Categories > Celebrities > My Chemical Romance > Trying To Escape The Inevitable
A/N: First off, can I just a MASSIVE thank you to all of you guys who rated and reviewed the last chapter- I was so worried about posting it, I was genuinely scared no one would have remembered it. So thank you all, reading your comments reinstated my faith in my love for posting on here. This instalment is a little shorter than most of the chapters, because it’s not exactly a chapter- it’s an important gap between two parts of the story. I hope you enjoy it- it’s kind of dark and dramatic, but I kinda needed it like that to move onto the next part of the story, which I’m so excited for. Man, I love writing this story, guys. Oh, and if you left a review on the previous chapter, I've responded to all your reviews :3
Interlude
It’s all broken around me. Ugly black crescents and half moons of empty glass at my feet, fragments of toothed glitter scattered across the ceramic sink like starless lights. I know that I’m still crying; strangled sobs that wrack my crumpled body, resounding bitterly off the bleak, tiled walls- but I can’t seem to hear any of it. It’s all numbed, inside my head. My grip on the sink is the only thing keeping me from collapsing to the wreckage on the floor, but I still can’t bring myself to stop.
I’m breaking the broken bits over and over again, unable to hear them shatter over the silence inside my head, inside my chest. I just watch them shatter silently under my feet, under my fists, until their nothing but dust. All I can hear is the unravelled beat of my heart drowning everything else out so that the next sound that comes is dulled, almost mute, meaningless in the rubble.
“Frank! Oh my god, Frank, stop!”
The mirror’s in jagged pieces everywhere on the floor and in my fist, dribbling hotly down my wrist. I dimly recognise the shout as Mikey’s, but I can see anguished green eyes in every piece of jagged glass. Taunting me. Haunting me. I don’t stop because I can’t, I can’t, I can’t. I can’t stop destroying the remains of something I never knew I wanted so much.
“Frank, please!”
The cry is wilder this time, louder in my numbed senses. It vaguely invades the overwhelming midst of bitterness consuming me, and I choke on the faint scent of talcum powder and bass strings. It’s too soft, too sweet in contrast to the jagged haze of salt and blood and shattered black glass that glitters like hundreds of tiny beads of blood. I see the bubbles of dark blood stitching Gerard’s perfect skin together in the floodlamps of the graveyard, remember the rough, ugly scabs of it under my scared fingers, feel the race of my heart as Gerard’s fingers clung to mine like he could hear it, like he could share it, and my body crumples, folding in on itself, the memory like jagged glass in my throat.
“Frank!”
This time I feel the breath of the cry against my ear, and there’s a hand on my shoulder, shaking all the broken bits emptily around inside me until I feel dizzy and Mikey’s hazel eyes swim into view, blurry and terrified through the mist of my tears. A wave of pain slams into me, and the dingy bathroom around me seems to waver, the thousand tiny shards at my feet becoming little black dots that obscure my vision, tearing it apart until it bleeds into nothingness.
For a while all I’m aware of is the coldness of the tiled wall against my weak spine and the way my chest judders with each sob I can’t suppress. My face is contorted, screwed up against the agony. I put my hands up to my eyes, trying to cover up my tears, but something sharp sears across my cheek and I wince, pulling back shakily.
“Oh my god,” Mikey whispers, staring. His eyes are wide and round and pure, bright hazel, the only thing in focus in the blur of tiles and white and glass. I watch the little colour left drain from his face as he tries to speak. “I- oh god, your hands, Frank…” he trails off speechlessly, his words still seeming very far away.
I look down numbly and realise distantly that the hotness dribbling down my wrist is red blood, and there are lots of tiny, jagged shards of mirror gouged into my flesh like ugly black scars. I blink and flex my fingers, watching blood splurge out of the deepest, darkest cut, staining the grey wall behind me. I look up at Mikey, my face screwed up as I choke in a breath only to have it fall straight out of me again, ripping through my chest in an ugly sob. I want to try and speak, try and tell Mikey to leave, but I can’t because the salt is obscuring everything.
It’s like a movie when real life is muted and it’s just lonely music. Only here there’s no music. Just broken glass, blood, tears.
