𝐊𝐈𝐋𝐋𝐄𝐑, paul lahote ✓

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐌𝐀𝐒𝐎𝐍 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑

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FOR HER

MASON DUBOIS ALWAYS THOUGHT THAT HE WAS MORE PARENT THAN BROTHER TO HIS YOUNGER SISTER.

It was a role he was forced upon— a role he had to steadily grip onto if they were going to make it out of their situation okay.

His entire world had always revolved around little Augustine, and perhaps the same could've been said for her, too. They were as thick as thieves, and were the only dependant figure in each other's lives given their mother's more than shitty track record.

Mason adored the girl ever since he first saw her swaddled up in a yellow blanket, eyebrows creased like she was having a bad dream. Looking back, that was surely a premonition to the fact that the two kids would never have the easiest of life— not as long as June Dubois was alive.

Their father's death hit him the hardest, partly because he had more time with the gentler man than Augustine did. Ernest would take him fishing, encouraged him into soccer despite the fact that Prudhoe Bay was certainly not the place for it, and was the best father anyone could've ever wished for.

June was always the opposite; this cold woman he could never stand, but found himself to be the favourite of the minute their father died. She saw her eldest son as a replacement, took her drinking to the next level, and left all responsibility onto his shoulders.

And it just wasn't fucking fair.

They tried to make do, tried learning different ways to avoid June's volatile behaviour, but everyone had their limits.

Mason had held down the fort for years, and his adolescent years had been effectively robbed from him due to the roles he took on. He never put his frustrations onto his sister, but boy, had he come close to whisking her away from June and running away altogether.

But that was a feeble idea because CPS would come looking, if June even cared enough to deem them missing, and the schools would get involved if they ditched for elsewhere. It wouldn't work, so Mason was forced to settle on the next best thing; taking a soccer scholarship and leaving.

The night before his departure as he wrote out a farewell letter to them both, he'd been filled with a sort of mind-numbing guilt. Part of him wished to write her a separate note, but June would've seen it coming from a mile away. Who knows what she would've done had she found out he was coming to get her, because despite loathing her children, she was certainly territorial over them.

The moment he left the Dubois house for the last time, he took his SIM card out of his phone and tossed it to the ground, crunching it under his converse shoe as he walked away.

He promised himself he would come back for her.

And he did.

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It was a colder evening, the sun already having set hours ago which most definitely contributed to the chill that spread across Fairbanks.