"Are you really here?" It's the question to ask, even if she doesn't really want to know the answer.
He shakes his head. "I could be," he says, not at all in the way she would expect him to answer, no arched brows, no quirked lips, no flamboyant gestures. "I could be," he repeats, and she begins to hope, and then he continues, "But you know I'm not," and her heart doesn't drop, no, it can't be any lower than it already is, but it does lose that weightless feeling it was beginning to have.
"I wish you were. Or - " She bites her lip. "I wish I wasn't."
"Where are you?" he asks, and an imperceptible trace of himself returns, and he almost smiles that almost-smile she loathes and adores. He knows the answer - or rather, she knows the answer, because if he's not here, what else can he be but a figment of her own imagination, and if he's a figment of her own imagination, which he must be, then he knows everything she knows, doesn't he? And he must be a figment of her own imagination, because if he were real, she would have been out of this place already. So he's not real, he can't be real, because her real beast of a man would have saved her if he'd found her, and if he hasn't saved her, he hasn't found her, and if he hasn't found her, he can't be here, so he's not real.
She wants to cry upon realizing this. Knowing why he's not there doesn't hide the fact that he's simply not there.
"Where are you?" he asks again.
"I - I don't know."
"You do know."
"I don't! Go away!" She hides her face in her arms. "I don't want to know!"
"What do you want?" He knows the answer, and she knows he knows the answer, but she still doesn't know the answer.
"I want - I want - " She lifts her head, and tries to focus on him. He looks so different. He's so old and clean and sad and different and the same. His clothes are strange to her, but it makes absolutely perfect sense that he'd be wearing them, given their surroundings - whatever their surroundings are, because even if she knows, she doesn't want to know. "I want to drink tea out of a chipped cup." With you. And I want to watch you spinning straw into gold, and I want to watch youwatching the wheel and trying to forget and fighting to remember and I miss you so much and -
"I miss you too," he says, cutting her off.
Vaguely, she wonders if she's spoken aloud, and then she remembers that he's not real, and her already broken heart shatters into a million pieces and she starts to cry.
When she opens her eyes again, he's nowhere to be found, because he didn't exist, you fool, and there's a paper cup with vitamins in it next to her foot. She doesn't want to take the vitamins, but he's not there, and they make her forget and remember, so she tosses them back, and the action feels familiar, though she doesn't remember doing it before, and then the drugs kick in and he's there again, but different and the same, and she feels herself begin to fade.
They're not the memories she's used to, she can't even tell if they're memories, but he's in them, and that's better than what she has.
Tell me where it is. Tell me where it is!
It wasn't my fault!
My fault. What're you talking about, my fault? You shut her out. You had her love, and you shut her out! She's gone. She's gone, forever. She's not coming back. And it's your fault! Not mine! You are her father! It's your fault, it'syour fault!
And it makes her sad, because she's gone forever, and she doesn't want to be. She wants to be with him, drinking tea out of a chipped cup