Warning: This fanfiction contains mentions/descriptions of self harm, depression, suicidal thoughts, and other potentially triggering things. If you are sensitive to anything like that, please do not read this fic.

Chapter One

Evelyn Clark opened her eyes, inhaling deeply as she stared up at the ceiling. She slowly sat upright and exhaled with a sigh. After a few moments of blank staring, she forced herself to stand, grimacing a little as her body rejected the movement by making her muscles cramp up. She stretched, hoping to relieve the discomfort, but to little avail.

She yawned and opened the door to her room, stumbling down the hallway and stairs to the kitchen to make tea. Her house was quiet, cold, and lonely, and had been for a long while. The deafening silence almost made her miss her brothers, who had been anything but quiet. The peaceful meals almost made her wish she hadn't moved away from them to live in America. She hadn't particularly wanted to move, but she was a photographer, and America was a better place to make a living off wedding photography, especially since gay marriage had recently become legal.

Evelyn filled a kettle with water and set it on the stove, turning the burner on and sluggishly taking out everything else she needed for tea. When it was all set out, she popped a piece of bread in the toaster, sitting down at the table for a moment, exhausted even though she'd hardly done anything.

Evelyn had just woken up, but she knew today would be just as horrible as all the others. After all, how could it not be?

A few years ago, she had been diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. She was in the post remission stage and was hopefully on the road to recovery, but she had no absolute answer on whether or not the cancer would return. The threat of death still brooded over her, and she didn't expect it ever to leave.

Cancer wasn't the only unwelcome thing that had taken a hold of her body in the past years. Depression had come as well, and it didn't show any signs of relenting. Every day was a fight for her; each breath was a battle she wasn't sure how long she could keep fighting. Getting out of bed each morning was hard enough in her weakened state, and having the burden of depression weigh down on her limbs made it even more difficult. How Evelyn had made it this far, she didn't know.

Hell, she didn't even know how she was still alive. She'd recently picked up habits, ones that were less than helpful to her condition. She knew she would die if she kept up with her ways, but she didn't care. There were few things she cared about nowadays, and currently, her well-being wasn't one of them.

Empty bottles that once held liquor were scattered about the unkempt house. A sharpened knife was hidden in the back of a cabinet in her bathroom. A blank notepad intended for final farewells lay on her nightstand, several pages torn from its bindings. To her, the evidence of her weakness was obvious, and was too tired to bother to clean everything up, hence why she didn't invite people over. Not that there was anyone who came to visit her. She was, for the most part, alone.

Startled out of her thoughts by the sudden whistling of the kettle, Evelyn forced herself to stand. Walking carefully, she reached the stove and turned it off, taking up the kettle and pouring the steaming water into her teacup, watching as it changed color. She watched it brew, rather entranced by it.

The way the tea mingled with the water in elegant, swirling tendrils was calming and reminded her of the ocean in the most beautiful, melancholy way. It made her yearn to feel the lapping of the waves at her feet, to drink in the salty sea air. The thin trails of steam drifting upwards made her feel homesick for the cold, foggy mornings in England. Making tea always made her long to return home, but she didn't have the money to travel, not with all the medical bills she was still struggling to pay off.

Evelyn's moment of hazed contentment was short lived, as the sweetly bitter aroma of tea was rudely overwhelmed by the rather unpleasant odor of charred toast.

"Bollocks." She groaned, hurrying over to the toaster as fast as her tired body would allow. "Not again…."

Sighing heavily, Evelyn took out a plate and set the slightly blackened piece of bread on it, wondering why it seemed that even when she turned the toaster setting down, it always burned. Not really caring if it tasted a lot more like coal than a piece of toast normally should, she grabbed it and her tea and sat at the table.

"To another day full of shit," she stated, mockingly lifting her tea as if to make a toast before taking a sip. After practically shoving her charred breakfast down her throat, she stood and grabbed the bottle containing her last dose of oral chemotherapy for the week.

Every few months, Evelyn would go in for a checkup and her doctor would give her a week's worth of chemo to take orally. Being in the post remission stage didn't guarantee the cancer wouldn't come back, hence her continued treatment. The chemo was in a much lower dose and not as often, but the side effects didn't seem to care about that. A while after each treatment, she'd recover a little, but the week and week after treatment was just barely short of living hell due.

She popped the pill in her mouth and swallowed it along with a mouthful of tea, shuddering. She took her dishes, placed them in the sink, and walked upstairs to change into a different pair of pajamas, as she was most certainly not going anywhere today. Thankfully, her job didn't require regularly scheduled workdays, so she could afford not to work for long periods of time. Being a high-end wedding photographer certainly had its benefits, the pay being the main one.

Evelyn was out of breath by the time she made it to the top of the stairs, and cursed herself for being so out of shape as she nudged her bedroom door open wider. Not that she'd ever actually been in shape, just less weak and slightly less sticklike.

After stripping down to her underwear, she looked at herself in her floor length mirror, scowling at the reflection that stared back at her. She ran a hand over her bald head, furrowing her nonexistent eyebrows at the lack of hair. She had a long blonde wig and fake eyebrows that were nearly identical to the hair she once had, but she rather missed the real thing, even if she didn't have to worry about washing or styling her hair nearly as much.

Evelyn sighed and let her gaze fall to her chest, frowning at how protruding her ribs were and how small her breasts had become. She looked at her arms, her eyes lingering on her wrists, where she saw her scars, ones both old and new. She clenched her fists as she glared at them, counting them all, counting the lines that marked each time she was too weak to end her life.

She gave up and wiped tears of frustration from her cheeks, turning away and pulling a pair of sweatpants and a hoodie. She sat on her bed and put on a pair of argyle patterned socks, suddenly laying back and taking deep breaths as a wave of nausea hit her.

"Oh, sod off, bloody-" Evelyn stopped, placing a hand over her mouth and swallowing the bile that was desperately trying to claw its way up her throat. She wasn't going to let herself throw up the chemo, especially not on her last day of treatment for a few months.

Sitting up very carefully, she kept her breathing steady and slowly made her way downstairs, gripping the railing tightly. When she made it to the living room, she collapsed on the couch, pulling a blanket around herself and shuddering as she once again swallowed the vomit creeping up her esophagus.

Evelyn reached for the book on the coffee table and opened it, diving headfirst into the world of literature to attempt to alleviate her nausea. Usually, focusing on something else until her urge to retch dissipated helped her not throw up.

Hours later, she'd finished the book, which was a collection of stories about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. She'd read it dozens of times, but it didn't matter. She could read a book a hundred times and enjoy it just as much as she did the first time, if not, more.

Having been mostly relieved of the feeling of impending sickness, she laid down, more tired now than anything else. Yawning, Evelyn closed her eyes and quickly fell asleep, eager to momentarily delve into the world of dreams rather than remain conscious in the inescapable nightmare she called a life.