Nothing.

As long as your hands are bound by fear.

It was the truth, and he knew it; he simply didn’t know where it came from.

What untried part of his soul had this level of wisdom?

He had made himself nothing.

And when his father died that had become apparent, because he had lost his purpose and his meaning.

Now that her father was dead, he felt the same. Except... She was still here.

She was still here, and the promise of his child yet existed.

When his father died, his mother had still been gone. His brother had still been dead.

And he had felt helpless in the face of that reality. Of that grief.

Jessie was still here. And that meant that at this moment he was choosing fear over her. Over his child.

And that made him rage.

At himself. At everything he was.

He had rejected her.

And he was nothing now, nothing more than that boy who’d walked away.

Dammit all, his father still held the keys.

He had never escaped. The vengeance had never been his.

He had spent all these years drinking poison and waiting for it to kill his father. His father had died of old age. His father had died after a long, bitter life.

Ewan had been allowing his father to kill him. All these years.

What he could be; what he could have.

Any hopes, any dreams, any love.

Jessie. He wanted Jessie.

He wanted to feel no fear so that he could have her.

You won’t. You always have the memory of your mother. You will always have the memory of your brother.

He sat there in that certainty. It was true.

He would always remember their deaths. He would always remember that tragedy. And the abuse that had followed.

He had to accept it. Something that happened. Something that was part of him.

And he had to find it in himself to choose to have more.

To be more than pain and suffering. To be more than his father had allowed him to be.

He had to stop letting that old man destroy him.