A/N: Sorry it's a bit on the short side, but I thought it was a good stopping point. Hoping to have the next one up by Wednesday.
The red-head spun around at the sound of that name- it was not her own, but it was close enough to warrant her attention. Shocked, she saw Freddie standing and calling for her, well, her sister, but it was close. They hadn't the best of relationships, though it had generally been fairly close to good for the better part of four years. Her relationship with the girl standing next to him, however, could have been a hell of a lot better.
"What the fuck, Freddie?" It became readily apparent to both Freddie and Naomi that he had called the wrong twin. And Katie sure scared Naomi much more than Emily did. Katie shouted at her ex-boyfriend as she crossed the room through the crowd. "That had better not be who I-" The last of that sentence was lost in a jumble bodies that Katie squeezed through, but all three of them could easily guess the ending. And unfortunately for Katie, she was correct.
"Get. The. Fuck. Out. Now." Katie shook almost visibly with a pent up anger and rage that had been sitting there, smoldering for four years. She was ready for a fight, a physical fight like they'd had at the Love Ball. The fire inside had been on the back-burner for too long.
Naomi didn't hesitate to bow her head and walk away; she knew that she deserved every bit of Katie's wrath, and she knew even more deeply that she couldn't take it. But someone thought that she needed to take it: Freddie grabbed her arm hard just as she was about to disappear and dragged her back to face Katie.
"Freddie!" both girls exclaimed, though for slightly different reasons. Katie couldn't believe that he'd be this assertive, that he'd care this much about something that wasn't Effy. Naomi couldn't really believe he'd ever actually cared about anything.
"What? You two should talk. Sort out the fucking mess you both made," he yelled at them, though not so much out of anger, but over the escalating noise level in the club.
Katie looked just about ready to slap him. "We both made! What the fuck, Freddie! She walked out on my sister! What do I have to do with anything!"
"You weren't exactly making things any easier for either of them," Freddie told her forcefully, yet calmly.
"And this is all my fault!" Katie was beside herself; what right did Freddie have to criticize her? She hadn't up and left someone she loved and come back four years later after no communication. "Freddie, I'm sorry, but since when the fuck do you care?"
He shrugged. "I always have. I just never really knew how to show it. And now I know. And what I know is things like this don't just happen, Katie. There's always a reason," Freddie informed her coldly. Katie knew exactly what he thought the reason was, and she certainly had neither the desire nor ability to stand and watch him silently blame her for something she didn't do. Though Katie was surprised at Naomi's newfound ability to keep her mouth shut.
"Oh, why don't you come out and say it, Freddie? You're so damn in touch with everyone's feelings now. Go on then. What's the reason?" She honestly believed that Freddie would turn back into his old self, the one that hid and smoked and skated and didn't do much else; otherwise, she never would've challenged him.
He took a tentatively strong step closer, a snake coiling to strike. "You want to know the reason? Everything was shit- you were shit, and your parents were shit and it was all coming down on her!" Freddie gestured wildly to Naomi, almost hitting her in the face. She honestly had no idea why he cared so much about her or anything related to her. Freddie had never been that type.
"Oh, Freddie, fucking little Freds! You know this whole conversation isn't about Naomi!" Katie knew that Freddie hadn't suddenly grown the desire to care about the rest of world out of nowhere. She knew the real reason.
Freddie took one step closer, one more step closer to showing he wasn't afraid, to showing he wasn't afraid to care. "Yes. It. is. And just because you don't love your sister enough to want her to be happy in any way- this way- doesn't mean that the rest of us don't." His declaration of such a raw truth brought an equally raw slap to the side of his face. Naomi blindly jumped between a struggling, aching, pounding Katie and a quiet, calm, stoic Freddie.
"Just stop it, Katie!" she shouted. "I know I fucked up, alright? But if I'm still good enough for Emily- why does it matter to you!"
She stopped. Really, she just stopped flailing and calmed down with the cold numbness of a person sentenced to death, but not admitting defeat. "When you left Emily, you left me, too. As much as I couldn't stand you, Emily needed you. But no one can ever see twins for what we truly are- one mind, two bodies." Katie looked about ready to slap Naomi, but she held her ground firmly, though her hands twitched in rage, confusion, and the cocktail of negativity swirling through her blood. "You hurt her, you hurt me. And maybe everyone got over you hurting Emily, but no one ever even realized how much it hurt me."
"Katie... not to sound like a twat, but you fucking hated me," Naomi said. Freddie simply watched, bobbing his head back and forth, following the sound waves.
The redheaded twin stomped her foot to the ground in frustration. "You don't get it! When Emily's hurt, I'm hurt. When Emily's crying, I'm crying. When Emily's betrayed, I'm betrayed. You betrayed the one person in my life who never, ever wanted to turn her back on me, no matter how awful I was. And now I'm fucking torn between wanting to run at her with the joyous news and telling you two to get hitched on the spot or strangling you right here with my bare hands, just to give you a measly portion of the suffering you've inflicted over the years!" And though the rage of techno music continued to echo and the tangled mass of sweaty bodies continued to press against them, Katie, Naomi, and Freddie heard nothing but silence, felt nothing but stillness.
"Guess I'm not the only surprisingly complicated one," Freddie muttered, stealing a glance at Katie.
Ignoring Freddie's comment, Naomi figured she had to step up and say something, because Katie had said so much. But the words wouldn't come out, and her throat closed up, and her feet took her toward her previous enemy, and all Naomi could do was wrap her arms around Katie in the most complicated of hugs she'd ever given or received.
"I'm sorry, Katie... everything I did, I did for Emily. Or at least that's what I believed at the time," Naomi whispered into Katie's ear, trying to ignore the uneasiness that came with hugging someone who felt so much like Emily, but wasn't quite the same. "I'll explain later, I promise."
Katie pulled away first and gave Naomi a quick once-over: ruffled shirt, skirt not on straight, suspenders threatening to slip off the shoulders, shoe laces partially untied. Naomi didn't look like the confident asshole she had once been, and maybe Katie should encourage that. After all, the taller girl had stooped down to give her a hug. Weird as that was, it came from the heart. "I'll help you."
"What?"
"I'm not the fool I used to be, Naomi. I can see you've changed." And somehow she forced a smirk onto her face. "And I want to see Emily get out of the hole you dug for her. Maybe, if you get it right, we can get Emily out of the drunken stupor she's been-"
"What!"
Katie wrinkled her nose at Naomi's slack jaw. "My sister's been practically an alcoholic for the past four years. Did no one tell you?"
Naomi felt it moments before it happened. She was panicking, freaking out ("Did I do that? I made Emily an alcoholic?"), picturing the sweet girl now: older, but still horribly young, hair messy and disheveled in the way that it hadn't been washed in days, sweatpants and an old T-shirt, the days of quirky and often adorably mismatched outfits now gone, and the hollow, sunken eyes Naomi had seen in the hardcore drunks in Cyprus, the eyes of someone who had abandoned all hope.
And it was her fucking fault.
Yes, Naomi knew exactly what was going on. Forget the pills, screw the therapy, because the fragile dream Naomi had been crafting was about to shatter. She was about to sink back into a state of mind she'd spent four years getting out of.
