Chapter 9: Deep Breath

I woke up on the floor in front of my bed, my old landline receiver digging into my hip where I'd pressed it into my side. As I forced myself into a sitting position, I tried to piece together how I'd gotten on the floor in the first place.

I remembered yesterday. I wished I didn't, but it had happened, and there was no denying it.

I remembered shutting the door after being brought back to my apartment. I remembered leaning against its solid wood as I slowly slid to the ground. In that moment, as I sat with my back pressed to my door, I realized that I was completely and utterly alone. The grey and grim light from the outside streamed through the places where the curtains wouldn't touch, as if showing me that the rest of the world felt as I did. My apartment was dark and colourless, as I'd disappeared into an old black-and-white film.

I didn't cry. I couldn't. What difference would it have made if I had? Nobody would notice, and I doubted it would lessen my feelings of absolute abandonment.

I couldn't bring myself to move, so I allowed myself to remain where I was, staring into my empty kitchen, the pale yellow color scheme making me feel sickly. Everything felt too overwhelming: the cozy, homey feeling of being back at my apartment, the loss of human contact, the smells and sights of things I hadn't seen in what seemed like years.

After sitting in place for some time into the evening, I realized that I would be unable to physically function if I did not eat anything, so I forced myself to my feet and shakily went to the kitchen, my socked feet dragging against the wooden, and then tiled, floors. I picked up my landline with one hand and absently headed to my bedroom.

I shut the door behind me, plunging myself into pitch blackness. I began to dial the number for the nearest pizza place as I lowered myself to the floor, my back leaning against the foot-board of my bed. I couldn't see anything, save for the small illuminated digits on the phone.

The phone rang a few times, but I froze just as someone picked up the line, unable to find the will to speak.

"Hello?" called the voice on the other end of the line.

I felt myself speaking, but what I said is lost to me.

I dropped the phone once the pizza place hung up. I sat there, staring into the darkness in front of me until I heard my doorbell ring.

One pizza and a few glasses of water later, I returned to my room, and lay down where I was sitting before. I ignored the fact that I was lying on top of the phone. I felt it jabbing into me as I fell asleep.

In the present, the world had shifted from greyscale to sepia. Amber light leeched through the blinds and under my bedroom door, as if trying to convince me that everything was fine, that nothing had changed.

I leaned against the foot-board of my bed, raising one knee and draping an arm over top of it. I tilted my head up, staring at the shadows that loomed over me, concealing my ceiling.

I thought about what my dad would've been doing right at this very moment.

A quick glance at the phone's screen told me it was just after nine in the morning.

Memories floated to the surface of my mind like dandelion seeds, clinging to the back of a breeze.

My dad was an early riser because he liked making breakfast. He liked experimenting with different oils and spices, and used a terrible French accent whenever I asked him any questions about his dishes.

I felt my eyes prickle at the edges, my vision of the golden nothingness above me going out of focus. I blinked rapidly, averting my eyes to my bedroom door instead.

At this moment, my dad would've whipped up a batch of scrambled eggs with bacon while singing along to whatever song was playing on the radio, whether or not he knew the lyrics.

I chuckled at the thought of him in the white, pink-trimmed apron my mom used to wear, the tears I'd been trying to blink away streaking my face in thin, chilly lines.

I don't remember when I got up, but at some point, I did. I found myself standing in the kitchen, in front of the shelf where I last saw Jack alive. The shelf was almost completely bare now. All of the photographs that had filled it were packed into the suitcase I'd taken with me to Alucard's house.

He did leave it outside, like he said he would, but I couldn't bring myself to unpack it. I thought that if I kept everything locked inside that suitcase, then maybe it wouldn't be so real. It would be locked away from me, impossible for me to access or be hurt by, and yet there I was, alone, crying like the weak woman I was pretending not to be.

Eventually I wandered over towards my father's bedroom. I hovered outside the door, leaning so close to the white-painted wood that I could hear my breath reverberating off of it. I hesitated to enter, listening to my breathing as if by some miracle I'd hear my dad shuffling about inside.

I waited, the sweat-slick pads of my fingertips brushing against the cool, brass knob.

I was apprehensive about entering his room. I wasn't sure if I was ready to be confronted by the signs of who he was, to be forced to remember the man that made me into who I was without him being there.

My heart was beating so fast I was growing dizzy. I didn't want to faint just standing by the door, so I took a deep breath, and turned the knob.

