it's all just raging disappointment

[slow_burn]

Aiden wasn't seen for the rest of the session.

It was a few hours later he was finally released from the room in the house that was basically just a room with a lock on the outside, a quiet room of sorts. It might as well had been Aiden's second home.

He didn't kick the door or bang his head against the wall this time, though. Instead, he thought. And waited.

It was night when Aiden found her, gently knocking on her room. They had a lot more freedom here than they did a hospital, that was for sure--no nurses patrolling, anyway.

"Hey," He's opened the door somewhat ajar, peaking his head in but not looking directly at the bed (it's the same setup for all of them). Tracy's asleep, anyway. "Heather. Get up, I want to show you something."

Comments

[sweetmotherofgod]

She's up already, pretty much. Dressed and sitting cross-legged on top of her bed. Sleep doesn't come easily to her anymore, and when it does it's full of nightmares. When Aiden calls for her, she unfolds herself and walks to him without questioning it. Midnight jaunts with potential psychos? Not her best idea, but at least it'll break up the monotony.

"Show me what?"

[slow_burn]

"Telling you would ruin the point, idiot." Aiden opens the door, lets her in, and begins to creep. He knows the ins and outs of the old victorian house, which floorboards creek and which don't, where each night-staff likes to hang out. He's got it memorized, and within a matter of minutes he's opened a window in the hallway and is climbing out. The ledge is steep, and it's more of a curve than a ledge but he disappears, hoisting himself up on the roof.

It's a full moon, but that's not what he wanted to show her. There's a chimney, and it doesn't work but there's a loose brick where Aiden stores his stuff. Some of which is a small baggie of marijuana and a pack of rolling papers.

He was prepared, if anything.

[sweetmotherofgod]

Well if it's his dick he's gonna lose it, but she's curious enough follow -- stepping where he steps, because there's a very deliberate way about his movements -- and give him a chance to make her feel bad for that thought. Even though the moon's not what he's showing her it's what catches her attention, holds it long enough that she doesn't look over until she hears the brick. Wouldn't do to get clobbered in the head with it, right?

"Ohhh." It's recognition, and very quiet amusement. "Really?"

[slow_burn]

"Calms me down." Aiden's shrug is factual, and while he plops unceremoniously onto the roof he settles into silence as he rolls.

"Did you get asked what you like about yourself?" He knows the answer, though--they all do. "Judy's a bitch, anyway. Keeps talking." her voice drips like honey. It's sweet, and Aiden doesn't like it. It makes him angry. It puts him on edge.

But he's lit the joint with a lighter he bummed off a homeless guy and never returned when he was allowed out, and he takes a long puff before silently offering it to her.

[sweetmotherofgod]

"God knows you could use a little of that," she says, but there's no malice it it. The fact that him springing to her defense was obviously just an excuse doesn't prevent her from being entertained by it, and a little grateful for the interruption.

"Does anybody ever answer that question seriously?"

Judy doesn't seem so bad to Heather. Silly, but harmless. She shrugs, takes the joint with a nod of thanks (ignoring the voice in her head chanting nothing's free nothing's free nothing's free), draws on it and hands it back to him with her breath held and eyes closed.

[slow_burn]

"Some people. The ones that aren't already fucked up. When they get better--they leave." Aiden shrugs again, laying down, staring at the moon.

"But they don't realize that we're all fucked, man. Nothing can change it. Sure, your parents are dead or something but who cares at the end how you come to terms with it? That's the thing,"

He's stretching now, shaking his head. "No one's gonna come to terms with jack shit because life is going to take a dump all of them again anyway, just in a different form. S'no point."

[sweetmotherofgod]

Well that's fucking depressing. Not that she would have expected much more, but she's not used to hearing people say that shit so bluntly. Even Leonard dressed it up in ideology.

She leans back, propping herself on her elbows. The moon's a safer object of interest than his face.

"What if it's already done it's worst?"

[slow_burn]

"It's never done it's worst," Aiden's gaze slides to her face, smirking somewhat. "'cause when it's done it's worst, people think they're safe. You're never safe, man. You're always going to be wrapped up in the biggest bunch of bullshit. You'll think it's the worst and then God'll take a giant shit on you."

He does, however, scoot closer.

"So you watched it happen?"

[sweetmotherofgod]

She does look at him, now. And yeah, she could ask how the hell he knows that when he wasn't in the room, demand he tell her who's telling him her business, but she's getting the sense that would get her precisely nowhere.

"No," she says, making eye contact, holding it. "He was dead when I got home." And, because it's the sort of little detail freaks love and this might go easier if she doesn't make him drag it all out of her, "Arranged."

[slow_burn]

"Like, how?" Because Aiden is scooting even closer, pushing his hair out of his face and puffing on the joint like it might as well be a cigarette.

He's picturing it, now--Heather's dad, though faceless since he can't decide what he'd look like. There's blood everywhere--spattering the walls, even--and the head is lolled to the side. Lifeless.

Deserved.

[sweetmotherofgod]

Her eyes stay open, stay on Aiden's face. If she looks away she'll close them, and if she closes them she'll see him, and if she sees him --

no.

