☁︎︎❥𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗰𝗿𝗲𝘁𝗲, 𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗺𝘆𝗶𝗻𝗻𝗶𝘁|⌫ - 𝘗𝘦𝘣𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘉𝘳𝘢𝘪𝘯 𝘈𝘜

Confrontation

A/n: press x to confront trauma (feel free to vent in the comments here, I may respond with support, I may not)

Tw: this is a heavy one, discussions of child neglect and suicide
Extra warning: listening to jubilee line for this one /hj (and interlude: i'm not angry anymore again /hj)
Allister and Tommy POV:

It took a lot of guts to come back. To park your car in the gravel driveway, the street, the sandy parking lot. To observe the trees, the plain (?) home, the rocky shore. To have the faces of statues stare you down, to see the angry looks of two people who should've been there, who should be there but aren't, but never were, to see the waves that almost were the last sight you ever saw.

It took a lot to not turn back around and walk out, to not repeat history, to leave everything to set in a bit longer, to not face everything. To leave your mind a blurry, obscured and messy paper of scribbles drawn by a child.

But Allister's therapist said it would be beneficial to confront the past, so one by one, she did.

She started with the Brighton Beach, night, cleared out. Nobody was there. Not where she wanted to go at least.

It was a stupid idea, the first time. Yeah, there was no way it would go as well as she wanted it to, but in her mind it made sense. The idea of coming to peace with water was always perfect to Allister.

It wasn't that Tommy thought she was still unstable, as he had said, she didn't mean to, he knew that now. But the mere thought of letting Allister, his girlfriend, someone he loved, deal with something that difficult herself was out of the question.

Maybe deep down he was a little afraid. It wasn't that he didn't trust her, he trusted Allister with more than his life. But the sad truth was he couldn't trust Allister with her life. She'd tried to waste it before and he couldn't let that happen again. He'd made that promise to himself and everyone around him.

So hand in hand the couple stood on the rocky beach, staring out at the high tide, waves crashing violently over each other, cannibalizing each other.

"What are you supposed to do?" Tommy murmured.

"I don't know. I haven't even been back here in 3 years." Allister whispered in response.

"This must be really hard for you. God that sounds so basic and annoying." He sighed, laughing softly.

"It is a bit hard, yeah, knowing here I almost never met you."

"Allie don't put it that way I'll cry."

"If you cry I'll already be crying so don't cry cause then I'll have to go back in time and start crying."

"That sounds complicated." Tommy chuckled.

"Then don't cry." Allister retorted jokingly.

"What's the next place you have to go?"

"Home."

"Ah, okay, guess we have to finish here first cause I have a pretty good idea on our last stop." Tommy said in a falsely happy manner, they both knew the last stop would be just as hard on him as it would be Allister.

She nodded sullenly, finally willing her legs to move forward, to realize what it must've been like to see your friend surface on the water and get pushed to the shore. Florence was only 17 at the time.

Three years. Three years, consecutively Florence had helped Allister through shit and she never even burdened Allister with her own load.

Florence had been the mother Allister desperately needed, she filled the roll perfectly, yet this long in your life instead of calling someone who should've been your mother a mother you tend to gravitate towards the words 'friend'.