How pathetic.
"Just walk away," it said, "Retreat and find a place to recover."
She did as she was told, scanning the lake house's living room. The boys were all in the kitchen, noisily scrounging around for sandwich materials, so she slipped away unnoticed down the dark hallway. Without thinking, she went into her room, an obvious hideout, and shut the non-locking door behind her, just hoping vaguely that no one would try the handle.
"Now sit down," it said, "and cry."
Easy.
She settled on the corner of the queen-sized bed, her fingers digging deeply into the tree-print comforter. Within seconds, there were tears: hot, helpless tears followed by screams. If she had been out in the forest alone at night like when she was a child, she would have let them go, screaming these pathetic, horrendous shrieks of desperation. Instead, she caught the noise, just throwing the action with her head tilted back, her throat rippling with pain.
Pathetic, pathetic, pathetic.
No matter what, your life is worthless.
The wild look in his eyes, the way he seemed to be grabbing her shoulders and yelling at her - man, that felt so bad. Why did games always go wrong with these lethal people? Bruised hands, thoughtless words. Sometimes, she got the sense that nothing ever changed between then and now.
I'm sorry that I let you down.
Just like in that muggy summer with the smell of American coffee lingering in the air, if he was mad, she would have taken his punishment submissively. She would have bowed her head and apologized. If he wanted to yell because she was unimportant or burdensome, he should have the right to yell.
No matter how much you accomplish, you are still pathetic.
You can never be good enough.
In every sense, you are without value.
Well, that was a lie, because he - neither of them, really - had any say over her intrinsic value. "Only God does," it reminded her, and, for a second, that argument gave her hope. She lifted her head, her tears stopping for a second, but that was too much effort to pick up her mind's edge and fight - and despair proved stronger. In another second, darkness had crushed the righteous action in its fist, welcoming that familiar sense of hopelessness.
She cried for a long time, weak gasps and whimpers escaping her tired body. Eventually, that death-loving urge became too strong, and she scratched at her forearms, leaving large swaths of red and white inflamed skin. She was spiraling, and, at this point, she knew she was spiraling. After dealing with this villain in her for so long, she knew what it said, what it tried to do, how it would make her bleed as she tried to cut her flesh to the bone.
Worthless.
Pathetic.
Burdensome.
These are the words that describe you.
"No," she said to no one, her panic becoming more and more violent. Was she back here after putting up a fight for so long? Even though she had been denying that sense since last spring, was she really, truly as needless and fake as she kept thinking she was? If he was yelling, just like they all did, then she was unloved.
That was all.
Her life was worthless.
Weapon.
Frantically, her bloodshot eyes flit across the room for anything. Pain broke this cycle: glass, a knife, a piece of paper, anything that could make her bleed. She was trapped, trapped in the soft, secure, weaponless bedroom of a vacation home. She could run out now and make a scene, crashing into the arms of her brother to only gain more attention - and maybe that would save her - or she could keep struggling here. What would that do anyway? They would all be asking her what's wrong, and what could she say other than that she wanted to die?
"Someone--"
That sea of complete desperation.
"--someone help me."
"Hey, does anyone know where she went?"
Silence.
Footsteps.
...no.
Closing her eyes tightly, she sat still, her adrenaline peaking. For a second, the thought crossed her mind that, like a child in a thunderstorm, she could hide in the closet with her hands over he ears - but that would be even harder to explain if he found her. He stood at the bathroom door at the end of the hallway, knocking, and then came back down, pausing at the other side of the closed door after he knocked.
"Hello?"
She was shaking uncontrollably, a whooshing in her ears as her chest tightened. No one ever came after her. If he even dared to intrude on this privacy of hers--
...but, at the same time, she wanted him to come in so badly that tears started squeezing out of her shut eyes again. Even if she was just dead weight to him, she wanted him to come, to love her, to heal her with those soft words like he always did. But how could she ask for even more? Those piercing snarls began flooding her mind again: "Shut up! Shut up! SHUT. UP."
She had yelled back at him too...
Too pathetic...
Before she could find the courage to cry for help, he had moved on to the other bedroom on the hallway, knocking there. In that moment, she felt both relief and death, covering her face with her arm. The salt from her tears stung her scratched skin, but she was safe. Out of the two disasters: her remaining in that room, locked and alone, or him coming in after her, she had avoided the worst. Even if this path meant that she would suffer and sacrifice herself to save him...
Well, she didn't deserve his help anyway.
