Chapter Text
It was too warm. Her hair stuck to her skin and her skin to itself, and it was miserable, but she couldn’t move. She just couldn’t move. Not when her head pounded like it did. Her face was swollen, and her lips were dry, and her whole body ached— miserable, and it was too hot, too.
Was she sick, then? Like, sick sick? Was that why she felt like this? Could she have worked herself into a fever, just… just like that? If not, then… stress could– could have weakened her immune system, or… she’d… gotten a bug…
She hoped she did have a cold. At least it would be impermanent. She wanted that. She needed it. She could be saved if it wasn’t her mind she was drowning in. Not just. If something else, something… tangible.
Fixable. She needed to be fixable. She couldn’t stay like this.
A foil wrapper moved along the table. That meant a breeze from the open window across the room, and could feel it, but she was still too hot. The wrapper danced, catching the light. Like flames. Her chest burned, sharp searing ache, as if the fire was actually inside her, not just burned into her brain.
“You doing okay, Olivia?”
She nodded, and it took extraordinary effort. Still, the gesture must not have been distinct enough. He asked again, and she managed to squeak a response. Her voice was dry and crackly from disuse.
“Is it… tomorrow, yet?”
“It’s been four hours.” She felt him sit down beside her, but she didn’t turn to look, “Almost eleven.” Her eyes blurred with tears again. Hadn’t she been asleep forever?
Had she even been asleep at all? Was it just… a… haze? The same sticky, syrupy stuff of the last two days? Couldn’t it just be tomorrow? Couldn’t she just fucking be done? Sleep through the night?
She pushed herself all the way up, quick enough to make her dizzy.
“You need water,” Orion murmured, but his voice felt so loud. Too loud. She closed her eyes to the light, which felt too bright, too.
“Think… I’m sick.”
The headache was excruciating, at least. And her vision was blurry, maybe just through tears. The skin around her nose was raw, cracked— but the pile of tissues beside her wasn’t indicative of anything other than her devastation. Maybe, then, her dry throat just meant she was—
“Dehydrated, definitely. I’ll get some of that sports drink stuff Drakson keeps, it’s better than water. Tastes kinda like shit, but…”
He got up, and she tried to focus on anything but how she felt. Fuzzy, and then deeper… worse. Way worse. She’d stick to fuzzy.
She heard the seal of the fridge opening. Closing. Footsteps. Pressure on the couch as Orion sat back down. His voice, asking her to sit back up.
He handed the bottle to her, and her hands shook as she unscrewed the lid. She felt so weak. When had she gotten so weak?
She brought the bottle to her lips, and it was a sweet-sour and it felt intense after nothing for however long it had been. Her sip was tentative, and it was wrong. She couldn’t even drink right, and she coughed, spraying the sticky liquid everywhere. Orion thumped her on the back.
“Hey, okay, just take it slow.”
She tilted her head in frustration, staring at the ceiling.
He hadn’t moved his hand, and started to rub her back, consolingly.
“I’m a–” She coughed again, “I’m a fucking mess.”
“Yeah,” He sighed, “You will be.”
“You,” she stumbled, “You did—” This… this same thing, it’d happened to Orion too, with Carlo. Over a year ago, and here he was, and she couldn’t fathom how he’d dealt with it.
“How did you…?”
Orion grimaced, “I… don’t remember it. Well. I’m sure you won’t either.”
She looked up at him.
“You’ll get over it, I promise.”
“Get over it?”
“You’ll be okay, okay? You’ll… live.”
“Are you okay?”
He knit his eyebrows, frowning slightly.
“No.”
At least he was honest. She took a shaky breath, running her hands through her hair, which felt heavy and unwashed. The haircut she’d been postponing was catching up to her, too. None of that helped her feel less disgusting.
“What do I do?” Her voice sounded pleading. Moreso than she’d expected.
"Cry? It’ll… just… Cry.”
Her lip quivered, "I already have, it hasn't done anything, I—"
Still, tears leaked down her cheeks.
"I'm not okay," She whispered, her voice breaking, "I can't do this."
"Shh, you don't need to worry about that, not now."
Her heart beat fast.
"What do you mean? What does that mean?"
"Just cry."
So she did. She cried, and she cried for everything and everyone that she could think of, everything that deserved her tears. Into Orion’s shirt, his shoulder as he wrapped his arm around her. So much deserved her tears.
