A/N!! Hey ducks…my internet's not working right so I've been typing on my computer, and posting on a different one, so I didn't get a chance to check if all the lyrics I used in this chapter are correct…but you can forgive me, no? :P (P.S. For those of you who don't know me and don't talk to me and all- I'm almost done with the story- PLEASE DON'T KILL ME! XD XD)

Chapter 71

I must've fallen asleep, before the first song was even over. For the first time since the hospital I had a nightmare, and not to do with the Mer de Noms songs, I was way past that. But…with what I was listening to. Fifty five minutes of masochism suddenly became a fifty five minute horror vision.

Through the songs I was doing different things, different things were going on, yet I remembered all of them clearly, they all seemed to take forever.

During Somewhat Damaged I was fighting with Amber, we were shouting at each other, throwing things at each other. Claudette was older, Armand was there, too, maybe four or five years old, looking exactly like I had looked in the picture. Claudette was shielding him, standing halfway in a doorway watching us. I don't know if Amber saw her or not, both of us were ignoring her and continued yelling. It was just the way the parents of most families acted today, fights happening that never existed in our lives together. When I thought about it, I realized that the only fights Amber and I had ever gotten into were over trivial things. And this fight, in the dream…it was about her dying.

And I could hear Trent singing, and I was screaming along with him.

"HOW COULD I- EVER THINK- IT'S FUNNY HOW EVERYTHING YOU SWORE WOULD NEVER CHANGE- IS DIFFERENT NOW- LIKE YOU SAID- YOU AND ME- MAKE IT THROUGH- DIDN'T QUITE- FELL APART- WHERE THE FUCK WERE YOU!?"

I could never imagine saying something so harsh to her, but it was so true. I meant it so badly, it made me so angry with her.

But the next song changed all of that. Somehow the anger got geared all different ways, the scene changed, I was with Mark, we were in our old house, staring at each other. Trent was calmer this time, the music went back and forth being calm and turbulent. I'd listen to the words he'd say but in his voice I heard decay. The plastic face forced to portray all the insides left cold and gray. There is a place that still remains, it eats the fear, it eats the pain. The sweetest price he'll have to pay- the day the whole world went away…

Mark is trying to consol me, but I keep shoving him, I'm screaming at him but not forming any words, singing with the song again just like the first sequence of the dream with Amber. Mark looks so hurt, he's holding his stomach, looking at me like I've deeply betrayed him. I don't know why I'm so angry, I just feel it there, and I'm crying.

Then it stops.

Then comes the piano.

The Frail, Amber's favorite song. Even while I'm unconscious I remember this, remember that she loved the song, remember that we used to put it on repeat and dance around to it, or kiss, or just talk for hours while it played. It was so melancholy, so delicate, so frail. So cryptic, so scared. The song is a million things, that's what's so brilliant about it. Yet so simple, too.

For those few seconds I'm standing at the edge of an ocean, except there are no waves. It's like a lake, that calm, that clear, only huge, dark. An ocean. The skies are gray, the water is dark blue and threatening. I feel drawn to it, start walking towards it…as I am, the piano gets harder, other music kicks in…

"Just a reflection, just a glimpse, just a little reminder…of all the what abouts, and the might have/could have beens. Another day, some other way, but not another reason to continue…now you're one of us…the wretched…"

The water was frigid, didn't move around me, just like a lake again, calm, blatantly liquid, didn't move the way an ocean did. It was pulling me in though, no undertow, no waves, just…something was beckoning me. I heard the music all around me as if the sky were just a big speaker, and went waist-deep into the water, standing there, staring up at the gray clouds.

I felt like it was a god yelling at me. "Didn't turn out the way you wanted it to. Didn't turn out quite the way that you wanted it! NOW YOU KNOW THIS IS WHAT IT FEELS LIKE! NOW YOU KNOW THIS WHAT IT FEELS LIKE!"

I started crying, and was pulled under the water, the ground vanishing, so that I kicked and couldn't feel it beneath me, couldn't stand up. The music sounded warped, like speakers in the water. I opened my eyes, couldn't see anything but blackness, kicked and reached for the surface and couldn't find it. I would've cried if I hadn't been already underwater, didn't know what to do.

Finally I gave up. It all went black.

We're in This Together played after that, I didn't remember that dream as clearly, something about Mark helping me. Confessing things to me which made me want to kill him, but then I forgot what they were. Not just by the end of the dream, either. It was like…he would be telling me something, and as he was speaking I would understand everything he was saying before he got three words out, but then I would block all of it out of my head because I didn't want to believe it, and then I would accuse him of lying, and we'd start fighting. We're in This Together- the song I'd heard with Kitten in the car, the song that Mark and I were arguing over.

