✞What doesn't kill me

 might make me

 kill you ✞

--- *** ---

--- The Next Morning ---

--- 25th of October, 1964 ---

The morning after approached smoothly sluggish. Blurrier than the vividly graphically explicit memories of the dynamic roller coaster you've been through from the bar fight up to your fake imprisonment behind the lifelessly dull, hoary walls of the one of the most notorious mental institutions in Boston caged you as a bird, deprived from the pearly celestial freedom. Sweeter than the most insatiably licentious liquor, lacing with searing spiderwebs your tongue, flimsy throat, corners of your dehydrated mouth and organs. As preciously opulent as a mortal's irreparably payable life.

After having a poor-quality breakfast alongside pretending to swallow the severe tranquilizing medicaments which the orderlies and nuns were obligated to give you, thereafter you were seating on the tattered, threadbare couch in the common room. The eerily French song was playing with the repetitive, unoriginal instrumental, accentuating the vocalist's chanting lyrics and rendering the musical atmosphere even eerier. The ocean of lunatics, encircling you in a desolated circle were minding their own business whether ruthlessly merciless banging their heads in the brick walls, babbling to one another or themselves mostly or spiraling around, barely handling the reins off tightened to control themselves from budging and moving a single muscle.

Desolation could be rather the most common or lucid word to branded the desolation and the reason why you didn't have any interactions with the other lunatics. The majority of them in the corner of your eye seemed far from sane and rational, besides to administer them with anything or manage to maintain a proper conversation for awhile at least. Nobody knew you, so as you didn't know any single soul lurking in each corner of the mental institution except Sister Jude and the Monsignor. The only essential goal for you was Timothy to arrange your release somehow even when he's risking his own career, vows and most of all, the Cardinal and his right hand's word.

On one hand, dab of warmness swaddled cozily your heart after sharing what actually happened the last night in the bar and how Cole confronted even you and your friends got beaten severely by his fists and kicks with nobody else than the sole person who seemed the most normal and sympathetic behind the lifeless walls of the facility. His reaction was far from predictable. You haven't envisaged somebody to stand for you even to care harkening your story without daring to interrupt you for a single second unless your monologue's epilogue approached. He knew so far that you didn't truly belong there, factly, you didn't show any signs of immorality and mental illness. On other hand, what it puzzled you was opening in front of a stranger and it's nobody else than a man of the cloth who had different tasks, refilling his hectic daily schedule rather than falsely committed patient against your will with its woe, befalling you. You didn't know anything about Timothy, nor he does. Neither anything about his backstory, his earlier life or anything authentically remarkable, situated in his vortex of memories, whirling and twirling stormily, nor he did know about your backstory, early life except that you used to be a drug dealer and spreading the cooked product by your former boss in Silver Spring, Maryland.

During your dynamic life's journey, you didn't trust easily strangers and most of all opening in front of them even about the pettiest detail, building your character as a fragment whether from the past or present. The trust issues have always been a painful topic for you even when you once used to be in a relationship back a few years ago, however, the culmination was inevitably sore. You behold how heavenly ecstatic were the young women and men circa your age, planning their own future with their own fiancés or boyfriends or girlfriends to have children, to have honeymoons wherever they covet for a week, whereas you struggled to survive and you could scarcely trust anybody from the opposite sex especially much older, because of your former boss and the rich experience through the years. You're still young and indecisive whatever you eventually wanted.

Why did you even grant modicum of your trust and opening about yourself in front of the priest? That was a crucial question, submerging your whirlpool of thoughts lately especially after having a sober, perfectly smooth conversation with him. You were an atheist for the rest of your days and the modicum of belief in the religion and God weren't your top priorities or at least being part of your daily life. You always deemed the priests and nuns as hypocrites, bloodthirstily yearning for power to rise in the highest tiers of the diocese. Nevertheless, the situation where you were situated with Timothy and Jude was completely different.

Last but not least, the surrealistically humongous difference between Jude and Timothy spoke volumes to you. Depending on their manners and their behavior towards you even their aura determined whom you trusted more. You didn't deem the woman of the cloth as somebody special whom you could grant your trust instantly, howsoever, something exceeding admonished you there's something grim behind her enigmatic, austere personality which froze the boiling blood in her veins and the heart of steel, enveloping and cradling it. What it made you wonder was what she used to be in her former life and what antagonized her to give up the free lifestyle of guilty pleasures to take solemnly her vows by joining the church and opting to cleanse her guilty conscience by serving devotingly to the church and aiding the wretched souls to find the path to God and the light even behind the unholy, grandiose façade for criminally insane. The same question also aroused your ginormous interest to discover the devotional man of the cloth's intentions and priorities and the crucial motive why he's a member of the clergy, persistently serving the hallowed duties instead of being a family man or at least man with free lifestyle, boozing insane quantities of liquor, be involved in immoral acts according to the members of the clergy. The British compatriot was doubtlessly attractive and far from realistic to be a holy man, besides judging his fragile. There was nothing wrong with the people's decisions they make in their own lives and from time to time, depending the decisions' sequence subsequently regretting them for sleeping on the major fragments of their lives whenever they had to have fun and cherish each elapsing moment of their youth before the heavy wrinkles adorn their faces, their skins losing its own healthy elasticity, the sensitivity to be under the weather drastically increase its criminal chances.

