Hi! I'm back! It's been years! I'm headed off to college now! Crazy, right? Anyways, while I can't write the other stories (sorry, but they're just so cringy for me to read), I thought I'd write a new one! I hope you guys like it! Please leave reviews! - N x
It was worse than it had ever been. I thought a couple years ago was bad—I thought that rock bottom was bad. This was below rock bottom. This was way, way below rock bottom.
I ran into the bathroom and locked the door behind me, covering my mouth as my shoulders shook, struggling to contain the sobs that threatened to pop out of my throat. My head pounded, trying to hold in an ocean's worth of tears.
"Open the door," Percy begged on the other side. "Annabeth, please, open the door."
I could barely see myself in the mirror, only a shape of me. A shape of who I am, or who I was. Looking at myself past the tears, it seemed like I could almost be the same person, but it didn't feel like I was.
My face was what made Misery miserable. My arms were what made monsters choke on their own blood. My shape was right, but everything that made that shape just wasn't.
My legs ached and gave out from under me. My voice pushed and pushed against the mental barrier I had placed in my throat, begging to get out, begging to scream and make a sound. My head pounded, trying to fight every single part of me that begged to fall apart and break apart.
Keep it together. Nobody needs this right now. This is not helpful. Keep it together.
My hands clenched into fists on either side of me, almost trying to root my arms into the floor. Keep me down. Keep me here.
My legs stretched and stretched until they hit the wall and pushed against it.
Get me out, get me out, get me out.
I wanted to jump out of my body—my body didn't feel like it could fit me in it. It felt like my skin was stretching and stretching and barely keeping itself together at the seams while every part of me tried to spill out of it.
And then finally, a scream.
My mouth opened and my mind wasn't enough to stop the flood of air that flowed through my vocal cords.
I once read you could hold 4 liters of air in your body. You don't really know what that means until you're screaming and screaming, and you just keep going. You'd think you had run out of breath by now, that there wasn't enough air to push out anymore, but there is. There's so much.
I didn't notice how the door slamming open competed with my own scream. I didn't notice the arms wrapping around me. It was only when my screams turned into hopeless sobs that my arms wrapped around him too. They wrapped around him.
"We're okay. We're together and we're okay," he said softly, a contrast to my loud sobs.
His hands rested on my back and mine on his. As my sobs subsided into fast, fast breaths, I could barely feel his heartbeat.
"Breathe, Wise Girl. Can you do that for me?" He asked. "Try to breathe like me, okay?"
He took a deep breath, and I tried to, too. My breath, unlike his smooth one, was raggedy with all its interruptions. He did this with me several times, and with repetition, I was able to breathe smoothly too.
I could feel his heartbeat with my hands, thumping and thumping. So present. So real.
"I'm sorry," I told him, knowing that it couldn't have been easy. It couldn't have been easy for him to be stuck up here without me. It couldn't have been easy for him to have seen me fall. It couldn't have been easy for him to see me like this, to break down the door.
"It's fine," he assured me. Maybe to him it was, but to me it wasn't.
Still, "Thank you," I answered. Maybe it wasn't fine to me, but he was right about one thing: we were okay. We were together. For now, that's all that mattered. That's all that mattered.
"Thank you," he replied.
I didn't know what he was thanking me for. I hadn't done anything to help him. I've been stuck here.
"For staying alive," he told me, as if he could tell what I was thinking. I didn't say anything. I just held him. I held him tighter.