Alucard

Empty wine bottles covered the surface of the two tables nearest to the sofa he sat. A few more lay discarded on the rugs by his feet, still dripping whatever remained of their contents onto the burgundy fabric. The glass in his hand was empty, stained red from how much it had held in the last twelve hours. He stared at it, expressionless, as if the glass would refill, shatter, or just change in some way of its own accord.

He thought about clenching his fist around it, thinking about how it would feel to let the slivers of maroon-stained glass embed themselves into his palm. He contemplated chucking it at the wall in front of him, wanting to hear the sound the stupid thing would make as it cracked and splintered into fragments of what it used to be.

In the end, he did nothing.

The tarp against the window frame fluttered with each gust of wind, the sound like a massive bird taking flight. An early morning breeze squeezed its way into his apartment through the gaps where the duct tape had properly failed to secure it in place.

The earliest he could get someone in to fix the window was two weeks from now, and so he'd settled for the tarp in the meantime. It made a lot of noise and was extremely annoying to keep attached to the window frame, but he didn't exactly have much of a choice.

He grew tired of watching his glass do absolutely nothing. Grunting, he pulled himself out of his slouched position on the sofa, just enough so he could fit the glass into a space between the bottles on the table in front of him. Sighing, he collapsed back into his original position, his arms outstretched lazily over the top of the sofa.

The last time he'd sat like this, the police girl had ended up falling asleep on him.

He dropped his arms, hunching forward over his thighs, rubbing the back of his neck with his fingertips. He rested his elbows on his knees, tangling his fingers in his hair as he held his head up.

She's probably mad at you, some part of him chided.

So-fucking-what if she was mad? She should be mad at him. She should be downright furious and revolted by him. All 90 pounds of her should hate him. She should want him dead, and yet, she'd agreed to whatever he'd asked, been patient with him, and although she was hurt and confused, he doubted that she held any rage towards him. He wished she did, so that maybe he could attempt to understand her. He wanted her to make sense to him, so that he could figure out what he was supposed to be doing with himself.

He'd never had such a lack of direction in his life before. He was always on a hunt, working a case, finding answers… But, now he was lost, just like he imagined she was.

And who's fault is that? He asked himself, not even bothering to think of an answer.

She was lost because of his fuck-ups, and he was lost because he couldn't figure out if he'd handled the whole situation in the right way. The whole 'not knowing' thing was getting to him, keeping him trapped in a cycle of what-ifs and speculation. It made his head spin and his throat dry. It made him want to crack open another bottle, but he remained where he was, as still as the stone busts that decorated the wall behind him.

He sat in complete silence, both physical and mental, brushing his hair away from his eyes before letting his fingers find their way into a clasped position over his knees.

I'm mad at her, he thought, the words forming slowly.

No, he disagreed immediately, I'm not.

He wasn't mad. 'Mad' was the wrong word.

He felt useless. All he had been doing lately was screwing up. He tried to think of something, anything, that had happened between him and that police girl that was remotely okay.

Nothing came to mind except the image of her sitting across from him at his table, eating dinner in a silence that he favoured much more over the one he was in currently.

At least when she was here, she wasn't alone, he thought to himself, as if reminding himself of that would justify keeping her with him. He took a deep breath in, letting it out in a gruff exhale through his nostrils.

With her, he was empty. He was forced to move on from what was keeping him glued to his sofa, getting shitfaced at ten in the morning. He was haunted by his decisions, but with her, he didn't have a choice but to stand by them. Sure, he wasn't actually certain about any of the choices he'd made, but he would never have let her know that. How the hell could he expect her to move on if he wouldn't let himself do so when he was with her?

Without her, he was caught in a disarray of doubt. He wasn't ignoring what had been right in front of him anymore. He was forced to confront it all, to confront himself, and he hated what he saw. He hated how weak he was, how weakened by her he was. He'd killed before, many, many times, by accident and by choice, yet none of those decisions clung to him the way this one did. He didn't understand it, and he couldn't let it go. It was all uncharted territory from him, and as much as he didn't want to say so, he was terrified by it, and it was that fear of himself that was frustrating him the most.

With how he'd chosen to spend a majority of his life, before Hellsing and with Hellsing, he'd known that guilt was never an option. Yet, it'd always been there, brushing its fingertips along some faraway, buried corner of his mind. Now, the floodgates had opened and he was on the verge of drowning in a storm of his own making; a tempest made for his enemies that had only capsized his own ship.