All the people, all the families who had gone through the same thing, the same pain as her. Unknowing, too. Especially unknowing.
For all the tears Akari had shed, and the hurt Olivia never could stop because only one thing could, and she'd failed at it. She'd failed to put an end to all of this, and she failed still because she'd given up.
She'd been kicked in the teeth, made a Chef, destined to lose. Promised. Sentenced.
They'd gone too far, but not far enough. It wasn't far enough, and shame on her for thinking it could have been. Orion didn't let go, and she cried for him too, for his generosity, and his understanding, and his pain. For Carlo and the confusion and the whirlwind that she didn't think would have happened at all without the wretched interference of that man, and the old friendship that meant she had him now, and also meant he felt the same way she did, because his friend was gone too, and there were as many unspoken things between them, surely, as between her and Akari.
She sobbed, for everything she'd miss so badly, so badly that she couldn't breathe, because Akari had been more than she'd realized, even when she'd known she meant everything.
Love was powerful and terrible and she wouldn't feel so miserable without it, and by God did it have a way of messing her up. Tearing her apart, utterly apart. She was shattered, and she didn't have hands to put herself together with, because that was the nature of the dilemma. She'd said it herself, she wasn't okay, and she, right now, couldn't even picture being okay.
And still, she hugged Orion and knew he'd done this before, and he'd lived to do it again and she realized that in a way so had she, because Akari hadn't even been the first girlfriend to go like this, she'd just been the first to matter, and that was horrible too. She had no idea how to make things better. She had no idea how to make herself better, to feel even a little bit better because the pain felt all-consuming.
Physical, and mental, and it was sickeningly coating everything around her, blurring her vision and her perception itself. Her life, constricted by the past— and this was all a glimpse into her future, too, wasn't it?
Twirling flames she hadn't seen but could imagine. The charred remains of a home that had once been full of life and love and eternity, and 'once' hadn't been long ago at all. Time meant everything and nothing, for nothing could be so vague and indiscernible and still be irrefutably true. Everything about everything seemed impossible, and impossibly hard, and this was the kind of pain felt in dreams, and this was the kind of pain you felt for the irrational.
The pain was irrational, and it wasn't either, because it was a response to all that was real, and all that had happened, and no one could say that that wasn't rational. She couldn't breathe, now, through the tears, and maybe she didn't want to either, because her body needed rest and her mind needed it more, and yet she was scared of sleep and what it meant, even as she craved it. She was terrified that anything could be even remotely normal, even sleep, even the idea of it at all. She wasn't okay, not in any facet, not for any reason, and the baseline of ‘okay’ had been creeping lower and lower for some time now.
Now, it had happened. The unthinkable.
The highly-anticipated unthinkable, that which had been thought over, time, after time, after time after time, and still somehow had been cataloged wrong. Was it disbelief, that did it? Hope?
She didn't know. She only knew she wished it had been different, that everything had been different, because the only way to change the present when she was stuck like this was to change the past. And yet, somewhere within her, she knew this wasn't true, because this was impossible, and so she sunk into Orion's embrace and let human comfort try and work what little magic still existed within it.
Maybe, just maybe, it made her feel better, just a little bit, because it meant she wasn't alone and it meant she wasn't stupid, and it meant she was worth something. But it didn't change the fact that everything had changed, and Akari was gone, and she was never going to see her again.
Orion got up, telling her to yell if she needed him. She didn’t think she was really capable of yelling at all, really. She curled back up, pressing her cheek into the couch and watching as the cat batted at a tissue that had fallen to the floor.
The cat. It didn’t show, it didn’t make a dent in how she felt, but she was so damn happy about the cat, because she didn't think she could have handled it otherwise. She couldn’t handle it anyway. Never in a million years would she have thought that it would have happened like it had, and… that… would have been just… a step too far.
They burnt down her house, and Party Sub could have died. It stung worse because she knew it wasn't just a side effect, that he could have died, not something that had happened as a fluke. He lived because of chance. Chance, and whatever self-preservation he had in that sweet little brain of his. And maybe she owed her life to him too, because what if he hadn't woken her up, meowed for food so loudly that she'd had to do something? Would she have died too? Would they have bothered to spare her just on principle, or the fact that she was the next Chef, and whatever ritualistic plan they had was more important?
She didn't believe they would have. She was a liability, that was why she was a Chef in the first place. It wasn't as if she couldn't be replaced. It wasn't like they couldn't have done the same damn thing to someone else if she’d already been taken care of.