“Frank!” Mikey’s voice trembles with fear, but it barely makes it past the blood. “Please speak to me, tell me what happened. No, hold on, I’ll get these out of your hand first. Oh god, you’re going to need stitches or something…”
I try and gulp down oxygen even though I don’t really want it. It sticks in my throat as Mikey’s voice is trembling, wavering through my senses in a nervous jumble of ‘hold still’s and I realise belatedly that the gentle pressure round the searing pain is his hand holding mine gently as he tentatively removes the glass splinters. I barely wince at the snare of glass invading my skin, because it seems to irrelevant in comparison to the crippling emptiness hollowing out my chest. The sickening clink of the pieces falling into the sink is bleakly soothing. I just close my eyes and listen to them fall, broken and still breaking. Broken and still breaking. Still breaking. Breaking.
“Frank, please speak to me! Please!” Mikey’s voice sounds close to tears now, but I’m too lost in layers of numb, noiseless hurt to respond. I just stay slumped where I am, letting him tweezer the shards from my bloodied hand, chest rising and falling feebly, caught in intermittent sobs beneath my stained, cheap school shirt. It’s the same shirt Gerard laid his head on in the timid, icy darkness of the graveyard.
“Frank, I’m going to get someone,” Mikey’s voice is tremulous, but determined, louder somehow. Dimly, I blink, letting his tearstained mousy face and hazel eyes swim into view. I shake my head frantically, choking on my gulps for breath.
“Please,” my voice is destroyed, vocal chords grated with salt. It sounds oddly human in the silence. “Don’t.”
There’s silence for several moments as Mikey removes the last of the glass from my hand and runs it under the cold tap, carefully rinsing the empty wounds. I watch the murky tendrils of dark blood wisp through the clear water and down the plughole, letting them blur my stinging, aching eyes until Mikey gently pulls my hand away and wraps it tightly in his school tie to stop the bleeding, and the water runs clear and meaningless.
I slump down against the wall and put my head in my hands, raking them through my hair as the intermittent, unstoppable stops still wrack my chest even though my eyes are dry now. My hand is stinging unbearably; the pain returning to its full velocity as the numbness drains out of me, only to be replaced with a hollowing, aching emptiness that makes me hug my arms to my lonely chest, holding myself together because if I don’t I’m scared I’ll just crumble.
Gradually, my vision unblurs and I can hear the crunch of broken glass under my feet. The bathroom is wrecked, the unsightly lacerations of black glass shattered everywhere, an ugly slew of ruins across the grimy tiled floor. After a couple of moments, Mikey turns off the tap and sinks down to sit beside me on the cold, tiled floor.
“Please,” he says quietly, his voice shaking as he pulls his knees up to his chest like he’s as vulnerable as I feel. “Just…just speak to me or something, Frank, please. I need to know you’re alright.”
I stay silent, staring at the bandage wrapped round my hand and the blood starting to ooze out of it, because I can’t lie to him. Not anymore. Instead, I shake my head wordlessly, the bleak room tipping with me.
“I should get the nurse or something, really Frank- you’re gunna need stitches or something, your hands look real bad,” he says fearfully. “I don’t know…If you don’t do something, it might stop you from playing guitar if they don’t get proper attention.”
I think of playing songs I’ve only just realised the meaning of, think of lyrics that aren’t mine, think of anguished eyes that understand and loathe every note. I think of my own lyrics sung by someone else who sounded as though they knew their meaning inside out, think of how the words tore through his song. Raw. Beautiful.
Unbearable.
I close my eyes as tears burn the lids, emotion welling up in my chest.
“What if I don’t want to play anymore?” I whisper hoarsely, the words hurting my throat. I wipe my eyes numbly and stare at the floor, chest still catching on each breath. I can taste salt everywhere, heavy on my tongue.
I don’t know how long we both sit there in silence before I dimly register the soft weight of Mikey’s skinny arm slipping tentatively round my shaking shoulders.
“No, get off me!” I cry out, choking and pushing him away. “Please!” My eyes are brimming with tears as I stagger unsteadily to my feet, swallowing. I don’t want anyone else, just that one person I’ll never have. I want to remember what his arms felt like around me, and only his, because I’ll never know what they feel like again.
I sway where I stand, the blood beating blackly in my skull. It obliterates everything into agony as I slam my fist into the wall where the mirror used to be, over and over again, until the wall’s cracked just like the mirror and I can’t feel my fingers over Mikey’s frantic cries. I don’t stop. I won’t stop.