"Dominique, nique, nique! S'en allait tout simplement! Routier pauvre et chantant! En tous chemins, en tous lieux,! Il ne parle que du bon Dieu! Il ne parle que du bon Dieu!"

"Hey!" All of a sudden, a young man visibly in the beginning of his twenties with frowzy chestnut neck length haircut, framing his oval, full profile with his cocoa brown embers and fair skin tone seated alongside you. "Are you new there?" When the stranger young man interacted to you not only non-verbally, moreover verbally it caught you off guard, dwelling out of your compact, imaginative world's vortex of thoughts promptly and dwelling back to the crudely cold, inescapable reality's realm. {E/C} embers landed on his, maintaining an appropriate, friendly eye contact.

"Yeah since the last night!" Quirking your {EY/C} eyebrow quizzically, your round rosy-coloured lips reproduced the half-heartedness in your utterance. "Who are you?" Your {E/C} jewels blazed sheer, childlike inquisitiveness to get to know the young man, knowing your borderlines and what was consuming you nonetheless.

"I'm Kit Walker. What about you too?"

"My name is {Y/N} {L/N}! It's nice to meet you." Even when you hardly know Kit, nevertheless, you still questioned his stay in the madhouse and what the genuine motive for his imprisonment was and what he's done. Licking meekly, idly your chapped roseate lips after twirling distractingly your berry-coloured tongue, Kit offered his mammoth, amusingly stiff and veiny hand for a handshake as your petite, weathered hand fit ideally in the brief handshake, barely averting your gaze from his strangely consoling, unblemished. Vaguely genuine, amicable smile perched on your lips and beaming your facial attributes.

"Why you're here? What have you done?" The calmness in his Boston lilt didn't resuscitate your trust to share promptly the backstory or rather the prologue of your false institutionalization unless you hark the young man's story.

"Before to question me or anything, I'd like to hear your story! I'm still questioning your stay there." The sternness and coldheartedness exquisitely polished your authoritative caution, raising an arch of your eyebrow and flickering up your gaze at him with sheer rebuke before granting modicum of your trust to a stranger man whom you met and conversated just a handful of minutes ago. "I don't give a damn whatever you used to be unless you spill the tea! I'm not judgmental, you know!"

"They think I'm Bloody face for not only beating to death and killing my own wife Alma, but also being responsible for the deaths of several women and skinning their corpses." Gruffily clearing your own throat, in order to reciprocating the salty lump, bubbling up into your feminine Adam's apple and petering out the scruffy hoarseness and rustiness in your voice, you listened attentively the young man's monologue. "I haven't killed any single soul. I'd never do such a thing!"

"I believe you!" By judging the young man's appearance and body language's polished mannerism, it scarcely alluded he bears a semblance of a murderer or an offender, involved in outlaw deeds, although you considered everybody had their own story and you could determine somehow how true or false is, parallel to the reality. "You don't even look like a killer." What it left breathtakingly speechless Kit was how non-judgmental you emerged at first sight to be and most of all, not reprimanding every petty detail behind your small talk which transmuted in a deep, philosophically logical conversation.

--- *** ---

--- A Quarter an Hour Later or So ---

Whilst you're in the middle of your conversation with Kit who was readily unblemished soul, all of a sudden the man of the cloth entered in the common room by announcing you to come in the head nun of Briarcliff's office with escort promptly.

As soon as up to the head nun of Briarcliff's office journey escalated up to the middle, icy hush was arching between both of you and Timothy which was peculiar for you, in fact, he treated you kindheartedly the night before after confronting Jude, besides spending each elapsing second of your limited time in providing comfort by listening to the prologue of your fake imprisonment in the asylum. The hush was far from satisfying. You still questioned the British compatriot's lethal silence and the eerie flat line, obfuscating whether the smoothly sheening textures of bliss spread across his baby-pinkish lips or the rigid texture of sorrow and ire. The heart rates rapidly rabid increased, murderously affecting the drums battering in your ribcage. You were yet sheepishly bashful to pose the question why he appeared to be formally serious now unlike the last night. From the night before you could deem him somehow as vague likeness for confronting nobody else than the most authoritative holy woman of the cloth you've ever encountered in your frail life up to the utter stranger with sheer neutral, hoary aura oozing of him. Little did you know whether if Timothy could be trusted or on the contrary he's a second choice to be part of your trust. The divine reverent aura, oozing of him was agitating you whether to question his silence or otherwise the British compatriot would spill the tea.

"Monsignor, is anything wrong?" Despite your formal politeness which your family taught you earlier through your evolution, heavy sigh flushed Timothy's flexible nostrils after your disquietude punctured your seriousness in the posed question, begging for his instant vouch, glancing at him to make sure whether if he pursued for your {E/C} pools or on the contrary, his cocoa brown pools were transfixed in the direction you're currently walking.

