Fear Itself

I sent Dean to get me mac and cheese. I probably shouldn’t have, really I knew that it was wrong, honestly, but it didn’t mean my morals were going to stop me. It did the opposite: it gave me an opportunity.

Not having seen Avery in days was actually driving me insane. I was angry, and I was livid, and I needed to know where he had run off and what was so important that he had to leave me to do. I knew Dean wasn’t going to let me see him; he had been a total mother hen as it was. Not that I didn’t appreciate the protection. I realized why I needed it, but it was suffocating. I felt like I was back at home with my father again, not even allowed to open a window in case somebody saw me.

So yeah, maybe asking him to go buy me food wasn’t the best way to go about this, but I knew if I had asked him directly, he would never have let me, and if I got caught and died in West London, at least I tried to fix things with Avery. I couldn’t say I didn’t try.

I took less than a few minutes to tug my boots on over my wrapped feet, and I stuffed one of Dean’s kitchen knifes into my backpack just in case I might have needed it. I would have had my switchblade, except it was now in the hands of the League, and I probably wasn’t going to get that back any time soon. Despite the pain in my ankles, I hobbled as quickly as I could out the back door and over the fence (I had this fear that somebody was watching the front door and would see me). Unfortunately, I forgot that I would have to jump down, so instead of landing on my ankles, I shifted so I landed on my side with thud and a small squeak. At least the grass was soft here.

I pushed myself up and brushed the bits of dirt off my new jeans. I pulled down the thick, tan sweater I had layered over one of Dean’s shirts (mostly because it kept me warm to have both, even if Dean’s shirt ended at the middle of my thigh and the sweater stopped at the bottom of my hips), pulled the pale lavender beanie snug over my head again, and adjusted my backpack, then off I went. Or limped. Limped is much better word for what I did.

Can’t really say how long I walked for. I didn’t have any way to tell time: no phone, no watch, nothing. I wandered, checked all the places I remembered running into Avery. I wandered until I really didn’t even know I where was anymore, until my feet hurt, until I was sure enough time had passed that Dean had gotten home and was currently having a panic attack because he had no way to contact me. It didn’t matter. I would be fine on my own. It wasn’t like I hadn’t been left alone in West London before… okay, maybe it was only twice, and one of those times, I ran back to Dean and begged him to walk me home. I guess that didn’t count. Plus, I currently had no idea where I was. At least people weren’t paying attention me, except for one guy who almost bumped into me.

“Ay, you watch where yer goin’, laddie,” he snarled, and for a moment, I snapped my head to glower at him.

Wait. I wasn’t a boy. I wanted to retort, and I really did think about doing it. I had a million witty remarks to shout at him, but I remembered all the wolfish looks I used to get around West London, and how I was almost prostituted a couple times. Maybe being a boy for the next couple of minutes would be in my best interest. I groaned under my breath, gripped the straps of my backpack, and hobbled along. I rolled my eyes, looked up at the sky, and muttered, “God, can you hear me? If you do exist, this would be a fantastic time for you to show yourself, you ass.”

A person walked by, walked quickly, with his hands shoved in the pockets of his coat and his head turned down. A cigarette dangled from his lips, and smoke puffed behind him, leaving a cloudy trail of mist. I stopped and looked at him, blinking, but it didn’t register until he was walking to the door of a nearby building. “Mumbles,” I called, but he didn’t hear me. He entered the building, and just as the door was about to swing closed, I shouted, “Avery Fortier, if you ignore me, I am going to stand out here all night! Avery!”

Just as quickly as the door shut, he came racing back out, just swiftly grabbed me by the arm, and dragged me toward the door. My feet began to skid across the pavement, and I yelped with almost every step. “Mumbles, Mumbles, stop, wait, ow, ow, ow,” I squealed until we were inside, and he stopped me. He raised an eyebrow, and I huffed a heavy sigh. “My ankles are sprained, Mumbles. Both of ‘em.” I dropped my head a little and shook it.

He didn’t say anything, just seemed to puff out a cloud of smoke. I brought my eyes back to him and pushed my shoulders back. “Mumbles, I think you owe me a word,” I told him sternly. I told myself that when I did this, I needed to be firm and unwavering. I wasn’t going to let him walk away from me this time. He glanced around a little.

“If you stop shoutin’ my goddamn name, we’ll talk,” he rasped.

“Deal,” I said. “Now, where to?”

