Yay! I'm back! And I think I was pretty quick in writing this one seeing how it was a really hard chapter to write because so much internal stuff happens in it. I think I did a pretty good job at explaining what Chloe is feeling and stuff like that... you'll see.
Sooooooo... I honestly don't have much to say this time (darn, I love babbling), but you're more than welcome to go ahead and read the chatper. Guess what! It's chapter 10! As in TEN! ONE ZERO! I'm so proud of myself. I'm already in the double digits! I really don't know how long this story will be, my guess would be about as long as A Werewolf In The Making, which was 17 not counting the Author's Note at the end. It may be longer, it may be shorter, it would be really cool if it was the same length. Wow, I actually found a way to babble. Yay! No, seriously, I need to shut up and you need to read. So I'm stopping.
Disclaimer: Disclaimers do not count as babbling. It is simply a way to ensure that you understand that the Darkest Powers series belongs to Kelley Armstrong and not me, which ensures that Kelley does not sue me for false publication (or something like that), which ensures that I will not lose my laptop in the lawsuit. See? It's not babble. It's a legal contract!
Chapter 10: Of Course
"It's fine, everything's okay." Derek was stroking her hair, hugging her to his chest, trying calm her down, make her feel better. But how do you make someone who is slowly going mad feel better? How?
It wasn't like she didn't already know. She knew, was given so many hints, was actually told that she was going to go mad. But it seemed so far away, seemed like a problem for someone else, like she didn't need to worry about it. But now she had seen Jon.
Her future seemed to be unfolding before her, revealing all its untold secrets, not that there was much to tell. She could see it now. She was going to go mad. That was her fate. She would spend the rest of her life on the run from people looking for her and she would die a mad crazy women.
If she would even make it to the age to be considered a woman. Jon himself had expressed his fear that she would succumb to the madness before the norm because of her heightened powers. Was that her fate? Was her already doomed life going to be made shorter just because scientists messed with her genes? Was she destined to die a young mad girl? How much time did she have left? How long before she started going mad? Was she already going crazy? How do know if you're crazy?
Chloe squeezed her eyes shut as tears started to leak out. She was scared. More scared than she had ever been before. She'd never really thought of the madness that was going to consume her; at least not in detail. But now, seeing Jon, it was unnerving. It was like gazing into a looking glass and seeing yourself in a few years time only to find out that in the future you don't exist. It was like seeing your own doom, your own death.
How do you recover from something like that? How do you bounce back? She just saw her whole life played out in the crazed man she had just met, and she didn't like what she saw.
Her uncle had jumped off a building. The uncle she didn't even know she had until her world started crashing down around her. The uncle who was also a necromancer. The uncle who killed himself at 19. Was she destined to repeat his fate? Or was hers going to be worse?
She felt herself crashing. Felt herself drowning in the sea of despair that she had stumbled into. She was going under, moving farther away from the surface, gasping for air that wasn't there, struggling to live when living was just a lost cause. She was done for. It didn't matter that her heart was beating. It didn't matter that she was, for the moment, sane. She was already dead. She was going to die by her own hand, driven mad by the ghosts she could see; or she would spend her last days mad, slowly wasting away. It didn't matter, she was dead. No matter how she lived her life from here on out, she was going to go mad and die. End of story.
"Chloe." It was Derek, breaking into her thoughts, pulling her out of her head. She looked up at him, tears in her eyes.
Derek's eyes were full of worry, full of more worry than she had even seen in them. He was worried about her, and he should be. She was going mad.
"Chloe." His voice was so soft, so caring. He wrapped his huge arms around her, squeezing her tight, resting his chin on her head. "It's going to be okay." He said, moving his lips to her ear, "Everything is going to be okay." What was wrong with him? She was going to go crazy, she was going to be what Jon was now, there was no changing that. How was that okay?
"Chloe." It was Jessa.
Turning her head sideways, Chloe managed to catch a glimpse of Jessa between Derek's arms.
"Chloe," Jessa said again, firmly "Chloe, don't you dare go off the deep end on me." Jessa was glaring at her, as if daring her to start going crazy or something.
"But I'm going to go crazy." She said quietly. Derek looked down at her curiously, but he seemed to sense that she wasn't talking to him so he didn't say anything.
"And so am I!" Jessa snapped at her, waving her hands in the air, "I'm a necromancer, too! I'm gonna to go mad one day, just like you!" Jessa was getting closer and closer to Chloe's face, her eyes narrowed. Chloe shrank back into Derek, Jessa could be really scary when she wanted to be, and she really wanted to be scary now.
