Title: Unruhe

Author: Kaitlyn

Rating: R

Summary: Burning lungs, dirty dancing, nightswimming and second chances...Loud music, tainted smoke, fiery kisses and racing hearts. Everyone remembers what it was like to be 18. Established R/R and eventual C/M.

Return of the quick updates! Here I am in NYC, and I'm going to be here for a good bit of the summer with my sisters. (Plural...there are 3 of them...pray that I can keep sane and alive long enough to finish the story). :-)

Sorry about the "40 years of marriage" mishap. I don't know why I overlooked that. I was originally going to write 30, but for whatever reason, I changed it to 40. Who knows?

Two people said there was a story similar to this one out there right now. I'm not sure what they meant by "similar to this one". The gang when they were younger? Rachel sacrificing herself for Ross' sake? In any case, I wasn't aware of that. I hope this story is original enough to hold your interest!

This chapter is rated R for disturbing themes and adult content. No sex- just sad, lonely men.

In German, Unruhe, the title, means "unrest".

For whatever reason, the asterisks aren't working to break up the sections, so to reduce the confusion factor I'm going to break the sections with long lines of "OOOOOOOOOO" Don't be confused when that happens :-)

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

"You guys really don't have to do this," Ross insisted, throwing a pillow across the room at Chandler, who was hauled up on the floor next to Ross' desk. "I'll be find on my own."

"We know we don't HAVE to," answered Chandler, taking the pillow and propping it up against the side of the desk. He gathered together some of the blankets and comforters that Ross had provided him with as well, crafting himself a makeshift bed. "We want to."

It had been a little over a month since that afternoon when Rachel had come to Ross. Only Monica had seen or heard from her since then. She had made a conscious point not to face the others- not because she was scared that they would try and persuade her to stay, but because she was afraid that in seeing them, she would not be able to force herself to go. She sent messages to Chandler, Joey and Phoebe through Monica, assuring them that she would call them when she was ready and instructing them not to worry about her.

Now, this afternoon she was moving off of their street and miles away into a city so distant and massive that it may as well have been another country.

She had not seen or talked to Ross in a month.

When Monica had come back from Rachel's for the last time a few days ago, baring messages and condolences to all, she could not look Ross in the face when she had nothing to offer him. Her friend had not explicitly told her that she could not say goodbye to him. She had simply chosen to not mention him at all. Monica was surprised. Ross was not.

Prom had come and gone. He had sat alone that night in his room, pretending to watch a documentary on early Pre-Columbian tribes and counting down the seconds until an appropriate time to go to bed. He had never moved his tux from where it hung on his bathroom door. Even now it was hanging there, ironed crisp and jet black in it's plastic bag. He had not bothered moving it. He told himself it was because there was nowhere else to put it, but secretly it comforted him to know that there had been a time when he might have been wearing it with her, elegant and enchanted, tucked at his side.

Monica and Chandler told him they'd stay with him that night, failing to acknowledge that it was out of moral support on Rachel's moving day, but knowing that it was a wordless understanding. He'd resisted at first, as expected, but had eventually succumbed to their invasion of his room.

Now, he laid on his bed in the dark with only one thing on his mind: her. All of his thoughts had come back to her. For an entire month, his brain had rewired itself into a circuitous cycle and he was growing tiresome. She plagued him- haunted him. Every dream was the same, with only minute details wavering at all.

The girl with golden hair was coming towards him across the field. With what seemed a single shifting of her muscles, she tore off her clothing and fell heedlessly to the ground. Her body was scarred and bruised- battered by a man without a face, but whose eyes he could see and they'd burnt her skin to cinder. Still, he could not tear his eyes from her. Even as she cried, broken and decomposing into a movement whose foundation she'd cracked with her tears, he was aroused and drawn to her like an army of ants to honey on a humid day. The girls grace and elegance could bring downfall to nations; annihilate entire cultures; drown coastal villages. His eyes would begin to burn, but he could not look away. Just as he would reach out to touch her, he would feel an emptiness in his stomach like falling and he would awaken. He could never remember exactly how the dream ended, but he knew that in some way her life had been sacrificed for his own.

He would wake up in cold sweats, reaching for the thing whose face had roused him to begin with. She was never there.

