I do not own Misfits or any of it's wonderful characters, I just brought my own lunchbox in and decided to hang out.

Hey guys! If you've appeared here whether on purpose or by accident... welcome. And I hope you enjoy reading.

...

Simon spends a lot of time thinking. It's not like there's much else to do when a majority of ones time consists of either being in their room, or switching between therapists, with the occasional meal thrown in between. He's in his room a lot. There isn't much outside it that interests him.

Considering visitors aren't allowed to give gifts to the patients, his mum had to take home the stack of comics she'd recently brought up to him. He tried to pretend that it didn't bother him so she wouldn't get more upset than she already was, but he'd be lying if he said he didn't wish she'd spoken out about it more. Instead of just sliding them back into her look with a dejected sigh and a small frown. He'd have said something if he wasn't still so focused on not talking to anyone.

There are small distractions, he supposes. Like that small library the unit has that he's allowed to check books out of. Although the selection is small and most of the books look like they're meant for children. He did find The Odyssy and had taken a shot at reading that, but quickly gave up when he realized that it was just as depressing a book as his life seemed to be at that moment. It's been staring at him from its spot on the dresser for a week now and each time the boredom seems to increase, he gets the urge to torture himself with it.

Until that moment possibly happens, or something better comes along- something he doesn't put much stock in these days- he mostly just sits with his own thoughts. Which can be a pretty scary thing during times like these, when he's feeling so out of control.

Sometimes he'll think about his parents, wondering how they're making due at home without him. He tries not to be bitter, tries to rationalize- something he's always been good at- their reasoning for sending him here, but most of the time it gets drowned out by anger when it dawns on him that they let him get stuck in here like some trapped animal. There's a metaphorical chain around his ankle that he spends ninety percent of the day trying to chew his way out of.

He imagines them and Rebecca at the dinner table, his chair empty, and them chatting or laughing like there isn't the giant elephant in the room that is their missing son. He wonders if they think about him. They told him they do during their second visit together. His mum said it's not the same not having him there to chat with like they usually do after she's worked a long shift at the pub. His dad said it's strange not having some sort of science show on the telly as background noise while he builds his model airplanes- something they used to do together when he was a kid, as he makes sure to remind him. They talk to him like these things are suddenly some far distant part of the past, and not like he wasn't just sitting in that same living room a few weeks prior watching Doctor Who.

He tells himself that they say all these things when they're with him, but that in reality it seems more likely that they just go about their days like they don't have a son in a mental institution. It must be easier that way. His dad did say he often gets stopped at the supermarket by neighbors and asked for the details of what happened, because apparently whatever rumors might have been floating around just weren't gossip-y enough. They need to feed that itch of knowing that there's just one more person out there that they're better than. He can picture one of his parents possibly telling someone that he's just gone off for a little while, like his cousin Natalie did that one time... for nine months. Sure the circumstances are entirely different but the main concept is the same. Something happened, they're gone, but they'll come back. They'll come back and things will be different. Will he come back different?

When he's not thinking about his parents, he's picturing that day with Matt and his mates. That day, as he's come to call it, is still as fresh in his mind as if it happened yesterday. Sometimes when he closes his eyes he can still feel their hands on him, hitting him, hurting him. He'll hear their taunts like a screaming storm inside his head, blocking out any other rational mindset. He'll get so lost in repeating out loud the things they'd said that sometimes he'll even catch himself doing it outside his room, and snap out of it to find one or two of the nurses staring at him. They'll give him that look that lets him know they're sure he's gone off the deep end and he'll quickly clam back up, reverting somewhere deeper inside himself as the thoughts rage on.

When those moments aren't mentally beating him down, he'll find small ways to combat it. He'll go over all the come back's he could have come up with to sling at them while they hit him. He'll lie awake in his bed at night and hiss these brutal words that he didn't even know could come out of him. Simon even goes as far as picturing what it would have been like if he'd fought back, if he'd just done something to defend himself. He may not have been able to take on all five of them, but what about just one? What if he'd been able to get his hands on that kid with the scraggle tooth? How he would have enjoyed hurting him, he thinks. But then, like it always does, the guilt will come settling in as he reminds himself that there's a reason he didn't fight back. One part niceness, two parts cowardice. He tries to tell himself that he didn't fight back because deep down he's a good person, and that he's better because he didn't. While the other half of him is spent kicking himself for being too scared to take a stand. Even if the opportunity arose for him to do something, he probably wouldn't have.

