AUTHOR'S NOTE: Hey guys! Early update this week because I forgot that I'm having a road trip with my friends this weekend :') HAHA but I hope you enjoy this chapter! This was a difficult chapter to write, and I only had time to proofread it about once or twice, but 25 is a special number for me so somehow I think this chapter turned out beautifully! <3 Tell me what you think!
WARNING: Dark chapter ahead.
Previously on Her Safe Haven: Rohan once again became distant after the talk with his father. Winter had an accidental talk with Rachel Turner which made her realise that she barely knew Rohan at all. It was now Thursday, the day of the marathon, and Winter was stationed as a first-aider until she found Rohan sleeping in the Infirmary. She watched him and realised that it was her only chance to "confirm her suspicions", so she started unbuttoning Rohan's shirt, undressing him...
From the deep pull by the shores of infinite darkness, he was stirred awake by movements against him.
His senses had been adjusted to years of insomnia that he would never miss anyone touching him while he was sleeping. He always slept with one eye open.
So who was it that dared touch him in his most alert state?
"Winter...?" the pull of sleep was still tugging at him, but the shock of seeing her face would win any day and his eyes shot open as he pulled his body away from her. "Winter, what are you—"
Winter lost grasp of the last button of his shirt she was peeling open, and her eyes snapped upwards to meet his.
Teal eyes gaped at her questioningly.
She ignored them and focused back on her task, following his movement forward almost with equal fervour and grabbing his shirt, yanking it away from one of his shoulders.
"Winter, stop—!"
At that moment Seth opened the curtain to their section.
He had heard Rohan's voice and was going to check on him. From the outside, the redhead and Winter sounded to be having a conversation, a civil conversation, but the drawn curtain revealed them on a much more compromising, and certainly uncivilised position.
Winter had one knee on the bed, and she was climbing and struggling to straddle Rohan. Both her hands were clutching at his shirt and she was...
...stripping him...?
Seth's jaw fell open at once, his eyes bulging out at the scene in front of him and oh, that insinuation behind it.
He never took Winter as the attacking type before, but damn. What the hell was she doing—? "Winter, what are you doing?!"
'No, Seth! Help me hold him down!' she tried to plea with her eyes as she looked back at him, hands still trying to yank open Rohan's collar. And all at once Seth knew that the depth of the situation before him was much heavier than what was seen.
Rohan tried to fight her back, jerking her hands away from his shirt and forcing himself out of her hold. They were almost wrestling now, Rohan was standing up and Winter was stubbornly climbing onto the bed, still tugging at him. She had both knees on the bed and was pulling at his collar from behind. "Winter, stop! What are you—"
Then her stubbornness won and she succeeded to tear his shirt open for just one second, but that second managed to reveal Rohan's back for her and Seth to see.
This.
This was what Winter saw when she accidentally saw him changing the other day. What she had been thinking about, and what she had been trying to confirm.
Rohan's back, from the tips of his shoulder blades to the linings of his spine, was all filled with scars. Cut marks. Burnt marks. Bruises so old they were now almost black.
Seth immediately froze.
Rohan snapped and pulled away from her almost violently. He immediately covered his back with the shirt that he hauled forcefully from her grasp, not even bothering to button it as he stood. Winter was trying to grab at him before he—
'No, Seth, stop him!'
But it was too late. By the time she could climb down from the other side of the bed, Rohan already ran out, crashing onto Seth's shoulder in his haste. While Seth was taken aback by the force of their collision, Rohan was already sprinting out of the Infirmary, flinging the door shut behind him.
Winter quickly darted and tried to chase him, stumbling out on her way as she slammed the door open and ran out. But when she got to the hallway, she tripped on her own feet. As she fell to her knees she watched him disappeared into a turn. 'No, Rohan, stop!' she tried to reach out and stop him, but it was too late.
As her knees made contact with the ground, the thunder boomed from the outside, shaking her to the core. Everything made sense now. With the flash of lightning that came, everything was suddenly clear.
Those scars on his back.
Rohan lying about an uncle.
The way he looked at his father.
Dissociative Identity Disorder was a form of protection. A separate personality, especially a dangerous, violent one like his, wouldn't just come out of nowhere without needing to protect him from anything.
And she knew what he was trying to protect himself from.
Seth followed her cautiously, closing the door to the Infirmary quietly behind him. He could only see her back, and Winter was kneeling on the ground. He couldn't see it at first, but as he got closer, he could see that her back was trembling. She was trembling.
