Chapter Text
There’s a silence in the house in the moment Roslyn dies. It wraps around the wood and the bricks, sliding through crevices and weaving its way into the very foundations of the building, spreading like mould into the carpet; the furniture; the pictures on the walls; the air itself - and eventually it spreads into JJ, standing wide eyed in the doorway to the bathroom.
The silence clogs her throat, and even though her brain is telling her to scream; to run; to do anything but stand there - her feet remain glued to the floor; her eyes don’t flicker from Roz; she stays silent.
All she can do is breathe, and grasp at the necklace - Roslyn’s necklace - that she’d proudly clasped around her neck before making her way to the bathroom. Eyes fixed on Roslyn’s face in the bathtub, the blood that is still slowing dripping on the white tile
And that’s how her father finds her fifteen minutes later - eyes wide, hand at her throat, staring into the bathroom. He’s still at the top of the stairs, unable to see what his youngest daughter is looking at.
“JJ,” He calls, “Breakfast is ready.”
She doesn’t move, not even a twitch.
“JJ?” He takes a step forward, planting his feet on the landing, “Jennifer?”
At the sound of her full name JJ flinches, and it’s then that she starts screaming, her body finally catching up to her brain, and reacting the only way she knows how; screaming and screaming and screaming - the noise filling the silence in the air; the silence in the walls; echoing until it’s the only noise in the house.
Her father rushes towards her, “Jennifer?” He grabs her shoulders, eyes following her gaze - and then, “Roslyn?”
JJ keeps screaming.
“Roslyn,” Her father is screaming now too, grasping Roslyn’s face.
“Jason?” Her mother is coming up the stairs, “Jennifer? What’s wrong?”
JJ keeps screaming.
And then her mother is screaming too, and her father is yelling, “Sandy, call 911!”
And JJ keeps screaming.
And there’s so much noise but there’s still silence.
JJ isn’t entirely sure what happens next, just that her mother and father are holding Roz, and she’s in the doorway screaming - and then there’s more people, and they’re taking Roz away, and her parents are going with them, and then she’s alone on the couch, throat raw, a policewoman sitting awkwardly on the floor in front of her.
The sirens fade away into the distance and then the silence is back in every crevice of the household.
She watches the lips of the policewoman move, but she can’t make out the words, the silence overwhelming her senses.
There’s just nothing.
Then there’s a hand on her knee, and JJ looks down, realising for the first time that there’s blood on the hem of her pyjama pants. Roz’s blood.
She swallows thickly.
She focuses on the hand, and then the body attached to it. Her eyes find the face of the woman opposite her, and for the first time since she stepped into the bathroom she properly sees something other than Roslyn lying there swimming behind her eyes.
The policewoman’s voice floats through the silence, “Sweetie? My name is Hannah, I’m going to stay with you until your parents can come back, okay?”
JJ nods.
“Okay good,” Hannah smiles encouragingly, “What’s your name?”
“Jennifer.”
Hannah’s smile widens, “That’s a very pretty name.”
“Everyone calls me JJ.”
“Wow, because of your initials?”
The silence is still ringing in JJ’s ears, but she shakes it away, “Roslyn used to call me J, because Jennifer was too long, then it became JJ.”
“Roslyn,” Hannah says, and the image of Roz in the bath burns behind JJ’s eyes again, “That’s your sister, right?”
JJ closes her eyes, which only makes the image burn brighter.
“Do you understand what happened, JJ?” Hannah’s voice is softer now.
She does, or at least as much as she can at eleven years old - she saw enough to understand that Roz was gone, even if she doesn’t know why. She nods, then she pauses, suddenly unsure, “Hannah?” She asks.
“Yeah?”
“If someone came into the house, why didn’t we hear them? Why didn’t she scream? If they were hurting her, why didn’t she scream?”
“Oh,” Hannah’s voice falters, suddenly aware of just how young the girl in front of her was. JJ’s words hang between them as she tries to think of a way to explain this to someone so untouched by the pain of this world. “JJ,” She finally says, “No one was in the house, she didn’t scream because no one else was there.”