In the early morning, before this prison has come to life and the screaming starts, and all these things are expected of him, Simon will creep out of bed. He'll make his way over to the window and he'll remove his shirt. There, he'll stand in front of that it until he catches his reflection and runns his hands across his skin, over arms and his chest and stomach. He allows himself the briefest of moments to trace the bruise along his neck with his finger tips, prodding at it until it hurts like it did when he first got it. He tells himself he's real. He's still a part of something and he exists, even if it feels like there's a giant hole where his heart used to be. He'll pinch and poke at himself until it stings and the air feels like it's settled back into his broken lungs and then, only then, does he feel like he can face the day. Because it's not living if he's not sure if he's alive. And even then there are still those crippling moments where he questions whether or not he even wants to be that.

This place can get confusing and terrifying. It has the ability, he's learning, to make you question everything. Like how much time really goes by in the day. He swears the minutes stretch into hours, and yet night time always seems to turn to morning in the time it takes to blink. Sometimes, even at the dead of dawn, the halls are too dark and the quiet is too loud. He'll swear he hears the taps dripping in the bathrooms and he'll walk faster like there are monsters on his tail. Maybe there are, he wonders. This place seems haunted by all the people who have passed through it, their old presense so persistently still acknowledged by the scratches on the doors and the nicks at the tables. Those people still exist here, it seems. And he wonders if he'll become on of them. Just another ghost.

These are the things that get to him, the little biting thoughts that seem to gnaw down to the bone. The incapability to turn them off because there's just too much time to think about it all. It's there in the morning at breakfast, and mid afernoon during therapy when he's pretending to care about all those things he's not actually talking about, and at night... at night, always. At bed time with the shades drawn and the covers pulled up to his chin, hands tucked tight under the pillow, gripping at it as the weight of all there is to mull over coats his brain like thick tar and makes it impossible for sleep to come. Not that he minds so much anymore, not going to bed.

Simon used to love sleep. He had this thing where he loved fighting it, holding off until just that right moment of complete and utter exhaustion and then closing his eyes and feeling it drift over and pull him under. It used to be comforting, a calm in the wake of the things that plagued him during the day. There, he could forgot. He could hand it all over and just give in. It's not like that anymore. In here, there's wide awake staring at the ceiling until you feel like your eyes will bleed because if you close them, you're only going to hear the sound of that chair hitting the floor repeatedly. Or the jeers and laughter of people who more than likely would have been very pleased if you had succeeded in killing yourself. Or your sister screaming about not knowing how to help you as the world slipped away for those few brief, terrifying moments that now you only wish would return.

Sleep is nightmares. Sleep is finally closing his eyes and imagining he's back at home in his own bed, and waking up every morning here.

His therapist gave him a notebook, a journal she called it. When she realized she wasn't going to get him to talk. She told him, "Write what you can't say." For a while he ignored it, knowing that every day he would have to turn it into her and she would read how he felt about things. Things he still doesn't quite know how to put into words, anyway. But tonight, at bed time, when the lights are already meant to be out and he's thinking about how his thoughts have turned into a loud buzz like an angry swarm of bees, he pulls it out from under his mattress.

Opening it up and taking out the pen tucked inside, he stares at that blank page for a long time. There's so much he could put here, he knows. It's like staring down at a clean slate, all the other horrible shit wiped away for the moment. There's just him and his empty book, and endless possibilities.

When I was a young boy, he starts, hand quivering until steadying out firmly as the words drip out in ink. I used to rip the wings off flies and watch them walk around until they stopped moving.

Now the wings have been ripped off me.

...

It's confounding to him, how certain things end up bothering him when he knows they shouldn't. Times when he'll ask himself why he even cares about the thing that will all the sudden start to annoy him. Like today, for example, during his one on one with Doctor Lewis. The way she said not one word about the journal he'd so precariously set on her desk after agonizing over it for a few days.

