| Fan Fiction |
by heartsong
---
I had always had a tendency to remember the most minute, most intricate details around me when something bigger was taking place.
I remembered, with all too much clarity, the swirl of the grey tiles around me as I melted gracefully onto the floor, the mix of white and blue above me and Hebe’s concerned face swirling into view.
Vaguely, and as though from over a great field, I heard Chun call my name, and I saw him pull out of his chair – heard the screech of metal against the tiled floor, as he tried to get to me.
I tried to pull myself together, to get control. I wanted to stop turning round and round, hey, I didn’t want to be a ballerina. I tried to get the world to stop staring down at me, and I thrust my hands out to grab something, anything at all. Why wasn’t the spinning about to stop? How come it was still whirling around me, a cacophony of wonderful, wonderful brilliant colours?
I ought to be able to do this. I was in control – I always was! I could do this. I could do this. No – I couldn’t let him see that this was what had become of me. I couldn’t. I could stop this – this spinning, this despair – this freak that was spinning out of control, out of reach.
I had to.
I struggled, and it was like drowning in a deep sea. Except there was something pulling me down but I didn’t know what and I couldn’t fight it. I was spiraling steadily downwards into a black, dark oblivion I didn’t even know.
It was like the one at night when I slept, half awake yet totally asleep. It was the one where I’d jerk at a slight noise and be able to think of ways to describe my fear; yet be totally conscious of what a deep sleep I was in.
I knew this feeling from somewhere. It was exactly like the one I’d experience when I slept, but deeper, darker. Heavier.
Too weak, Ella, too weak.
No, I wasn’t weak! I tried even harder to get control of my limbs but I couldn’t feel them. I didn’t know what this was. I clenched my fingers, trying to fumble for something to grab onto but it was so difficult because my fingers weren’t mine anymore. I couldn’t feel them moving.
I felt how my lips stretched wide – much too wide – into a smile as my eyes rolled back into my head. I saw the red, the orange, and then yellow behind my eyelids as I lifted my face in varying angles to the sun.
And then I saw, blurred, as in a dream, Ariel pulling his hand so he started and stumbled back a few steps. I felt the despair as he sat right back down. I wanted, with all my heart, to call out and say, No, Don’t sit back down. To say, Come, come to me. To say, Don’t you care anymore? I wanted to get up and pull him over. I tried to scream his name, but all that came out was a murmured syllable that Nobody could decipher.
But if I’d tried to put the details together, I wouldn’t get the final picture. All that would come out was a distorted picture, a warped tale to tell.
It was something like putting all the right pieces of a puzzle together, only to get a distorted image of what was on the cover. It was a distorted, cracked image – one you saw when you looked into the concaved and convex mirrors in the carnivals.
It was disappointing, but it was what we had to learn to deal with.
It was exactly how, when I was younger, I’d colour, with all the heart I had, a picture that spoke of my wildest fantasies: a Prince on a white horse which I coloured black, balloons flying into the sky. Their strings would be tied into a knot that was not meant to be there – A knot I’d drawn because I wanted the balloons to stay together no matter how much they squirmed and tugged at the binding.
All because I wanted to see the clashing colours, a bright splash against the gray skies that had begun to release rain; crying tears of hate and resentment.
Perhaps all I needed to make the picture look right was someone to tell me that it really was fine, so I could see.
When I was younger, that person was my mother.
Now? I have no doubt that it’d be Chun.
---
Black.
Oblivion.
Was that a light?
Yes.
Sprint, Ella, sprint!
Now!
I ran.
---
My eyes fluttered open.
It was dark here.
God, was this another tunnel I had to get through?
Then I realised: there was a slow, steady humming.
This place smelt real. It smelt familiar.
Was I back, then?
“Ella?”
Someone drew back the curtains so that a brilliant flash of light hit across the white sheets on the bed.
Only then did I realise where I was.
This was my bed.
I strained, but I couldn’t remember a thing that had happened before this. I could only remember gray, and the whirlwind of colours I’d tried to stop singlehandedly.
