Insanity.

Sometimes Chloe wondered how to describe it.

Perhaps like inky blue mixed with searing red, shades of deep black swirling together- perhaps almost infinitely- turning lightness to darkness, never stopping, never ending. Perhaps she would call it words upon words, screams upon screams, letters upon letters, stacked until everything was a blur, a blissful haze.

To Chloe, insanity was no longer seeing the line between good and evil. It was questioning what she loved and knowing she wanted, more than anything, what she hated. Insanity was having ideas- millions of ideas, incomprehensible ideas- and not having a way to communicate them because you're lost. It was thinking about death more than life but life more than death and having crazy, unsurpassed obsessions and addictions to everything, everything, everything. It was losing yourself within yourself and understanding but not comprehending and seeing the world on a scale so wide you realized that, in the end, you didn't matter. (And nothing does. That's the sad bit.)

—

On her first day back at work, Chloe Goddard was walking on air. She could hear Dom and Essie talking, maybe to her,maybe not, but their words were still hollow and empty and she couldn't help but despise it all.

"Chloe?" Dom asked, his tone impossibly concerned.

"What?" Chloe replied, agitated. She had been thinking. She couldn't really remember what of, but she had probably been pondering something incredibly important, and she had been interrupted.

Dom stopped in his tracks and stared at her strangely.

"Are you alright?"

"Yeah. Fine," Chloe replied, because that's what she was. What she always was. Fine.

"Chloe, if you ever want to talk-" Dom began, nudging Chloe's shoulder and smiling slightly -"I'm here. Okay?"

"Okay."

Okay. Chloe liked the sound of the word. Harsh. Jagged. Round but sharp, curved but linear. It sounded broken but glued back together. Exactly how she wanted to be.

And then she started thinking about the letter O, and how it was purely infinite, how it was full and roaming and never ending. Chloe liked things that had no stopping point, because she couldn't help but wonder when she'd hit his road block. The end of her line.

As she stood in the corridor, contemplating thoughts no one else would understand, her mother watched from the nurses' station, a worried expression splayed across her face.

—

"Do you think she's okay, Ange?" Dom asked a few nights later in the staff room. He had patient files spread out in front of him and a pen in his hand.

"Who? Mrs Williams? I did notice that her obs seemed a bit off earlier-"

"No, not Mrs Williams. Chloe."

The mood quickly changed from carefree to grim in a matter of a few words. Ange gulped and looked away.

"Oh, Dom," she whispered, and her voice dripped with sadness.

"She's been so detached, so unlike herself. I'm really starting to get worried," Dom muttered, setting down his pen and running his fingers through his hair.

"I think she's blaming what happened to me, on herself. She always has," Ange said, biting down on her lip.

"We need to let her know she has us," Dom resolved, his voice sounding a little bit stronger. "That she's not alone."

Ange smiled.

"Yeah. I miss her," she mumbled, her thoughts journeying back to just a few weeks ago. They had always been so close, eliciting envy from Chloe's friends, who had strained relationships with their mothers. Although dysfunctional in many, many ways, Ange and Chloe had always been the most important people in each other's lives.

"I do too," Dom whispered.

—

Chloe's thoughts were killing her.

When she closed her eyes, she was met with what happened to her mother. When she opened them, she was confronted with the harsh reality of a world that she realized had never really loved her. With every word spoken, Chloe had a thousand untamable thoughts which ripped through her skin and spurted blood invisible to everyone but herself. She was painfully, acutely aware of every severe thing that had ever crossed the world, and it was tearing her apart.

Maybe that was why she dragged the blade down across the fragile skin of her stomach that night. Maybe because it felt right, the way her eyes fluttered closed as she hissed in pain. Maybe because she didn't have to remember the sound of her mother's screams as Ange awoke from her own nightmares, nightmares that must have constantly reminded her where Chloe came from, what Chloe was. When all she had to focus on was the blood, and oh shit, oh God, it's all over.

It hurt, and the blood was crimson, the color of roses and war and the devil, and it was horribly beautiful.

The gashes weren't deep. Deep enough to return her to the normality she had missed and craved, yes, though not deep enough to take her away forever. Not yet.

She didn't cry, though. She breathed heavily and thought about everything she regretted and it made her insides quiver with some sort of pitiful delight.

And, quietly, almost silently, she leaned over to the toilet and hooked a single finger down her throat. Nothing came up the first time, so she tried again, and again, and then she felt her stomach empty itself and her mouth tasted like bile and there was something sort of numb about it all, something with which she couldn't help but fall in love again.

A few minutes later, she could feel everything return to her, and all of a sudden she felt fifteen again.