•Blind~•{Eazy E X Reader Fanfic}°

Almost doesn't count

-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-☆°☆_-_-_-_--_-_-_-_-_--_-_-_-

The house was silent again.
Too silent.

Korina sat on the couch, one leg tucked under her, the other hanging limply off the side.
The clock on the wall ticked loudly in the background, counting down the hours until the lawyers would arrive.
Until her life would once again be dragged into conference rooms and courtrooms and cold fucking paperwork.

She didn't want to see them.
She didn't want to see anybody.

Her hand absentmindedly rubbed her side, the familiar ache gnawing at her ribs - the ache the doctors said would never truly go away.
Some stupid long-ass medical term she barely remembered.
All she heard when they diagnosed her was: Permanent. Chronic. Progressive.

It was like a slow death.
One nobody could see but her.

Eric didn't give a shit.
The only thing he cared about now was winning - winning in court, winning custody, winning at hurting her the way he thought she hurt him.

She could still hear his voice from that phone call.
The venom.
The rage.
The way he spat the words out like he hated her.

"You just some weak ass bitch without me, Korina."
"You moved the fuck on like I was nothin'."
"Kory's gonna see what a pathetic ass mom you are."

She squeezed her eyes shut hard, trying to block it out.
But it was all still there - living rent-free in her head.

It hurt.
God, it fucking hurt.
She loved that man once.
She gave him everything she had.

And now he was threatening to take the one thing she still cared about - Kory - just because he couldn't stand the idea of her breathing without him.

Korina wiped her eyes roughly.
No.
She wasn't gonna sit here crying like a damn victim.

She got up, shivering a little from the fever she hadn't even told Navira about, and wandered down the hallway.
Her old recording room was still there - barely touched.
It smelled like dust and memories.
Like a version of herself she didn't even know how to reach anymore.

She ran her hand over the old mic stand, the beat-up headphones hanging from it like a relic.

She remembered being 19, broke as hell, sneaking into after-hours studios just to lay down tracks.
She remembered the first time a DJ spun her shit on the radio.
She remembered the nights the whole city felt like it was hers.

Before it got ugly.
Before the labels, and contracts, and Eric's jealousies, and the cheating, and the lying, and the fights, and now this never-ending war over her fucking child.

She plugged in the equipment.
The computer whirred to life, the screen lighting up the dim room.
The mic crackled when she tapped it.

Korina sat down, grabbed an old leather notebook with worn edges, and flipped through blank pages.
No beats.
No team.
No distractions.

Just her.

Her hand trembled a little, but she started writing.

The first lines were messy, almost too honest:

"Wish I could feel how I felt back then
Before the pain, before fake-ass friends
Before I loved a man who ain't love me back
Before they all wanted a piece of my tracks..."

Her voice cracked as she muttered the lyrics under her breath.

But she didn't stop.

She wrote about the nights she spent awake, clutching the side of her bed, crying into her pillow so Kory wouldn't hear.
She wrote about feeling like she was dying faster than the doctors even warned.
She wrote about the loneliness that fame never protected her from.

It poured out of her like blood.
Like something that had been building for too damn long.

She hit 'record' and stepped to the mic.

No warm-up. No vocal coach. No fancy-ass AutoTune bullshit.

Just Korina.
Bare.
Broken.
Still fighting.

"I gave you my youth, my soul, my prime
Now all you want is to say she's 'mine'
But where were you when I was bleedin' at night?
Where were you when my world lost light?
You ain't never stayed when it mattered the most,
So don't come now, tryna act like a ghost..."

Her voice was raw, scratchy, too real.
She didn't even care how it sounded.

She recorded until the tears blurred the words on the page.
Until her body gave out and she sank to the floor, back against the wall, mic still hanging from its cord like a noose.

The house stayed quiet around her.
Too damn quiet.

She thought about her first show - in a shitty little club downtown, packed with sweaty kids screaming her name.
She thought about the first time she signed an autograph and the girl said, "You changed my life."

She thought about the nights she used to stay up in her tiny apartment, making beats on a $30 keyboard, dreaming of making it out.

Back then, life was messy but beautiful.
Back then, her dreams were bigger than her fears.

Now?

Now she didn't even know if she had a future to dream for.

She knew this would be her last album.
She didn't need a crystal ball to see that shit.

Her body wasn't going to let her tour anymore.
Her mind wasn't going to let her love easily anymore.
Her heart had already taken too many fucking hits.

And honestly?

She was tired.

Not the kind of tired sleep could fix.
The kind of tired that lived in your bones.

Korina curled up on the floor, headphones still clutched in her hand, and stared up at the ceiling.

Maybe nobody would understand this album.
Maybe it wouldn't go platinum.
Maybe it would barely get played.

But it would be hers.

Her truth.

Her pain.

Her final gift.

She whispered into the empty room:

"This is for you, Kory. This is for every part of me I never got to say out loud."

And then she closed her eyes, letting herself feel everything -
the loneliness,
the anger,
the love,
the grief,
the music still burning somewhere inside her chest.

Because even broken, even dying, even abandoned - Korina still had a voice.
And before the world silenced her for good, she was damn sure gonna use it.