This dark story was inspired by a prompt (which is set out at the end of the story). I'm fascinated by Amelia and always wiling to entertain new ideas for stories about her. Again, it is dark and contains adult situations and references.

We Dance Round in a Ring and Suppose

The secret, the real secret (there are others, but they pale in comparison) is this: she killed her father.

It's the secret she doesn't tell anyone. Didn't tell them then, sitting at low plastic tables covering reams of manila paper with waxy black crayon, identifying inkblots, posing little wooden dolls and banging their heads together, hard, until they broke sometimes. Doesn't tell anyone now either, not at meetings that smell of stale coffee and empty church, hard metal folding chairs and knowing glances.

She tells them other things, but not this.

She killed her father.

Surely as anything, it wasn't the man with the blue scarf and the loud voice, it was her. It was her fault, because she pestered Derek to take her with him, always the baby sister, always left behind, and Amy, it won't be fun, it's just invoices. I'll be back soon and we'll get ice cream, but she didn't listen, wanted to go too and he gave in and she held his hand, warm and big and folded around hers. Her big brother.

She wasn't supposed to be there.

It was her fault.

Because they said it was the watch, that her father didn't want to give up his watch, but she knows better. She knows something even Derek doesn't know and he's supposed to know more because he's her big brother.

The man with the blue scarf was there, loud, and there was a flash of silvery dark when he moved his hands and they were hiding, Derek crouched around her all folded up, one arm holding her still, one hand across her mouth so she couldn't scream or move or talk. She could hardly breathe, but she could see. She could see more than Derek could and she saw her father's eyes flicker toward her just for a second. Just for a heartbeat he saw her and then he said no, wouldn't give up the watch and she knew even though she was little that he was trying to keep the man with the blue scarf from seeing the jewelry case.

It was because of her.

She wasn't supposed to be there.

Then there was a loud smoky bang and then a lot of quiet and Derek didn't let her up and then Dad, he said in a voice as broken as the glass case, Dad, no. Her father's eyes were open and they were blue but they didn't flicker to her. They were just empty, so empty and Derek pulled her away from the floor, held her tight, said don't look and then the ambulance came and a policeman lifted her up, a big one, taller than her father and said what a brave girl you are.

But she wasn't.

She killed her father, and she never told anyone.

It just stayed inside her, dark and wet like mold where it does the most damage. It made her sharp and angry sometimes, folded and sad other times. Made her fight, try to claw her way out of that house, sisters everywhere, someone always upset with her. Kathleen nicknamed her Goddamnit Amy when she was a teenager for all the times that was shouted through their house. She wanted a light nickname, a fun one, like Kick or Nance, but Goddamnit Amy, they said when she failed a class or broke a curfew or stole money - only a little- from Mom's dresser.

Derek didn't call her anything: he stopped looking at her, didn't see her anymore.

So she didn't tell anyone.

Until she did.

She tells Cooper because he gets it. She tells him because he told her first and she realized then that he would understand. He has one too - a secret. He killed his brother.

Not really - he didn't even know him when he died. Wasn't even alive. But he found out later that his brother died, his parents' first son, and that's the only reason they got Cooper. The only reason he was even there and Cooper tells her that when he found out he was glad. Glad his brother was dead. And mad - mad his parents didn't tell him, mad they dared love someone before him and maybe try to wedge Cooper into the puzzle piece hole he left behind. Glad and mad but not the thing he was supposed to be - sad.

Amelia knows all about that.

Cooper killed his brother and he understands, only it doesn't make him drink or swallow pills. His medicine is anger, it bubbles up in him until he overflows - then it's hateful, real venom, words like knives and she takes it just as she takes the anger he directs into their bed. They "play" - that's what they call it - and pretend it's a game.

They play hard.

(I fell, she explains to Addison, when she's still living there, close enough to catch a glimpse of a bare shin or back. Or: I bumped into a desk. I was carrying a box. Silly me.)

Harder, she orders him. Harder.

(Amelia...you would tell me, right? If you thought you wanted to ... use? Addison, stammering uncertainty. Or you'd tell Charlotte?)

Charlotte. And the things she can't tell her.

"I don't want to hurt Charlotte," Cooper whispers, so many nights, mouth around her ear, hand around her throat.

So he hurts her instead.

And she still goes to meetings with Charlotte. And she still can't drink.

This is what she does instead. She had to find something else, when she realized she couldn't drink away the pain - not anymore - couldn't swallow it in hard capsules. So she drives it away - sometimes behind the wheel of a car but that reminds her of the one she stole so more often on top of someone or below them, straddling, rolling, thrusting until she can't see any more pain.

