Glasshouse

Last Letters

Dear Harry No, this isn't an entry in my diary.

Dear Brother I sound like Thor. I SHALL WRITE TO HIM, FOR I DESPAIR!

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Harry.

If you're reading this I'm dead. I can spontaneously think of a multitude of reasons why that might be, so I'm just gonna go ahead and assume it wasn't pleasant or of old age. My funeral is taken care of, the music selected and no, nobody can stop me from requesting Iron Man.

But that's not why I'm writing this. In this line of work it can all be over pretty soon. So I want to make sure that I get to say what I wanna say.

First of all, I'm sorry. Incredibly sorry. I said something absolutely awful to you and I knew it. I did it to hurt you, to hit you in your worst fear and I knew what I was doing.

Second of all, I'm a stubborn, arrogant ass. I have always known that. What I didn't know or rather didn't think about was how that affected other people. I thought that because I'm incredibly smart, I also automatically knew what was the right thing to do. One of the hardest things to do was to realize that that isn't true. Not even a little bit. I have made more mistakes than you have children and I have a feeling I will spend a lot of my mortal time on this earth paying for them. One day I will have to explain to a grown adult who maybe has kids of his own why I pulled him into my war. Why all of my smarts didn't make me stop and think about the consequences of making a 15 year old part of my army. I hated Dumbledore for pulling you into his war, his conflict and, in a way, his world. And now I have done the same. I was supposed to protect him as Dumbledore should have protected you. I have made many mistakes. That might be my worst one. There is no excusing that and I will spend the rest of mine and hopefully many decades of his life making it up to him.

But there is something I need to say as well.

You once said to me that I was being a crybaby because Daddy didn't love me enough, or something to that effect. However, you and I did not have the same father. I had Howard Stark, inventor, genius, father. You had Dad. When you came along, our relationship was already so fractured, it would have taken all we had to fix it. But I was too young and stupid to see that and Dad...well, I don't know why he gave up on me. Maybe he had decided I was one of his failed projects. I was something he did for Mom. I was the necessity for an heir. You WEREN'T a concession to his wife, something you just do after a certain age. He chose you. He wanted you. He listened to your stories about the mean boy next door and how his mom kept telling him to stay nice to you because you were important. You were his golden boy, his second chance. I was never angry at you for that. But I hated Dad for it. I always wanted to know why I wasn't enough.

And then Barnes took that from me. He took the answers, the questions, my parents, everything. So when you told me that you knew I just wanted to hurt you so much. As much as Barnes had hurt me that day. It felt like he took any chance I had to fix things with Dad and you, the son he always loved, supported and listened to, you said it was fine. You, with your perfect relationship with Mom and Dad, who did not have the questions and unspoken issues, you told me that I simply had to accept it. How could I? He took more than my parents. It's like he took a part of me.

So, no. It's not about Daddy not loving me enough. It's about being left with this feeling of not knowing and never being able to find out. It's about asking Daddy why I simply wasn't enough. Why I never merited his time, his attention. Why I just wasn't enough.

And that is the core problem, as I can tell you after many hours of therapy. This feeling of...helplessness? Unworthiness? I think it's why I just disappeared after Ginny's death. I felt like there was nothing I could have done. I just didn't know how. You had all these people, Molly and Arthur, Sirius and of course, Ron and Hermione. What would I have done they hadn't done already? I would have just sat there, not knowing what to say or do, how to console you, how to make you whole again. I just...wouldn't have been enough.