All That I've Got

Carys' P.O.V.

Judging by the little sunlight coming from my window I could tell that it was just getting dark outside, or it the sun was rising. The beeping of my laptop was what had woken me up, and I groggily picked it up, setting it beside me as I remained lying down, waiting for the screen to load. My heart soared for a moment when I saw that I had a new message on my email, I knew it was from Jake's address, but I had no idea that the sender wasn't him.

I clicked on the message, still half asleep, my eyebrow raising at the first few sentences. Jake had mentioned an Emily, but....

And then I read the rest of the letter, my brother was being experimented on, slowly dying in a bed in the basement of an asylum, the last place police would look if they got suspicious. At that point there was no holding back the tears that'd cried me to sleep in Frank's arms yesterday, I sat up in bed, arms wrapped around my knees as I cried, my body starting to shake from the suppressed emotion that was being released.

I had barely seen Gerard come upstairs, and he stopped dead in his tracks when he saw me. I could make the guess that when I'd fallen asleep the guys had spent the night, Frank had more than likely sent Gerard up to see if I was awake.

"Hey, hey, what's up Carys?" he asked softly as he walked into the room, sitting beside me on the bed. Usually if it were anyone but Frank doing so with or without warning, I'd be curling up in the nearest corner. But somehow this was different, Gerard was my friend, and I knew somehow that he meant no harm. I didn't look up at him from my crying, I probably didn't have the strength to, but with a shaky hand I pointed to the laptop which was still opened, the message bright and clear in Arial font.

He took a second to read it, eyes widening for a minute before his face returned to that calm expression I'd gotten used to. Having prior knowledge that I was usually timid, he didn't ambush me, but moved slowly to be sure that I knew what he was doing, pulling me close and resting his head on my shoulder. He didn't budge when I struggled at first, it wasn't like I could do much damage if I wanted to hit him, but I felt so much anger and pain bubbling up inside me that I couldn't completely harness it.

"I'm so tired of people telling me it's gonna be okay," I whispered, nearly gasping for breath. Gerard tensed up slightly, shocked that he'd heard me speak for the first time, but soon relaxed again before he spoke.

"I'm gonna be straight up with you Carys, I don't know what you're going through, and I'd be lying if I said that this was going to have a good outcome, because I don't have a clue. But even then, you can trust that we're here for you. If we didn't care, we'd all have went home last night. No asylum could've put you through so much, there's a reason why you go in the first place. I'm not asking what happened because that's something you decide to tell people, no one's going to force it out of you, but no one's ever going to know if you don't tell them," he said, my body becoming numb at the memory of that horrible night.

I quickly pushed it back to where I'd kept it locked away for so long. Gerard had been the first to be brutally honest with me, something I truly needed. But he'd also cracked a piece of the code that he wasn't even aware of, sure, everyone knew that I'd been through some rough crap in the asylum, but he knew that wasn't the reason behind my emotional state.

And at the same time, he'd brought something to light that I'd been ignoring for so long, the person I was before the thing happened, the person Frank had remembered before he moved. I'd always been smiling, my eyes were bright whenever I laughed, I tanned pretty easily, I had a body that made the most athletic cheerleader jealous, I was happy. I had friends that cared about me, girls that I'd spend hours on the phone with, girls that I could confess my darkest secrets to. But that was all gone now, those girls had moved, I made models look fat, my skin was paler than Gerard's, and my eyes had lost that shine that was one of the last things I remembered about Jake, the asylum had only sped up the process and caused me to go almost completely mute.

"No, I don't think she's asleep," I heard Gerard's voice say as I snapped back into reality. Frank was kneeling on the floor so that his eyes were level with mine, his warm hazel eyes causing a comforting feeling to wash over me as I looked into them.

"Would it be a stupid question to ask if you were okay?" Frank smirked when he knew that he had my attention. Gerard handed me over to him without hesitating, nodding before getting up and walking out of the room. Frank sat down next to me, bringing me into his arms before resting his head on mine, lips planting a light kiss on my hair. He didn't say anything, just held me close and tight, rocking me slowly back and forth. Though I'd gotten enough sleep last night so that it didn't lull me to sleep, I was certainly calm as I clung onto him. "Now do I have to beg and plead you to eat something? I promise you, I'm a better cook than I appear," he smiled as he pulled away.

I nodded, stretching my arms out before I stood, Frank taking my hand and leading me downstairs to the kitchen. Gerard, Ray and Mikey were seated at the counter, looking up from their breakfast to smile at me. Frank sat me down on the other side of Mikey before pushing a plate in front of me, a smirk on his face as he crossed his arms. I stuck out my tongue at him before picking up a fork and rolling my eyes when the guys started a drumbroll on the counter, cheering when I took the first bite of my eggs. Suprisngly, I didn't spit it out like whenever I would eat at the asylum, that only made them revert to force feeding me. No, this was actually good.

"Yay, she didn't faint from eating Frank's cooking!" Ray laughed, causing Frank to roll his eyes as he poured himself a cup of coffee.

"My dad taught me how to cook Toro, watch it or you'll wake up bald one morning," he said pointing a finger at him.

"I'm still remembering that one time you made brownies and gave us all food poisoning for two weeks, Carys, don't trust Frank around chocolate," Mikey smiled as he looked at me, making Frank poke him as he took a gulp from his cup.

"It's was the mix I tell you!" Frank exclaimed, making me laugh when Gerard, Mikey and Ray all replied with a chorus of 'Yeah right'.

"Bob's usually a heavy sleeper," Ray told me when I'd looked around the room for him.

I nodded, smirking when I pushed my empty plate towards Frank, his eyes showing disbelief.

"Okay, where'd you dump it Car?" he asked laughing as he looked down at the floor and under my seat. I playfully shoved him, grabbing his cup and taking a sip. It'd been a long time since I'd had coffee, and Frank laughed at the weird expression I gave when the taste met my tongue, I'm guessing he liked his coffee strong and black, just like my dad did. "Some OJ might be a better start," he said pouring me a cup of orange juice.

"Serving a healthy breakfast, your mother would be proud Frank," Gerard smiled.

"Part of the job my friend," Frank said chuckling as he finished his coffee. "Well it's only five-thirty, we can watch movies until Bob wakes up I guess," he shrugged.

We all cleaned up our breakfast and walked into the living room, finding a tired looking Bob waking up.

"Morning Bobbert," Frank said before pulling me down on the couch next to him.

Bob mumbled a reply, sitting up and rubbing his eyes before looking at me. "We were a bit worried about you last night, you okay?"

I was guessing that only Frank and Gerard knew about the email, so I simply nodded, folding my legs as I sat up straight. Frank got up a minute later, stepping over a still half-asleep Bob and filing through my movie collection before smiling to himself and popping a movie in. Gerard flicked off the lights and he and Mikey plopped down on the couch once Frank sat down again, Ray taking an arm chair and Bob sitting on the floor near him. The movie credits went by slowly before the movie finally showed up, and Frank looked down at me to see my wide smile.

The Nightmare Before Christmas, the last movie Frank and I had watched together before he moved, also my favorite in the whole world. A small tear trailed down my cheek and Frank wiped it away, my head resting on his shoulder as the opening song started. I really couldn't ask for a better attempt to cheer me up.