It could have gone so different, and in a way, she was grateful it hadn't been worse. She didn't know what she would have done without that spark of relief when that firefighter held the yowling cat out to her.
It was the same woman who had driven Akari home after she'd crashed her bike, and that same bike had lain on the ground outside what remained of her home.
Her home, and she still couldn't really believe it was gone, still couldn't really imagine how she was ever supposed to feel safe again.
Her girlfriend, and she’d known that was coming. Her own time was numbered, and she knew that too. But her home? She hadn't counted on that. It had never even occurred to her as an option, which felt naive now. It could always be worse. If the past year had taught her anything, it was that it could always be worse.
She was unbelievably lucky to still have her cat.
He climbed onto the bed, and she was lucky that she got to hold him now too, keep him near, and lucky she had a place to stay at all. It all seemed so perfect, like fate. So many things had aligned for this moment, hadn't they? The good, and the bad. It was insane, if she thought about it. So many ways things could have gone differently.
So many ways it could have gone differently, like the one where she was stuck alone, maybe at her grandmother’s terrifyingly empty house, surrounded by the heavy weight of death and the perfume of a woman she’d never see again. She’d wear clothes that stunk of smoke from the home she’d never see again, still flecked with hair from the cat she’d never hold again. Tears dripping down her face as she cried herself to sleep, maybe in her childhood bed, because she’d lost everything, lost a love she’d never feel again and a person who had meant so much to her she could barely breathe. She’d be alone, so completely alone. She’d fall like a tree in the forest and no one would hear, and she’d fade into the earth and the ground and rest there forever.
Orion had picked her up. Driven three hours to pick her up. Three hours alone on the highway, probably a mess himself. He’d told her he did well under pressure. She knew that meant he’d break once he was alone.
He’d offered the bed, and she’d insisted on the couch, and it hurt like hell to be there. It was warm, too warm all the time, and warm with the wretched memory of cold winter nights here and laughter and the taste of Akari’s lips. A place they’d never lie together again, surely, and it seemed to pull Olivia’s heart deeper into it than her body, wrapping in threads that cut into her, making her bleed. Made her chest hurt, made it hard to breathe. But she couldn’t get up, couldn’t leave, and she didn’t want the bed, either.
She wanted hers, wanted to go home to a place that was gone, and she still couldn’t get her mind around that. She’d seen it. She’d seen it and she’d gotten that closure, and still, in the briefest of seconds, she was just staying at a friend’s and would be back the next day. And maybe Akari was in the other room, and she’d be back soon and she wouldn’t have to hurt anymore, and things would be okay, and they’d be normal.
Olivia couldn’t imagine ever feeling normal again.
She took another sip of the sports drink, wishing it went down as easy as water because even that was hard. She needed it, she knew. She couldn’t dream of… something better if she wasn’t at least okay physically, but it was hard. Hard to not ignore her body and succumb to the pain she felt all over, pain that wasn’t from anything but her mind, really.
She pressed the cold bottle to her cheek, preparing for another sip. Her face was so swollen from tears that left sticky, salty tracks. Nonstop rivers that she could only wipe away and away.
The cold felt nice, and she left the bottle pressed to her face.
Party Sub got up, and sprawled on the floor, looking content. To Olivia, he seemed sad. Dejected, melted, sunk into the carpet as his world crumbled over and over. It wasn’t the case, she knew. She could hear him purring. And he was just a cat. Just a little cat.
He wasn’t even allowed in the apartment, technically, but the boys didn’t care and she sure as hell didn’t have anywhere else for him. Still, it made her cringe when she saw him leave a trail of fur in his wake, and god knows she had no energy to clean it up.
She was a horrible guest, she knew. She couldn’t bring herself to be anything better, she couldn’t even think about it. Tissues littered all over the coffee table, all over the floor. Just looking at them made her feel miserable.
She got up.
Orion returned to the room, and she left it, heading to the bathroom, because she had to do something, didn’t she?
The walk made her feel like passing out, and she steadied herself against the wall. The light was dim, because she couldn’t find which switch turned the mirror light on, and that was stupid, too.
It wasn’t an unfamiliar space. It was the same as it had always been. More toothbrushes than the two guys would ever use. A practical tower of products that she knew were mostly Drakson’s, crowding the counter. The hand soap was the same as the last time she’d been here. The same container, not just the same scent. Stickers on the mirror that read the same words they always had, but now, she couldn’t make them out.
