Chapter Text
It was a long drive back to his childhood home. He grew up in the countryside; his parents owned a few acres and filled them with beautiful gardens and party hosting areas. And of course, their home was there too.
It was a masterpiece of romantic architecture, that was for sure. It was opulent and shining white, an impressive 4 stories tall with arches and red brick. The fountains that surrounded it and the green grass made it look breathtaking as the morning light showed the shine of the dew. The cool air left Roman with a slight chill. It was still warmer than near the college, though. He passed by greenhouses and old oak trees that stood tall and sturdy. He had pleasant memories of climbing them as a kid with his brother, listening to music on their walkmans under the stars. As he drew nearer on foot, having parked his car just outside the grounds, he spotted his brother’s car parked next to his mother’s and father’s.
He took a deep breath in as he put his hand on the door knocker, bringing it down 3 times with his fist. The door was large and foreboding, standing tall in front of his hunched shoulders. He felt his chest grow tight as he stood there. He tried to keep his heart from racing as he grew more and more uneasy, shifting his weight from the soles of his feet to his heels.
The door opened to his mother’s face.
“Roman, you and your brother are spoiling us today! I’m so happy to have both of my boys here!” She exclaimed as she pulled Roman into her arms in a crushing embrace.
“Good to see you, too, Ma.” He responded as soon as he was released. He saw his own features in her face. The two shared hazel eyes and tanned skin, although his hair was curlier and darker than hers. It goes to show that people really do reflect the world around them. His mother had recently chopped her once knee length brown hair off and it now hung in loose waves around her waist. Her grin was accompanied by smile lines and a light crinkle around her eyes. Despite being in her sixties now, she looked how Roman remembered for the most part other than a few more wrinkles and gray hairs.
Her smile lines were endearing and showed that she’d lived a happy life.
“You’re so thin! Look at you! Take that big coat off, it looks like you’re drowning in it! How many meals do you eat in a day? If my friends saw you, they’d ask if you were sick!” She asked as soon as she took a closer look at him. She wasn’t wrong. Roman supposed he had been losing weight. He ate 1 or two meals a day on average but he didn’t want to make his mother worry.
“I’m fine, Ma. I eat enough. How are you and Dad doing?” He replied politely. He spoke quietly and tried not to take up space.
His mother looked at him with concern and furrowed brows. It almost broke his heart to see his mother look so worried. Knowing it was because of him was worse.
“We’re doing alright. Being married to your father has perks, you know. Beautiful home, wonderful children, not having to work in business anymore. I’ve made a lot of money myself but you know, your father still works and I'm retired from the finance field for good. Oh, your brother is upstairs, he wants to see you.” His mother informed him. She smiled but she still looked worried.
“Alright, I'll head up there now. I love you.” He told her as he left. She looked up at him as he went up the stairs. She was silent and it was a tad unnerving. Usually, getting the Theodora Kant to be quiet was impossible. Hearing her be so quiet scared him in a way he couldn’t quite place.
He slowly ascended the large spiral staircase up to the second floor and walked straight up the 3rd, ignoring the large parlors and guest bedrooms. The 3rd floor had almost belonged to him and his brother when he was younger. It was a place of both good memories and bad, They ranged from screaming matches to pleasant days to…avoidance. He had truly been evil to his brother when they were younger, hadn’t he? He’d been such a self centered kid. Remus was struggling severely and Roman cut him no slack. It was one of his biggest regrets.
He walked down the hall to his brother's room which was still emblazoned with a “Normies, keep out!” sign taped there during their childhood.. He knocked carefully. That sign was most likely posted when they were both 16. Roman had gone from being considered a fellow counterculturalist to a normie that year, after all.
“Come in!” He heard his brother’s voice call out. He remained in the hallway for a moment, pondering his younger years. Where had all the time gone? He’d been living as an adult for the past 17 years but as he stood in the place where he grew up and forced himself to change, he’d never felt smaller. He felt so utterly insignificant in that moment that he flinched when his brother opened the door.
“I said come in. Do I need to learn more ASL? Because, you know, I learned a few new ones recently. If you put a bull head-” Remus rambled as he showed the sign for bullshit.
“I’ll come in.” Roman smiled and tried to keep his gaze down as he entered the room. It looked almost the same as it used to other than the lack of messiness and empty closet.
“So, what are you planning on taking with you to your new apartment?” Roman asked, his posture rigid and his hands folded politely in front of him. His brother looked at him suspiciously for a moment.
“If you keep worrying so much, you’ll have more gray hair than Dad.” Remus remarked, reaching for Roman’s hair. Roman usually kept his hair cut in a short and professional style but ever since Virgil had come back into his life, he’d been trying to let it grow long again. It now sat awkwardly on his head, a wavy mop that almost reached his chin. Remus was right about the graying. There was a rather large patch near his temples and gray hairs could be seen throughout his head. He was probably 25% gray now. Luckily, his curls hid some of it.
“Like you have room to talk with that white streak in your hair. What do you want to get sorted into boxes first?” Roman replied with a slight smile, sitting down on the wooden floors. He grabbed a cardboard box from a nearby pile and a tape dispenser, carefully folding it into the correct shape and taping the bottom shut.
“I want to try and get some of my decorations out of here first.” Remus said before pausing. Roman looked around and tried to figure out which specifically would be the easiest to pack first. Remus shook his head after a moment of staring at the light switch.
They got into a rhythm with packing the boxes rather quickly and about an hour later, the room was nearly empty. The two of them were taking a break when they came across an old DVD.
“Fucking score! This is either an old r rated movie, a video diary, or home videos. All 3 are good outcomes.”
“One of those is not a good outcome, Remus.” Roman objected. Remus had already inserted the tape into a DVD player he kept on his desk.
“Why did you never get rid of that?” Roman asked, confused.
