CHAPTER 5

CC was sitting at a large, round table, alone. Her hair was pulled up in a beautiful style, and her dress was black silk. But something felt wrong. The silence and loneliness were unnerving. She was bored of just sitting, and felt somewhat tense, not knowing where she was and what to expect.

She was startled by music starting to play, loudly. Suddenly a crowd appeared in front of her, but she was an outsider, like looking at them through a glass. A couple waltzed near her table, but still out of reach. Maxwell and Fran, elegantly dressed, Fran in white. The wedding! CC's mouth opened in shock at how beautiful and radiant Nanny Fine looked, and the hate and jealousy were physically painful to her. Max smiled broadly, looking at Fran in the eyes, and then turning to CC and looking at her eyes too, mockery in his look.

More people waltzed that way in front of CC, like a parade of perfect couples. Couples she knew, couples she didn't know but who looked perfect with each other, people she knew with partners she didn't know. Pretty much anyone she had ever known was there. All laughing at her for being so out of place, so unable to fill the gap between them and her. Her siblings. Her exes, even the flings, even those whose names she didn't remember, but she somehow recognised. Yetta. Val. Her hairdresser, her maid, random Broadway actors and choreographers, Niles.

Niles? Her heart, already bleeding with the anger of seeing everybody's successful relationships while being confined behind an invisible glass, broke in very small pieces. She couldn't see the woman he was with, but her figure was perfect, petite and graceful, and her hair blonde, and he looked ecstatic with her. CC was struggling to breathe. She gasped for air and couldn't get any. She clutched her hands to her chest and saw that there was blood. Her heart was bleeding for real.

Suddenly she noticed her hands looked different, wrinkled, old. She looked up and she was no longer at the Perfect Couples Wedding Party. She was on her deathbed, old and weak. The silence was deafening again, and the loneliness was total. It was engulfing her, physically, a dark cloud coming her way slowly, like from a car exhaust. Could it be that really no one was there to help her? She knew she was dying and her last wish was for someone to hold her hand, and someone, anyone, to say goodbye to. She tried to comfort herself with memories and there weren't any, not a single memory involving another person's warmth. Only work, and drunken loneliness. She knew there should be someone, at least in her memories, but she couldn't remember anything else. She couldn't accept that her fate was to die so completely alone, and made a last attempt to fight, to call someone, to scream. She gathered all the strength she could find through the pain in her heart and lungs and she screamed.

Niles practically jumped awake on his bed. His heart skipped a beat in the confusion of the moment - he was fast asleep, now he was awake. What the hell? As he gained more consciousness, he seemed to remember a scream. He must have had a nightmare, he reasoned, but something still felt amiss.

He needed something to drink so he decided to go downstairs. As he walked past the guest room, he saw that some light was on and there was some noise inside... like a faint crying. He knocked gently and all went still. He could picture her holding her breath. Just like a few days before at her penthouse, he entered the room.

CC was too shocked to care about the intrusion. She was sitting on the bed, looking distressed, her face in her hands.

"Miss Babcock, are you okay?" She didn't look okay.

He rushed down to the kitchen and came back with two glasses of water, and held one out to her. She seemed to still be scared by something and slightly out of breath. She automatically drank her water then held on to the glass, as if unsure of what to do.

Niles took the glass from her hands and placed it on a nearby table. "What happened?" He asked as gently and kindly as he could as he sat on the bed next to her.

Several long seconds passed. "I don't want to be alone…" Was all that she could whisper.

Once again, Niles was at a loss for what to say. Normally you could just tell people that they were not alone, but it seemed too big and fat a lie to tell the woman he was looking at. The difference was that, until now, she seemed accustomed to her solitary life. He just sighed.

"I will be alone forever, you agree, right? I am not able to establish a relationship. I'm never enough. I'm not like her. And now she has everything and what do I have, what am I? Just a big waste of space. I appreciate what you've done for me in the last few days, Niles, I really do, but I know I will go back home and we'll be back to normal, to being enemies, so I don't even know why I am telling you all this." She sobbed. She hadn't realised that the tears she was holding back had started to fall.

"Miss Babcock...come on… You have to move on. Did you really want Mr Sheffield anyway? I know you really did at some point, a long time ago, but in the last few years? Wasn't it just a habit, a pastime? An unreachable aim to keep you going, to keep you fighting for something you will never have?
And about Miss Fine, well...yes, you are two very different women. But you are both fierce and honest and caring - I know you could be caring, if you wanted to."

She looked at him. She craved his touch, she craved his embrace. Everything that felt so cold, the dark cloud that surrounded her, would be cured away by that embrace, she lied to herself. She leaned into him, terrified that he would back off, let her fall to the side and laugh.

