a/n: Hello darlings, I'm apologizing in advance for this (and that's never good, right?) I'm just going to tell you right now, straight up, this is fucking depressing. I don't tend to tear up or anything when I write stories that are sad (I didn't even cry writing the scene when Eddie actually dies!), but I really teared up as I wrote the whole first section and then I just cried as I read it all over. Why I torture myself by writing this kind of shit, I'll never know. I never really intended to write a follow up to TOV, but then tonight I just decided, out of the blue, I wanted to write about how Patricia was taking it and I was in the mood to write angst, okay, I don't know. So this was produced.

note: This is sort of a sequel to The Toxicity of Vices. It's Patricia-centric, about her after that story. I suggest if you didn't read it, that you please do, because half of this won't make any sense to you if you didn't. But hey, I'm not the boss of you, so if you don't wanna read it, what you need to know is that Eddie sort of, accidentally killed himself. He cut his wrists like, way too much and too close to his veins and he died, and Patricia was there after and oh for the love of god, just go read about it, okay?

Oh, yeah, didn't proofread. Uh... sorry?

title: i'm crippled and slow for the agony i'd rather know

rating: t (language, sorry)

pov: third / patricia-centric

pairing: eddie/patricia (centered around patricia)

(chin up and we'll drown a little slower.) we've been sinking all along. and we're gone, we're gone, and we're gone.

Patricia, she doesn't feel like a thing anymore.

She walks around like a living ghost, and sometimes she laughs (bitterly, hollowly) because she imagines that this must be how those drugged and medicated and insane mental patients must feel, and isn't that what she is now? She wonders how one of her teachers, or housemates, or Piper, or her parents, or Trudy, or even Victor, hasn't shipped her off to a loony bin yet.

She did feel for awhile, after it happened. (She still can't bring herself to say those two words - Eddie's death - and she doubts she ever will be able to.)

Right after, and for weeks and weeks and weeks after, Patricia felt like she couldn't breathe; like the undertow of the ocean was pulling her under, under while water filled her lungs, making her choke and gasp for the air that just wasn't there. The tears never fucking stopped either - just when she felt like she was done, more salty sorrow would push out of her now permanently red and puffy eyes and run down her face at full speed ahead. She felt like there was this horrendous, harrowing monster within her, ripping open and mangling her insides as slowly as it could, day by day, just to fucking torture her.

She would vaguely wonder if this was what hell felt like.

She couldn't make the pain go away and she would find herself questioning if this was what Eddie felt like that night, when he told her ("I just, I couldn't take it anymore. It was all too much. I wanted everything to stop for just one damn second.")

Every single word he said to her that night plagues her mind at all times, haunting her. She can't shake his fucking voice out of her head.

Patricia knows she shouldn't, but she sometimes finds herself wondering if maybe, just maybe, Eddie had the right idea. Maybe the slits on his wrist did take away all of the paralyzing and abominable agony. Maybe he was the smart one - getting out of the labyrinth before it was too late.

But every time, as Patricia brings that blade down inches from her pale, exposed wrist, she remembers his face. She remembers how distraught and completely, fucking terrified he looked. She remembers that he was scared at what he'd done to himself, to her, to everyone.

And then she drops it hurriedly, her skin hot and her stomach sick, and rushes from the room in panic.

She's barely said anything to anyone since it all went down.

Her friends try to talk to her, try to help her through it, but she's just sick of it.

She wishes everyone would just leave her alone.

She doesn't want Joy trying to wrap her arms around her, saying, "It's gonna be okay eventually, Tricia. I promise."

Patricia hates the stupid, pathetic eyes everyone seems to give her nowadays. Eyes just all full of pity.

She eventually just stops making eye contact with everyone. It's easier that way.

She hasn't even glanced at Mr. Sweet since the funeral. She knows if she looks at him, she'll see a man that's slowly falling apart before everyone's own very orbs. And she can't do that - she cannot watch as the one person she's always known to be put together and immaculate and okay, go to broken, shattered pieces.

