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chapter twenty: good night and joy be with you all

a/n:

one extra disclaimer — I have never been to england. all of this comes from research, so it might not be 100% correct.

introducing... rory's extended family.

TW — MINOR CHARACTER DEATH, UNDERAGE DRINKING, MENTALLY ILL BEHAVIOR, RORY'S FAMILY

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Elijah Myrtle died late that Friday with no one but Rory at his side.

The time leading up to it was quiet. His glassy eyes, half open, were sunken into his skull and his body laid limp in the bed—— he didn't have enough life left in him to move, let alone speak, and only made the occasional noise as he swallowed the saliva that pooled in his mouth.

He was left in the den, partly to let the fire keep his frail body (he'd lost nearly one hundred pounds since she last saw him) warm and partly to allow her father to keep an eye on the hospice staff now rotating through the house. Rory had been curled up in an armchair at his bedside since she got home, wrapped up in a blanket and trying not to sleep as she watched the snow fall through their large windows, silently missing the days in which she could play in the flurries and her nannies would be waiting inside for her with hot cocoa.

At some point in the night, the nurse on staff came to check on him. Rory only briefly glanced away from the outdoors to flash her a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes.

It wasn't until Chester, Eli's now-retired service dog that had been happily dozing on the fire-warmed floor at the foot of her chair, lifted his head that Rory had the mind to look up again.

The nurse wasn't smiling.

"It won't be much longer." She said in a kind and quiet voice, breaking the rattling sound of Eli's breathing. "I'll go get your father."

"Oh." Was Rory's only response.

"You should talk to him." The nurse continued. "Hearing is often the last thing to go."

Rory swallowed and nodded. Her whole body trembled as she stood and pushed the railing on the bed down to grab his hand.

"I'm very sorry for your loss."

Rory just shrugged. She didn't know what to say to that.

The nurse left after that, and Rory listened to the sound of her footsteps as they disappeared down the hall.

In the silence that followed, Rory found that her mouth kept opening, but no words would come out. She had no idea what to say now, either. The last time someone this close in her family died, she was too young to really be affected by it.

She chose to kiss his hand, bony and cold to the touch, instead.

These were the hands that raised her father. That beat him. That hit her, once or twice. Yet here she was, sat beside his deathbed and brushing his papery skin with her lips like he was a King.

The irony of it would have made her laugh had tears not immediately burned her eyes.

"It's okay." Rory said into the empty air, throat tight and aching as she forced the words out. "It's—— You can let go. You've lived an exceptionally long time, and I think grandma's tired of waiting for you, now."

Eli choked on a rasping breath and she flinched.

"Everything's going to be just fine. You don't have to be scared, okay?"

The tears on her cheeks were as hot as the fire beside her, painting tracks down her face and dripping from her chin.

"You're going to be okay."

When the words stopped coming, Rory pressed her lips to his hand again and hummed My Funny Valentine against his skin.

There were no machines attached to him, no medical professional in the room to tell her what was happening.

But she knew.

There was a terrible sound. He struggled to inhale, and the air churned in his chest, the noise thick and wet and phlegmy, and then his exhale was more of a croak than anything.

And then he stopped breathing entirely.

Olivia Oakes, the crisis manager who worked for their PR team, was snuck in within the hour.

She was making phone calls to England—— there were rules regarding repatriating a body, but Elijah Myrtle wasn't just any British citizen, and Olivia was good at talking people into breaking rules and convincing them that it was their idea—— and arguing with her father about who was going to release the statement about the death. Rory was sitting on the couch, staring listlessly at the place where the body (which had been tucked safely away in one of the spare bedrooms for the time being) once was and scratching Chester's head as he rested it on her knees.

"I'll do it." Rory interrupted the bickering adults. She wasn't sure why she spoke, maybe to make them stop making so much noise, but she did. "I'll make the announcement."

It took a considerable amount of effort to focus her eyes and drag her gaze from the empty space in front of her, the pressure behind her nose and her eyes making her entire head throb, but, when she did, she found that they were all staring at her.

Her stepmother sighed and glared holes into the side of her father's head as Olivia pulled her head away from the phone, grinning.

"Good. I'll get a makeup team down here ASAP. Sneak them in through the back—— Joe, would you mind?"

The head of security casted a look in Rory's direction before he followed Olivia from the room. She stared ahead, expressionless as the dog whined lowly, and waited for her father to say something.

Anything.

(Be proud of me. Tell me that you're proud of me, Daddy.)

