A/N: -_- It's almost 4am and I have no hope of sleeping unless I get this out of our heads. (Yes, I said our heads.) Also, seeing as how this was finished around 4am, I'm sure there are errors. Well, it happens. Sorry about the...sadness of this OST. WARNING: Dark themes, touchy topic/s, angst...and more angst. Remember, I warned you.
Wake Me
He was not one to talk so freely about many of his thoughts, especially not those thoughts, not those dark ones. At night his mind seemed to always be filled with layer over layer of pain and questions, none of it ever getting answered. They were like voices talking over each other, sometimes the words meshing and tangling until he couldn't make them out anymore. Sometimes the images overlapped like a double exposed photo, until the images no longer made any clear kind of picture. During the day it eased a little, but the shadows still lurked behind his eyes and kept his lips from smiling. There were no close friends, he wasn't very good at making them or keeping the few he had managed to acquire over the years. There wasn't even family to lean on and spill the pain onto, in hopes of some relief. He'd managed to alienate all the ones who were left living—all nine of them. There were just certain things they did not see eye to eye on, and he had a bad habit of always believing he knew best, and wedges were stuffed between relationships until they were all but destroyed. He hadn't really meant to, but it had happened. Sometimes he counted being alone as a good thing, sometimes he even professed it, but most of the time he was so lonely that he didn't want to get out of bed in the morning. If only his memories and rampaging thoughts would leave him alone as everyone else had, he would be in peace. But maybe he didn't deserve that, maybe the torment was punishment for allowing his ego to get so big that it blotted out everything else. If he had been there, it wouldn't have happened. He would have never allowed that stunt.
He ducked his head a little, looking down at his jeans and his fingers as they picked nervously at a loose string. He hated waiting like this. The chairs in the lobby seemed stiff and uncomfortable and he thought about walking out, but he knew he couldn't do it. His head was in such bad shape, he needed some relief, someone to listen to the dark things that gnawed at him relentlessly. She would probably think he was a horrible person, but that didn't matter so much anymore. He just needed her to work her magic and ease the pressure that was steadily building, night upon night, week upon week, year upon year. If he let it go on any longer, he was afraid of what might happen. The breaking point seemed close, and with the passing of each restless night and miserable day, it only came closer. One day, he was going to completely snap, if he didn't try to do something about the things that haunted him.
She was a psychiatrist. She was supposed to make it all better, right?
He focused on a crinkle of long hair that fell over his face, and into his line of vision. He touched the tip, and wrapped it around his finger, studying the strands and noticing one silver thread that had invaded the dark ones.
He startled when his name was called. The woman sitting behind the front desk gave him a small smile.
"She's ready to see you."
He nodded, and got up from the chair. He walked past the desk, hoping to avoid any curious gazers that might recognize his name, and down a hallway. The room was at the end, to the left, and he ducked in feeling nervous. His hands made their way to his pockets and stuffed themselves there. The doctor smiled at him, and motioned for him to sit in one of the overstuffed leather chairs. His fingers flexed, gripping and un-gripping the arms of it.
The session began the same as it always did, with her asking him simple questions about his week, and how he'd been feeling. It was hard for him to open up like this, even at some of her less intrusive questions he wanted to throw up a wall, wanted to shut his mouth tight, and stare her down until she became intimidated and stopped her questioning. He forced himself to talk to her though, slowly, his words carefully chosen. He wanted her to help after all, he wanted all of this to stop so he could sleep at night, so he could have a moments quietness without the clamoring and crying of ghosts inside his head.
He closed his eyes, relaxing a little in the plush chair as she listened, and asked her questions. He heard his own voice responding to her, telling her things that were growing more and more revealing. In a way, it felt good to finally be able to release some of it, and a few times he caught himself rambling on and made a real effort to stop.
Then she asked about him, and him, and that place.
He bristled, his formerly relaxed fingers biting into the soft leather material of the chair. The burst of anger that coursed through him, even after all these years, still managed to make his heart thud quicker and his lips turn down into deep frown. He said nothing, a million thoughts racing through his head, all of which had run laps with each other many times around the track of his mind. She prodded.
He snapped out, the bitterness and hurt lacing his words like a strong alcohol spiked into a bowl of once mild punch. He was a good employee, he was the best in his company, the top of the top, he carried the product, but it wasn't enough. His boss had his eye on someone new, someone pretty, someone who couldn't hold a candle to the man currently reigning as top dog. His boss fell in love with shimmering golden hair, twinkling blue eyes, and a sluts body, and then all of his hard work and passion meant nothing. His boss wanted to place his whole company onto the shoulders of this "man" who had no business being the face of anything. The guy was a wreck, and he was too pretty, too whiney, too fagged up to knock over the best man the company—the business all around—had to offer. But he did, just because he was beautiful.
The man in the leather chair spat the name, which he claimed over the years not to hate as much as he did, with venom. It wasn't enough that there were disagreements about the direction of the company, it wasn't enough that he'd decided to leave it behind for an opposing company which was just beginning to stink with the decay of gangrene, no it wasn't enough.
