[10]

He looks me deep in the eye, his minty breath still fanning the tip of my nose, leaving me with goosebumps all over my body. My breathing is coming out in short puffs. My heart is clawing against my ribcage.

Riku's jaw is clenched and his fingers are tightly holding onto my collar.

"Keep out of my business. And don't tell anyone what you saw in that alley, understood?" he threatens, his voice husky and deeper than usual.

I nod. "I won't."

My hands are trembling and still wrapped around his jacket, which I have managed to pull over his injury without further hurting him. When he finally lets go of me and backs away a bit, I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding, and put his jacket on my lap.

"Why are you doing this? Helping me?" he suddenly asks out of the blue, startling me slightly. I turn my face to him as I put some of the ointment on the washcloth and carefully put it on his injury. Then the ghost of a smile crosses my face, something that tends to happen whenever I refuse to cry. And right in this moment, I want nothing more but to do that. Because this whole situation reminds me too much of my mother, of the helplessness, of her very last breath and. . . the silence.

That was the worst. After 5 minutes of her blood curdling screams and pleas, there was just silence. I could hear my own heartbeat back then, it was the only thing that filled my ears. My father was so quiet with what he did after killing my mom, that I didn't even notice when he kicked himself off the chair or when he, too, took his last breath.

But instead of telling him that, instead of spilling out all the heavy secrets that are lying on my chest, I reply, "I promised myself to never not help anyone ever again, if I can help."

"What if I was a serial killer though? What if I was a stranger who had just killed 3 people? Would you still help me?" I stay quiet, mostly because I have no idea how to answer that.

Would I? Would I help him if he had just killed a person? Taken their last breath? Robbed them of something, that he had no right of stealing? Would I really?

I don't know. Maybe.

My life is fucked up. I am fucked up. So why let someone die just because they took someone else's life? Do they deserve to live less than any other human being? People ain't know shit about killers, yet they judge them. Maybe they had reasons, fears, scars. Things that made them do it. I know it wouldn't justify killing someone, but it would justify the 'why'.

"Are you?" I inquire, my blood running cold. "Are you a murderer. . .? Did-. . . did you kill someone?"

"What if I did? Would you be scared?" The corners of his lips quirk up into a smirk, his eyes darkening. I gulp, but don't avert my gaze.

The brown color of his eyes turns black as he watches me closely, as if I was his prey, his next victim.

I wouldn't mind. Getting killed isn't the way I originally wanted to die though, I wanted to do it myself. Take my last breath, break every bone in my body or just drown myself. Why? Why I want to kill myself rather than have someone kill me?

Because I want to have the control over my last breath. I never had control over my life, so I at least want to have control over my death. Logic, right? However, as long as I die at the end, I'm not complaining about the way I do.

"And you? Would you treat someone's wound who killed someone?" I ask.

He frowns and wrinkles his eyebrows, but doesn't answer, so I finish cleaning up his injury and bandage it. When I'm finished, I sigh and shove the rest of the ointment into my pocket. My fingers are numb due to the decreasing temperature, so I put them in front of my mouth and try to warm them up with my breath.

After a few moments I give up and put them under my thighs, a trick that my mother has taught me that one day when we had went to the park in the winter.

All of a sudden Riku clears his throat, making me turn around my head. I look at him, trying to figure out what he'd say next, but failing. His facadę is icy, blank, just impossible to look through, so I give up and just wait for him to talk.

His eyes are fixed on some street lamp right across the street, as he replies to my previous question, "No, I wouldn't. I hate helping other people."

I avert my gaze and before I can stop it, a soft laugh escapes my mouth. I can even see my breath fading away into the cold night air, because of the low temperatures. Riku stays quiet, so the only noises are the chirping of tiny insects, that are flying around the broken streetlamp right next to us.

I bend my head and look at the sky. I've always had this weird love towards skies; no matter what color they had, what time of the day it was or what form the clouds had, I loved it. But the dark ones, with white points swirling around in them, have always been my favorites.

Night skies are fascinating. When I was younger I often imagined what it would look like without all the stars and the moon. It would probably be so black that we'd have no idea whether our eyes were closed or opened.

I also used to love, or rather still do, that the stars look different every single time. They never stay in the exact same place; they wander, you could almost say. And it has always been calming for me to count them, although I never got an accurate answer and my eyes always hurt afterwards.

My gaze wanders back to Riku's face, who is already looking at me intently. To a point where I feel like squirming under his icy gaze.

"You're different," he mutters.

You're different.

You're pathetic.

You're disgusting.

Why couldn't you be normal?

Why are you like this? So different?

So goddamn different.

I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to ridden myself off the memories. All the taunting words that were imprinted in my mind by him, by his friends, by kids at school who hated the way I dressed so much, that they beat me up until I had to think twice about what my name is.

I curl up my hands into fists, digging my nails into my palms. My breathing becomes rapid, my lip bloody, as I bite onto it as hard as I can, hoping to release some of the pain that is eating on my heart. The pain always comes back when I have flashbacks or when I'm reminded of what I want to forget. My past.

Ugly.

Fragile.

Hopeless.

Mistake.

Different.

It's one of my trigger words: different. Not always though. Only sometimes. I don't know when or how it triggers me more than other times, it just happens.

It's hard to get me out of this kind of anxiety attack, so I usually just black out due to the hyperventilating and the lack of oxygen in my lungs.

All of a sudden I feel something warm on the top of my fist, startling me. I don't open my eyes, nor uncurl my fists, nor stop biting on my lip, but because I have something to focus on - the weird warmth and the electricity shocks that erupt on the back of my hand -, my breathing slowly slows down.

I don't know how long I sat there, listening to my heartbeat and the chirping of those insects, with my eyes still tightly squeezed shut. But when I open my eyes and look around, I spot a clock that is hung up on a wall in some shop across the street, which reads 22:12PM.

Shit. I hope my aunt won't be too mad when I get home, I'm too tired and exhausted to listen to some longer-than-needed lecture in the middle of the night.

I inhale the cold air, feeling it burn my throat, and then look to my left. Riku is still sitting there, eyes closed, one arm in the pocket of his jacket, and the other one. . . My eyes slowly trail down his arm to find it resting on the top of my hand, which is still in a fist, but I'm not digging my nails into my skin anymore.

My heartbeat skips a beat as I realize what happened.

The warmth that I felt, that helped me focus on something while I had the anxiety attack and that dragged me out of it, was his hand. I retreat my hand as though he had caught fire, causing his eyes to jolt open. I quickly stand up, only to sit down again, as a wave of dizziness clouds my vision with black dots and makes me waver.

"Don't you dare tell anyone what happened today," Riku suddenly threatens right next to my ear, whereupon my breath gets caught in my throat, "got it?"

I nod my head vigorously and after a few seconds I feel him leaning away from me, making me breathe out a breath I didn't know I was holding.

Lying to people? I'm good at it, won't be a problem. Forgetting about what happened to day? Seems impossible. Today was such a shitty day for me, because I was so drained from all the nightmares. I couldn't even have fun with my friends, laugh with them. I couldn't even return their smiles.

But. . . then I stumbled upon Riku, and strangely enough he was the reason why I laughed for the first time in days. Even though it was so soft that he probably didn't even hear it. But what counts is, that it was the first real laugh; not a faked one, not a forced one. Just a real laugh.

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

Hey there, what's up y'all?

I hope you're safe and doing good, if not, well then I feel ya. Got some real bad moods and anger issues lately, but anyways.

So, what do ya think about this chappie?

Btw, Chase thinks about and does some things differently, because his mind is still damaged and affected from what he's been through.

Stay safe everyone!

❤

- L I S A