/JADE/

You know that sensation you get in dreams, the one where you're walking along a cliff edge and you know one wrong step will send you plummeting to your bloody and gruesome end? That's basically how I'd been living for the past few weeks, in a comatose dream like state. Barely awake but with at least one foot in reality, the other one barely teetering over the edge. Beck and I had hardly grunted at each other in passing, and I was relieved to find the ache was finally beginning to subside, replaced permanently with a cold and empty feeling, equivalent to someone gutting out my insides to leave nothing behind but veins, tissue and bone structure. I couldn't determine which state was worse.

One thing was certain though, I was slowly becoming stronger with the growing days Beck and I were apart. I knew I could survive without him. It was just fucking hard to get used to a completely different routine. I had honestly contemplated going around to his trailer once or twice, but had managed to hold myself back. I wasn't going to grovel to him. But since then, I had vowed to keep my mind active and busy at all times, using any little thing to distract myself from him, to push all of my negativity somewhere else. He would never see how much our break up bothered me. Because it didn't.

No.

My fingertip slides up the length of a page, turning to the next one. My own messy handwriting stares back at me and I feel a pang in my chest. These were all my scripts, all my songs, my hopes, fears and dreams for the future. It wasn't a diary. I refused to call it that. It was a journal. A journal where I wrote down anything that intrigued me. Hasty scribbles made in the early morning sunrise or One Acts in the dead of night, with half asleep eyes and a cup of luke-warm coffee. Writing which sometimes made it into pages of dialogue or faded into obscurity. It was whatever I wanted it to be and it was mine.

I keep flicking through the pages of the journal, lingering on some passages while purposefully skipping over others. Beck had been the inspiration for some of these ideas and I can't stop torturing myself as I flip through, each fresh page bringing about a new wave of painful memories. I can feel the gnawing ache starting to build up again in my stomach, the red hot coals starting to burn and I quickly toss the notebook aside, the pages fluttering through the air, before falling open to reveal one hastily scribbled word:

'Tori.'

What? Tori? When the hell did I write Tori? Was the universe trying to show me it had a fucking sense of humor? I grit my teeth and snatch up the journal, studying the word again to make sure I had read it properly. Tori. Tori -fucking- Vega. I don't know what it was but she made me want to slam my head into a brick wall, her positive happy-go-lucky attitude was sickening. She was always...there. Our friendship - if you could even call it that - was rocky to begin with, but now, after everything that had happened, I felt like I owed her. Which was stupid, I owed her nothing. She was the one who had decided to wander down the alleyway. I had the situation handled fine on my own.

What the chiz was I even writing about her?

Tori wazzed me off today? Tori got the lead role, again?

I mean seriously, West. What? I had done nothing but torment this woman and yet she still persisted with me and I kept chipping away at her. She'd become like some sort of annoying splinter, irritating underneath the skin but I kinda enjoyed it because I could pick at it and make it sore. Her little heroic spiel in the Black Box Theater was still at the back of my mind, her sweet voice striking a chord in the deepest parts of my resentment. She was still there for me. After everything I'd done to her since she started Hollywood Arts. I had to hate her because I swear, Tori was either really stupid or she was secretly some sort of extreme masochist-

"Hey, Jade?" I snap my journal closed and turn to glare at my irk of a younger brother, annoyed and slightly surprised he'd barged in.

I couldn't remember the last time we spoke.

"What, Cody? I told you to knock before you come in. Or better yet, don't come in at all."

"I just wanted to say I've noticed." He continues to talk calmly, ignoring my snide remark.

I raise one skeptical eyebrow. "You've noticed what?"

"That you're happier." His words make my blood ice over. "Or...at least better than you were a few weeks ago."

I blink twice, making sure I'd heard him correctly.

"I'm happier?" I roll the word around on my tongue.

"You probably don't notice it, but you're smiling a little more and I don't hear you screaming in your sleep as often."

"I- what is this? Analyze Jade day? Get out!"

"...But sometimes I can hear you talking in your sleep. Someone's name-" He keeps talking, my anger starting to boil underneath the surface.

"I said out!"

I don't let him finish, snatching his shirt roughly. I haul him outside with a snarl and slam the door, ramming the homemade dead bolts into place. My back hits the wood and I slide down, clutching the journal to my chest. My breath is forced out, ragged, rough and so hard it shakes me. I can physically feel my heart trying to tear out of my chest.

I didn't realize I'd been talking in my sleep. I thought it had stopped since Sophomore year. I could only imagine who I had been calling out for and the thought made my stomach take an unpleasant lurch.

I tilt my head back.

Up until now, I figured at least my room was a sanctuary, a place I could lose myself in. I naively believed I was safe from my tormenting emotions but in actual reality, my room had gradually warped into a prison, the lingering aspects of the past everywhere. I could feel the four walls starting to close in on me. I tuck my knees into my chest, whimpering as I started to slip, started to lose control.

This proved it. This just fucking proved nothing would provide any real escape from the world. No matter how hard I tried to fake it, the hard cold exterior that shielded me was starting to show cracks, it was starting to break.

You know why, don't you Jade?

My eyes flicker and focus on the metal hanging frame from across my bed, the space now vacant of the scissors which were once held inside.

I don't even have time to contemplate why I did it, before the darkness rushes over me and this time, I willingly surrender.

A/N: Please keep those crackin' reviews coming! I love seeing how much you're enjoying the story. All your comments and encouragement has inspired me to start another Jori, possibly a crime AU this time. R&R!