His boss and that fucking pretty boy had to destroy his name, his dignity, his respect, his career…it wasn't enough to just let him go. His boss had to step on him, and grind his heel down, like the heavy heel of a man smashing a used cigarette butt into the pavement. All he asked was that he didn't have to drop the title in his home country, in front of throngs of loyal fans. He'd agreed to drop it at the next live show, and as far as he knew, that was the way it was going to happen. But that wasn't how it happened. His boss stabbed him in the back, and after all he should have known the man would never be so gracious. He only looked after himself, and his company was at war with the rival. Talent was signing to the opposing team, and the boss man couldn't risk not getting the title out of his hands, and that place was the best to do it. Doing it that way would make the other man in the match up a star to the U.S. side of things who generally hated the color pink anyway. In Canada, this man would suddenly be the biggest heel, having crushed their hero with the cheat to end all cheats.
But really, his boss had manipulated them both, and probably in reality cared no more about his new found star than the old one. For what happened at that place, he was really more angry and hateful towards his former boss. In the beginning he had been angry at both of them, lashing out in rage and hate, but as time wore on he began to realize that plain and simple, they were both used. His anger towards that pretty boy stemmed from something far deeper, that had nothing to do with that place, or the title that was cheated from him.
"Why do you feel this way about him?" The doctor asked.
Silence took over once more. He chewed at his lip, his heart speaking mutely for him. A thin sheen of tears built behind his still closed eyes.
"He…he made me…feel things. Want things…" His brow furrowed, and made himself swallow the rest of the words. He held his mouth shut so tightly that his jaw began to ache, his heart skipping in his chest, and he wanted to scream at her to go on—to ask him anything but that. "I don't wanna talk about it." He finally blurted.
"What did he make you feel?"
"I don't wanna talk about it!" He barked. "I'm not going to."
She nodded, but he didn't see. His eyes were still closed, his hands felt clammy and slick against the leather beneath the palms.
"That's fine, we can put that topic away for another day." She said, trying to make her voice sound light.
"There's not gonna be a day for that discussion." He answered flatly, his mouth sat in an unemotional line. He was afraid she could see his emotions roiling just beneath the surface of that mask, after all it was her job. He was afraid she could see the word 'FAG' posted across his forehead, that she somehow knew that thing that no one else did and that she was going to call him out on it. Then he would surely never come back, the session would end the way those accusations always ended: an enraged spew of nasty, shouted, words, adamant denials, and offended glaring, maybe some fist pounding to her desk. If she was lucky, her office wouldn't be in that big of a mess when he stormed out.
"I see."
Was all she said, and she didn't push. A sigh of relief ghosted from his lips and the tightly tied muscles throughout his body began to slowly relax once more.
"Are you okay? Do you want to continue, sir?"
After a moment, he nodded his head.
"We're almost finished for today, anyway." She smiled at him warmly, and oddly, he just realized his eyes were opened, but didn't remember doing so. He closed them again, trying to put himself into a more relaxed state. He heard some papers rustle minutely, and the soft sound of pencil lead scrawling notes. "You've told me before that you have problems sleeping, and that you often have these repetitive dreams that wake you, and keep you from sleeping again."
He froze, a piece of the redundant dream flashing horribly against the backs of his closed eyes. He winced, jerking in the chair.
"What do you dream about?"
The lump of tangled feelings stirred up by her question about him was suddenly usurped and blotted out by that dream hurtling into his mind with all the horrible details of the worst sort of nightmare—one that wasn't just drummed up from random, subconscious thoughts, but one that had been lived as a real, cold, thing, that wakeful eyes had seen and would never forget. He could have put a stop to it, had he been there. It was the loving duty of the older one to be the watchful guardian, and he failed. The tears welling behind his closed eyes leaked from beneath the dark lashes, and ran in slow, shimmering streaks down his cheeks.
"I want to help you, but you have to tell me."
He sobbed out the one word, the two syllables a whimper.
"Falling."
At some point, she had moved her chair closer to him, and she touched his knee.
More tears came.
"That's a very common dream. Do you wake up before you land?"
Again, the nightmare sparked inside, the images burning and blinding and never leaving. He couldn't just wake up, lay in bed, and calm himself by whispering 'it was only a dream'. He would give anything if that were so, but it wasn't. All he could do after he startled awake from the horror was to stare blindly into the darkness, and feel the ache of the hole left in his life, and in his heart. Of all his demons this was the worst one, it made him feel physically sick. He shook his head, and a couple stray locks brushed against his cheeks and stuck to the wetness of his spent tears, much like they did at night when he cried alone until his eyes had no more to give to try and release the pain.
"Mr. Hart?"
She handed him a couple of tissues, and he dabbed at his nose.
"I wake up." He said quietly. His dark eyes looked down at the wadded tissue in his hands. "But it doesn't matter."
"It does matter, Mr. Hart. Many dreams have symbolic meanings and-"
"No, you don't understand…" The tears splattered onto his shirt, and his hunched shoulders began to tremble with the sobs.
"Mr. Hart, what don't I understand?" She reached for another tissue, and then handed him the small square box.
"I-it isn't me." He stared down with blurry vision at the box in his hand, knowing there would never be enough flimsy sheets to even begin to dry his tears. "I'm not the one who's falling."
"It's only a dream Mr. Hart."
"Then why can't I wake up? Why—God—wake me the fuck up, please, please wake me up!" The sobs came harder as he begged her, grabbing at her arms as she backed away. "I don't want to see it anymore! Just wake me up! Wake me up please, please!" His pleading dissolved into weeping, his once strong form slumped into the chair as the pain wracked his soul like an unforgiving storm.
There was no hope of waking up, ever.