“But, she was bleeding,” JJ looks back down at the bloodstain on her pants, confused.
“Yeah,” Hannah says, “But sometimes people’s own brains hurt them, say mean things, and sometimes the mean things make them hurt themselves.”
“Oh,” is all JJ says.
Roz had wanted to die; wanted to leave JJ.
There’s a lot more to it - things JJ doesn’t understand at eleven years old.
Her hands grasp at her necklace again, and the silence overwhelms her. Hannah’s talking again but she can’t hear it.
She keeps staring at the blood on the bottom of her pants.
Then the hand on her knee is gone.
And her parents are walking through the front door, eyes red rimmed with tears.
It hits her suddenly, in that moment, when they’re alone in the living room, just the three of them.
Roslyn’s gone.
Yesterday she had a sister, today she doesn’t.
The realisation shatters the silence around her, and everything becomes overwhelmingly loud; her mothers sniffles; her father’s feet on the carpet as he paces; the steady pace of her breath, in and out of her nose.
Roslyn’s gone.
A single tear trickles down her cheek, hot against her skin. And then another, and another, and another and another and another and another and another; on and on and on until she’s drowning in tears. They’re in her ears; her throat; her nose.
She rubs her fingers over the heart shaped locket, thumb tracing the outline again and again.
At some point her father’s pacing turns into drinking, her mother’s sobs into shouts - blaming her husband for not helping, not noticing, not stopping her.
And JJ sits on the couch, her sister’s blood drying on the hem of her pants, tears flowing down her face. Completely alone.
---
The silence worms its way back through the walls, wrapping itself around JJ, holding her tight. The only thing to hug her in the days between when she first stepped into the bathroom, and Roslyn’s funeral a week later - when suddenly she’s surrounded by friends and family, hugging her and kissing her, and telling her it’ll be alright.
And JJ hears none of it - feels none of it.
She sits in the front pew of the church, eyes focused on the photo of her sister - blown up and looking right back at JJ. Staring at the light in Roslyn’s eyes.
And yet the only thing she can see is the emptiness in them - the emptiness she saw when Roz was in the bathtub; the nothingness.
A cousin gets up, and reads a poem, talking about how Roslyn is dancing in heaven - and all JJ can think about is Roslyn’s empty eyes, and Father Daniels telling them about sins at church camp last summer, and how suicide was one of them.
It’s all she thinks about at the wake, alone on the couch again, as relative after relative moves past her, going on about how Roz is in a better place - sadness in all of their eyes. For a moment she meets Mr Howard’s eyes and sees something else lacing the grief - anger, maybe? Fear? She brushes it away.
There’s enough going on in her own brain without adding another person’s emotions.
All she feels is the silence, the deep quiet that seems to have settled in her mind, blocking out anything else. She doesn’t feel sad, or angry - or any of the other emotions she thinks she should feel - she just feels nothing.
She sits on the couch in her black dress until everyone has left - the photos of Roslyn and the food packed away; her father drinking again and her mother yelling again. She sits, quiet.
Alone.
---
She goes back to school the next week - her mother drops her off, stating she can start taking the bus again the next day, she just wants to make sure she gets there.
JJ can feel everyone looking at her as she walks up the steps of East Allegheny Middle School - she knows they know what happened - everyone knows. East Allegheny isn’t big, everyone knows everyone; and everyone knows everything.
She feels small, like the world has gotten bigger in the two weeks since she last set foot in these hallways. The whispers; the eyes following her as she makes her way down the hallway to her locker.
She tries to ignore them, but the whispers worm their way into the silence in her brain, filling it with the echoes of their words.
She doesn’t look sad.
I heard her Dad went crazy and killed her sister.
I went to the funeral, she didn’t say anything, just sat there the whole time.
Do you think she’ll do it too?
Crazy does run in families.
