Catharsis: Part 1

Aria leapt into the air, music notes aiding her ascent into the sky, all the while fending off Ahzef’s pestering attacks—shadow puppets that danced along the golden dunes, their claws matching her alacrity as they pursued her with relentless bloodlust. Ahzef was frustrated, she could tell by his inconsistent attacks and the way he couldn’t stop glaring at her—she loved it. He’d occasionally fly after her only to get knocked back into the sand. She never could have imagined that piecing the final fragments of her past together would lead to such… calm.

Her baton caressed the air, gentler than a feather; her heart synced to the rhythm of her music; her breathing stabilized as her earlier abhorrence faded to bouts of girlish laughter and stifled giggles. Something in the back of her mind offered her a cautious warning, however. Despite her fun, she knew Ahzef’s attacks were strangely underwhelming. Sure, she had figured out that she could slow just about anything he threw at her simply by pointing her baton at it, but that didn’t explain the surprising underperformance. She kept a watchful eye on the devil. Her last attack had forced him miles into the Chiiphan desert only for him to suddenly reappear in the same spot seconds later—the power behind her attacks didn’t seem to faze him, yet he continued to just… stand there… like he was waiting for something.

This unnerved her, causing her own melodic aria to falter. Notes vanished from beneath her feet for less than a second before she promptly regained form, keeping the music cheery, bright, and on-tempo. She could see the desert floor beneath her, pristine and shimmering as they reflected the regal auroras overhead. Her attention shifted to Brendan, still stuck in a slow-motion display like sluggish water in an icy river—right where she left him, but he was defenseless in his current position… she needed to move the fight. If she tried to flee, Ahzef would surely take a shot at Brendan—he’d even the odds, no matter how dirty he had to get.

Her current plan was to take the fight into the sky. She could easily support herself atop the pristine surface of her music notes, simultaneously fending off Azhef’s lackluster attacks… except that he wasn’t following her. Did he finally get tired of trying to chase her down, deciding instead to stand there and sulk? Or was he just being a poor sport because she had the upper hand, the battle currently tuned to her favor? Somehow, she knew neither reason offered substantial explanation—Ahzef’s lack of moves against Brendan struck her as odd. Was there some unrevealed facet of his grand plan? Why was he just standing there, not attacking?

She twirled the baton, creating a golden shield of sand around Brendan, a vortex of golden particles strong enough to repel any physical attacks. Positioning herself so she could see into the swirling funnel, she turned her head away from Ahzef… and received the answers to her questions.

A blinding flash filled her vision, temporarily nullifying her sight, but she could still sense that Ahzef hadn’t moved. The static that bit at her skin told her he’d tried to strike her with what she could only assume was lightning, the thundering boom that rolled across the desert the final piece to the electrifying revelation she’d come to: he was playing on her emotions and the love she had for Brendan. By turning her head away, she’d purposefully allowed Ahzef to attack her, tricking him into thinking she couldn’t bear to leave her future boyfriend unguarded. By momentarily dividing her attention, the devil had taken the opportunity to strike her down, wings clipped like an injured bird. Little did he know, she’d taken his attack on purpose. While the main bolt had missed her, only by mere inches, she hadn’t been so fortunate with its branches. Any exposed skin now sizzled with electric heat, a painful reminder that she was always seconds from death as blisters formed along her arms and on the backs of her hands. Still, she knew she had to take the hit if she wanted the answers to her questions. Her gamble had paid off.

“You’re such a pest,” Aria said, teeth clenched, “but now I know how to hurt you.”

She rose the baton again, telling the music to enter fermata—a longer than usual rest. Placing the nature-turned-material-object in her hair, she began to trace the air with her fingers. In a matter of seconds, she’d taken the stanzas from the music in her mind and turned them into tangible objects—it was the same song she’d been composing and conducting. Closing her fingers around the obsidian-like bars, she flung them into the desert around Ahzef, trapping him inside of the newly built musical cage.

“Not even the princesses got this creative,” he noted, gripping the bars. “Let’s see how long you can hold me here.” A haunting laugh rose from deep within his chest, guttural. “How sure are you that you’ve really trapped me here?”

Aria stopped mid-trace, halting the creation of a new musical weapon—this time a sharpened whole rest. “What… do you mean by that?”

“Have you even been paying attention to who you’ve been so mercilessly pounding? How certain are you that I haven’t already penetrated the deepest layers of your unconscious mind, twisting and reshaping the things that scare you the most? Warped amalgamations of pure terror.”

