Shadows Dancing Everywhere

By Sempiternus

Summary: One-shot. Alternate universe. Craig-centric. I just had to screw-up one more time. It was inevitable. I did not know she would fall so far away.

Author's Note: I wrote this a long time ago, the same night that I wrote "Escaping Her," my first Gilmore Girls fan-fiction. I was, and still am, to say the truth, reluctant to post it because, well . . . it's just so angsty. However, I have slightly revised it, and I think that maybe it might stand a chance. I also borrowed the title from a lyric in the Alice in Chains song "Angry Chair"—it just seemed to fit somehow. I hope that you enjoy.

Disclaimer: I do not own nor am trying to get profit off of Degrassi: The Next Generation.

Nhân nào, quà nãy

As the call, so the echo.

– Vietnamese proverb

I am a soldier,
I will never show emotion, I will never disobey.
The throbbing pain has left,
Because I am a soldier—
Something that will never show emotion.
What a shame, though . . . it was the only thing
to ever care.

She wrote that, I know she did. Beforehand, before all of this shit. Before she left forever. I did not know that she was in that much need of help. Hell, we hadn't talked in the traditional sense since that last night together. Now that is one of my regrets, probably one of the biggest regret I'll ever have.

Nothing has changed.
There are still careless acts to regret;
Scars to pick at that won't heal,
No matter how much of the ointment
I seem to put on the blood-red marks.

That's another poem I know she wrote. I'm getting these straight out of her "creative writing journal"—as it says on the cover—as I sort through her things in this barren room. It no longer resembles her room because she is not here. Her spirit escaped with her body; it is a wasteland of dreams never achieved.

I'm going to escape—
I have to escape—
to something more than this.
I'm ready;
Just say the word.

I wish to change other people's lives. Whether through my drumming with an near-famous band (we wish) or writing something that can change a view of life, I want to do something. I have to do something. It is time for an escape from this place. I've been here too long, become too attached. Leaving seems the only option.

That one was dated before this all began. I knew her dream, sort of, for we shared the same views. Also, I do know that she could have changed something about this fucked-up world. Anything, actually. I know this for sure. She could do anything she wanted, and everyone around assumed that she would. They praised her profusely for finally publishing a poem of hers, and it was amazing. I suppose that wasn't satisfactory for her, though. She still dwelled on the demons of her past, on her discontent with everything around her . . . dwelling on everything except what was right in front of her face. I should have told her more often how awesome she was; maybe this . . . could have been avoided. If only regrets didn't always smack people in the face and settle in their stomach's.

Something is hurting inside, and it won't go away.
And I can't help but claw at it but—
It won't go away.

My hands then let loose some of the wet drops I can't (won't) identify,
As I claw and claw and claw, and—
Why won't this go away?

This was her first indications of something going wrong. Or, perhaps, it was ours. She was trying to tell us about what was happening to her. I remember her leaving her diary in the most precarious places, seemingly by accident, trying to get us to be as curious as we normally are and read it (she never really was "good with words," as they say. Who is, really?) But, they—we; I—didn't want to "invade" her privacy. The diary was left to accumulate dust.

I want to save you.
I want to help you.
I want to open up to you.
Will you save me, too?

She wrote this bit about me. I know she did, based on the entry's before and after her pleading poem. She always wrote a poem before an entry. I suppose it was her release. I didn't really know that she was a poet—and a goddamn good one at that—before she published her poem a short time before our graduation, after the journal had ended. I didn't know a lot of things, apparently. For instance, what happened when I left. I did not know how that came to be, how she came to be, though I could make a not-so-wild presumption about it.

My giver of comfort is disappearing;
The river is rushing beneath my feet constantly.
"Do you trust me?" it asks, whilst making my feet turn blue.
I stare, helpless; how can something so continuous also be so fleeting?
"Did you trust him?" it urges.
Yes, I loathly think;
"I knew I'd be alone again."
And I let the river embrace me in its sombre grasp.

I'm not sure as to why she wrote this. I suppose she was trying to symbolise the secrets she hoarded from her past, her feeling about everybody she knew abandoning her. Maybe it was another plan to escape from this blasphemed place. "But drowning," she had wrote, "seems too slow. I want to go rapidly. I want it through a quickly as conceivably possible. I want to slip away into the darkness and never have to see the light again. I want to never be heard from again—as they don't hear me now."

Enshrouded in my perfectly fabricated shadows,
Repeating slowly, incessantly,
"Go away, just leave,
"I don't fucking need you.
"I am a soldier,
"I don't need anybody—
"I'll be fine,
"Just like always."

This one was in response of her raving away at the arrogance of a counselor. It seems as though somebody tried to "reach" out to her. Of course, I didn't know who or why before reading this; she was always good at keeping secrets. That's just one person who tried to reach her but made her go even deeper into her hole. It was just another person who tried but failed; another name on the extensive list. Probably just some fucking supercilious person who saw a girl who wasn't carefree all of the fucking time and immediately thought, "Oh, she must have an issue or is being abused." More tension mounting atop the previous—a therapist picking her life apart one strand at a time; or trying to, at least. She's about the crack by this entry, I can tell. There's only one last entry. I wish I had seen it coming, taken in at least some of the goddamn warning signs. I was a fucking expert in wanting to die, seeing people die, and I couldn't take my eyes off of my selfish life for one goddamn minute. If only I hadn't been thinking only of myself when I left, heading South to America to "discover" myself. I did it straight after high school when there was no more protective coating to shield our lives. We were on our own then, and the country didn't give a damn about us any more 'til we got a job, and then they would take our money. They would be on our backs once again, hounding us every damn month for things they needed to make the country "better." It was more strain impounding us and our individuality into the goddamn ground.

