Hey amigos! Wanna hear something freaky? After I wrote the last chapter, about Zacharie getting sick... I started feeling sick too. So now I'm fighting off a cold or something equally gross. Weird, right? [muffled X-Files theme playing in the background]

Thanks for all the reviews! Huehueh, I cackled like mad reading all you guys freaking out about Zach. Am I a terrible person? Probably.

We're All Mad Here

Chapter 10

In the early hours of the morning, Batter finally gave up on any hope of sleep. He pulled off the ridiculous hospital gown and began to look for his clothes. If he had to sit in this room a moment longer, he'd lose it; he had to know that Zacharie was real, and he had to know it now.

So after fishing his shoes out from beneath the bed and retrieving his cap from a drawer, Batter stepped out into the corridor and set off for the next ward over. That was where Zacharie had said the mysterious 'disturbance' was the other day, so it seemed as good a place to start as any.

The hospital was quiet; Batter's footsteps echoed weirdly and his heart pounded so loudly that he feared someone might hear it, but the few times he saw a Magnolia or doctor they were reasonably far off and he managed to duck out of sight in time. His skin was slick with cold sweat and he was breathing heavily by the time he reached the large pressurised doors to the next ward. There was a sign to the left of the doors. Batter forced himself to read it.

Unité des Brûlés. Burn Ward.

Batter clapped a hand to his mouth, tears stinging his eyes. Oh god, Zacharie…

I never knew…

I never even thought…

But he was getting ahead of himself. He didn't even know if Zacharie was in there. For all Batter knew, he could be on the opposite side of the hospital. Though, somehow, Batter had a feeling that he was in the right place. That phantom itch was back, and it was telling him to walk through those doors.

His fears were confirmed when, a moment later, the doors hissed open. Batter dove out of sight behind a nearby sculpture, just as two Magnolias came out of the ward. One was holding what looked like an empty cat-food bag.

"I don't understand how he keeps getting back in," she was saying. "It's bizarre! And the way he grins…"

"I know what you mean," the other said. "I'd get rid of him myself if he wasn't so good for the patients."

Batter's heart quickened again. They were talking about Pablo; they had to be! The doors began to close. It was now or never. As soon as the nurses had passed out of sight, Batter steeled himself and darted through the doors. They almost caught him, but by sucking his gut in he managed to squeeze through. He was in!

Moving quickly now, he set off down the hallway, peeking into each room as he passed by. Most of the beds were empty; one was occupied in the third room, but by a sunken-looking woman with bandages on her arms. Her eyes were closed, and Batter passed by as quickly and quietly as he could so as not to wake her.

He slowed down as he neared the last room. If Zacharie was in this ward, this is where he would be. Batter took a deep breath. He shouldn't be doing this. But he had to know.

He looked in. There was someone sitting up in the bed on the far side of the room, nearest the window; a boy with tousled black hair. He was facing the wall, talking quietly to someone Batter could not see.

After a moment of searching, Batter's eyes found a familiar shape. But it wasn't covering the boy's face. It was lying on the bed, next to his knees. A pale, papier-mâché frog mask with a painted grin.

Zacharie.

Relief exploded behind Batter's eyes like a blossoming rose. He was real.

"You really think he'll- wait, what?"

Zacharie's shoulders tensed, and Batter's breath caught in his throat as a venomous hiss went up. He began to back away, but it was too late. Pablo had seen him!

In a flurry of movement, Zacharie grabbed his mask and turned to face him, holding it in place without bothering with the ribbon.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded. His voice was even hoarser than it had been yesterday. "Get out!"

The shout hit Batter like a slap to the face. He had never heard anyone sound so furious. "I-"

Zacharie's eyes flashed dangerously. "GET OUT!" he screamed. His voice cracked, and he dissolved into a violent coughing fit. As Pablo began to yowl like a cat possessed, Batter turned and ran.

He didn't stop running until he was back in his own room with the door shut firmly behind him. He leant against it, chest heaving as he pressed his fists against his eyes, trying desperately to hold back the tears. He knew if he let them fall now, he might not be able to stop. Everything was unravelling…

And it was all his fault. He should have just let it be. He had doubted, he had gone too far, and he had ruined everything. Just like he always did. Only this time, he stood to lose the one thing he had ever cared about in the slightest. It was a loss that Batter could already feel, like a cancer eating away at his heart; a loss that he knew would simply be too great to bear, even for him. He had lost so much in his life that he should be used to it by now, but somehow he could imagine nothing worse than losing Zacharie, a boy whom he had known for a measly four days and yet had made such a home for himself in Batter's heart that he could not bear the thought of living another day without him.

Of course, it was stupid to think that Zacharie felt the same. He had brought so much colour into Batter's life, but Batter could not have been more than one uninteresting speck among thousands in Zacharie's. To think otherwise would be madness.

But that was Batter through and through, wasn't it? Enoch and Dedan could throw as many words at him as they liked – delusion, hallucination, schizophrenia – but in the end, it all meant that he was crazy. Broken. Dangerous.

Unlovable.

Batter's breathing finally began to slow. He no longer felt the urge to weep, or scream, or break something as he had before. He felt numb. Slowly, woodenly, he pulled his hands away from his eyes and began to get changed into his hospital gown.

Later, when the Magnolia came to give him his pills, he swallowed them without a sound. When she left, he walked to the bathroom, stuck his fingers down his throat, and coughed the hateful things back up. He repeated this process mechanically each time they came to dose him, and by the end of the day his head felt clearer than it had in months.

He wasn't even surprised when Pablo pushed his way into his room and told him, quite clearly, to get dressed. He had been expecting him, after all.

I took some artistic liberties with this one, so I guess a disclaimer of sorts is necessary. Obviously you would not be able to sneak around a hospital so easily, especially not a burn ward where the risk of infection is so high. I don't think Pablo would be allowed into the ward either, for similar reasons.

So, now we're starting to get a picture of what might have happened to Zacharie... did anyone guess that he had been burned? And did anyone figure out that Batter has schizophrenia? And, as always, share your theories about how you think the story is going to end! I love interacting with you guys, it's like we're one big sado-masochistic family UwU

Stay tuned! The madness is only just beginning, my dear friends...