"Don't you go running to Derek to protect you, Chloe!" Jessa's green eyes were on fire and burning right into hers, "He can't protect you from this. Only you can deal with it. We are the only ones who can save us. You can't hide behind Derek and hope that everything will be okay. You have to fight it!"
"But I'm not strong like you." Chloe said weakly, "I can't just brush it off like you can."
"Brush it off?" Jessa stared at her like she was stupid, "You think I can brush something like that off? I saw what happened to Jon, I was right there with you, I saw him lose his marbles right along with you. You think that didn't scared me?" Jessa asked, "You think I didn't see myself in Jon? You think I don't care that I'm going crazy? That I can brush something like that off?" Jessa made an exasperated noise and looked to the sky.
When she looked back at Chloe tears were in her eyes, and her gaze had soften to an almost pitiful look, "Chloe, you have to stop thinking like that. You have to stop thinking that I am perfect and nothing can hurt me, that I can face anything, because it's not true." Jessa gave a watery smile, "I mean look at me, my spirit was kicked out of my body, the only one who can hear me is you, I can't even talk to my boyfriend and tell him that I love him because I don't have a body to do so." Tears were flowing out of both Jessa's and Chloe's eyes.
"I'm scared, Chloe." Jessa said quietly, "I'm so scared right now. I'm scared that I won't ever get my body back. I'm scared Simon will never hear me speak again. I'm scared that I will have to spend the rest of eternity watching as you guys grow up and move on and I will be left behind; that Simon will leave me behind. I'm not invincible, Chloe."
Jessa's voice was so soft, so flowing, "I'm scared that I will go crazy one day. I'm scared that one day I will get caught off guard by a ghost or a residual and be driven mad. I think about it at night sometimes, when everyone is asleep and I have no one to convince me otherwise. I think about it and it swirls around in my head, twisting my thoughts, until I finally start to believe that I am mad, that I have already gone crazy." Jessa smiled at her, "And whenever I start thinking that, I tell myself 'No, I'm not crazy, and I don't have to worry about being overwhelmed by ghosts because I have Chloe. She'll help keep me sane.' And then I can fall asleep because I know it's true."
"Look, Chloe," Jessa said, her voice getting harder, "You're strong, even if you don't think so yourself. I've seen it in you, you can handle anything, I know you can. And you can handle this, you can handle going mad, you know why? Because I'm here." Jessa smiled, "The way I see it, the only way we're going to stay sane as long as possible is to help each other, like we did in the hotel a few days ago. That really freaked me out, I'm not going to lie, but I had Simon and I had you and with your help I could fight what I saw and after that everything was okay. You have Derek and you have me and everyone else, you have us and since you have us you have hope. We both have hope. Because I know right now you're giving up, you're thinking your life is over. But it isn't."
Jessa motioned to Derek, "You have Derek, you two are perfect together, your life is just starting, it's not over yet. If you start dwelling on the fact that you're going to go mad then it will come faster because you're not fighting it, you're not trying to stay in our world, you're not trying to stay sane. And since you're not trying to stay sane then you're not going to stay sane. And you have pently of reasons to stay sane; I mean look at this hot hunk of werewolf," Jessa slapped Derek on the shoulder, her hand going through him, but Chloe laughed quietly anyway, "you wouldn't want to just give up on him, do ya? 'Cause he would never give up on you. Why? Because he loves you. Because you do crazy, unbelievable things for those you love."
"So, Chloe," Jessa was smiling now, "Would you, out of love, try your hardest to stay sane for me and Derek and Simon and Tori and Kit and your aunt?"
"Only if you promise to do the same for me." Chloe said quietly, smiling slightly.
"I promise." Jessa said.
Chloe buried her head in Derek's chest, trying to compose her thoughts, to compose herself. What Jessa said was true, if she dwelled on going mad, then it would only make her go mad quicker. And it wasn't like she couldn't live a full life. Margret, the evil women who trained her briefly, was rather old and she seemed sane (until she went and murdered everyone, but Chloe didn't think that was associated with being a necromancer), and Jon himself admitted that he had used his powers too much when he was younger. For all Chloe knew, she had decades before she started going mad, so she had better live them.
Jessa was right, she had to fight the madness, fight it to stay with Derek, who she loved, so she could stay with her friends. She could do it. How many times had she freaked out from seeing a ghost and her friends were there to help her feel better? How many times had Derek gotten angry at her for trying to deal with the ghosts on her own? Her friends wanted to help, and this was one thing that she couldn't handle on her own, so she should let them help her. With their help, maybe she could stay sane longer, maybe she wouldn't lose as much of herself to the madness once it caught up to her.