Her breathing picks up, and she starts to push her way through the crowd, desperate to get to her locker and away from the whispers. She dials her combination and pulls the door open, hiding behind it, trying to stop herself from crying.
“JJ?”
She jumps. Spinning around, Olivia Nelson, her best friend since second grade is standing next to her.
“JJ, hey,” Olivia says.
Crazy does run in families.
“JJ?” Olivia repeats
JJ flinches, “Don’t call me that,” She says, her tone harsh.
Olivia frowns, “What?”
She sighs, “I don’t…” She trails off for a moment, “Roz called me JJ, and I’m just -” She swallows hard.
Liv smiles sympathetically, “It’s okay,” She tilts her head, “Do you want me to call you Jennifer instead? Or…”
JJ shakes her head, “No, no. I’ve never been Jennifer.” She pauses, “It’s just so weird.”
Liv doesn’t say anything, just reaches out and grasps JJ’s hand, squeezing it tightly - sending a jolt through JJ, she freezes for a moment, confused, then she squeezes back. She meets Olivia’s eyes, dark compared to her own, and smiles softly - it’s the first genuine smile she’s managed in weeks, but something about Liv’s presence is calming - in grounds her in a way nothing else can; making the world stand still, and just for a moment the crushing weight of losing her sister disappears.
“Come on,” Liv says, still holding JJ’s hand, “We’ve got Geography, and I’ve had to sit through that alone for long enough.”
There’s no malice in her words, no blame - but JJ interprets it for what it is; a subtle reminder that she was missed, would be missed, just like Roslyn is, if something should ever happen. It’s sinister, the implication behind the words - the understanding that JJ has been forced to grow up so much in the past few weeks. That now she knows, not only what loss is, but the horrors of a person's own mind.
They haven’t spoken about it, but she thinks Liv knows too - knows the way the Father Daniels had come to the Jareau household the day after Roslyn’s funeral and reminded her he was always available if she needed to talk - that if she ever felt as alone as Roz did, she could come talk to him about anything . He’d emphasised the last word.
She wasn’t sure what that meant.
But she knows from the pitying looks thrown her way by the people in town that they half expect her to go too - follow in her sister's footsteps.
All she knows now is that whatever loneliness Roslyn was feeling, the sensations that made her force it all to stop - JJ’s feels some of the loneliness in Roz’s absence, the gaping emptiness in her heart.
And she’s really not sure if she’ll ever be okay again.
But then Liv’s squeezing her hand again, and just for a moment she isn’t Jennifer Jareau, the girl whose sister died, killed herself. She’s just JJ - just eleven years old, and with her best friend in the hallway of their school.
And just for a moment she’s alright.
Not okay.
But alright.
---
Twenty-one days after Roslyn dies Thanksgiving comes and goes with no celebration in the Jareau household. No meal, no decorations.
There’s nothing for them to be thankful for this year.
There’s just the emptiness of Roslyn’s chair at the dining table.
---
Thirty days - a whole month - after Roslyn dies, Christmas decorations start to pop up around East Allegheny. First, it's the garlands hung on main street, then wreaths on peoples doors, and finally the large Christmas tree gets hoisted up in the middle of town.
No decorations hang in JJ’s house.
It’s become a unit of measurement - the time since Roslyn’s death. JJ counts the weeks; the days; the hours; the minutes.
She stands in front of the bathroom mirror each morning, seeing the bathtub reflected behind her and ticks off another day in her head. Wondering, like she did every day, what might have been if she’d just gone to the bathroom five minutes earlier that morning.
Neither of her parents have said it, but she’s certain they’ve asked the same question too.
Christmas hangs heavy over all of their heads. There’s no gifts exchanged; no Christmas meals cooked.
Instead there’s just the emptiness left by the person missing from the household.
JJ has gifts for both her parents, wrapped and waiting in her bedroom - hidden behind her dollhouse. She doesn’t give them to them. Not after she comes downstairs on Christmas morning to see her father already with a glass of scotch in his hand, and her mother staring out the kitchen window, tears rolling silently down her cheeks.