Call her, he thought, fix this.

What good would it do? He asked himself. What good would calling her do now that he'd thrown her out of the only place she'd tried to move forward in? He thought he'd brought her to his home to keep her safe, and to make amends with everything that had happened between them, once and for all, but he'd thrown it all away.

As his thoughts continued to swirl around his mind like a leaf in a lazy stream, he began to see the answer to a question that he'd been asking himself since he'd driven her back to her apartment.

He straightened his posture, his vision blurring from fatigue.

He had his answer now. The only problem was that he'd known it all along, but had refused to acknowledge it, much like everything else he experienced. Now, however, he just hoped that it wasn't too late to act on what he now knew.

Dad's room was the same as it always was, albeit a little mustier that normal. His pajamas were draped across a chair in front of his desk, by the window on the wall on the right. His bed was against the left wall, facing the window because he liked being woken up by the sunlight on his days off. Bottles of cologne littered the surface of his dresser, and small photographs of mom and me were stuck to the mirror with tape.

It never occurred to me how bare his room was. There weren't any decorations or personal mementos, aside from the few small photographs. It was as if he was just passing through, rather than someone who lived in the house.

I wandered over to his bed, my gaze wandering to the golden light that highlighted the gaps between the blinds. I climbed onto the mattress, falling onto my side, my face sinking into his pillows.

It smelled like he did, like his cologne and almond shampoo. I curled into a ball, wrapping my arms around the pillow, trying to physically hold onto the scent.

It hurt more than it comforted to be in his room. It made me miss him more than I thought I did. I was surrounded by those scents my entire life, and now all I had left was whatever had managed to cling onto his unwashed sheets. It made me realize how empty my life was without my dad. It made something deep inside me, something below my ribcage ache. It made me want to fold myself inwards until I was suspended in nothingness, until I was enveloped in what was left of my dad.

It wasn't fair.

Why did any of it have to happen? My father, my friends, my team, and now the last person I'd expected to be somewhat getting along with… All were gone. All were now nothing more than a fading vision of something that should've been more than it got a chance to be. I was alone, and I didn't understand why. What purpose could there be to all that had happened?

I rolled onto my back, new tears sliding past my temples and into my hair. As I straightened out my posture, I heard my cell phone slide out of my hoodie's pocket and clatter onto the floor. I let out a half-groan, half-sob. I was so frustrated by everything, and on top of it all I might need to spend money I didn't have replace my phone.

I hoisted myself into a sitting position, scanning the floor through tear-clouded eyes for my phone, but I couldn't find it. I smacked my fist against the mattress, angrily wiping my face as I made another disgruntled moan. I was sincerely hoping the stupid thing hadn't shattered.

I hopped off the bed and onto the floor, pacing around while trying to spot my phone. I crouched down, hoping to see any trace of it. Soon, I noticed the edge of the black, plastic phone case poking out from under my dad's bed. I flattened myself onto my stomach, reaching under the bed for the phone.

As I felt the cool plastic beneath my fingertips, I also made contact with something else. It felt rough and papery… Files?

I pulled the phone out from under the bed, then stuck my hand back under for whatever else was under there.

I was right. There were file folders, many of them, all under my dad's bed. They were pretty far under, so I had to claw at them with my nails to get them close enough to properly grasp.

I'd always thought my dad asked me to skip his room when cleaning the floors because he wanted to make the chore easier on me. Now, however, I wondered if he was just trying to keep whatever was in the files away from me.

I took the files to the kitchen, where there was the most light. I dropped them onto the table, setting my phone on the counter. Thankfully, it had survived its fall.

I sat down in front of the files, my heart beating as if I'd been running. I felt small droplets of sweat beading on my upper lip, my stomach churning like the sea in a storm. I wasn't sure if I even wanted to know what was inside. But, if my dad had to hide them, they must've held very sensitive information, otherwise he likely would've told me.

Whatever it was, I wasn't going to run from it. I would never begin to answer any of my questions by just sitting there, staring at what were likely the answers I'd been looking for. I felt myself holding my breath as I picked up the first file.

Author's Note: I think this whole monthly update thing will work, since I've got an actual plot outline now. This story is going to be a ride, so I hope you stick around to see where it's going from here. Thank you again for your patience and support, and I hope this update, along with the others that follow it, are worth the wait.

-Shan