“I… I would know if you’d done something like that,” she countered. “In no world would I have ever invited you into my mind.”

“Are you sure? What about the early days, when you were taking all of those pills? Bottle by bottle, you sank deeper and deeper into the abyss, hopelessly praying that someone or something would you pull you out and rescue you.”

“My thoughts and memories are my own. I walled my mind off a long time ago without even the slightest crack!”

Ahzef leered at her. “Then what do you suppose happened when you retreated back into those grueling high school memories, looking for some kind of comfort where there was none? Perhaps you might recall the moment you looked out the window at lunch that one afternoon. Is that boy really who you think you’re protecting?”

She rubbed her eyes, still trying to clear the spots, but there was no one else around aside from Ahzef, Brendan, and herself. Brendan was behind her, in the opposite direction of her attacks, and Ahzef was in front. To suggest she hadn’t been paying attention was both confusing and strange. If she lost focus at any point, she would have fallen, unable to funnel enough mana into the music-notes-turned-sky-platform. Unless…

“The cafeteria, when I looked outside! Was that Ahzef then? How would he have slipped through without my knowledge? That was eight years ago though. I wouldn’t have met him for another three…”

Aria blinked a few times, still trying to wrap her mind around what Ahzef had said. Was it possible he’d slipped through the cracks in her defense, years earlier than she thought? Did her walls have cracks in them? The implications were huge, if so. For a brief moment, she wondered if she truly was responsible for the accident all those years ago. She shook her head.

“No. That’s what he wants me to think. It’s all a game because if I turn around, I already know Brendan will be there, and Ahzef is there in front of me. There’s no reason for me to think—”

Something brushed her lower legs, something big and slightly squishy. Slowly, she lowered her gaze, unsure of what she was going to find. Did she want to know what it was? She couldn’t help but allow her innate curiosity to steal the show. For a moment, she wasn’t sure what she saw. Was it some kind of giant lump or shadowy blob? Something meant as a distraction and not the one thing she hoped the human-sized torso might possibly be?

Unfortunately, the reality she was hoping for was much different than the reality that stared her in the face. More than anything, she wanted it to be anything but Brendan, anything but what Ahzef wanted her to think it was. The longer she stared, the more she began to realize just what had been laid at her feet: Brendan’s body—mangled, bloodied, and broken. She closed her eyes faster than her brain could process the images they’d just received. It was only a split second, but she knew what she saw: his arms had been bent into pretzel-like twists, blood poured from the open gashes on his chest, and his eyes looked like they’d been seared from his head. She’d only caught a fleeting glance as she turned her head and closed her eyes, refusing them the chance to witness her single greatest fear, refusing her mind another opportunity to allow Ahzef inside, but she still knew what she saw.

She stumbled back, forgetting she was nearly a hundred feet in the air, and fell… but she never hit the ground. She fell for what seemed like hours, but what was time, anyways? Her mind was squarely focused on Brendan and how he could have possibly ended up so… mangled. Part of her refused to accept what she saw; another part had already begun mapping out what happened next—a war between reason and irrational thinking.

At first, she felt a wave of guilt so immense she wondered if, maybe, she should just put up with Ahzef’s emotional and mental abuse: the lies, crafted deception, and the burden she carried… life like a heavy weight upon her shoulders. She was tired, had been tired, but she kept pushing herself further and further along. When she remembered who Lacia was, it had given her renewed hope that maybe she could escape the suffocating life that had plagued her; when she remembered her relationship with Brendan, her heart grew happy, using him as an anchor in a stormy sea that threatened to capsize her boat.

Yet, the deeper she sank, the further she fell and the darker it became; light seemed to vanish beneath the infinite void she fell through. She reached out her hands only to have air slip through her fingers like some maddening joke—she could reach all she wanted, but grasping was another matter entirely. She wondered if, maybe, she should be happy the end to a miserable eight years would soon be behind her—no more ruined hope, two-faced people… No more rolling with the punches everyone told her she had to do if she wanted to survive. Most of all: no more struggling just to crawl out of bed in the morning. Now, she’d assume her position in the coffin she was ready to crawl into… and stay there, hidden from the world, on her dying breath—alone.

