#drabblethon

Lightning lit up the sky followed by several booms of thunder. It was loud enough that it had woken Kaben up yet again. Max was going to spend another sleepless night comforting her young son. She wasn't sure what caused Kaben's fear of thunderstorms but then again she hadn't really been in his life much until recently. "I'll give Nance a ring tomorrow and see what this is all about," she thought to herself. She surely didn't recall herself ever being scared of storms but then again, she had always loved to play out in the rain with her brothers even when it was a rather bad storm. Max the tomboy, always keeping up with her brothers or at least trying.

Turning the television on so that they could have something to drown out the sounds of the thunder, Max asked what Kaben wanted to watch. He shrugged his shoulders. Maybe it was because he was so tired and would probably go back to sleep halfway through anything that she put on. "Okay buddy, how about.." she trailed off as she flipped through the channels landing on QVC. Of course, they were selling clothes. Max was a sucker for clothes. Clothes and shoes to be exact. Glancing down at her son, she smiled. "Mind if mummy watches this for a minute. Might buy us something nice" she winked. Kaben was half out of it already and just nodded. "We have this nice sweater in both lavender and rose" the host of segment stated. "Hmmm," Max nodded. "Mummy what is a sweater?", Kaben chimed in causing Max to chuckle.

Title: Walk Through The Fire

I touch the fire and it freezes me

I look into it and it's black

Why can't I feel?

My skin should crack and peel

I want the fire back

‘I can’t keep doing this to myself’ Nicola repeated over and over in her head. To the outside world it would appear that she had it all together but inside that was a different story. She felt as if she lived in darkness when everyone else thought that she lived in the light.  She hated what she had become. She wanted to feel something, just anything except for being numb. She didn’t recognize the person in the reflection of the mirror. She doesn’t recognize the woman that she has become. She took a breath and sighed.

She hadn’t slept in days, hadn’t eaten in two. She lied to herself and others around her. All she wanted to do was to sink down into oblivion if she could. Without warning she took a cup that was on the sink and threw it at the mirror shattering it. All she wanted was a decent nights sleep. Hell she would settle for a few hours sleep if she could. She wasn’t taking her medication again and she knew what would happen if Gabe were to find out.  She wasn’t sure of a lot of things at this point.  She would do anything to forget. She wanted to forget her past. She wanted to forget that she had almost died, that she had been a pawn in some elaborate scheme to get at her father.

Plagued by memories she decided to give up any attempt at getting any sleep. She slid her feet into her slippers and tied her robe as she walked into the kitchen. As she turned on the light, her pale face took in the kitchen. She glanced at the bottle of vodka on the counter.  She wasn’t much of a drinker but she didn’t even feel like herself. Part of her feared that she’d never feel like herself again. She needed a drink. She wanted a drink. She stared at it before she took a sip from the bottle.  She grimaced as the vodka burned down her throat and settled down into her chest.  She opened a can of ginger ale to go with the vodka. What was wrong with having a few drinks? She settled into one of the chairs.

Her body and mind were riddled with a thousand memories. She wished that she had never come home sometimes. It reminded her of just how disconnected she had become after her mother’s death. That had hit her harder than anything. She sighed as she took drink after drink. She sighed as she got up. Walking into a spare room she had been using to do some art therapy. She reached over and flipped the light on. She looked around and threw the empty bottle at the wall. She watched it shatter into pieces onto the floor. She went to her paint supplies and grabbed the glass jars that were there. She didn’t care anymore. She just started throwing them and watching them shatter. She didn’t want to feel a damn thing. She started destroying things she painted. She screamed as loud as she could. She didn’t even realize that she was bleeding. It wasn’t until she heard her name that she stopped what she was doing.

It was time to leave. Max's flight was in a few hours and she definitely did not want to miss it. She had been planning her big move across the pond to New York City for a what seemed forever. It however had been just under a month from the time she told her family that she was leaving no matter what ,to them, especially her mum and younger brother excepting it, to her packing and loading up the car to head out. Saying goodbye proved to be harder than Max had thought. There were plenty of tears to go around.

Diane held her only daughter's face in her hands one last time before pulling Max into the mother of all hugs. That was going to be a feeling that Max would miss. Not having her mother to hold her when life beat the shit out of her. She was not sure she would survive being so far from her family. Her older brothers she wasn't that worried about. Sure she would miss her daily talks with Thomas but Mitchell she wasn't going to waste as second thinking of him, even if he was her twin. Their bond was shattered years before. As far as Max was concerned she didn't have a twin brother. Now, her younger brother Alfie, she was worried the most about him. He had always been her shadow and there wasn't much the two didn't do together. 

