title: psychopathology
summary: you feel like the whole word is crumbling around you; darkest timeline abed/annie
notes: i am obsessed with the darkest timeline. mostly for angst purposes. prime timeline is full of rainbows and hand holding. dark timeline is full of angst and PAIN. i would like to write an evil!abed/annie fic as a sequel to this? i have a lot of feelings about evil!abed and evil!annie too. god they make me so sad ;A; please enjoy!
you hear the gun shot in your dreams.
BANG. BANG. BANG.
the noise echoes in your skull. the soundtrack to your insanity. you feel yourself slipping further and further away.
there's a girl who you share a room with. she stays on her side most of the time, but once you found her sleeping in your bed, wearing your clothes. she tells the day nurse her name is annie edison. you start to believe she really is.
but then who are you? you look in the mirror and see a face. a girl. her skin pale white, hair stringy, eyes sunken and dark. who the hell is she, you wonder, touching the mirror with your fingertips. all you feel is smooth, cool glass.
your hear gun shots. one right after the other. shouting, blood, faces you don't recognize. you wake up screaming and sweating and shaking. the nurses flock around you like mother hens, coddling you, brushing back your hair. annie edison says, "hm? what's wrong with her?"
you don't remember how you got here. to this place with all the nurses, and bleached walls, and people who ask you too many questions.
they ask, "do you remember how you came to live here?"
you shake your head. no. no, you don't know.
"do you remember anything about you life before?"
you can't, and that scares you the most.
most days you sit in the day room doing puzzles. there's groups, but you don't like looking at other people, or having them look at you. you've done a bad thing. you can't remember clearly what happened, but you know it was bad. the gun shots. they were because of you. were you holding the gun? did you pull the trigger?
you do puzzles. they keep your mind off of everything that frightens you. you're quite good at them, and some of the others watch even after you tell them to go away. your favorite puzzle is one of a tree. you've completed it about twenty-nine times since you've been here.
"annie," one of the nurses says. her voice is calm and sweet, like she's talking to a child. she reminds you of someone. "annie, would you like to do another puzzle? aren't you bored of this one?"
"it's the same every time i finish it," you explain. you hate the sound of the word "annie". that's not your name. it's the name of the girl in the bed next to yours.
"yes, but wouldn't you like to do another one?" she shows you a box with a picture of an underwater scene. "how about this?"
you pull apart the tree puzzle, flinging pieces onto the floor. "it's the same every time i finish it."
you don't feel yourself getting better. that's what you're here for, right? to get better? but nothing's working. they give you pills, tiny white pills with names you can't pronounce. sometimes you don't swallow them. the after taste is heavy on your tongue, and it makes you throw up. you're so scared. you feel like the whole world is crumbling around you.
one day the sweet nurse says, "annie, you have a visitor."
a visitor? the word is foreign to you.
"someone wants to see you," the nurse says when you don't respond. "they said they knew you in college."
you allow yourself to be taken to a room with chairs and tables. you see some of the others with people you've never seen before. some of them are holding hands across the table. some are crying. some are talking. some are just staring at each other in silence.
the nurse leads you to a table where a man is sitting. he's rather tall and skinny, dressed in black from head to toe. his hands are folded neatly in front of him, his gaze directed right at you. you feel as though you know him from somewhere. his face. you've seen his face in a dream.
"this is mr. abed nadir," the nurse tells you, slowly, enunciating every word like you're deaf instead of batshit crazy.
you sit down in front of mr. abed nadir, nauseous under his measured look. maybe he's from the police. he's from the police, and he's here to take you to prison because of the bad thing you did.
"i'll be back to get her in twenty minutes," the nurse says.
you shift uncomfortably in your seat, feeling the man's eyes on you. when you finally find the courage to look straight at him, you find he looks a bit sad. his eyes. his eyes are searching for something in yours.
"annie…" says mr. abed nadir. he says your name again and you flinch.
"please," you whisper. "please. don't call me that. i hate it."
"i'll call you geneva then," abed nadir says. "do you prefer that?"
geneva. yes. you like that a bit more. gen-e-va.
"how do you know me?" you ask.
"we were old friends, back in school. do you remember?"
he sounds like one of those doctors. you lean back in your chair, shaking your head.
"we went on adventures," abed nadir explains. "we've been to space. we've seen the stars together."
you can't imagine that. here is all you know.
"do you know what i… what i did?" you ask, hesitant. you're not sure if you want to hear his answer.
abed nadir nods solemnly. "your gun went off. it shot pierce. he died."
he died.
you killed someone.
