She'd almost said it.
She'd almost confessed everything.
But she'd hesistated. She was so scared, her voice shaking, the biggest confession on the tip of her tongue. Even though it had only been for a split second, that slight pause had meant that the words hadn't come out soon enough, and by that it meant that they didn't come out at all.
She should have just told him, Cheryl thought as she was pulled down the corridor by her mother, glancing back for a moments as they approached the corner to the stairwell. The tall doctor was stood there still, clipboard in hand, puzzled expression on his face, and Cheryl wanted to break away so hard, run back to the man and fall on the floor begging him to help her and her nana, call the cops, whatever would have happened if she had.
Could have happened.
But her mother's nails were digging painfully in to her upper arm and she knew deep down that it was game over.
The first step down was what made her regret everything she had and hadn't done. She realised suddenly that she'd left her phone plugged into the socket in the wall. Her book was downturned on the page she'd read probably a dozen times out of boredom. Her bag, her wallet, her school books, and – most importantly – her grandmother were all left behind in that one room, and whether or not she'd see them again was a question she couldn't help continuously asking herself.
Oh God, she thought suddenly, Friday night had been Nana Rose's turn. Now it was hers. The stone-cold expression on the middle-aged woman's face was the confirmation.
Taking away her when she was vulnerable, alone, and in fear? It was the perfect storm.
She hadn't replied to Toni's last text yet. She was hoping that if he didn't, the brunette would stop texting her and focus on the teacher instead.
What would she do if she saw her now? She'd tried to act respectfully towards Penelope, tried so hard, Cheryl could see from the way she'd addressed her correctly and spoken in a polite register at every greeting. She knew that this wasn't because she was a fan of her – not in anyway – but instead because she didn't want Cheryl to get hurt. But if Toni was here, watching her as she walked to her most-probably horrifying fate, she had no doubt in thinking that the tables would take a complete U-turn.
"In the car," her mother had growled at her. She'd barely acknowledged where she had been walking, barely acknowledged the cold air and outside world and the front automatic doors of the hospital and the horrific squeak they made. There was the red convertible in front of her, passenger door wide open with the red-haired witch she despised to call her mother blocking every other direction with either her body of her devilish stare which made Cheryl too afraid to step back, too afraid of what could happen to her if she did. What would happen to Toni if she did.
She knew that she should have just done something – anything – other than take a seat on that cream leather, hands shaking in her lap out of a combination of coldness and sheer terror. There was a click. Her door had been locked manually, and the person who did that was now making her way around the bumper and to her door – the left-hand one, which gave her the authority of the direction they were to drive in.
Down, that was. They could be taking the road which led north, east, west, maybe even south, but one thing was for definite; whatever road they would join would be the road to hell.
The woman glanced at her for a second before it turned into a scowl, starting the engine as soon as she had placed her burgundy handbag on the back seat. And she reverse out. They joined the road which went east, out of town, over one of the many bridges which crossed with river, through the woods, and with a glance in the mirror they were out.
Out of town. Out of civilisation. Out of anywhere she had hope of getting help through.
They couldn't see a man for a dozen miles, barely any cars because this road essentially led nowhere. There was no radio to occupy her, the only thing on her mind the fear of where she was being taken and the thought of Toni, trying to remember every last detail of the girl she felt thing she'd never felt for anyone else in the past before they could be pulled apart forever.
xx
"Cher?"
The pink-haired girl stopped dead in her tracks the minute she set eyes on the empty room, the only thing on the chair being the redhead's iPhone.
Maybe she'd gone to the bathroom, she wondered, or to get something to eat from the small hospital shop.
But nothing was feeling right and she knew deep down that everything really was not right.
Cheryl was not alright.
"Shit," she'd said aloud monotonously, the single syllable echoing off the walls of the chilly room repeatedly, more times that it seemed it should have.
It had been enough to trigger the one-woman search around every floor and ward of the hospital. Take her to the rooms which held terrible memories for the shorter girl, to the rooms that some of her best friends had taken their final breaths in.
"Who are you looking for, madam?" she heard a voice behind her shoulder and she spun around quickly to find a tall man in pristine a white doctor's coat, clipboard in hand. She could have sworn she recognised him, and he had a certain glimpse in his eyes which told her that he'd seen her before. But considering the number of times she'd been here with fellow gang members, adding on to that the several nights she'd been here as a patient in need herself, it was inevitable. She paused, feeling the lump in her throat make it ten times harder to talk, her breaths coming out at a faster rate than before, heart beating in her stomach.
"Cheryl Blossom? I was supposed to be meeting her here... ICU for her nana?"
