked about the fact that sometimes memories around a trauma can become distorted. She suggested to ask Regina about the records from the hospital and the police. She suggested for him to talk to his uncle about it at the end of their session, but he didn't want to do that. He was scared about what he'd find out. He was scared he'd done him wrong, but equally was scared of feeling rejected all over again, if he found out he was right.

'Turns out I was right,' he mused, but in a strange way what he had overheard didn't make him feel rejected but came as somewhat of a relieve. It meant he wasn't remembering it wrong. His head wasn't in as bad a mess as it could be. There wasn't much he remembered clearly of the aftermath on the day of their murder, just disconnected moments, with bits missing, not a complete film but those bits he remembered he remembered clearly even though he'd always told people he couldn't recall anything at all.

He remembered the weight of the skillet in his hand and could imagine the shape of the handle. He could actually feel it pulling his arm towards the ground just thinking about it. It was black and made from cast iron. He had always needed two hands to handle it when he was making eggs and bacon for breakfast for himself and Nicky and yet, here he was just holding it with one hand. 

When he had been swinging it and brought it down on the back of his father's head, he had been holding it with both hands by the handle. He clearly remembered that, and the sound of the impact of it on the bone. After he'd gone down and lay semi-conscious on top of his mother's dead body, her eyes unmoving and wide open in terror, he hit his father again several times until he lost consciousness and didn't move again. But then he remembered how he turned the pan around and held it on either side of the actual pan as he was trying to ram the handle into his father's skull. At this stage his intention was murder, driven by sheer rage. And he'd thought he'd succeeded as well, but it turned out his father's head was as hard to crack as a coconut, at least that is the case when a twelve year old skinny little boy is trying to do the cracking, which is what the lawyer said to him that represented him at some stage before the case even was brought to trial.