I looked at Hebe, my eyes wide.
“What happened?” I choked out, my voice a bare whisper.
“You fainted, Ella,” Hebe sounded distinctly uncomfortable. I stared straight at her.
“In the middle of the streets, Ella. What’s been going on, Ella? You wouldn’t faint for no reason, not like this.”
I flinched. The voice.
“Tell me!” He demanded, his voice strained with tension, hoarse with – oh, Lord, was that worry?
“I – I…”
I dissolved into tears. There was really no other word for it other than dissolved.
Hebe watched as my face melted into a crumpled mess I was too familiar looking into, as the tears tracked clear paths down my cheeks.
“Nothing,” I whispered, tears pooling in my eyes again and again and again.
I couldn’t breathe. I gasped hurriedly, drawing air into my lungs. But it never seemed to be enough. I choked and gagged and breathed some more. I struggled, kicking the blankets off myself and thrashing wildly until Chun held me down.
I could feel my blood pulsing where his hands grasped my skin in a grip too firm, too heated, and yet impossibly tender.
I continued to breathe; harder, harder. There wasn’t enough air for me. I couldn’t.
“Hebe, please. I need time with Ella.”
Hebe must have stared blankly at him, the endearing look I always knew but could not conjure to mind, because the next thing I heard him say was just one word: Alone.
He had seated himself at the edge of my bed and was holding me down silently, staring straight into my eyes as I fought to breathe. My chest constricted, as tight as I was panicked.
“Breathe, Ella,” he said, and I did the exact opposite.
I started to choke. My lungs felt like metal. I twisted my wrists so my hand could grab at his arms, an anchor I could hold onto.
I clawed at him, frantic, like a marooned sailor who spots a lighthouse, gathers his hope, and swims, steadfast, towards it – with all the might he has.
I did not notice I’d calmed down until moments later, at the same second in which I felt his arms, a shield around me, a protective, hard shell for me to crawl into. I lifted my hands, wanting to push him away, but wrapping them around his neck in the last moment, crying into his chest.
I needed this.
I hadn’t had this for so long now, I needed this.
He held me tighter still, murmuring words of comfort in my ear as I clung onto him, not so that I would live, but so that I would not fade away.
When the overwhelming tide of emotions died down, I pulled out of his comforting embrace and looked away.
“Why did you come? You should be spending time with Ariel.”
“Ella, I – I came to – to apologise. I – I’m sorry for yelling at you. You’re still my best friend and I still care about you. I saw you – at Crepe de la Crepe. And I – I wanted to go over, Ella, but Ariel – I know it isn’t an excuse. Ella, just…I’m sorry.”
Overcome by the sudden sincerity, evident in his hoarse tone and his dark eyes, I started to sob softly. I buried my head in my arms and let him pull me into an embrace again, knowing this time, that you did not need a tsunami, nor did you need water – to drown.
I didn’t want to let go of him – he was my strength – I couldn’t.
“Chun, I’m sorry, too. I shouldn’t have done that – that thing, the other day.”
I was blubbering, and I knew it.
He shook his head against mine, his hair feathering against my ear – a secret, a promise, anything.
“It doesn’t matter,” he whispered, just as softly, as though he was afraid that, any louder, and I would crumble again.
“I think neither of us minded it.”
---
The shadow in the doorway slipped away, features clouding in anger as she thought of how Chun had held Ella tenderly, so tenderly; in a way he’d never held her. There was a light in his eyes totally different from the one that shone when he saw her. It wouldn’t take a fool so see that her sister had yet again taken something rightfully hers. Rightfully. Ariel was incensed.
---
I drifted slowly to sleep in his arms, thinking of how all I needed to drown was Chun.
You have no idea how much I wished it could be the same for him, that I was all he needed to drown, to be intoxicated.
Or, in simpler terms, no one would ever know how much I needed him, or how much I needed him to love me, just the way I loved him.
We could be such a beautiful couple, we could be so perfect together.
My last coherent thought was of how Chun was holding me – like he was holding a butterfly, frail, fragile, delicate.
Crippled.