unseentides | [DARROW] come back and haunt me, oh and i rush to the start

I don't know why my first instinct was to go to Faye. Maybe because she was the first person that had been there for me in Darrow, no matter much we might have disagreed. I knew she wasn't going to hold my hand. That wasn't what I needed. I just needed someone to talk to, to give the situation the weight that it deserved, and it wasn't fair to put all of that on a boy just because he looked like somebody I onced loved. Someone, I suppose, I still did.

I didn't call. Maybe I should have. I knew my manners, after all. But Faye had given me her address for emergencies, and while I still don't know if this counted, I figured the worst she could do was turn me away. I just didn't want time to think it through before I went, I guess. I had thought enough that day, and I was tired.

Faye lived near the beach. Ocean View, I think the apartments were called. I was a little envious of that, but sometimes the sea brought strange pangs of longing back to me. Reminded me of how we'd run down the pier with the wind whipping at our sides, how we'd visited that wreckage and we'd all been so much more broken than we'd ever been. How the ship hadn't been the only hollow thing that sat atop that beach. I lingered for a while on the edge of the apartment building, looking out at the ocean, breathing in the salt air. It was cold enough that it almost stung, and yet so invigorating.

I had to pull myself out of the moment. One of those moments so like just before I'd arrived in Darrow, when I'd really let myself cry over Tommy for the first time. I probably could have stood there for hours, but I had a purpose. I needed to remind myself of that sometimes. And though I had more time than I ever had before, I intended not to let it waste. So I made the short walk to Faye's apartment, #3, and knocked on her door.

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I'm not sure I wanted him to turn into something whole on its own. Maybe that's a terrible thing. I knew that he wasn't Tommy. I knew he'd never fulfil any of that. He was just a boy, after all, who happened to share his face. But what I worried about was whether seeing him as his own self might make Tommy drift that much further away. Maybe I wasn't ready to let go yet.

Maybe I never would be.

Faye's question threw me, and it took a long moment for me to figure out a reply. Because I didn't know what I felt. I still don't. Nothing could prepare me for that moment. Maybe, maybe in the way that we thought of encountering our Originals it might have, but it just wasn't quite the same. It wasn't me. It was Tommy. And sometimes I missed him so much I worried I'd forget how to breathe. "Sad," I said, finally. Honest.

Sad. How apt, and how brief, almost to the point where it didn't feel like a word that did the emotions justice. Maybe that was unfair of me to say. It wasn't me who had encountered a ghost of a face. Having Spike around, however briefly, had been cathartic. It was him. Really him. And I could let out every single emotion with him around — or, as I did more often, nurse them in the privacy of my room.

If it was just a face... you know what? I think I would have found it frustrating. Just frustrating. And I probably would have opted to never see that person again.

As the kettle came to a whistle, I gave both of us a little time, pouring the water into two mugs and allowing the leaves time to steep as I brought them over. A quiet sort of movement, back and forth, as I went back for the milk and tea. Tea was better for these sorts of conversation than water was, I was convinced.

"I'm sorry that you had to see his face again like this," I said quietly, once I'd finally settled by her side. I glanced over, quiet, meeting her gaze. I genuinely... felt sorry about the situation. "It must have ached."

I wanted so badly to dismiss its significance, to pretend that it was all okay, but it occurred to me that doing so would be dishonouring Tommy and his life and his worth. It wasn't okay. Losing him, I realised, wasn't justifiable in the ways that we justified old age or illness or tragedy. Somebody brought him into the world, as they did me, with the knowledge that before he'd even reach middle age he'd be dead.

More than sad, I felt angry. And I'm not sure I'd let myself feel like that prior to that point. Prior to seeing Peter, the boy that looked just like Tommy but broke my heart when he was not. She was right. It ached. How could it have done anything less? How could I have felt any better? "I should have expected it," I said. "I've met so many look-a-likes. I should have figured."

"I don't know. I don't think we ever learn to fully expect all the crap that life can throw our way. Even if we're used to it, or even if we're aware of it around us. We still don't expect to have it land on us. Especially if life's already been hard enough as it is," I remarked, watching Kathy quietly. I could sense more tension in her shoulders when she talked about Tommy than when she talked about her own likely fate.

Funny, how it took being angry on behalf of another person to wake many of us up.

I placed the tea set gently on the table, pouring out a cup of tea for either of us, and trusting Kathy to handle her own milk and sugar.

"You know, when I arrived here... someone from my home was already around. Someone who had passed away about a month before I arrived. That happens, too."

I'd heard about those sorts of things and while I knew that I had as much a chance of that happening to me as the next person, I didn't let myself dwell on that. I'd rather have been surprised if he did turn up, the real Tommy – not just some picture of – than hold out a hope that he'd come back to me when I'd already accepted his death. Before he even died, really. "That must have been difficult," I said, although it didn't feel adequate.

Difficult. That was a word for it. It certainly felt accurate in describing the tightness in my chest, the way my pulse pounded, the way everything in my body was slightly off knowing that he was around. He didn't have a quiet presence; instead, having him by my side changed everything. The air I breathed, the ground under my feet.

As much as it had hit me square in the chest when he left, I breathed easier these days.

"Just like how your encounter was difficult, right?" I asked, raising a brow lightly. "There's no need to worry about me, though. He's gone, I know he could come back, and that's as settled as that matter will ever get. But I wanted to warn you. A lot can happen around here."

"I think this is one of those times where ignorance would have been blissful," I said, not unkind, and not as if I wasn't grateful for her warning me. I knew the bizarre sorts of things that Darrow could do to a person, I just never never imagined I'd see him again. Him, all of him, not just a face that happened to resemble his.

I wasn't over losing him. I'm still not. But I'd tried my hardest to rationalise it all, to tell myself that when he went he saved another, that the life he lived was rich and real and what he wanted it to be. But I could hardly convince myself. Those days, at least. "I appreciate you saying so, though."

"Isn't it always, though? Not knowing keeps life so much... lighter," I remarked, far more open with Kathy than I would have been with most of my other acquaintances. Maybe because she'd shown the initiative in being open with me. I know that there were plenty of times when I wanted to return to that blissful state of unknowing, those precious few weeks after I'd woken up in that chamber, when I could still believe in the goodness of people. And how that was the default.

I knew better now.

"But it also makes things a hell of a lot more dangerous. At least when you know about the unpleasant stuff, you also know when you've spotted it. Maybe I care about you being able to suss the dangers out, Kathy. Not that this particular fact is dangerous, but... well." I glanced up at the ceiling.

It was an emotional danger. That prospect of seeing a loved one again. Maybe it was just me, and how I hated for things to grow more chaotic than I was anticipating... but I'd rather be warned, I thought.

[DARROW] come back and haunt me, oh and i rush to the start

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