Hugging Thomas, Max asked where Alfie was. He hadn't shown up. She couldn't leave with out saying goodbye him. Thomas searched the house for their brother but the blonde boy was no where to be found. Letting out a sigh, Max said one last goodbye to everyone before getting into the car with her best friend. Though the girls were not heading to the same final destination, they were both headed to the airport.  Just as Max turned the key in the ignition, she looked up and spotted Alfie hiding. He had been watching the farewells from afar. She smiled at her little brother and blow him a kiss. She knew that he couldn't handle an actual goodbye.

Title: Get Out

Pairing Selena (Nicola)/Chris

Setting: New Mexico

“Just get out. Get out and don’t you dare ever come back.” The words echoed over and over in her mind. As much as she wanted things to be normal they never could be. Her life would be always be complicated as long as her life continued to be in danger. Anyone that got close to her put their life at risk and that wasn’t the way things should be. She hated being who she was but even when she was in New Mexico she wasn’t really herself. She could take care of herself but that wasn’t the problem. She didn’t want to end up like her mother.

She often began to wonder if she was cursed. She was beginning to think that she was cursed. Everyone around her wound up getting hurt in some way. Against her better judgement she followed after him. “Where are you going?” “You told me to leave.” He shouts back. He doesn’t turn to look at her. She isn’t sure what she’s most upset about…the way she handled things, the way she told him to leave, or a combination of it all. She had never allowed anyone to get close to her and she let him in. It was like something inside of her snapped and she felt as if she was broken, unfixable. “STOP PLEASE!” Her voice breaks as she cries.

Those words stop him at least for the time being. He turns to look at her. “Sel…” he sighs. “I can’t do this.” She sighed. “I know. I know that I push you away and I’m sorry. I am sorry Chris whether you believe that or not.” He shook his head. “It doesn’t fix things. I can’t help you if you don’t let me in. Why is it so hard for you to trust me?” Tears ran down her face as she looked at him. “I don’t trust anyone. The last time I trusted someone I got hurt.” He stepped closer to her. “I’m not going to hurt you.” She ran her fingers through her dark hair. “This isn’t easy for me, okay? You don’t know me. You think you do but you have no idea….no idea the hell that I went through. You don’t know why I’m up half the damn night or why I keep a gun by my bed?”

He looked at her. “If you let me I can help you, okay?” She shook her head. “Why? Why should I? You don’t think I know what everyone thinks about me around here. What you think about me? If you knew my past you wouldn’t like me. Anyone that ever cares about me winds up getting hurt or leaving me.” “I’m not going to get hurt. Tell me what’s going on.” She backed away. “I can’t. Just let me go. If you care about me at all you’ll forget about me.” “Sel….I…” “Don’t say it. I don’t deserve to hear it.”

"See? I told you I could do it.", Max said in an unsure voice. Could she really do it?  Sure she was strapped into the swing and was seconds away from being swung out over the trees and valley below. There was plenty of time to back out and her nerves were telling her to jump out of the seat before the two-man crew released the swing from its restraints. "Are you ready?", the older of the two men asked. His Jamaican accent was just as thick as her British one.

Max shook her head. She wasn't ready, she needed a few more minutes to talk herself into it. She knew that she couldn't back out after all her best friend had already taken her turn. Max didn't want to look like she was afraid of it. Truth be told she was a little afraid. Not of the swing or being so high up. It was the fear of the swing giving way and her falling to the earth below. That terrified the fuck out of the then sixteen-year-old.

"Come on Max, you got this girl", the blonde encouraged her. Taking in a deep breath, Max looked up at the bright blue sky. "Okay, let's do it" she stated, closing her eyes. If she was going to fall to her death she sure the hell didn't want to see it. Pulling her back the men counted down to three and let her go. She swung out over the trees. The breeze hit her in the face.

Title: Normal Again? Trigger Warnings: mentions of suicide, mental institution 

When she opened her eyes it was quiet. She hated the quiet. It made her feel as if she was drowning and that wasn’t the feeling she wanted. The room was dark except for a small bit of fluorescent light escaped from the corridor just right outside from her room.  She struggled to remember what happened. How did she get there? Her head was too full and nothing seemed to be making any resemblance of sense. It was almost like she was trying to fit two sets of memories and neither seemed to mesh with the reality that was before her. Her head was throbbing and it was the worst headache or migraine that she ever had.

