At the Top of My Lungs (Gerard Way fanfiction)

You Can't Answer a Question With a Question

Chapter 7

Everything he gives me knocks me out. For how long, who knows? Well, he does. But when I do come to, it just seems like something else has been added to the basement. After the soup, it was a quilt on the cot in the corner. Last time, it was a floor lamp that illuminated the danky basement far better than the single bulb hanging from the ceiling. And, just now, there is a paperback on the cot.
I get up from the corner that I feel asleep in and walk over. The book is Pillars of the Earth. I've never heard of it, but it is quite large.
For about the hundreth time I wonder what this guy's motives are. Besides the initial hitting me in the back of the head with the butt of his gun, he hasn't made any attempt to further hurt me. In fact, the only time he has come closer than the base of the stairs while I have been awake was the first time I woke up here. Is that for my comfort or his?
I'm sick of waiting. I want to know what this guy wants.
The door opens and he walks down the stairs, wearing his black jeans and tshirt. He looks down at his feet as he walks, and doesn't look up until he sits on the bottom step and opens his little book. When he does, his eyes first go to the corner that I usually place myself in for our sessions, due to the fact it is farthest from the stairs. He sees that I'm not there, and his eyes slowly scan over until they rest on me, sitting on the bed.
"Hello Christine." he says through a smile.
"Hello Gerard." I reply. I begin to clench the quilt around me. This is it. He opens his mouth but before he says anything "Actually, can I ask you something?"
He smiles even wider at this. "Of course, but I reserve the right to not answer." I let out a chuckle at this, how could I not? I am completely under his control, yet he says things like that. I don't know what to think.
"What is your question?" his smile is still on his face.
"Why... why did you take me?" I blurt out before I can change my mind.
"That is the question, isn't it? It must be on your mind every moment. 'He doesn't seem like murderers on the crime TV shows I watch. He hasn't tried to kill me yet. Sure, all his food knocks me out, but that's only so he can put things in my room without me freaking out.'" he pauses, and I don't like the fact that he called the basement my room. Does he think I'm some sort of house guest?
"I'm going to answer your question with a question," he continues. Great. "Do you value human life?"
"Uh... yeah. How does that have anything to do w-"
"How can someone with self-inflicted scars say they value human life when they don't even value their own?"
My head snapped up and looked at him. What? How did he know?
"Oh, so I was correct. I usually am, but still. It's reassuring."
"H-how?" I barely stutter out.
"Your attempts to distance yourself from your parents. Your inability to name five people you consider friends-" that was our discussion last time- "and really, the thing that gave you away, was your lack of fear. No one that didn't already want to die would have been this calm the past week."
I have been gone for a week.
"That doesn't answer my question!" I yell as he gets up.
"Maybe, I want to get you to appreciate life."
"You killed that man-"
"That doesn't matter."
"so you could teach me the value of human life?"
He pauses at the door, and looks at me over his shoulder.
"Sounds a bit crazy, when you put it like that." With a flash of that smile, now on the verge of psychotic, he is gone.