[When she rests her head on his arm, he just stops. He closes his eyes, and takes in a deep, shuddery breath. He's not going to lose it in the corridor of some backwater police station. He's not. ]
I- I should've noticed. I'm supposed to be his best friend. I should've seen he was getting worse, that he wasn't taking his meds. If I had, maybe I could've stopped any of this happening. Made him get help. I don't know. Something.
[Instead of not seeing it. Of letting his best friend down. The best friend he thought he'd killed with a flip of a switch just a few hours before. Yeah. Friend of the year award goes to him, for sure. ]
But nooooooope. I didn't. And now he's stuck down those mines being- being fucking eaten by those things. He didn't deserve that. He was just sick, it wasn't-
[He takes another deep breath. In. Out. It's hard to connect His Best Friend Josh with the Josh that tortured them with his twisted little games. Those two people don't fit together. That scared, angry kid was not the same one he'd spent the better part of his life hanging out with.]
[Ashley... really shouldn't be surprised that Chris is blaming himself for this, but still, her heart twists at his words, and she steps in front of him, for once glad that she's so much shorter than him, because it'll be a lot easier to look him in the eye even if he tries to look down and avoid it.]
Chris, no. Nononono...
[She reaches up, and for a moment, it almost looks like she's going to put her hands on his cheeks. But she pauses at the last minute, before setting them on his shoulders.
It's still... weird. This whatever-it-is between them. And now's not the time to address it, so it's back to dancing around each other.]
You can't... you can't blame yourself for this. Don't say you didn't do enough; you did! I know you did. You spent so much time with him, and his parents... you did everything a best friend should.
[She doesn't bring up the first trap. She refuses to. That... it's not fair to count that against Chris. Either choice he made would've been horrible in some way]
[He starts as she moves. True, it's what he's wanted for a very, very long time. Them. Together. If there's one single good thing to come out of this mess, it's that it finally made him tell her how he felt. Funny what thinking you're about to die does. He can't unsay those things, and he doesn't want to. Right now, it's on his List of Things to Process. Just...not quite yet.
So he relaxes his shoulders a little as she rests he hands on them. He closes his eyes, takes another deep breath, uses her presence as an attempt to ground himself.]
But I didn't do enough.
[And that hurts. That after everything, he couldn't get everyone he loved out of that mess. That his life is going to have this chunk ripped out of it, and it wasn't fair. He'd give anything to have Josh standing behind him, calling him Cochise again and telling him to just get the hell on with it with Ash. Anything.]
I'm really gonna miss him.
[That was quiet, almost murmured. He allows himself that moment of sorrow, of self-indulgence, before finally looking at her properly. ]
Sorry. Shit. You've been through hell, too. How're you feeling?
[Because it's far easier to focus on someone else's problems than his own right now. Looking after someone else, he can do. Himself? Not as much. ]
You did all that you could. And you put a big effort into it! That... it's not a bad thing, Chris. And... it sort of goes both ways, y'know? He wasn't telling you everything. He wasn't letting you help as much as you could. He was hiding things...
[She's not really sure what she feels most bitter about. Josh punching her out twice and rigging her up in those fucked-up traps that would make his horror movie director dad proud, or just. Him hurting Chris. Obviously shunning Chris. If he was doing it to get back at her, she would've understood that, in some twisted way. But Chris had absolutely nothing to do with any part of the prank. He didn't deserve any bit of what Josh did to him.
And yet...]
... I'm gunna miss him too.
[Miss the Josh she thought she knew, at least.]
And... I don't really know, to be honest. So much went on and I kept having to push all these different feelings around. But now that we have time to stop and think about it all... I don't really know what to feel.
[And it hurts, that Josh hid that from him. That he hid away instead of letting Josh help him. That, combined with all the bullshit traps he;d gone though, Chris is starting to wonder if he'd done something to turn Josh against him. A small part of him hopes that's the case. So he can put some logic in the utter betrayal he's faced.
