Whatsername
"Whatsername"
A quick note: This is a song fic based on the song "Whatsername" by Green Day off of their 2004 album "American Idiot". Obvious disclaimers are obvious, I don't own the song and such, all of that. Enjoy!
It was incredible how quickly things could change in mere seconds. A simple blink of the eye and everything could be different. One second, everything is as it was; everything would be calm, collected, straightforward and easy to see. The next... everything could spiral downward faster than anyone could ever realize, and faster than they could catch it.
There was no possible way anything could be more different than it was now. That was the thought in Rudy's mind. Nothing could possibly change any further than it already had. He'd lost so much in such a small amount of time. Two family members, his best friend, and his girlfriend... gone, just like that. No longer a part of his life, with only the impacts on his life left to go on.
It frightened him, really. How drastically things could change in such a tiny amount of time, where suddenly the insignificant became more significant than he could have ever imagined. How a simple friendship with that girl had escalated to a relationship what seemed like only days ago, and had crumbled to no more than rubble and ruins what felt like seconds ago. The weight of that breakup, of that failed relationship, of the abuse and the things that he endured during and even shortly after it had all happened weighed on the young shepherd's shoulders like a wall of a thousand bricks. There wasn't anything that he could do about it, either.
It was pretty much a day like any other for the dog. Just long, tiring, and filled with annoying things that drove him insane. The heat that day was a big part of it, though thankfully it was supposed to cool off later on in the day and even rain somewhere on down the line. He was still in a bit of a daze of sorts from everything that had happened, even though practically months had passed by now. His feet simply guided him along down the sidewalk of the city, aimlessly letting them take him wherever they pleased; he didn't even feel like he was in control of his own body. He was barely even aware of his surroundings. He simply didn't care at this point about anything that was going on. No matter where those two feet that simply padded along down the street took him, he knew it wouldn't be far enough away to escape the pain and the weight on his back.
His jumbled thoughts were interrupted as he bumped into someone unexpectedly, stumbling and falling down on his chest. He flipped himself over with a slight groan, looking to the other person, the one he'd bumped into. They had also fallen down, and he quickly stood up and offered a paw down to the other person.
"Sorry...," he muttered softly as the person took his paw, and he pulled them up off the ground. As the face came into view, Rudy's eyes widened; it was the girl... the very girl who'd hurt him so badly... or was it? The young beagle girl that he'd knocked down started to walk past him when he spoke again. "Excuse me, but... do I know you?" The girl did a double take, looking at Rudy for a moment before simply shaking her head and continuing on her way.
The dog was completely thrown for a loop now. Was he seeing things? Unable to burn that girl from the deepest recesses of his mind, where those memories would reside forever? Would he never forget that girl who completely destroyed his heart, broke it into a thousand pieces without so much as even just a smidge of remorse?
There was no way to tell at the current moment. Finally a car horn told Rudy he needed to get out of the street, and he simply looked to the culprit before continuing on his way in the same slow, head-hanging pace he'd been keeping from before. It was as though, to him, that this was an unending nightmare, one that he would never wake from but always wished that he would...
It didn't take too long after that for him to reach his car, which he got into and solemnly drove home. He parked the car in his driveway and got out, heading to the door and walking inside only to be greeted by nothing but an empty house. His parents were gone, his brother hadn't come home from college for the weekend... there was no one there but himself. A long, heavy sigh left him as he headed into the kitchen, seeing a note on the countertop. He picked it up and scanned over it quickly before just tossing it back down, not caring what it said anymore. It probably said something about how his parents were out and they'd be back and they loved him, but he really didn't care at that particular moment for anything that was written on a note. He thumped up the stairs of the house to his room, where he slammed the door shut and locked it, looking around in his room. His eyes scanned across his bed, to his TV and Playstation, to his laptop on the desk and finally landed on a picture that he had framed resting on the desk near his computer. A small tear slipped from his eye as he walked to the photograph, picking it up, frame and all.
The picture was dated in April of 2014 in the bottom right corner. It had Rudy himself in the picture with his arm around that familiar beagle girl that he'd once been with... it was so long ago now that the photo had been taken; during the best of times, when they were both young and free before everything else had happened to crash the relationship to the ground. Nothing could've broken them apart at that time...
Another tear fell from the young shepherd's eye as flashes of the memories he had with this girl went through his mind, from the very first time they met to all of the good times they'd had, the struggles they'd made it through together... the pain he'd had to endure when he'd carried what was one of the most important things in his life on his shoulders and his shoulders alone. Slowly the shepherd turned the picture frame around, popping the back off of it and sliding the photo out of it to take one final look at it. It was a night to have been remembered...
Rudy took the picture and held it in his paw, walking to his door and unlocking it to walk out into the hallway. He thumped back down the stairs and took a look around; nobody had come home yet. He headed into the living room, where the fireplace rested, unused and at the moment still filled with ashes from the winter that needed to be cleaned from it. He opened the doors of the fireplace and placed the picture down standing upright against a small support that was normally used for the wood that they placed in the fireplace to burn. A lighter was then produced from the pocket of his hoodie, and he seemed to study it for a moment. Was this really necessary? Was it going to make a point to anyone but himself?
