A/N: 3,000 reads! 134 votes and 128 comments! I cant even. Thank you guys so much.
Dedication goes to Mammoetje (yes, I've started dedicating to commenters, because I just love them so much rright now) for her amazing comments and awesome support AND from being from Neverland!!!! AAAAAHHHHH, okay she's actually from the netherlands, but I like Neverland better, so there!!! No, but really, I find that just absolutely fasinating. Please tell be if you are not american! I will fangirl so hard.
CHAPTER TEN
Open Wounds and Desperation
I didn’t know.
When William carried her in, that night, he didn’t say a word about what had happened when he’d picked her up. And she was fast asleep in his arms.
I was completely unprepared that night; when the screaming started, there was nothing I could do. I couldn’t even touch her.
And it was the hardest thing I’d ever had to do, see, or hear.
And I had no idea why.
~Claire Pia
*July 8, 2013*
Screaming. It was loud and raw and terrified. Terrifying. Somewhere, in the back of my mind, I knew that it was me; I was making that horrible, wretched sound. But I couldn’t seem to stop. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. No, that wasn’t completely true; I could think.
But I wished that I couldn’t.
Where was he?!? I kept grabbing at the wood of the wall and the floor in the corner, but he wasn’t there. He wasn’t there. My eyes darted frantically, not even avoiding the bed that I hunched and cringed and curled away from, trying to find him.
Because if he wasn’t here, then nothing would stop it from happening.
Pure terror made my eyes dilate, and by the time Claire found me, I was incoherent. I didn’t recognize her, fighting and clawing at her touch, pulling as far from it as I could.
Desperate, she must have called Mrs. Bransen, but I would not even calm for her. Like an animal that’s been beaten until it doesn’t recognize those that it once loved, I didn’t know even her.
And, all the while, my screams continued to rip the air.
* * *
It had been almost three hours and Roza’s nearly inhuman screams still shook the very foundation of the little duplex. Mrs. Bransen had long since left, unable to stomach the ripping sound of the small girl’s purest terror and utter pain.
The worst part was, she seemed to be saying something, asking for someone, but her fear and desperation garbled her words so much so as to make the meaning indecipherable. And no one could calm her.
Claire stood in the doorway, unable to pull herself away, her face blanched and deathly white, dark circles bagged under her eyes.
However, when James came back out of the kitchen, a cup of herbal tea in either hand, Claire’s head snapped up.
William. William had been the last one to speak to Roza before-
She was across the room in an instant, her cell up to her ear before she could even fully process her actions. As she heard the dial tone start up, she thought better of it and put the device down on the table, putting the phone on speaker instead.
And his phone rang.
* * *
“Hello?” the voice was raspy and deep, as if the speaker had just woken up, but I recognised it immediately.
And the moment I heard him, I went silent.
Tripping over my own feet, I stumbled towards the sound, hitting the floor and bruising limbs, but not stopping for even a moment, scrambling forward as fast as I could. Suddenly, I could breathe again; I could feel, I could stand, I could speak.
I could see.
Claire was there, James across from her, boths’ eyes wide in shock, but I didn’t care about them. I searched only for him, and I couldn’t see him. I couldn’t.
My eyes began to dilate again, my breathing becoming shallow as I realized the extent of his absence.
“Hello?” three pairs of eyes shot to the phone laying, forgotten, at the dining table, but neither Claire nor James spoke. I jerked forward, unsteady on my feet, trembling with need.
“Please.”
Claire’s eyes glued to me; it was the first she’d heard me speak in hours, but before she could open her mouth his voice filled the air.
“Roza?” his voice was suddenly alert, completely awake, “What’s wrong? What happened? Talk to me.”
My lip shook, and tears filled my eyes. Both of my caretakers were watching with seeming bated breath, but I couldn’t take my gaze off the phone.
“Where are you? I woke up and you were not he- go- gone,” I was crying now, hiccuping sobs punctuating my broken questions, ”He’s gonna come, he’s gonna take m- me. Please.”
I heard a sound, like the jingle of keys.
“Hey, hey. Shhhhh, I’m on my way right now. I’m so sorry, babe, I didn’t realize-” he cut himself off at the sound of my gasping cries, “Shhhh. Claire and James are both there, right?”
My eyes flickered to the people on either side of me.
“Y- yes.”
“They won’t let anything happen to you. You know that,” a car door shut as an engine roared. But instead of soothing me, his words just remind me.
“They weren’t there. They didn’t stop- Never- Couldn’t stop it from-” I pulled in a wet choking breath, “You’re the only one that’s ever stopped it.”
There was a short pause before all three started talking at once.
“What do you mean ‘that’s ever stopped it?!’ Last night was the first and only time he’s ever touched you, right? Right?!?!” this voice was filled with anger and rage and I cringed away from the sound as it continued.
“What did William stop from happening Roza? Roza, talk to me! What happened last night?” this voice was filled with worry and concern, but was demanding and firm and I couldn’t help but close my eyes tight with anxiety. It was the last voice that finally stopped the other two and gave a life raft of hope to cling to.
“Mates!! You’re scaring her!” that silenced them, “I think that it’s become quite obvious to you, Claire, that, for whatever reason, Will’s presence is needed tonight so-”
“Because she’s been screaming, inconsolable, for the past three hours!” Claire cut James off, but her outburst was obviously meant for William, “And I- we have had no idea what happened- Still have no idea-”
“She’s been screaming for-?”
“Mates!!!” James’s yell made me flinch, but it made Claire’s mouth snap shut and the phone become silent. He took a deep breath, “Will, how far are you?”
“I’m less than five minutes away, just got off I-15.”
“Great. When Will gets here, he will help Ro,” James glanced at me, before back to Claire, but making sure to direct his conversation to us all, “back to bed. Once she’s asleep, William, you can fill Claire in on exactly what happened last night and, Claire, you can fill William in on Ro’s past.”