"i killed someone."
abed nadir's eyes are alarmed, but the rest of him stays the same. "you didn't kill him. your gun killed him. the gun in your purse. it went off due to a series of accidents, none of which were your fault."
"i killed someone."
"geneva, it wasn't your fault."
you cover your face with your hands. no no no no no nO NO NO.
you don't realize you're screaming until the mother hens rush in, single-file. you don't realize someone's arms are around you until they're pried off.
mr. abed nadir comes back every wednesday to see you. the nurses are all aflutter, clucking and cooing. they say he's your "gentlemen caller". annie edison asks if he's your boyfriend.
it doesn't matter. it's all background noise. you killed someone.
"i brought you this," abed says. he puts a puzzle box on the table. there's a man in a trenchcoat and bowler hat, flanked by a policeman and a girl in a yellow crown. "it's a rare limited edition inspector spacetime puzzle. 585 pieces."
you like your tree puzzle better, but you accept the gift without any protest. abed points to the girl in the crown. "that's you. geneva."
"i don't have red hair," you say.
"you're just as pretty."
you remember the girl in the mirror, and think otherwise.
"i also brought you this."
abed gives you a piece of folded over black felt. upon further inspection, you discover it's a goatee. abed puts on one of his own, his expression serious throughout. is this a joke? you didn't think mr. abed nadir was the type of man who liked jokes.
"i've come to the understanding that we're in the darkest timeline," abed explains. "we have become the evil versions of ourselves."
"you think i'm evil?"
abed backtracks. "not evil. more like… darker versions of ourselves." he pauses to make sure you're all right with his word choice. you're not, but you politely allow him to continue. "to fix this we must find a way into the prime timeline, destroy the good versions of ourselves, and take their places."
you don't know how to react to this.
you hear the gunshots in your dreams, and you know you killed someone.
you start to close off even more. you stay in your room doing the inspector spacetime puzzle abed gave you. you spread all 585 pieces on the floor. it takes the entire day to finish it.
you find new ways to avoid taking the little white pills. you hide them under your tongue, pretend to swallow. they think you're such a good girl. a good girl would never lie. a good girl would never let someone else die because of them.
abed's visits become shorter. he has other things to do. important things. things that involve prime timelines and not you.
"it's for the best," he tells you. he reaches out and brushes a strand of hair out of your eyes. his goatee isn't made of felt anymore.
one day it's too much for you.
you find a window that's opened in the doctor's office. he's gone out to discuss something with another patient, leaving you alone. you're a good girl. the nurses tell you it's not long before you'll be discharged. if you keep taking your pills you'll be out of here in no time.
it's been a while since you've tasted fresh air. you're so high up. if you jumped… if you jumped you'd go SPLAT.
annie edison would splat. geneva would fly.
they catch you before you can try it. the doctor pulls you back, and you scream, clawing at his eyes.
they put you in a room with bars on the windows. they force the pills to go down your throat. you aren't allowed to do puzzles anymore. you're going crazy. the word crumbles, and no one is there to hold your hand, push back your hair, tell you it'll be okay.
they let you see him one wednesday afternoon.
he's different now. you barely recognize him. the goatee on his face has fully come in, course dark hair. he's wearing sunglasses, so you can't see his eyes. his voice is tired.
"i'll get you out of here," he says. "we'll leave. we'll get our lives back."
"but can you promise me that?" you want to leave more than anything.
"i promise," he says. "i'll give you everything you want."
he's just as gone as she is, but he's smart enough to hide it.
"do you remember?" he asks. "do you remember when i kissed you?"
you shake your head. "no. you did? i wish i could remember."
"i wasn't me. i was somebody else."
you lean across the table and kiss him. you want to know what it feels like. what it felt like before everything went wrong.
he pushes you away. "we're not good together. i'm not… i calculated everything. we don't. we don't match up."
you stare at him, tears pricking your eyes.
"we're not like your puzzles, annie," he says. no geneva this time. "we don't fit together."
you want to kiss him again. you want to take off those stupid sunglasses and look at him.
"i'm leaving," he says. "i'm going to the prime timeline, and i'm fixing everything. i'm the only one who can do it."
"don't leave me behind." your voice is a hoarse whisper, and for a moment you're not sure if he heard you.
"it's for you," he says. "it's for all of us."
you touch his hand. he's cold. cold like a bathroom mirror. that warmth you craved for so long. it's gone.
he leaves just like he said.
and you wait in your white room with the barred windows. you wait for him to come back for you.