"Chloe." It was Derek, he still sounded worried. He didn't know about the epiphany she just had, didn't know that her fears were, for now, pushed aside. He reached down with his hand and pulled her chin up to look at him. "Chloe you know I would never let anything happen to you." His eyes were completely honest, staring deep into her own, "You know that I will always be there for you, to help you fight off things that you can't handle. You know that you can come to me if you're scared or worried and I will help you. You know all that right?" Derek was searching her eyes, "You know I will help you, right? You don't have to worry about what I will say, okay? If you're scared or worried come to me. If I freak out and get mad at you, that's okay, you don't have to worry about that, because I will get over it. I always do."
"Chloe," Derek's eyes softened and he moved his head close to hers, "I love you. I don't want anything to happen to you and I don't want you to have to deal with stuff like this all by yourself. You can tell me anything, and if I get mad, I'm sorry, but know that I like it better when I know what's going on. I'd rather you told me and I get mad than you not telling me at all, because I want to help. Yesterday, when you got that weird feeling before we entered the house, you should have told me. I want to know things like that."
Chloe couldn't help but think that they had had this talk so many times before, except before Derek was always angry with her for not telling her something. But now it was different. He was telling her to come to him about anything, and it wasn't like Chloe didn't already know she could do that, but now he was telling her that she didn't have to worry about him freaking out. That he cared and if he did freak out, it was because he loved her and that he was worried about her.
And he was right. The weird feeling she and Jessa got yesterday before entering the house was something she should have told him, something that she should have suspected meant something bad. And if she had told him then maybe, just maybe, Jessa would never had been possessed. And everything would be alright.
"I know, Derek." Chloe said softly, "I'll start trying to tell you things more often."
"Good." Derek wrapped his arms securely around her and kissed her forehead, "I love you Chloe and I want to help you and I can't help you if you think I will get mad and you don't tell me. And even if I do get mad-"
"It's because you love me." Chloe finished.
"Yeah," Derek smiled down at her, "Because I love you." He gently placed his lips on hers.
"Chloe?" Kit's hesitant voice interrupted her and Derek's moment.
Pulling back from Derek and turning to Kit, Chloe noticed that Jon was standing on the far side of the porch, about as far away from her as he could get, and he was staring at her, not in a creepy way, but in an observant way, no longer babbling.
"We can leave if you want to," Kit said, his face looking so sad, "I was afraid something like this would happen, and I'm sorry. We should have never of came here. We can leave now, we can do research, we'll find a way to save Jessa, we don't have to stay."
"No," Chloe said firmly, surprising Kit, "Jessa needs our help and this might be the only way to get the answers we need. I'll be fine." And to be honest, she already was fine, or at least for the moment she was. It was like Chloe was in a weird calm, a calm only reached after having a big shock and breaking down only to be put yourself together again quickly. She couldn't understand it, but her mind was suddenly so much clearer than it had been ever since Jessa's incident.
"Chloe's right," It was Jon, he was aproaching them, all traces of his insanity from minutes before was gone and he seemed like any other normal human being, "I do have the answers you are looking for. I know how to save your friend."
"How-?" Kit started, frowning.
"Do I know what answers you guys are looking for?" Jon finished asking for him, "I noticed the spirit of the girl right here." He motioned to Jessa, "I'm Jon by the way, and who might you be?"
"Jessa." Jessa answered, studying Jon.
"It's nice to meet you, Jessa." Jon nodded to her in greeting, then turned back to Kit. "I heard Jessa say something about the possibility of never growing up and never being able to talk to her boyfriend again, who is Simon. So it's obvious that she either died recently and you all are trying to bring her back to life, which everyone knows is impossible because she would just come back as a zombie and it just wouldn't be the same; or that her body was possessed and you need to figure out how to get her spirit back into her body which would makes more sense than the first option and would explain why you came to me looking for answers."
"So you know how to get her back?" Simon asked, hope in his eyes, though his voice didn't betray it.
"Of course I do." Jon said, as if it were the simplest thing in the world, "You just have to kill Jessa's body."
BUH BUH BUH BUUUUUUUUUMMMMMMMM!
So. Is Jon just crazy? Do they really have to kill Jessa? Is there no way to save her? Will all this be for nothing? Can armadillos really swim? All these questions and more will be answered in the next chapter if you review!
Which reminds me! I would like to thank everyone who reviewed! I got 10 whole reviews! I've never had that many reviews before for just one chapter! (Well maybe I have. To be honest I have never counted before). Anyway, I love you all so much and if it wasn't for all of you who reviewed this chapter it probably wouldn't be written for another week. So you know what that means? If you want more faster, REVIEW!
Thanks- Cheerfully Blue