A/N: Hi, everyone! Firstly, thank you for reading and leaving comments/reviews. Every single word you write for me makes me happy. Secondly, the last couple of days have been quite rough for some people, me included. This is not the most cheerful chapter, but I hope this can offer you solace at least.

Raindrops hit the window of my cell, wet leaves stuck to it. The walls felt, smelled, sounded, and seemed colder without moonlight. (Incomplete description with five senses. Too bad I didn't taste the walls.)

The beginning of winter was around the corner, and the sad excuse of a blanket wasn't sufficient to keep myself warm at night. I cluttered my teeth, as I pictured Jude wrapped up in silky blankets, in a bed that didn't have bedbugs. The wrinkles between her brows must be smoothed out in serene sleep.

I missed home, missed the warmth of my bed, perhaps with the warmth of another human's body.

My brain decided to play Dominique on repeat. I tried to drown it out with another song of my choice. And by my choice, I mean my brain's.

Venus, if you will

Please send a little girl for me to thrill

A girl who wants my kisses and my arms

A girl with all the charms of you

"No, not this song."

There were two songs in the world I couldn't stand. One was Dominique, for obvious reasons. The other was this. And now two of them simultaneously assaulted me, while insomnia and the cold kept me awake. There was nothing more miserable than this.

"Go to hell, Venus," I said.

"Not a fan of Venus?" a voice abruptly said next to me.

I turned my head around, legs hanging from a decrepit chair. It was a familiar place, my second home. I was sitting in a gay bar located on the outskirts of the town. The place was so small. With the shelves that stored alcohol bottles occupying almost half of the room, it could be full house with about fifteen people.

As I looked about, I saw familiar faces, people that I called my family. But the woman who sat next to me—I had never seen her before.

The warm lighting colored her pale skin orange, accentuating small patches of freckles on the tip of her nose and cheeks. She gave me a lop-sided smile, and her teeth peeked just a bit from between her thin lips.

"I sort of have a love-hate relationship with this song."

"Why is that?" She tilted her head to the side.

"Well," I said. "I love the lyrics. I love the music."

"It's a good song."

I nodded. "But I can't sing it freely. I can't tell my friends how much I love it." I put a cigarette between my lips, and offered her one.

"You could, if you wanted to— No thanks, I don't smoke."

I struck a match. "My straight friends, I mean. The public love it because Frankie Avalon is a straight man singing about wanting a girl."

"That's a fair point," she said.

"Imagine a girl singing it. There would be thousands of angry straight people."

She giggled, and stopped to listen to the chorus part. "Ok, now I have a love-hate relationship with it, too."

Her smile was coy, like that of an adolescent boy. Her dark locks fell into her face, as she looked down. She wiped the water droplets on the glass surface with her thumb. Then, she lifted her face to smile at me, the corners of her eyes crinkling, with all the charms of Venus.

I smiled back, and gestured towards her almost empty glass. "Can I buy you a drink?"

She pursed her lips, held her chin in her hand, and pretended to think for a while. And she said, "Only if you let me buy you one too."

"Oh, no, you're driving a hard bargain, lady." I giggled, the whiskey running in my veins making it so effortless. I beckoned over the bartender. "I'm Lana, by the way."

"Gwendoline," she said.

"That's a pretty name. Can I call you Gwen?"

Her eyes shone, and she bit her lip. "Actually," she said, "I prefer Wendy."

I opened my eyes, and the dark and the sound of rain welcomed me back. Her smile lingered behind my eyelids. God, she was so beautiful. My heart thumped against the mattress, telling me how weak I was against my subconscious. I cursed myself for taking sleeping pills, instead of dumping them in a filth bucket like usual. I felt even more tired.

Wendy, my Venus.

Pepper was humming in her cell, and inside my head Dominique joined in. It'd be a long night, another endless waking nightmare.

"Pepper, go back to sleep," a husky voice said, drawling the r sound of the name.

I hadn't heard that voice in days. The footsteps were so light, the sound of rain almost drowned them out. She stopped in front of my cell, taking a deep breath or two, the keys jingling in her hands. I lay in my bed completely still, all of my focus on her, in the dark. Then, after some moments, I realized she couldn't see or hear me move, couldn't tell if I was asleep.

As soon as I sat up, the cold air stroked my bare legs. I shivered once, and got on my feet to walk to the door. We stood there without a word, staring into the dark, feeling each other's breaths. And then, the keys clattered, as she unlocked the door, the sharp click too loud in the stillness of the night.

Yet, she stepped back, instead of opening it for me. She stood there, waiting for me to come out on my own volition.

So I did.

###

In the entrance hall, the sound of rain was louder, as it hit the skylight above us. Mary walked with anxiously quick steps, as if we were getting rained on. We took the advantage of the rambling of thunder, and sprinted down the Stairway to Heaven.