...And he did, ultimately, choose Ashley. He'd hated it. It made him sick. But the choice has still been made. ]
I'm -
[Really, seriously Not Okay. He knows something deep inside him has horribly and irrevocably broken. He can feel it, this prevailing feeling of wrongness in the pit of his stomach.
He moves to ruffle a hand on the beanie on her head. It's a little too mechanical to be the funny gesture he's trying to make it seem. Hah hah, funny old Chris.]
I'm still pretty hungry. Yep. The hunt for the mystical vending machine doth continues.
[It may not work in its attempt to be a funny gesture, but... the hand on her head is rather comforting. It's a gentle, solid weight against her, and she almost shakes as she leans into the touch.
After a full night of being punched, slapped, and shoved and chased around, it's just... good. To have something nice like this.]
... You don't have to pretend, you know. I know "I know what you're going through" is usually super shitty and empty words of comfort, but... we were all there. You don't have to hide it from any of us.
[He gives her a smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes. Pretending is exactly what's getting him through this right now. A short time of denial before it all comes crashing over him and there's no going back. ]
I'm not- [Yeah, he is.] I just... need to processing time, I guess? If I think about it took much, it feels like my head's gonna explode. And no one wants that. My head's too pretty to explode.
[... Judging by how flat her voice is when she says that, she isn't really joking. And she only realizes after the fact that she said that out loud and OH BOY okay just. Just pretend you didn't say that, Ash....]
I don't know if my head is going to explode or implode. Either way, just thinking hurts.
... I guess this means midterms and finals are gunna be a breeze now, huh?
[... It feels weird to talk about school. To talk about normal teenager things. Geez, how would they be able to go back to all that now...?]
[He definitely heard that. Normally, that would make him an awkward, stammering wreck, but his brain has had far too much to process to allow embarrassment into the frame. He clears his throat, somewhat awkwardly, painfully aware at some point they need to take the pin out of what they've started on the mountain...whatever that thing is, and talk about it, but right now, his brain is too fried. Baby steps. ]
I don't know, I think I could still slide in a couple gym nightmares in amongst all the other ones. There's still some space in amongst all the abject terror.
[Maybe a wendigo chasing him up a rope. Oh, yeah, great brain, now he'll definitely have that one. Great. ]
Yeah. Trust me. The gym is not the natural habitat of the technophile.
[Gym is the worst, ok. The absolute worst.
The joking does feel weird. What used to be part of Chris's natural patter don't feel right any more. He's saying the words, but there's no joy behind them. ]
I'm right there with you on that one. I miss when the only thing I had to worry about was if the coach caught me hiding under the bleachers to avoid a rousing bout of running in eternal circles.
How do you think I felt? Reading all the time doesn't exactly give you an amazonian buff body, you know.
[HAVE FUN WITH THAT MENTAL IMAGE, CHRIS]
... I got away with it sometimes, though. I used to tell them the books I was reading were for English. [Any hint of a smile that may have crossed her face as they reminisced disappears, and her voice sort of. Trails off.] They used to be spooky stories. Weird, right? But in the middle of the day, with a lot of light and background noise... that's the only way I'd be able to handle stuff like that.
[Sorry, he kind of zoned out for a minute there. Somewhere after 'Amazonian buff body' his brain short circuited. He stares off into space, before realising she's still talking. Okay, okay focus. Focus on the words and not the mental image they bring.
Something something spooky stories.]
I'm pretty sure nothing they could write could top the real thing. I know the movies don't. I'm one hundred percent done with spooky for a long while.
[He's also burning all his Saw blu rays. No thanks. ]
[... She looks a little concerned when he starts zoning out, but he seems to snap out of it. So... okay then...]
For a while? Try forever. Just... [She shakes her head, crossing her arms over her stomach.] I-I don't know how people can find that stuff entertaining. I never understood it, but n... now...
[That last word trails off into a whine. God, the idea of people watching a movie or reading a book that's anything like what they went through, and enjoying that sort of suffering... where it once just made her roll her eyes, now it makes her sick. ]
[It's called Being a Teenage Boy, it's the best. ]
Well, I didn't mind them all that much. I mean, I watched them all the time when me and Josh were kids.