IIIIIIII'VE BECOMMMMMMME IMPOSSIBLE!

Everything was so crazy. Finally Mark grabbed me by my shoulders and screamed at me, with Trent. "Youuuuu and me, we're in this together now! None of them can stop us now! We will make it through some how! You and me- if the world should break in two, until the very end of me, until the very end of you…"

I started to cry, and he let go of me…and I started to fall…I don't know what was happening. When I opened my eyes, the title song of the album was playing, and there were gears all around me, people pushing them, faceless, chains dragging on the ground with the lilt of their steps. I wound up bound, and when I tried to move I saw the same chains holding me down. The more the people walked around me, the harder they pulled on my limbs, but rather than stretching me, they just reopened my wounds, made my arms bleed, made my arm shrink into the burn scars, and hurt as much as they did when they were first inflicted. They were all singing, without mouths, the sound just coming from them, faces all holes, blackened depressions in the middle of their heads.

They sang all around me, walking in circles, their heads turned towards me as if they were staring but without the eyes to do it with.

She shines in a world full of ugliness. She matters when everything is meaningless. Fragile- she doesn't see her beauty. She tries to get away. Sometimes it's just that nothing seems with saving- I can't watch her slip away.

I WON'T LET YOU FALL APART. I WON'T LET YOU FALL APART. I WON'T LET YOU FALL APART. I WON'T LET YOU FALL APART.

She reads the minds of all the people as they pass her by, hoping someone will see… If I could fix myself I would, but it's too late for me…

I was seeing when Amber and I first met, through someone else's eyes, seeing myself, in my mask and the Undertaker shirt, walking over to her, making conversation as she seemed so fucking sad. Finally I made her laugh, brought her out on the floor, started dancing with her. In the dream we were dancing to The Fragile, not the song that had actually been on at the time, for a moment of serenity we were singing it to each other.

But then…the guitar came in, the same tune as the one in the Frail that we both loved so much, and I was dragged back to the place with the chains, and the gears. I started to scream. It hurt so badly, I didn't know where I was, at the moment I didn't know that I was dreaming. I was so scared, I didn't know what was happening, I couldn't breathe, I couldn't think, I didn't know where Amber was.

Mark woke me out of the sleep.

The next song was on, the perfect background to the situation, continuing from the dream so that I didn't know if I was actually awake. I'd only been sleeping for like a half hour, Mark was standing over me asking if everything was okay, saying that I'd been screaming.

"Go away," I mumbled, still angry at him. He looked hurt, and stared for a moment before actually listening. After he left I locked the door behind him, sat back down on the bed and drew my knees up to my chest, staring at the stereo as the CD continued. It all went by in a blur.

DO YOU KNOW HOW FAR THIS HAS GONE?
JUST HOW DAMAGED HAVE I BECOME?
WHEN I THINK I CAN OVERCOME
IT RUNS EVEN DEEPER

I wasn't dreaming but spacing out, even though I wasn't asleep after that I could just see everything in my head. It seemed so simple, like such an afterthought…was my life that? Was my life just some higher power's postscript? They forgot to include me, shoved me in there at the last second, left it up to me to fix everything, try to hold on even though I've never had anyone who stayed with me long enough to help me through it. That was all I ever needed…just someone to be there for me…

Why couldn't He just realize that?

It was so easy to point all the pain, all the anger, all the fear on God. I didn't even believe in the bastard, but if it meant I had someone to blame I was more than willing to acknowledge him.

My whole life was just some fucking joke. I wasn't meant to stick around the way I did…I should've died in that fire. I've told Mark that so many times…sometimes he would get really upset, and shocked, and say something like: "Don't you ever let me hear you say something like that ever again…", sometimes he would be angry with me and say "Yes! Yes, you should've, you wretched fuck," in those times when we hated each other, times that I've never spoken of because I don't have the courage to. I don't care how horrible he's been to me, we've made amends, I love him so much. And it hurts to have some one-sided love, it really does. And that's all my life has been, some stupid reflection, me loving everything around me and no one loving me back.

That was what turned me into such a ghost. That's what I was back then. That's what I was four years ago, I was just there. A ghost- you don't know if they're real, you can debate on it but in the end- do you even fucking care? Who cares? A ghost- you see one and get frightened, you know of a poltergeist and pretend you're deaf.