The shadowy light made the purple-hair-dye-stained tub look bloody. The trickle of the faucet seemed menacing, and the shower curtain seemed like it was concealing something, someone, and she fumbled around until the mirror lights turned on, because she couldn’t take it.
The bathroom wasn’t any different. She was, and she could see it even in her reflection. It was her face that was warm and red and blotchy. Her eyes that looked glazed over, and felt that way too. Did they actually look that way, or did they just seem to? Did her eyes just… make her eyes look like that?
It was a stupid thing to wonder, but she leaned against the counter to get a better look. Cold water soaked her sleeve, and she winced, rolling it up. She shivered, but she still felt warm. Did that mean… fever, or no fever?
She turned the sink on, turning the knob from cold to warm and back again. The warm felt too warm, and the cold… felt… cold. She didn’t know what that meant. Probably that she could perceive temperature.
She took a deep breath, stepping back to sit on the edge of the tub. She managed to accidentally dislodge a soap bar beside her, and it clattered loudly, ringing in her eyes.
Everything felt louder, now. She thought she could hear the TV. Orion had probably turned it on.
Definitely, actually. She recognized the voice of a news reporter she’d heard before, but couldn’t name. Eleven o’clock news. Which Orion would only be watching because–
Curiosity got the better of her, and it made her heart twist too. She thought she might know what this was about, and as much as she didn’t want to see it, she needed to.
She was right.
She could see it from the hallway. A picture filled the screen, one she’d seen before.
The Official Tastyville Cold Cuts ones, with fancy graphic backgrounds and dramatic lighting. The ones they used for fancy scoreboards, and broadcasting.
Allan’s. Only a few months old.
His gap-tooth grin smiled down at them, but it made her stomach drop to her feet. She had half a mind to reach for the remote, and turn it off. She’d come out here, but she didn’t want to see it, didn’t want to hear what they had to say, what…
She could barely make out the words blarred across the screen, but even barely was too much.
Her heart swung again.
BODY OF MISSING HOCKEY STAR DISCOVERED BY RUNNER
Orion let out a hissing breath, resting his head in his hands.
“It’s not real, Olivia, you know…” his voice broke, “Just like how she wasn’t… the fire wasn’t…”
He trailed off, and she could see his eyes shining as he gazed at the TV screen.
He was right, and they both knew it wasn’t real, but it didn’t help. He was still gone. He was still missing. He still could be dead, and that was his face on the screen.
She hadn’t had the capacity to think of Allan all that much. It was too soon, too intense, all of it. She remembered the night before, hearing the news through eyes glued together with sleep. Then, to them, he was just missing.
The reporter interviewed a woman now, dressed in running clothes and looking dazed. She certainly could have seen a body. Maybe she had, and god– maybe there was more truth than they wanted to admit, because maybe things hadn’t gone how they were advertised, but the result was the same. The end was the same.
Allan was gone. Akari was gone.
She was never going to see them again.
“— I… I jus- uhm, I’m sorry, can I have a minute?”
The volume was muffled as the woman covered the microphone with a hand, pushing it away. Clips of Allan’s hockey performances began to play, and Orion closed his eyes. He didn’t bother holding back his tears, and Olivia didn’t either, sinking onto the couch beside him.
The TV seemed loud and distant. If the rest of the world felt like she watched it through a screen, then what did that make an actual screen? Evidently, not the real world. Just... doubly unreal.
Did the colors always change so quickly on the screen? It seemed the shapes shifted constantly, not fluidly. One thing, to the next. It seemed perfect for her mind. But like how the two negatives didn't cancel into a positive, it just became extra-not perfect.
Maybe her brain wasn't fast, it was slow. She wanted the pictures to linger, so she'd have time to process them. She wasn’t sure she could do that, even with time. She didn’t want to process it, she wanted to ignore it all, forget it all, disappear into memory. She was certain it could envelope her if she let it. Forgetting was peace and deluding herself was solace, and memory was what bridged the gap between them.