[His voice wavers on his best friend's name. Josh always did love horror movies the most, and now look what's happened. He created one, just for them. This was no sneaking into Josh's dad's mini theatre at ten years old to watch the latest film he'd worked on, even when they'd been told no, they were too young for that. This had become something real, and terrible.]
They lose their fun once you've lived through one.
[Despite the turn their conversation took again, Ashley manages to roll her eyes. Of course those two would be the kids to watch R-rated movies when they're still in elementary school...]
I'll help you get rid of all your horror movies if you help me get rid of all my ghost story books.
[She reaches out to shake his hand. It's supposed to be a casual gesture, something supposed to be silly, but her grip is tight, and she doesn't seem to realize it.]
It's... definitely something good to look forward to. After the hospital.
[She needs to have something to look forward to, or else she's not sure how she's going to get through this ordeal ahead...]
[He appreciates the tight grip. She, at least, is something real, something tangible in this whole mess. He doesn't let go right away, but he doesn't really realise it. It's more subconscious than an actual decision on his part. ]
We can make a day of it. We can toast s'mores over their ashy remains. Take that, nightmare fuel.
[Ash isn't really too eager to let go either. She just sort of.... stares down at their hands. Just like the hair-ruffling before, there's a sort of warmth to his touch that makes her want to keep on holding his hand. It's a good warmth, not like the searing heat of the burning lodge....]
Can we.... d-do we have to wait till then to spend a day together? I don't... [Her grip tightens even more, so that she's flat-out clinging to his hand.] I don't want to be alone after all of this....
[She has her parents, of course, but they wouldn't understand. They'll be overbearing, as parents tend to be, and she can't really blame them for that. But she needs someone who actually knows what she's going through there with her....]
[His expression softens, his own hand tightening around hers, trying to give her some reassurance. An anchor against the storm. ]
Ash.
[Where 'they' are right now is still pretty confusing and he knows they'll need to sit down and talk about that, but one thing he knows absolutely without question. ]
You won't be alone in this, in any of this. I'll always have your back, I promise. No matter what. You need me for anything? I'm there.
[Now that they're not in any sort of life-threatening situation, or walking into impending death, those words... they actually make her blush a little. God, it's so cheesy, and something a lot of people in this day and age might think is just all lip service, but....
But Ashley knows Chris. Even before last night, he was always the kind of person to put others before himself. The events of last night just took that feeling of protectiveness to a whole different. level. And it... worries her, just a little.]
Just... promise me you'll come to me with anything you need, okay? I appreciate you wanting to help, god, I really do... but you need to think of you too. Got it?
[That's what Ashley gets. Terrible cheese. She needs to look at her life, look at her choices. He means it, though, every single word. He failed Josh and now he's lost him. He can't let it happen again. He absolutely cannot.
That would be a no on the looking after himself thing. Still, he shifts his crutch to cross his chest with his hand.]
[Psh, she won't complain one bit. His absolutely adorable dorkiness is one of the reasons why she loves him so much, and he wouldn't be Chris without it.
And if she can't protect him in the ways that he protected her at the lodge, if she can't be the knight in shining armor that he is to her, then she'll try her damned hardest to make sure he can still smile and joke. She'll make sure that Chris stays Chris. So she's gotta be serious here]
[So much for exploiting that loophole. He hesitates for a moment, know if he makes this promise, he has to mean it. She'll know if he doesn't. He gives a soft exhale. ]
Okay. I promise, Ash. But you know that means you're subjecting yourself to three am phone calls because I really need a sympathy pizza.
[Yes. Make it funny, then he can pretend it doesn't hurt as much. ]
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I- I should've noticed. I'm supposed to be his best friend. I should've seen he was getting worse, that he wasn't taking his meds. If I had, maybe I could've stopped any of this happening. Made him get help. I don't know. Something.