No one gave a shit about me. People didn't care about me, people didn't extend any kind of kindness to me…I don't think there's really been anyone in my life who could just ask me what happened to my face. I mean, yes, I'm sensitive about it, I'll admit that, it's pretty obvious that I am. But I don't know what's worse, feeling scared or embarrassed that people are going to laugh at me like they did when I was younger, or that they'll just avert their eyes from me and pretend I'm nothing. It's so much more easier for people to deal with if there's no conflict. So they turn away from me, they address me staring at my chest, they don't look into my face while they're talking…

My life didn't mean a thing. My vitals were just some rag doll being tossed around amidst all the misery, something hanging on for dear life…maybe while all of them were toying with my mind and slowly but surely fucking up my head beyond repair, I was toying with how long I could survive like that. My life didn't mean a fucking thing. At all! What did I have to live for? Mark? Fuck no, Mark was never a constant in my life. One second he was being cool, another he would be screaming at me telling me he should've started the fire on my fucking bed.

Nice guy, really.

I try not to think of those times, they get me upset, they make me angry with him. I try to put all of it behind us, try to remember that he's apologized, that he's said there have been demons in his head making him say those things to me and that he never meant any of it. Is that true? I'll never know. I don't fucking care anymore, either.

I had nothing to live for back then, for so long. But you see…when you're so dead on the inside, it doesn't matter if you're alive on the outside. Because you can't feel anymore. It just gets to the point where everything is the same, when you just feel your heart beating, when you can sit down and sit still and feel blood running through your veins, feel like some kind of poison is rushing through your body.

But that doesn't mean you're any more alive than one buried in the ground. Back then I was more dead than Amber is now, she's remembered, she's loved. That's more alive than I ever was back then.

You die within, it kind of corrodes your insides, works its way through your intestines, weaves in and out of your organs, yet somehow can never break through…if it would, those razor sharp claws would just tear out of your stomach, leave you bleeding…then you'd be physically dead. But that never happens, it's not possible.

Everything in this world has to be done on your own.

When you get down to it…you're the only person you can ever trust.

Ever.

Is that what screwed me up so badly? Often I ask myself why- after everything I went through, after all the abuse I've endured, after one tragedy after the next- I'm such a nice guy, still. Well…not anymore. I know I've done some pretty mean things to Raven and Saphrin, I pushed them away from me because I was afraid, the same way I pushed a lot of the guys backstage away from me just because I didn't want to get involved with them. It's nothing personal, it's really no one's fault, but…maybe that was my one glitch. My curse, my meaning, is that I'm too fucking nice. And I've always been too fucking nice.

Put anyone else through what I've gone through and they'd come out a criminal, a cold-hearted bastard, some kind of maniac. I might be crazy…but I don't make it so blatantly clear. I don't think being miserable and having these feelings make me crazy.

But me? Everything just humbled me. Because I trust people- because when Paul told me horrible things I believed him, because I had faith in Mark when he would say that no one would ever love me.

If my flaw was being too nice, Mark's was that he underestimated me. Because you know what? Someone DID love me, goddamit.

I'm so confused, you have no idea. All these things I scold myself for…I'm just confused, because maybe I did hurt myself more because I was too nice about everything, maybe I did screw myself over for being a stupid little naïve kid who believed everything everyone ever told him. But if I hadn't done that- I never would've met her. And I never would've known what it was like to love her, and to be loved, and to be happy.

Is it just another joke that it didn't last? Tell me. Humor me now, because I don't think things will get any worse, or any better, and there's no reason why I shouldn't laugh at myself for being such a moron.

Amber was so perfect. I met her and right away I just…knew. I don't know how, it was just something I felt, like she was special. But I was right, wasn't I? We were brought together, I always thought it was fate. There was some reason that I looked up at that one split second when there was that parted line of sight in the dance floor, a reason why it was that very moment that she was revealed to me, that she looked so sad, that I had the balls to go talk to her.

She made me feel so alive. And she loved me. And she was the one person who ever thought I was beautiful. She touched my face, touched my scars without repulsion, was the first person since the fire that made me think of my mother, who was probably the only person I love as dearly as my wife.

The only thing Paul ever told me that I didn't believe was……

Of all the things I've admitted this has been the hardest.

He said: "You're so ugly, your mother would cry if she saw you now. Forget it, Kane, she wouldn't love you anymore."

How old was I? Seven? Eight? That was the first time since it happened that I'd seen a mirror, just because he felt like torturing me. I was as shocked to see it as everyone else was, I guess. He told me that my mother wouldn't love me. I can't fathom what goes on in his head that could make a person so cruel. But that was the one thing he ever told me that I never believed.

