T.W= Trigger warning, T.W.O= Trigger warning over

**TRIGGER WARNING IN THIS CHAP**

Emerson was once again cooped up in his room, well bunk, on the bus, surrounded by his two best friends, blades and Netflix. He never cut in his bunk, that would create too much mess, he just kept them in his bunk so that neither one of his brothers ever found them. They knew he was broken, they just didn't need to see how broken.

His brothers tried to get him to leave his bunk and join in with what they were doing, but he refused, claiming he was up too late watching Netflix and needed sleep, which was only a half lie. He was always up late watching Netflix, but he didn't sleep anymore. She haunted his dreams.

When he did dream, it was always the same dream: he was in a forest surrounded by nothing but shadows and trees. Then he would start walking, always in the same direction, towards the fog. He had tried to turn around multiple times, but he was paralysed, he could barely conceive a coherent thought. After a while, he would just be in the fog, no tree from the forest in view, nor was the floor in sight. It was just fog.

And then she would appear, at first she would smile and then say she missed him, but then the smile would become malicious, and she would start saying how she missed playing with his emotions and kept listing off all the names of the people she slept with when they were together, making sure to add Remington and Sebastian. Even though they had never slept with her, it was just his deep subconscious acting out revenge for him opening up and feeling things. Once she had finished rhyming off all the names she would fade into the fog and all that would be left was her voice, repeating the names on a loop. And then darkness.

It wasn't over though, the dream never finished until he woke up, brain screaming for him to paint the lines of hate upon his skin again. After the darkness appeared, and the words faded out, she would just appear in front of him, during the first few playing's of the dream it used to scare him, now he was used to it. The only difference between now and before, was now she was holding his heart in her hand.

That was the furthest he had ever gotten in the dream, because his body woke him, aching for a release from the pain, and so he would climb out of bed and walk to the bathroom. Once he had tried to not listen to his brain and just lay there in bed, it didn't work out as it ended with him, shaking whilst crying, shouting for the pain to stop. Needless to say, he woke everyone in the bus up, and he had not tried to prevent the inevitable after one of those dreams. Everyone soon forgot about the whole ordeal, except Emerson, it stuck in his mind.

That's where Emerson was now, he had just woken up from a 30-minute nap, and he only knew it was 30 minutes because he was on the same episode that he was watching before he went to sleep, only now, it was at the end. Emerson's whole body was shaking, he had stayed in the dream longer than he had before, and ignoring his bodies demands for him to wake up and brand himself with the self-loathe that burned under his skin.

**TW**

His whole body was shaking, trembling. He was sure that if Remington was sat on the bed below, the shaking of the bunk would alarm him, and bring unwanted attention to him. Luckily for Emerson though, it was the middle of the day and both of his brothers were out doing an interview with a new tour photographer.

Emerson did have the option to go and join them, he just didn't have the energy. His body was drained because of the nightmares, lack of sleep and unhealthy food diet he was on. Overall he was on a roller-coaster downhill that had run out of track in the middle of a 'jump' over a gorge of spiky rocks that would shred him into a million pieces.

At the moment he had not yet reached the gorge, nor had he reached the incline where life would begin to get better, which only led to the destruction and fall into the gorge more disastrous and impactful on Emerson's already faded mentality. It was clear to him that he was at the end of his rope, he was done. All that was left was his descent into self-destruction.

He slowly slid off the bunk above his brothers, holding his left wrist closely to his chest as he did his walk of shame towards the bathroom, blades in hand. On foot in front of the other, he slowly but surely got to the door of the bathroom, the empty bus stirred fear into Emerson's heart. What if he went too deep? What if one of his brothers found him? What if there was no happy incline and it was just a vertical decline into the mouth of the gorge which would end his life?

He didn't really want to die, he just didn't want to feel empty anymore. He wanted to be able to wear the mask again and pretend everything was okay, but he couldn't. The mask was broken and so was he. He was stuck in a backlog of emotions that he had locked away for years, and now he was stuck with the consequences.

As every second ticked past he looked at himself in the mirror, his shirt was now on the floor and he was looking at his scarred body. Scars littered all up his wrists, all along his forearms, up his biceps and up onto his shoulders. Calling them scars was generous, these were fresh cuts, the most recent ones from no more than a few hours ago. Sure some had become scars, but he had cut over them so much that no silver lines were visible, just pink disgusting fading lines of self-hatred and fresh cuts.

Line after line, Emerson began to feel the release he so desperately desired. The new lines spread across the top of his forearm and shoulders. Over 40 new lines drawn in his clean blade across his skin. Before he could start to clean up, he heard the door of the bus open and voices flow in and fill the empty bus, Remington's more noticeable and louder than the rest, "The bathroom is just at the end of the bus, take your time,"

Panic arose in Emerson's heart. He was exposed, vulnerable. In a moment of clarity, he calmed and came up with a rational plan of action. He left the puddle of blood and hastily made his way to the shower and turned it on, which would buy him some time to clean himself and the floor. Some of the cuts still bled as he moved and reopened the ones that were in awkward positions. He saw and heard the door handle jiggle up and down as the person on the other side tried to enter the- luckily for Emerson- locked room. Then he heard Rem's voice explain to this bus invader that Emerson must be in the shower and would be out soon.

