remember when she left

AIDEN JACKSON

FRIGG WAS ASLEEP when Aiden Jackson decided it was time to get her home. He had kind of wanted her to fall asleep, because that gave him a reason to keep her in his arms as he carried her.

The idiot got lost three minutes away from her own house. He couldn't help a smile at that thought, and she called him a Birdbrain.

He heard Harvey bark when he arrived in front of her house, and before he rang the bell, he felt relieved that he'd had a shirt under the pull, because it would have been extremely awkward to arrive shirtless with Frigg asleep in his arms if he hadn't.

Agnes –Frigg's mum– opened the door, and her tired eyes went from her wet, unconscious daughter in his arms, to him.

"I can explain, but first she needs to get in her bed," he said quickly, not wanting to be banished of this house forever.

She rubbed her eyelids, before letting him in. "Don't worry, Annie came in earlier and explained everything."

"Oh." Was the smartest answer he could find.

"I guess you know your way to her room," she said blankly. "Don't wake my husband or he will castrate you."

Aiden nodded, remembering all those times he had picked up Vivian here. Or when they would hang out with Reece and Annie. He loved the twins, Jai, and the girls, but sometimes he couldn't help but miss the old gang.

The most vivid memory was when he'd come here crying, barely breathing, right after he'd found Vivian was dead. He remembered crying in Frigg's arms under her parents' worried faces. He remembered having to tell her what happened, and her face when her entire world had shattered, just like his.

He pushed the white door to her bedroom, and looked around. It hadn't really changed. There was still a big white bed, an enormous library, and a messy desk, but the Of Monsters And Men posters and the drawings had disappeared, and her walls were now a greyish shade of blue. He noticed a box of posters, paintings and papers, and he guessed she had just painted her walls, and hadn't had the time to put everything back up.

Aiden gently put her on the bed, and covered her boy with a blanket. She couldn't sleep in her swimming costume, but he figured it was dry, and he could at least give her a minute of more sleep as he looked around the room.

His eyes wandered to the small bed table, and he noticed a Pride And Prejudice lying on it. Vivian's book. He couldn't help himself, he took it and opened it, reading the recognisable writing in green ink on the first page.

To the gods' queen, from Viv. "There is a stubbornness about me that never can bare to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me."

"She gave it to me."

Aiden jumped at Frigg's voice, and turned back to her. She was sitting on the bed, watching him with a bittersweet look.

"Oh." Apparently his favourite word now.

He glanced at his sister's writing again. She did love green. "When did you wake up?" He asked.

"When you carried me home," she said easily. "I just pretended to sleep so I wouldn't have to walk."

"Maybe I would have carried you anyway?"

She laughed. "We both know that wouldn't happen."

He gave her a shrug. If only she knew. "We both thought I would never come back in this room, yet here I am."

She mentioned at him to turn around, and he did and waited for her to take of her cozzie and on a pyjama. When she told him to turn around, he did, and was surprised to find that she had kept his pullover over her trousers.

"Do you plan on giving that back some day?" He asked, remembering how she used to steal his clothes all the time. He used to pretend it annoyed him.

Frigg didn't answer, lost in her thoughts for a moment, before she pointed at the book. "Read it to me."

Confused, he glanced at her again. "What?"

"Read it to me," she repeated, in a slightly more annoyed voice.

Aiden bit his lip, considering running away for a second, but he opened the damn book, ignored his sister's writing, and began to read. "'It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a great fortune, must be in want of a wife.'"

His felt her eyes on him as he read a couple of chapters, and around the tenth of the first volume, she finally fell asleep, her chest going up and down with her respiration. She looked like an angel, and that made Aiden laugh quietly. She definitely wasn't an angel awake, she could be the fucking devil itself when she wanted to,

He decided to go home before Frigg's father found him staring at his daughter as she slept, like some creep out of Twilight.

He was carful not to make a noise as he left, and when he reached his own house, he found his own father waiting for him, seated on the couch in the living room, drunk.

"Where's mum?" He asked. He wouldn't come home drunk in front of his wife, he wouldn't act like this in front of his wife.

"None of your business."

Aiden figured she must be at a friend's. The only good thing left in the man in front of him was the love for his wife. The death of his only daughter took the rest of his heart.

"You're late," he groaned.

"I know." But it was worth it.

His father tried to stand up, but fell back on his side with a small noise of protest, before dropping his glass bottle to stand up for real this time. "You damn kid, you ruined my family," he muttered, like in transe. "This is all you fault, you useless shit. You killed her."

Aiden closed his eyes. He was drunk, he didn't mean it. He was drunk, he didn't mean it.

"Vivian needed to live," his father broke down in tears, "You killed my daughter!"

Aiden knew that, of course he faking knew. He had killed his sister.

His father dismissed him with a clumsy arm gesture. "Get the fuck away from me."

Aiden stormed to his bedroom and shut the door quietly, turning the key in case his father decided he needed to do more. He turned to lean on it and closed his eyes.

It's not your fault.

Yes it is.

Vivian wouldn't want you to let it break you.

Well Vivian's dead.

He sighed and opened his eyes. Only to find out that his walls were now entirely pink.

He didn't gasp, he didn't freeze, he didn't blink. He only let out a long breath.

Damn you Frigg fucking Evans.