Winter was crying.
Slowly and very, very carefully, he crouched beside her, gently wrapping his coat around her. "I... didn't know it was that bad. I'm sorry..." he murmured softly.
Seth was smart. He was a genius, after all. Of course he could put two and two together before everyone else.
Just looking at Rohan's behaviour and the Garrisons' father, Seth knew.
'I've seen it before,' Winter signed, still sobbing violently. Her breath hitching with her sobs. 'When he was changing— I saw them. Bandages in places hidden by his clothes. His back. His ankles. I know he has those but I never knew why, but I— I... now I—'
And she was crying again, her shivers stronger than before as her hands covered her face and she sobbed. From next to her, Seth slowly put one arm around her, hushing her. She was shaking greatly he almost didn't know what to do.
"Yeah..." he said softly, patting her back in an attempt to get her to calm down. She felt cold, very cold to the touch. "Ssh, it's okay. It's okay. Come on."
He was the first one to know. Yet his relationship with Rohan was strictly professional that he found he was almost unaffected by the knowledge. Winter, on the other hand, cared about Rohan. Maybe even more than just as a friend. He didn't know how she felt, but at that moment Seth could see the extent of stress it put on her emotional balance.
After a while, her sobs lessened, and she pulled her hands away from her face, looking at Seth with teary eyes almost pleadingly.
He immediately knew what she wanted. And he sighed. "Yeah. Let's take you to Jake and Lennox."
+++
In a world of unfairness, the innocents were always the biggest victims.
'I know what happened to him.'
She stood in the doorway to the private room of the Garrisons, eyes still bearing marks of their previous tears but full of conviction.
Seth stood next to her, translating her every gestures to the two pairs of eyes looking up from their works and watching them intently.
'I know what happened to him. I know his trigger. I know everything.'
"Winter..."
'It wasn't your uncle. You have no uncle. Your father tried to kill him in his sleep. He was covering for your father when he said that it was your uncle,' and she was even more sure of that fact now that she saw their resigned expressions.
It was so obvious now that she almost laugh in contempt. That man. He blamed his own son for his wife's death. How dare he touched Rohan?
'Rohan did try to defend himself. He threw a glass bottle at your father in self defence. But your father didn't die,' she continued, shaking again in anger at the unfairness of it all, 'that's why your father has a scar on his left eye.'
"—I swear, I didn't know it was him! I was sleeping and he came to me... so I threw the bottle in defence, and—" he had said to her, so long ago. On the hospital roof. It wasn't his uncle.
No, Rohan's father didn't just try to kill him.
She saw it on his back. Everywhere else. That man was a monster.
Lennox and Jacob looked worriedly at each other and back at her. "Winter—"
'Your father abused him,' she was seriously enraged now, and crying again, eyes wet with furious hot tears. The movement of that bloody word was in itself so revolting she almost vomited the moment her hands made the motion and associated it with Rohan. She was shaking, tremors in her gestures obvious as she kept her hands raised.
Seth was worried now, watching her from sideways and wasn't sure whether he should continue translating what she had to say. But before he could say anything Winter continued anyway. 'And you knew,' of course they did, how could they not? Years ago his screams could be heard echoing throughout the house. 'Yet you did nothing.'
And all at once, everything was out. Her hands fell to her side immediately after she made her last statement. Her lips quivered. She was exhausted now.
She wiped at her eyes slowly and shakily, looking down at the ground.
Everything was out now.
Yet it still didn't make her feel any better. It couldn't. Knowing made her feel worse. In a world of unfairness the innocents were always the biggest victims. It was unfair and she hated herself for not being able to do anything. For taking this long to know.
Rohan was the innocent. Literally a victim of circumstances.
Rohan...
She snapped her head back up at the realisation of what happened today. Her eyes were wide and almost vicious as she searched around the room, and Jacob and Lennox were almost taken aback at the sheer intensity behind those innocent black orbs.
Winter's heart almost stopped in sheer fright after she found no sign of what she was looking for. 'Oh, no.'
'Rohan ran away. I'm going to look for him now.'
"Winter, wait!" Seth didn't even bother translating her last sentence as he pulled her back by the elbow, trying to stop her.
She immediately whirled and glared back at him. 'Seth, let me go!'