Every night, when she closed her eyes, lulled to sleep by the ebb and flow of the waves beneath that horrid ship, she felt like some part of herself was missing… but what? She never did get the chance to pin down what bothered her so much. Was it her birth into a world where her first few moments were filled with blinding hospital room lights, their dim, white glow blinding her newborn eyes? Was it her name she never got to choose or the destiny she was meant to embrace with blind faith? Could it have been the lies she built into her walls, secretly hoping they wouldn’t come crashing down like the waves of despair that had already swallowed her?

She liked to overexaggerate things, and hyperbole was her favorite form of figurative language; it was something staked with double meanings and triple the risk of failure, hence why it was all the more thrilling when she made off with another unbelievable lie. Of course, she knew that, someday, it would all come back to haunt her, to strangle her until she couldn’t breathe. The lies were something that made her feel alright, and the pleasure center of her brain rewarded her after each successful lie.

Now, after all of the months and the years that she’d gone through, building her castle walls with sand, caked with lies that would crumble faster than the walls themselves, the past had finally caught up with her. She could only run from the nightmare for so long, and she’d grown tired of running years ago: over-exaggerated grades on tests in school, fallacious arguments she believed she couldn’t lose, courage when, really, she felt as cowardly as a dog…

She knew what she had become and it was clear; the lying she had to endure, the cheating she had to put up with, the stealing of her pride and dignity: she had become an amalgamation of twisted wrongs that somehow became rights, a girl who had been hardened by the world and forced to grow up too soon. Her earlier wardrobe-change wasn’t for show—she was trying to convince herself she could finally put the past behind her, a chance to shine through every little mistake that only ended up turning her into the very same monsters that wanted something in return for nothing.

When she was with Brendan, she felt something pound in her chest, crashing against her ribs—a hopeful heartbeat that proved she was alive, that proved she was more than just the sins that had corrupted her soul. But were her feelings genuine or were they something artificial, implanted by the entity that grew off her negativity? Was everything her fault?

“Was I not supposed to play Elys’ solo that night? Was she watching from her hospital bed? Was she waiting on me before making the final judgement call on her own life?”

She twirled around in midair, now facing the cathartic hell that stared back at her without remorse. There would be no God—no savior, no messiah—to swoop in and save her and show her the righteous way back… Was she even redeemable in the first place? The further she fell, the further salvation seemed to fall with her—out of reach and out of sight. If catharsis could write a book, her name would be its title.

“I’ve always been a burden to people, and they just crumple me up and throw me away like I don’t have human emotions too or something,” she said, defeated. She felt her body begin to pick up speed, descending into the darkness that kept her glued to the floor of the lowest level of her cathartic hell—an inescapable ruin that was offered nothing and took everything. “If I close my eyes, will it all go away? When I reopen them, will I still see the ruin I’ve caused everyone? Will this become just some hole to bury myself in?”

The fall felt infinite. Time was distorted, its vector veering off course into some other dimension where it no longer answered to its master, where it no longer recognized her as its wielder. How long had she been falling? Minutes? Days? …Years? The air had grown soupy, like it had been crying with her—it was almost comforting in a way, but it made sense: she was descending into the same hell she’d been living in for almost the past decade. If she was fated to fall from the precipice, forced to fall without ever crossing the event horizon, that would be fine by her—it would save her the trouble of picking out the prettiest coffin to bury herself in later. She’d never see the day they buried her in roses, a peaceful smile spread across her lips as she finally received the rest she deserved. Everyone would tell stories of how brave she was when, really, she was just putting on a façade, something that hid her true feelings.

“I crawled out of my coffin years ago, thinking I’d finally shed the past, but who was I even kidding?” she scoffed at herself. “The roses I’d get at Valentines I would let die in their vase, the cake on my birthday I’d force myself to throw back up later, knowing I didn’t deserve something so happy…” She let out a deep sigh. “But it’s all over now. I’m finally alone again, crawling back into my coffin like I should have done years ago… What a shame…”

The pulsating muscle in her chest, in that fleeting moment with Brendan—together again for the first time in years—was as fake as the acrylic nails she treated herself to once a month… back when she cared enough to do something nice for herself. That beat, its rhythmic melody, could finally be at peace. It wouldn’t have to endure the pain and suffering she’d carried alongside her like some kind of deadweight.

