CHAPTER 72

This is all your fault. This is all your fault. The words rattled through Miguel's skull, refusing to leave. Emily's father was absolutely right. This was all his fault. None of this would have happened if he hadn't met Emily. Hadn't fallen for her. Hadn't pushed to be a part of her life when even Emily at the beginning resisted. If he had just stepped back then, Silver wouldn't have gone after Emily, and Emily would be completely unharmed right now. But no. He had to do the exact opposite and it had led to the shitshow that was currently occurring.

Now that Emily was finally safe and the adrenaline that had been running through him throughout the search for her had worn off, a new feeling took over: guilt. It wracked through his body, both numbing him and filling him with an excruciating agony at the same time. It was the most powerful emotion that he had ever felt, and it nearly brought him to his knees with its strength. He felt himself staggering back and almost falling onto the sidewalk outside the hospital. He closed his eyes and let the pain coarse through his body, burning his limbs, eyes, and most of all his chest. His core felt like it was being burned from the inside out. Tears pricked to the back of his eyes and he felt bile rising in the back of his throat. This pain was like nothing he had ever felt before and he needed it to stop. IMMEDIATELY. He needed something to dull this agonising pain that was ripping through him, all of his resistance and energy waning with every passing second.

Suddenly, he found his feet shifting towards somewhere he hadn't been in nearly a month. Somewhere he vowed to quit, but yet knew it was the one way to numb the immense pain he was feeling. Before he knew it, he found himself in the roughest bar in Reseda, and he threw himself onto the bar stool at the far side of the bar.

Shot after shot Miguel downed with no sign of stopping. With each one, he slowly faded from consciousness so his guilt was slightly numbed. Not much, mind you. He was still in agony. But a little, and that was all the invitation Miguel needed to drink more…

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This happened every day for the next week. Miguel would go to the bars all day, drinking the bar dry, school, karate and any family commitments he had completely ignored. He was broken, there were no two ways about it. This was by far the lowest point of his entire law. He was drowning, no longer able to kick to stay afloat and instead slowly but surely sinking into the pits of the deepest ocean. He had all but dropped out of school at this point, not showing up in the past week. He had gone completely AWOL on Miyagi-Do and Karate. He hadn't even come home for more than a 5 minute shower every couple of days. He really couldn't give a damn about the karate war anymore either. Silver had not been arrested, but had instead fled the Valley before police could catch him, and Cobra Kai and Miyagi-Do were locked in a stalemate. Tory, much to his surprise, had gone back to Cobra Kai. With Silver gone and the police having no idea how Emily had been found, Tory wasn't in danger and so with everything that had happened, she decided to go back to Cobra Kai.

In addition, Miguel had become increasingly violent. Due to the fact that 90% of the time he was heavily intoxicated, he was much more aggressive in his drunkenness and had gotten into many a bar fight, getting him thrown out of bars all over the city. He was extremely dangerous for one simple reason: he had nothing left to lose, so he had nothing left to live for anymore. He was done with school. He was done with karate. He wasn't allowed to see the one person he truly wanted to see. Things couldn't have been worse.

Carmen was also starting to lose her patience with Miguel. Though she loved him so much, she had absolutely no clue how to help him. She had tried desperately to get Miguel to talk to her, or a professional therapist, but Miguel adamantly refused. There was nothing wrong with him, he said. He wasn't mentally ill, or any of that weak-ass crap. He was just tired and done with these absolutely god-shit cards life had dealt him. And Carmen was getting increasingly impatient with the fact that whenever Miguel would come home, he would reek of booze, and would normally be pretty drunk. She had voiced her displeasure but of course, he was in no mood to listen. He brushed her off and had even started crashing on couches or even park benches just to get away from his nagging mother. Johnny was no help either. Miguel avoided him as best he could, and even when he found himself face to face with the man, he expertly found ways to get out of the situation. Though Carmen, Johnny and all of Miguel's friends were really worried about him and really cared about him, Miguel was alone. None of them could help him because none of them knew how it felt. They could pity but they could not empathise, because no one he knew could possibly know what it was like to feel how he felt. To feel the pain. All of the bad things that had happened to him in the past year came piling up and buried him.