She was panicking now, he could see it in her eyes. In the way she was violently trying to break free from his hold. "What are you gonna do?" It had been almost half an hour since Rohan left. "Where are you going to even start looking for him?— Stop!"
'I don't know, and I don't care! I just have to— let me go!'
"Winter, wait," it was Jacob this time. In her tug of war with Seth she hadn't even realised Jacob walking to stand in front of her, blocking the door.
She thought that Jacob was going to stop her, too. She was going to shove him and tell him to stay away if he didn't care, yet before she could argue with him and storm out, Jake gave out a long, mournful sigh.
She was surprised at the sound and she stopped her movements, looking at his eyes.
The look he gave her was so sad she almost wished she hadn't seen it.
"I know where he might be."
+++
The marathon was the most waited event in the festival, yet it was the most depressing one so far.
It was dark, so dark that she almost couldn't see in the drizzle. It was only lightly drizzling now and she could barely feel the wetness on her cold skin as she ran, but the wind was picking up speed along with her movement, and the sound of thunder implied heavy downpour was coming soon. The students partaking in the marathon were following along with the wet weather plan, jogging under sheltered areas, and she ran among the crowd of laughters and chatters; searching, tugging, huffing, running, until she found it.
The small dirt pathway widened as she broke away from the sea of people and stumbled towards it, walking slowly inside the gate. The water touched her again, wetting her hair and shoulders as soon as she frayed off the sheltered walkway. The place was silent except for the sound of rain on the dirt, but she was glad that they had decided to change the marathon route not to pass the cemetery, because now the place was empty and he needed this.
Rohan needed the silence, away from the runners, away from the chatters. He needed the solitude.
He needed to be alone.
But he had been alone for far too long.
Walking inside, she searched the turns and rows of headstone, and it was already raining heavily when she saw him.
He was under the rain. Unsheltered. Water dripping from his hair, and shirt sticking to his figure from the wetness.
He was kneeling just like her a few hours ago. From the mist and the rain she couldn't make out his shape clearly but she could feel the loss in the weakness of his shoulders.
Defeated.
She hesitated before moving, looking at her left hand clutching the sedatives Jacob gave her "just in case." But there was no trust without risk, and she didn't want to go to him as just another person who feared him.
Because she wasn't afraid of the hurt little boy in front of her. She couldn't. None of it was his fault.
She placed the syringe on the wet ground next to her feet. Water immediately entered her eyes as she looked back up at him, and she didn't know whether it was tears or rainwater. Patters of rain sounded like hisses against her ears.
Slowly and quietly she approached him, but it was by her silence that he recognised her footsteps nearing under the rain.
"He is not my father."
She stopped only a few steps behind him.
As clear as day, she could see the name engraved on the grave in front of him, flooded with the flowing water.
Cecilia Garrison.
Beloved Mother.
"My mother had an affair after she had Jacob. I am not his son."
She could hear the sound of the falling water, so loud against the path under her. But she could hear his soft voice clearer than the rain as he spoke. Could hear the hurt clearer in his voice as he spoke.
"That man, I HATE him," he was seething now, almost shouting through the gritted teeth. The rage. "If it wasn't for my name in my mother's will and her money that is keeping the company running, he would have thrown me away. Would have killed me," he spat, taking long breaths as he calmed himself. Then, weakly as he shook, he whimpered, "...like he did my real father."
She was right behind him now.
Agony so strong she could feel it emanating from his back.
"But I suppose... that is what should have happened," suddenly he said softly, voice devoid of any of the previous burning emotions. Some dark humour was in his voice as he stated it, but it was gone as soon as it was there, replaced by a voice so sad it almost broke her. Yet it was resolute as he announced, "I killed my mother. It is what I deserve for taking her away from him."
At that moment Winter couldn't take it anymore. She fell to her knees, eyes hot again and shaking as she wrapped her arms around him from behind.
All of a sudden the barrier he kept in his mind broke. The tension and gasp at the contact was so clear and loud, and his first instinct was to whirl and hiss and shake her off, but she was holding on stubbornly, and she was grabbing on to his hands from behind, and his desire to keep her safe from himself was stronger so he managed to stop himself just before the one inside of him did something he would regret.
It took him a great moment to calm down from the initial mental stress of being touched — hugged — to get his heartbeat down to a normal speed. To stop himself from shaking and fight off the voices in his head trying to break free.