It was impossible for him to take his eyes off it during his session, with it sitting there like some flashing neon red sign. Doctor Lewis hadn't paid a single mind to it when she'd sat down at her desk, like it wasn't even there. He'd waited there on the couch, with his knees pressed tight together, hunched over. He waited for her to pick up it, to flip it open, for her to read those words he'd used up all his energy to write. She didn't, of course. In fact, she'd even moved i from where he'd sat it like it was in here way. As if he had inconvenienced her by setting it there. At least that was how it felt.

Now here he is at lunch two hours later, and he can't stop thinking about it. He never would have expected it to make him so upset, but it has. He sits with a plastic fork in hand, shoving around the food on his plate, going over in his head what he might have done wrong to make her not want to read it.

Couldn't she have pretend to be at least somewhat interested in it? After all, she was the one who had given it to him. She had told him when she gave it to him that she assumed it would never get used, but he'd done it. Surely that counted for something? Some sort of progress? A notch that lead him one step closer to going home?

The conflicting part is not knowing why he cares so much. Hadn't he told himself before he set it down on her desk that he hoped she would ignore it? He's never liked talking, anway. No doubt that's exactly what she would have made him do, ask him about what he wrote and why he wrote it, and what did he mean? As if he'd have the answers to those sort of questions anyway. He'd pretty much spent the first fifteen minutes of his session making up possible reasons to give her for when she did ask.

And she hadn't.

And it hasn't bothered him before but now it does, and he feel ridiculous. He sits there imagining going back to her room and demanding an answer when someone clears their throat behind him, causing him to jump. Tensed up, he slowly looks over his should to find a nurse standing behind him, a little too close for comfort. He leans forward a bit, not taking his eyes off her, and is it his imagination flaring up again or does she look a bit unnerved, just then?

"You all right?" she asks in a monotone voice, like she asks it so often in a day that eventually she stops seeming like she actually cares what she's asking. When he doesn't respond, she asks again, this time a rise of annoyance in her tone.

He sinks down in his seat and nods briskly, trying to avoid anymore eye contact with her.

That's another one of those things he can't stand about this place: someone's always staring, and usually at him. Therapists, nurses, security... other patients. They think he doesn't see it, how quick they are to look away, turn their heads, but Simon's always been acutely aware of things like that. Years of being bullied definitely helped. If he closes his eyes, and it's silent enough, he can still hear their jaunts and laughter.

Here in the unite, it's something else entirely. There's no noise when he catches someone watching him. Not so much a cough or a sneeze. They just...stare, quietly. And there's been something else about these looks that he can't quite put his finger on. Something deeper and more complex, he thinks.

"Try less mumbling to yourself."

He turns his head to find the nurse still standing there and he gives her a confused look.

She rolls her eyes. "You were talking to yourself before. I would recommend less of that, wouldn't want people to get the impression that you're..." She makes a whistling sound accompanied by a finger twirling motion next to her head.

Crazy, he thinks, possibly even lowering his eyes at her. Possibly even holding that look until, with a click of her tongue, the nurse turns and walks away. But not without a parting look over her shoulder and the shake of her head.

Simon bites down on his tongue and resists glowering more. At least until she's entirely gone. Looking back at the table with a scowl, he tell himself to let it go. It's not worth getting worked up about. In all reality, she did have a small bit of a point.

Glancing over his shoulder a fraction, he surveys the room from his secluded table in the corner. It's looking around at the others- the real mentals- everyday, that puts into perspective just how far down from actually crazy he falls on the list. It's not like he's sitting in the middle of the dining hall beating his fists against his face, screaming. Or being restrained and hand fed lest he stab someone with his plastic fork. He's nothing like that, never could be.

So then why is he the one subjected to sitting in the farthest spot in the room, with the nurses treating his quietness, or even small out burst, like some extreme case? He doesn't get it. At least not then.

It isn't until later that it all becomes clear.

...

Rule number twenty- three: when needing to use the loo, always contact a nurse.

Rule number twenty- four: never go into the loo by oneself.

