-125. One Flew Over the Rock Star's Nest

After passing through the rather menacing security guard at the front gate, Daria drove her rental car up the hill, parking before the five car garage. Was she nervous? Jesus Christ yes she was. Daria was no psychologist, no psychotherapist, no nothing that technically qualified her to deal with this kind of seeming psychological condition, except perhaps being a close friend. Maybe, hopefully, that would be enough.

Well, the rock god had spoken, and she, Daria Morgandorffer, was the one he wanted to see.

What kid of shape would Trent be in? Locked up in a dark house, voluntarily, for six months...what ever lay behind that door, it couldn't be good, could it?

Standing before the large double front doors, it seemed to Daria that there should be some out of the ordinary protocol to follow. Knocking, or ringing a doorbell, just seemed too mundane. But at a loss for what else to do, she pressed the ornate doorbell, hoping Trent hadn't disconnected it.

Daria found she could tell time by the sound of her heartbeat throbbing in her ears. One, two, three...at least a minute passed. Did he not hear? Did he disconnect the doorbell after all? Did he just decide he didn't want to see her after all? At that moment, all three seemed like feasible explanations. Reluctantly, Daria began to raise her small hand to pound upon the door, when the sound of a deadbolt clicking back nearly caused her to jump off the front stoop.

Almost as though she'd never seen a door work before, she stared in awe as the rest of the locks were pulled back, and the portal cracked open slightly. Daria squinted, peering into the darkness, just as seemingly the face in the shadows warily regarded the blinding sunlight outside.

Adrenaline raced through her veins, making Daria's limbs slightly tremble with a combination of nerves and anticipation. And the moment of truth finally came, Trent's first spoken words to her in more than a year: "Hey, Daria." His voice was croaky, as though he had not spoken in a long while.

"Hey, Trent," Daria replied, relief for some reason washing over her.

"Want to come in?" he asked, holding the door open wider, even as he peered out at the outside world suspiciously.

"Sure."

Daria slipped through the barely large enough crack in the façade of the house, and Trent immediately closed the door behind her, latching the deadbolt with an obviously practiced motion of hand. A quick look around revealed that most of the house was swathed in shadow, excepting a beam of light emitted from somewhere down the hall.

They stood across from each other, sizing each other up in the darkened foyer. There was a wariness to Trent's eyes; even in the diffuse light seeping through the blinds Daria could see the open suspicion. She had come on Rolling Stone's agenda, after all. Was she one of them now? Yet another reporter, hungry for the scoop, hoping to use him and his pain to make their career? If Daria hadn't already tried to make contact, long before, Trent would have never even considered Rolling Stone's offer.

"So, you're here to report, huh?" asked Trent in his most unenthusiastic drone. Daria studied him carefully. He'd gone back to the familiar olive green t-shirt, holey jeans, and bare feet. Though it was hard to tell in the dark, Trent seemed a lot paler than usual. Maybe a little gaunt. But other than that, in one piece. At least on the outside. Appearances can be deceiving.

Daria gave a noncommittal shrug. "We can scrap the article right here if you want," she found herself saying. "It's you I care about."

Trent gave a ghost of his usual smile, covering that cough-laugh with a hand. "Oh. Slipping in under the radar. Like James Bond or something. Cool."

There was a note in Trent's voice, a certain tone of utter fragility Daria had never heard from him before. Perhaps hints of it here in there, mostly when he was begging her to move to California on numerous occasions. But this...this was unnerving.

"Oh, Trent..." Articulate as she usually was, especially now that she'd gained some self confidence, finally grown a bit into her skin, Daria had no words. In a gesture of universal language that could be understood the world over, she held out her arms in offering of human contact.

Once upon a time, Trent would have immediately melted into that offered embrace, thrilled to be so graced by her trust. But now, he stood still, warily evaluating her. Daria's heart sank with the suspicion he viewed her with. Had things really come to this?

Just as she was about to lower her arms disappointedly, Trent took a tentative step forward, almost as though he expected to be slapped for moving towards her. She froze, afraid to move, lest she spook him, almost as though he were a wild animal unaccustomed to man. Six months locked away...perhaps the analogy was closer than she knew.

Once convinced the territory was safe, so to speak, Trent took another step, and another, until he filled her arms, long body stooped over her to bury his nose in her hair. She detected a tremor rack his wiry frame as she wrapped her arms around him, pulling him close. With arms around his torso, Daria determined that she could definitely feel ribs through his shirt. Oh Trent, she found herself thinking. What have you done to yourself? What has the world done to you?

Almost as though he detected her silent mental question, Trent sighed against her skin. "I've had a rough year, Daria," he whispered, voice cracking.

Daria turned to press lips to his neck, at the base of his ear. "I know, babe, I know," she whispered back. "But it's going to be alright."