She waits, perhaps a little bit eagerly to see if there’s any gifts for her - she’s old enough to no longer believe in Santa Claus, but she’s still young enough to be influenced by the magic of Christmas - the excitement.
But her parents say nothing, not even ‘Merry Christmas’, they just pull out the cereal and sit at the dining table.
It's a habit, routine - something they haven’t broken since Roslyn died. JJ’s noticed. The way they always do the same things at the same time every single day - like they’re on autopilot.
It almost seems like their arguments are scheduled, always starting at the same time every evening, the yelling, screaming and cursing a carefully rehearsed act that they must repeat over and over until it’s just right.
---
Fifty-Eight days after Roslyn dies - New Year’s Eve 1989 - something shifts in the routine. The actions are the same, but there’s a tension in the air; a weight. JJ feels on edge as her parents go through the motions of the day - she’s cautious, like one wrong move will set them off.
In the end, JJ doesn’t think there’s anything she could have done to prevent the inevitable.
She sits in the corner of her room when their arguments start, late in the afternoon. She presses her hands over her ears as the shouting gets louder and louder.
For the millionth time in those fifty-eight days, all she wants is for Roslyn to be there; for Roslyn to wrap her arms around her; for Roslyn to tell her it’ll all be okay.
“I lost her too, Sandy.”
A sob rises in her throat, and she chokes it back.
“Oh, it’s not the same, and you know it!”
The sound of her parents' voices float straight through her fingers and cut into her ears.
“How is it any different? She was my child too!”
She just wants her sister back.
“Like you cared at all… Or have you forgotten how she used to scream that she hated you?”
There’s a bite to her Mother’s voice, sharp and designed to her. It makes JJ flinch, even though the words aren’t directed at her.
A door slams downstairs, and JJ curls into a ball, tears running down her cheeks, all too aware of the fact that whichever parent didn’t storm out makes no attempt to come see if she’s okay; no attempt to invite her downstairs for dinner; no attempt to tuck her into bed.
Her hands move down from her ears to grasp at the necklace hanging from her throat. She rubs her thumb over the cold metal, back and forth, trying to stop the Roslyn shaped hole in her chest from getting any bigger.
She’s pretty sure that the moment Roslyn made her decision, her parents lost both their daughters, even if JJ has no say in the matter.
---
Fifty-Nine days after Roslyn dies - New Year's Day, 1990 - JJ wakes to complete silence all over again. She can sense it deep inside her, the ominous feeling that something is wrong; something is missing.
The argument from the night before still rings in her ears, and she uncurls herself from the corner of her room, needing to check the bathroom - just in case. The cold wood of the hallway stings her bare feet as she runs down the hallway, pushing open the door - anxiety filling up her chest as she takes in the room.
There’s no one in the bathtub.
Her breath rattles in her chest.
There’s no one in the bathtub, but something is still wrong.
Her ears ring with the silence of the household - the only thing she can hear is the loud inhales and exhales of her own breath, wheezing as they enter and exit her throat.
She’s quiet as she slips downstairs, making her way into the kitchen.
Her mother is sitting at the table, hand wrapped around a cup of tea - the cup looks full, JJ notes, but no steam is rising from it; like she made it a while ago and simply forgot it was there. Sandy doesn’t register her presence; doesn’t say a word; doesn’t move at all.
JJ gets a stool to reach the top shelf, and pulls down the cereal, making her own breakfast before she sits down at the table. “Mom?” She says.
Sandy doesn’t move.
“Mom?” She repeats, tapping the hand not holding the tea.
“Hmm?” Her Mom hums, eyes coming back into focus, seeming to notice her daughter in the room for the first time.
JJ frowns, “Where’s Dad?”
Sandy says nothing, but her eyes glaze over again, turning icy; angry.
JJ’s eyes flick around the room, noticing for the first time since she came downstairs that her father’s favourite mug is missing from it’s usual spot - his favorite cereal isn’t sitting on the counter.