Funny, Simon wouldn't have expected his first offense to be over something as simple as taking a piss. They're rubbish rules anyway, he tells himself as he pushes open the door to the loo and steps inside. Walking to the urinal, he rationalizes his breaking the rules. In fifteen minutes group therapy would be starting, and it made more sense to him to go first, instead of standing outside in a line after with a full bladder and people who take too long to go. This is a better idea.

Simon, unfortunately, still hasn't quite come to terms with the fact that most of his idea aren't actually good ideas. Sure, sometimes he comes up with some effective ones, but he's been off the past few months. He hates to think it, but he'd link it to what happened that night. His thoughts take him back there for a moment, and he supposes he could attribute that to why one minute he's pulling up his joggers, and the next he's being hoisted up under the chin and slammed into the wall. He wasn't paying attention

His skull makes a sickening crack against the tiles, blinding white taking over his vision as it now feels like his eyes are rolling around inside his head. The pressure against his throat increases until his feet leave the ground, and there's only one thing flashing through his mind, then. He's back in his room with that rope around his neck, but there's no music this time, only a loud ringing in his ears. Ringing and pain as the hold on his neck tightens further against a bruise that hasn't even faded.

He's going to die, he thinks, and instinctively starts kicking his legs, which only makes his body slide down on the tile and the pressure to increase.

"P- please," he chokes, the word coming out like a high- pitched squeak.

"Quiet boy," a voice croons.

Simon stills long enough to be able to intake a small gasp of air as he realizes that he recognizes the voice of this person. Opening his eyes, someone comes into his line of slightly blurred vision. A name, he thinks. What's his name?

Sam! His mind screams the name. Snap Sam, he recalls someone in group once referring to him, on account of how quick his moods could change. Paranoid schizophrenic, someone else had said. But what was it the group therapist had said about him? That he was harmless? Or was it mostly harmless? What would they call this, a small mood swing? Was he even medicated?

"Sam," he wheezes, quick to cringe a second later when Sam's face comes close to his, dangerously close. He gags at the stench of Sam's rank breath, caused by god knows what, as he breaths into his nostrils. That gagging makes his throat hurt more and he struggles to turn his head, hoping to get a small gasp of fresh air.

"Quiet boy got something to say? Quiet boy finally gonna talk?"

Talk? He'd start singing God save the Queen if he knew it meant he'd be released... and at least mildly unscathed. The burn of clothing rubbing against his raw throat is uncomfortable enough as it is, like the time he ripped a blister on his hand off using sandpaper. He'd just wanted to know what it felt like, and now he had a new reminder.

"Let me-" he starts to say, but Sam quickly cuts him off with a low, keening whine at the back of his throat. It's a sound that almost makes Simon feel bad for him.

"Trouble," he bites out with a twitch. "Gonna... trouble. Trouble. Nurses!" He hisses, his eyes widening. "Nurses talking. Quiet boy. Too quiet they say. B- bug eyes. Creepy. Think I can't hear 'em. Can't..." He twitches again, violently, something that makes Simon tremor. It gets worse when Sam goes back to pressing hard on his throat.

"Dangerous, he says, draws the word out real slow. "Quiet boy's dangerous. Head case. Hurt... hurt someone." Sam's eyes, though he wouldn't think it possible, seem to grow wider still. "You'd hurt me, quiet boy?"

How does one answer that? A bit hard to shake your head when someone's got their arm on your jugular. Simon tries a different tactic, choosing to mouth the word no instead, as many times as he can.

"Nurses says," he replies in a panicked voice.

God he wishes he could say something, anything. Call the nurses liars, scream for help, anything besides this silence. And when Sam applies that final amount of pushing, he swears this is it. He'd survived a hanging in his bedroom only to wind up being strangled to death in the loo by a guy who smells faintly of vomit. What a way to go, he thinks, closing his eyes.

There's no way to escape the ending here, but maybe he can make the scenery a little better in his head? It's always been nicer there, anyway. What would his end credits look like, he wonders right before gravity's pull envelopes him and he falls hard on his side against the floor. A noise he might compare to a dying seal escapes him as the breath he didn't even really have gets knocked out of him.

