Come Back to Me

1

It was cold and dark. The hum of the machine that she once spent years of her life developing was absent, leaving only an ironically timeless silence.

This was the one place she could really think before she left. Everywhere else was crowded, loud or full of unwanted distractions, often painful ones. This time, however, there was no thinking happening. No problem to solve, no complicated math to pour over... just pain. Visceral, primal pain that left her unable to even cry.

She had considered drinking, but that would only hurt differently...only make it harder to deal with in the long run. She knew she had to get to Dead somehow, he's alive and so very very close but now, she felt...

She didn't really have a way to describe it. The feeling felt almost...wrong. As if she wasn't even supposed to be feeling it. Every emotion she had ever felt was now swirling together in the pit of her stomach. Even here in her workshop, her should-have-been safe space she felt all the anxiety and inward guilt of what Varg had said to her. About how he said her desire to help, the dreams, the connection, all the good she thought she did had just been some twisted self serving fantasy to go out with her boy crush, taken to a new extreme.

She had started to hate herself for that. All of the spite in Varg's voice, not towards them but for them, ate away at her. Burrowing deeper and deeper like some hungry parasite, these thoughts of guilt and self loathing, hatred and sorrow for what she had done as collateral. She started to think that they would all be better off if she just k-

"You ok?"

The voice startled her.

"You haven't come out since we got home, even when mom called you for dinner..."

Valerie...

" I know we haven't always gotten along but I'm worried about you, even when you were working on all of this, you weren't this out of it."

Vannesa could feel something in her break, like a crack in a dam. There wasn't much she could do to stop it either, all the tears she'd been panicking to har dot cry came rushing out all at once and she didn't want to be alone for it, she didn't care who it was right now. But, she was glad it was family for once.

"I never should have gone back," she whispered, voice cracking as she spoke. "Varg was right. I was fucking selfish and reckless."

Sitting down on the floor beside her, Valerie rested a hand on Vanessa's leg, squeezing gently. For a moment, the silence that had been surrounding her had almost become comforting with Valerie beside her. The feeling was gone almost as quickly as it came, leaving an even more hollow feeling deep inside her.

"Look," Valerie started. "I can't say if what you did was right or wrong, at least as far as getting together with this guy, but I do know that your intentions were good and that you weren't selfish at all. If you look at the big picture, you going and doing what you did kept two people alive and saved two families the heartache of having to bury their children. I don't know much about this Varg guy besides what you've told us, but I think he's wrong."

"I just feel so...I don't even know."

"There's not really much you can do at this point except talk to him when you get there or just let it go."

"I can't let it go...I put too much of myself into this to give up now."

Valerie smiled, pulling her in for a tight hug. "Then get him back."

Vanessa nodded, looking at her sister with a half smile. "Thank you."