He didn't. There was something like a small jump as he hadn't expected the sudden physical closeness, but he quickly wrapped her in his arms and said nothing. She gripped his sleeves tightly, almost painfully, almost as if she thought he would run away if she didn't hold him in place.

After a while, he seemed to remember to answer to her last point:

"You can tell me all you want, you know. I can try and be a better friend, if it helps."

She continued to hold on to him and cry. She wanted that from him, so badly, but she didn't think it could really work or last long, and the thought of losing it all again made her feel even lonelier. She cried about her fears, she cried about the hopelessness that had grown like poison ivy around her heart since Maxwell's engagement.

"I know, Niles, that you are wondering who the hell is this wreck of a woman I turned into. I am shocked too… It's just that… I feel like I have been hanging from a rope for a very long time. Dangerous, blown by the wind, but the rope was strong enough to keep me safe. But then for the last few months… more and more weight appeared on my shoulders - don't say it, Niles, I know you want to point to my physical weight gain too - and the rope has begun to thin… slowly… First with Maxwell and Nanny Fine making progress, then with their engagement and concurrently with my position in the business becoming less and less relevant as she took hold of that too... and then our short-lived friendship and your jokes becoming more and more cruel. I know you thought I could take it, I thought so too… But the rope couldn't, and it snapped, leaving me in free fall…" She gripped him even more tightly, as if it could stop her from falling.

His voice was light like a feather: "I see, Miss Babcock, I know now, I fully understand… I should have known that even if you are a strong, independent woman, deep down you are so fragile. And perhaps no one, not even you, can take that level of cruelty while their dreams are crumbling down and it is rubbed on their face so carelessly. You are human, and I neglected that, thinking I could just treat you like a witch forever."

Instinctively, without even realising, he started to rub her back while he spoke. He only became fully aware of what he was doing when he felt her body tense in his embrace, but she eventually relaxed, her face on his shoulder. He moved his own face down to rest on her head, and he kissed the top of her hair so gently that she barely felt it.

After a while, the crying subsided but they stayed closed a little longer, his hand still lightly stroking her back. When she pulled away, she suddenly seemed to realise how spontaneous and intimate that moment had been, and she looked away.

"Thanks, Niles." She whispered shyly to the wall in the opposite direction to where Niles was sitting. He nodded even if she wasn't looking.

"Is there anything else I can do to help?"

She bit her lip. She really wanted to ask. But it seemed crazy. He would realise how simply desperate her mental state was. But what is there to lose when you feel you already lost every bit of sanity?

"Niles… this is so pathetic and you will laugh and tease me about it until the day you die, even if I die before you… but… could you… stay? Here, tonight? On the other side of the bed, I mean. I promise I won't touch you. I'm just… so scared…"

"You really must be scared to death if even I seem good company!" He said laughing. She feared some heavy mockery was about to come her way, but he just proceeded to take place on the designated side of the bed and to make himself comfortable under the cover. So she followed.

It wasn't long until Niles felt tiredness claiming his body, but he could feel CC was restless on the other side of the bed. They had started very much on opposite edges, their backs to each other but, half asleep, he didn't have time to question his own decisions when he turned around and held out his arm to place it loosely on her side. She didn't move away. After a few minutes, she scooted closer and turned to him and, just like earlier that night, she gripped his arms tightly, like she thought she would fall if she didn't. As she grew sleepier, her grip unfastened. They fell asleep in each other's arms.

They were no longer wrapped together when Niles was woken up by the light outside. He jumped up. He was late! It was usually still dark when he got up to prepare breakfast and attend to other morning duties, but moving to the guest room meant he didn't have his alarm and, uncharacteristically for him, he hadn't woken up naturally at the usual time.

He stood up and looked for a way to tell the time. He found her watch on a table. If he hurried, he could still put together a quick breakfast before everybody was down and would wonder where the hell he was.

He looked at CC, still asleep, and he felt like his heart jumped, she looked just so beautiful. He made to leave but he remembered her fears of the night.

He poked her gently. "Babcock," he called out until she made a sound and tentatively opened one eye just to close it again a moment later. "Babcock. I am late. I have to prepare breakfast. I am not abandoning you, okay? I just really have to rush. Now repeat to me what I just said."

"Breakfast… not abandoning…" She muttered, turning around, still mostly asleep.

"Good witch", he said, and couldn't resist placing a small kiss on her forehead before leaving.

[A/N - I am just so proud of CC's dream in this chapter, if i say so myself (anybody reading might disagree). I hadn't even planned it, it just came out while writing, but it just feels like it fits so well right there].