I’m scared of what will happen when I stop.
So I don’t.
“Stop, Frank!” Mikey’s screaming, pulling me away, his hands grappling my school shirt. “Your hand, you’re still bleeding, please stop!” He wrenches me away, stumbling.
“Leave me ALONE!” I scream brokenly at him, arm falling at my side. My vision is blurred like parts of it have been ripped away.
“I won’t!” Mikey shouts back, trembling.
“I want to be alone!” I yell wildly, throat raw from salt and self-hatred.
“No you don’t,” Mikey says softly, looking at me sadly. “That’s the problem, Frank. You really, really don’t.”
I stare at him numbly for several moments, feeling the anger drain from me like importance. Then with a choked sob, I cover my eyes with my hand and I let myself crumple to the floor again, even more insignificant than before. I’m just another fragment of shattered glass, the smallest fragment. Because he’s right. I don’t want to be alone.
But I am.
“I’m sorry,” Mikey sinks down beside me. “Really Frank.”
I don’t reply, because I can’t bring myself to uncover my eyes and look at my own smashed reality or him, because all his hazel eyes do is reflect all that so poignantly. For moments, seconds, minutes, neither of us say anything. I listen bleakly to the lonely thud of my heart hiding behind my ribs and Mikey’s soft, scared breathing beside me.
“Why did you have to do this?” he whispers eventually, voice aggrieved and almost inaudible.
I don’t say anything, and I don’t think he expected me to. I don’t need to reply to him this time. We both know exactly why I did this- yet somehow, neither of us say a word. Instead, we both sit on the cold bathroom floor amongst the debris and the shattered glass until my shoulders stop shaking with suppressed sobs.
Until my fist stops bleeding.
Until there’s nothing left but silence, and I wonder how there can possibly be anything beyond it now.
……
Cheerful stuff, huh? Don’t worry, this isn’t the end. I’m so excited for the next bit of the story now and what you guys think of it! I’m in the middle of revising for my exams, but I will try my utmost to get the next chapter up soon. I know this update was kind of short compared to my usual ones, but I think it worked best like this- as a gap before the next part of the story. Also, Frank's emotions here are really crucial to the rest of the story from this point. Rates and reviews would be amazing…I really want to know what you’re thinking c: Please drop one by? Thanks for reading, you guys are the best :'3
Lucy xo
Interlude
It’s all broken around me. Ugly black crescents and half moons of empty glass at my feet, fragments of toothed glitter scattered across the ceramic sink like starless lights. I know that I’m still crying; strangled sobs that wrack my crumpled body, resounding bitterly off the bleak, tiled walls- but I can’t seem to hear any of it. It’s all numbed, inside my head. My grip on the sink is the only thing keeping me from collapsing to the wreckage on the floor, but I still can’t bring myself to stop.
I’m breaking the broken bits over and over again, unable to hear them shatter over the silence inside my head, inside my chest. I just watch them shatter silently under my feet, under my fists, until their nothing but dust. All I can hear is the unravelled beat of my heart drowning everything else out so that the next sound that comes is dulled, almost mute, meaningless in the rubble.
“Frank! Oh my god, Frank, stop!”
The mirror’s in jagged pieces everywhere on the floor and in my fist, dribbling hotly down my wrist. I dimly recognise the shout as Mikey’s, but I can see anguished green eyes in every piece of jagged glass. Taunting me. Haunting me. I don’t stop because I can’t, I can’t, I can’t. I can’t stop destroying the remains of something I never knew I wanted so much.
“Frank, please!”
The cry is wilder this time, louder in my numbed senses. It vaguely invades the overwhelming midst of bitterness consuming me, and I choke on the faint scent of talcum powder and bass strings. It’s too soft, too sweet in contrast to the jagged haze of salt and blood and shattered black glass that glitters like hundreds of tiny beads of blood. I see the bubbles of dark blood stitching Gerard’s perfect skin together in the floodlamps of the graveyard, remember the rough, ugly scabs of it under my scared fingers, feel the race of my heart as Gerard’s fingers clung to mine like he could hear it, like he could share it, and my body crumples, folding in on itself, the memory like jagged glass in my throat.
