Chapter Night

[The following chapter contains strong language. Reader caution is advised.]

[The following chapter is set between Chapters 73 and 74.]

Monday 3rd July 2000

I wasn’t sure about writing this at first, but I’ve decided it’s worth including… it’s important that I talk about it.

It was well past 11pm and I just couldn’t sleep. Adrenaline was still running through my veins, and the epiphany I’d had wouldn’t shake itself from my mind, and Breathless had been playing in my ears on-and-off for hours. Tossing and turning didn’t help, and the more I thought about the fact that I was still awake, the less capable I seemed to be of drifting off. Dakota was out cold next to me, and I didn’t have the heart to wake her just so we could talk.

My bladder decided to chime in on the situation. I heaved myself out of bed and trekked off for the bathroom in the hopes that paying it a visit might help me a little.

Obviously I won’t go into detail on that…

As I quietly made the return journey across the landing, I caught Kitty’s bedroom door opening slowly, and her peeking out from the space she’d made.

“Oh, hey,” she greeted me in a whisper.

“Hey… can’t sleep either?” I asked, matching her volume, although I didn’t imagine we would wake Dakota talking at least a little louder.

“Sometimes it takes me a while to fall asleep…”

In that moment, I prayed that she’d never overheard things that Dakota and I assumed she wasn’t awake to overhear…
“Sometimes I listen to music for a while…”

“That’s fair,” I nodded, trying my best to keep any concern from striking my face.

“Could we talk for a bit?” she requested suddenly. “Downstairs, so we don’t have to whisper.”

I thought for a second, rationalising almost immediately that I probably wouldn’t be getting to sleep any time soon if I did turn her down and return to bed.
“Sure…” I replied with a tinge of uncertainty (more about why she wanted to talk than about my decision).

She opened the door fully, stepping into the dimly-lit landing in her navy pyjamas with squiggly yellow lines, making me feel under-dressed in just my boxers… though it wasn’t the first time she’d seen me like this, and her complete lack of a reaction to the sight of me in my underwear after closing her door up reassured me. Drifting past me without a sound, she began tip-toeing downstairs, and I followed in kind. We made our way to the living room, illuminated faintly by what little light made it through the curtains and seeped through from the kitchen; Kitty sat down on the sofa, her legs brought up to her chest and held close; I settled down half a space away.

“You said you had an epiphany…” she began, a little louder now but still below her normal volume, her eyes downcast.

“Yeah… not a full-on vision or anything fancy, but I had this big eureka moment, sure,” I clarified as though there was really any confusion.

“Explain it to me… what the epiphany was.”

“Hrm…”

I paused to figure out exactly how to recount it.
“I told you about when I confessed to Dakota, right? She’d gone home to Dundalk for Christmas, and the others sent me over there on Christmas Eve to tell her how I felt… I travelled halfway across Ireland to find her, and I was convinced I wouldn’t be able to say it… that I shouldn’t say it, because I’m me and I’m not worth it… y’know, all that bad stuff floating around in my head.”

“Mhm,” she interjected only then; she was looking at me, now, though not facing me.

“And then when I saw her… I just said it. I told her ‘I love you’ like it was the easiest thing in the world… I mean, it is, now, obviously, but in that moment…”
My eyes closed gently, letting the image of her on that snowy evening come to me for the second time that day.
“It was the biggest thing and I did it like it was nothing. All of that self-doubt and self-hatred, all the certainty that she didn’t feel the same way… I saw her and I was strong enough to forget all of that.”
My eyelids fluttered open again, my vision taking a couple of seconds to adjust again to my surroundings.
“Basically, all this shit in my head can be beaten. I can overcome it. Not easily, but I can and that’s the point, it’s possible, so…”

I found myself unable to say any more, struggling to fully articulate – or, I suppose, to fully grasp – what I wanted to express. It was more than just tiredness, my brain not running at 100%... what was the big idea here? I was capable of overcoming my darkest thoughts, yes. It had been easy, that time. But in the end, I wasn’t trying to overcome anything: I was entranced and in love, and I spoke straight from the heart. What did that mean for my epiphany? What would it actually take for me to fight off the dark thoughts?