Every time lightening lit up the whole sky, it shed light on the raven-black veil on her head. It was a quite magnetizing sight, I must say. But I'd never admit that I almost missed a step because of it. I thanked the fact that she was too preoccupied with the surroundings to bother looking at me.

Once we entered the chapel, Mary closed the door so gently, that a spider's sleep wouldn't be disturbed. The lightning gave me a sight, only for a bit, and I saw her at last. Her hand rested on the rusty black handle, and the other flat on the expanse of the door. Her bottom lip was between her teeth, as she looked at me from under knitted brows. I saw guilt and uncertainty in her eyes, as though her behavior was worth a reprimand, from me.

I smiled at her. "I haven't seen you for a while."

She nodded her head slowly, as her hands let go of the door. I followed her to the same spot as before.

"I was in town to run some errands for Dr. Arden," she said.

"Arden?" The darkness concealed my grimace, but not the suspicion and slight disgust in my voice. She must've heard it.

"He's been very kind to me ever since he started working here." She repositioned herself in her seat, so her body was facing me.

"Is that right."

"The kindest anyone has ever been to me."

"Sure, and Jude is a saint."

She fell quiet, and said, "You don't know about my life, Miss Winters."

The sky got bright again, illuminating her golden bangs, as she ducked her head. It stung, not because she was right, but because she was wrong. Dead wrong. I knew, painfully, more than what she'd told me. More than she knew.

"I owe him a lot," she said.

"How so?"

"Everyone thinks I'm a stupid girl. I can't do anything right. It takes a lot of time for me to learn. Even after five years, they don't quite trust me with anything. But Dr. Arden— He is different."

And she told me that Arden had come to Briarcliff three years ago at the Monsignor's suggestion, that he came off as very intimidating at first, and that the enigmatic appliances in his office used to give her nightmares. Then one day, a patient died and his death devastated her. Arden was the only person who cared about her, cared enough to sit with her in this very chapel, while she cried.

"He said I had something everyone else didn't have, said I was not the worthless person that they had made me believe I was."

He was right, for thinking she was special. She had purity, innocence that the rest of Briarcliff lacked. And he was a predator, a perverted parasite, attracted to the lightness in her.

"I don't like him," I said. "I don't like that he makes you think you owe him something."

"He's not a bad person, Miss Winters. He's just misunderstood . . . like me."

"He abuses Kit. Have you seen the scar on his neck?"

"It's not abuse. It's for the greater good." She let out a sigh. "It's true that he has a peculiar way of thinking, but ordinary people aren't supposed to understand his ingenious brain."

"Are you sure he didn't mean sane people?"

Then, another sigh escaped her lips, as she shook her head. "My point is," she said, "that he's the only person who deems me worthy of his time and voice. He trusts me. He even lets me help with his experiments."

"Experiments?" I said. "What kind of experiments?"

She began to fidget, her words dying in her throat. "I—I'm not supposed to—"

I was growing tired of talking about Arden, but this— It was a topic that woke up the journalist part of me, blowing away the rest of my drowsiness.

"When I caught you out in the woods, were you helping him?" I said.

A jolt of lightning lit up the sky above us again, followed by a roaring thunder. Mary jumped, a gasp leaving her lips. She scooted closer until our knees bumped into each other, and wrapped her fingers around my forearm. The ground shook under our aligned hips. Her body was radiating heat, despite the cold air of coming winter. We'd never had skin-to-skin contact before, I realized.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm easily scared."

"Didn't know that."

She pulled away, recovering a little distance between our bodies. My skin that touched hers felt colder then, and I shivered. Silence fell upon us. I could hear her swallow, hear her play with her crucifix.

"Well?" I said. "The experiment?"

She took a deep, slow breath. "I can't tell you," she said. "I'm sorry." Her voice was frail, as though it really pained her to build a barrier of secret between us. "But the point is, he was the first—and only—person who ever made me feel useful. I owe him my life, and I need to pay him back, whatever it might take."

Useful. It was goddamn exploitation.

"Is he making you do something illegal?"

"No—" she said with much conviction. But then, her voice faltered again. "I don't think— It's for the greater good."

"The greater good."

"I help him," she said. "He says he couldn't do it if it wasn't for me. You may not know how much it matters to me."

She was right this time. I was always the go-to person in times of trouble, the person who strived to lead herds of lost sheep. The earliest memory I had was of me, age three or four, sitting on the edge of my parents' bed. My father was letting me pick a tie for him. I remember choosing a purple one over a blue one, because it was my favorite color at the time. "You're such a dependable girl, Lana," he said, with the purple tie around his neck. Although I had yet to learn what that word exactly meant, his crooked smile made me proud nevertheless.

