Intertwined

What Could Have Been

A/N: Don't get put off by the title.
T/W descriptions of injuries.
When I first heard the song 'What Could Have Been' by Sting with Violinist Ray Chen, I cried. The violin crescendo is like a heart breaking, like whole body, soul releasing trauma sobs. I then heard it again after my 17 year old got me watching Arcane and cried again. IYKYK!

The song and the lyrics remind me of TNN characters and their manipulation and suffering at the hands of Roger in order to create and control people to the image he wants. Ultimately his attempts to do that will seal his own fate, however and whenever that happens. So as I was writing this chapter I wrote it with that song in mind.

What Could Have Been Lyrics
I am the monster you created
You ripped out all my parts
And worst of all, for me to live,
I gotta kill the part of me that saw
That I needed you more

I hope you know we had everything
And you broke me and left these pieces
I want you to hurt like you hurt me today and
I want you to lose like I lose when I play what could have been
Oh, what could have been

Why don't you love who I am?
What we could have been
I am your ghost, a fallen angel
You ripped out all my parts
I couldn't care what invention you made me
'Cause I, I was meant to be yours

I hope you know we had everything
And you broke me and left these pieces
I want you to hurt like you hurt me today and
I want you to lose like I lose when I play
I want you to hurt like you hurt me today and
I want you to lose like I lose when I play
What could have been

It was an hour and a half to the farm with Autumn driving. No one argued when she told them to get in her car. Winter, came to keep an eye on his darling, Mia desperate for Charlotte to be in her arms and Reece hardly containing his rage that his father continued to hurt people and had been for years. Wrecking lives, all for power and control.

Autumn was exhausted. She was still recovering from the miscarriage, from all of her hopes and dreams tumbling down, from the emptiness she felt knowing her body had failed. From the despair she saw Winter struggle to hide as he helped her and made sure she was ok. They were going to be such wonderful parents, sharing the love they have for each other with their beautiful child. It was unfair. Autumn wasn't really one to feel or express self pity, or at least she dismissed it as weak if she had ever felt it before, but now she found herself angry at the unfairness of losing their loved baby and asking 'why us?' and 'why me?'

There was of course no answer coming. There was no medical reason found for her miscarriage. The doctor said. 'Sometimes these things just happen'. Autumn didn't deal with uncertainty well. She had naively believed that by doing all the right things she would end the pregnancy with a beautiful baby in her arms. The fact that a miscarriage could happen anyway made her unsure whether she ever wanted to be pregnant again. She was so confused about all these conflicting feelings and had no space to just lay down with Winter and talk about it.

She wasn't upset at Charlotte or Mia or even Siobhan, though that was a strange realisation. What was causing her to feel rage and heartbreak was the suffering her father has caused. He had been doing this her whole life. He had been breaking people and trying to turn them into the versions he wanted or abusing them into submission or worse.

Autumn thought that being able to channel her rage in a physical way was ok if she was helping or protecting someone. When she saw someone like her father treating another human, especially a child, badly, she would never hesitate to step in and throw any hands necessary to protect the person being abused and mistreated. Now she wondered if the fierce, angry and sometimes violent person she could become was what her father had always intended. Had he created her and if he had, could she change from being that monster?