After the first weak, he stopped believing that the cold sweats and insomnia would ever stop. After the first month, he stopped believing altogether.

He could hear Monica and Chandler on the floor at the foot of his bed. He couldn't help but resent them. Where had they gone wrong, he asked himself. Had he loved her too much? Had he held her too closely? He hated all of the "what ifs" and "if onlys" that clouded his mind. They'd been there for weeks like a chorus of voices, all of whom refused to let the others finish. He sighed, staring up at the rain. It was only raining anymore- maybe to remind him of all he'd lost and the impossibility of ever starting over from there.

She had left him to save him, but all that was left was not worth saving.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

"Where does this go?" Jill asked, appearing in the doorway with a big gray box in her hands. Rachel nodded towards the closet.

"Just set it over there. I'll sort them out later."

"You okay, Rach?" she asked with a legitimately concerned look on her face. Rachel nodded weakly and leaned over to finish emptying the box she was currently unpacking.

"I'm just tired," she replied. That was such a lame answer. No one ever answered with "I'm just tired" unless about a dozen other things were actually bothering them. Even with as shallow and dense as Jill was, she noticed the grief in her sister's voice.

"Oh, come on. You usually tell me everything but you haven't even mentioned why you decided to move in here so early. What gives?" Jill sat down on the one of the two twin beds that would belong to her and crossed her legs to signal that she was not leaving anytime soon. Perceiving this, Rachel rolled her eyes and continued her unpacking.

"I really don't feel like talking about it, Jill," she mumbled under her breath, her words just barely decipherable as English.

"I talked to mom today," Jill offered, hoping this would strike some interest from Rachel. It did. She looked up inquisitively but said nothing. "She moved into this apartment in downtown San Francisco. She's going back to school next fall."

"Did she say anything about dad?" Rachel asked. She wasn't sure why. She didn't really know what she wanted the answer to be. Jill nodded and kind of smirked.

"Actually, yeah. Believe it or not, she said she kind of misses him."

I miss him, too, she immediately thought, not sure of which "him" she meant.

"You look tired," Jill proffered randomly. Rachel stopped what she was doing to look up at her sister and stare blankly at her.

"Thanks," she deadpanned. She did feel tired, though, and with good reason. She had not had a good night's sleep in almost a month. She always seemed to feel on edge- like at any moment, the cold and sharp tension inside her was liable to translate itself into a debilitating virus. She would fall asleep underneath piles of blankets and down comforters, shivering and huddled into a ball, and wake up breathing deeply in a puddle of sweat in the aftermath of an erotic union with her demons.

This had all started about a week after she left Ross' house. One of Jill's older guy friends had been at the house and had somehow found his way into Rachel's room. They'd struck up a conversation, which Rachel had been disinterested and inactively participating in from the beginning, and he'd somehow ended up asking her out on a date. An icy hotness had shot all over her body, making her blood numb and the hair on her arms stand on end. She felt dirty, even after her immediately declination. She had closed her eyes after he left the room, bringing to the forefront of her mind the image that would stay there permanently for weeks to follow:

The face of a young boy, frightened with tanned skin and deep chocolate eyes. Her young boy. Him. Always him.

"Hey," Jill began, snapping Rachel out of her interlude and back to reality. "Why'd you bring everything with you? I thought you were supposed to leave like half your stuff behind." Rachel nodded, fixing her eyes on the floor.

"I left more than half."

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

It's curious how little the mind can focus on one thing- one image or thought- without recovering all previous encounters associated with it. For days at a time he was capable of forgetting her face, but never her lips or eyes or smell. He would barter with himself at night, trading the memory of a first kiss for that of a last dance. He found that phasing her out in stages and fragments of memories made the process all that less painful.

At times, he even tried lying to himself- outright lies that ventured so far from reality that they could not possibly budge without regaining some truth to them. He tried remembering her in ways that she had not and could not ever exist. He thought of her at times as a jointed wooden scarecrow, wincing and stiffening when he touched her. He would force her, in his dreams, to push him away as he pulled her nearer. All of these things, he thought, would make letting her go easier.

Letting her go.

That's how Monica had worded it- using a strategically placed euphemism similar to "passing away". When she said it, he immediately pictured himself as a little boy standing by the sea, watching a tiny wooden sailboat being carried effortlessly away by the waves.