She man nodded sincerely, realisation on his face as he uttered a jumbled blur of sentences containing words Toni didn't like the words off, and she quickly excused herself to run down the three flights of stairs as fast as she could, shoving the burgers she had bought from Pops in the trash can outside because that would be no fucking use to herself or Cheryl or anybody else anymore, jogging to her motorbike and trying to work out where she fuck to go from there.
xx
It looked like something out of a horror movie, in every way possible. She wasn't sure she'd ever seen a horror movie about a convent-cross-asylum-cross-orphanage before, or whether any even existed, but she could make one right now... a point-of-view, realistic horror movie. The thing which would make it so realistic would be the fact that it was literally a real-life situation, one she couldn't escape from, one which would go on for however long she'd late there.
She was so scared. Too scared to move, too scared to run, too scared to look anywhere besides the floor and occasionally the peeling walls of reception.
If this was the front of the house, she didn't want to know what was hidden out of the public's eyes. But she would soon. Her mother was telling the nun with white hair and wicked eyes her details... first name, surname, middle name, date of birth, address; the list goes on. There was a man in a nurse's suit stood blocking the corridor leading... somewhere... only the outfit looked like it belonged in the last century.
"Don't contact me until she's fixed."
In all the years she'd spent with her, she'd never heard her mother's voice sound so icy. Never seen her face so blank. And she'd fallen victim to some very cold acts from the older woman in her lifetime.
"Whatever it takes... however long it takes..."
... alongside other things like, "she's not my daughter until this is over with" and "I'll pay whatever you want me to".
And then the final thing?
One final glance down her nose of disgust, no words coming with it, hazel eyes tracking as she walked out of the building as if nothing had ever happened.
Followed by a woman gripping her by the arm, dragging her into an even colder room, and staring at her terror-filled eyes as she demanded for her to change her clothes and hand over her belongings.
Pale blue and red as dark as wine which branded her as 'sick' and 'wrong' and 'an item of theirs'.
Her identity was gone, the only thing left was her will.
But that was gone as soon as she tried to fight back with the smallest, most hopeless bit of hope she could muster. It hadn't been enough. But it would never have been enough, because even that one minor kick in the man's shin had won her a straight jacket, a hard slap against her cheek and a ticket to the so-called 'isolation' zone on the top floor... a padded wall on one side and a frosted window the only things besides a bed and mouldy, peeling walls, and a metal door locked twenty-four-seven.
xx
A locked door, a lie, ten laps of town up and through every street, almost running out of petrol in her motorbike, and her she was, at Pops once again, dodging the weird look the man himself had given her for her second visit of the day, cheeks tear-stained as she sniffled through ordering an americano which he put on the house. After the whatever-number-she-was-on-th call she was contemplating ringing Fangs or someone to come and sit with her, help her through, offer some advice, because he would probably be more empathetic than Sweet Pea on this certain occasion, but before she could click to dial him she found herself scrolling back down to the 'C's in her contacts and pressing the one which had so many missed calls to its name right now.
Dialling... dialling... dialling. Pause. Hold breath. Hope that it's the real being right there, that the voice behind the speaker isn't that automated recording, but know deep down that the phone had rang for too long already, that there's no chance in hell that the answer. Then there's that voice, those same thirteen words, that cursed number for god's sake, and that makes it... what, the tenth time or something like that?
At this point, Toni's eyes are stinging and it takes a hell of a lot of effort to keep those tears from falling. She can't help the crack in her voice, she can't help the shuddering breath, because she's really just terrified and helpless in this situation.
She needs help. She knows that she needs help, as much as she can, from anyone she can get it from, to even even have a chance of finding her.
All she can think of right now is how Cheryl must be even more terrified than her... and how impossible that feels right now makes her want to cry harder into her coffee.
Instead, she picks up the phone. She sighs, closes her eyes, and whatever comes out of her mouth is not much more than a thought-filled cluster of words, a prayer for the helpless, the only thing which would give her sanity for the next ten days, as well as the phone thing which could give Cheryl any peace of mind in that... that place if only she'd been able to hear it then. That someone did care enough to leave a million teary-eyed messages on a phone which was pretty much battery dead, when she'd been dragged far from home, that someone cared enough to come and save her from her mother.
Bonjour loves! Randomly decided to write a little prequel to ATSO because, well, I can? May be a little bit triggering due to mentions of conversion therapy and homophobia but I don't delve too far into it. As for Too Young To Fall Asleep (note: just as I wrote that I got a notification from Avril's channel... illuminati?) I've got the dialogue for the next chapter pretty much sorted; next chapter for All The Shattered Ones... well I've just checked where that's at and it has been tragically lost about 1k in so I'm very much in grief right now. Oh, and on top of this I have a list of a million other random oneshots I wanna write just because I can... so bear with.