It was a natural thing to me, this leadership. I was useful, and I knew it. Mary had a point—I could not even fathom, how it felt to be useless, how it could affect a person's life. Her life.

"I'm sorry," Mary said.

"For?"

"I don't know. For bringing you here, for talking only about me."

"I told you, don't apologize for that."

"But there isn't even the moon to look at. I should have let you stay in your room."

"Then why did you unlock the door?" I asked.

The sky got bright again, the light falling into her eyes, as she looked at me. She bit her lip. Then she disappeared into the dark. Still, I could see her looking at me, searching for words, and failing. The rumbling of thunder came after a few seconds, so far that it just sounded like a cat's purring.

"Did you want to talk to me so badly?" I said.

What are you doing, Lana, flirting with one of the people you're definitely not supposed to flirt with?

Another jolt of lightning. The sound of rain suddenly got unbearable. But I swore that, as the sparks in her eyes burned my skin, her face became a little less pale. Blood in her cheeks. I wondered if anyone in her life had ever made her blush before. I feared that it might slap her in the cheek. She might sober up from our mutual whatever-this-was, and confess to Jude about us.

"The moon isn't out, sure." I sank back into my seat. "But I have freedom, as much of it as I could have in here. I was having a crappy dream anyway."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"You don't want to know."

Her clothes rustled, and I felt her hand hover above mine, close enough for the heat to travel. But she did not take my hand. It stayed there instead, and then she pulled away.

"Whatever eases your pain, I want to help," she said.

"It's my girlfr—my ex-girlfriend."

"Oh—"

"See? You don't want to poison your ears with the story of my sins."

"Do you miss her?" she asked.

It was not to condemn me. It was not to ridicule me like everyone had done since my admission. Only, it was to know how I was feeling. And it felt odd, to have our life together on the tip of someone's tongue, to have the thought of her on someone else's mind. The woman who'd betrayed me, but still managed to control the beat of my heart.

And the irony lay here, because in here, of all places in the world, I didn't need to hide the true relationship between us. They might mock me, called me names. But the cat had long been out of the bag, and was running around as it pleased. It was liberating. In the outside world, we were simply best friends who shared a house.

"I do." I wanted to say no. I wanted to not miss her. "She was the love of my life. The one that got away."

"And you dreamed about her?"

I nodded, and after a second, nodded once more. "Yeah. The worst nightmare."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"Do you want to see me cry?"

She hesitated. "No. I don't want to see you cry," she said, as if she was going to cry.

And I felt guilty for it, for the tears that she had yet to shed, even guiltier than when I actually meant to be cruel. I raised my hand to fiddle with something on my chest, then realized I didn't wear a cross, or a necklace, like she did.

"I mean, it's not that shitty." I put the hand back in my pocket. "It was just about the first time we met, Wendy and I."

"Is that her name? Miss Wendy?"

It had been long since the last time I heard that name, not inside my head, but spoken by someone else. And the way Mary said it. It wasn't Miss Peyser like her little students or Jude said. Not Gwen, as her co-worker called her. Wendy. My Wendy. And I felt like Mary cherished the name, just as much as I did. It was such a peculiar thought.—She had never met Wendy, and never would.

"Wendy Peyser," I said. It tasted bitterly sweet on my tongue. "Everyone called her Gwendoline, but she preferred Wendy. That's what she told me when I first met her."

"When did you meet her?"

"Five years ago. In spring, but it was a cold night. It was her second year teaching at an elementary school, and I was just starting my career as a journalist."

"Was it love at first sight?"

It caught me off guard, leaving my mind blank, blowing away part of the nostalgia. Never in my most bizarre dream had I ever imagined talking about my gay love life to a Catholic nun, inside a chapel, of a psychiatric hospital.

"No, it wasn't." I shook my head. "Well—not to me anyway. To her it was. After we left the— We met in a bar. After we left there, she took me to the school she was teaching at. We were quite . . . not sober."

She giggled, in a more demure manner than I did.

"We snuck in from the backdoor that they always left open. And she led me to her classroom, and showed me the drawings her students did of their parents, telling me what she liked about each one of those kids I'd never met." I sighed, as her drunken smile came back before my eyes. "I couldn't care less, to be honest, but I liked how she spoke, glancing at me every five seconds, like . . . she was making sure I was still there next to her. And then—"

She asked me if she could hold my hand.

"Then?" Mary said.

"Then, she told me I was the most beautiful woman she'd ever seen. She said she couldn't take her eyes off me in the bar. Not my words." I laughed. "I'm just quoting what she said."

"How'd you know you liked her, then, if it wasn't love at first sight?" she said.