"In an armchair. It wasn't even - he never sat there. But it faced away from the door. I was talking to him for... a long time before I noticed something was wrong."

It wasn't that long, and rationally she knows that. If she plays the sequence back in her mind, it was only a sentence. But it feels like hours, like she left him there for days.

"He was stabbed. On the roof, I think. There was blood. A trail of blood."

And I followed it and I saw her and she told me what I had to do to kill her and I still failed.

[slow_burn]

Aiden's eyes arch upwards.

Stab wounds.

A knife, sliding in and out and in and out and making a squelching noise, like a suction cup everytime he removed it. He's screaming, he's screaming even though there's no one else to hear him because even with all of the blood around him he can see his sister's big beautiful eyes.

Aiden begins to blink the same way he did when they first met--long pauses, like he's getting sleepy. Ready to curl up and dream of blood and dark places. He replaces the images with images of Heather talking to a dead body, saying she's home from school.

It's better, he realizes, when he makes the body talk back.

"Did you try to jump off the roof after?"

[sweetmotherofgod]

It's unsettling, the slow way he blinks. There's something sleepy and sensual about it, and it's completely fucking inappropriate.

"No." Would that have been the normal thing to do? Is that what a whole girl would have done? No point to wondering. Anyway, she's only know Aiden part of a day and she's already pretty sure he's not a useful gague for normal.

"It was only two stories. All I would have done is broken my legs."

[slow_burn]

He finishes the joint--because as far as he's concerned Heather doesn't get all of it because she needs to learn to chip in--and he immediately reaches for the cigarettes.

He grabs one, using the same lighter, still blinking slowly. His gaze does drift off to the sky, though, and it takes Aiden a moment to find his words.

"If you broke your legs, you would have stayed in a hospital. Procrastinated getting into this freakshow."

[sweetmotherofgod]

"I hate hospitals."

Yes, more than she hates this place. It doesn't have the sterility, the smell, the heavy hanging fug of people who are dying or should be dying. But there's really no reason for her to tell him that. She watches the coal of his cigarette instead, the glow of it on his face and hand.

"Anyway, I had stuff to do."

[slow_burn]

That earns a snort.

"Yeah, like being locked up in a house and being told you can leave whenever you want? That's busy work." He's amused, though, because the idea that rushing to the halfway house (or whatever the fuck this place even was) amusing.

"Oh man, dad's been shanked. Guess I got to run to the orphanage."

[sweetmotherofgod]

There it goes. Like a switch being flipped, whatever she'd left open enough that she's even talking to him about this stuff slams closed. Eyes back on the moon.

It was a stupid idea, anyway. What was she planning on telling him, exactly?

"Something like that."

[slow_burn]

"Hey we all have to do our shit. I'm a very busy guy, believe it or not."

No, he wasn't and no, they didn't, but Aiden doesn't bother laughing at his self depreciating joke, instead notign how she turned her gaze to the sky again.

"You don't want to talk about it, that's cool," he stated simply. "I just think it's cool."

[sweetmotherofgod]

Sick

fuck.

Her shoulders tighten, her jaw sets, and she doesn't look back at him because if she does she's going to hit him. Not that he doesn't deserve it, but this jumping off roofs talk makes her very aware that he knows this place and she doesn't.

"How he died, or that I found him?"

[slow_burn]

"That you're pulling the wool over everybody's eyes," Aiden corrects, and he leans over so he's resting his head on his elbow, moving to the side in a half-fetal position. It's almost like he's going to sleep but he stops blinking irregularly and smirks.

"It's good. You're good."

[sweetmotherofgod]

When he speaks, she flinches.

She should leave. Slip back through the window and crawl into bed. Crawl into Tracy's, maybe, and warm away this chill. She should leave.

She should, and she doesn't. She lays back, twists onto her side and curls up, mirroring him. There's nobody around, nobody to hear, but she still speaks in a whisper.

"How do you know that?"

[slow_burn]

"'Cause." He leans backwards, and for a moment all that's left is the light on his cigarette, burning like an ember.

He extinguishes it, almost at once, chipping it on the tile. Darkness engulfs them. Aiden feels at peace.

"I do it, too."

[sweetmotherofgod]

She lays silent for a while. There's just the night and the sound of their breathing and the smell of his cigarette while her eyes adjust until the curves and angles of his face swim out of the darkness.

"How?"

Quiet. So quiet.

"It's making me so tired."

[slow_burn]

"It's that or more medication," He points out. Not for Heather, maybe--or a temporary fix. Poison pills and little lies. Aiden decides maybe--just maybe--she deserves a real answer.

"This world is full of fucked up shit and people are monsters, Heather. Sometimes you gotta accept you're one of those terrible things choking the world and do what you can to hold yourself back."

[sweetmotherofgod]

"It's not-"

No. She has the sense at least not to say it's not fair, because nothing is and whining about it has never changed that, ever. But it's all still so fresh, and in between the days when she thinks the best thing she can do is grow into someone her father would be proud of and the days when she wishes she just wouldn't wake up, there are days when she wants to burn the whole world down just to see if she feels it.

She reaches for his face, catches herself and drops her hand to the tile beneath them. Watches, watches, watches.

"Help me."