Greys II - Ghosts

Chapter 50 - Endings & Beginnings

It's perfectly okay,
I'm afraid too.

La Dispute - Untitled

"What's wrong with James? I just watched him- he collapsed, and- and he can't eat or sleep, or anything without his Shift, it's like his body is rejecting e-everything. I know you know, so tell me."

I burst into Abby's study, interrupting a meeting with Cordelia, who startled heavily. I knew Abby would know what I meant, he always knew everything, even the things I thought were secrets in the Vault, even when I knew he hadn't been around to see something happen, he still always knew.

I wished I didn't have to ask about James. And I hated that I had started calling him James again. I didn't even know when the change took place, but suddenly he wasn't Gabriel anymore, not in my mind at least. He hadn't been for a long time.

"It isn't his body that's the problem."

I raised my eyebrows, waiting for more. Abby sighed and rubbed his eyes before continuing, pinching the bridge of his nose and looking much more weary than usual. He had seemed so much more tired since James' arrival.

"It's his mind, child. And I have nothing I can do for him. He won't tell me what's ailing him, he won't tell me what the attack is, so I cannot help him. He never was good at asking aid from others, for admitting when he needed someone other than himself. And now I'm afraid it's killing him."

Abby's last words were quiet, barely more than a whisper in his large office. His eyes were still closed, his thumb and index fingers still pressed to the top of his nose.

"Killing him? He's dying?"

My voice squeaked at the end and I had to cover it with a clear of my throat, but Abby's eyes didn't even search for mine.

"Yes, dear child, I believe he's come to join us too late. Something is haunting him, but I know not what. I'm afraid his father is in his mind, breaking him more and more each day, each hour, but the boy won't ask for help, and so he cannot receive it. I believe he is losing his mind more with each day he tries to battle his demons alone. He's been with us eight days already and I've seen nothing more than deterioration, and rapid deterioration at that."

I was stunned, dumbfounded. All the things I had seen, all the incongruity in his personality, the sickness, did that mean he was already insane? Was that what all of this was? Was that why he was so often Shifted? Did that slow it? Give him some kind of control? This couldn't be right, James couldn't go insane, he wouldn't, it wasn't fair. Abby was wrong.

Jevin had been insane, that's what insanity looked like, but James couldn't be, he never could be. It wasn't fair, it couldn't happen, not to him. The world shouldn't allow that. It was unfair. Not just unfair, it was wrong. James' mind was strong, the strongest I had ever known. Everything about him was strong, he was strength. It couldn't fail him now, after all he had lived through, after all he had overcome.

Leave faith to the deprived and it will unravel your mind.

Leave kindness to the strong and be haunted by your wrongs.

The poem echoed in my head and I almost screamed at it to leave me alone, at the voice in my mind to let me be, just this once. The words never seemed to mean the same thing any two times I thought of them, just like my feelings for James, they were always changing, always morphing and I never knew what they'd be, even a moment later. I had so little control over so much, and Abby's words just proved this more, just like the poem, just like my own damned emotions. It wasn't fair. James couldn't live through his father's torture, live through learning how to be a real person, with a heart and soul, make a family, hold them together, lead them and love them and protect them just to have his mind ripped away because he was alone, because he had been abandoned. Did I do this to him? Was I responsible? I knew I was.