A/N- Lyrics don't belong to me, they're KT Tunstall's. Thanks to everyone who has reviewed, it's really appreciated.

The intense relief Marissa felt at his departure shocked her a little. She had expected to fall apart as soon as that door had slammed behind him, to tell the truth. She didn't though, the intense relief soon being replaced by numbness. She knew she'd be panicking over this later, that if he offered to make it better she wouldn't know how to refuse, even though she knew things would only get worse.

She'd never been good at following her heart. She'd always gone with what her head told her would hurt the least. Every time, it was wrong. She was sick of making the wrong decision all the time, and she hated herself for being so weak. Maybe she wouldn't have ruined the best thing that had ever happened to her if she could have been stronger. Maybe if she didn't let her thoughts turn against her, and she wasn't so scared all the time, she could still have that now.

What ifs were no good, though. She wasn't supposed to think about them, because all that did was highlight the regrets she had. She didn't like to be reminded that she was a failure. It was as if she couldn't control it, though, because the thoughts kept on coming. And hurting.

You say you feel like a natural person
You haven't got nothing to hide
So why do you feel imperfection
Cut like a sword in your side

The verse of that song made Marissa wonder how musicians could sometimes so accurately describe what she was feeling. Imperfections weren't made for people like her, that's how she'd always been made to feel, anyway. Deep down, she knew that was wrong, that nobody could possibly be perfect. The people that said that always failed to mention that everybody wants to be perfect. They never can, and if they fail to realise that, they spend their lives striving for something that was only ever an illusion. Nothing was ever perfect, and especially not her.

She'd always felt that Alex was perfect, though; even if she knew the only reason for that was that she could skip over the little imperfections. She didn't need to see them, because they were irrelevant to the way Marissa felt about her. Alex had always made her feel, too, that she was a little closer to being everything she should be, without words. Just by being with her, Marissa felt that Alex made her feel as if she was worth something, as if even her flaws were beautiful. She wanted to feel that way again, and she wanted to make Alex feel that way. Because when she thought about her own idea of perfection, she thought about her and Alex together.

Ryan would be back, she knew. He'd tell her that everything would be alright, that he didn't care about Alex, that there must be something else making her feel this way. He'd tell her that she didn't really have any feelings for Alex, that she was just confused. And she knew, that when he said all of those words to her, she wouldn't know what to say in response. Then he'd think that she agreed with him, and what way did she have to stop him? She told him once, and that wouldn't be enough for him to accept it, but she knew she wouldn't be able to tell him again. Dreading the next time she saw him, she lay down to try and get some sleep, before she woke up panicking. The safety net was gone now, and she had to try her hardest to not let anything get in her way again.

After lying there for a while, her eyes wide open, her body refusing to relax, she sat up again. She felt so exposed now. There was nothing to hide her feelings behind, and that terrified her, just like she had known it would. Fear was what had been holding her back all this time, and it would continue to hold her back. It was something she'd never been able to cope with. She needed to feel safe. The funny thing was, it was her feelings she was trying to keep herself safe from. There was no reason to do that anymore. She should finally be able to take the actions she wanted to.

Should. She hated that word sometimes. It was so sure, and uncertain at the same time. The way she felt about that word, and what came attached to it, reminded her of the way she felt about herself. A contradiction. Just because people should be able to do something, didn't mean they actually would be able to do it when the time came to try. Marissa knew she was one of those people who couldn't do the things she should be able to do. Telling someone how you felt about them wasn't supposed to be this hard. Yet she couldn't do it, not without her smokescreen. The haze that was created by alcohol, and even when the alcohol wore off, the haze still lingered a little. Not enough for her to be honest, though.

Honesty. She hated that word even more. The amount of times she had failed to be honest were just increasing. How was she supposed to be honest with other people if she couldn't even be honest with herself? Her life was made of lies, and the reason for that was that she couldn't handle feeling real. She'd rather feel like she was watching herself from a distance, almost like there were two different people. And then she'd wonder why it hurt so much if it wasn't even her true self living that life, and she'd be back to where she started. Stripped of her lies, and rebuilding different ones. They were supposed to protect her, and she couldn't quite understand when they didn't.

Love without honesty didn't work for Marissa. And it was even more of a problem for Alex. They fell apart, the way people in two different places do, because they weren't honest with each other, after the beginning. At the end, all that was left were comforting words that didn't offer any comfort at all, feeling buried under all the lies and confusion. So she'd never lied to Alex exactly, but she wasn't honest either. It was just another thing for Marissa to add to her long list of regrets.

She wasn't the only one with regrets. Every day Alex would think about how she shouldn't have walked away that day, how she should have fought. It's what she had always done before. That time wasn't about her, however. It was never about her, it was about what she thought would make Marissa happy. Now, knowing that it wasn't the right thing to do, sometimes she would regret sacrificing her own happiness to give Marissa what she wanted. If she had stayed, then she could have seen what was happening, she could have stopped these feelings before they took hold of her and refused to let go.

She'd been awakened by yet another nightmare, jolting her from her sleep. She lay back down as her body calmed down from the adrenaline rush that the fear of the dream had given her. She never used to get nightmares. She used to be able to sleep through the night without being tortured by her dreams. She guessed that she had a lot of repressed feelings to sort through, and they were expressing themselves in her dreams. She'd rather deal with them when she was awake, she thought, judging by how bad the dreams were getting.

You're under the weather
just like the world
and I need somebody to hold
when I turn out the light
you're out of sight…

The rest of the lyrics to the song bled together as Alex focused on one line. All she needed was somebody to hold, and that somebody had to be Marissa. Maybe that wouldn't make everything better, but it would be a start. It would lift this constant dark cloud from her, and make her feel like she could think clearly once again. She couldn't pretend that she didn't need Marissa. She couldn't keep pretending that everything would be fine, and that if it were meant to be, everything would fall into place by itself. Life couldn't be that simple, you had to give things a push in the right direction first. And Alex wasn't doing enough. She was sick of feeling this way, and she had to do something about it.

She didn't know how. She didn't know how she could make Marissa see that what was happening now was bad for both of them, that it should never have come to this. Marissa's denial would be hard for Alex to break down, and in some ways, she didn't want to try. She'd never been so terrified of getting hurt. Getting hurt wasn't for people like her. She was supposed to be strong, and even when she was left with a dull ache in her chest, she was supposed to pretend that there was nothing wrong. Marissa had broken down those defences, though, and while that should, to some degree, be a good thing, all Alex felt was that it should never have happened. She knew what happened when she opened up to people and let them in, and she had done it anyway. It made her feel weak.

She had to go back to Newport again. Trying to talk to Marissa over the phone wasn't the right way to do this. But Alex wasn't sure she could handle a repeat of last time. She wasn't sure that she could handle any of this, but she couldn't sit around and wallow in self-pity anymore. She had walked away, and now she could walk back. It couldn't be that hard.