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Roman barely remembers his father's death. He remembers seeing him dead, remembers how disconnected he felt at that moment, but after? There's nothing. He doesn't remember feeling like this, like there's something curled up dead in his throat, rotting in there, and can't be pushed out or swallowed down; like his insides have been scooped out and burned. Like the only connection he had to the world has been cut.
He sits, knees up to his chin, arms over his head, one hand knotted tight in his hair, on his bedroom floor.
He can hear his mother moving furniture upstairs in Shelley's room. Or what was Shelley's room. Now it will be something else, no doubt. Something functional. God forbid they actually mourned her.
He rocks himself slowly, from side to side, eyes shut tight, teeth clenched. How could Peter do that to him? Just leave without a word. Roman had always known Peter didn't feel exactly the same way he did, but there had still been something between them. They'd had the same dreams, fought side by side. Brothers of a sort, if nothing more.
No 'I'm sorry I have to leave', no 'why don't you come with me?'.
And now Roman's been left to rot, here in this big empty house with only his name and his wealth and his mother who would rather poke out her own eyes than offer him a crumb of genuine comfort. For all her crooning, Roman sometimes had to wonder if she even had a soul. Did he, for that matter?
He'd never really felt like it, until Peter came along and for the first time in his life he'd felt like a real person, like maybe he was actually worthy of something.
Clearly, he'd been wrong. Peter hadn't thought so. Now everything Roman wanted—Peter, Shelley, Letha—they're all gone.
Make it all clean, something whispers in the back of his head. He ignores it. He can't leave now, no matter how much he wants to. His mother needs him, and the town needs someone to hate. And that—being needed—is everything. Peter never understood that, couldn't; it isn't in his blood. Roman, however, knows how to be dutiful, even if it kills him to be.
He uncurls himself from the floor, wipes the tears that have leaked out across his cheeks, and tries to swallow past the desiccated thing in his throat. Fuck Peter. Fuck all of them.
Deep down he's always known it would be like this, that he'd end up alone. He always has been, after all.