Her thoughts soon began to shift focus, her friends and the automatic instinct to reach out to them.  It took real restraint not to call out for help. She knew that it would be pointless. Her friends weren’t there. She was alone, in a dark room. Somehow she knew that she might not be able to get back to them and that thought scared her more than anything.  She felt like she had been in a fog or daze for what felt like daze. She vaguely remembered the doctor saying that he couldn’t believe how lucid she was. Her parents thought that it was some sort of a miracle but she knows that whatever this is…whatever happened is not a miracle.  This was hell. Hell in it’s purest form. She knew that she was in her right mind but it didn’t mean that the doctor would think the same thing.

Her parents were the hardest thing to deal with. Her mom was there. She was alive and breathing. She hadn’t died. Her father was there which only added to the confusion in Nicola’s mind. It confused her because he never gave a damn about her before. Why would he give a damn about her now?  All she wanted was to go home but that wouldn’t happen unless the doctor believed her to be in her right mind. He was concerned with her confusion and would likely recommend for her to stay at the clinic. She would do or anything that she could in order to get out of this place. Was that too much to ask? She wanted…no she needed answers.

She was confused by the conversations that she had with her parents. Things like getting her back into school;what school? What had she done that was so awful that she was no longer a student? She could tell that things were not great between her parents. They never had been.  Perhaps the toll of where she was, what happened had been the cause of their unhappiness or maybe it was something more.  Something wasn’t sitting right with her and that scared her. What had been so bad that she wound up in a institution?

Two weeks.  It felt as if she had been in there for years. Maybe it was the drugs in her system that made it feel that way. Her heart thundered in her head for a few minutes. She didn’t understand why she was there. She remembered the aftermath though.  She remembered her father yelling at her in Russian. Her parents shouting at each other and then silence. She was still searching throughout her scattered memory when an orderly poked his head inside the door of her room. “You have a visitor Nicola.” “A visitor? I thought I wasn’t allowed to have visitors.” “She’s waiting for you in the day room.” Nicola ran her fingers through her dark hair. “Who is it?” “Your mom.”

“Hello,this is a prepaid collect call from an inmate at Attica Correctional Facility. This call is subject to recording and monitoring. To accept the call press 1. If you do not press one please hang up.” As much as Nicola wanted to ignore the calls and there had been a lot of them part of her felt this need to hear whoever it was that was calling her and it could be either her father or the piece of shit that had caused the death of her mother. Either way she had no desire to hear what either one of them had to say. Her life had never been the same. There was no going back. All that she could do was to move forward. Against her better judgement she hit one. “You may now begin your call.”

Nicola rolled her eyes. As much as she just wanted to hang up the phone she knew that it wasn’t much of an option. She hated that she allowed him to have control over her life. “Privet dochka.” She shook her head as she heard the familiar voice of the last person that she ever wanted to talk to in her life. “Privet papa.” She replied as much as she hated saying it. He never wanted anything to do with her when she was growing up so why would he want to have anything to do with her now. She was getting too old for all of this shit.

“Pochemu ty vernulsya?” She knew that he was angry and so was she. He only called when he wanted something from her. Hate was a strong word and it was one she would use to describe their relationship.  “Ne troye chertoro deto.” She responded in a tone that she hadn’t used in a long time. “Nikolina you will not use that tone with me.” She rolled her eyes. “What do you want?” She wished she had never answered the call but curiosity got the best of her. What was the saying? Curiosity killed the cat.

“Can’t a father call his only daughter?” “Daughter? So I’m your daughter now….funny the last time we saw each other you were ready to feed me to the wolves.” Nikolai laughed. “If I wanted you dead I would have done it a long time ago. If it wasn’t for me and my connections you wouldn’t be alive.” Nicola let out a sign of frustration. “Because of who you are…need I remind you that I was kidnapped and tortured for days by the same man who took my mother….your wife away from us.” Nikolai sighed. “I know….I know. You need to be careful.” Nicola ran her fingers through her hair. “You don’t get it do you??? All I have ever wanted was for you to just love me, accept me as your own but you treated me like I was a pebble in your shoe.” Nikolai laughed. “So strong willed like your mother. If it wasn’t for me you wouldn’t have had a family.”

She was angry. She knew that she could say things without giving it much thought and of course she did. “Nikodga ne zvoni mne snova.  Do svidaniya.” She hung up the phone and sighed. All she wanted was to be able to have some sort of life where she didn’t have to worry about who her father was or if her life was in danger. Without giving it much thought she grabbed a bottle of whiskey and took a long drink from it. She didn’t give a damn about the consequences. All she knew was that she needed to just forget.