Reginald 'Reggie' Delallo (reggie_delallo) wrote in rrinitiative, @ 2012-09-23 16:32:00 |
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Current location: | London |
Current mood: | pissed off |
Entry tags: | flashback, reggie |
Family Ties Broken
Who: Reggie, His Sister Isabella
Setting: London, 2007
Reggie really hadn’t thought that there would be anything that would get him back over the Atlantic. Not even Nathan could quite get him over there, although Nathan had visited him a few times in New York. (He’d always made sure to be living in a decent place and not up to too many criminal activities when Nathan came to visit for his sake.) Still, when his sister had left a message on his answering machine telling him that his brother was dead, a victim of a stupid mugging, he knew that he had to go to the funeral. He owed his little brother that much.
That didn’t mean that he had any intention of even letting anyone else know that he was coming. Without making one phone call to ‘home,’ he simply booked a flight and, after doing a little research, learned when the funeral was. He stayed in the back of the church, wearing a pair of sunglasses to shield his bloodshot eyes from the sunlight streaming through the windows and in a hope that no one would recognize him. He hadn’t been here in almost twenty years, so it wasn’t a completely idiotic thought that no one would know him. It went alright for a while, anyway.
It didn’t work nearly as well when they went to the graveyard. He should have just headed off to a bar and had a drink like he initially planned, but something had held him back and instead he had followed the motorcade of cars out to the grave site. He stayed a little away from the crowd, instead hiding under the shade of a tree. However, it seemed that caught some more attention rather than simply hiding in the back of a crowded church. Still, he had no want to talk to anyone remaining here, so what did he care if he looked like some creepy lurker?
What he hadn’t expected was his angry bitch of a sister to figure out who the man hiding in the shade was. The burial was over, but Reggie had been too lost in thought to immediately leave, simply staring at the mound of dirt that covered his little brother.
“I’m amazed that you even made it out here,” a voice said from behind him, and he nearly jumped out of his skin, whirling around to see that it was his sister, Isabella, much older but just as hard looking as he remembered.
“Fuck, Iz! What are you, a bloody ninja or something?” he snapped at her, looking away again. It had been two decades since he’d actually looked at her but he could still barely stand the sight of her. “Shouldn’t sneak up on people in a graveyard. Could’ve thought that you were a ghost or something.”
She rolled her eyes, and he actually tightened his fists at his side when she did so. “Why didn’t you call anyone and actually let them know that you were coming?” she asked him. “Not that anyone would have known your phone number. I had to find it from Nathan’s address book.”
“And here I thought the twenty years of talking to you as little as possible got the message across,” he snapped at her. He admittedly couldn’t stand the woman and had no interest in talking to her. The only reason he hadn’t already wandered off from her was simply because his defenses were down more than usual. Losing a brother will do something like that to a person.”
“You should have called,” Isabella insisted to him. “It’s not like our numbers have changed. I understand that you’re needing to change your number and address constantly, but we aren’t all dealing with the criminal element in the same way you are.”
“And here it goes, ladies and gentlemen!” Reggie said with a roll of his eyes. “I should have just sent a bloody wreath, I knew it! You can’t possibly be pleasant for one bloody day of your life, can you, you dried up old hag?” If he had drank more before he came here, he wouldn’t be feeling so vicious, but she bloody started it by coming over to him! That’s what he told himself, anyway. She should have stayed away and just let him go in peace.
“You nasty, disrespectful cad,” Isabella snarled at him. “How dare you talk to me like that after all this time? After what you did to me?”
Reggie snorted with laughter and rolled his eyes. “Oh we were still kids then, Iz! You can’t get over a mistake like that?”
“Forgetting to bring the cat in at night is a mistake, you ass,” Iz snarled. “What you did was unforgivable.”
“Then why are we even talking in the first place?” Reggie asked her with a bitter smile on his face. “Can’t we just go back to pretending that we’re both dead and move on? Because as fun as this is, I’d like to go out and try to drink myself to death, if you don’t mind. I think it will be less painful than being in your presence.”
He turned to walk away, but she grabbed his arm and forced him to turn back around. For a woman, she actually had a powerful enough grip to catch him off guard and let her force him around. “Why are you like this?” she asked him. “All any of us ever wanted for you was a good life, Reginald,” she said to him, an edge to her voice despite the almost nice words coming from her lips.
“Yeah, but no one ever actually cared enough to ask me what I might want for myself,” he snapped back at her. “Well, there was one person, but we just buried him, so can’t keep wishing for the rest of you to turn into decent human beings now, can I?”
“You’re someone who needs to be told what to do, Reginald,” Isabella snapped right back at him. “I mean, look at your life! I’m amazed that you’re even alive, much less in any shape to travel. Nathan thought that way because he was soft, and you of all people certainly cannot afford…”
That was when Reggie lost it, sweeping up his hand and popping Isabella right across her face, leaving a giant red mark across her cheek. He hadn’t even realized that he was doing it until her head was snapping back from it. He’d never hit a woman in his life, and now he was slapping his own sister for the things she was saying.
She raised her hand to her face, glaring at him. “You were raised better than to hit a lady, Reginald,” she snarled at him, looking like she wanted to hit him right back. Not that he would be all that shocked if she did.
“Yeah, a lady, and you stopped being one a long time ago, Iz,” he told her, sighing and turning away. “Actually, not sure that you ever were. You always were kind of manly.”
“More than you could ever be,” she said, and he flicked her off over his shoulder as he walked away. He was done, and damn if he didn’t need a drink after that exchange.