Stolen By Him | ✓

day zero

||DAY 0
||EPILOGUE

Sometimes, courage took nothing at all.

Other times, courage took everything out of you- every fibre of strength melded into you and every thought of fear, hope and faith.

And even as Lana stood in the middle of the cabin house, her place of captivity almost five months ago, it was as though nothing but courage was keeping her from falling. So, maybe courage took, but it also gave.

She breathed in a ragged breath as she looked around her. Her therapist had told her that she was ready- ready to return- and that when she finally did, she had to ask herself one vital question.

What does this room mean to you now?

What did it mean?

Maybe she should have been expecting the answer to be "nothing". Perhaps that's what her therapist wanted to hear.

Or maybe the answer should have been "something bad". That's what her family, and everyone else in her life, referred to it as.

But it was neither.

At times, she couldn't distinguish whether what happened was good or bad. Because even though she knew the answer she had to give was bad- of course it was bad, it brought pain and suffering and so much lost time- in her mind, she knew, it could never be as simple as that.

This house, and everything that happened, could never be as simple as black and white.

Maybe that was wrong of her. The fact that she appreciated that tiny snippet of another world in the form of a river. Or how she was thankful that he saved her, not once, but twice. Or how he showed her how to escape without having to truly leave this life.

Or how she felt his death smack into her like a freight train.

And maybe all this time he hadn't cared about her, and he was just selfish- for which everything he did up until he died was for himself. There were so many things he did, and said, that she couldn't account for. Things that had no explanation. She could have never known his true intention, especially not now. It was this very fact that made life after much harder. For the rest of her existence in this world, that part of her being will always have ended on a question mark.

One of the hardest things that she had to overcome, however, was the fact that she'd waited too long. At the time, she thought it was the right thing to do, but when her parents finally got it out of her where he was, he was already gone.

They said he died from pneumonia.

It's a wonder that she hadn't suffered the same fate.

Her therapist told her that everything happened for a reason, and to not let the feeling of blame hang over her like a cloud.

"You can't take the blame for something you had no control over," he'd said.

The pain still hit her sometimes, but she was starting to realise that even if she could finally accept the fact that she couldn't have done anything more, an affliction that fierce would always live on somewhere deep inside her healing heart.

That was just what it meant to be human.

Lana took one more look at the room around her, knowing this would be the last time she'd see it. She could almost imagine Matthew sitting on the old futon, looking up at her from under his eyelashes, recounting some story of this or that.

'Goodbye' she mouthed silently to the empty figure before her.

Taking a full, deep breath, she turned around towards the exit.

"Are you ready?" Adam asked her, his body casting shadows from the entry way as he leaned against the door, a pair of crutches tucked under one arm.

"Yes."

They both walked out of the cabin, and she closed the door softly behind her. He passed her the little lighter, and she gripped it in the palm of her hand.

"On the count of three?" He asked.

"Okay," she nodded. "One..."

However, now that she was here once more, and now that she had seen a different light shone onto everything that had happened, there was no denying one thing.

"Two..."

Even if she missed him, or ached over the fact that he was gone, he had stolen her.

"Three."

And that was something that he should never have done.