Worlds Apart Fanfiction - Shattered Lives

Begin Again

DAY 1

"I'm sober, I swear. I have been for the past three years." Ever since I found out the horrible secret five years ago actually. I control the urge to stomp on my feet and walk away, knowing that it will only support Cash's theory. "Just because I haven't slept for the last three days doesn't mean I have been drinking." As soon as I say it, I realize that statement makes no sense at all. How will I stay awake if I'm so fucking drunk that the only option is to pass out? Still, not the point.

"Let me recount then." Cash glares at me and it is only the pity that hides behind it that makes me stop. After what happened… after what I did to him, it is the least I can do. Even if he does get on my last nerve. "Four days ago, you call me to revive your music career with another album after thirty months of no communication. Thirty months after you publicly announced that you were done with everything of this world. You gave me so many sleepless nights that my own wife suggested sleeping pills and therapy. And now you tell me that you have been awake for the last seventy-two hours?" He lets out a loud exhale and only the knowledge that it would not be good to prod him right now makes me stop from correcting him that it has been seventy eight hours since I last slept. Fuck, I do need to sleep.

Unfortunately for me, a yawn follows that thought and Cash's gaze follows it as if it will tell him the location of the Atlantis. "Yes, I yawned. I need sleep. I will sleep. Now would you look at the lyrics I came up with?" I prod with the very papers that started this fight today. I fake swaying a little and he takes the bait. His concern for me is the only thing that makes him finally give up and snatch the papers from me. I have my favourite, and most invested, one on top for him to see, titled 'Begin Again'.

His eyebrows shoots up as he reads them and admiration sets in. He opens his mouth to speak but he freezes in shock at something he sees. I don't know what exactly but I have quite an idea when black spots fill my vision and I hear a loud thud. There is a moment of brilliant thinking in my head (fuck!) before I pass out.

*****

5 years ago...

"Jude? Where are you? It's been a month since you were last seen!" Cash calls out somewhere from my apartment but my mind is filled in such a deep haze that nothing seems to penetrate. I know I'm in my house but I hadn't that it has been a month since Logan tore me apart and left me bleeding in that cemetery. God, I'm remembering. This stuff is shitty. I need another hit.

"God, what is that smell? Have you - Jude!" Cash screams so loudly that I drop whatever-the-fuck-it-is. I try to look around and being conscious enough, I wince at the sight. My bedroom is a mess. Clothes thrown around, broken glass littering the floor, even my precious vinyl records lay broken all around me. And I stink. Badly. As if there was an event of mass shitting all over me. I give him a careless smile, though from the numbness of my face and the concern in his eyes, it wasn't such a good job. "What the hell are you doing?"

Before I can respond, and I'm not really sure I can, he drags me up and pulls me into the bathroom. He opens the door and my mind has only enough time to say Oh shit! Before he freezes. And then his grip on my arm hardens so badly that I suspect I might lose that limb. Just like how I lost the two pieces of my heart. Even the stray thought causes so much pain that I don't feel his arm anymore. I look over his shoulder and even I'm surprised and disgusted by the sight. I practically opened my own drug lab in the bathroom. Used and new syringes are thrown around carelessly while that drug, whatever it was, lies in enough quantity that justifies the one thousand grand cost of the entire pile. "You are going to rehab right this instant." His voice is filled with so much anger that I flinch. But then the thought of rehab reminds me of drinking and how I haven't even touched alcohol since I found out the truth. And then only three words go through my mind then.