[Instead of not seeing it. Of letting his best friend down. The best friend he thought he'd killed with a flip of a switch just a few hours before. Yeah. Friend of the year award goes to him, for sure. ]
But nooooooope. I didn't. And now he's stuck down those mines being- being fucking eaten by those things. He didn't deserve that. He was just sick, it wasn't-
[He takes another deep breath. In. Out. It's hard to connect His Best Friend Josh with the Josh that tortured them with his twisted little games. Those two people don't fit together. That scared, angry kid was not the same one he'd spent the better part of his life hanging out with.]
He wasn't really being him.
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Chris, no. Nononono...
[She reaches up, and for a moment, it almost looks like she's going to put her hands on his cheeks. But she pauses at the last minute, before setting them on his shoulders.
It's still... weird. This whatever-it-is between them. And now's not the time to address it, so it's back to dancing around each other.]
You can't... you can't blame yourself for this. Don't say you didn't do enough; you did! I know you did. You spent so much time with him, and his parents... you did everything a best friend should.
[She doesn't bring up the first trap. She refuses to. That... it's not fair to count that against Chris. Either choice he made would've been horrible in some way]
You can't put Josh's mental health all on you.
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So he relaxes his shoulders a little as she rests he hands on them. He closes his eyes, takes another deep breath, uses her presence as an attempt to ground himself.]
But I didn't do enough.
[And that hurts. That after everything, he couldn't get everyone he loved out of that mess. That his life is going to have this chunk ripped out of it, and it wasn't fair. He'd give anything to have Josh standing behind him, calling him Cochise again and telling him to just get the hell on with it with Ash. Anything.]
I'm really gonna miss him.
[That was quiet, almost murmured. He allows himself that moment of sorrow, of self-indulgence, before finally looking at her properly. ]
Sorry. Shit. You've been through hell, too. How're you feeling?
[Because it's far easier to focus on someone else's problems than his own right now. Looking after someone else, he can do. Himself? Not as much. ]
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[She's not really sure what she feels most bitter about. Josh punching her out twice and rigging her up in those fucked-up traps that would make his horror movie director dad proud, or just. Him hurting Chris. Obviously shunning Chris. If he was doing it to get back at her, she would've understood that, in some twisted way. But Chris had absolutely nothing to do with any part of the prank. He didn't deserve any bit of what Josh did to him.
And yet...]
... I'm gunna miss him too.
[Miss the Josh she thought she knew, at least.]
And... I don't really know, to be honest. So much went on and I kept having to push all these different feelings around. But now that we have time to stop and think about it all... I don't really know what to feel.
... I do know I'm worried about you, though.
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[And it hurts, that Josh hid that from him. That he hid away instead of letting Josh help him. That, combined with all the bullshit traps he;d gone though, Chris is starting to wonder if he'd done something to turn Josh against him. A small part of him hopes that's the case. So he can put some logic in the utter betrayal he's faced.
...And he did, ultimately, choose Ashley. He'd hated it. It made him sick. But the choice has still been made. ]
I'm -
[Really, seriously Not Okay. He knows something deep inside him has horribly and irrevocably broken. He can feel it, this prevailing feeling of wrongness in the pit of his stomach.
He moves to ruffle a hand on the beanie on her head. It's a little too mechanical to be the funny gesture he's trying to make it seem. Hah hah, funny old Chris.]
I'm still pretty hungry. Yep. The hunt for the mystical vending machine doth continues.
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After a full night of being punched, slapped, and shoved and chased around, it's just... good. To have something nice like this.]
... You don't have to pretend, you know. I know "I know what you're going through" is usually super shitty and empty words of comfort, but... we were all there. You don't have to hide it from any of us.
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I'm not- [Yeah, he is.] I just... need to processing time, I guess? If I think about it took much, it feels like my head's gonna explode. And no one wants that. My head's too pretty to explode.
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[... Judging by how flat her voice is when she says that, she isn't really joking. And she only realizes after the fact that she said that out loud and OH BOY okay just. Just pretend you didn't say that, Ash....]
I don't know if my head is going to explode or implode. Either way, just thinking hurts.
... I guess this means midterms and finals are gunna be a breeze now, huh?
[... It feels weird to talk about school. To talk about normal teenager things. Geez, how would they be able to go back to all that now...?]