Letting her go.

A 40s-style sailor in immaculately white garb, bright-eyed but already lost, kissing her wet body in the rain before shipping off to defend an abstract uncertainty.

Letting her go.

The face of a young boy, frightened with tanned skin and deep chocolate eyes. Her young boy. Hers. Always hers.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

"Rachel, are you not going to get ready?" Amy asked, having walked into her sister's room with expectations of her being dressed to the nines and instead finding her laying on her bed reading a magazine in jeans and a t-shirt.

"I am ready," she refuted, not looking up from her magazine. Amy rolled her eyes and sighed deeply.

"Come ON, Rachel, you've been here for like a month and you haven't even come out with me ONCE! At least put on some make-up or something! What's gotten into you lately?" Rachel shrugged, finally putting the magazine down and sitting up on the edge of her bed.

"I don't feel like it. I'm ready...let's go," she offered, trying to sound at least somewhat enthusiastic. The truth was, though, she couldn't have cared less about going out with her older sister to some lame club or bar. She wasn't even old enough to be served alcohol, and even if she chose to use the fake ID she'd obtained so many months ago, she would still be with her sister. Amy saw through her and came into the room.

"Rachel, you really do need to get over this Ross shit. It's been 2 months since the two of you broke up, and I know I don't know much about it, but YOU'RE the one who initiated it. How friggin' sad can it be? You're just in high school, anyway."

"You're right," Rachel answered in a calm, even tone. "You don't know much about it."

"Whatever. The point is, I'm taking you out tonight and you're GOING to have fun! Who knows? Maybe you'll even meet some guy who'll make you forget him." Amy smiled spuriously, patting her sister on the back and handing her a make-up back from the desk beside her. "I'm going to wait 20 more minutes for you to get ready, but that's IT. Now hurry!"

Rachel sat alone on the bed with the make-up bag in her hand after Amy left. She didn't move to get up or even to open the bag. She just sat there for a long while, feeling nothing until a warm liquid splattered against her arm and she looked down to see that she was crying. Amy's words echoed through her mind.

Forget him.

I don't want to forget him.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

"Alright, so tell me all about it!" Chandler demanded, scooting up the wooden chair beside Ross' bed and leaning forward with impatience. Ross sat cross-legged on the bed, smiling at his friend's eagerness.

"It was, uh...it was alright."

"No way, dude, this is Carrie Dubnansky we're talking about here! I want DETAILS!"

Carrie Dubnansky was a tall, fair-haired girl with bold but soft features and sun-tinted skin. She had a face that one might call graceful if it weren't for the fact that there was nearly nothing behind it. Her claim-to-fame was being both the cheerleading and lacrosse co-captain and also "being with" nearly every guy in her class.

"It was...nice," Ross insisted, hesitant to add anything more. "She's nice."

"Aw, dude," Chandler whined, giving his friend a doubting but sympathetic look. "You still can't stop thinking about her, can you?" Ross shrugged his shoulders modestly, looking down at his lap. Chandler leaned over and patted his friend on the shoulder.

"I'm sorry, man," Chandler bided. Ross nodded but didn't look up.

"It was weird. There I was with this really attractive girl, on her bed with her ready to do anything I wanted...and all I could think was...'I wonder what Rachel's doing'," Ross confided.

"Woah, you were on her BED?" Ross shot him a look of warning and he apologized with a soft "sorry".

"I bet she's with someone," Ross wagered, his comment seemingly coming from nowhere. He was still staring down blankly at the navy of his comforter.

"I bet not," Chandler offered optimistically. Ross looked up.

"Oh yeah?" he asked, a hint of hope shading his voice. Chandler nodded.

"Yeah. I know I don't know her like you do...but that girl loved you, man. She LOVES you. She didn't leave for the city to find other guys. She left to find herself. I really believe she wants to be with you when she's ready. You're just going to have to..."

"...wait," Ross finished.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

In the darkness of the room, if she covered her ears and squinted her eyes, she could almost pretend she was outside. That is, if it weren't for the plethora of raging neon lights and the slow burn of cigarette smoke in the air. A thousand clubs just like this one and she hated them all. She had lost Amy an hour ago, at least, among the crowd of half-naked strangers who were too busy getting drunk on their overpriced mixed drink to ever notice her. She was thankful for that much.