“Frank!”
This time I feel the breath of the cry against my ear, and there’s a hand on my shoulder, shaking all the broken bits emptily around inside me until I feel dizzy and Mikey’s hazel eyes swim into view, blurry and terrified through the mist of my tears. A wave of pain slams into me, and the dingy bathroom around me seems to waver, the thousand tiny shards at my feet becoming little black dots that obscure my vision, tearing it apart until it bleeds into nothingness.
For a while all I’m aware of is the coldness of the tiled wall against my weak spine and the way my chest judders with each sob I can’t suppress. My face is contorted, screwed up against the agony. I put my hands up to my eyes, trying to cover up my tears, but something sharp sears across my cheek and I wince, pulling back shakily.
“Oh my god,” Mikey whispers, staring. His eyes are wide and round and pure, bright hazel, the only thing in focus in the blur of tiles and white and glass. I watch the little colour left drain from his face as he tries to speak. “I- oh god, your hands, Frank…” he trails off speechlessly, his words still seeming very far away.
I look down numbly and realise distantly that the hotness dribbling down my wrist is red blood, and there are lots of tiny, jagged shards of mirror gouged into my flesh like ugly black scars. I blink and flex my fingers, watching blood splurge out of the deepest, darkest cut, staining the grey wall behind me. I look up at Mikey, my face screwed up as I choke in a breath only to have it fall straight out of me again, ripping through my chest in an ugly sob. I want to try and speak, try and tell Mikey to leave, but I can’t because the salt is obscuring everything.
It’s like a movie when real life is muted and it’s just lonely music. Only here there’s no music. Just broken glass, blood, tears.
“Frank!” Mikey’s voice trembles with fear, but it barely makes it past the blood. “Please speak to me, tell me what happened. No, hold on, I’ll get these out of your hand first. Oh god, you’re going to need stitches or something…”
I try and gulp down oxygen even though I don’t really want it. It sticks in my throat as Mikey’s voice is trembling, wavering through my senses in a nervous jumble of ‘hold still’s and I realise belatedly that the gentle pressure round the searing pain is his hand holding mine gently as he tentatively removes the glass splinters. I barely wince at the snare of glass invading my skin, because it seems to irrelevant in comparison to the crippling emptiness hollowing out my chest. The sickening clink of the pieces falling into the sink is bleakly soothing. I just close my eyes and listen to them fall, broken and still breaking. Broken and still breaking. Still breaking. Breaking.
“Frank, please speak to me! Please!” Mikey’s voice sounds close to tears now, but I’m too lost in layers of numb, noiseless hurt to respond. I just stay slumped where I am, letting him tweezer the shards from my bloodied hand, chest rising and falling feebly, caught in intermittent sobs beneath my stained, cheap school shirt. It’s the same shirt Gerard laid his head on in the timid, icy darkness of the graveyard.
“Frank, I’m going to get someone,” Mikey’s voice is tremulous, but determined, louder somehow. Dimly, I blink, letting his tearstained mousy face and hazel eyes swim into view. I shake my head frantically, choking on my gulps for breath.
“Please,” my voice is destroyed, vocal chords grated with salt. It sounds oddly human in the silence. “Don’t.”
There’s silence for several moments as Mikey removes the last of the glass from my hand and runs it under the cold tap, carefully rinsing the empty wounds. I watch the murky tendrils of dark blood wisp through the clear water and down the plughole, letting them blur my stinging, aching eyes until Mikey gently pulls my hand away and wraps it tightly in his school tie to stop the bleeding, and the water runs clear and meaningless.
I slump down against the wall and put my head in my hands, raking them through my hair as the intermittent, unstoppable stops still wrack my chest even though my eyes are dry now. My hand is stinging unbearably; the pain returning to its full velocity as the numbness drains out of me, only to be replaced with a hollowing, aching emptiness that makes me hug my arms to my lonely chest, holding myself together because if I don’t I’m scared I’ll just crumble.
Gradually, my vision unblurs and I can hear the crunch of broken glass under my feet. The bathroom is wrecked, the unsightly lacerations of black glass shattered everywhere, an ugly slew of ruins across the grimy tiled floor. After a couple of moments, Mikey turns off the tap and sinks down to sit beside me on the cold, tiled floor.