Mr. Sweet watches her though, she knows that. He knows that Patricia is far, far from repair, but he also can't do anything about it because he's too damaged himself to help another.

/

Patricia loathed Eddie's funeral. She knew it was full of everything that he would hate.

That dreadful day (only three damn days after he was gone), she had to shimmy into the only totally black dress she owned, which also happened to be the dress she'd worn on the last date she'd had with Eddie. And in that moment, her mind flashed back to the last time she'd zipped it up.

Patricia walked down the stairs, her dress so black and so tight that it looked as if night itself was clinging helplessly to her. Eddie was waiting at the bottom in dark jeans and a light blue button up shirt. Patricia smirked when she saw he had on his leather jacket too because really, when did he ever leave without it?

Eddie grinned wide, wide, wide when she made it to the bottom and breathlessly said, "You look beautiful, Yacker."

"Yeah, yeah, you look pretty good too, Weasel," Patricia replied, but she was smiling, a blush rising to taint her cheeks.

Eddie laughed, because it was just Patricia being Patricia. "Shall we, darling?" he asked, holding out his arm.

Patricia rolled her eyes, said, "Only if you never, ever call me that again," and linked her arm with his. As they walked out the door, she pushed herself impossibly closer to him.

If Patricia had known that date was going to be their last, she would've tried her hardest to remember everything he told her that night and she would've took the time to trace the features on every inch of his body so delicately, so slowly.

But she hadn't known, because how could she? Life doesn't care. No, life just catapults things at you and never thinks of asking permission first.

Eventually, Joy and KT came in, and saw her sitting there on her bed, staring into nothingness, and gave her those awful, sympathetic eyes that she knew she'd be seeing all day, and gently told her it was time to leave.

Patricia didn't even do her make-up, but she really didn't care, because she knew that if she did, it would all be down her face in mere minutes. As soon as she saw him (because whatever idiot had decided to have the wake and the funeral on the same day), she'd be bawling.

Everyone held their breath when Patricia stepped into the dimly lit, stuffy room that the boy she loved was currently at the front of, stuffed into a coffin.

She swallowed hard as she made her way to him (and she could feel the stares burning into her and she couldn't stand it).

She managed to hold back her sobs for almost a second when she finally saw him.

His stiff, lifeless body. His striking hazel eyes were closed and his arms were crossed across his chest, his lips that Patricia loved so much had lost all of their color and they weren't smirking like he always was, his hair was just lying flat against his forehead, and he was dressed in some suit that she was sure didn't even belong to him. There was some stupid, morbid song playing in the background and everything was all fucking wrong and Patricia couldn't do it. And she snapped.

She turned to the closest person she could find that worked at the stupid funeral home with fury coursing through her entire being.

"You! You work here, don't you?" she yelled and the man nodded and backed up an inch, terrified. Everyone in the room went silent, just watching. "Well then tell me, who the fuck do you think you are? That," she said while pointing towards the coffin, her voice dangerously low, "is not Eddie. This whole thing is not Eddie! He would've wanted to be wearing jeans and his leather jacket and his hair's all wrong, it never looks like that unless he's sleeping!" Patricia barely noticed that she started talking about him in the present tense. As if he were still alive. "And he would want the Sick Puppies playing, not this garbage! And - and he should be smiling!" Her voice got eerily quiet as she spoke the next words, "He died smiling, why did you take that away from him?"

She turned away before he could even open his mouth, and collapsed in a heap next to the coffin, leaning over it to sob into his now rock hard, stuffed chest. It didn't smell like him at all and it only caused her to weep even harder. She spoke the first words since he'd died when she whispered, "Please come back, doofus. I miss you, I- I need you. I love you, Weasel."

Later that day, when it was time for the actual funeral, it started pouring. Patricia slightly smiled and it was twisted, but the downpour fit the entire mood and situation. She glanced around and she hadn't noticed before, but Amber, Mick, and Nina were standing there with all of her other fellow housemates. She shook her head and then noticed Mr. Sweet standing off to the side with Eddie's mom (who looked even less put together than his father), and they were sobbing into each other, holding each other close.