She imagined nothing had changed. Maybe, nothing had changed, and they were visiting Orion and Drakson again because they were... feeling sad, never mind if that had never drawn them here before. That was how it worked, now. She and Akari went over to... to comfort. Something bad had happened. They'd sat in the car, and it had been warm inside because they'd turned the heat on. The days were cold enough now to do that. Before, they'd walked in the crisp fall air and Akari had kissed her, and it had felt like the air and the kissing was equally vital, and it made her remember that things were okay, even if they weren't allowed to be good, because... they... they couldn't be good, because…
Her eyes snapped open, and the room seemed strangely bright. She'd fallen asleep, or had been falling asleep, and it couldn't have been long ago. The light must have been lulling enough to allow that, but now they weren't, and they stung her eyes, and she buried her face in her arms like she saw Party Sub do on so many occasions.
He liked to sit in the sun and its warmth, but not its light, and she couldn't find fault in his logic. She was too warm, again, sweating, and it was made worse by her pounding heart. The image from the TV was burned into her head, and it flashed to the forefront again. Allan's smiling, gap-toothed grin. Another eerie murder victim for the books. Death shrouded in mystery, or maybe, more horribly in truth.
She heard Orion sniffling. He’d gotten up from the couch, and she sat up.
She watched him, watched as he walked around the kitchen and put things away, and then he was out of her periphery. So she listened, and he opened drawers and shut them, and the rushing sound of the sink turned on and off without pattern. She sunk back into the couch, but she didn't lie down, just sunk into the couch and let the sound sink into her ears. She tried to anticipate his next move. Maybe the sound of clinking glass, or droplets splattering on the ground. He'd have washed his hands, and she’d hear the muffled sound of a dishtowel.
She couldn't predict what he'd do next, and it frustrated her. He wasn't following a pattern, not one that was apparent, at least. When she did the dishes it was wash, dry, and put away. Sink, towel, drawer. There was a dishwasher here, which meant unloading and loading, but she couldn't get any pattern to click in her brain. She wanted to lay there, and imagine him and see what was happening with just the sound, but she couldn't. She knew this apartment, she'd been here countless times before. She knew the kitchen.
She could only picture hers, though. Orion's footsteps didn't sound like Akari's, but if they had... She didn't know. She didn't know much of anything, now. That was how it felt, at least, like she was lost in her mind and missing half of it, too.
She knew this stuff, didn't she? But she blanked, and she filled in gaps with things that didn't matter, didn't mean anything, and then her stupid brain would try and find meaning in them.
There was no meaning in the sounds of the kitchen. She was tired and for some reason, she had trouble connecting herself to the present, as if she were listening to a recording. It didn't make sense, nothing made sense. Something about her was broken. It was just... broken.
Not like a bone, or a person. People said 'broken' to describe grief all the time. She hadn't fallen apart— or maybe she had, but that wasn't the way she was broken. She wasn't in pieces, she was whole and nonfunctional. An old radio with no speaker, everything there but the most important part.
And the mechanics— the mechanics of the radio, they didn't know they weren't doing anything, did they? They just did their job, electrical pulses and clicks and shifts and whatever the hell happened inside a radio. Inside any machine.
No sound came out though, did it. It wasn't a radio at all. It was just a box, a box of parts and bits that added together but didn't form a sum. That's how she was broken.
She clenched her fists tightly, trying to make the pressure louder than any other sound, and of course, it didn’t work, and soon Orion was beside her, telling her not to. To unfurl her hands, and try and relax because that was all she could do. There was no use getting lost.
She pressed her fingers to her temples. ‘Getting lost’ felt good, though, he didn't understand. How did it matter if it didn't help— what defined what helped? What made her better, stronger? She wasn't sure anything could do that, except for time, maybe, and she couldn't give herself a higher dose of that, could she? The one commodity no one controlled, and it wasn't as though speeding up time would have 'helped' her either.
She was a ticking clock too, or a bomb, maybe. A bomb felt more violent, and that felt good, but... was there anything more violent than what a simple clock represented? It was the same thing— that broken radio, an inanimate object. How would she tell Orion that was the only thing she could find meaning in now, inanimate objects?
It was just a machine, just a series of parts. It knew nothing of its power. It knew nothing at all, and yet it had a job that in any other universe she was sure would have to be reserved for the all-powerful, because how could anyone not be intimidated by time itself? How reductive was it to trap it inside a machine, give it hands and a face, and watch it speak through them, twisting the tale of life and death and constant undying motion? Everything was connected through time, even her. Especially her.
"Look at me, Olivia, please."
"I'm looking at you."