“Please,” he says quietly, his voice shaking as he pulls his knees up to his chest like he’s as vulnerable as I feel. “Just…just speak to me or something, Frank, please. I need to know you’re alright.”
I stay silent, staring at the bandage wrapped round my hand and the blood starting to ooze out of it, because I can’t lie to him. Not anymore. Instead, I shake my head wordlessly, the bleak room tipping with me.
“I should get the nurse or something, really Frank- you’re gunna need stitches or something, your hands look real bad,” he says fearfully. “I don’t know…If you don’t do something, it might stop you from playing guitar if they don’t get proper attention.”
I think of playing songs I’ve only just realised the meaning of, think of lyrics that aren’t mine, think of anguished eyes that understand and loathe every note. I think of my own lyrics sung by someone else who sounded as though they knew their meaning inside out, think of how the words tore through his song. Raw. Beautiful.
Unbearable.
I close my eyes as tears burn the lids, emotion welling up in my chest.
“What if I don’t want to play anymore?” I whisper hoarsely, the words hurting my throat. I wipe my eyes numbly and stare at the floor, chest still catching on each breath. I can taste salt everywhere, heavy on my tongue.
I don’t know how long we both sit there in silence before I dimly register the soft weight of Mikey’s skinny arm slipping tentatively round my shaking shoulders.
“No, get off me!” I cry out, choking and pushing him away. “Please!” My eyes are brimming with tears as I stagger unsteadily to my feet, swallowing. I don’t want anyone else, just that one person I’ll never have. I want to remember what his arms felt like around me, and only his, because I’ll never know what they feel like again.
I sway where I stand, the blood beating blackly in my skull. It obliterates everything into agony as I slam my fist into the wall where the mirror used to be, over and over again, until the wall’s cracked just like the mirror and I can’t feel my fingers over Mikey’s frantic cries. I don’t stop. I won’t stop.
I’m scared of what will happen when I stop.
So I don’t.
“Stop, Frank!” Mikey’s screaming, pulling me away, his hands grappling my school shirt. “Your hand, you’re still bleeding, please stop!” He wrenches me away, stumbling.
“Leave me ALONE!” I scream brokenly at him, arm falling at my side. My vision is blurred like parts of it have been ripped away.
“I won’t!” Mikey shouts back, trembling.
“I want to be alone!” I yell wildly, throat raw from salt and self-hatred.
“No you don’t,” Mikey says softly, looking at me sadly. “That’s the problem, Frank. You really, really don’t.”
I stare at him numbly for several moments, feeling the anger drain from me like importance. Then with a choked sob, I cover my eyes with my hand and I let myself crumple to the floor again, even more insignificant than before. I’m just another fragment of shattered glass, the smallest fragment. Because he’s right. I don’t want to be alone.
But I am.
“I’m sorry,” Mikey sinks down beside me. “Really Frank.”
I don’t reply, because I can’t bring myself to uncover my eyes and look at my own smashed reality or him, because all his hazel eyes do is reflect all that so poignantly. For moments, seconds, minutes, neither of us say anything. I listen bleakly to the lonely thud of my heart hiding behind my ribs and Mikey’s soft, scared breathing beside me.
“Why did you have to do this?” he whispers eventually, voice aggrieved and almost inaudible.
I don’t say anything, and I don’t think he expected me to. I don’t need to reply to him this time. We both know exactly why I did this- yet somehow, neither of us say a word. Instead, we both sit on the cold bathroom floor amongst the debris and the shattered glass until my shoulders stop shaking with suppressed sobs.
Until my fist stops bleeding.
Until there’s nothing left but silence, and I wonder how there can possibly be anything beyond it now.
……
Cheerful stuff, huh? Don’t worry, this isn’t the end. I’m so excited for the next bit of the story now and what you guys think of it! I’m in the middle of revising for my exams, but I will try my utmost to get the next chapter up soon. I know this update was kind of short compared to my usual ones, but I think it worked best like this- as a gap before the next part of the story. Also, Frank's emotions here are really crucial to the rest of the story from this point. Rates and reviews would be amazing…I really want to know what you’re thinking c: Please drop one by? Thanks for reading, you guys are the best :'3
Lucy xo
Sign up to rate and review this story