There, that's her strategy.

This, she can tell people.

That, she can speak it aloud in a meeting.

(Can't say who's helping her this time, not when Charlotte comes to the meeting with her, sits next to her on the hard grey chair, folded up like a lie.)

But she can say that when the urge to use gets so big that it fills up her head and swells her ears and hurts like hell that she can push it down as surely as she falls back on a mattress, springs up into someone's arms, big warm hands, scruffy half-shaven jaw and finally, suddenly, full where she was empty.

She doesn't tell Addison. Addison squints at her carefully, cool-voiced, cool-headed mostly and Amelia feels that Addison loves her. Which is strange but she accepts it, just as she accepts that when she falls - it's when, not if, Addison will be there. She won't catch her but she'll try, because that's what she does.

I fell, she tells Addison and it's sort of true. It's not really a lie.

It was at their wedding so long ago, Addison and Derek's. Amy was fifteen - not quite fifteen and a half and just the fact that she was still counting that reminds her how young she was, how young she felt and everything hurt that day tired failed another class suspended for swearing Goddmanit Amy, zipped into tight pink satin with feet bound up in unforgiving heels, listening to speeches, stupid speeches, hand-threaded vows:

You made me forget everything else, Addison said, a white cloud around her pretty face, until I only saw you.

That's dumb, Amy huffed, maybe out loud because someone glared at her, so she snuck another flute of champagne, tossed it back, wandered the rabbit warren of corridors behind the ballroom until she found the busboy who'd looked at her when they were getting ready to serve the cocktails - looked in that heavy-lidded way that scared her, but also enticed her. She wanted to forget everything else so she held out her bouquet to him, orchids and fern, and pushed the straps of her dress carefully off her shoulders.

That's how Kathleen found her and Goddamnit Amy! but the nickname wasn't funny anymore. Pink dress halfway up her hips, just a little blood on her legs, crushed flowers behind sweaty knees. They must have bumped a bottle of jack because the liquid ran next to her head like tears, a piece of glass in her hair. Amy stared right through her sister - why not, that was how everyone looked at her - and said I fell.

It didn't even work. She still felt everything.

Don't tell anyone, she begged then. Please, Kick, and she hadn't called her that in ages.

You think I want to tell anyone? You're not supposed to be here, and she helped her up. Amy, my God, Amy, you can't keep doing this, she said and there, that's a good example actually:

It's a secret, but it's one she tells. She's told it in meetings.

Told a few lovers. A friend or two.

Told Charlotte, once. In the car. On the freeway, swallowing the sharp itch at her throat when Charlotte turned understanding eyes on her, huge and moist.

Charlotte.

"I don't want to hurt her either," Amelia hisses, cramped fingers clenched in wiry black hair.

They keep it a secret.

Because it would hurt Charlotte.

And if they don't tell her then they can keep doing it. She needs to keep doing it, because she can fuck the pain away -

(and it works, it lasts an hour a night a week - it works)

but there's still some pain around the edges, pain waiting for them because this secret isn't the biggest but it's dangerous.

They get daring. Just a little at first. Outside, once, on the deck, a splinter at the back of her knee, long hair tangled up in the floorboards and what if Addison comes home? What if Sam... but they don't.

They drink with Sheldon right beside them, Amelia nursing a ginger ale, tonguing a cherry, and then they make separate excuses and sneak off between pool tables, ducking the spearing cues and letting the clank of the balls drown out their breath. Right there in public and she's close, so close, but -

"Cooper," Pete is in the archway looking at them and he knows, he clearly gets it. How could he not: Amelia's legs are wound around Cooper's waist, fingers knotted in the copious hair bursting from his half-buttoned shirt; he's holding her up, crushing her against him with one big palm at her ass and the other gripping the back of her neck, and -

"You need to come with me."

"What the hell, Pete?"

"It's Charlotte," he says, dark eyes seeking - and finding - Amelia's. "Charlotte's hurt."

Cooper's hands drop to his sides and Amelia falls back to the ground.

It changes after that.

They don't stop. But it changes.

They play but it's no game, they do things he can't do with Charlotte, can maybe never do again. He ties her up. She makes him cry. They rent a cheap room and yell until they're hoarse. They break two bedsteads. He fucks her so hard against the cement wall of the overpass that she fractures her coccyx, gives a fake name at the free clinic because she's too embarrassed to go anywhere else. It's dirty and rough and makes sure she doesn't feel anything else - she can't, because there's no room for anything else inside her.

