So Long and Goodnight...

Helena’s P.O.V.

You sank to the cold, hard ground in the alley behind the venue, crying harder than you could remember crying in a very long time. You couldn’t believe that you had actually come here. What were you hoping to do? Just waltz right back into their lives? You had been dead to them for five years. That was a hell of a lot of time to go on thinking that someone you had been very close friends with your whole life was dead and gone forever only to have them show up five years later out of the blue with nothing more to say than “hey guys. I missed you. What’s up.” God! You were such an idiot!

How the hell could you have come all this way without a plan, without even an inkling of what you were going to say when or even if you saw them. You hadn’t even considered the fact that security might be tight to protect them but in reality it wasn’t too hard to sneak past the guard near the door that led backstage. You felt bad about sneaking into the concert itself. The money from tickets and merch went to them. It was what they lived on. They were nowhere near rock star status at this stage in the game but they had definitely made a name for themselves. The concert had sold out.

You thought back to the day, not too long ago, that you had been watching TV in your uncles’ living room. He’d gotten MTV just for you and you were watching music videos. You made use of a commercial break to go grab some food and from the kitchen you heard a promotion for a new CD from a band called My Chemical Romance. You’d never heard of them so you didn’t really pay much attention …until you heard his voice. It had changed a little, matured …but there was no denying that it was Gerard’s voice. You ran back into the living room just in time to see a clip of them on the screen. It was them, all of them: Mikey, Frank, Ray, Bob, and Gerard. You suddenly felt very lightheaded and you weren’t hungry anymore. The only thought in your head was ‘I have to see them’. So you borrowed Tony’s laptop (he was a stable hand that worked for your uncle full time in return for a place to sleep and food to eat) and you looked up their concert schedule. The closest they would be coming to you was LA in three weeks. Not a lot of time to save up money. You reluctantly told Charlie about your discovery and though you absolutely hated to do so because you knew how hard he worked for it, you asked him if he could chip in just a bit. Not surprisingly he was more than happy to and he gave you all he could but it was not a lot. The money had just barely been enough for a plane ticket and cab fare from the airport to the venue. Luckily you were able to wriggle past security with a bit of effort and a lot of wit. You wanted to stand at the foot of the stage and be as close to them as you possibly could but you didn’t want to risk one of them seeing you in the crowd so you stayed back, lost in a sea of eyeliner, mohawks, baggy pants, and mosh pits but you didn’t really notice any of it. All you saw were the five beautiful angels on the stage in front of you. They were absolutely brilliant and more than once, you cried for all the missed practices, the 4:00am band meetings at Starbucks, not being able to sit there for hours and just watch Gerard write as you had watched him draw so many times before. You cried for the five years that had been taken from you.

When the concert was over and you watched them walk off stage, you debated what you should do next. Surely you hadn’t gone to all this trouble just to come so close and then turn back around and go back to Montana like nothing had ever happened had you? Without thinking, without even asking yourself if you (or they) were anywhere near ready for this, you waited for a distraction which came in the form of a fist fight between two guys over some barely dressed girl and you slipped past the security guards and got backstage. You were standing in a concession area for band members and their crew and venue staff. Everyone was rushing around, tearing down equipment and either shouting or following orders. No one noticed you. But you noticed a very familiar face over by a vending machine. It was Mikey. Suddenly you realized how pitifully unprepared you were for this. You started shaking and found it very hard to draw breath. You couldn’t make yourself walk over to him and you couldn’t think of a single think to say even if you had been able to. Just as you started to cry and decided that you needed just a little time to think of something, anything better than this, his gaze swept over you. You turned your head away immediately and were already running toward the door when his eyes snapped back to where you had been and followed you as you slipped out the door and into the dark alley.

Now you were curled into a ball on the ground in the same alley hating yourself and fate and God if there was one and there were so many thoughts going through your mind …not one of them positive. You realized suddenly that you were being extremely selfish. This whole time you had only thought about you; how you were going to get here, how you were going to get in, how you were going to finally see your boys. You’d never once considered how it would affect them. They were almost famous now. They obviously didn’t need you. Did they even think about you anymore?

‘Selfish!’ you screamed in your head. ‘It doesn’t matter! They’re better off without me barging back into their lives and fucking everything up. They looked so happy on that stage tonight. They found their place. They don’t need me anymore. Maybe they never did. I never should’ve come.’ You buried your head in your arms and cried so hard you thought your lungs were going to burst and your throat felt like it was on fire but you couldn’t stop.

In the back of your mind you heard the footsteps but you tried to pretend you couldn’t. This was LA. You were in a dark ass deserted alley with no money, no cell phone, no way home, and you were all alone and much to vulnerable to fight anyone off. It made sense that it would come to this. Maybe you would get raped or killed or both. It really didn’t matter to you now. For five years, the only thought that had kept you going and the only way you had found the strength and the courage to survive that terrible night of the crash was the fact that you had made a promise to your boys that you would see them again. Now that the full reality of the situation had finally presented itself to you, you knew that it was hopeless and you actually found yourself hoping that whoever was walking toward you meant to kill you. It would be ten times better than a lifetime of knowing you had lied to everyone you loved.

When he spoke, his voice was kind and soft and it gave you a brief sense of inner peace that you couldn’t describe. He asked you if you were okay and you said the only thing that came to your mind even after all these years, something you had shared with Gerard so long ago.

“No,” you sobbed, your heart breaking as you recalled that day at the skate park and in your mind saw Gerard standing in front of you, your hands on his shoulders, his hands on your waist as he steadied you on the board, his eyes gleaming like priceless jewels as he smiled at you. “I’m not o-fucking-kay.”

In the silence that followed, you wondered if you had only imagined the footsteps and the voice so you slowly raised your head and the worn black tennis shoes a few feet away from you confirmed the presence of an actual person. Your eyes moved up to the tight black jeans. When you saw the bat belt buckle, your heart skipped a beat but surely it couldn’t mean what you thought so your eyes moved steadily upward to the black shirt, over which was a tattered leather jacket. You hesitated a bit then, not sure you were ready to see the face of whoever was standing in front of you but you no longer had control over where your eyes went so they traveled further up and quickly took in the jet black shoulder length hair before falling to rest on a pair of honey colored eyes that were beginning to fill with tears.

So …he had missed you after all.