Pretense: Prologue

No one should ever have to feel such cold. The kind you feel deep inside; it spreads through every part of your being and settles in your bones. It absorbs all feeling. It is inescapable. It follows you, pushes you down and resides in your soul.

She sat next to an open window in early May. The air was heavy and there was a definite chill. Port Charles had been the recipient of a late season cold front and the city had yet to thaw. She was freezing, but it wasn't from the weather. It came from within. She had been invaded by emptiness. She felt nothing.

Only the cold.

They said it was shock and it would pass. That was weeks ago and it was still hanging over her like a thunderstorm that has yet to break. All around, life moved on, but not for her. She went through the motions, but to what end? Once again she was pretending to move on, pretending to be okay, pretending to live. Once again her entire life had become pretense.

All that existed for her was the emptiness. She was living in a void.

Her life was like a carousel ride. Every time things started to look up and started going well for her, the bottom would drop out. Something would come along like a detour in the middle of the road and screw her over.

It had happened again. She had been so happy and carefree. She was smiling. She had thought that this time it would work out. She felt normal. That should have been her first clue. Elizabeth Webber was never happy for long; life, destiny, or some twisted god wouldn't allow that. And life had smacked her in the face once more.

She felt like she was screaming and no one was listening. No one cared. Sure, everyone tried in the beginning. But as the weeks passed, people stopped noticing. Whether it was intentional or not, she didn't know. There's only so many times the same people can say that they're sorry. The only difference was, this time she didn't care. She welcomed their indifference. She didn't want to share conversations with people that didn't matter to her. She didn't feel anything anymore, unless numbness counted.

"Do you know what nothing feels like?"

"Yeah, that's pretty much where I live."

There was one who wanted to help. He wanted to be there for her, to help her through the loss, the devastation, the anger, but she didn't want him. His help always cost too much. In the past whenever she needed him, he had been there, but then he too, like everyone else, had finally left. She had placed all her trust in him, all her faith and gotten nothing in return except lies and heartache. He had all but forgotten her. She had been cast aside for someone else. He had been her hope, her beacon of light, and her wind. He had saved her in so many ways, only to forget her existence.

She used to feel the wind, but it's gone now. The wind doesn't exist anymore, not for her. All that's left is the cold.

She doesn't want him around because she wouldn't be able to handle it when he left. She knew if she let herself believe in him again and he left that she would be truly lost and that scared her. Never again did she want her life to revolve around anyone. You only lost when it did. The only person who can be relied upon is yourself. At least that way when you fuck up, there is no one to blame for it but you.

"There's no word for what I feel for you."

When Lucky had died, she wanted people to see that she was moving on. She wanted them to see that her whole world didn't revolve around him. The grief she felt for Lucky was razor sharp; she ached for him constantly. She thought the pain would never go away. Then he came into her life and changed everything. She started to see the world differently and she looked forward to getting up every day on the off chance she might see him. And the pain from Lucky's death had started to diminish. It became a hollow ache. She attributed this change to him: the first man who had never let her down. Even after all the times he left, her belief in him never faltered. She had been such a stupid girl than. She trusted too easily, gave too much of herself, and in the end she was the one who always lost. Not much had changed, she still lost. But now she knew how her life was. She knew that she would never win.

"Just please be happy, because that's all I really want."

Happiness doesn't exist, at least not for her. When was she going to learn that?

Then Lucky had come back from the dead and she was expected to be exactly the way he had left her. She was supposed to be the same girl left behind. She was supposed to forget what it meant to be strong and to make decisions for herself. She was supposed to forget being his friend. She had to forget the man that had helped her change, but she couldn't. She had been selfish; she wanted him in her life, so she played him like a yo-yo. The blame wasn't all on her side though, there was plenty to go around. He never fought for her; he didn't tell her how he felt about her until the end. He never made an effort to bring her into his life, his heart. It was always too dangerous; there was no room for her. And now, there was no room for him.

"It's too dangerous to be around me."

"I've held you once and watched you bleed. I can't do it again."

It was always excuses from him.

When Lucky had been acting so odd that summer, everyone kept telling her to not give up. Everyone cared about Lucky, not her. She had wanted to shout that she mattered, that she was there too. No one noticed. No one cared. Except him. Back then she had wanted people to notice her pain and listen to her, now she just wanted to be ignored.

"Don't follow me, you're only going to get lost."

She was lost and wanted to be left alone to the emptiness.

The worst part was during the night when the nightmares came; they threatened her sanity. As soon as her eyes closed, his face would tattoo itself onto the back of her eyelids. She would remember his eyes, the way they looked, the way they smiled right along with his mouth. She would dream of his smell, his hands, his laugh, and then she would see the way he looked right before…She shook her head, she wasn't going to think about that. She started avoiding sleep, along with people. She knew she looked terrible. She had lost weight she couldn't afford and her hair was stringy. She was pale, and the circles under her eyes were a deep purple. No one saw her though because she never left her studio. She had food delivered once a day, but didn't eat most of it, and the locks had been changed so she wouldn't have any unwelcome visitors. She just wanted to be left alone. Left alone in her sorrow thinking about what she had lost once more. What had been taken from her again.

The breeze ruffled her hair as she looked at what remained of her studio. Breaking things was always so easy.

She laughed as a chill took her.

No one should ever have to feel such cold.