Trent shuddered, and it took a moment for her to realize he was laughing. It was no sound of joy, but harsh and broken spasms. "You know, if it were coming from anyone else, I would call you a fool and a liar."

Holding back tears of her own at the broken tone of Trent's voice, Daria ran her fingers through his hair. She knew not what to say to that, because she feared she might still be both of those things. Please don't let me screw this up she found herself entreating to whatever deity may have been amused enough by the antics of mortals to watch and listen.

Daria stroked Trent's hair quietly, until he straightened up again to look down at her. "I'm glad you're here, Daria," he said, very much in earnest.

Reaching up, he made to stroke a lock of hair away from her face, until Daria gazed in horror at his hand. The fingertips were rough and scabbed, some with the blood seemingly only just dried. "Cleaning out the garbage disposal with bare hands again?" she deadpanned, clasping the abused fingers gingerly in her own, examining them well as she could in the pseudo-twilight.

Trent allowed her to look at his chord hand, and then subsequently the picking hand, which did not look much better than its mate. She recognized the damage. They were guitar blisters from hell. Manic fits of playing, perhaps? "I've been practicing," he simply said, as though that explained everything.

When Daria looked up at him with wide eyes behind square framed glasses, he realized it indeed was not quite enough. "Come into the living room," he invited. "I'll tell you about the past year of my life."

"If you're ready," she said, almost cautiously, not wanting to jump immediately into anything Trent wasn't quite prepared to confront yet.

Slouching in his characteristic way, Trent gazed about the shadowy house around him with accusatory dark eyes. "I think it's time," he said, almost as though speaking to himself. Reaching out a long arm, he flipped a light switch without warning, plunging both of them into blindness for the next few seconds. "It's time," he echoed, this time quietly, turning on his heel. "It's time, it's time, it's time."

Somewhat bewildered, Daria watched Trent make his way down the hall with that long-legged gait, flipping all the light switches he could along the way to the living room. Was this a renaissance waiting to happen in the Lane household? She found she was hoping so. "And let there be light," she murmured to herself, and followed Trent down the hallway.

Entering the living room, Daria found Trent standing in the middle of the area rug, gazing around the space as though he hadn't seen in in years. And in this light, perhaps he hadn't. A small smile ghosted across his lips, and Daria followed his gaze, finding he was staring at one of Jane's paintings. His pleasure in his kid-sister's work seemed genuine, and Daria couldn't help but think that this was going better than she'd dared hope.

Silently, Daria took a seat upon the black leather sofa. She watched him carefully, curious of what he would do next. He turned his gaze to her next, studying her sitting form. "Will you hold me?" he asked quietly, in a voice that only a total wretch could have denied.

"Come hither, if ye wish."

It took no more encouragement than that, for Daria to suddenly have Trent draped across her lap, head resting against her thigh. And with no more ado, he talked. He talked and talked, as though he had not spoken a word to a single human being in a year, and had bottled up all this life within him, just waiting for the opportunity to escape in the form of words passing his lips. He spoke of the loss of his friends, his pain, his fear.

Daria stroked his hair, his neck, his back, as he spilled his soul to her, in a string of words possibly outweighing in volume everything else he'd ever said to her in their entire lives. Where the words seemed to have been stuck in his throat for so long, unable to escape, they now flowed like water bursting forth from a dam, trickling out and filling every available space in their journey onwards. For so long, he had not even been able to sing. How was it, that with Daria near, he discovered so many things about himself, things before he did not think he could do?

"So Nick wanted a hobby. And for some reason, he picked sky diving. Had to be sky diving. He was so damned stoked about it. But the rest of us, we all had a bad feeling about it. Like a premonition, you know? We knew something bad was going to happen. And it did. Bam, the chute failed. Nick falls four hundred feet without a parachute. Guess who had to identify the body? It's enough to make a guy never want to fly again, much less jump out of a plane.

"Then, Max freaks out. Says it's a sign from God, that he's not doing what he's supposed to be doing. Says he had a dream or some shit, that he needs to go to Africa, to help the babies with AIDS or something, or else he's going to die too. I told him he could probably do more good by playing music, making ungodly amounts of money, and then starting a charity. Send them food and clothes and medicine and shit, you know? But no. He had to go himself. So now he's in Darfur or the Congo or the Kalahari or some shit, I don't even know where. I don't think he knows where. If he's even still alive.

"And then, Jesse and I got into it, arguing about where to go next with the band. Do two guitars still constitute a band? Ok, the duo. The pair. Whatever. I said maybe we should wait a month, and hopefully Max would come back. Maybe we would all want to tear into each other sometimes, but we made good music together. Great music. Once we grew into ourselves, we discovered something. A creativity we could all channel together, all at the same time. It's weird, it's hard to explain. But it was there.

