Chapter Text
Contrary to popular belief, Margaret and Phillip Buckley never hated their son.
To them, hate was too strong a word and an even stronger feeling. Hatred implied a level of interest towards him that neither of them had ever been able to manage. It suggested they thought about him or cared enough about his life and what he did with it to feel something more. Neither of them could so much as feign the sort of interest needed to form such a strong opinion of him.
Hatred meant they cared.
Instead, Margaret and Phillip developed a level of indifference towards him. It wasn’t hatred, or even dislike. It was nothing. It was a void in their chest whenever they looked at their son, an emptiness neither of them ever put into words. They managed the bare minimum as parents by keeping a roof over his head and keeping him fed, but beyond that, Evan always stood on his own.
The three of them existed as strangers, although they shared the same DNA. They orbited around each other without ever really making contact.
It didn’t start out that way.
They loved him at first, in their own way.
On the day Evan was born, Margaret looked at the small, screaming baby in her arms and knew she loved him. How could she not? Evan would be the one to save their family, to keep Daniel alive when the medicine failed and the doctors gave up. She could see past the red birthmark blooming by his eye, and tune out the screaming because Evan held the answer to everything.
Philip had grand plans for Evan and Daniel. They were going to create an empire, build a dynasty out of the Buckley name. The three of them would turn it into something to be revered and remembered for years to come. He could see if the second he held Evan for the first time, his bright blue eyes gazing up at him in wonder, like he was trying to uncover every secret he kept hidden.
Evan would be the glue that kept their family together. He was the missing piece of a puzzle that, for years, always felt impossible to solve.
For the first few months, Evan was the light their family needed to see through the darkness. He looked at everything with a sense of fascination, frowning at something mundane like bubbles and lighting up when he heard the sharp jangle of a house key. Everything interested him. His smile brightened any room, and he made their family feel complete for the first time.
Maddie, despite longing for a sister, would read to Evan in his crib even though he couldn’t understand her. She looked at him with love; the sibling she never wanted, but would look after anyway. After school, Maddie would rush home and sit cross-legged on the rug beside his crib just to talk about her day. Every day Evan would stare at her with those brilliant blue eyes, his face alive with curiosity.
In a house oftentimes overrun by chaos and haunted by illness, those moments beside baby Evan’s crib are the ones Maddie held onto. She cherished them long into adulthood, though her baby brother hadn’t been a baby in some time.
Daniel quickly became Evan’s guardian, his protector. He knew why Evan had been born, what his role was supposed to be, and it made him want to protect him even more. When Evan cried, Daniel was the first one there. His singing silenced the cries in seconds, and just his presence was enough to bring a small smile to Evan’s face.
They were bonded in a way no one else would ever understand. Blood brothers in more ways than one.
Nothing was ever going to break them apart.
One night, a few days before the transplant they all hoped would finally put an end to the vicious circle of hospital visits, Daniel snuck into his parents' room to see Evan. Margaret and Phillip were asleep with their backs to the door when he pushed it open and recoiled as the hinges cried. His parents didn’t stir. Avoiding the squeaky floorboard close to the door, Daniel snuck into the room.
Pale sunlight began to stream into the room, splinters of light cutting across the edge of the bed. Phillip snorted in his sleep, rolling onto his stomach and burying his face in the pink pillowcases his wife insisted on. Daniel bit back a laugh. He moved quietly across the room, reaching the crib and curling his fingers around the warm wood. Evan stared up at him, his blue eyes bright in the slither of light creeping into the room.
Daniel moved his hands from the edge of the crib and tilted his body forwards, his weight shifting to his toes. He reached into the crib and let the tips of his trembling fingers brush over the smooth skin of Evan’s small cheek. A light smile worked its way onto Daniel’s lips, and he muttered the words that would die with him.
“I’ll always look out for you, Evan, like you’re looking out for me.”
A splinter of light cut across Evan’s face. He tilted his head, a small furrow settling between his eyes as he looked at Daniel. He blinked. Wiggling against the mattress, giggling softly, Evan stretched one arm out towards his brother. Daniel leaned further over the crib until he was standing on his toes. The wooden bars creaked from his weight. He pressed a light kiss to Evan’s cheek. Evan’s fingers found Daniel’s face, one small hand resting on his cheek, the other grabbing at his nose. He giggled again.
“Whatever happens, I’ll always love you.”
Evan looked at him with that intense, curious stare he saved for bubbles, his fingers ghosting over the cold skin of Daniel’s nose. Part of Daniel wondered if maybe Evan did understand him. Maybe he’s understood them the entire time, taking in more information than they thought.
Maybe he understood more than they ever gave him credit for.
Thirty years later, Evan—now going by Buck—would remember a vague voice he couldn’t quite place and wonder just who it was. He’d remember hushed whispers, promises made in pale sunlight, but no know where he heard it or who said it.
