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She goes back to Chicago for Frank’s funeral.
She has tried to go back before. She knows that the only reason she manages now is because she knows her family needs her.
It’s not like they haven’t needed her before, Lip in his sobriety, Ian with his bipolar, Debbie with her daughter, Carl with trying to get on the straight path and Liam… Dear Liam, who can’t even remember any good times with their parents, who has only her as kind of a parent.
But she has been with them. She has texted and called all the time, especially with Liam per video. She has still supported them, she just… hasn’t been actually there to get too involved, to take over. It has honestly done her good and all of her siblings have supported her very much.
Yes, she has also missed a lot. She wanted to hold Freddie and wanted to be at Ian’s wedding but when she had been at the train station time and time again she just hadn’t been able to go. She found herself frozen to a spot every time, flashing back.
She saw herself at the hospital with Lip and Ian. She saw herself feeding Debbie, just being born, Monica having a manic episode and she and Frank having parties without noticing their kids. She saw herself comforting Carl after Frank let him fall in a drunken state and Monica ran out after screaming at Frank for it. She saw herself with Liam in her arms, knowing that their parents wouldn’t be there, their absence becoming longer, their stays shorter and worse.
She saw herself crying at Ian’s hospital bed, both Lip and Ian asleep. She saw herself crying after rocking Debbie to sleep after her feeding. She saw herself crying after the boys distracted Carl to play with them and Debbie outside, her staying back in the house. She saw herself crying, endless nights wondering how to take care of five kids.
Then there was that night, way before Liam was even born, Lip and Ian in middle school, Debbie and Carl in elementary school, where she decided to drop out of high school to get in more shifts of the various jobs she tried to work. Frank and Monica payed less and less bills and she hadn’t seen them for a while at that point. She knew she had to do it.
There she lied in her dark room and she couldn’t help but cry, silently to not wake her siblings. As a child she always dreamed of getting her high school diploma, maybe even a college degree. Then she could get out.
But it wasn’t in her cards, it wasn’t a possibility. She would never get out, that’s what she thought. That’s why she absolutely needed to get out when she left Chicago. But that night, she thought she never would. She could only help her siblings to get out, hope for a better life for them.
She knows it hasn’t been her longest nights. There were so many where their parents were partying or fighting and her siblings needed comfort, where she had to check on them regularly to make sure everyone was okay. Those must’ve been at least as long. But the morning of that night was the morning where she perfected her make up game in the earliest hours, making sure her siblings wouldn’t see how much she cried and how tired she was, before she plastered a smile on her face and told them of her dropping out over breakfast.
Why is Frank’s death the thing that makes her return?
She doesn’t know but maybe she should try therapy. Ian has started and is talking positively about it.
She’s happy to see her family again either way. There are so many hugs exchanged and Liam immediately cries as they hug. Of course he does, because it’s too much emotionally, finally really seeing Fiona again and losing his father that he still loved. Fiona feels so damn sorry for him. She wonders if she betrayed him by leaving but Liam has been one of her strongest supporters whenever they talked. Liam maybe has the oldest soul of all of them, is the strongest despite everything. Lip has once said on the phone that it was because Fiona raised him and their parents weren’t able to mess up as much, but she feels like she can’t take credit. Especially after she has left him too.
She finally gets to hold Freddie, meet Tami, and hell, even Mickey hugs her in greeting!
The funeral isn’t a sad affair. They use their old home for the reception or rather an “after party” that Frank would like, just without as much alcohol and without harder drugs. It’s the last thing they’ll use the home for; Fiona will use her stay to make the sell that Lip wanted official. Everyone has already moved but they’ll stay one last night, V and Kev with their kids too.
It’s a loud party and it reminds Fiona of so many parties thrown in this house. Parties with a few of the best moments she has had with Frank especially.
It’s getting late and she’s engulfed in those memories, as her eyes meet Mickey’s as she turns to leave the house. She just see him moving over to Ian. She wonders if he cried over his father’s death. No, probably not. Only a deranged person would cry over a death of a parent that abused you time and time again.
She is that deranged person without a doubt. That’s why tears start streaming as soon as she has carefully closed the door behind her. This is not for her siblings to see. It never has been.
She walks down the stairs to the old backyard that’s so riddled with memories as well, good and bad, in the neighborhood that has changed so much and will change even more with people like Frank dying away.
She holds herself like she has done endless times and hasn’t even heard the door, before she gets engulfed in other arms, Ian’s first, then Lip’s and Liam’s and Debbie’s and Carl’s and even Franny squeezes between the grown ups’ legs to hugs hers.
Instead of pulling herself together, she absolutely and violently starts sobbing. Her family is holding her.