She sat in the back corner of the club, slowly nursing her Coke, obviously detached from the scene and even herself from the far-off look in her eyes. Her hair had grown a bit over the past 2 months and it now reached almost halfway down her back, straight and slick and more golden than ever in the lamplight.

A crowd of eager strangers shifted and for the first time, he saw her properly.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

It was far too humid that night for blankets. Ross laid spread-eagle across the bed, stripped to his boxers and praying for the air conditioning to kick in. He contemplated going to sleep on the floor just to feel the cool wood against his skin, but movement was not an option and his thoughts were already beginning to bleed themselves to death for the night.

Thoughts of her. Slow, aching thoughts of her.

Music radiated from the clock radio on his bedside.

"Was it something I said

or something I did?

Did my words not come out right?

Though I tried not to hurt you

Though I tried

But I guess that's why they say..."

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

It had to be confessed. It should be written down. In blood, even. Thoughts so perverse- so twistingly demented- that they should be scribbled hurriedly in scrabbled writing by a mind as manic as the one that committed them.

He had taken a step towards her and then halted, too overcome by his own lust and terror to continue. He had been aware of the risk he was taking earlier that evening, but after his 10th shot and first dive into her eyes, all reason had been cast out with inhibition and conscience. He could not very well go away now without doing what he had come here to do.

He pressed his fingers tightly against his eyelids. The therapy had not worked. The voices had not quieted. The urge to do the unspeakable was as strong as ever, and he would not let it claw it's way inside his large intestines while trying desperately to contain it.

She was young and beautiful and hopelessly lost. Maybe she had a boy. Maybe she has a boy.

Take heart, sweetheart, or I will take it from you.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Ross' skin was sticky now, having accumulated sweat from the sheets he was laying on. A furnace seemed to have fizzled out somewhere inside him, spreading it's last of steam and vapor through his veins. He had never been so hot.

The sky was dark and the stars were bright and they had been all he'd seen for hours, besides the inside of his eyelids. Now and then his eyes would flutter shut, but that made her face too bright so he'd open them again. The song played on.

"Every rose has its thorn

Just like every night has its dawn

Just like every cowboy sings his sad, sad song

Every rose has its thorn..."

Slow, aching thoughts.

A tingling began in his stomach, like the dull burning of a dying fire whose flames are slowly losing their heat. It spread itself downward between his legs and he let images of her flood his mind. He did not feel dirty. He did not feel sad.

"I listen to our favorite song

playing on the radio

Hear the DJ say loves a game

of easy come and easy go

But I wonder does he know?

Has he ever felt like this?

And I know that you'd be here right now

If I could have let you know somehow

I guess..."

It had been so long since he'd thought of her like this. The last time had been before they were dating, when he was so in love and she was still just an unimaginatively perfect hologram, as illusive and unattainable as a face in a magazine. Now, after all they'd been through, she was still just as unattainable. Just as illusive. Just as distant.

Just as much in love.

"Though it's been a while now

I can still feel so much pain

Like a knife that cuts you

the wound heals but the scar,

that scar remains..."

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

If there had even been hope for her, it was distinguished now. There, in that swarming mass of alcohol-wasted outsiders, it had been lost.

She did not see him slip it into her drink. It tasted bitter and sweet, all at once, and then like nothing moments later.

She was not conscious when he brought her to the car, desperate desires and unadmirable plans buzzing in his head.

She could not make out his face when he slid her into the bed. She was awake through it all, but the mixture of vodka and malicious intent on his breath was all that she knew.

She was not aware when he stripped her of her clothes, her eyes fighting sleep and a cold, bare breeze washing over her.

She did feel the pain. The wide, stretching pain.

She did not see the blood. Everywhere.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Ross' hand moved rapidly, jerking and pulling at that hot place between his legs and moaning her name into the stale air. His eyes were sealed tightly and his breath escaped his mouth in quick, frantic puffs. His heart raced and beat against his chest, his chest pushing tightly back against it., yearning for a girl miles and miles away. His girl.

"Where are you?" he groaned. "I need you."

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

It hurt. She needed him.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

End Chapter 11. Continued in Chapter 12.