How She Came Home

Chapter Sixty-Five

Note: I had fun reading your messages and comments from the previous chapters. I guess everyone crying now. I don't want to spoil so all I'm gonna say is we still have 10+ chaps left so you'll never know what will happen next in... 😉

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She woke to a throbbing pain in her head, but it wasn't all bad. There was a warm feeling in her stomach, a floaty feeling, something fuzzy and giddy and cozy as she lay beneath the heavy blankets, the consuming pain of her grief beating against the dam wall the sedative had erected, holding the flood at bay for the time being.

Of course, Becca didn't know she'd been sedated exactly, only that things had hurt and then it had stopped and now she was awake.

All memory of arriving home was a blur to her, although she vaguely recalled her mother there, and she sat up in bed after a minute, hand pressed to her head, and stared down at her undressed figure. She didn't remember taking off that black dress, remember walking upstairs or getting into bed, but she had and she'd slept and taken something - that much was clear.

Stiffly climbing out of bed, Becca pulled on a pair of Freen's sweatpants, the waistband needing to be pulled in that little bit tighter now to stop them sagging around her hips, and she ran a hand over her face, tongue thick in her mouth.

Despite the abundance of sleep she'd been getting lately, there was a bone-deep weariness to her that never seemed to go away, dark circles beneath her sunken eyes and a sallow pallor to her skin.

She was sick with grief and there was no cure for it.

The worst part was it hadn't even been two weeks; she would have a lifetime of this.

Perhaps worst of all was that Freen consumed her every waking thought in an endless film reel inside Becca's mind; her face, her eyes, her lips, her mouth, her laugh, the smell of her perfume and the memory of how soft her hair was as Becca ran her fingers through it.

Becca remembered it all. Every moment was a fresh memory come to torture her, and after dreams plagued with Freen's homecoming, even sleep was no longer a comfort.

Her family might have been a comfort if they weren't such a bitter reminder of Freen too. The hollow-eyed grief of a mother losing her daughter a slap in the face whenever she looked at Nun, memories of bickering and laughter and inside jokes whenever she looked at Mind.

It was too much and it was a relief that everyone had mostly left her alone, aside from her mother who seemed to relentlessly hover, worried sick over the frightening change in Becca.

She'd always been a fighter - physically, verbally, emotionally - and even when she'd struggled to open up to people, she'd never been so closed off and quiet. The stubborn determination to fight for everything denied her was gone, and now Becca could barely get out of bed.

When she woke, the sky the purplish blue of a bruise as rainclouds lingered and the weak sunlight slipped away, Becca found the stifling silence of the house suffocating though.

It felt like the walls were closing in, her ears ringing as she looked around Freen's room and the cotton wool feeling of the drugs left her feeling unbalanced. Gripped by the sudden urge to leave, she climbed to her feet and pulled on a sweater and shoes over her bare feet.

Reaching for the damp coat hanging on the back of the door, Becca slipped out of the room and crept downstairs, the screen door squeaking faintly as she crept outside.

No one stopped her as she hurried down the slick driveway, raindrops pattering against her shoulders as she hunched them, hands balled into her pockets and her breath a faint mist as what little warmth the day had held fled into night.