Before I left, I could have at least noticed it—her ever-growing depression. She was a tower, steadily crumbling to the ground. Her mother, who she did not get along with to begin with, had wasted her liver to the brink of its use and died when we were in grade twelve, not even eighteen yet. But that had been a year ago. I thought she was fine, that she was stronger than she let on. She seemed to be healthy and grasping firmly onto life, unlike her mother, even enjoying a summer break before going into one of the many colleges that had accepted her. She had triumphed over everything thrown at her and was moving on. She was set. She did not have to go across the U.S. because nobody wanted a mentally ill person in their "fine establishment."

Her face, though, I just cannot get her face out of my mind. Her beautiful face that seems to pop at me everywhere, saying a quick hello and goodbye, like she never got to do. It had begun to slowly darken after graduation. Her eyes were losing their color, their light. Eyelids were sagging in a melancholy way, covering her eyes underneath. The fierce, red hair losing its magnetic force that was unusual but engaging. Maybe nobody else noticed this but I did. I just didn't know how to stop it. She was conversing and adding sarcastic but witty commentary less frequently and, when she did, it was in a monotonous voice. I—we—just blew it off as a part of adjusting, leaving high school behind. Hell, we were all sagging a bit. "Maybe she's just going through something. You know, graduating, going to college, those are big deals," was the general shrug-off.

Can you hear it?
The voices won't stop speaking to me.
They won't stop saying it's all my fault—
It's my fault for ending up like this.
And I think that I should believe them,
Because this hand I've been holding onto is slowly loosening its grasp,
And the voices will be the only thing I've got left.
So, I'll listen to them,
And never return.

That was the last piece she wrote. I can barely read it by now, as my own eyes have been blurred. This is the first time I have returned to this town. I continued my escapade across the forty-eight contiguous states even after I had received the news. And, now, I've returned to face this red-haired demon of my dreams that is biting my ass for not fixing this in the first place. The last phone-call I received from her—though only through voice-mail—is still playing firmly in my head. "Hi! I just wanted to check in on you, see how it's going down there. I hope you're safe and have been taking lots of pictures. See you when you get back. 'Bye!" She seemed so . . . lighthearted, for lack of a better word, than when I had left. There was nothing conspicuous about her message, nothing about saying goodbye forever. When the next phone call came—I had picked it up instantly, hoping it was she and that I would not miss her again—it was from Joey, telling me the news, just like he told me about my dad so many years ago. I was benumbed, just like before, too. Angry at myself for not doing something to help her. If I just would have . . . I don't know . . . spent more time with her, not run away from my own problems, leaving herto deal with hers on her own. Just something. I haven't even deleted her voice-mail message yet. I can't even look at that goddamned phone now. It's just . . . she used it, held it, took pictures on it, had pictures of herself and me, smiling, laughing, just like old times taken on it. It's one of my many demons that I can't deal with right now.

I tape the last box shut with duct tape. All of her memories are now packed away. Everybody had waited for my return to go through her possessions. I'm still numb and everybody keeps looking at me like I'll explode again, just like I did with Dad's death. I'll be fine, though—"Just like always," like her poem says. Marco was here earlier to help out, but ran out of the room after a few minutes. He never came back. I had found the sleek, black book—black, her favorite color, goddamn it—shortly afterwards, when going through her night stand table. It was under everything, even a razor that looked like it hadn't been used in a while, but still held dried blood on it like a curse. The journal won't go into the box labeled "charity" where her father—he didn't even fucking show his face round here—wanted everything to go. No, this black book will be slipped and hidden under my leather jacket. Nobody who didn't know her dreams or accomplishments, everything that she was and went through is going to get this. Right as I pick up one of the charity boxes, Joey appears with a distraught Marco. 'At least somebody went after him,' I think. Joey had brought me here as soon as I dropped off my stuff and car at his place. Apparently, he doesn't trust me to be alone, either. I was shaking badly when Joey tried to put his hand onto my shoulder as I walked out with one of the boxes in my hand. I didn't want him to touch me, comfort me, when nobody had done so for her. I didn't deserve to be comforted for something I helped cause. I shoved him off and he, albeit reluctantly, went back with Marco to get the rest of the boxes.

As we afterwards drive away from her apartment, I gaze out the window and scarcely hear Joey trying to make polite conversation. I think about the black journal in my pocket. It's the last memory I have of her soothing voice. I know the tone will fade away soon, just as it did with my mother and father. And I know that, someday, I won't be able to see her face as soon as I wake up, either. But her memories and thoughts are things that I will never forget, thanks in part to her journal. She comes up in the many pages. I can still hear her as I read it. I keep it to figure out why. Why she had to leave so soon, why she couldn't have come with me, why I was such a fucking screw-up as to have never seen this coming; not have prevented it. Why I left her there to die. These writings of her are all I have left of one more demon of my life. But I know that, just like with my mother and father's deaths, everything will eventually go back to normal, and everybody will forget; push it to the backs of their minds. The journal will become buried underneath everything in the closet. My demons will always be buried alive in the closet. That is the only way I can live. The only way I can bury the guilt over three lives that ended too soon because of me.

Inspirations:

"The Fragile" by Nine Inch Nails

"The Day the World Went Away" by Nine Inch Nails

"Alone" by Downface

29 October 2005