A few hours had drifted on, ebbing, slipping, asphyxiating Alaska.

Like wanderlust smoke in a house fire, they had made their way down the staircase. Past the crooked picture frames on the cornflower walls- which seemed to leer. Wondering invasively what morose circumstances painted their expressions grim. Was Alaska's palette too far gone to be renewed?

The kettle squealed. After whistling in warning, the sound erupted and filled the kitchen in noise. Alaska watched, head tilted and eyes vacant. Steam curled- a dancer pirouetting from the spout, gracefully to the lullaby it sang itself. It was beautiful to a mind yearning for distraction, entrancing, even.

The skin beneath her eyes was taught. Tight as a compressed wound, swollen and pulsating even hours after her tears stopped. The meantime had consisted of a droning void, inflating the tension of the impending questions. At any moment it would burst, and smatter the blue home with more sentiment. If these walls could talk, they'd have a reason to gnash their teeth for weeks.

Thank god they couldn't.

Cas' back blocked her view of the kettle. The burner clicked off under the guide of his steady hands. Soon, it's song silenced. "Peppermint or chamomile?" He hummed, glancing over his shoulder at Alaska.

A cigarette.

"Peppermint," she replied. She sat up straighter, and propped her elbows on the countertop. The day returned to her stare, the daze melting away like the moon at sunrise. The hazel of his gaze was escorted by a faint lapsing twinge of red. The ring of foreign color was brought about by the few tears he'd allowed himself to shed in front of Alaska. They'd been fleeting. Falling swiftly as a sinking stone after skipping across the water's surface.

"Peppermint," he echoed with a nod. He moved like he'd spent the night counting each star instead of sleeping. Squinted eyes, jet lagged in their journey to focusing on the cupboard. He snagged two mugs down. One was a pastel number that he had painted in a pottery class. Every cup of coffee or tea he had was consumed through it.

He dropped a bag of peppermint tea in his handmade one, and chamomile in the other.

"How are you feeling?" He asked, not facing her. The sound of water hitting the cups covered the small sigh that escaped her cracked lips.

Like New York City at night.

When the city that never sleeps finally succumbed to the dusk. The lights groggily flickering in the windows of night owls, and on billboards. She could recall it. The stints of quiet- infrequent as they were, between an eruption of blaring car horns. In the seconds of calm, when the streets were vacant and peace was a facade it adorned. Only those accustomed to the city knew to listen more the bubbling caterwaul.

With ears tuned to it's pitch. Hearing the shouts from souls who were lost. They screamed to the culs-de-sac, airing their tribulations to the stragglers who remained awake. Alaska always heard them, and now she understood them.

With a breath reaching the base of her lungs, she shrugged. "Everything always gets worse before it gets better, right?" She rose an eyebrow.

"Right." He stirred a drizzle of honey into each mug. Cassian pulled the yellow curtains on the small windowsill back, permitting sunlight to spill in. It glared over Alaska's wriggling hands. Her motion stopped when he turned and slid her tea towards her. The hot liquid sloshed from each side of the vessel, though none managed to spill from the brim.

"You're letting me use your favorite mug?"

Cassian shrugged in return. A barely detectable smile surfaced on his lips and was lost as he sipped his tea. "I was feeling generous," he murmured.

"And I thank you for it," Alaska managed to faintly laugh. Aglow from the lambent shred of normalcy he spared her with that tired smirk.
She lifted the mug closer, allowing the steam to waft to her face. The heat lullingly heated her skin, recreating the loving touch of a parent's hand. On the flip side, the scent wasn't so sleepy. It was energized, sending sparks through her scalp when she inhaled.

Cas took a seat on the stool beside her. He quirked his head to the side and peered at the time on the microwave. "I'm going to give you a second more to catch your breath before we talk about what I know you don't want to talk about." His words carried from his throat to his tongue carefully. They made space, dragging a jagged blade through the restless uncertainty. He didn't leave room for argument.

"What if I left and joined a convent?" Alaska couldn't help the amusement that crept up when Cassian frowned at her. "Then we wouldn't have to talk about it all, I could just pray about it, or whatever."

"No."

"Damn," Alaska lazily snapped her fingers. "It was worth a shot," she sighed. She leaned forward and briefly allowed her aching neck to relax, as she hung her head.

Cassian rolled his eyes, "very funny," he unenthusiastically responded. "You must be happy with yourself," he said dryly.

Her nasty habit of speaking before thinking decided to rear it's ugly head. "I'm not happy about anything, that's why I wanted to kill myself," she spoke, just before gritting her teeth and staring ahead in regret. Cassian's eyes were searing into her. She could feel his gaze burning into her, incredulously, if the image in her mind was accurate.

Alaska pressed her lips into a line till they washed of pigment. "So, that was too soon..." she trailed off sheepishly. She squinted her eyes shut, then cracked on in order to peak at her uncle's unpleased expression.

"There will never be a time when that's not too soon," he scoffed.

"Give it a few years, you'll look back at it and laugh."

"That has got to be the most grim context that saying has ever been used in," Cassian retorted. Alaska could practically see the crossroads he faced. Debating whether the joke as a bad sign, or whether the humor was a hopeful step in the right direction. Alaska liked the believe it was the latter.