Patricia guffawed and said to herself, "Man, he would've loved to see this." She debated whether she should look up towards the heavens or down towards the depths of hell. She bit her lip and looked up at the sky, wanting to believe, hoping, he was up there somewhere. She said softly, "Hey Eddie, get this: your parents are actually getting along. Insane, right?"

She refused every umbrella that was offered to her, instead choosing to let herself get soaked and let the tears rolling down her cheeks blend in with the rain hitting her face as she watched the coffin sink lower, lower, lower into the ground, before two guys started shoveling dirt on top of it.

Patricia hastily walked away and left her heart with the rotting flesh and disintegrating bones of the graveyard.

/

When she got back to the house, Patricia walked down the hallway and stood outside of Fabian and Eddie's room for what felt like hours. Finally she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and entered. It took everything she had in her not to just sink down to the ground in sorrow.

Patricia wanted to be able to have some of Eddie before they took it all away from her. She pulled one of his duffle bags out from under his bed and first, before anything else, put his leather jacket in it. She knew there was no way in hell she was letting anyone have that. She grabbed some of his clean and some of his dirty shirts because even if they weren't fresh, at least he had worn them and let the smell that was Eddie sink into them. She took all of the pictures he had of the two of them, and the one of him, Fabian, and KT. She took his cologne and his laptop, and the one book he'd ever managed to read on his own (and had even actually highlighted and underlined and wrote comments in).

While looking through his drawers, she came across Nina's locket. She sighed while picking it up, and walked across the room and set it on Fabian's bed. Suddenly, she felt the overwhelming urge to do something about them because of her own situation, so she grabbed a Post-it from Fabian's bedside table and scribbled on it: Don't ever let her go. Tell her you love her, because you never know when you won't be able to anymore. She placed it next to the locket and then walked back over to Eddie's side and picked up the bag, swinging it over her shoulder. She grabbed his pillow and comforter too, and then carried it all up to her room.

She pushed the duffle bag under her bed and then put her pillow on top of hers, and laid down, wrapping herself in his comforter so she could just smell him again.

She reached for her phone and scrolled through her contacts, pressing his name when she came to it.

It went straight to voicemail, as she'd expected, and a tear slid down her nose, landing on his pillow as she heard his voice ring loud and clear through the speaker.

"Hey, this is Eddie. Guess I missed your call so leave me a message and I'll probably call you back. Unless you're Yacker, because you're probably calling to yell at me about something if I didn't pick up for you. ...Please don't pour milk on me again."

She didn't think she could cry any harder, but when was she ever right these days? She kept playing the message over and over until she finally fell asleep, Eddie being the only thought on her overcrowded mind.

/

But ultimately, Patricia ran out of tears to cry. One day, she just couldn't anymore.

And that was the day that she realized she was just empty inside.

At least when she was crying and when her insides were twisting, she knew she was feeling something.

But then it was all gone, and Patricia was just there; just an exoskeleton of a human, numbly doing what she had to just to get by.

She knew her housemates grew more worried by the day, but some of them were just starting to be able to somewhat get over Eddie's death.

She envied them.

Patricia knew for a fact that she would never just get over it, like everyone seemed to tell her she'd magically be able to do.

How could she get over the fact that the one person who'd ever actually loved her (and not for her pretending to be someone she wasn't, but for the actual her), and the one person that she'd actually let her walls down for, the person she let herself fall in love with, had accidentally killed themselves?

How is it a possible, tangible, and literal thing that you could get over that?

Patricia knew that it fucking wasn't feasible.

She was going down, and everyone could see it.

Eddie was gone (ten feet under) and Patricia was too (pieces of her carelessly floating away like smoke in crisp autumn air).

She could try and kick, flutter, kick, flutter and try to stay afloat, but it would always weigh her down like an anchor, and eventually, she was going to sink down, lower, further until she was completely submerged underwater and she would be forced to swallow the pure liquid until it asphyxiated her completely and she, herself, perished.