Krystal's body trembled, too, "Don't you have anything to say? They are sending your child to the wolves——"

"She agreed to it." He walked to the cabinet and poured himself a drink.

"She's sixteen! She's only doing it because she thinks you want her to!"

"Why don't you run along and tend to your child instead of telling me how to take care of mine?"

His young wife sucked in a sharp breath, and Rory wanted to defend her.

She wanted to remind her father that Krystal's daughter was his daughter, too.

But all she could think about was the fact that Elijah was dead, and that she wanted Oliver to take care of her, to protect her in the way he always said he would, more than anything else.

Krystal stormed out with a strangled, frustrated noise, and Oliver approached Rory slowly. Instead of saying anything, he just held the cup in front of her face.

Her eyebrows pinched to the center of her forehead.

"Here," He said, pressing the cup to her lips, "it'll ease your nerves."

(She also wanted to tell her father that she didn't feel anything. Not nervous. Not scared. Not sad. Just... nothing.)

Rory let her father feed her his booze like he was a priest and she was his loyal patron. Her fingertips ghosted the bottom of the glass as he forced her to drink more than she'd have liked, the thought that he might be trying to drown her crossing her mind. And the booze burned. It burned like poison, lighting a fire in her chest as it went down her throat and writhed, warm and unruly, like a beast in her stomach.

She suppressed a cough when he finally pulled the glass away and sniffed miserably while he tipped it back to drink what was left.

"Mary-Anne!" He shouted over his shoulder.

One of the maids, still evidently shaken by the events of the past ten hours, appeared in the doorway, "Yes, Mr. Myrtle?"

"When my daughter is done with the press, I want you to give her a benzodiazepine and make sure she goes to bed."

Rory stared up at him.

"Oh—— I—— Well, of-of course, sir. It will be done."

She disappeared as fast as she arrived and the sixteen-year-old was left perplexed.

"A ben—— Am I supposed to take that stuff?——"

"Hush up." Oliver took the seat next to her, still pinning her gaze with his. "Don't bother with such things. Trust that your father will take care of you."

Rory didn't really have a response to that.

She didn't have the energy.

He wrapped an arm around her and let her curl, ever so slightly, into his chest.

"You did well, love." Oliver said as he petted her hair, but she was afraid she might have imagined it.

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ONE WEEK LATER...

The numbness in her bones quickly becomes Rory's only comfort as the funeral preparations take them overseas.

They stay in her grandmother's ancestral home, a stately manor in Surrey that looks over several hundred acres of land and becomes open to tourists in the colder months when no one in the family cares to use it.

Her father makes sure to put her in a room that doesn't have a balcony. It, like the rest of the home, is frozen in the eighteenth century, the walls all spackled with blue paisley wallpaper and ninety percent of the space taken by more useless furniture than she could even pretend to know what to do with.

The first few days are a blur. She spends them helping make executive decisions about the burial, helping her extended family settle in, and generally just standing around in nice clothes with a wide, faux smile on her face like the puppet everyone she knows thinks she is. But the nights are something else. Instead of sleeping, she stares up at the top of her canopy bed and listens to the wind whistling by her window, trying not to think about the paintings of her dead ancestors that litter the walls, nor the family cemetery they rest in that she can see from her window, nor the fact that she'll be buried there, too, one day, trapped with a long line of people whom she's been a disappointment to for the rest of eternity.

(It's something that should concern her, how much she's been thinking about death. But, really, what else is there to do? There's an unexplainable fog blanketing the land, sending the press away but forcing all the family inside, and imagining herself doing a nosedive off the roof was much more fun than listening to her aunts gossip about the women in their social groups and calisthenics.)

By the time their sixth day in Europe rolls around, Rory, has unknowingly settled into a routine.

She gets out of bed at five, brushes her teeth, and greets the staff as they prepare for the morning before she goes for her run around the property. About eight or so miles into it, when the exhaustion starts to weigh down on her and muscles turn to jelly, she walks back to the manor, wet and dragging her feet like a child mid-tantrum.

Chester wags his tail and makes this boof sound as she walks through the kennel.

"Hey, boy," She whispers, crouching down and petting him, "you'll come with me tomorrow, yeah?"

He licks at his greying muzzle and his body wiggles as his tail wags.

There are people in the dining room when she enters. All of her cousins, lingering around and picking at the food in front of them, each looking more dead than the last; late last night, the four of them got tired of drinking in the house and took her step-brother out to the local pub to get trashed in public instead.

"Good morning." She says.

