November 7, 2010

Chapter 19: The End of a Legacy

Posted in Chapter 19 tagged Legacy, Sims 3, Sydney Van Pagan, Van Pagan Legacy at 2:49 pm by taishan16

Author’s Note: Well, here it is, the final chapter. I kind of rushed through this a bit, and I am sorry, but I’ve been really busy lately, and if I didn’t post  this now, then I never would. I just want to thank all the people who took the time to read this. Thank you all so much, you really made writing this worth it.

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Chapter 19: The End of a Legacy

Ruben didn’t outright accuse Havana of cheating, but he began to see things differently. Finding excuses to skip work for the day, he began to spend more and more time around the house, just watching to see what was out of place. It disturbed him a bit to see how everything in the house seemed to flow well without him. His son Brisbane barely knew his face, and he hated how Dewey was the first person the little boy and Havana called for whenever they needed anything.  Ruben realized he couldn’t let things continue this way, and decided to quit his job. He got a job in the criminal track where he could work less hours and made over his appearance to make himself seem more cool, but unfortunately ended up only having the opposite effect.

Ruben = Mr. Cool

Making himself over didn’t really change things between Ruben and his wife, but it did make Havana and Dewey decide to put some distance in their relationship.  Neither of them liked the idea very much, but knew that it was for the best. Things had, after all, gotten out of hand. Still, though they put distance between them, this did not include Dewey moving out of the house, something he absolutely refused to do, especially since Havana had just delivered his baby, a little girl named Sydney.    

It's a girl!

Daddy's girl

Sydney was Dewey’s life. Not that he wasn’t extremely fond of his nephew Brisbane, who was so alike him personality wise that he could have been his own son. But he seemed to have that special bond with his daughter. She was the first person he went to whenever  he  entered the house, and he seemed to go on the offensive if Ruben even looked like he was going to touch her, which upped the tension between the two brothers considerably, especially since neither Dewey nor Havana had yet to admit publicly that he was the father. By the time she became a toddler, Ruben had stopped trying to put up any pretense at being the girl’s father.

Hands off

Baby Sydney

Brisbane

Even Havana seemed to dote more on the little girl, giving the baby all the love and attention she couldn’t give to the girl’s father. Sydney for her part, lavished in all of the attention, and was a sweet little thing. That is, until she became school aged and her personality changed drastically. Not that she wasn’t still sweet, she really did have her moments of adorableness, but upon aging she had developed the hothead trait and found herself blowing up at the smallest things. Daddy’s precious angel could just as easily become his terror of a demon at the drop of a hat, but mostly with everyone else. With Dewey, she tended to cling to him and see him as her knight in shining armor to save her from the rest of the world.

Sydney

The one thing that would keep Sydney calm was her love of music. It seems she also developed her virtuoso’s mother’s obsession for all things musical. But where Havana had allowed marriage and family to hold her back from becoming the rock star she had long dreamed of, she was determined to not let the same happen to her daughter. Buying a guitar, giving her lessons, and taking her regularly to concerts, meant that by the time Sydney became a teenager she was already an accomplished musician and had a love of music deeply rooted in her soul.

School of rock

Her dream of being a rockstar taking precedence, Sydney decided that nothing else in her life mattered. Especially school, she spent more time skipping than actually attending, and when she did go she slept through most of her classes. Naturally this didn’t sit well with her parents, who tried everything they could to stop her from failing or being a drop out. But Sydney didn’t care, she was a musician, the only math she figured she needed was the numbers to count off the start of a song. With this mentality in mind, she finally did stop going to school, choosing instead to spend her time hanging around the new nightclubs that had sprung up around town, and trying to get gigs wherever she could, even if that meant playing her guitar in the park until wee hours of the night or hogging the karaoke machine. 

Teen Sydney

Superstar Sydney and Dewey

Drama queen

It wasn’t until Sydney reached the legal age as a young adult before she was able to get a proper job of tending bar at the local club that steered her on course for the rest of her life. Often finding herself serving drinks to the featured bands, it was there that’s she met Frankie, the lead guitar player from one of the new up-and-coming bands in town. Finding herself instantly attracted to him, she began to see Frankie as more than a love interest, but also as a means to an end. Frankie may be new to town, but he already had dozens of connections to all the right people in the business. That info alone was enough to have Sydney star struck. With an offer from him to tour with them as the band’s bassist and singer, Sydney found herself with a dilemma on her hands. Touring with the band would put her one step closer to seeing her name in lights, but it would also mean she would forfeit the family legacy that was left to her.

All about Frankie

As expected, Sydney’s family wasn’t happy with the situation one bit. Havana was more understanding about it than the rest, after all, she had long dreamed of doing it herself, but she feared seeing her family’s legacy die. With no female heir as a spare, the house and money would all go to one of the distant cousins around town once Havana died, and she had no daughter living in the house to claim it. Dewey didn’t care about that; he just didn’t want to see his little girl going off with some random guy she barely knew for a pipe dream.

Siblings all grown up

Despite this, Sydney felt it was an offer she couldn’t pass up. If she let it go now, there was no telling if or when she’d be offered another one, and if she stayed behind she would always regret it. So packing up her things, she had little more than her guitar and duffel bag when she slipped out of the house late one night, and into Frankie’s waiting car. Not even bothering to leave a note. They may all not be on speaking terms after this, but Sydney was sure that some day after she made it big they would see that it all had been worth it.

As expected, the Van Pagan household was in an uproar the next day when they realized Sydney was gone. Angry and sad at their daughter for having left like that, it was a long while before the hurt had dulled enough that they could even mention her name aloud.

Time passed, and it wasn’t until Havana left out of the house to get the morning paper that she realized that there was a basket on her doorstep. Lifting back the cover, somehow she wasn’t really surprised to see the scrunched up face of a little baby staring back at her as it sucked on its fingers. Not sure of what to make of the sight, Havana searched through the blankets hoping to find some bit of identification, which turned up a short slip of paper, and not much else.

Nothing but a short note explaining:

“We named her Seoul on account of we were working on a new rock/blues fusion when I had her Korea.”

Tucking the letter in her pocket, she lifted the baby up slowly. No doubt the letter was from her wayward daughter. Havana could do nothing but shake her head. Maybe the Van Pagan legacy wasn’t dead after all…

baby Seoul, the next generation

The End…

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