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Sunny stared out the window of the room he was still in, his eye focusing on all the little details of a summer day. He had always enjoyed people watching to an extent, keeping himself at arm’s length (usually, significantly more) and watching ordinary people live their lives.
In a sense, he envied the people he watched.
They got to have an ordinary life at all.
Perhaps it was unfair, after all, who's to say he couldn’t have? Who’s to say the people he watches are? But, in the long term, it doesn’t matter. They had at least the appearance of what Sunny wanted…
Happiness.
He was never happy alone. In fact, he hated it, but he never had any other choice in his mind. If he showed himself to them…
The truth’s out now. They won’t forgive him, or they shouldn’t anyways. But… that was fine, wasn’t it? He was leaving now anyways. After today, when he’s discharged from the hospital, he’ll leave. Out of their immediate lives, for better or for worse.
Their reactions were… about what he expected.
Hero just looked broken, Kel dumbfounded and lost, and Aubrey…
Aubrey was furious.
He was lucky she wasn’t able to bring her bat for visitation, or she might have tried to kill him. With only her hands though, she had time to realize what she was doing and just push him out of the way to leave. Kel and Hero left soon after. Not a word was said.
At least they let him finish talking.
Basil woke up not long after, but… all they could do was apologize to each other now. They’d done so much to ruin each other, and now there wasn’t much left. The demons weren’t haunting them anymore, and they could move on…
Start to, anyways.
Sunny sighed, lowering himself back down to stare listlessly at the ceiling. If nothing else, the time in the hospital gave him time to think, to straighten out the last few days in his mind. It was nice to have a real adventure with his real friends… even if he doubted they’d think of him as such now.
A bittersweet realization. At least now they knew the truth, he didn’t have to hide behind a lie anymore.
A knock at the door of his room knocked Sunny out of his introspection, the door quickly opening as a nurse led a certain pink haired girl in to see him. Silently, the nurse left, leaving the two of them alone.
Several moments of silence, as they stared at each other. The makeup she wore was a mess, evidently from crying. Sunny closed his eye, and took a deep breath.
“I’m sorry, Aubrey.” he muttered, the words bumping hoarsely from his throat.
“That’s it? All this and…” she trailed off. “Why’d you have to end up in here? It’d be so much easier to just... “ she continued, shakily balling her hands. The two sat in silence for a few more moments.
“No, there’s… a lot more. I just don’t know how much more you want to hear.”
“I just… I just want to know why. Why?! WH-” she started to yell, catching herself as she looked over the door.
“We were scared, we didn’t know what to do, and we made… an awful choice.”
“I hate you, you know that? All this we all said about being here for each other, and then you just drop that shit on us right before you leave us.”
“I’m not dying, you know.”
“Maybe I just wish you were, you know?”
“Fine.” Sunny shrugged, “Can’t say I don’t understand it.”
Another pause, broken only by Sunny drinking water to ease his throat.
“I just wish it never happened. I miss her Sunny, damn it I…” she started, tears welling in her eyes, even if they never left to her face. “How are you being so calm right now?”
“I’m just… tired.” he sighed, “I’m so used to just staying monotone whenever I do speak... “
Yet another pause, Aubrey walking over to sit in the seat next to Sunny’s head.
“Why didn’t you trust us Sunny?”
“I didn’t even trust myself, as far as I knew you’d all want me gone if I was honest, like most people.”
“Stop with the cryptic bullshit and just talk to me, Sunny. I’m… too tired to be angry now.”
“You didn’t sleep, did you?” Sunny asked, staring into his friend (Ex-friend?)’s eyes. As the make up slowly washed off, the bags became more and more obvious. When she didn’t answer, he sighed and went on. “Basil and I had a similar thought process. We thought… we thought it would be easier to just lose Mari, but then… then we both closed ourselves off. That cut everyone off from each other too... “
“Who wants to be friends with a murderer, much less someone who murdered their sister, yeah?” Aubrey muttered, answered only with a nod. “I… hate you so fucking much right now, you know that? But…”
Sunny slid out of the bed, his blue gown hanging over his thin frame.
Aubrey hated hugs, and she hated him now, but… hugs were the only physical comfort he knew.
It’s how Mari always calmed him down.
He didn’t realize he was crying until he had wrapped Aubrey in a hug. They sat in silence once again, Aubrey hesitantly returning the hug.
“I’m so… so sorry Aubrey…” he whispered into his friend’s ear. “I miss her. Every day I woke up, and almost daily it hit me all over again that she wasn’t going to be there to comfort me anymore, and it was my fault.”
“She was the only one who ever was able to calm you down, wasn’t she?” Aubrey whispered back, smearing her wet makeup onto his shoulder.
“Yeah. I… wasn’t sure I deserved to even live without her. I broke down, and all I did was hurt her.”
“God… this is all so fucked up. You, Basil, Me, Kel, Hero… it’s all fucked up.”
“It really is all messed up, but I…” he paused, taking a deep breath, “I hope that now we can get through it.”
“But… you’re leaving!” she whimpered, “You’re leaving, Mari’s already gone, how do things go back to being alright?!”
“I don’t know… I’ve been trying to figure that out for the last four years. This… this is just the first step.”
“The first step, huh?” Aubrey whispered, standing up (and taking Sunny up with her)
“I’m sorry I shut you out, Aubrey. You needed something, even if it was just the right person to hate. It was never Ba-”
“Shut up.”
Sunny obliged, standing in silence in her shaky embrace. They couldn’t see each others eyes now, only the back of each other’s heads. Despite being dyed, run through who knows how much hell in her new normal, her hair was still just as soft as Sunny remembered.
“I hate you but… I can’t hate you entirely. There’s something in the way of it.”
“You have every right to be, you know.”
“Repeating that doesn’t make it just magically go away. It’s my turn to pull the Mari card… if she heard you saying that, how would she feel?”
“She’d… tell me to chin up and believe in myself more.”
“So… let’s do that then. Let’s… try again.” she said.
“What are we trying again?”
“Being… friends. Do you have a way for us to keep in touch?”
“Well, I’ll have a follow up appointment here in a month or so. I won’t be that far away, you know.”
“Hold on, I need to do something.” Aubrey said, releasing her hold on Sunny and taking a step back. He tilted his head in confusion, then recoiled in shock as she punched him in the stomach. He doubled over, then exhaled lightly.
“I deserve that a bit, I think.”
“Yeah, you do.”
“So, Aubrey,” Sunny said, slowly lowering himself back onto the bed, “Will I see you tomorrow… you know, before I go?”
“Yeah… Yeah you will.”
Sunny smiled, despite the tears falling down his face.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet… I haven’t entirely forgiven you. I don’t think I ever will.”
“You shouldn’t have by now… I’m honestly shocked you’re even here now considering the state you were in yesterday.”
“You make bad decisions when you’re tired, I guess… But sometimes a bad decision is… cathartic.”
“I’ll miss you Aubrey.”
“You better. It’d be a dick move for you to disappear for four years only to pop back in for a few days before leaving again and then just forget about us.”
“I could never forget you guys. I don’t want to ever forget you guys. I don’t ever want to forget you.”
“Jeez, tone down the sappiness, you still have a few hours for that.”
“Not sappy, just being honest. I don’t want to lie to any of you anymore.”
"So... tomorrow then."
"Yeah. I'll see you tomorrow Aubrey."