The collective response is more groan than word and a wince from Chuck.

"Hey, Miss Piggy." Alexander is her great-uncle Ewan's only surviving descendant. He's the same age as Chuck, spent his entire adolescence being sent away to and then kicked out of America's best military schools, and is one of the meanest men that Rory knows. "I don't think I've seen you without your dad there to pull your strings since I got here."

Rory rolls her eyes. (He is, unfortunately, also the only cousin she has that shares her last name.)

"I don't need my dad's permission to go on a run, Alex. He's my dad, not my commanding officer."

Alexander mocks her, making this petulant little ooo sound that makes her skin itch. "Was that an insult? Were you trying to insult me?"

"It's whatever you wanted it to be, dickhead."

Before he can bite back, Ewan appears in the doorway, a shadow that looks just enough like his brother in the low light of the morning that Rory stops in place.

(She doesn't believe in ghosts. She doesn't. But...)

"Breakfast is ready." He says, the low timbre of his voice filling the room and stealing all the air from her lungs. "Are you wastes really so hungover that you can't hear the bell?"

Alexander's face twists at his grandfather's words but, before he (or any of the rest of them, for that matter) says anything to dig himself into a further hole, Rory clears her throat.

"I didn't hear it, either."

Ewan purses his lips. "Very well, then."

Rory, as her cousins all force themselves to their feet, makes a break for the exit on the opposite side of the room.

"Aren't you joining us?"

She pauses in the doorway and turns to look at Ewan. His comment has all of their eyes on her.

"Uh, sure, I was just——"

"Oh, you're not getting all... binge-y and purge-y again, are you?"

Rory blanches at Alex (because who just says that?), and her brows furrow as he shrinks under Ewan's gaze and disappears through the door, following the rest of them.

They're silent in his wake.

"You haven't, have you?"

She feels her eye twitch. "No. I haven't."

"Good." He folds his hands behind his back. "It would be terrible to hear that the only member of this family with potential was killing herself over beauty standards... or that anyone in this family was wasting food."

Figuring that's as close as she'll get to a compliment from him, she nods curtly and dismisses herself from the room.

A member of staff—— the same member of staff that she's seen every morning, this older woman who has cold hands but a warm smile—— is in her room when she gets there. She helps Rory into a tight black dress and then sews the back shut, muttering derogatory things about the designer as the teenager is forced to take shallow breaths to avoid tearing the fabric in half again.

When she's done, she leaves Rory to finish getting ready by herself, and Rory, instead of putting her shoes or her jewels on, opts to stare out the window.

There's a constant ebb and flow of cars coming in and out of the gates. Cars belonging to the staff, and family, and couriers and florists bringing condolences and big flower arrangements with them. She stands there and watches them like they're ants in a farm. But thinking about ants and farms makes her think about those first few days at Eden Hall, and the bout of nausea that hits her full speed has her retreating into the back of her mind again.

And, just as she's fastening her grandmother's pearls around her throat, someone knocks on the door.

"Lorelei," Her mother's voice, muffled by the wood and stone between them, reaches her ears, "are you done in there? Your father wishes to speak to you."

Janis looks her over once, her gaze scrutinizing, before she pushes a lock of her hair behind her ear and loops her arm through Rory's like nothing ever happened. They don't talk at all, but that's hardly a surprise—— even when Oliver sends Rory away, convincing Janis that it's her idea to have her daughter for a few days, they hardly interact—— and Rory is all too happy to be released from her mother's hesitant touch when they arrive at the room her father has turned into a makeshift Cabinet Room.

His new assistant runs from the room, almost in tears, as they enter. Rory watches her leave and then looks at her father with a lifted brow.

"We've been sent many things." Oliver mutters over the rim of his glass. "She hasn't sent one bloody thank you card."

Rory gnaws on the inside of her cheek. "Okay."

"Speaking of, the Crown has sent lilies, and some old Swiss bloke sent chocolates. You can have them both."

At the wave of his hand, a member of staff holds an enormous box that smells vaguely sweet out to her.

"Could you bring both things to my room, please?" She asks, voice almost gentle until she turns back to her father and loses all warmth. "Mom said you wanted to speak to me?"

Oliver holds a finger up to her as he finishes off the rest of his drink. Then, he begins to pour himself another.

"Olivia received a call from Minnesota this morning. A woman named Casey was asking what she could do to help," At the mention of her former friend's mother's name, the nausea returns tenfold, and her blood pressure drops so fast she briefly wonders if she might pass out, "and Olivia suggested that all of those beggarly children that played those games with you fly out to... be with you in your grief."