He didn’t need to tell me because he picked me up. “You ain’t walkin’ nowhere, Princess,” Avery murmured as he took me to the stairwell and up a few flights of stairs. “How long you been walkin’ for?” he grumbled as he shouldered his way through a door and took me into a hallway lined with even more doors.

I shrugged my shoulders a little and replied, “Dunno. What time is it?”

“It’s ‘bout four,” he explained. I took a deep breath and lifted my eyes to ceiling while I thought and counted on my fingers.

“Um,” I hummed. “Maybe like… three hours? Three and a half?”

“Sounds ‘bout right,” Avery muttered. “Your boyfriend’s been callin’ me nonstop for ‘bout two.”

“Why is he calling you?” I asked. “We haven’t even spoken in almost a week now, Mumbles.”

“Cassidy’s smarter than he looks, ‘pparently,” Avery grumbled. “You turned up ‘ere, anyway.”

“I’m sorry,” I sighed. “I meant to be home before he was.” Avery didn’t say anything. He fumbled with keys, struggling to balance me in his arms at the same time. When he opened the door, we entered an apartment, probably smaller (but cleaner) than Alex’s. He sat me down on a small couch, but I immediately leapt up. “I’m not sitting down,” I declared.

“Princess, sit,” Avery sighed with exasperation as he headed into another room that looked a little bit like a kitchen. It didn’t look used, though.

“No, I know how it works. I’m going to sit down, and you’re going to leave me, just like last time,” I retorted.

“I’m just gettin’ you ice, Princess,” Avery muttered. “Sit down.”

“I’m not sitting down because you asked me,” I huffed. “I’m just doing it because I want to, so don’t think I did it for you.”

“Sure, Princess,” he grumbled. When he came back he had two bags of ice. “Take off the shoes,” he instructed, and I did so rather begrudgingly. I kicked my feet up on the table, and Avery’s face flickered just briefly with shock. “Damn, Princess,” he murmured as he set the ice on my ankles.

“Yeah,” I drawled softly. “Dean says I shouldn’t be walking.”

“Lemme just guess,” Avery huffed a breathy laugh. “You been walkin’ everywhere, ‘aven’t you?”

“Of course,” I scoffed. “Do I ever do what I’m told?”

“No,” Avery chuckled. “No, you don’t.”

I smiled faintly, and I licked my lips a little. “So, Mumbles, what I came here to say was…” I paused to swallow the lump in my throat. “I um,” I stammered. Where were my words? I swore I had practiced this speech a thousand times in my head, but now that I was in front of him, I didn’t know what to say. “Mumbles, why’d you leave me like that?” I asked him softly, eyes staring straight at him, lips twitching downward in a gentle curve when he didn’t answer me. “Mumbles, I needed you,” I told him.

“Cassidy was there,” Avery muttered, couldn’t even look at me.

“Mumbles, I needed you,” I repeated. He still didn’t look at me. “I was scared, and I thought I was dying, and you just walked out on me.”

Avery rubbed his forehead. “I waited until Cassidy—“

“I trusted you,” I interjected, voice cracking under the weight of my tears. “I trusted you to stay with me, like you usually do. You’ve always kept me safe, Mumbles, and you just left,” I sniffled. “You just left me there. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t breathe… do you know scared I was?” I could feel my eyes welling up. “Do you know how… how hard it is for me trust anyone at all?” I blinked out a couple tears. His eyes drifted back up to me, and I merely shook my head. “Everyone I’ve met so far has stabbed me in the back at least once, save for Dean,” I choked out. “Including you.” I closed my eyes and more tears fell. “Including… including my own father,” I sputtered out through a sob.

I buried my face in my hands. I felt a weight beside me on the couch, and I felt Avery’s arms wrap around me. “I’m sorry,” he murmured.

“Mumbles, he was just gonna watch me die,” I sobbed. “I was screaming, and he just sat there.” Avery kept his arms there, tried to hush me and calm me down, but it wasn’t working this time. “He sat there and watched, just like he did with my mum,” I cried. “He didn’t do anything, didn’t even bother to help or… or anything—“ I paused and took a shaky breath. “I don’t know what I expected. He’s never been there for me, anyway.”

Avery’s fingers gently rubbed my arm, and I sputtered out another sob. “I just thought maybe he’d try to help,” I wailed. “I thought… I thought maybe… Mumbles, I was so scared,” I confessed, lifting my head to look at Avery with watery eyes. “I wake up screaming in the middle of the night and can’t go back to sleep. I dream about my friends dying,” I told him with a shaking voice. “It doesn’t go away, Mumbles. It shook me up so bad, and I just…” I had to stop to sob again, and I turned my head away. “You were there, and I thought everything was going to be okay again, but you left, Mumbles. Why did you go like that?”