When he does finally get some air back to his lungs, it's in short, quick gasps. Worse, his hip feels like it might be broken. Another bruise to add to the collection. It's already extremely painful to even prop himself up on his elbow. It takes him a bit to regain some focus, he must struggle a good ten minutes working at get his composure back. He's slowly managed to work himself up to a sitting position when a loud crack behind him makes him flinch and curl into himself, bringing back a searing pain in his side from the fall.

He waits a minute, unsure of whether he even wants to look, before curiosity gets the best of him and he uncurls a little and turns his head to the right. Gaze settling on the wall behind him, his mouth falls into a horrific O at the sight of blood. He'd been pinned to that wall only moments before, he reminds himself. His heart leaps as he cranes his head around to find it's source and he catches Sam right as he crashes into it again at full speed.

A scream that might have escaped had he known what was going to happen before that moment catches at the back of his throat. It doesn't take much for his adrenaline to kick in, and he hurriedly claws his way to his feet, no thought of the pain he was currently in.

When Sam turns to look at him, Simon's stomach convulses, causing his eyes to well up. Sam stands there, chest heaving, with blood pouring down his face like a curtain from the gash leading from one side of his forehead to the other. Simon's never seen so much blood before, nothing so red and sticky looking. It's like that for a while, him just standing there, that blood forming into a puddle at his feet.

Simon swallows hard, throat catching fire with the action. "S- sam," he tries quietly.

Sam's head snaps up, and Simon only makes out one word: Run, before Sam is charging at him.

He doesn't remember starting to scream.

...

"You're lucky security was close by."

Simon looks up from his spot on the bed in the nurses station, at the nurse he slightly recalls showing him around his first day here. He gives a slight nod.

"He hadn't been taking his medicine. That's the cause of all this, really. I've worked with Sam for six months now, he's not usually like that."

A psychotic murderer? Simon thinks, holding back a scoff.

"I'm sorry you had to go through that. The other nurses... they'll say you were partly to blame for going in alone but..." She sighs. "I always thought it was such a silly rule. And either way, it doesn't mean you deserve what happened. If they try to give you hell for it, just let me know and I'll take care of it."

There's something in her stare he can't quite place... sincerity, maybe? A look he's not quite used to receiving from anyone here, and it makes him nervous. He nods and looks back at the floor.

"Did he hurt you?"

He looks up for a brief moment.

"Did he?"

It's a surprise to him, the way his head slowly bobs the confirmation. He wonders why he answered, what he's doing, as he watches her cross the room towards him. Maybe the look she gave him before wasn't so bad after all? Maybe it felt good? Maybe he wants her to show it again, that kind crinkle around her eyes. How long's it been since someone showed him that? Almost unconsciously, though, he flinches when she sits down close to him on the small hospital bed.

"It's okay," she says without pause. "I just want to make sure you're okay." Her voice is light and soft, like the comfort of having a warm blanket draped around him. Still, that small bit of apprehensiveness is still there, and he watches her carefully as she raises her hands up and asks, "where?"

And he almost does it. Nearly. Hand half raised towards his throat, to the sweatshirt covering the bruise, he stops, hoping she doesn't catch it, and lowers his hand to his hip.

She quirks her brow. "Really?"

He nods, heat pooling in his cheeks and around his ears.

"All right," she breathes out, standing up from the bed, and he watches her alarmed. "Well, then, as it's a blow the waist sustained injury, I am required to have a male staff take a look and evaluate it so I'll just go get someone quick and-" She stops at the vehement shake of his head. "What, no you don't want me to go get someone else or... no, you no longer wish to see your injury attended to?"

When he doesn't say anything, she sighs loudly. "You know, Simon, this would be so much easier if you would just talk to us." At his persisted silence, she rubs at her forehead before telling him, "That's fine. Fine. Don't worry about group, I'll explain what happened. If they haven't already heard. You can retire to your room for the evening."

It stings a little, this thing that feels like a form of rejection from her, though if he were in a logical mindset he'd see that it's not. Standing up, he shuffles away on heavy feet, with her eyes burning holes into his backside the entire way.

...

The light in Simon's room is too dim. It's hard to really see himself clearly standing in front of the window, shirt off, staring at his reflection. They're not allowed to have glass in their rooms, which makes a mirror non optional, the only reason he uses this means to begin with. Unless he wanted to wait until morning to go back into the same loo he'd been attacked in and assess the damage.