“And you’re sure?” Kitty asked, her eyes swivelling away from me again immediately after.

“I mean… I’m here. I’m back.”

“Because of the epiphany.”

“I-I mean…” I scratched at my head a little. “I realised that I could be better than I thought. I was in a bad place… thinking that all I could ever do was hurt people. That being with Dakota meant I’d just wind up hurting her again and again. But if I can control all the shit in my head, and I know that I can, then it doesn’t have to be that way. That’s… that’s basically what I realised, that’s what snapped me out of it.”

“That’s why you came back,” she mused, brow furrowed a little.

A thought that I really didn’t want to consider flashed into my head like lightning, and I knew that I had to voice it or else it would linger as a dark storm cloud forever.

“Did you not want me to come back…?”

She looked at me – properly, this time, turning her head to me, taken aback if anything.
“Of course I wanted you to. You’re like family to me. I don’t want to lose you. That’s the point.”
A soft sigh escaped her lips, her gaze falling away again.
“I know you don’t want to do what you did again, but you can’t be sure it won’t happen again, right…?”

“Dakota said the same thing earlier,” I told her. “And yeah, I can’t be sure, I know…”

“Then… does this epiphany even help?”
It was said with total sincerity, and genuine concern; all the same, it stung like a barbed hook through the heart. I must have made a face to match, because the moment her eyes landed on me, she seemed to panic a little.
“I don’t mean that in a bad way-”

“No, I understand…” I assured her gently. “I don’t have a good answer for you. I think the epiphany’s a good thing… because the bottom line is, sometimes I just think of myself as a monster… I guess Melody’s the one who really put that idea in my head. Knowing that I can be more than that… that I can be better, y’know? That’s a way to shake myself out of it. I mean… we fought my dragon.”
A smile found its way to my face in spite of everything.
“All of us took on the worst parts of myself and I cut off its head. I can do it. I’m not saying that’s enough to stop me, but it means I can… I can win.”
We looked at each other wordlessly before I spoke again.
“Trust me, I hate that person more than any of you. And if you think I don’t feel guilty and terrible for it, you’re underestimating me,” I finished with a twinkle as though a humorous spin would take all the weight out of what I’d said.

“Mhm…” came Kitty’s concerned response.

“It doesn’t feel good,” I elaborated desperately. “And I know, it’s not like you’ve all had a great time since, but hey, maybe it helps to know I’ve been beating myself up over it the whole time…”

“Why would that help?” she asked, and I realised only then that it really wouldn’t help at all.
“Lucy was telling us how you were. We know you were down the whole time. We care about you, knowing you’re sad makes us sad. But we had to wait for you to be ready.”

“What if I never was? What if everything that happened today didn’t?”

“Isn’t that something only you can answer?”

I mused over it for a moment. Too many variables (and pondering it too late at night) to really know if I ever would’ve come around without Harmelody prodding at me.

“I want you to understand,” Kitty continued with the verbal equivalent of a comforting hand on the shoulder, “the way things went when you were gone.”

My heart sped up, dread taking hold, but I chose not to voice it.

“Everybody was worried that this will keep happening… that if you’ve snapped and ran away twice, you could do it again and again. It was weird, being on the other side this time… seeing what they went through when I first met you. You hurt them doing this-”

“I know,” I grumbled, shutting my eyes tight like it made any difference, exhaling a little through my nose.

“You hurt them because they care about you. It’s scary seeing you like that, and it’s painful knowing you’ve run away and that you’re suffering. It would be dumb for us to hate you for having issues, because we all have our own. Dakota was telling me about when you were all getting to know each other, and Zahid got really angry but you all forgave him.”

“That was different-”

“How?”
Again, not accusing, not angry, just quiet, calm, firm without harshness. And I’m certain she knew I was going to use that argument before I even said anything.

“He came back an hour or two after…”
I realised how stupid that sounded as I said it, but I stuck to my dinky water-pistols.