Oh.
She walks to the sink and places her bowl on the side. She feels numb.
Her Dad is gone too.
She makes her way through the house, taking in everything that’s gone. The framed photo of him and Roslyn is missing from the mantle; his shoes missing from their spot next to the door; his toothbrush missing from the bathroom; his clothes missing from their drawers.
If it wasn’t for his presence in some of the other family photos lining the walls of the house, it would be like he never existed at all.
It’s not lost on JJ that he didn’t bother to take anything that might remind him of her.
Unlike Roslyn, his existence is erased from the household. Her room remains like a museum - her hairbrush still sitting on the counter in her and JJ’s shared bathroom, strands of her hair still wrapped up in it.
Sometimes it still feels like she’s there.
She’s not.
But Jason Jareau is gone in every possible way, not a trace of him remains, except in JJ’s memories of the man who once taught her how to ride a bike; who cheered her on at her track and field meets; who wrapped her up in his arms and told her he loved her.
His absence doesn’t create a hole in her heart.
Instead it just fills a section of her brain with rage.
---
Sixty-Four days after Roslyn dies, her mother takes down the family photos off the wall, and cuts her husband out, before hanging them up again, the holes in the pictures a stark reminder of who they’ve lost - a faceless figure with his arms wrapped around his wife and daughters.
JJ takes some of the clippings and hides them in a drawer in her room, worried she might forget what he looks like if she doesn’t.
She shouldn't care - he left without saying goodbye.
She cares anyway.
---
Sixty-Six days after Roslyn dies, winter break ends, and JJ goes back to school.For the second time in two months she feels everyone's eyes on her as she enters. She can feel the pity in their gazes and she wants to turn around and shout and scream at them to mind their own business - that she doesn’t need their pity.
For the first time in her life she hates being from a small town. Hates that everyone knows her business.
That she can’t just be JJ, instead of Jennifer Jareau, the girl whose sister committed suicide; the girl whose Dad left.
She stays quiet, and Liv takes her hand in the hallway - she feels that familiar jolt go through her and wonders what it means.
She holds her head high and pretends she’s fine as she walks to class.
---
Seventy-Nine days after Roslyn dies, a package arrives at JJ’s house. It’s addressed to her. She collects it off the doorstep and carries it up to her room, shutting the door behind her. Her eyes catch the return address as she flips the parcel to open it - the sight of her father’s name makes her want to throw it out without looking.
Something about how carefully the parcel is wrapped makes her stop though - it’s carefully put together, ribbon twisted around brown paper. It looks like a present and JJ freezes, wondering if maybe, just maybe he’s trying to make an effort.
If he’s remembered that he only lost Roslyn, not JJ too.
She’s not deluded enough to think he’s coming back - the pace at which he removed himself from the household made it very clear that he had no intention of returning; he had left no excuses for a way to get back inside.
There’s a resentment towards him that boils inside her chest - the ease by which he’d exited her life - seemingly forgetting he had a second daughter at all; taking something that reminded him of Roz, but not of JJ.
She tears the paper open, the first thing that falls out is a card - a Christmas Card. She opens it and a fifty dollar bill falls out, fluttering into her lap. She leaves it there, focusing instead on the words written in her Dad’s tiny, loopy handwriting.
Jennifer, it reads;
I realized I never gave you a Christmas gift. I hope this makes up for it.
Please give the folder to your Mom.
Write me any time, my address is on the envelope.
If you want to come visit me, maybe in summer? Let your Mom know and we’ll sort it out.
Lots of Love,
Dad.
JJ stares blankly at the words on the page. There’s no apology; no remorse. He wants to make up for not giving her a Christmas gift, but not for leaving her behind.
She rips the letter in half, and then in half again, and again, and again, and again, and again - until it’s tiny shreds of confetti that blanket the ground in front of her.