It takes people years of therapy to get over that shit. I never had therapy. I had to get here on my own, that's probably why I'm so weak, I had to just realize that he was lying, slowly strain all of his words out of my head. Amber helped me, she was so beautiful, she loved me so much…

EVERYTHING THAT MATTERS IS GONE
ALL THE HANDS OF HOPE HAVE WITHDRAWN
COULD YOU TRY TO HELP ME HANG ON?
IT RUNS…

It's funny the way I work. I'm stupid, I think that's what the bottom line is. I get fucked over, yet I trust people anyway. And then I get fucked over again, and I say I'll stop trusting people…then someone will come along that just seems so innocent and nice and perfect that I can never imagine these things happening. That's what happened with Amber, with Raven, with Saph. Maybe I'm stupid for trusting them if I knew eventually I'd lose them, even if I hoped it would never ever happen.

Maybe it's just that I'm a masochist.

Stupidity and masochism go hand in hand.

I don't think masochists actually enjoy pain, just want to see if they're still capable of feeling such. Because pain can be your friend- it reminds you that you're still alive.

Now we can cut back to Mark's house. All those thoughts ran through my head as I was spacing out, listening to Nine Inch Nails. When the last song came on I snapped back into what was happening, stared at the stereo sadly, bit down on my lip and tried to hold back the tears. After a couple seconds had passed I thought: "Fuck it, what's the point anymore?" and let myself cry again.

Again.

These tears would never stop.

Staring at the sea- will she come? Is there hope for me after all is said and done? Anything at any price…all of this for you. All the spoils of wasted life- all of this for you. All the world has closed her eyes, tired faith all worn and thin, for all we could have done, and all that could have been. Ocean pulls me close and whispers in my ear. The destiny I've chose- all becoming clear. The currents have their say, the time is drawing near. Washes me away. Makes me disappear. AS I DESCEND FROM GRACE IN ARMS OF UNDERTOW  I WILL TAKE MY PLACE IN THE GREAT BELOW.

I grabbed the stereo remote and pushed the repeat button. I couldn't stop sobbing. It was this moment of truth- she was gone. SHE WAS GONE. I knew it, I knew it, I knew it, I'd known it for the past year yet I still didn't want to believe it. Trent's words were so perfect for the occasion, I didn't know what to do. I wanted to badly to just give up already, go join her, do anything that kept me from feeling this way…but I felt so unfinished.

And scared.

It scared me that everyone would remember her over me…I mean, I didn't have a problem with that, really. I love her, I would remember her over me. It's not a thing about spotlight, just that…I don't know. It's hard to explain really. The best way I can say it is- even though she was the only person that has ever loved me back…I've loved many people. As much as I've cursed this earth- I am intoxicated by its beauty. As much as I've grown to hate- I cherish humanity and see a beauty in people that most people don't recognize. Through my pain I've been able to see such beauty, and such darkness, in so many things…

I've loved so many things, I don't want to be forgotten. I don't want Amber to be forgotten. I don't want our children to be forgotten. I don't want to become that filthy headstone who's only company is a dead lilac bush. I don't want to become just some engraved name that no one remembers. I don't want to be remembered in wrestling as just some great tragedy of a man and his wife dying…I don't want them acknowledging it at all if they can't get across truly how tragic it really is, because none of these fucking people care anymore. You know what happened when wrestlers die nowadays? They get a tribute video sandwiched between a couple of commercials on Raw, they get a special page in that month's magazine, they get moments of silence in the independent federations that want to be with us so badly.

You can't just get across to the public that she was wrongfully taken. They don't fucking care. So as much as I see the beauty in humanity I can see how much these people suck.

I leaned back in the bed, wiped my eyes, tried not to get too worked up. Part of me wanted Mark to come in and give me some words of wisdom as he'd been doing ever since Amber died, part of me wants him to go kill himself because those pictures, those secrets, the memories that they dragged up are making me hate him.

Trent sounded so sad, so final.

"I can still feel you…even so far away…"

So true, for everything. Just thinking about all that I'd gained, all that I'd lost, all that I'd juggled around in vain made my head hurt. I could hear my mother laughing, heard Paul making fun of me, heard Amber telling me she loved me, heard Claudette on a string of peals. Heard Mark shouting, heard Paul shouting back. Heard Jake. Heard Mark. Paul. Saphrin and Raven laughing at something. Paul. Mark. Evan, Sugarbear, Amber. Paul. Mark. Mark Paul. Amber Claudette Saphrin. Paul. Mom Armand Raven. Mark. Mark. Paul…

That's when I realized…

I wasn't hallucinating. All the voices faded out, but Mark's was still strong.

And Paul was in the house.