Ultimately, he didn't care. He'd done this with his pain in the past, burned it away without a second thought... but this was different. Something about it was different, and he couldn't figure out what. Finally he ignited the lighter, the flame licking just above his thumb as he brought it to the picture, hovering it away from the corner for a half second in hesitation.
He then let the flame of the lighter touch the corner of the picture, and he held it there for a few moments as it began to light. The ink in the corner bubbled and the paper that it was printed on ignited and began to burn, spreading across the top. The ink continued to bubble as the flames spread across the picture, soon heading down it to engulf the rest of the photograph in fire. The dog tasted a few of the salty tears that ran down his face on his lips as he licked them to wet them a bit. He didn't fully understand why he was crying... Maybe it was because he was letting the pain go. Maybe it was because he was burning away a piece of his own history. Maybe it was both.
Whatever it was, now that she was gone, Rudy knew he was definitely on a different path than he was before. She'd broken his heart, that girl... what the hell was her name?
He couldn't remember. Not like he wanted to anyway.
-
Soon, another school year began, and Rudy went into it hoping very much that he wouldn't be reminded of the girl that had shattered his heart. Thankfully, since the school was big, he'd probably have minimal contact with her. The school day advanced as normal, but even with as large as the school was and with as many classmates as Rudy had, he didn't see the familiar face of the girl anywhere. His curiosity grew throughout the day on what had happened to her, if she was just absent or if something more had happened, and eventually it got to the point where he couldn't simply sit and not know anymore. Close to the end of the day, during his free period, the dog went down to the front office, ringing the bell at the front to gain the attention of the attendant there.
"Can I help you?" the attendant asked.
"Yeah, uh... do you have a file on a girl from my class, a beagle? About five two, a little bigger in the hips, um... can't remember her name," Rudy explained.
"Well... it sounds like you're describing-" The attendant was cut off as Rudy brought his hand up, making a motion for her to stop speaking.
"I'd rather not be able to remember that name," the dog said, shaking his head. "Don't ask."
"Ah, well... let me see what I can find for you." The secretary got onto a computer on the desk, typing away on the keyboard for a moment. "Well, it says here that she finished last year's school year with average grades, C's and B's mostly... she didn't enroll this year. Hm." The secretary looked a bit confused. "I suppose I could call the number here..."
"Don't bother. I'll find out myself, ask around a little. Thanks." Rudy then walked away from the office and headed back up to where his locker was, spinning the lock around to enter his combination and get out a folder for his last class of the day. The bell rang just as he shut his locker, leaving him just enough time to go and talk to a friend of his that he knew was going the same way as he was. Sure enough, he ran into him in the hallway.
"Hey dude, what's up?" Rudy said to the raccoon, Quentin, as he saw him.
"Not much man, how'd the last couple weeks of summer go?" Quentin responded as they walked down the hallway.
"Pretty bad, honestly. Was all depressed the whole time about what happened with her," Rudy replied.
"Ah, well... chin up man. Someone else will come along," Quentin told him.
"Maybe... you know what happened to her, dude? She didn't enroll this year..."
"I heard some shit from people who know her pretty well. They all say she's a complete and total bitch now. You know that asshole that she cheated on you with? Fuckin'... what's his face?"
"Yeah, what about him?"
"Apparently she ran off with him. Ditched her parent's house in the middle of the night and just fucking scrammed."
"What? Where the hell did they go?"
"I don't know and I don't give a fuck. You shouldn't either, man. Better to let that girl go and never look back on the time you had with her. Shit will fuck you up for a long, long time. Trust me." He shrugged as he turned and walked into a different classroom without any further word, leaving Rudy standing by himself in the middle of the hallway for a few moments before he continued on to class.
The day came to a close shortly after that. Rudy didn't talk to anyone on the way out, not even Quentin, as he walked out to his car and started it up. He plugged his phone into the auxiliary cord in the car and hit shuffle on his playlist of music, but he stopped dead in his tracks as he heard the opening notes of the song. He quickly grabbed the phone and skipped the song, tossing it back down onto the seat afterwards as he leaned his head against the steering wheel, wiping a couple of tears from his eyes.
"Fuckin'... can't even listen to that anymore...," the dog whispered to himself as he brought his head up from the steering wheel and put his car in gear, pulling away from the school. Thankfully his house was only a ten or so minute drive from the school, and he pulled up to his house in pretty much no time. He parked his car in the driveway and gathered his things, getting out and heading inside.
"Hey," his mother greeted him as Rudy dropped his book bag on the floor beside the door as he shut it.
"Hi," the dog said in a voice so quiet that his mom could barely hear him. She could easily see that her son wasn't in a good state of mind, and though she didn't want to leave him alone it seemed he wanted to be that way.
"Dinner should be ready in a couple of hours, kiddo," she said to him as he trudged towards the stairs, climbing onto the first step. "We're having your favorite tonight."
