Cai Finch (itsajesusthing) wrote in darker_london, @ 2015-03-08 14:21:00 |
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Entry tags: | cai finch |
It's little and broken, but still good (Cai, Faye, Roe)
Cai heard the screaming from his tower room, where he was trying to write his conclusion for his history essay. As usual he took the stairs two at a time, jumping the final three to land on the second floor with a thump to announce that he was coming and things better quiet down. Things didn’t quiet down, but they never did. No one respected his thumping footsteps.
Not that his foster sisters could probably hear him over the shouting anyway. Faye was yelling “GIVE IT BACK” over and over and Roe was shouting “YOU’RE WRONG IT’S WRONG YOU’RE WRONG.”
“LADIES,” Cai interrupted, striding through the kitchen to the living room, where Roe was standing on the windowseat with her arm stretched high into the air, fingers grasped around the tv remote. Faye was standing on the floor with her arms wrapped around Roe’s waist trying to pull her back down to Faye’s level.
“Faye Osborne!” Cai said, in his best big brother stop-fighting-right-now voice. “Miss Roe! Cut it out.”
Faye broke away from Roe and folded her arms, her elbows and glare sharp. “I just want to watch TV!” she protested. “It’s not fair! It’s been ages! Everyone else in the world gets to watch TV!”
“It’s wrong!” Roe hadn’t moved off the windowseat, and she hadn’t dropped her arm. The remote was still as far from Faye’s reach as Roe could make it. “We’ll be punished.” She looked so frightened that Cai quickly changed his tactic.
“Hey no,” he said gently to Roe, who widened her eyes and inched backwards, trying to stretch her hand even higher when he looked at her. Her eyes left his pretty quickly, as they always did. Roe didn’t like eye contact. “No one’s going to get punished if you watch telly. We’re just trying to give it up for a while, but you’re not going to get in trouble if you do watch some. Neither is Faye.”
“See?” said Faye, bitterly.
“Faye,” said Cai. “You shouldn’t have tried to take the remote by force.”
“I didn’t!” Faye protested again. “She snatched it off me and ran! I just wanted to watch Spongebob! What’s wrong with Spongebob? Jesus doesn’t hate Spongebob!” This last bit was directed at Roe.
“Jesus doesn’t hate anyone,” Cai said. “And I’m sure he’d be well into Spongebob. Faye, you don’t need my permission to watch telly, okay? Lent is supposed to be your choice, and if you don’t want to, that’s fine. I have failed at Lent so, so many times, it’s okay. I’m really bad at it. And I haven’t been struck down,” he smiled encouragingly at Faye, who was still angrily pouting, and turned back to Roe. “If she wants to watch some telly, you don’t need to stop her. You can just leave the room and come and find me, and we can do something else.”
Roe didn’t move, and flinched visibly when Cai took a slow step toward her. He stopped. “S’alright,” he said. “No one’s going to hurt you and no one’s going to get in trouble. Could I have the remote, please? Then we could go downstairs and make something. Do you want to help me in the shed?”
Roe’s frown shifted and she dropped her arm slowly down, though it was still bent and the remote was still protected by her body.
“Come on,” Faye whined, slumping down in the arm chair she’d turned around so it faced the TV.
“Patience, Faye.”
“I hate patience,” Faye muttered, chin tucked into her chest.
Eventually, slowly, Roe climbed down from the windowseat. She didn’t look at them and didn’t hand the remote over but put it down on the carpet instead. Cai bent over and passed the remote to Faye, who said “thank you,” in the most exasperated voice she could muster, with the full weight of a decade of exasperated experience behind her. Roe didn’t look at her as she left the room.
“Faye,” Cai said, before she could turn the TV back on. “I know it’s really hard to be her sister sometimes, but she is family.”
“Foster family,” Faye pointed out.
“That’s still a kind of family,” Cai said, crouching down in front of Faye, and in front of the TV, forcing Faye to look at him. “And it’s kind of the same as if you were related, because you never got to choose any of us as your family. So you’re stuck with her as much as she’s stuck with you. And Faye,” he said, drawing her pouting attention back toward him. “Listen to me, please. I know you’re younger than she is, but I think sometimes you’re going to have to be the big sister around her, okay? She’s never been part of a family who loves her, and you’re really lucky, because you’ve got two. So you’re, like, a pro at families. And she’s really new at it still.”
Faye looked worried, and a little guilty, but when Cai smiled at her she smiled back. “Fiine,” she said.
“You’re the greatest,” Cai said. “I’m really glad I ended up stuck with you.”
“Ugh,” said Faye. “Can I watch Spongebob now? If it’s not over already.”
“Go for it, chica,” Cai said, reaching out to fluff her hair, which made her squirm away, but Faye never flinched away in the same way Roe did.
The rest of the afternoon he spent with Roe in the shed, listening to quiet music and showing her how to fit pieces of a set of chairs together. He wasn’t sure how to talk to Roe about family, wasn’t sure she believed him that no one was going to get in trouble for breaking Lent, wasn’t sure about much except he was really good at making chairs, and she seemed content to watch him, and even smiled a little when she put together a chair of her very own.
Nonnie had told him before that he just had to be patient with Roe. She’d spent all her life learning that family meant one thing, and coming into the Finch family was still clearly an alien experience. They just had to keep reassuring her that they were all in it for the long haul, and that they were all in it together. There didn’t seem to be an easy way to do that, but Cai wasn’t sure he believed in quick fixes anymore.
Still, maybe after Lent they could all watch Lilo and Stitch together. That seemed like an ideal solution.