“You worked so hard… For twenty-two years, you put up with me and my selfishness. For the last eight, you did your best to make me feel like I still had something to hold on to and that the false hope I was given was more than lingering summer heat.” She closed her eyes, embracing the darkness. “I died once, but Lacia became my guiding light, the thing that set the restoration of my soul into motion. When I found Brendan again, I thought maybe, just maybe, I would know what it meant to live again.” She wept. “I’m so sorry you guys went through so much trouble to bring me back. I should have used the broken glass to cut my losses, that way I wouldn’t have had to deal with all of this agony—just a few seconds and I could be just like the dying roses in their vase. Born just to wither away beautifully in a rosy puddle.”

Begrudgingly, she felt her back hit something hard, temporarily expelling the air from her lungs. She gasped for air, though it wasn’t like she wanted to. She cursed her body for instinctively trying to keep her alive. It was as if the universe was trying to play some cruel game on her, to see how many hits she could take before her castle of sand came crumbling to the ground, throne of lies she sat on dissolved at her feet. Somehow, she managed to roll over onto her side, fingers clawing the warm concrete she found herself pressed against. Would this be her coffin? Some concrete wasteland with no meaning? She was alive—the warmth from the afternoon sun on her skin told her as much, though the fiery pain that filled her veins with lava only managed to exacerbate her labored breaths.

Tears continued to stream down her face, silent weeps turning the choked breaths into agonizing hopes that teased her like a school bully. She wished the impact had killed her, that she could just stop trying. She didn’t want to think about the hellish memories from high school; she didn’t want to think about her parents or the car accident; she didn’t want to think about Lacia, or Brendan, or anyone—not anymore. What she once thought was a pulse, when her friends called her name, was nothing more than the dark tide that continued to suffocate her as it dragged her deeper and deeper. It wrapped itself around her neck, pulling her further from the trickling light at the surface by the second. It was ironic—the way her own threads of fate would now be the strings that stole her dying breath, refusing to let go as she struggled to breathe.

The crumbling, lifeless concrete buildings around her seemed as ready to give up as she was: cracked foundations, exposed rebar, graffitied walls and broken windows. Despite the warm spring day, she still felt cold, like the concrete had absorbed her negative emotions and amplified them tenfold: her foundation was more than crumbling—it was broken, in weathered pieces that had broken off from the rest of the slab a long time ago.

The rebar symbolized her exposed feelings that had rusted away over the years—the days her heart was left out in the rain, the clouds that obscured her sunshine, the nightmares that forced her to keep her distance from others, afraid she’d only bring them misfortune, too.

The graffitied walls, all splashed with color and vibrant art, represented her jumbled thoughts, unable to come to a consensus on how she felt or what she wanted—a chaotic symphony of clashing sounds and confusion; she would paint something, admire it for a moment, then decide to start over, concealing the earlier artistry beneath a new layer of color and doubt; in some ways, she felt just like the violin she had in high school, the one that would never stay tuned.

The windows represented the cacophony of sounds so misaligned they shattered the windows she used to frame her life, shattered glass showering her in shards of tiny shrapnel—fragments of her life she didn’t have the heart to put back together or replace. She embraced the cuts that littered her arms, the blood that seeped through the sleeves of her blouses, dresses, and sweaters now dyed red. She’d told herself to accept it, to accept that no one liked her anymore and that she truly was destined for death by a thousand cuts.

This forced her to question just how strong her own walls were, how much longer her foundation would hold her before finally crumbling into dust. When the cold wind had pushed her back, was that her doing? Was it a sign her walls were so paper-thin they couldn’t even protect her from the army of dark thoughts that found its home in the furthest reaches of her mind? Subconsciously, she knew they were always there, just waiting for the right moment to pounce, and Ahzef had taken advantage of that, twisting her most unstable emotions into contorted amalgamations that swore their loyalty to the king that now commanded the legion that marched through her mind.

She couldn’t even discern love from protectionism anymore. Did she love Brendan, or did she just want to protect him, to feel better about the mistakes she made? He was so understanding and so willing to stand up for what he believed in; he was so soft and squishy like clay, and she loved that about him, but it wasn’t the false image of him Ahzef had used that severed the lingering threads of hope she clung to—it was never about Brendan, despite how much she loved him. From day one, it had always been about the mind games that destroyed her sanity, the unraveling of her innermost subconscious thoughts taken and molded like wet clay. Ahzef knew what frightened her most: he’d enjoyed his time digging through her head to weaponize her memories, feelings, and experiences against her. She feared losing Brendan; she feared forgetting about the people who meant the most to her; she feared someone else would come along, pretend to be her friend, then leave… like everyone else.