Again, she threw me off with her out-of-the-blue question. If I were straight, this might not have been so foreign to me. Where did you meet him? What do you like about him? Did he buy you a ring already? That kind of questions that straight girls like to ask her straight friends over lunch. When I talked to my gay friends, the conversation centered on work, parents, and how homophobic the world was.

"I don't know," I said. "It just happened over time, I guess. But, I think . . . I think it was the night of my birthday."

"When is your birthday?"

"May 10th. We had only been together for three months or so, and I only mentioned my birthday once, like a week after we first met. But she remembered it, and bought a gift for me. The little L-shaped brooch that I wore on my jacket? She bought that for me."

"Was it expensive?"

I shook my head. "No, but the price didn't matter. She remembered my birthday, and took her time to do something. That mattered. And then, I knew I liked her, I suppose."

"That easily?"

"It's little things like these that matter most of the time," I said. "Big things are nice too, but little things . . ." I put my hand on my left chest, where the brooch would've been. There was nothing, but the unique coldness of fabric.—Metal would've had sharper coldness.

"Like saying 'I love you' every day?" she said.

"Yeah, like that," I said. "Like 'I love you,' 'I care about you,' and simply sitting next to her when she cries. Things like that."

The rain had subsided to drizzle outside. There was no more lightning or thunder, only the sound of the ground absorbing soft raindrops. I wondered what became of my L pin.

"You still love her," she said.

I turned my head to her. "What— No, I don't." I let out a snort. "She betrayed me, chose her job over my life."

"But you still love her," she said. "You were smiling."

And I realized—the flashes of lightning did not shed light on her face, but mine, too. I had been seen. And while it was true that I didn't ever recall smiling, my cheeks hurt, cramping. Those were the muscles that I hadn't used in a long time, the muscles that Wendy never failed to get moving.

I was smiling, wasn't I?

"We've spent five years together." Fuck, don't cry. "Of course, I do." I tried my hardest not to blink, but tears spilled over, and trickled down my cheek anyway. And then, I ached all over. "We were gonna spend our lives together. We promised it. She promised, said she'd always be there for me."

We will always have each other, Lana. Don't you ever forget that.

That was what Wendy said, as she kissed me. After our third anniversary, we drove to my hometown in Vermont to see my mother, hoping to, I don't know, to have her blessing, to have her understanding, to show how happy I was. I chose to avoid my father. He wouldn't have even bothered to give her a glance. And it wasn't hard to achieve, since they'd had a divorce several years prior.

I had misgivings, still, to come out to my mother. It was a huge risk, but I thought, if there was anyone who was familiar with alienation and discrimination as much as I was, it'd be her. But when I finally told her the truth, she couldn't look at me. She collapsed to the ground and wailed, as if she'd lost her child.—I lost my mother that day.

"This is my only home," I said to Wendy in our house, after a long, wordless drive.

Then, she wrapped her arms around me. I cried, for the first time since walking out of the house I grew up in, leaving my childhood behind. For good.

Her embrace tightened. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry," she said it many times. Her voice trembled, as she wet her cheeks for me.

Mary's soft fingers stroked the skin of my hand, barely touching. It was a yearning, yet timid touch, an uncertain approach, similar to that of a cat drooling over a fish in a stranger's hand. I wiped my cheeks, opened my hand, and took hers. It felt odd, quite awkward. But somehow it was hypnotizing, too, to find that her hand was slightly bigger than mine. Wendy's was smaller.

"What she did is," she said, ". . . unjustifiable, and I can't imagine half of the pain you must be in." She squeezed my hand. "But . . . maybe she really meant it when she said it, when she promised those things to you. I don't know her, but I think— I can't think that a person, loved and trusted by someone like you, could lie about something like that."

I didn't know what to say. What can you do to be free from the bitterness, when you know the person who hurt you isn't a villain? How do you let it all go, and forgive them? Where does one go, after accepting that both the hurter and the hurt are just humans?

Everything felt so surreal.

"Fuck, I need a cigarette," I said.

"They say those things will give you cancer."

My single laugh echoed in the chapel, followed by my sniffling. "Death sounds wonderful."

"Please don't say things like that," she said. "I'll be sad if you die."

I was going to apologize, but I wasn't sorry.

"You get sad when anyone dies," I said.

We fell silent, and like this, we waited for the morning to come. I stared down at our connected hands, illuminated by the weak sunlight. They rather looked alike, with scars and bruises and all, with pain and struggles accumulated under the skin. She was a mortal, just as I was.

Then I looked up, and found her looking at me. She gave me a smile, a sad one. It made me want to cry again.

I rubbed my puffy eyes. "I don't know how you could've survived here for five years," I said.

"You get used to it."

I didn't know if it was true.