“If it took him four days, would you not have forgiven him?”

“Okay, you’re right…” I conceded in record time. “I get it…”

“We’re worried about this happening again, but we’re not going to stop being your friends. We just… I want you to find a way to not… explode…” she concluded, staring with big sad puppy-dog eyes.

“I understand. I guess I never really thought about it from the other side… I’ve been so sure you’re all better off without me…” I admitted sheepishly. “But you’re right, it’s like exploding… or like a lightning bolt going through me. It’s so powerful and I can’t stop it... but that’s not gonna stop me anymore.”

A little smile crept upon her face, and I smiled along with her.

“I’ll try to get away from things that’re upsetting me, if I can. I’ll try to voice what’s getting to me before I blow. I’ll try to be honest about how I’m feeling… Dakota’s told me off for not opening up about things… And if I don’t stick to it, you have permission to whack some sense into me,” I chuckled at her.

“Yeah,” she tittered a little.

“I want to fight this,” I insisted, “and I think it’s possible.”

“I think so too,” Kitty smiled sweetly; she moved her knees apart, crossing her legs feet-under-knees, leaning back into the sofa. “You’ll figure this out. Like you said, you can overcome it.”

“Hey, you were asking if I could be sure,” I pointed out with the same amiable air she’d been using. “And I’m not sure-”

“Of course, but you’re confident.”

“I’m hopeful.”

“Isn’t that a good start?”

All of a sudden, I felt like I was looking at a completely different girl to the one I’d met a year ago, who’d torn herself out of the body of Nightmare pleading to be killed, who’d been so quiet and withdrawn. I’d been watching this transformation in real-time, but it only really hit me now how big it had been.

A quizzical expression had spread across her face as she waited for me to answer.
“What…?”

“Nothing,” I shook my head at her lightly. “You’re probably right. Hope and effort, that’s a good mix.”

“You should speak to Dakota about it, too,” my young friend continued, “she’ll be there with you every step.”

“I know,” I smiled fondly, and then flashes of that argument days ago hit me again and guilt washed the smile away.
“Still… Harriet had a point. I keep hurting Dakota…”

“You got upset because she put that idea in your head. It’s like Bao said, it’s a…”
She crinkled her nose a little as she searched her memory for the right words.
“Self-fulfilling prophecy.”

“That doesn’t make her wrong,” I countered uneasily.

“Alex, prove her wrong,” she spoke resoundingly, so much so that I couldn’t even answer. She was right… yes, I’ve done this twice now. I still hate myself for it, and that won’t change any time soon. But if I could keep to my new resolution, and manage to never do it again – to never harm the girl that I love – then I could still be better than the monster Harriet sees me as.

“When did you get so wise…?” I questioned her, genuinely impressed at this point.

It was Kitty’s turn to fall quiet, clearly flustered by the praise.

“Thank you,” I pressed on to spare her any (more) awkwardness. “Like, for being concerned about me as well as for this pep talk.”

“You’re welcome… I just want to know you’re going to be okay. I know you don’t like yourself a lot, but we all care about you. You’ll find a way. You just need a little bit of…”

“Monica in my life,” I quipped, because she’d unwittingly set up the reference. She giggled, shoulders shaking, toes wiggling which happened to catch my eyes. When she noticed, she let out a “pfft!” and giggled more.

“Alex…!”

“No, I just-”
The combination of my joke and her laughter set me off too, the two of us laughing at nothing and hopefully not disturbing the neighbours.

…

Kitty and I stayed downstairs a little while longer before finally deciding to call it a night. I snuck into the main bedroom, closing the door as gently as I could and then crawling into bed as though I would set off a mine if I made the wrong move. My efforts seemed to work, as Dakota remained undisturbed until the moment I settled into place… at which point, she rolled over, snuggling up to me.

“Bathroom?” she muttered, half-asleep.

“Yeah,” I replied, stroking her hair.

“I love you,” she purred.

“I love you too.”

She let out a content “mhmm”, and I yawned, and then we both began gently drifting off to sleep.