She hasn’t cried about him leaving yet - hasn’t wanted to shed tears when all she feels is anger - the rage filling every portion of her body not filled by sadness for Roz.
But now the tears well up in her eyes and spill over, through her eyelashes and down her face, until she’s drowning in them just like she was the morning seventy-nine days ago.
God, she wants Roslyn.
Wants Roslyn to wrap her in a hug thats so tight JJ can hardly breathe, and tell her that their Dad isn’t worth the tears; to call him a curse word even though she isn’t allowed to curse; to just be there with JJ, missing their Dad together, instead of JJ being alone and missing them both.
The gapping, Roslyn shaped, hole in her heart seems to grow impossibly bigger.
In the past seventy-three days, JJ has discovered that sometimes she hates her sister so much. Hates her for leaving - for choosing to leave and for leaving JJ alone.
That hate makes her feel guilty, because she understands - in a way no eleven year old should - that Roz didn’t leave just because she’d decided too; it’s so much more complicated than that. She’d left because she was sick and to her it had felt like there was no other way out, no escape from her feelings - from the endless amount of pain she must have been in.
And JJ hates that even more - that Roslyn hurt so much, that she felt so alone, and so sad that she saw no other option.
Mostly JJ hates herself for not saving her. For not noticing the signs; for not asking if she was okay more; for not getting up five minutes earlier on that morning; for not moving when she saw Roz in the bathtub, because maybe if she hadn’t frozen she might have been able to do something to save her sister.
Her right hand claws at her necklace.
Her left hand still rests on the package from her father, and she looks back down at it, reaching to pull out the folder he’d told her to give her Mom.
Below it is a postcard from Orlando, Florida - his new home. She tears that up too, ripping it into smaller shreds than the letter. She tells herself she doesn’t care, doesn’t want to see him - not after he just left without so much as a goodbye.
She does care - cares more than she wants to admit - and she hates the way it hurts.
She focuses instead on the folder - he’d said it was for her Mom - but she wants to see, so she opens it anyway. The rage in her brain pushes away any rational thought about the way her mother might react.
Divorce papers stare back at her, already signed by her Dad - ready for Sandy to sign and to be finalised.
The sight of the papers doesn't shock her, not really.
But the italicised words in the middle of the page catch her attention.
The divorcing parties have consented to full custody of Jennifer Kate Jareau being granted to Sandra Marie Jareau (nee Samuels). Jason Micheal Jareau consents to the removal of all parental rights to Jennifer Kate Jareau.
Deep down she already knew that he wasn’t coming back - but it still startles her, the formality of the words. The finality of the words, confirming that he’d already moved on; accepted so quickly that he didn’t want to be a part of her life anymore.
And, God she does care.
Despite what she tells herself, she cares so much.
Because he’s her Dad, and suddenly in seventy-nine days he’s stopped being her Dad. Forgotten so easily that he raised her; cared about her; loved her.
In seventy-nine days he’s gone from being her Dad , to throwing her away like she never mattered at all.
She throws the papers across the room and screams out loud - the sound ripping through her throat just like it did on the morning Roslyn died.
It pierces the silence that has filled the house since that morning, seventy-nine days ago.
It shatters the quiet in her mind and chest - filling the Roslyn shaped hole in her heart, and releasing the Dad shaped rage in her mind. The noise breaking free from the cage she’d trapped it in.
The sound fills the air; piercing the walls, wrapping it’s way around the wood, the bricks, and eventually the foundations themselves.
Her scream breaks through the silence which had been covering up her pain, and her hurt, and her emotions.
In the past seventy-nine days she’s gotten very good at pretending.
Pretending she’s fine.
Pretending everyone’s stares don’t bother her.
Pretending she doesn’t see the empty look in her mother’s eyes.
Pretending she doesn’t feel her throat starting to close every time she looks at the bathroom.
Pretending she still feels like an eleven year old girl instead of someone who’s aged years in seventy-nine days.
Pretending her world isn’t collapsing around her.
Her scream fills the air and she stops pretending.