Flowers in the Window || W2S

16

big death trigger warning for this chapter. I'm still pretty proud of it, but if you come across something you're really not comfortable with, feel free to skip for now :)

As you drifted, you began to dream. Began to think.

When you were a child, you'd never known your father. He had been killed in a bar fight two months before you had been born, and your mother had raised you for eight whole years, with only Bryce's help, until she finally started going on dates again. You hadn't understood her grief at the time-never known it, never thought it possible.

Eventually, she met a man. He was a model who she'd formed a sweet friendship with after being dragged down to the pub by some friends for a birthday drink. He charmed her, talked her way into her heart, her life-and eventually, yours too.

You hadn't liked him upon first meeting him. You thought he was a strange man. A peculiar man, with an odd smell that you recognised but didn't place, because it wasn't a smell that you came across very often as a small, well spoken eight year old girl. But he reeked of this weird scent, and it made you distrust him instantly.

Still, your mother was smitten, so you went along with it. And pretty soon, you began to like him too. He was friendly, he was thoughtful. He always brought you cute little gifts whenever he came to visit the flat. And because you got to stay with Bryce whenever it happened, you didn't mind a bit whenever he took your mother out on dates.

Until she began to smell too.

You noticed it one evening, when the two of you were curled up on the couch together, watching an old movie. You were getting sleepy, so you leaned over and cuddled into her side more, burying your head in her neck. And you smelled it then, on her body-and it seemed to be coming on particularly strong from a large red and purple bruise that had been partially hidden by her hair.

"What's that mark, mama?" You remembered asking her very well.

"Oh, that's just a little mark you give to someone whenever you really like them," she'd explained. "The same way I like-"

You couldn't remember his name. You didn't want to. It was bad enough to remember his face. It was blocked from your memory, and it would most likely never resurface.

So you'd just accepted her answer, in the same way most children do when they are at that age where they firmly believe that their parents know the answer to all of life's questions. And you continued to believe her, continued to not ponder any of their outings, any part of the smell, or any of the marks, until one night, when Bryce took you to a special Halloween bonfire, and there, sitting on his shoulders, dressed as a Disney princess, you finally placed the smell.

It was fire.

He was an arsonist.

He'd been doing it for most of his life. It began as a teenager-those were the words that the officer had parroted off from his file-and had slowly morphed into an obsession, a deep rooted desire for the flames. He'd burned down many an empty building before, watched the red and orange and yellow paint the black and blue sky with sights far more destructive than the stars did. And once or twice, there had been people in those buildings. People who had just barely managed to escape with their lives-and some hadn't escaped in one piece.

Your mother was being dragged into this through their relationship. Ownership was probably a better word, actually. She hadn't lied to you on that night, about that mark on her neck. It had been a hickey. A symbol of his possession of her. And, by extension, a symbol of his possession of you.

There had been quite a few arguments. Heated exchanges, screaming until their throats were raw. He'd threatened you constantly-threats to take you away and put you in child services, threats to put you in an orphanage, threats to beat you, assault you, kill you. She cried at every single one. And so did you. And you cried even harder at the threats towards her. You hated him. Life was so much simpler when he wasn't around-what made her so inclined to bring him here and burn down your home from the inside in this way?