She was, and she blinked heavily. She could see him. His eyes were brown and his hair was too and he'd tied it back, hadn't he? He looked stressed, she thought. His shirt was blue, a sort of dusty, grayish blue, though. She couldn't think of anything else that color, but she knew there must have been plenty of things. Millions of things, maybe.
She could describe him, but it was like… looking at a photograph, wasn't it? She could see him. She knew what she was seeing. She still wasn't sure she was there, though, and maybe he thought so too, and maybe he thought that another sense in the mix would amend that.
He put his hand over hers, which had clenched again into a fist. It was a threatening gesture, she supposed, but it was just the comfort of her fingers tight against her palms. Energy, she could feel energy, actually feel it. She could feel her blood move through her body, and her fingers felt numb where it had trouble reaching. She was in tune with herself, wasn't she? It was the outside she had trouble with.
"You're out of it."
Of course she was, what else would she be? Reality seemed to sway in and out of her grasp. It wasn't as though she were anywhere else, she supposed. Or, maybe, it wasn't about being so much about her.
"I know." She murmured, trying to focus on Orion, and actually him, not just the concept. She needed her mind to clear, because otherwise she was nowhere. She wasn't trapped in some dream world. She was just... trapped.
"What do you need to hear?"
She stared at him, unblinkingly. She didn’t know. She didn’t know what she needed to hear. She didn’t know what she needed at all.
He held his arms open slightly, and she felt her face crumple and tears start to fall. Ugly crying like the movies, her lower lip trembling, and her face surely bright red. She hugged him tightly and he hugged back, rocking her slightly as if she were a small child, and it was fitting, and it was comforting because she was devastated like one.
Like a small child who saw the world for the good it held, saw the best, expected the best because the worst was foreign. And only a child could see pain for the deepness it cut, even small pain before it got pushed away, buried and belittled, because pain should be rational, and reserved. She was shaking, shivering even when seconds ago she’d been hot, and she thought that if Orion left– if Orion let go, she’d collapse, implode because she wasn’t made of anything.
That, or what she was made of was nothing to what she felt, and it had eaten her from the inside out. The structure remained, the shape, maybe, but not the substance. She was made of nothing, she was nothing.
“You need to do something,”
It felt so vague, so… meaningless, and yet, she didn’t bother to stop his words.
“Doesn't matter what.”
She didn't care to hear him, not right now, but she listened anyway.
“A distraction— you asked how I did it, and… and you need to take your mind away from it—“
She doubted that was even possible right now. It took work just to concentrate on him.
“Me and Drax are—“
His words kept getting lost in her brain like she was weaving in and out of her ability to hear.
“—wouldn't be too much, just—“
His tone was soothing, though, she had to admit. Maybe this would help. Maybe she would be fine.
But then there was a knock at the door.
Loud, banging. It wasn’t Drakson, and she knew it, but it didn’t stop Orion trying to assure her it was anyway. He didn’t leave, but he was going to.
The banging continued. Whoever it was hadn’t bothered with the buzzer, just came straight to the door. A neighbor, maybe. Complaining, something. It wasn’t a neighbor.
The banging paused, and a voice called out with a cold politeness, that if someone didn’t answer the door, it would be broken down.
She heard Orion gasp, and she knew he’d release her mere moments before he did, and she tried her best to compose what little she had left of herself.
The door creaked open, and she didn’t bother to look.
“H-hello? What can… can I do for you?”
“Is there a reason you didn’t come to the door?”
“Oh, I’m… sorry, I didn’t think… that… Thought it was just my cousin–”
“You’re Orion, then, correct?”
“Yeah– yeah, hey, listen if this is about Allan, I’ve seen the news, I’m– I know, and it’s kind of a bad time right now if you–”
Olivia could tell they were looking at her, and she turned her face slightly towards them. Orion had paled, and across from him stood a police officer, looking solemn and beige in his uniform. Olivia didn’t recognize him, but she felt like she did. Something about him was familiar.
“I’m afraid that’s not possible. We have reason to suspect foul play, and we are aware that he was with you during—”
Realization dawned on her, because there was no way anything could be fair, not with what they were up against, and she felt like she was spinning again. She’d spent all this time, thinking that… the worst… at least, the worst was over, and, no, it couldn’t be. No, not– not another thing, another thing to be happening, not when— Blood rushed loudly in her ears and she held her knees close to her chest, and she wasn’t sure how much time went by before the door slammed shut, and she was alone.
She was alone.