Chapter Text
Ever since she was a little girl, Roxanne Lalonde was a tad bit different.
As a youngster, she was bitter and terribly shy. As she got older, she got better, but she also got worse. Monsters plagued her mind – not the kind that hid in your closet, or under the bed, but rather, the kind of beasts that hid in the cabinets, among bottles and corks. The monsters scared her, and moreover, they scarred her – thighs and wrists ruined, blood loss high from the alcohol that thinned it.
Acquaintances with all and friends with none; that was Roxy’s life. A sad state to be in, perhaps, but the young woman barely even noticed through her blurry haze.
Junior High was plagued with drugs and cigarettes and distilled moonshine hidden in water bottles. The school’s sheer lack of attention towards their students was practically horrifying, but none of the kids cared, so few parents did, either. It wasn’t like any prestigious kids went to that damned district. Even Roxy – rich, intelligent Roxy – was considered low-class because of her behavior.
She didn’t mind.
An only child, she got everything she wanted. A daughter of a woman like Rose Lalonde, she got nothing she needed. The girl craved attention like oxygen, hung on anyone who’d show her an ounce of care. She screwed any boy who gave her the time of day and believed any boy who’d tell her they loved her, and when those heartbreaks weren’t enough, even the other team couldn’t sate the attention she needed. Her water, her sustenance, her lifeblood: she needed care and she never got any.
Roxy found that a liquor cabinet was the only thing that would never leave her, the only thing that would listen to her woes and drown her demons when she couldn’t do it herself, and became completely dependent on it. Drank it with her cereal each morning, practically.
The heartbreaks were beaten back by Jack Daniels, the only man she’d ever loved; the abandonment was forgotten with Absolut distractions; the fear was conquered with Charlemagn- er, shit. Champagne.
Hung up on a constant dosage of Hangar One, Roxy soon forgot what it was like to see straight, to hear things like they weren’t underwater, to smell anything but booze on her breathe. It was a bitter life that burned in her throat, and she simply wasn’t capable of caring.
Her first friend was found in the seventh grade; a stout, round girl with bright blue eyes and bubbly laughter and a posh vernacular, Jane Crocker turned out to be the kindest, sweetest thing that ever happened to Roxy. She cared about her. Fussed over the prominence of her bones, kissed her cheeks and promised that things would get better (they never did, but Rox always appreciated a kind lie).
She finally felt loved.
Jane and Roxy were true ‘biffsies fo’ life!!’, and Jane didn’t mind the blonde clinging to her, needing her attention more than anything, because she took the time to understand that Roxy didn’t have anyone else to give it to her. Even in her angry moments, when the Lalonde broke down, freaked out, screamed about not wanting her pity, Jane did not leave her – Jane stayed and helped her calm down.
Then sweet, sweet Janey started working.
They didn’t hang out as much, and Roxy was just too much of a mess for Jane to handle anymore. She tried (bless her heart) but Roxy was too much to handle for anyone.
No one could ever love a girl like her.
No one.
The roof of the apartment complex was cold; the Ohio wind whipped her thin frame back and forth like a sprout in a hurricane. Roxanne was barely much more than bones, some skin layered over, her hair brittle and thin, nearly as wispy as the rest of her.
She was alone up here.
It wasn’t very different from anywhere else, though.
The blonde was wheezing with gross sobs, but the sounds of her wheezing and weeping were swept up in the wind and pushed right back to her, swallowed up by her own self-hate, like a slap in the face for ever being so weak as to cry in the first place.
Roxy shrugged off her jacket, let it slump to the ground, and the slug she took from the bottle in her hand was the last as she let it clatter against the cement below her feet. It didn’t shatter, but her heart did, for the millionth time today, and her shoes were toed off, too, feet sockless and getting soaked from the tattered bottoms of her jeans. Each step was slow and shaky, the rest of her trembling just as badly, and Roxy seated herself on the very edge of the apartment building, legs hanging down over the legs with little care.
“This ‘s it, babes,” she murmured softly to herself with an absent sniffle, pink-glossed lips curled into a hazy, bitter smile. The little tune was hummed under her breath, and as she tipped forward, Roxy imagined someone who cared enough to teach her how to escape the bottled-up beasts she loved so dearly, the monsters that had mastered their spell of Stockholm’s Syndrome over her.
“Fina’bly gonna make momma proud.”