Once the floor was clean, Emerson climbed into the shower and let the hot water was over his body. The blood and shame matted together, sticking to his skin, making it harder to come off. He scrubbed with a hard rag that was long overdue a permanent vacation into the trash. Soon after, with a lot of force, Emerson skin was clean, his heart not so much. He watched the last of the blood-stained water empty down the shower drain, and decided to climb out.

As he was pulling his clothes on, he noticed stray drops of his crimson blood on the floor, where they had dropped from his skin whilst he was cleaning up. He wiped them up with the dirty rag he showered with before hastily throwing it in the trash. Towel wrapped around his neck he left the bathroom, and immediately bumped into a petite brunette who was quick to apologise.

**T.W.O**

"Oh my god, I'm so sorry! I didn't see you, I mean I should have because how else would you exit the bathroom? But oh god I'm so sorry. I'm actually so clumsy, I'm not myself in new environments, and now I'm rambling, sorry?" Emerson watched her with a disgruntled look, a small smile played on the corners of his lips but it didn't grow. His eyes fell over her small frame whilst she rambled, her brunette hair stopped at her waist, whilst her face was contorted into worry.

He shrugged her off with a small shrug of the shoulders, which caused Emerson a fair amount of pain as his bicep came into contact with her small bony shoulder. He kept a straight face as he walked back to his bunk, rather than attempting to climb up onto the bed so soon after inflicting the self-drawn hate upon his arms, he opted to sit on Remington's bed.

Remington and Sebastian were play fighting whilst Emerson cuddled into Remington's pillow. The sight of Emerson, a 6'1" man curled up into a small ball holding a pillow to his chest, must have worried Remington, as he stopped his assault on Sebastian and turned to the younger of the brothers. Following his lead, Sebastian also stopped and turned to his brother, clearly at first confused as to why they were now looking at their 21-year-old brother, but when he caught sight of his brother it was clear something was wrong.

Emerson still had his eyes shut so he didn't see their worried gazes and just lay there unaware to the second-hand pain his brothers were feeling at the sight of their brother not being himself. Neither one of them knew what to do, each of them stepped forward in an attempt to speak to their brother, yet neither of them said a word. Remington took a small step towards the bed that Emerson was lay on, but stopped what he was doing as he heard the soft snores come from his brother.

He wasn't stupid, he knew that his brother wasn't sleeping well, the bags under his eyes were clear telling signs of that. He just didn't know how bad, if he knew how bad he was, he would be able to formulate a plan of action to help his brother. Yet, he didn't know how. How was he supposed to help him if he didn't want any? Remington didn't know anymore, their relationship hadn't been the same since Maisie. She thoroughly destroyed his brother. Shattered his heart into a thousand pictures.

At the same time, she humiliated him as well, cheated on him. What hurt Remington the most, was that he was there when Emerson found out about where she really was when she told him she couldn't see him. Emerson had found out after multiple pictures were posted online anonymously of Maisie acting intimate and kissing many other men. Over 25 pictures where published, and both Emerson and Remington, and the rest of the people who saw those pictures, knew that they had been taken within the span of 6 weeks. They knew this because most of the pictures were taken when she had blonde hair, and she- up until that date- had only recently dyed it to blonde, she had never been blonde before, which meant they were recent pictures.

Emerson was tagged multiple times in all of the pictures, some by concerned fans, some by generally nice people who didn't think he needed to be treated that way, and others were by evil malicious people who lived and thrived through other people's pain and torment. Later that day she had messaged him claiming people where photo-shopping pictures to try and get them to break up, but Emerson had already had his heart shattered and demanded she told the truth and told him to tell her how many people she had cheated on him with.

He was never given a definite number, but many more pictures surfaced in the week after their break-up of her with more men, and it was obvious the number was in the 100's probably nearing 150, not even counting the people who were repeated. They had been together for a year and a half, she had brought him a year and a half's worth of happiness and then ultimately tore it away from him along with other parts of him. To Remington, Emerson was an empty shell of the person he used to be before she came along.

Their new photographer came out of the bathroom after about 20 minutes, after having needed to take a shower after a mishap during their meeting that involved a cup of coffee, a fizzy drink and wine. He was surprised when she still accepted the position as their photographer after the whole ordeal, but she had happily said yes, with the condition that they let her shower the 'mess' off herself first. Which was where they were now.