“Princess,” he grumbled after heaving a sigh. “I just… I seen too many people die—“

“Mumbles, people are always going to die,” I interjected, breaking the rhythm of my sobs. “You can’t change that by pushing them away.” Things were quiet again, and I did my best to steady my breathing. I just shook my head. “You’re one of my only friends, Mumbles. You can’t just do that,” I murmured. “You can’t just… you can’t just leave, okay?”

He paused and looked at me, and he nodded. “Okay,” he croaked. Just as I looked up at him, his phone began to ring in his pocket. Avery groaned under his breath when he looked at the screen, and he tossed me the thing. “That’s for you, Princess,” he huffed. Sure enough, it was Dean. I clicked the green button and put the thing to my ear.

“Hello?” I answered. I was met with an audibly relieved sigh.

“Thank God,” he huffed. “Where have you been?”

“Um, Avery’s,” I told him, biting my lower lip and glancing at my legs.

“Bullshit,” Dean shot back. “Bullshit, you weren’t there ten minutes ago when I last called him. Where were you?”

I sighed, “Fine. I was looking for him.”

“Looking. You mean, wandering around West London,” Dean retorted. His patience was thin, with good reason. I couldn’t even be angry that he was snapping at me because he had every right to be.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Alone.”

“Hey,” I whined a little. “I took one of your kitchen knives for protection.” I paused. “I put it in my backpack.”

“Because it is so useful in your backpack, Blondie.”

I paused and took a deep breath, tried to fight off my frustration and my urge to snap back at him and say something rude. I had to remember that this was my fault and that I would need to apologize for what I did, even if I thought that fixing things with Avery was more important than resting. “Muscles, I’m sorry,” I told him, and he didn’t retort that time. “I know I shouldn’t have snuck out, I just really wanted to fix things. And I understand that it was really rude of me to send you out like that, but I did honestly want mac and cheese, just not right at that second, I just knew you’d never let me go to West London. I’m really sorry. Do you want me to come back?”

“Well, it’d certainly make me feel better if you did,” Dean relented with a sigh.

“Okay,” I told him quietly. I covered the phone a bit with my hand and looked at Avery. “Mumbles do you think you could take me back to Dean’s?” Avery nodded, so I gave him a smile and turned back to the phone. “Yeah, Mumbles said he’ll bring me back soon. So I’m gonna go, now, okay? Love you.”

“Love you too, Blondie.”

I hung up the phone and gave it back to Avery. “Guess we should go then?” I asked, raising my eyebrows, when I heard the sound of tiny feet padding across the carpet, and my head turned. I gasped immediately when I saw my beloved cat coming toward me. “Ralph!” I shrieked. He jumped up on my lap and immediately starting rubbing himself on me, purring and mewing. “I knew you were alive!” I exclaimed as I took him in my arms and gave him a nice, gentle squeeze. “Oh, I was so worried, Ralphie,” I told him and kissed his head, and he just mewed.

“Good,” Avery huffed. “Now ‘e can stop sleepin’ on my shit.”

Now, accompanied by my cat, Avery carried me all the way back to Dean’s house, and Dean was more than relieved to have me back where he knew I was safe. Avery left soon after dropping me off, and Dean just sat me down on the couch and iced my ankles some more. He asked me about how things went with Avery, and I told him everything was back to normal now, but I was sparse on the details. I still didn’t think it was my business to share peoples’ personal matters with anyone, even Dean. He sat down on the couch with me and sighed a little, put his arm around me, and pulled me close.

“You know, I’m sorry you have to stay inside,” Dean said, glancing down to me. “I know you must hate it, but I—“

“I know,” I cut him off, wrapping arms around his center and resting my head against his shoulder. “You’re just trying to keep me safe,” I said with a small smile.

“Right,” he said, leaning down to kiss my forehead.

I sighed softly and closed my eyes for a moment. “Thanks, Muscles,” I murmured through a smile.

“For what?”

“Keeping me safe,” I told him. “You’re working really hard to do it, and I know that,” I added. “So thank you.”

“You’re very welcome, Blondie,” Dean told me with a content smile.

I thought then that maybe I would try to be good and stay put for him. Maybe… but I just couldn’t make that kind of promise.