𝐋𝐎𝐍𝐆 𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐑𝐘 𝐒𝐇𝐎𝐑𝐓, p. parker

ix. if this was a movie

ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ ɴɪɴᴇ ── ɪғ ᴛʜɪs ᴡᴀs ᴀ ᴍᴏᴠɪᴇ

               GRIEF IS A funny thing. It claws and claws, persevering. It could be months, it could be years, grief remains. Grief holds a chokehold, scratching and biting with each chance it gets and usually, Frankie's used to it. She's learned to live with grief. She no longer cries, the world is moving on and so did she, but she's still grieving. Always, at every moment of every day, she's grieving for the man she lost.

But she had been ten, strapped in at the backseat after her dance recital as they dropped off her brother to meet friends, a smile painting her face and her father's voice singing along to the song playing at the radio. And then the tires began screeching and suddenly her breath was stolen from her as the car was submerged in water.

She's seventeen now and thousands of therapy later but Frankie still grieves.

Her brother's arms are securely wrapped around her, holding her together as she cries at his shirt,   holding on to him. Grief perseveres, Frankie had learned long ago. You never stop grieving, simply learning to live with it and every year, on the death of her father's anniversary, Frankie breaks. She gives herself the day to cry, to clutch her brother's shirt tightly as the nightmares come.

And Stephen let her. Every year, he would come home and lay with her in silence ─ an older brother protecting her sister from the monsters from the past.

Stephen Strange, having seen the car swerving, only nineteen at the time, had jumped into the water, seeing the panicked look on his baby sister's face and the way his father struggled to remove the seatbelt, immediately swam to his sister, wrangling her out of the car as he pulled her back to safety only to find the paramedics have arrived.

He was going to jump back but they had held him back and Stephen stayed, holding his shivering sister as she cried. Funnily enough, seven years later and the scene is the same. Frankie cries, sobs, body shaking and tears falls and as he had seven years ago, Stephen holds her study.

"Shh," he tries to calm her as she sobs to his chest, having woken up from a nightmare. "I'm here. I got you."

Frankie says nothing, only crying some more as her brain seems to be determined to rewind the memory again and again. Had she gotten out on her own, would her father be alive? Had she pushed at her seatbelt like he had been telling her to, would he still be alive?

It had been Frankie's catalyst, turning her perfect, happy life into one filled with grief, superficial. Her mother who would tuck her in every night, a kiss on her forehead had turned cold, domineering, distant, unable to look her children in the eyes in fear of seeing her lost love on their faces.

Their home, once warm with the Christmas lights up till February, pictures lining the walls and full of echoes of laughter, had turned as cold as her mother.

And so seven years later, a child, only seventeen, cried for the life she lost.

And yet, years later, there's one who's trauma was overlooked, one who drove his sister to every therapy but never bothered caring for his own. Stephen, barely an adult at the time, had stepped up after their mother became a shell of herself. He had to make sure to be there for his baby sister's recitals, every competition, every father-daughter dance. He had to step up because he knew no one would, because he had been desperate to give his sister even a semblance of the happy childhood they both knew.

Even now, Stephen holds Frankie tight to himself, keeping her together even when he himself is falling apart.

"I'm here, Frankie," he muttered against her hair as the girl sobbed to his chest, ignoring the way his heart was also clenching painfully. "I'm always here."