The night of the orchestra concert, after conversing with Elys’ father, she’d convinced herself that life was finally moving in the right direction, that she could finally pull back the shades; open the coffin lid; take a breath—a breath that restored life like warm, spring rains.

A couple days later, she’d find out Elys had passed away after an emergency surgery. Details were sparse but, from what she’d gathered, she’d been sick for a long time… something she’d had since birth. When the announcement came over the school’s intercom that Monday morning, Aria felt everything she’d worked so hard for, the life she’d spent months trying to recollect the fragments of, run her through like a sword—she rushed to the bathroom, threw up, and passed out. When she finally woke up that evening, nestled beneath the blankets of a hospital bed, all she could think about was how cold, lonely, and afraid she was—afraid of her own mind, afraid to get too close to someone she genuinely cared about. When she asked what happened, all anyone could tell her was that a female student had found her passed out against the stall door and, despite her best efforts, that she’d been unable to wake her—she’d told the paramedics it was like she’d fallen into a coma or something.

“Remember, you did this. You shouldn’t have gotten involved in a dying girl’s affairs, Aria,” Ahzef’s voice whispered in her ears. “Now you’re left to suffer the agonizing reality that you could have just forgotten about her had you refused to play her solo, the same way everyone forgot about you.”

“Why? Why can’t you… just leave me alone? Haven’t you tortured me… enough?” she said, voice trembling between exasperated breaths. “Just stop!”

“But don’t you just hate yourself for catering to their every whim, every want? All those people you thought would love you as you played your soul out in earnest beneath those blinding lights… Did you really think they’d have a change of heart just because you finally learned to play the violin? And what of those pills you said you didn’t need but kept—”

“But kept taking?” she finished. “The pills that all the doctors said would fix me… and rushed me out the door five minutes later? I took them because I still had hope, something that I could cling to and… blame all of my problems on!”

“You can put an end to the suffering, Aria. All you have to do is renounce your relationship with that boy and the rest of your troublesome group. I can give you everything you’ve ever wanted—all the clothes money can buy, a job where you’re the one who everyone loves and wants, a chance to relive your worst years without all of the pain and suffering— You can start over from the very first day of your birth if you want. All you have to do is say… yes.”

“You want me to, just, say yes so you can destroy my life all over again? So you can put me through hell and use me like I’m some kind of tool? Or do you want to cage me like a bird, a doll on display in her case—only for looking and not touching?” She broke into sobs again. “I— What do you even want with me? This is crazy you’re so obsessed with me!”

“Don’t be so harsh on yourself, Aria. You know I would never take advantage of a very useful person such as yourself. Only paradise awaits you! If you come back now, I’ll even let you have that boyfriend of yours—no strings attached… for you.”

If she said yes, would she really get to start over? Was there a way to turn back the clock, to redo the worst days of her life as the best days? Would everyone love her for who she was instead of pitying her from the shadows cast by the late-afternoon sun against the school lockers?

She suddenly realized she never even got the chance to tell her grandmother goodbye that night after the senior prom, before Ahzef whisked her away and wiped her memories clean. The guilt formed a lump in her throat. She felt awful for even entertaining the thought of leaving, even if it was of her own accord—it was selfish, being so absorbed in her own self-pity. Her grandmother was getting older, and her health had begun a steady decline. If she accepted Ahzef’s offer, would she be able to keep her problems from becoming her grandmother’s? At the end of the day, though, she blamed herself for being so gullible, so easily manipulated. For all she knew, the guilt and stress her grandmother likely would have faced had killed her—she would have blamed herself for failing to protect her own late-daughter’s child…

Protect… She began to hyper-fixate on Ahzef’s mention of Brendan, how he was allowing him the opportunity to accompany her: ‘no strings attached,’ he’d said. The thought of losing him, too, burdened her, more than she realized. She’d never let him hear it, but he was her teddy bear, the fearsome-but-cute guardian that stood watch over her as she slept. Seeing his body so mangled, so bloodied and broken, was like watching someone pull the stuffing from the bear before throwing it away, never bothering to stitch the tears in its cuddly fur coat—the same stuffed bear she’d had since before she could remember now nothing more than something to be disposed of now, nothing more than garbage… It broke her faster than the shattered windshield of the family car as the drunk driver collided with them head-on, leaving finely ground shards scattered across the ground like glistening dust.