Those hushed words spoken over the edge of a crib to a baby who looked at bubbles like they held the answers to the universe turned into a promise Daniel never got to keep. It was a task he failed before he even started.
Daniel Buckley died on a Thursday.
The sun burned brightly, the sky a brilliant shade of blue that almost matched Evan’s eyes. A few wisps of white, cotton-candy-like clouds drifted aimlessly on the breeze that ruffled the bottom of the blinds.
It would have been the perfect day were it not for the slight figure dwarfed by the hospital bed. A heart monitor beeped softly against the wall, the gentle whirring of an oxygen tank flooding the air.
The Buckleys stood beside their son’s hospital bed, the careful facade they held onto for years shattering into pieces. Tears streamed down Margaret’s cheeks, her choked sobs echoing through the room. Every small beep of the heart monitor sounded like a countdown to the inevitable.
Phillip, on the other hand, was the opposite. He stood as a picture of calm in the burning sunlight. A stoic expression was carved into his marble features. Phillip’s jutted chin trembled, but a quick clear of his throat halted any emotion in its tracks.
Standing beside the window, silent tears trickling down her cheeks, was Maddie. Her entire body trembled as she stared at the large bed and listened to the whirring of the machine. The sharp scent of disinfectant burned her nose, the fluorescent lights flickering. She didn’t want to be there, but Margaret had insisted she say goodbye, that they stand there as a family.
Evan sat in her arms, eyes fixed on a small mark on the ceiling. He furrowed his eyebrows, hands stretching towards the ceiling as if he was trying to touch it. His eyes were alight with curiosity, but he didn’t laugh the way he usually does. It’s almost as though he’s aware of the tension settling over the room.
Maddie held onto him like a lifeline. He was the last normal thing left in that hospital room, the only one of them who would emerge without the memories of death following them.
The beeping of the heart monitor suddenly shifted. It dropped from the steady, metronome noise that filled the room into a steady, continuous beep. The sound jolted through Maddie’s body. She shook her head, refusing to look at the hospital bed or her mom, whose sobs were loud enough to rival the screeching of the alarm.
Maddie looks at Evan. His small face was screwed up tightly, his hands balled into tight fists. Evan’s bottom lip trembled, his face turning a deep shade of red. A sharp cry broke free from his trembling lips. The noise joined the still wailing alarm and Margaret’s sobs, a symphony of sadness flooding the room.
A nurse pushed open the door to Daniel’s room and stepped inside. Her footsteps were muted on the cold linoleum, and she didn’t react to the cacophony of noises. Instead, she approached Daniel’s bed, checked the small fob watch hanging from the pocket of her scrubs and muttered through the noise.
“Time of death, 2:32 pm.”
With one press of a button, she silenced the screeching alarm. Evan’s cries became the loudest thing in the room, his face red and tears streaming down his cheeks. Margaret turned to Maddie, her eyes bloodshot and her face pale beneath the flickering lights. She looked at Evan before turning back to the nurse.
“Could—” She cleared her throat. “—could you take him outside? We need to say goodbye to our son without … that.”
“Mom—” Maddie started, her voice thick and shaky. She held Evan a little tighter, not wanting to give him up. He deserved to say goodbye to Daniel too.
“He won’t even remember it, Maddie,” Margaret said. The words were sharp and pointed, leaving no room for arguments. “I just want a few minutes of silence. That’s all.”
The nurse looked between them and then at Evan, who continued to scream in Maddie’s arms. “I can take him for two minutes, to let you say goodbye.”
Margaret nodded stiffly and turned a sharp gaze to Maddie, who recoiled under it, still clutching Evan. She looked down at her baby brother and grazed her knuckle over his cheek, his skin warm from all the screaming. For a moment, the screaming stopped. He stared at her with wide, watery eyes.
“He loved you so much,” Maddie muttered. “I know he’ll be protecting you from wherever he is.”
“Give him to the nurse, Maddie. Come and say goodbye to D-Daniel.”
Placing a light kiss on Evan’s forehead, her own tears mingling with the ones drying on Evan’s cheeks, she handed him over to the nurse. The moment the nurse had Evan in her arms, he started crying again, twisting himself in her grip and reaching out to Maddie or his parents.
Maddie glanced towards the door, still hearing Evan’s cries. Her heart clenched, tears soaking her cheeks. A hand on her shoulder steered her towards the bed.
Margaret didn’t spare Evan a glance as the nurse carried him from the room, the indifference settling into her chest as the hospital room fell silent. All thoughts of a Buckley dynasty slipped from Phillips mind, the door closing between him and Evan.
When the soft click of the door echoed through the hospital room, a veil fell between Evan and his parents. It wasn’t hatred or dislike, but indifference. Evan would represent everything Daniel never got to be.
At 2:40 pm on a Thursday, Evan Buckley lost the parents he was supposed to have the moment the door shut.