Rory swallows the bitter taste that rises in her throat.

"Oh."

"Two of them have denied the invitation, but the rest have agreed to come. They're arriving this afternoon."

"Oh."

"Want a drink?"

Rory glances at the cup offered to her only once before taking it and drinking every last drop.

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The feeling that Rory gets at the thought of the Ducks (specifically Charlie and Averman) intruding on this moment of all things is a pure, unadulterated rage.

This is her family's house.

Her grandfather died.

Why do they get to be a part of this?

She wants to, and there is no other way to aptly put it, throw a tantrum. To scream at people, and throw all of the antiques around her at the walls, and hurl insults at Olivia, who put her in this position in the first place.

But she can't, so she drinks.

By her third or fourth glass of whiskey, the petulant anger has dulled down to a buzz, and her family has become tolerable enough to spend time with. Well, almost.

When she walks into one of the lounge rooms and sees that her cousins have all gathered there, still recovering from their night out even after breakfast, she still tries to leave.

Chuck grabs her bicep before she can retreat, though, and pulls her to sit half in his lap like she's still seven and he's still the sad sack of shit that got forced to be Santa for her every other Christmas. Despite her initial hesitation (and how awkward this position is now that she's not seven), Rory settles into him, leaning her head against his as he wraps an arm around her waist.

It feels good to be little again, anyway—— even if only for five minutes, even if it's just pretend.

"You stink like booze." He mumbles. She can hardly hear him but she knows he's smiling. Smirking, even. "Just yesterday we were watching you take your first steps and now you're here, dressed up like an adult and drinking your daddy's vintage behind his back."

"Maybe it's just your breath wafting back into your face."

The sideways look she shoots him makes her cousin laugh.

Though there's really not much to admire in Chuck, she thinks that, maybe, his ability to so aptly sum up a person's life in a few words might be the most commendable thing about him.

Dressed up like an adult and drinking your daddy's vintage.

He's right. Ever since she turned sixteen earlier that year, people—— the public relations team, the press, and, especially, her father—— have been making her out to be older than she is. They got her new clothes, and they got her jewels, and she got a refresher course in how to do her makeup in a way that made her look like she wasn't wearing that much at all. She doesn't feel like an adult, though. Even now, dressed in Givenchy and wearing real pearls and schmoozing amongst her rich elite family after she told the whole free world that her grandfather was finally dead, she feels like nothing more than a sixteen-year-old girl wearing her dad's shadow for size.

Maybe even smaller than sixteen. Younger. More immature.

She rolls her ankle. The heel almost falls from her aching foot.

"No, no, no," Chuck waggles a finger in her face, "it's definitely this."

Rory grips her glass harder when he tries to take it from her. Her knuckles are white.

"Don't." Her voice is hoarse.

He was right about that, too.

The booze still burns on its way down and it makes her eyes water, but it's good. It tastes like Rick, and it hurts like her grandfather's hard-handed discipline, and the unbearable warmth in her stomach might be love if she squints through her rose-tinted lenses.

(Or, maybe, pain just feels like love to a child who knew poison better than she ever did milk from her mother's breast.)

"Are you alright?" He asks after a moment, eyebrows drawn together in the center of his forehead as he looks at her. "I mean, I know you were in there with the geezer when he croaked, but... Are you okay?"

Jesus Christ, Chuck, Emily, her other aunt's daughter who is sitting across the room and pretending to read a book, says under her breath.

"I'm fine." Rory sighs as she, disgusted by his behavior, lifts her head and stops leaning into him.

"See, I don't really believe——"

"Miss Myrtle?"

All of their heads turn to the doorway to look at the staff member who stands, anxious, in the doorway.

"Yeah?"

"Your friends have arrived."

Rory bites back a they're not my friends (because, even if she's almost drunk, she knows that this man doesn't deserve it) and stands up. She starts to feel angry again, so she finishes the rest of her drink and takes a deep breath before she follows the man out of the room.

But then, the feeling goes away at the sight of Adam in the foyer.

Adam drops his bags as she flies down the steps and catches her as she throws her arms around his neck.

"You came," She whispers.

"Of course, I did."

And, hugging her best friend, Rory cries for the first time in days.

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a/n:

word count — 3762

LMFAOOOOOOO the way this isn't even the worst of this?????

adam and rory >>>>>>>

comments and votes are super appreciated! they let me know that you guys like my writing and they motivate me to continue! thank you