Sorry this one took so long. I kept rewriting the chapter, then changing things, and now I'm settling with the original. I'm not so sure about how much I like this one, it sounded so much better in my head...as most things do. And, just so you know, the next chapter will be the last, and definitely longer than this one. So hang in there with me, okay?

Night Three

(or)

Logic and Proportion

I really don't understand things like myself. I mean…I mean…God. I don't really know, alright? The things that have happened, I should have a borderline personality, or at least be, to some degree, dissociative. I'm not. Borderline personality and dissociative identity grow out of a natural coping method: blocking the hurtful things out so you don't have to deal with them. And I guess I never did that. I didn't let myself get away, and as punishment, I'm totally sane, and I can never leave these things. I won't let myself go, and I really want to.

The manipulative, hypersexual, narcissistic world of borderline is more inviting than this. Or the shattered, confusing, blackout of dissociative. That's better. That's all better. If I was there, then I wouldn't have to be here, in this awful hotel out of Sartre's imagination, silently crying into a starched pillow. As I've said before, I was a dumbass kid, and because of that I can clearly remember the things that happened in the house with blue floors, or in the San Fran suburbs irrigation ditch, or in the H.I.V.E after Brother Blood took over.

I go through the night jumping between lucidity and semi-consciousness, all the while aware of the crying. Eventually, I'm aware of sheets moving and somebody sits next to me. Raven. Shit. I woke her up. Now she'll really know how big of a mess I am, even more of a mess than what I was in the shower. I never turn over to look at her, feeling worse than dirt.

Her cold little hands touch down on my shoulder. I shiver and cringe and groan. Slowly, she pulls me up so I'm sitting. I keep my head hanging, my hair serving as a protective curtain between us. I'm suddenly pretty glad that they didn't let me wear my horns; no matter how awesome they look, they aren't protective. Maybe I'll wear it down more often, just in case.

Raven doesn't say a thing. Slowly, painfully slowly, she pulls me into a hug. I can see her arms around my waist in the dim light from the parking lot, and I can feel her head on my shoulder. I curl up there, and then my mouth opens and I just start talking. Talking and talking, a mile a minute, to the moon and back in a heartbeat. I can't stop it either. That's what really kills me. I can't stop.

"I…I grew up in a house with blue floors, alright? These blue floors…and it was always sounding like police sirens or gunshots or screaming. Or they'd turn and look at me with these awful eyes, just blank, you know? Like they were mask eyes. And when I was six, I walked in and saw Maeve in the bathroom, on the floor, with razors in her hand and blood all over and she wasn't moving. I left her there because it was just too awful and she was just too thin. I mean, you guys say I'm scrawny, but you haven't seen scrawny until you see Maeve…" Just like that. Everything I can remember about that house. "There would be white powder in his moustache, and she'd put the needles between her toes so her arms stayed pretty, or Uncle would get carted off to the psychiatric ICU and he'd escape through the roof. That sort of thing. So then when they took the house away because nobody had any money left and they'd found the drugs in the floorboards, I ran away, and…and they didn't even follow me. They just really, really didn't care."

Raven doesn't say a thing the whole time. In fact, the most she does is take my hand in both of hers and hold it very carefully, like it was a glass egg, or a crown jewel. Like I was just a fragile person. I guess, at the time, I kind of was too.

I keep blabbering about that house with the blue floors, and she keeps listening. After a while, I talk my throat dry, but I keep at it, telling her about my early escapades in a raspy, thin voice. And then I start falling asleep. Once that happens…well, I'll be honest; that's when things got funky.

So it kind of went like this: I'd be yapping along about the foul closets or why you never went in Mauricio's room on Wednesday, and then I'd just doze off because I was so tired. I kept talking, though, even when I was asleep. Not really asleep, actually, more of I have my eyes closed and I couldn't move my body, but I could still hear my pitiful voice and I could still feel Raven there around me. The next time I'd open my eyes, I would never be sure if I was really awake or just dreaming. Or sometimes, with my eyes shut, I'd start seeing these things in my heads, like this huge clownfish twisting around with all the colors changing. It just twisted and twisted, and suddenly it wasn't a clownfish anymore. Then Raven would say something, right up close to my ear, and the clownfish would leave and I'd open my eyes, only to find the clownfish twisting on the ceiling, or in her eyes.

That clownfish. It stayed there all night long.

"Yah know, clownfish can change their sex," I told her. She made this noise in her throat, some sort of quiet acknowledgment. "And elephants are the only animal that can die of heartbreak,"

"You've obviously never met a human being, then." She whispers back, out of that same deep part of her throat. I curl up tighter, close my eyes.

When the clownfish comes back, her words come with it. Over and over again. Or maybe it's just the lyrics to White Rabbit, because suddenly they start sounding a lot alike. White Rabbit brings an image of Dr. Gonzo in the bathtub, and those damn cantaloupes. Huh. The clownfish is juggling the cantaloupes now. And everybody's saying her words with abalone teeth.

I sit straight up, my eyes open, and the clownfish and cantaloupes have taken off on the Jefferson Airplane. I launch the two of us off the bed and onto the floor, pinning her down with my hands knotted up in her shirt.

For the first time ever, I see her face light up with surprise. She's surprised, and she's really showing it. That makes me smile.

"Listen," I tell her, and I'm sure I sound most deranged by this point, "that blue floor? Yeah. I can deal with that stuff. And the irrigation ditch. That's pie. And what I just can't do, though, you listen? I can't be away from my brothers. That is just…" I look around for an adjective to make her realize how horrible this really is. But she gets the idea, and I fall silent.

"Jinx, calm down. I understand that you're very stressed out about your brothers, and I understand that—" She starts talking, but her using the word 'understand' rubs me the wrong way. Because she is being the condescending good-guy, and after that initial flash of surprise, she's shown nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing at all.

I deck her, right in the kisser. I've never actually hit her before, and she's never actually hit me. We always fight, sure, but we're too quick for one another; the only way we ever get damage in is by our powers. In fact, this trip is the first time I've ever touched her, probably.

It shocks her, obviously. She looks up at me, mildly curious, dabbing her fingertips along her jaw where I hit her, makes that noise in her throat again. She thinks I'm done, though. I'm not done.

"Don't talk about them like that," I warn, "demons don't know what family means."

That does it. I have to smile at the red in her eyes. Oh, I've pissed her off now! Raven, the unruffled, composed, Ice Queen has been knocked off her high horse by me. I don't even regret it when she rolls up from the ground in a single, fluid movement like how the clownfish twisted and knocks me off of her. I grin up at her, at the red in her eyes.

Then I pass out. For good, this time.