The doctor that frequents the building every two weeks or so had told him that his stitches in his forehead could come out soon, something he's been looking forward to.

Although the news that he'd more than likely have a permanent scar in that spot hadn't sat too well with him. The only solution he's been able to come up with as a means to hide the grotesque feature is to part his hair in a way that covers it, swooped over far enough that only one small stitch is slightly visible.

That's only one thing, though. It's something he can find himself forgetting is there unless he accidentally bumps it, or crinkles his brow too hard. Then that small twinge will remind him and he'll quickly make sure his hair is in place. Other than that, it's almost non existent. It's not the worse of the damage to his body, he thinks, standing in front of the window with his head tilted back. The bruise around his neck is more predominant after the incident in the loo. He can feel the rawness of it when he swallows and he cringes at it all.

Ugly, he tells himself. As if there weren't enough things that he found wrong with himself, that he constantly put himself down over. His wide eyes passed down from his mum, ones that earned him the title bug- eyes in school. His wide lips that make him seem in a perpetual state of displeasure, pulling together tight when his face is relaxed so he frequently looks like he's scowling. How big his ears seem, protruding from his head as though they're trying to escape.

Those are just the flaws he finds in his face. He's also never been a fan of his boxed chest, small waist, but wide hips... or his chicken legs. He's never needed anyone to tell him he looked like a freak, not when he can look in the mirror and see all those things himself. And now there's a nasty purple and black and bright red bruise strained all the way across his neck and it just kills him inside. It's all he can ever focus on, this thing he gave himself that feels like it's never going to go away.

Almost every day, at some point going to the loo, with a nurse looking on, he'll pull down the sweatshirt they'll only sometimes let him wear, and he'll stare at and try to will it to fade faster. To disappear. He was always so good at doing that, why couldn't his imperfections? And then he wondered, if someone feels invisible enough, wouldn't that make their flaws invisible, too?

Reaching up, he tenderly presses his finger against the lower part of the mark and winces. Sam had definitely hurt him more than he let on to the nurse. Any time he moves his head or swallows, a burning heat sears through the spot around his throat, making his eyes well up. Add that to the throbbing in his hip and side, and he's basically a walking billboard for abuse.

It's there, with his hand still at his throat, that the words, not just the actions that Sam committed in that room, come back to him. Even in his despair of what was happening to him, apparently enough had managed to slip in and wiggle its way into his brain. Dangerous, Sam had said. Nurses whisper about the quiet boy. They call him dangerous. The realization sinks in slow, like a drawn out dose of medicine in his veins, making his whole body feel on fire.

All the little things finally seem to click into place. The way everyone goes quiet whenever he's around, the way they constantly stare at him, watching like they're waiting for something. They do it because they think he's capable of something he's never even thought of. They think he's dangerous, they think he could hurt someone.

His chest aches at the thought, breaths coming fast and shallow. He turns away from the window and sinks down to the floor, pulling his knees up to his chest as the first sob escapes him. He sits like that for a long time, finding it hard to pull in air, as thick, fat tears fall down his cheeks. It's not a bad melt down, not like the one he had at the club or the hospital, but it's awful none the less. It runs deep, like it's making its way through his body digging out tiny holes where it wants to crawl in. It hurts. He thinks it'll never stop hurting. Every time he starts feeling like things might look up, life finds a way to take it all back. It feels like life will always be taking it back.

Simon doesn't go to sleep that night.

...

The following day, eyes heavy and undoubtedly black and sunken in, Simon has a small go round with one of the nurses over whether or not he should still go to group. They insist he can skip again, but after a night of restlessness, with all those thoughts of what everyone thinks of him going through his head, he knows what he has to do. And that doesn't include sitting in his room all day, watching the clock tick by. He had simply stared the nurse down despite her protests until she relented and told him she'd let the group therapist know he'd be coming in.

Everything about the day feels sluggish, from breakfast to his one on one with Doctor Lewis who, despite her best efforts of trying to get him to talk about what happened in the loo, gives up about fifteen minutes in and just scribbles away in her notebook while Simon stares at the ceiling. She still hasn't brought up his journal. Which, inherently, isn't bothering him like it was before. Not when he's got other things weighing on his mind.