Good, because hard is what she wants.

He's soft only once after Charlotte gets hurt. Just one time he pulls her down to his chest, that mat of damp curly forest and smoothes a hand over her back: she's trembling, blood rushing to her head and her wrist from the metal cuffs, calves cramping where they were locked behind his neck and he rubs at her sore spine in the bed in the flat she rented two neighborhoods over-

(because even though Addison took her in when no one would and tried to love her what she wants is space to scream Cooper's name and shove him through rooms and bend over the furniture at will and that's more important - and so is escaping those cool blue eyes - You fell again? - and all those fucking questions)

but "You okay?" he asks gently, the one thing she won't answer anymore and "don't coddle me," she snaps. "I'm not your fucking girlfriend."

It makes him angry just like she wanted because he stops worrying at her nape and murmuring into her temple and the rest of the idiocy she can't have, doesn't want, won't do, and shoves her into the mattress again instead: arms out, head to the side, drives into her until she can't remember what they were arguing about or why he looks so angry or why he cries, afterwards, says he's sorry.

"Don't be stupid," she mumbles, doesn't comfort him, not even a little because it's what they both want, isn't it?

And he learns. He doesn't do soft again.

It's so deliciously good some of the time - hard, which is what she wants - just straddling that elusive pain pleasure border before it shoves her over and she dares him to do more.

More.

Charlotte's bruised face heals and after he's tenderly stroked her to sleep he picks Amelia up in his car and they don't even make it out of the front seat. Her knee crashes into the dashboard, her stuttering shoulders drive the power windows up and down.

More.

Charlotte comes back to work and the next day he and Amelia fuck on the conference table like the rumor of Sam and Naomi. It's just before dawn and they actually wait - how sick is that - until 20 minutes before they know people could arrive, dare themselves - the table is slicked over with sweat, she's so slippery wet with fear and the dirty dare of showing everyone at the practice who she really is and what she's really capable of, exposing all her secrets, but they make it, they just barely make it.

And maybe that's been her strategy all along. The ones who made it - that's a common theme at meetings. Because addicts die. They crash their cars, they overdose, they anger strangers or friends or lovers and get shot or stabbed or left in the cold to freeze. And everyone at the meeting who didn't die, they made it. Just by a hair, a dangling thread, a chance. They're not supposed to be there, not really. They just happened to make it another day.

One day at a time.

Every day.

She needs him every day or the pain gets closer, bigger.

More.

Charlotte wants to go to a meeting. Amelia sits beside her on a hard grey folding chair - it's always a hard grey folding chair - the unforgiving metal irritating sensitive flesh. Still feels him inside her - it was the floor of her apartment that morning; she still doesn't have a bed. It was hard and it hurt and it worked. Twice.

And she hates herself a little more each time. Because Charlotte will find out, they always do.

They always find out - that's what Addison tells her dully as she watches her pack, because Charlotte did find out and her blue eyes were so empty that Amelia understood she'd done it again. She'd killed someone else.

So she starts over where no one knows her and no one cares, but you can't start over, not really, not with a secret

(two secrets)

like this.

Months later Addison calls her and this time she picks up. "I...miss you," Addie says and Amelia doesn't answer, just lets it wash over her like the waves at the beach house where she once fucked Cooper in Addison's bed, when she wasn't there, just because he dared her. Just because they could. That stupid white coverlet was so smooth and because Addison was trusting and let her live there in spite of everything. She doesn't know why Addie still tries to talk to her and thinks maybe she'll stop soon. Like everyone else did.

"They're back together," Addison says. "Charlotte and Cooper. They're getting married."

She pretends to be interested. Listens to Addison talk about California. Her life. The practice. "Your license?" Addison inquires and she ignores her.

Goddamnit Amy, why don't you answer? Why won't you help yourself? What the hell did you take this time, Amy? Jesus, Amy! Ma, come quick, it's Amy, it's Amy.

"Well, let me know if you need anything," Addison says. Amelia can just visualize her finger over the buttons of her cell, thinks she's probably not alone, Sam's there, and maybe Addison won't feel any pain tonight. Not like Amelia feels.

Back together.

Getting married.

Vows, a banquet hall, cocktails in a ballroom and corridors outside where you can fall and never quite stand up again.

When she looks in the dusty mirror on the still-unfamiliar wall her own eyes are emptier than anyone else's and then she realizes who's actually dead.

(three secrets)

We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.
(Robert Frost)

Prompt: Amelia/Cooper, dark and dysfunctional. Reviews are warmly welcomed.