The hush was more intensifying than a senseless body, swaddled lukewarmly in a sheerly oyster-white blanket of the death and weakness. The arcane quietness was yet bemusing you. Anyway whenever you witnessed the British aristocrat's presence in the common room to inform you about your recent urgent visit to the holy woman's office, the vivid memories of his unavoidably unspeakable jealousy, glinting in his smoky quartz jewels was quite fiercely sinister for you even when he hardly peeled off a word about his jealousy when you interacted with other representatives of the opposite sex. What he actually wanted from you? Did Timothy covet to protect you or anything from Kit, who's falsely accused as Bloody face? Even if he didn't have benevolent intentions, at least what was his problem to put his nose in your business?

The answer was unavoidably apparent. In spite of Sister Jude was the one to be utterly responsible for the patients and the barbaric punishments from the canes up to the solitary confinement, it didn't obscure Timothy's ability as her boss and most of all, his interference to be a particular sequence of a patient's destiny.

Conundrum was rather the appropriate moniker for the aspiring Monsignor's behavior towards you. You didn't even know what whirled and twirled in his blizzard of thoughts. You'd rather wonder one second your undeserved punishment was far from escapable, whilst in the same time wondering if he's going to be true to his word and be chargeable for your release which may affect his career, vows and his professional even platonic relationship with the Bostonian.

"Monsignor, I've a question!" You tried your best to attract his attention which was one of the toughest, crucial tasks at the moment even when your meek, monotonous footsteps drummed in a click against the cemented, grayish flooring. At the moment, you managed to hold your stare, pursuing for his smoky quartz embers which eventually met yours after increasing your voice's tone to diminish the chances of muteness.

"What would you like to ask me, {Y/N}?" Eventually it worked how deliberately was the highlight in your posed question, subsequently earning a vouch of inquiry, slipping from the clergyman's tongue, whereas you cleared your throat with a dry, idle cough. You needed to admit you loved it whenever his tongue crafted the honeyed syllables and vowels that built by rhyme your name. In the meanwhile, his mammoth, stiff and veiny hands were plugged uneasily in his charcoal black wool slacks' pockets, indicating his composed posture which couldn't be flinched at all even due to an odd background noise.

"Is anything wrong actually? What I've done so that to treat me coldly unlike the last night?"

"You weren't interacting to somebody you would easily trust or would like to talk for a small talk at all, Miss {Y/N}! He's a murderer of women, according to his patient file." After passing ocean of orderlies and security guards who were struggling to drag lunatics' writhing bodies in their grips, your nostrils flared at the lavish reek of urine, poor hygiene, human waste, heavy medicaments and bleach, amalgamating in a fogging cloud.

"What's the problem for talking to somebody who's also a patient in Briarcliff, Father? Even if he's a murderer or sociopath, he doesn't seem trouble at all after listening to his story." Suddenly severely rough texture highlighted the clergyman's charming facial attributes, grimacing his face in a twisted frown, embellishing his pale-pinkish, cherub lips. Furthermore, the pure jealousy was skeptically tingling a requiem in your ears. "I don't clearly understand it. Sister Jude is supposed to be the one to take care of patients and she'd be totally okay with me even interacting to the biggest psychopath of Boston unless we endanger one another's lives or the paged up rules."

"Do not make it hard for me, {Y/N}!" All of a sudden, in the epilogue of your journey up to the Bostonian's office, the older man pushed you violently against the brick, icily cold wall, his mammoth, veiny and amusingly warm hands clawed your dainty shoulders, while your breathing hitched and averting your gaze for a split second to glimpse at the both directions of the abysmally dimming hallway, gulping hard the bitter lump, budding up in your throat. Cherry blush tinged your chubby, well-carved cheeks and sweltering flush hypodermically sedating your neck. "Do you understand me?" Lightly baring balefully his teeth in berserk mode spotlighted his nonchalance, accentuating his enquiry, while you nibbled on the raw spot of your lower plumpish lip, bobbing your head in solemn agreement, scarcely acknowledging what you've done to him to taunt his darker side. "Good! It's a mental institution and it's not a kindergarten, {Y/N}!"

"So as it's not a kindergarten, every patient has every right to communicate with whoever inmate they want. It's just like school, work and everywhere else, Father!" In spite of the loosened claw, clung to your shoulders, the masculinely headstrong, bizarrely warm and comforting touch sent paradoxal shivers and paroxysm down your body of sweetness, pleasure and slight embarrassment. 

Author's Note: I'd like to apologize sometimes for the updates' delay, nevertheless, soon I got hooked on Supernatural and school is such a pain in the neck, besides the author's block not because of the lack of ideas except the laziness, itself. 

I think I'm starting in the beginning slightly earlier with some dramatic stuff such as Timothy's jealousy which reminded me of Wings of Light's first chapters when Timothy was peculiarly jealous of Jude for interacting with Cayden. Moreover, I'd like to apologize for the slightly sloppy chapter, but I tried my best to overcome with something original even to finish it in the end of the week instead of saving it as an update for the beginning of the imminent week.