"Cool," Rudy said with next to no emotion in his voice as he simply walked up the staircase, heading up towards his room. His mother only sighed, turning back to the stove. She looked over towards the phone for a moment, debating calling the psychologist that she'd had Rudy go see a few times in the past, but decided against it.
Rudy was now up in his room, lying on his bed as he usually did with the TV playing something in the background. Some sitcom or something, he didn't care. He was too busy on his laptop to notice, and his headphones were on, playing some music through them. He was on Facebook at the moment, checking messages and status updates from his friends when his phone buzzed with a text message. He looked to where it was, and it rested where his wallet was on his dresser. He got up with a small grunt, taking off his headphones and walking over to the phone, swiping it off of the dresser and knocking his wallet and a couple of other things off in the process. He groaned a little, tossing his phone onto the bed and bending down to pick up the things he'd knocked onto the floor, but he stopped in his tracks as a picture that had apparently dislodged and fallen out of his wallet caught his eye.
It was another picture of his now ex girlfriend. He picked it up and looked at it for a moment before frowning in a manner of disapproval and anger, grabbing a lighter off of his dresser and just lighting the picture on fire right then and there. He tossed it into a nearby trash can, which thankfully was empty, where the picture simply burned until there was nothing left of it to burn. The canine could smell the burnt photo in the air of his room now, and slowly he picked up his things, placing them back onto the dresser before flopping down onto the bed and looking at his phone. The text was from Quentin, and simply read "Like I said, man, forget her. She isn't worth your time."
Even still, Rudy couldn't forget her just like that, no matter how many times people told him to do it. There was something about that girl, something that just lingered around like a bad taste in his mouth. He could remember the face, but the name just wouldn't come to mind...
And yet, even after all that she'd done to him he still wondered how she'd been.
-
Routine settled in at Rudy's house shortly after the school year began. Every day was the same monotonous pattern, with Rudy getting up at 7:00 every morning to head to school and coming home every day at 4:30. His mental state, however, was slowly beginning to improve. As time went on, things slowly faded away into the background, what she'd done to him meaning less and less every day. Things continued as normal from there.
Unlike where he was at the end of the summer, Rudy had come far. Back then it had seemed as though everything that had befallen him had happened only mere moments before; now, it seemed like forever ago that it happened. No longer was it holding him back; his grades and the work he was putting in on his car displayed that easily. His sociality returned, hanging out with his friends more often and heading outside quite a bit more as well. The depression he'd been in slowly began to subside.
However... it wasn't as though he'd forgotten about everything that had happened entirely. He still remembered. He still knew exactly what had happened and acknowledged what it had done to him. But the regrets he had were useless anyway. They wouldn't get him anywhere in life, nor would they do him any good; rather, he should take what happened and turn it into a learning experience, make it so that he knew what he wanted to avoid happening again and what he needed to do in order to prevent it.
Even with all of that in mind, though, the dog couldn't shake her from his head. She was in there, always nagging at the back of his mind. Even now as he walked down the streets of downtown, heading back towards his car as usual after hanging out with his friends. It was late that night, somewhere around 11 PM already; thankfully there was no school tomorrow since it was the weekend. His resilience to everything that went on in his head was slipping because of his current tired state, and he shook his head a little as he walked across a crosswalk.
And it happened again. He ran straight into someone else who, like Rudy, evidently hadn't been paying too close of attention. He managed to keep himself upright and catch the person he'd run into as they were falling, pulling them back up.
"Sorry about that," Rudy said to the person he'd nearly knocked over, a rabbit.
"Eheh... it's alright, my fault," the rabbit said to him as Rudy let him go, both of them standing upright now. The rabbit cocked his head a little as he looked at the dog, his look thoughtful. "Hey, you alright? You look a little... I dunno, out of it or something." Rudy raised an eyebrow at the question, but he answered it nonetheless.
"I mean... kinda, I guess?" the dog stuttered. "Definitely not one hundred percent, if that's what you're asking, but..."
"Hey, whatever's wrong, things will get better soon. Trust me on that one." Rudy just looked down at the rabbit again, who wore a smile as big as could be. "Probably about a girl, right?"
"...How did you know?" Rudy asked him quietly.
"Lucky guess. What say you talk with me about it? I got nothin' better to do tonight, and it'll keep me out of trouble, heheh." The rabbit stuck his tongue out a little, to which Rudy laughed.
"I guess it can't hurt," the dog said. "Lead the way." The rabbit nodded, that smile still on his face, and simply started walking again, Rudy in tow.
"What was her name?" the rabbit asked.
"...Let's just call her Whatsername," Rudy told him.
"And what really happened?"
"A lot of things. It seems like forever ago now..."
"In the middle of forgetting or something?"
"Forgetting her... but not the time." The rabbit just looked back at Rudy for a second, a bit of a smirk on his face.
"That's something a lot of people don't do," he said. "They'd rather just forget entirely."
"I want to remember what happened, but not her," Rudy told him. "So that I know what I don't ever want to experience again." The rabbit's smirk grew.
"The name's Kyle."
"Rudy."
Both smiled as they shook hands.