A/N: My first Next to Normal story! This is the brainchild of watching the show countless times via youtube and falling in love with Aaron Tveit all over again after I saw him in Les Miserables. I love his presentation of Gabe's character, especially the vulnerable child presented during Make up your Mind, I am the One Reprise and There's a World. Any feedback is much appreciated! x
Please hear me calling
'Sometimes when these stories are hard to tell, hypnosis can be helpful'- Dr Maddison
Hypnosis? No. That wasn't going to happen. Not to Mom. Not if I could help it. I'd only just found her after she had dumped the new meds and I wasn't going to lose her again. Wasn't going to lose the wild, wacky mother whom I had watched over and yearned for and dreamed of for sixteen years. Desperately, I try to reach out to her as she nods reluctantly; her eye wider than a deer's caught in the full glare of wet headlights. Try to restrain her, try to pull her back into the comforting oblivion of safety where I could hold her and look after her. Where she didn't have to face the harsh reality of a world where her first child was little more than a fractured fragment of her imagination and her daughter… Her perfect, precocious daughter was refusing to talk to her; leaning instead on a dark haired stoner type who liked to listen to her practicing the piano. It makes me feel sick; the vomit rising in a fiery waterfall up my throat, only to be choked back into oblivion. Natalie was my sister! My sister! My little sister whom I should've protected against jerks like Henry and what had I done instead? Left her out in the cold to find her own way in the world. Left her to find solace in idiots such as Henry who wanted to manipulate her innocence of the outside world and twist it to meet their own ends.
I couldn't let Mom go through the hell of losing me a second time and yet here she was, gripping the black rollerball in a shaking hand, her eyes wide as she leans to sign her name in a loopy flourish of wet, black ink. Sign my death warrant and her arrest into the prison of normality. 'Mom!' I can't help the panicked tears from erupting in the back of my eyelids as I stumble towards the back of the chair; pricks of fiery pain stabbing my retinas as my hands finally find the soft leather backing. I barely have enough time to get a firm grip on it before it is pulled roughly away from me and I am stumbling backwards… Stumbling backwards until I am nothing more than a distant painful memory of a crying child as she inches her way down into the deepest, darkest crevices of her twisted mind.
'Mom! Please!' But she can't hear me. Her eyes are closed and she has a blissfully peaceful expression of complete calm on her pale face. Again, I try to make my way towards her; but am forced back by the calm, collected tones of Dr Maddison; silently barring me access to the very person I want to save. 'Make up your mind to explore yourself. Make up your mind, you have stories to tell…' What stories? Why does he have to know them? He doesn't. He can't. She can't tell him! Sudden, inexplicable fear crashes over me, gripping me in an icy, perverted embrace as I futilely try to pull her back, but still she ignores me. Why is she doing this? Why is she allowing him to do this to her? Why? Her eyes are only for the doctor as he slowly reels her into his sticky web of lies, deceit and deception; promising with icy, honeyed words that slipped like poison into her broken mind. Promising that he will make it all better; promises which I know he doesn't believe in. He can't make it better, how can he? He has no idea what hell his profession has made her go through and yet… Panicking, I try to reach out to her again, her name bursting in silent screams from icy lips, which she cannot hear. Cannot or does not? I don't know.
'Catch me I'm falling…' Deep down I know that I can't do this without her and I have to. I have to make her see, make her understand because if I can't; then who can? Dad won't. I know he won't. He'll try and understand but deep down, I know he really doesn't have a clue how to handle it. How to handle the fucked up mess that my death; my premature, untimely death has thrown our family into. 'Please hear me calling!' The tears are falling thickly now, staining my cheeks in waterfalls of salty silver as I desperately cling to the last fraying strands of silver memory that are slowly and steadily fluttering out of my clutching, snatching grasp. 'Catch me before it's too late!' I'm losing her. Losing her to the poisonous, shitty mess of a reality that she is not ready for. A reality which I'm not ready for. I can't lose her! 'Please Mom!' My voice is choked like that of a crying child as I reach out for her one last time, wanting to hold her, embrace her, tell her that it was all going to OK, when I know it isn't.
A flicker of recognition as our eyes meet one last time outside the nursery bedroom that was my only place of safety away from the messed up shithole that was the real world. A flame leaping hopefully in inky pupils. A flame that flickers and dies inside large, blue eyes which are now filled with tears as she buries her head in her hands; sitting at an empty kitchen table set for supper. Four places. One lying empty. My place. The place that should have been with her but is now lost in the distant oblivion of her memory. I reach out to her again, knowing that she won't look round. Knowing that she will never look round; that that one, fleeting chance has now been ripped away from her in a flurry of wet, black ink. 'Catch me before it's too late!' 'Catch me, I'm falling! Catch me I'm falling!'
A/N: Please feel free to read and review! I'm open to pretty much anything and would love some feedback on this first attempt into a pretty formidable fandom, so any constructive criticism is much appreciated. Much love and enjoy! x P.S Reviews are like virtual cookies to my brain, so if you want to hear more... *hint!*