The only part of group that did interest him was Doctor Lewis informing him that there'd be one less person in their group sessions from that moment on, on account of them moving facilities. She didn't give a name, of course, but it was enough to let Simon know who, and for that he was relatively relieved. At least he wouldn't have to worry about another assault if he went to the loo alone again, though he doesn't think that's a rule he'll be inclined to break again any time soon.

By the afternoon, he's in a bit of a foul mood, between the combination of being tired and his hip and throat still hurting. They'd offered him medicine at the nurses station but he had turned it down with a wave of his hand. The last thing he needed was something making him more disoriented than he already felt half the time. Apparently his mood is noticeable by the time group rolls around, as the first thing the group therapist does is ask him if he's doing okay. He nods once before scuffling across the room to an empty chair, with empty chairs beside him.

No one ever sits by him.

This notion just builds onto his already soured emotions. He scowls at the empty chairs for a moment before slipping into his seat. Simon watches as the other members from group come in, a few wheeled in, and one carried. Freaks, he thinks. Like me. Maybe he does belong here, after all? He stares at them until someone looks back, and he turns his gaze to the blue tiles of the floor. How often has his spent his days doing this, already? How many more will there be?

Nothing in today's topic of discussion interests him, not that many do. Though there has been an occasional day where something someone will say catches his attention and he'll take notice, nothing today draws him in. It's some regurgitated version of the previous days topic, a learn- to- love- yourself load of shit. He spends more time frowning than anything, trying to tune it out. When are they going to get to him so he can get this over with, release this thing that's spent all day building up inside him?

Patience used to be one of his strong points, but he appears to be lacking that as he clears his throat loudly, interrupting someone else talking. The group therapist turns to him, brows raised. "Simon?"

He glances up, blinks a few times and sits up straighter in his seat, willing himself to look bigger than he feels. Quick, he tells himself, like ripping off a plaster. Do it before he loses the courage. "I-" The word comes out in a squeak, which doesn't help his frayed nerves. Taking a deep breath, he tries again, that lump at the back of his throat slowly melting away.

"I would never hurt anyone," he tells them, voice stronger than he expected from himself. It's determined and unwavering. "I'm not... like that," he continues, looking around the room with an anxious itch at the base of his skull. They're all watching him... which was the point, really. But that doesn't stop how uncomfortable it makes him. Clearing his throat, he adds, "I do things for a reason." They go on staring until he finishes with, "That's... all I wanted to say."

The group therapist, eyes much wider than Simon can ever recall seeing, asks, "Anything else?"

Simon swallows hard and shakes his head.

"Any particular reason you felt like sharing this with the group?"

"That's all I wanted to say," he repeats, sinking back into the chair and letting his gaze go to the floor once again.

"Well," the therapist says, letting out a loud breath. "That was... what did you guys think? That was good, yes? Simon sharing with us. Good job, Simon."

It's not much, three simple words, but those three words suddenly mean the world to him. There's no reprimand for his interruption, no pressing for him to elaborate on what he meant, no chastising or judgment. There's only those three words, and even if they have their own bearings later, whether it affects whatever conversation he has with Doctor Lewis tomorrow, or it changes the way people look at him... it was worth it, he thinks. He's never had someone give him praise before.

"Good job," the therapist repeats, giving him a nod.

Simon returns a smile.

...

And there we have it, chapter 3. As always, Chapter 4 will get posted next week as I update every Wednesday.

Okay, so here's the thing guys. I can see it's gotten clicked on... but I have no idea if people are even enjoying this lump of crud I piled together lol. So reviews are always accepted and welcomed, even the not nice ones. Wanna tell me that you think Simon's a stupid wanker for doing what he did to himself... have at it. Any little bit of constructive criticism helps... and reviews are like a feel good button. They let me know I don't suck.

As for the question I got about whether or not Lucy will be in this story. Yes, she will be. It wouldn't be Simon in the unit without her. However, as this story is set pre- community service, non of the other characters will be appearing in most of this fic.

Thanks as always and I'll see you next week :)