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I don't know, I think I could still slide in a couple gym nightmares in amongst all the other ones. There's still some space in amongst all the abject terror.
[Maybe a wendigo chasing him up a rope. Oh, yeah, great brain, now he'll definitely have that one. Great. ]
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[Are they... are they joking? Really? It feels so weird. Like things might actually be some shade of normal.]
But I'd take embarrassing locker room scenarios and bad games of dodgeball any day now, if it means I didn't have to think about... all of this
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[Gym is the worst, ok. The absolute worst.
The joking does feel weird. What used to be part of Chris's natural patter don't feel right any more. He's saying the words, but there's no joy behind them. ]
I'm right there with you on that one. I miss when the only thing I had to worry about was if the coach caught me hiding under the bleachers to avoid a rousing bout of running in eternal circles.
[Track. He means track. ]
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[HAVE FUN WITH THAT MENTAL IMAGE, CHRIS]
... I got away with it sometimes, though. I used to tell them the books I was reading were for English. [Any hint of a smile that may have crossed her face as they reminisced disappears, and her voice sort of. Trails off.] They used to be spooky stories. Weird, right? But in the middle of the day, with a lot of light and background noise... that's the only way I'd be able to handle stuff like that.
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Something something spooky stories.]
I'm pretty sure nothing they could write could top the real thing. I know the movies don't. I'm one hundred percent done with spooky for a long while.
[He's also burning all his Saw blu rays. No thanks. ]
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For a while? Try forever. Just... [She shakes her head, crossing her arms over her stomach.] I-I don't know how people can find that stuff entertaining. I never understood it, but n... now...
[That last word trails off into a whine. God, the idea of people watching a movie or reading a book that's anything like what they went through, and enjoying that sort of suffering... where it once just made her roll her eyes, now it makes her sick. ]
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Well, I didn't mind them all that much. I mean, I watched them all the time when me and Josh were kids.
[His voice wavers on his best friend's name. Josh always did love horror movies the most, and now look what's happened. He created one, just for them. This was no sneaking into Josh's dad's mini theatre at ten years old to watch the latest film he'd worked on, even when they'd been told no, they were too young for that. This had become something real, and terrible.]
They lose their fun once you've lived through one.
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I'll help you get rid of all your horror movies if you help me get rid of all my ghost story books.
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You got yourself a deal.
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It's... definitely something good to look forward to. After the hospital.
[She needs to have something to look forward to, or else she's not sure how she's going to get through this ordeal ahead...]
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We can make a day of it. We can toast s'mores over their ashy remains. Take that, nightmare fuel.
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Can we.... d-do we have to wait till then to spend a day together? I don't... [Her grip tightens even more, so that she's flat-out clinging to his hand.] I don't want to be alone after all of this....
[She has her parents, of course, but they wouldn't understand. They'll be overbearing, as parents tend to be, and she can't really blame them for that. But she needs someone who actually knows what she's going through there with her....]
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Ash.
[Where 'they' are right now is still pretty confusing and he knows they'll need to sit down and talk about that, but one thing he knows absolutely without question. ]
You won't be alone in this, in any of this. I'll always have your back, I promise. No matter what. You need me for anything? I'm there.
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But Ashley knows Chris. Even before last night, he was always the kind of person to put others before himself. The events of last night just took that feeling of protectiveness to a whole different. level. And it... worries her, just a little.]
Just... promise me you'll come to me with anything you need, okay? I appreciate you wanting to help, god, I really do... but you need to think of you too. Got it?
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That would be a no on the looking after himself thing. Still, he shifts his crutch to cross his chest with his hand.]
Got it.
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And if she can't protect him in the ways that he protected her at the lodge, if she can't be the knight in shining armor that he is to her, then she'll try her damned hardest to make sure he can still smile and joke. She'll make sure that Chris stays Chris. So she's gotta be serious here]
That wasn't a promise. You gotta say you promise.
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Okay. I promise, Ash. But you know that means you're subjecting yourself to three am phone calls because I really need a sympathy pizza.
[Yes. Make it funny, then he can pretend it doesn't hurt as much. ]
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