** Back again, I am, I am. I love this chapter, personally… there won't be too many left from now on… just a couple… and we'll all miss it so very, very much when it's gone… even me! I'll especially miss writing it… a whole lot… BUT, yeah, I don't own Freddy or Elm Street or any of that crap. Saphy, TJ, Kris, ect. are based on real people. Ginny and Jeanie belong to me.
Ginny saw, through the window in the bathroom, the sun set off to the West… as darkness, as well as night, dawned upon Springwood… and dawned upon Elm Street once again.
Why does it even bother to set anymore?, she wondered; Why does it still go down when it full well knows what the darkness harbors… the death that will no doubt follow every time it's gone.
She was in the shower, then… trying to scrub away all the filth… the life… the blood… all on her hands! All that blood… it was all over her hands! It was all over her… the filth and grime and dried on blood.
She scrubbed harder.
It's an accessory to his murders, she realized; He and his murders stalk it… keep it… tie to the horrible crimes… just like me.
The first star poked its crystal beams of white light through the growing darkness, as if in reply.
Ginny closed her eyes… then forced them open as if something had stung her within the second… every time she closed her eyes; she saw it again… the words carved into Saphy's stomach… the stitches holding the awful gashes together… so that Saphy didn't bleed to death.
"LEAVE GABE ALONE OR ELSE, BICTH – FREDDY"
She hated herself for that… how could she have done that? She hadn't known… but she should have… she'd told Freddy about how Sapphire was hurting her… and Freddy had taken it as a personal offense… and reaped Ginny's revenge, so to speak… by carving those awful words into the flesh of Saphy's belly.
Ginny finished rinsing her hair and, finally, as she could feel the water temperature dropping, she turned the water off… stood dripping for a moment… and then emerged from the shower.
The air felt really – really – cold to her bare, wet flesh. Winter sure was coming… she didn't believe Fall was supposed to be this cold, yet… but she didn't know for sure… she'd never spent any time outside of Summer away from where she used to live, with her family… her real family.
She shook her head, lightly, so-as not to send drops of water from her soaking hair fly everywhere, and forcing all her thoughts away… she couldn't stand them anymore! Everything was getting so unbearable… quickly; she patted herself dry with a towel, then slipped back into her clothes (lilac-colored tank top and pajama pants set), and then turned for the door.
It swung open… and brought with it a blast of cold air.
She shivered, surprised by the sudden cold, and jumped back. Goosebumps popped up on the skin of her pale, pale arms. She blinked several times, bringing herself back into her mind.
Damn it's cold tonight!
She pulled back her hair with one hand, nervously, and then let the arm fall back to her side and emerged from the bathroom.
She saw no one else up and down the hall but light spilt from underneath Dana's door. She stepped up, proceeded down the hall, trying to remain as quiet as a mouse… just incase TJ and Saphy were no longer downstairs… she didn't know why… but as she reached the staircase, she heard both their voices carried up. They seemed to both be talking in loud whispers… she stopped, rested her body against the wall next to the stairs, and listened.
"Of course it was her!" Saphy's voice declared.
"Sapphire, please, we don't know that–"
"Who else could it have been?" Saphy barked, interrupting TJ. "Huh? Huh? Tell me that one, Ms. Know-It-All!"
"I'm not a know it all…" TJ mildly defended herself. "… And I don't know, Sapphire. You know I don't know. Why would she have sign it as "Freddy" if she'd done it?"
"I heard her saying something about "Freddy" in her sleep, more then once, TJ!"
Ginny closed her eyes. She knew, now, that they were talking about her for sure… a steady ache stabbed her heart in unison with every beat.
"So?" TJ's voice kept getting lower and lower with each reply.
"SO!" Saphy nearly thundered. "SO?! SO?! TJ, she KNOWS someone named Freddy! I think maybe she made him up… maybe that's who she blamed her killing her parents on… it said in the papers she said she didn't do it!"
That's enough! Ginny wanted to scream it down to them. It was one thing for Saphy to think she killed everyone who'd died, but it was another for her to bring Ginny's parents in on it!
She'd talked to Saphy… she'd opened up to her like she never had to anyone else… and this was what she did with it! No wonder she could barely trust anyone anymore! No wonder she had never been able to in the first place… it was because of people like that… so stupid! So closed-minded! She wanted to scream! She wanted to scream so badly!
She stopped past the stairway, not caring if they saw or heard her, not caring if they knew she was there, it didn't matter anymore. Nothing mattered anymore.
She flew into there room and slammed the doors behind her, dug through the closet for her pills, took two as always, and then flung herself onto her bed.