"But Jesse didn't want to wait for Max. He said either we hire new people to play with us, or he would go solo. I basically told him, because I was angry, good fucking luck. He stormed out, got drugs from somewhere. Bought them or had a stash, I don't know. It doesn't matter. Vwoom! Off a cliff, in that Porsche that he never had good enough reflexes to drive well. Guitar he could handle, but a manual transmission? Not a good idea. But chicks like it though.

"So here I am. Bandless. Familyless. I've been playing music with those guys since junior year of high-school, Daria. I saw them more than the total time I've ever spent with my own parents, I guarantee.

"Now, I'm cursed. I mocked Jesse's idea to go solo, and now I myself have no where else to go, but that very path. What else can I do? Find another band? Build another band? At this point? Yeah right. I'm terrified, Daria. I've never been so completely alone before, emotionally, and creatively. I've always had someone else to back me up, someone else to give me rhythm, a supporting riff, a lyric that was just what the song needed.

"Now, it's all on me. Solo artists go one of two ways, breaking away from a successful band. Either they soar through the sky, or sink like a stone. There is no in between. You're either Clapton, or you're...Fergie."

Daria suppressed a laugh at his last observation. "I don't know, Trent," she teased. "London Bridge sold sickeningly well."

"I don't mean sales, Daria. I mean...respect."

Fair enough.

Trent took a deep breath and released it, finally relaxing against Daria, finally allowing himself to feel the soothing motions of her fingertips over his skin. "So I've been practicing," he explained, gesturing with a scabbed hand absently. "I've been working. Writing. Playing. I have to be able to play by myself well enough, along with vocals, to captivate a crowd...no pressure."

Though the actual sight of his hands made Daria cringe a little inside, she couldn't help but be impressed by this newfound work ethic, OCD as it was. She remembered a time when he was doing well, getting to practice two hours late. Where had he kept this fervor all along? Possibly inside a box labeled insanity, deep within his soul. Maybe letting a little bit of both out was what made great artists, she mused. The best of the best never quite walked on the same plane of mere mortals. Most would argue, herself included.

"Trent, when was the last time you went outside?" she asked quietly, stroking his now bony cheek. He was so pale, so very pale, and so very thin. Now that he was pressed against her, she could feel it.

The thought made Trent groan. "I don't want to go outside," he groaned. "They're waiting."

"They who?"

"Reporters from Rolling Stone," he joked, turning on his back to look up at Daria, a ghost of a playful smile curling his lips.

"Sorry to break it to you, but she's already infiltrated," she said, smiling down at him. "She flew in, under the radar."

"Mmm." He reached up to trace the lines of her face. Lines he knew so well, even though he had not seen her in so long. Too long. "I'm glad you're here, Daria."

"Me too."

"Stay for a while?"

"I could be persuaded."

The smile widened, and the sight caused Daria's heart to soar. "Then we both might not see the sun for a while longer," he mused, plans of keeping her all to himself running rampant through his head. In his bedroom, in his studio...maybe they would open some blinds. Let the paparazzi snap photos of them making love on the living room floor. Now that would piss off Monique...the thought pleased him greatly. How long had it been, since he felt this way? Since some ray of...hope had shined in on him?

"When was the last time you ate?" Daria asked, brushing fingers over his exposed ribs. One, two, three, four...Jesus.

"I don't know." As of late, Trent was often lucky if he knew what time of day it was, much less when it was time to eat. He would meander to the kitchen when he could no longer ignore the clawing in his stomach, then disappear back into his studio again.

"Well, I'm no culinary genius, but you learn a thing or two when forced to feed yourself. Can I cook something for you?"

"Alright."

Daria smiled, relieved. This was a moment she never anticipated having: being glad to cook a meal for a man. Though she was no Ms. Barch, it was something she'd managed to avoid thus far. It was almost a game with Daria, seeing how many of the commonly accepted gender roles she could reverse on the beaus of her life. Thus far, she'd become a whiz at getting Tom or Graham to cook dinner for her.

Though it seemed the next step would be to stand, Daria found herself unwilling to move. Trent held her small hand against his cheek, eyes closed, as though he meant to memorize the exact feel of her skin against his. Maybe he did. Maybe he already had. "Daria?" he asked, voice barely above a whisper.

"Hmm?"

"Do you still love me?"

The question echoed in her mind from so long ago, and suddenly she was back in a very posh hotel room in Boston, tangled in naked limbs with Trent, still seemingly a kid on the cusp of maturity, getting ready to slap life in the face and see how far she could run before it caught up with her. One would most likely say it had caught up to Trent now. Her time was coming, as it did for everyone. It had to sometime, and the thought frightened her.

"Yes," she answered, and knew she meant it. She could not imagine ever being asked that question by Trent, and not having the same answer, in some form or another.

"Want to write some songs? Like old times?"

"Alright. But only after you've finished your dinner, young man."

Trent released a long sigh of relief, pressing grateful lips to her wrist lovingly. "If you say so."