Care For Me ✔️

60

trigger warning; mentions of suicide and depression.

Leo sat perched upon his bedroom window ledge. The window lay open as he dangled his legs over the edge, slowly swinging them back and forth wondering what it would feel like if he just let go. Would it hurt or would it be instant? All the pain gone in a matter of seconds.

It was tempting, maybe a little too tempting.

His bedroom door creaked open, startling him out of his never ending dark thoughts. The short frame of his twin sister came into view, there was a sympathetic look on her face and Leo hated it. It made him feel weak, pathetic.

Silently, Lily made her way towards him, her movements cautious, as if she could hear all of his previous thoughts. When she reached him, she braced her arms on the ledge and pushed herself into the space beside him, mirroring his actions as she dangled her legs over the edge without a second thought.

"Are you thinking of jumping?" Lily asked nonchalantly, as if she was questioning something as simple as the weather. She had a knowing glint in her eyes and Leo knew then and there she'd see right past the lie that sat on the tip of his tongue.

"You already know the answer to that." He choose to say instead of denying it like he'd planned. He sucked in a breath, shoulders slumping as his gaze dropped to the gravel beneath his feet.

Lily hummed curiously, following his eyes. "It's a fair drop. It would hurt." She eventually said, studying Leo's reaction intently.

Keeping her eyes solely on his face, she pushed past her fear of heights, ignoring the slickness of her palms and thudding of her heart as she swallowed down the nerves in her throat. Whilst this situation made her all kinds of uneasy, Lily could handle it because it was all for him and she wanted nothing more than to understand her twin. To understand his depression and how it made him feel. And though she could never truly relate, it didn't mean she couldn't try to see the world through his eyes.

"I don't think anything could hurt more than this... more than living." Leo whispered, azure eyes blinded with unshed tears. He'd thought about it a lot, about leaving, jumping. Everyday was a struggle for him to carry on and the burden on his shoulders often felt heavier than his heart could bare.

"I've felt like that before." Lily said, hesitance latching onto each word. She was terrified of saying the wrong thing, of giving him another reason to let go. Slowly, she moved her hand along the wooden edge of the window frame, her pinky softly grazing the edge of his. "I wished for nothing more than to die... because compared to what I was living, death never seemed scary. If anything... it was like freedom."

To her surprise, Leo threaded his pinky with hers, both seeing blue as their identical eyes met. The words she'd spoken were so familiar to him, as though she'd recited them from his own bitter thoughts. For the first time in a long time, Leo felt like he had someone who somewhat understood him.

"Why... why did you stay?" He found himself asking, the question slipping from his tongue before he could stop it. Each day his reasons seemed to drift further away and he was so desperate for someone to pull them closer before it was too late.

Lily sighed and shifted her eyes from his to the stars. Why? Honestly, she wasn't so sure. Or she was, but it sounded stupid to say it out loud.

"I think... somewhere deep down, I knew things would get better. It sounds strange but I had this feeling that I was put on this earth for a reason, and I didn't want to die without knowing what that was."