Even as her body slowly accepted the steady return of oxygen to her lungs, she couldn’t help but feel like she was drowning, like air and water had suddenly inverted—the air became water and the water became air; she was drowning in a dry sea. She turned her head towards the ground, hidden by the hair that dangled in front of her face, as she silently sobbed. Dark stains fell onto the warm concrete, quickly evaporating into the air with no evident trace of their presence. Enough. She’d had enough—enough of the games; enough of the self-doubt; enough questioning if she was good enough for the world. Where was her teddy bear she knew she could always rely on to scare the monsters away at night, providing her the comfort she needed for restful sleep? Where was her teddy bear she’d always cried to before falling asleep, that listened to all of her rants, complaints, and frustrations with gentle ears?

It didn’t matter how real anything was anymore, or if her life had been one masterful illusion woven by Ahzef himself, meant to seep into her cracks and freeze like water in wintertime. Like the crumbling concrete around her, her foundation had been shaken to more than just the core; it had been broken into pieces, put back together, and broken again, left to crumble away into nothing. No… that wasn’t quite how she felt: shattered, crushed, demolished with no hope of rebuilding—that’s how she felt. She was the teddy bear that had endured carpet-burn drags through the hallway to her parents’ bedroom at night after a bad dream; the teddy bear that had been offered a spoonful of vegetables at dinner just to accidentally get knocked into her plate of food; the teddy bear that had survived more wash and dry cycles than she had useless boyfriends.

“I’ve had enough of this! You’ve done it— I’m a mess, utterly hopeless and broken.” Her eyes continued to bleed tears, leaving their salty tracks along her flushed cheeks. “I give up. I don’t want to fight anymore. I can’t take this anymore! You want me to say yes? Fine. Then you can have me—”

“Except you can take it, Aria,” a woman’s voice came from somewhere behind her. “It’s not about how much we can take, how much our words have to bend before we break—it’s about being able to take it in the first place. You aren’t weak because he slithered through the smallest crack in your walls. In fact, that’s what makes you so much stronger than you could ever imagine.”

Aria didn’t move, but she didn’t finish her cut-off sentence, either. She kept her gaze fixed to the ground, the concrete tearing her knees up like paper and blistering her hands like a hot stove. She wept as her tears continued to fade into the concrete. She thought she recognized the voice at first, but it was so full of confidence and commanded so much certainty and wisdom that she began to second-guess herself.

“I don’t know who you are or why you’re here, but I don’t care anymore. Just let me drown. I don’t want your pity, and I don’t want to hear empty words.” Her lower lip continued to quiver. She was trying to hold back the tears that wouldn’t stop coming. “You… can’t even begin to imagine what I’ve been through. You don’t know me or my life.”

“But I do. I’ve known you for longer than you think, than both of us realized.”

Aria sat up, wiping her tears with the backs of her hands before hiding behind her bangs, lost behind a curtain of caramel. She had no idea why words of encouragement would be anyone’s first words to her, much less why they’d address her by name, but her despair had begun to mix with frustration and irritation. She wanted to be left alone, to fade away like her tears against the grey concrete beneath her. Why was everyone trying to bother her now of all times? Why couldn’t they just let her drown in her sea of tears and self-pity?

“I fought… I fought for years. Fought to love myself again. Fought to find some kind of meaning in my life. Fought to find forgiveness for the terrible things I did. For the secrets I kept from my friends. For forgetting about the people who cared about me. But you know what I found? Nothing. I found nothing. I was so sure I had become someone I could finally love, but it was just a façade, a fake life built upon castles of sand. When the waves washed over my walls, I crumbled with them. All it took was a gentle breeze to tell me I wasn’t the woman I thought I had grown into.”

“And that’s where you’re wrong. Just… Listen, and I think you’ll understand,” the woman reasoned. “When you dove into my own hell to save me, unknowingly, I wanted to say thank you… thank you for saving me from that wretched nightmare, from the living nightmares Lucifero had turned my dreams into.” She paused. “You don’t have to listen to the broken voices anymore, Aria. Do you know how many times I wanted to cry but didn’t? Too many,” she laughed, “but the point is, those things you hate about yourself are what make you human. It’s okay to cry. I know you feel like you just lost everything again, and I know you know that the reason we’re here right now is because you don’t want to be left alone.”