#with any luck I *will* update Fulcrum soon so I’m not lying in my author’s notes

[writerpyre]

Hello!!

It’s been a LONG time but if you’re inclined to read please have a bonus chapter to an older fic: first time in just over four years that I’ve posted anything for any fandom!

I found it in my files today and being as it’s been so long, I figured why the heck not, as I reckon it’s about time I came back with something. It’s not technically new writing, but I’m pretty gosh darn happy with myself either way. I’m finally at a place in my life where maybe things are going to be ok? I mean, I’m 31.

I’ll see what else the fates bring (my bestie is pretty unwell — not sure what’s with this people closest to me getting horribly sick thing), but I think I’m in a place where if I go back to using my writing to cope I’ll be fine. I can at least hope.

(For those who have by this point probably given up anticipating an update for Fulcrum (or anything related to it) never fear, for that one is next on my agenda! I’m ‘Bound’ and ‘Determined’ to get John through his decade-long predicament. Haha.)

Either way, have a chapter. :)

(For those who are unaware, Kent is my OC, Virgil’s identical twin who died of complications from a heart condition, three days after their birth. Technically part of my AIE “AU”, I originally wasn’t intending to ever post this part, as it’s a practice piece I used to look at who Kent Tracy may have been had he survived past infancy.)

Midnight

The soft sounds of Virgil’s snores rumble through the room from the top bunk, but Kent lays in the bottom bed, wide awake with his pen in one hand, the flashlight in another; scrawling furiously across the pages of his notebook.

It’s past eleven again, and the fourteen-year-old boy can’t sleep; the insomnia from sleeping all day has kicked in again, and all he can do is while away the hours until his father and older brothers roll out of bed. He doesn’t fear waking up his twin brother; Virgil doesn’t wake up unless someone holds the alarm clock right next to his ear; volume up on full, so it’s highly unlikely that he’s going to be disturbed from the light.

He doesn’t mind overly much though, these quiet hours before the dawn. Being one of six children often means that aside from the two hours of study that their father enforces every day, it’s very rare for any of the Tracy children to have any time to themselves without another sibling interrupting it somehow.

It’s nice to have this time to write, and consider and dream without his two youngest brothers asking ‘What are you doing, KT? Can I see? Lemme look!’ he finds it bliss to not have his father wanting him to help with chores or his grandmother wanting him to watch Alan while she takes Virgil and Gordon out, because their father is busy in the office again.

It’s peaceful, and as much as he likes a bit of chaos and excitement, Kent also likes to have some quiet now and again. He loves the way the moon streams through the curtains in the bedroom, how he can listen to Virgil dreaming and feel his brother’s happiness and quiet soul soar through their twin bond.

He feels the pressures of being the sickly child; the one who everyone has to be careful of and look out for too much, and for Kent, these moments when he doesn’t have them looking over him in concern and hovering when he’s ‘too pale’ or ‘overtired’, it just makes him feel more whole somehow. At fourteen, he just wants them to stop seeing him as the ill one and allow him to grow without them worrying that he’s going to overtax his weakened heart.

In these moments, he can remember his mother, and how like him; she was a writer, although with six children before she died, she never got to achieve her dream of getting a novel published. Sure, she wrote for the local newspaper, along with the kindergarten teaching and the music lessons she taught in order to help their father with the monthly bills, but it’s something that Kent knew she always wanted to do. Now she’s gone, he’s more determined than ever to achieve that dream, and make his mom as proud of him as she was as his other brothers.

That’s not to say that he didn’t think she was, but he just wants to do something that his three older brothers haven’t yet.

Kent loves his family, but he just wants to get out of this little box, pre-packaged, made just for him, the one that labels him as the sickly child, the one who is to be worried over and assisted.

It’s not that his father, Grandpa and Grandma don’t expect him to amount to anything, just that somehow, Kent has this invisible label on him that instantly informs people that he’s ill and that he is given just that little bit more leeway to get to places a little easier. There’s nothing more Kent hates more than to be told that he needs to take it easy, or that he can’t do something, just because he’s sick.

That’s why he uses this time, past the hour he should’ve been in dreamland to work harder on anything he ever has in his life, because he wants to make them proud, to break out of the accidental constraints that his condition has placed upon him. He’ll rise above and beyond those automatic assumptions, and prove to everyone that he can do just as much as his brothers. Even if it takes him a little bit longer, even if he has to work a little bit harder, he will achieve his goals.

As he packs up his book and caps the pen an hour later, still not sleepy but content that he’s worked with what he can for tonight, Kent is determined that he’s going to become a published author before he hits his eighteenth birthday, because he’s a Tracy, and for a Tracy, failure isn’t an option.

He’ll lie awake for the rest of the night, and yes, he’ll be completely exhausted and will spend the day in bed tomorrow, but he’ll keep with him through his grandmother’s fussing and John and Scott’s smothering, the peace and tranquillity that this time has given him.

He’s happy, and he knows that if his mother is watching, she’ll be proud.