“But-”
“If William is going to be brought into this, which, frankly, I approve of about as much as you but I don’t see a way around,” James gave me a pointed look, “Than he, being William, not only deserves to know; he needs to know about her.”
Claire held strong for a moment before letting her shoulders drop in defeat, seeing the wisdom in her boyfriend’s words.
I didn’t say a word, my eyes once again locked on the phone. I could hear his breathing. Just barely, but it was there. And it felt like that noise was the only thing keeping me afloat. James went to end the call, but Claire stopped him.
I think she realized how much I needed that sound.
* * *
I didn’t hear him come in. I was too focused on the fact that he was coming, trying to calm myself with the shear knowledge of that one idea.
I had sunk to my knees, there on the cold tile, my back to the little leather couch that separated the dining room from the living room. Usually there would be the soft hum of a soccer game coming from the flat screen in the room behind me, but the tv had long since been turned off. The place was completely quiet and still except for my slow shivers and the sound of breathing from me, James, Claire, and...
“William.”
“Yes?” I jumped a little when his voice came not through the phone, but from beside me, and my eyes wrenched forward. And then I was shifting and moving, my body a mess of limbs as I struggled to reach him as quickly as possible. Claire was sitting on the chair in front of me and James had moved to the couch behind, but I barely noticed either of them; I was much more concerned with getting to him. I barely even heard him, his deep, endeared chuckles at my clumsy desperation going ignored. At least by me.
I got my feet out from under me and fairly launched myself at him, grasping at his shirt and clinging to him, my face buried in his chest just as Claire got off her chair.
“This isn’t funny, Edwards. This is-”
“Claire,” surprisingly, it wasn’t William that interrupted her, but James, “Let’s let William get Ro back to bed, and then we can tal-”
“William,” I don’t know why I said it; maybe I just wanted to try the sound out; maybe I wanted the quiet, shocked reaction that followed; maybe I simply wanted his attention.
She looked like she wanted to argue, but one glance at my shaking figure made her eyes soften, and, without another word, she turned to sit back on her chair.
* * *
He stayed with me that night. And the next. And the next.
I had finally reached the point, like several times before, where my mind snapped. I fixated on him, on William, because William had stopped it.
It was three days before he was able to leave my side without bringing on severe seizure-like shakes and all consuming terror. But I got to a point that I was okay without him. I would paint, draw, read; distract myself from his absence until he came back.
I guess they thought that, eventually, I’d be okay at night. But even children know best: night is when the monsters come.
They were on break. The break had started three days before-
…
Before William and I met.
The break would last two months.
After three weeks, Will left to visit his family in Virginia. He was supposed to stay for two weeks.
He was back four days later.
Thinking back, I feel bad for that. He’d waited so long to see his mother, his friends, his family, but he couldn’t stay.
Because I couldn’t sleep without him.
He might’ve never known. I certainly wasn’t going to tell him. But by the third night without an episode, Claire was so surprised with my progress that she felt it might be a little too good to be true. And rightly so.
She came at midnight. That’s when she first saw the insides of my notebook.
I couldn’t sleep without him. So I remembered. And I drew what I saw.
Until my palms were raw and my fingers bloody.
…
I wish he’d never had to see me like that.
* * *
When I heard that all too familiar chuckle, the one filled with arrogance and conceit, especially directed at Ro, I was filled with rage. He had been so concerned over the phone, surprisingly so. Yet once he was there, and it was obvious that Roza was safe, William reverted back into his normal, shallow, cocky, jerk of a human being.
But she needed him.
It tore me apart inside that he was able to do something with ease that I could no longer do, give her what I could not. But I cared for her far too much to remove him, not when it was so obvious that she could barely breathe without him.
And so I told him. I told him everything.
Everything Mrs. Bransen had ever told me; everything I knew.
His attitude towards her changed completely from then on. He was furious at first, spent the rest of the night either in Ro’s room or on James’ MacBook, searching the name of every villain I’d revealed, making sure none of them were out of jail, that all of them were receiving due punishment. But as her dependence on him became more and more pronounced, he softened. It became clear, not only to James and I, but to William, in just that first week with her, that she was his priority, that it didn’t matter what else was going on, if she needed him, he would be there.
Will treated her like something fragile or cracked, yet far too priceless to even display. He kept her close, fiercely protective and unusually possessive of her, but not in any way romantic. It was almost like she was too precious to him for that.
Don’t get me wrong, William was still William. He still went out. He still drank. He still slept around. In fact, it wasn’t uncommon for William to go ‘clubbing’ with some random fan, and then come home to sing Roza to sleep.
After a week or so, Will had all but moved in. Roza couldn’t sleep without him there; the longest he could leave without her waking was about fifteen minutes. And after the night I saw her, eyes wild, smudging charcoal that was mixed with her blood- After he came back from Virginia, it became obvious that there would be no quick fix and that it was pointless for Will to keep his own flat. His things filled the bottom four drawers and over half of her closet already, so we gave permission and he made the temporary arrangement permanent
I might not have allowed it, but his staying with her was in no way lustful or dirty; it was gentle and tender; it was completely innocent in both physical and mental aspects.
He truly cared for her and would have shied away from using her in any way, especially for physical relief. That would have been enough.
But above all:
Roza trusted him.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
A/N:
RIP Cory from Glee
Best Song Ever was leaked!!!!!
I love bacon...
I’m sorry, that’s all I got
WAIT! Question:
How is it that I have 81 pages, single spaced, size 12 font, Times New Roman, of this story on Microsoft Word, yet only 33 pages on wattpad? This is slightly ticking me off
Ummmm, that's it. Thanks for readin'!