Everybody has their ghosts, that emptiness that haunts (FM Jan Topic)

[darkersideofyou]

Ready.The word airport was hardly out of Ryan's mouth but that was all I needed to hear. If I had been thinking a little more clearly I might have just taken the keys out of his hand but instead I just turned around and walked out of Kennedy's apartment where apparently my sister had been staying. I didn't think Ryan had any reason to lie to me, he

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[liked_the_cold]

I lowered my head when she said that she had seen me, but that she had written off what she knew as hallucinations. It was hard too. To look away. This was the closest I'd been in a year. I'd seen her, and yes, I'd followed her. Watched her from so many hiding places. But I hadn't been close enough to feel her warmth or to see the subtleties of expression as they were written across her face.

"I just needed to know you were okay," I said quietly when I finally lifted my head. "Rena's grandmother, she knew voodoo. She brought me back. But Last Chance needed you. I couldn't get in the way of that." I explained.

I knew that it wasn't going to matter what I said. The look on Lucy's face said it all. There really was no excuse, was there? But it made sense to me.

"By the time you did what you were supposed to do, there was a whole new purpose for you. This new place for you. I didn't want you to suddenly feel like you owed me your life all over again. And I watched you. I knew that you had grieved for me. I knew that you had let me go. Who was I take that back? To take it away from you?" I softly demanded.

[darkersideofyou]

Voodoo? How the hell could voodoo bring someone back to life? I didn't really understand it but there were a lot of things in the world I didn't understand, I just learned to accept them. But I couldn't accept this, I just...couldn't. She wanted to make sure that I was ok? She didn't want to bother me because I'd already grieved for her? I thought she knew me better than that.

I nodded, once and then again and I didn't really stop for a minute as my eyes grazed the floor before I stopped nodding and looked back up at her. "Do I look okay to you?" I asked her, my voice breaking so much more than I would have liked. "Do I look like I've grieved and moved onto you?!" Now it was wavering and I could feel a few tears building up behind my eyes before they spilled over.

"Have you assessed the situation fully, Helena? Now you're just gonna move on and let me think you're dead forever? You were gonna let me carry that around with me for the rest of my life?!" I was happy that she was alive but the overwhelming sadness of the last year and a half along with the anger of her secret was more than I could take.

"I'm not okay. I haven't been okay." I knew I was making a public spectacle of myself, something I usually went to great lengths to avoid but suddenly I really didn't care. I shook my head. "Not since that day in the hospital, not since you sent me to that fucking town."

I looked down at her bags. "You left me once. Are you really gonna do it again now that I finally have you back?"

[liked_the_cold]

Truthfully, she didn't look okay to me. She looked like she was about to shatter. Or like something inside of her already had shattered along those thin seams we trust to hold us together. But I fully believed she would have been okay, if Ryan hadn't told her. If she didn't know I was still here, she wouldn't be standing there looking like that.

"I'm supposed to be dead, Lucy." I said in a quiet yet heightened timbre. "I was dead. Either way, you were already going to carry it around with you for the rest of your life." I pointed out. "Either way, whether you'd grieved me and moved on or not, you would have had to do it eventually! I didn't think I was doing you any harm. Any more than I already had just by being alive."

There was no way I could be wrong about this. There was no way she could be better off with me, than without. No way...

"Lucy, please don't cry." I begged, feeling my own eyes well to the brim with tears as I realized just what this was doing to her. It was the exact opposite of everything I had tried to do for her.

"You gave up everything for me." I whispered, shaking my head slightly. "I was only prepared to do the same for you."

[darkersideofyou]

I shook my head at her. "No. I was never gonna do that." It was true. Whoever I'd been back then wasn't exactly who I was now. Back then there'd been a fire in my heart and ever since she died it's just been dead. A lot of empty space that I tried to replace with a lot of things but none of them ever really worked. She was the only family I had. Everyone else we'd ever known was dead.

"I never did anything that I didn't want to. You thought I was giving things up but you were keeping me alive." I admitted to her wiping away tears with the back of my sleeve a little bit before I looked back at her. There were probably people staring at us but I didn't care.

"If you want to do something for me you'll stay." I said firmly to her. I didn't know if we could ever go back or anything. I didn't think we could be who we were before. She looked stronger and I felt smaller than we were before but who cared as long as the two of us were together? Maybe the world would feel a little more right if she were here. It might be wishful thinking but I could only go on what I knew. And what I knew was that the world made more sense when she was with me.

"Just say you'll stay." My voice was pleading with her as I looked at her. "Say it." I prompted her again, nearly begging her. If I had to, I would beg. I'd do whatever it took. "Or take me with you." I saw Ryan perk up at that nearby but I didn't care. I loved Ryan and Molly but neither one of them could understand this. I'd leave them and go with Helena if I had to.

[liked_the_cold]

My face fell, it sort of crumbled underneath the weight of my attempt at bravery. I’d been keeping her alive? No. That wasn’t true. It couldn’t be. I’d been keeping her from life. Not the other way around. All the time spent in hospitals. All the times, never knowing if I could keep hold of the life I’d been clinging to. Of having to work twice as hard just to pull my weight too. She never got to be. She never got to be a kid, or a normal teenager. She had to be everything to me. And you just can’t. You can’t be everything to anyone because then that leaves nothing for you.

“It’s not true.” I whispered, shaking my head slowly from side to side without realizing moving. Without seeing through the sheen of tears that held like a wall against the surface of my eyes, building until it would break. “I kept you from living. You did those things because you had to. Because we shared a womb together, and we were born and I was always part of you. You had to. And it was never right.” It was never fair, and didn’t she know that? Didn’t she know that after everything she gave me, she deserved the world. The whole, entire world. I couldn’t give her that. And I couldn’t give her the time back. But I could give her a future. Which is honestly more than I thought either one of us would ever have. I knew Lucy would make it. I knew that she would survive. But damage is permanent and I never really know if she’d walk anything less than wounded.

I didn’t want to stay. I really didn’t. I felt like an impostor. Like I just didn’t belong here. And I was figuring out how to tell her that. A way to say; ‘thank you, for giving me everything. I’m sorry for leaving you with nothing’. And then she offered to go with me. I realized in that moment, with Ryan standing there behind her, a whole entire new life built around her outside of these airport walls, but that when it came to Lucy’s life or mine, it was still mine. I wasn’t taking her away from them. I couldn’t.

“Lucy…” I whispered, reaching forward to place my hands around either of her arms. I leaned forward, kissing her forehead for a long moment. I owed her everything in the world, I owed her my life. There was no question that I owed her this.

“Of course I’ll stay.” I whispered against her forehead before wrapping my arms around her in a helpless embrace that claimed all of her as still half of me. She was the one piece of me that was still missing when I’d been resurrected. The one part of me that had never really been gone.