Nothing anyone could do could possibly pull Miguel out of the pit he was currently in, and Emily wasn't much better either, provided her situation was very different to Miguel's. Thankfully her physical injuries had been minor enough to have her discharged from hospital within 3 days, but after she stepped out of those doors, that was when the true horrors had just begun. Almost as soon as her discharge, she had been swarmed by a plethora of cops commanding her to describe to them her whole experience from the night of the accident. 'Spare no detail', the cops had said, so she was forced to recount being dragged away from Miguel and the burning car, thrown into the basement, beaten, raped, fed scarily little, and all of the other horrors she had been forced to endure. She had had the comfort of her parents, as well as Mary and George, as she was forced to recount the stories, but she was missing one person…

Miguel hadn't come to see her since she had gotten rescued. Originally, she thought that he was out of town or hadn't found out or something, but as more and more days had passed, doubts began to creep into her mind. Would he ever come? Had he forgotten about her? Had he found someone else? Emily's mental scars after the accident went extremely deep. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw her captors. She was terrified to be in the same room as large men without at least one other person she knew there too. She couldn't sleep, with nightmares plaguing her every time she tried and not letting her get more than an hour of continuous sleep.

Emily's family and friends also never talked about Miguel. It was strange. Mary and George hadn't even so much as mentioned his name, despite all her asking, and whenever she would ask, they would subtly find a way to change the subject. Same went for her parents too. They had met Miguel numerous times and absolutely adored him, but suddenly, they didn't dare to even mention his name. It was extremely worrying for Emily, but she didn't have the strength to go outside and go looking for answers. She hadn't even left her house since she had come home from the police station.

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Miguel was teetering on the edge of his mom's limits, and eventually, a few days later, he finally pushed her too far…

It was another shit day for him. He woke up in the same throbbing pain he had been in for the past week, made even worse by the fact that he had a lethal hangover. He knew there was no way in hell he could possibly survive a school day in his state so he decided to blow it off once again. He had crashed on a park bench that night so he groaned in pain, clutching his aching neck, before rolling off the bench and standing up.

Miguel spent the whole day roaming around the city, no direction or aim. He had turned his phone off so he ignored any effort his mom or friends made to contact him. None of them knew where he was and he wanted to keep it that way. He was always alone now, and he deserved it. He didn't deserve company. All he did all day was think about all of the people whose lives he ruined with just his existence, thinking about this until 6 pm, when the bar thankfully opened and he could waste away the whole night.

Like he had done almost every night before in the past week, Miguel sat at the bar and poured a seemingly endless stream of heavenly liquid down his throat, gratefully feeling its dull numb begin to set into his bones. He felt so guilty about so much and this numbness was his only slight relief. Miguel took shot after shot, after each one feeling his mind and vision become a little more woozy. Soon, as he became scarily close to double digit number of drinks, he finally fully lost control of his body and blacked out…

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"Get up."

The harsh words jolted Miguel to reality and forced his eyes to snap open hurriedly. As his eyelids slowly lifted, they immediately slammed back down again as he felt blinding light shining straight into his eyes, his massive hangover not doing him any favors. His head was absolutely pounding and his ears were ringing deafeningly loudly. As Miguel sat up on the couch, he instantly felt a wave of intense nausea that forced him to lie back down. However, Miguel's eyes continued to wander around the room as he tried to figure out where the hell he was. It didn't take him long to see George staring at him from the doorway, and he realised that he was indeed in George's living room.

"Get up." George repeated, in a very gruff tone. Miguel slowly sat up and immediately, George shoved a glass of sickly smelling liquid under Miguel's nose. "Drink this."

Miguel recoiled as his hangover collided with the overly sweet smelling drink, but as George glared at him, he forced himself to down the whole thing, before shuddering and then turning to George, confused.

"Dude what am I doing here? What happened to me last night?" Miguel asked. George's eyes widened as he looked at him.

"Wait… you don't know?" George asked, surprised. When Miguel shook his head, George winced and nodded. "Okay, here it is. So it all started last night at the bar…"