“Shh! The video is starting, look at my computer screen.” Remus said, shoving Roman down from where he sat on the bed. Roman fell unceremoniously off the bed and onto the floor as the screen started.
It was an old video of the two of them when they were both fifteen, probably a week or 2 before the fight that made Roman change his personality. It started with the two of them in one of the sheds their father soundproofed.
“Man, I can’t play good music with this thing!” Roman complained. He was so young back then, his voice was still squeaky and his hair was dyed red. Young Remus hit the snare 6 times and then repeated it again and again, at least 5 loops.
Roman knew what this video was. That video was of the fight.
He couldn’t bear to look. His younger self furrowed his brows and began to yell at Remus for ruining the jam session with his “stupid” looping sixes.
Roman reached for the CD player and clicked eject. Remus looked at him in confusion.
“What's up, Princey?” He asked, smirking and crossing his arms. He looked vaguely like a shark who was ready for his next meal as he propped himself up against the pillows.
“You kept the disc?” Roman asked, standing up stiffly, keeping his upper body rigid.
Remus smiled sheepishly, an uncharacteristic thing.
“It may not have been a very good memory, one of the worst in fact, but there is a reason I kept it. It was one of the last times I saw you….be yourself. You were mad at me, yeah, but you were Roman, not whatever you are now. There's a reason I encourage you to act like you used to. You can call it self centered and evil all you want. I just called it my brother.” Remus spoke with an even tone and lightly tapped sixes onto his leg, straightening up and crossing his legs underneath him.
Roman looked up at him from the floor with tears in his eyes. He first thought about ways to hide it, to inconspicuously wipe the tears from his eyes and take a deep breath, but before he managed to blink they were slipping down his cheeks as he took hiccuping breaths.
Remus stood up and sat down on the floor next to his brother. Roman was sobbing into his hands with his back against the now plain walls, stripped of all posters and tapestries. Only a few scratches and drawings remained on the walls.
He felt that was a bit poetic. He'd never been much of a creative but it said something. Almost all evidence of the self had been stripped from the room and it was left blank but the walls were still affected. The space was changed by who inhabited it like how people are changed by who they know.
As Roman sobbed on the floor, he felt the cage in his chest open, its door ripped straight off the hinges. The monster was awake and as he looked upon its visage, it looked more scared than aggressive. It looked outside at the world it had been hidden from for the past 19 years and it slowly, tentatively stepped out of its cage, its face looking more like a child's than a monster, and it slipped into his head and onto his face.
Roman looked up at his brother through his tears and felt a small bit of relief.
This fight wasn't over. The cage still stood tall and menacing and the door wouldn't be off forever. Not every change he made was a bad one, for example. It was good that he listened more but the cage was not a solution that anyone needed.
As he felt his brother place a hand on his shoulder, he took a deep breath.
“I-I'm sorry, Re. For all of it.” He stuttered out through his tears, wiping them carelessly as they did not slow.
Remus smiled, just a bit, and looked at him, his hazel eyes looking directly into the ones so similar but so different to his own.
“I know. Let's get you off the floor.” Remus stood as he spoke, offering a hand to the cowering silhouette on the floor. Roman wasn’t sure if he deserved to take it. He’d tormented Remus for most of their lives. He didn’t deserve to take it. However, with a moment's reflection, he took it.
He may have been a monster, a being who didn’t deserve the air he breathed, but he wasn’t. There was no truth to the statement. He’d just been…a kid. He’d been self flagellating for the past 19 years over that. He was probably gonna keep hating himself for the next 19, too. But he’d decided that this wasn’t the time to do this. It was…incredibly exhausting to be Mr Kant.
Sometimes he needed to be Princey, too.
He stood up with his brother’s help and wiped his tears. Today had been tiring and not much had changed since the day before it, but looking back, he’d realize it was important in its own rights.
Roman didn’t like himself right away. Mr Kant remained for a good 2 years after that and traces of him would remain for many, many more, but every word of advice Virgil had given him over the past few months had mattered. They’d got him here.
The seasons changed in Roman’s heart and they did outside of it too. Two years later, a week after his 36th birthday, Roman sat down at a booth at the coffee shop he’d visited with Remus.
He wasn’t alone for long. A few moments later, Virgil sat down next to him. Logan and Patton were situated on the other side of the booth, enjoying the air conditioner’s reprieve from the summer’s sweltering sun. They shared quiet laughter at some inside joke and the sound was pleasantly familiar.
After watching Remus jokingly flirt with the cashier for a good 5 minutes, he carried their drinks over. Remus had been talking to the cashier who changed their name tag every day for a good few months now and the cashier’s smooth southern drawl had on more than one occasion joined their conversation on movie nights.
Roman grabbed his vanilla latte from the paper caddy first, smiling a bit as he took a sip. He brushed his hair out of his eyes as well. It now reached a bit past his shoulders and it brought him joy.
He looked up at his brother, a recent masters degree recipient, and grinned.
This day is not a particularly special one. It doesn’t tell us anything about Roman’s psyche or the now derelict ruins of a cage in his chest. However, it is a beautiful day, and as Roman discusses theater and shows off the new calluses on his hands from the electric guitar he’d bought as a teenager, he smiles. He doesn’t think about the monster he used to be, or well, the kid he used to be. He doesn’t think of some philosophical reason he is why he is. He simply enjoys coffee with his friends and family. As he meets Virgil's eyes, he internally mutters a thank you. That was the last time he reflected that afternoon.
The sun shone brightly on the town and the green leaves were firmly on the trees. It was a beautiful summer day and the sky was blue. He had pleasant company and that was what mattered.
Roman knew he’d changed a lot since high school. And he refused to let who he used to be define him now. He was Roman Kant. Nothing more and nothing less than that.
~fin~