You're just a burden on him.
When he got no response from the other empty bedroom, the small-steps hero called to the others in the kitchen, "Which bedroom is hers?"
One of them replied with the correct answer, and the footsteps came back with only a perfunctory knock this time. The doorknob turned, and he was there in the doorway so suddenly that she jerked in alarm.
Instantly, the tears stopped, and she hastily rolled down her sleeves. Then, he called out her name in a voice full of sadness, and that was all that the solider in her could do to regulate her.
Boom.
A gunshot in his voice.
Her strength took a direct hit.
In her name, he had given her permission to be weak. "I know you are here, and I came after you," he said in his actions, and she was losing more and more control. Heaving for breath, she keened, no longer able to hide her cries, and he pushed further in to her chaos, closing the door behind him and sitting on the bed next to her.
Stop, stop, stop.
Anyone who saw this weakness of hers before had left her with an "oops, sorry" - but here was the punk, trying to peer closer into her face scrawled over with embarrassing, illogical self-hatred. Even worse, he felt like he had some responsibility for her feelings, didn't he? She could tell that much by his quiet caution.
Shielding her face from his view with one hand, still acting like a toddler, she hunched her shoulders and tried to disappear - but that felt awful too, pushing him away like that. He seemed concerned. After the first few times, she got the idea that he should be jaded to this by now, but he never seemed that way, not even now as he started talking like he always did, his voice low and soft and hesitating.
What was he saying? She never paid too much attention to the words, but to his presence and his feelings of overwhelming distress for her. How she even knew that was a mystery since she was too fragile to even search his face. He apologized for the way he acted, saying that he put her in a horrible position, and she murmured some short, pathetic replies, too angry at herself to completely neglect his kindness.
What...was wrong with him?
She avoided his steady gaze, but she was crying irrepressibly again, her shoulders shaking. She could perceive his desire to hold her then too, to wrap her in his arms and never let go - and how much he fought that off in respect to their decision.
"I--"
Fate was rude, like usual.
Before the conversation could lift off into its regular flying pattern, the voices in the living room called them and said that they were going to start their next session soon. Another external force caused another reversal, and the solider came back to life. While he got up and responded to them, she went to the bathroom, scrubbing away her tears with icy water to reduce the swelling. Maybe the others would notice that she had been crying, but they shouldn't know how close she was to hitting the bottom of the cliff.
If he had just left me like a sane person...
He stood in the doorway of her bedroom again, watching her from there with those eyes filled with grief. Flicking the lights off in the bathroom and drying her face, she walked towards him and pushed her face into his shoulder without hesitation, breathing in his scent and feeling the warmth of his jacket pressed against her numb skin. He stood with his arms at his sides, not touching her, and, though her palms raised instinctively, she also stood her ground, brushing the ridges of his clothes with the left side of her lips.
He said something, and she pulled away to listen, her gaze still cast down.
When he was done, she rested her forehead on his chest for another moment before gathering strength to go out to the others. In the dim mirror in the hallway, she stretched her pretty face into a convincing smile, squinting her eyes forcefully, and then went out into the sunny meeting room with an unnerving laugh.
Fake.
~ ~ ~
That afternoon, he took her back to his apartment, the late sunlight playing on her hair and eyes as she rested her head in his lap on the long car-ride. She should have apologized to her other friends who drove - for being antisocial and pathetic - but apathy and numbness had her completely surrendered.
Once they were dropped off, they walked quickly inside, cutting over the well-manicured grass with some admitted guilt and a quick laugh. The air was too cold, and they were both too tired, so the heinous act was overlooked with some effort.
Then, for the rest of that day, they rested together. There was a big, thick, green-and-red comforter that smelled like him and his fingertips playing on her face, funny videos and home-made beef bourguignon over rice, and his eyes, watching her steadily as she calmed down.
He was like that.
Protecting her.
Loving her.
Talking to her that night with her brother about her misplaced sense of value.
She knew what she had done wrong anyway.
The point is that no one gave him permission to intrude into her darkness, and he did anyway, walking through her hell consistently like he had been there before. With that calm readiness, he kept naming her crows and demons, smiling softly, and holding her close to him in the night.
Is that love then? To fall for a hero who keeps saving you?
I'm...helpless.
~ ~ ~
Bad ending but I'm too tired and emotional to care haha. No amount of my editing is ever going to convey how this feels anyway; I'm pretty convinced of that at this point.
Night, y'all.
Write on!
Clove