As she walked past Emerson she gave a small glance but didn't look for more than one or two seconds. He scared her. Not physically, but he was nearly one foot taller than her, and had a generally displeased expression on his face. She assumed that he probably wasn't always like that and that it was due to fatigue which was why he was now passed out on the bottom bunk. Remington and Sebastian were taller than her, sure, but they chased away the intimidation with smiles and jokes.

She only knew his name because she had been told by Remington, and was only able to put a name to a face when he came out of the bathroom. If she had the ability to blush, she would have when she thought back to how much she was rambling when she first met him. She was usually calm, collected and confident, but new situations and environments threw her through a loop; new people didn't though, she was very outgoing and comfortable with strangers.

She sat on the couch opposite Remington and Sebastian and joined in their conversation about musicians and bands. "Sleeping with sirens is obviously better than falling in reverse-" Both men obviously agreed and nodded in response, so she took it as a cue to continue speaking, "-But, I think we call all agree that Black veil brides -and Andy Black- is superior, just my opinion though."

Before either of the two men could respond, whimpers from the bunk drew their attention to the sleeping figure. Sweat was rolling down his face, mixing with tears that were just endlessly coming from his eyes. His whole body was trembling and he was unable to continue holding the pillow and his body stretched out to his whole length, which revealed how bad the shaking and trembling was becoming. His face had paled and his under eyes seemed darker than before. The distress was rolling off him in waves, alarming all those around him.

Suddenly he sat up, eyes wide and panting for breath. His body continued to tremble as he gripped onto the edge of the bunk, still gasping and trying to get as much air to his lungs as he could. His brothers were at his side the second he had shot up and left the new photographer to watch from afar.

Emerson was a mess. His hair was sticking to his head, and tears were still coming from his eyes. Once again, the dream had been all that appeared in his subconscious when he had slipped into the slumber. He saw more this time.

She held his heart in his hand, an evil smile on her lips. It wasn't like one of her old smiles that made him smile too, it was the kind of smile that showed someone's true personality. This was why he didn't smile anymore, she had taken them all, but at the same time she had taken his personality when she had taken his heart, so he had nothing to show.

She stood in the same outfit she had worn when they first got together, a cream sweater and black leggings to fight away the oncoming winter chill. His heart was still slowly beating in her hand, slowly but surely coming to a stop. When it had beat its last, she looked down and smiled. Proud of what she had accomplished, she had broken him, there was very little chance of normalcy becoming frequent in his life again.

She looked to him again, holding his hand out towards him, offering it to him now that she had used it for all that it was worth. Yet when he reached out for it, she pulled it back and laughed, before going on to crush it with her left hand. "Do you really think I'm done with you yet Emmy? I'm just starting, just because you've stayed asleep longer now and you're facing it? The longer you stay asleep the longer I control you!

You're still mine, but I was never yours. How does it feel to know that the only reason was someone else's intelligence and not your own? How many men do you think I would have cheated on you with by now?- she tapped a bloody finger against her chin, mocking the action of thinking- 250? 300? The possibilities are endless." Her voice was cold and flat, but at the same time icy and venomous.

Hearing her use her old nickname for him hurt more than the coldness that had begun spreading around because of her presence. The skin that was closest to her prickled and was being stabbed by the cold that her heart produced. A burning feeling spread under his skin as her fingertip trailed along his face, touching each and every one of his features. It lingered on his lips, causing them to go numb with the cold and pain. Her eyes flickered to his lips and she leaned in for the kiss that would end him.

As her lips touched his eyes shot open and he sat up in a final attempt to detach himself further from the dream. He gasped for air and gripped the edge of Remington's bed, his body pleading more so for oxygen than for him to paint his skin in even more lines of hate. He immediately became aware of his brothers' presence at either side of him and tried to compose himself to come up with a believable lie.

In the end he opted to just blame it on a film he had watched recently, blaming it on the creepy clowns he had seen. Laughing it off and jokingly pushing Sebastian away whilst he stood up and headed to the bathroom to 'shower the sweat off'.

When in the bathroom, Emerson looked at his reflection in the mirror. He barely recognised himself, he was a ghost of the man he once was. Barely even a man anymore, just a spectre forced to walk on the earth in the torment from his past life, hurting those around him. He knew he was hurting his brothers, they were worried sick about him, he didn't dare think about what would happen if they found out just how broken he was.

***

A very long first chapter, (over 3000 words) it's actually the longest first chapter I have published. I'm excited about this book. and I hope people love it the way I love it.

Also, I'm very sorry that I keep changing small things in this chapter, it's just that as I'm writing the second chapter I had to take into consideration about dates and other things that I didn't really mention in this chapter.

Also, I have the plot planned out and all I have to do now is write the whole story. Which is apparently going better than it usually does, I have written over 1700 words of the second chapter and it's only past halfway done. I've also written another scene from another chapter which kinda pained me to write, it gives more insight into Emerson's mind and what he's thinking.