The feel of her body against him was warm in midst of the freezing rain. He could feel her around him, the weight of her touch so lucid as reality. Her puff of breaths coming from next to his shoulder. It took a great deal of time and energy to do so, but only after he could convince his consciousness that he was not in any sort of danger could he realise that there was something in her hand.
She was trying to pass him a piece of paper, prying his fist open so she could put it in his hand.
He exhaled cold air and took a deep breath. Taking her hand carefully, he slowly peeled her fingers from the grasp that had been tightly shut around the crumpled note, and opened the paper shakily, squinting to see the fading thin ink under the rain.
'It's not your fault.'
He looked at the words impassively.
It was something he had heard all of his life. Everyone had told him that. His brother. His sister. Dr Switzgerald. Everyone told him that it wasn't his choice, and he was in no way to be held accountable for it. But how could he believe them when the only parent figure he looked up to throughout his whole life prosecuted him, and only him, for it?
But then her hands turned the paper to the other page, and he saw the words he didn't know he had been waiting to hear for his whole life.
'And if you still think it is, I'll spend however long it will take to try and convince you otherwise.'
At that moment his self reserve finally broke, and for the first time in ten years, he cried.
+++
In a world of unfairness, the innocents were always the biggest victims.
This world was a cruel, cruel place. He knew it since he was still unbelievably young. Knew it since the moment he found out he was an illegitimate child of a very powerful, dangerous family. Knew it since the moment his mother's husband laid a hand on him.
He had known it for sixteen years.
He thought for a lot of times, why was he alive? He fulfilled no other purpose than to exist and to suffer — and to make other people suffer. He existed not even as himself, because he wouldn't be accepted if he existed as himself. This society was not one that would accept someone as himself. He existed as a mask.
And the demon inside of his head knew, because that demon was the real him, and this was the mask. His existence was a facade. He was a lie.
But sometimes, that deceitful demon of a child was the only strength he had to continue living.
Yet he couldn't even live as the other one. For years he didn't want to live. But he didn't want to die. It was a strange feeling, and dark, and lonely, and his siblings were sympathetic but they could not understand. Couldn't support him. No way would they go against that bastard of a patriarch.
Jonah was a first and only one, but even then he couldn't get too close. He couldn't go too deep in his friendship with his only friend because Jonah only saw light, and he was anything but.
But then she came, and she was the light, brighter than anything he had ever seen.
In a world of unfairness, the innocents were always the biggest victims. If one wasn't an innocent, one was guilty. He guessed that he wasn't an innocent then because he knew that he was guilty, yet at the same time he felt deep inside that he would prefer to be a victim. But he couldn't because he was the offender. Repeat offender when it came to hurting her.
He would only hurt her, he was sure of it. But he had hurt her, again and again and again for the past months, yet she still came back for him. He will still hurt her — no doubt about that — yet there was no doubt and he was sure that she would still come back to him. And he didn't understand why someone as smart as her would do something as foolish as that.
This world was a cruel, cruel place. Only the innocents would be victimised. Happiness were given to those who wasted it. Second chances were given to those who didn't deserve it.
Yet she was something pure in that cruelty. She had given him a chance. And she knew nothing of the world he knew and for all heaven and hell he didn't want her to know.
Though he didn't believe in heaven, nor in hell, and he didn't believe in God, for years he still cried out those three words: Lord, have mercy! And mercy came in the form of a ghost.
For she was a ghost, and he was her seer. He could see her now, standing in the dark with light coming from her hand and suddenly he was no longer alone.
And he couldn't win against her. She saw the real him, the demon, and instead of running away she chased after him. He couldn't win against her because no darkness could have swallowed that kind of light. Because he realised that right there and then, under the rain, under her touch, she was peeling his skin to the point of no return.
The face of his mother and the blood flowing down her face was suddenly replaced by her face, fair and glowing under the pour of the rain, and in an instant he was no longer dreaming. No darkness, no light, no crash, just her.
Under the rain, under her touch. He could reach for her now.
And at that moment he swore by any honour he might had left, that he would stay loyal to her until the day she willed him to go to the other way.
+++
Under the rain, under her touch. He turned to face her. For the first time in his life, he reached out and touched her back.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: And there you go, Chapter 25!!! Everything has been revealed now!
Do you like it? I personally think this chapter was so beautiful I almost cried when I finished it D': HAHA tell me what you think!
And next chapter is the last Arc Finale! Look forward to it! Much love!