I don't care anymore, she thought; I don't care anymore! I don't, I don't, I really don't! I can't! Freddy, baby, you can have me!
And she laughed.
She laughed, then… all the bitterness and the hatred and the horror and the pain all came up from deep inside of her and out through her throat in the form of a laugh… and she laughed, and laughed, until there were tears in her eyes… and laughed, and laughed, and laughed, and laughed, until her laughter slowly died as she fell unconscious…
Ginny's eyes opened again to the familiar scene… to the only place she could really think to call home… her home with her family was no longer home… and her home on 1428 had never been home; but just a foster area… no; this was the only place… this… was Freddy's boiler room.
She felt a heavy pang in her heart when she knew for sure where she was… when she knew for sure that she was in Freddy's playground… it was beautiful… like hope… like redemption… like love.
He had forgiven her! He had to have forgiven her! Other wise he would never have let her enter.
"Freddy!" she called out, from deep in her lungs. Her voice rang on it's own for a long moment, and then echoed back at her over and over again… the metal sending it back at her and then sending that back at her and so on and so forth.
She waited, until her echo died… nothing happened.
"Freddy!" echoed once, "I'm here!" echoed three times, after her.
She breathed heavily, trying to catch her breath from that entire calling out business. She waited… and waited… and slowly the smile faded from her face.
Where was he?
He hasn't forgiven me…
She felt her sorrowful tears – growing so bitter and angry, now, as they had over time – burning at the back of her marble gray eyes again. She bit her lip, trying to distract herself. She wouldn't let them fall… not here!
"Freddy, please…" but she couldn't raise her voice. "… Please, don't abandon me… don't abandon me like everybody else already has!"
She fell to her knees, then, and was unable to hold herself together. She placed both her hands over her face, trying to hide it all behind them, and cried into her hands. She bit her lips shut tight in an attempt not to let the sobs out so horrible hummed whines took their places… the tears gushed from her eyes, as plentiful as they had ever been… it seemed you could never cry yourself dry… her body shivered, horrible, convulsing in the terrible woe she felt.
There was a long silence… a long moment she just sat there, drowning in her sadness, her heart bleeding out her eyes, a long moment… and then…
"Ah, quit your winning!" a voice in front of her growled… she stopped, suddenly, hope tingling at her heart… she knew that voice… that beautiful guttural voice! She opened her eyes, hesitated, but forced herself to look up, slowly…
It has to be… it had to be… it… was!
"FREDDY!" she cried, jumping to her feet, she threw her arms around the Nightmare King. She had never been so glad to see anyone in all her entire fifteen years of life… which is mighty fucked up when you consider who she was so glad to see.
Freddy was in shock, for a moment, but he would quickly recover… he hesitated, not knowing what to do, and awkwardly patted her back for lack of a better idea.
"You've forgiven me," she sobbed into his chest.
"Um… yeah…" he replied, carefully. He really didn't want to fuck this up, now…
"I really am sorry!" she said, looking up into his eyes. The paths down her pale, pale cheeks in which the tears had taken glistened brightly in the not-so-bright light of the boiler room.
"I know you are, Kiddo." Freddy replied, whipping away the left over tears with the back of his gloved hand. "… Now no more of this crying shit or I'll have to pluck out your eye balls."
Ginny laughed, and hugged him again. "Okay…"
Finally, he knew what to do… and he rapped his arms around her, carefully for his claws not to catch – or even touch – her clothes and/or skin, and held her close… held her dear… like he'd once held his little daughter.
She is your daughter, now, he told himself.
It felt odd… like a success story… as if he'd finally won Katherine… he'd played it over and over again in his head, the events of losing Katherine… how it'd all happened… he'd tried to think it over… he'd tried to make it work, in his head at the least, over and over again… always trying to find what he'd done wrong… and how he could have fixed it… it'd haunted his every living breath, his every moment, awake or asleep never mattering… until now.
It almost felt like a victory, in that moment… like he'd finally succeeded… like he'd finally won Katherine back.
He knew he could never win Katherine back… but Gabrielle was always second best… and maybe… maybe, after a some time, she'd be better then second… maybe one day she'd be best.
Wait… was he thinking optimistic thoughts?
Suddenly, he stopped hugging her, and pulled her back from him, gently. "Hey, Gabe, there's somethin' I wanna show ya…"
She looked back up at him, eyes wide in wonder – like Katherine used to look at him – and tipped her head to the side. "Huh?"
He slipped away from her, grabbed her wrist, and pulled her along… careful not to hurt her… how weird was that? "Just c'mon!" he grunted… and she followed.