She sipped her tea. Immediate relief came with the tiny drink of the piping hot substance. It coated her dry, raspy throat so it no longer rivaled the sting of a thousand wasps. Mint revived her taste buds, exiling the traces of salt left from her tears. Her now moistened lips parted to speak but Cassian beat her to the punch.

"While I am going to give you a break from talking about that," he emphasized. "I am going to talk about another thing you probably don't want to talk about."

Alaska groaned weakly. Her stomach churned, gnawing on and devouring every second of stalling she could. Surely she hadn't admitted any other troublesome things last night, right? "I would like to formally refute anything and everything else I said last night."

"You can refute what you said all you want, but you can't refute the lipstick on your neck." Knowingly, he projected a side glance at her. His eyes turned to stone when they shifted to Alaska's. Resiliently, they studied her while she observed her hands.

She searched them as though she was reading her palms. Like she was connecting the fated lines on her skin, finding a satisfying end for her own story. "I was hoping you'd forgotten about that," she admitted lowly, leaving her paper mache lips pursed.

"It's sort of hard to forget when you have visible hickeys, kid," Cassian's intone was in discordance with his smirk. Alaska, deciding that decoding his thoughts was a better story than her palms, tried to read him. Whatever was on his mind however, was not on his face. A blank slate with the exception of a flourishing amusement embellishing his smile lines.

Alaska's freckle dappled cheeks became the sun. Crimson arose, clawing up her face, brightly as the inferno inspiration. Her ears blistered, and scorched, amalgamating with her sheepish embarrassment. "Good point," she sheepishly admitted. She was burned from the inside out. Her ribs were a furnace, her heart and lungs fuel for the incineration, with smoke leaving her lips and ears. "Are you mad?"

Timorous wasn't a word would usually use to describe Alaska. If there were ever a chance though, it would have been now. With her breath held and shoulders tense as a tightrope which was ready to snap. She caught herself before her worry could shine through too long. She didn't want to seem small. She wasn't a fragile porcelain doll which needed to be propped on a higher shelf to be kept safe.

Cassian's conscience was a miraculous thing to marvel at. His patience withstood each time her body shook with sobs that had been living in her soul too long. He freed the secrets she tried to bury, which probably would have resulted in her being put six feet down. He was a pillar. Strong. Kind.

He was the opposite of August.

He didn't deserve to be put in a position to pity her anymore. Wherever his beliefs were, they weren't for Alaska to rearrange because of her current state. Distorting his opinions by becoming an illusionist, who skewed things and played the victim was something her mother would do. And Alaska was not her mother.

Not entirely. So, she swallowed back the lump in her throat and put on a brave face. Nonchalance radiated from her falsely, satisfying her distinct need to appear calm. Her body eased, and her eyes softened to bleary curiosity. His wry smile pricked the back of her neck, raising the hair in anticipation for the worst. She always anticipated the worst.

"Oh, I'm furious."

Alaska's jaw tightened. Her teeth squeaked as they were tightly forced together. She nodded softly, hardly moving at all. Her mother had been as well, and off all the fire and fury the woman oozed, this was a reason Alaska could grasp. She grappled with it, waging a war against herself in a smattering of conflicting thoughts and infighting. It was natural he wouldn't like it, and in this town-

"That you have hickeys, they're gross."

His words hit the air, and Alaska was finally able to breathe. The tone he elicited shook playfully from deep in his chest. It was built on a foundation of raindrops in the summer, the welcomed kind of showers that cooled you. His voice was petrichor emanating from his mouth, smothering Alaska's flames of worry.

"What?" She cautiously asked. Her inflection was a sonnet written from the seams of doubt.

"You have hickeys, and I'm going to have to see them every time I look at you," he complained, wrinkling his nose. "For days probably," he continued, and she could sense his gears shifting into lecture mode. "You know, there have been rare but documented cases of hickeys giving people blood clots. Is that what you want?" He narrowed his eyes. "A blood clot from a hickey?"

"I mean, there are worse reasons to have a blood clot, no?"

He seemed to blatantly ignore this comment. Tilting his head to the ceiling, lips still twisted to a grimace, he sighed. "I would ask if you're new friends are a bad influence, but I'm pretty sure you were like this before," he smirked. This conversation came more easy, despite Alaska wanting to keep to topic locked away forever. His eyes weren't so watchful. His stare didn't linger in concern for a moment, and things felt just like they had yesterday. It was fleeting, she knew this deep inside her heart, but for a second things seemed usual.

"I was," Alaska chuckled. "One could even argue I was worse. I mean, I have really laid off the meth since meeting them." 

"Well that's some good news of the day," he sarcastically bit back, rolling his eyes.

"I think so," Alaska nodded, stretching her arms forward in faux satisfaction. Her smile was ghostly when the laughter dwindled past her grasp. It was victim of an early death, as flickers of fire threatened her once again. "Really though, what-" she paused to find the words. "If you were upset about it," she selected the word it to dance around the obvious. "I would understand," she earnestly offered him a guilt free chance to speak him mind. "I know a lot of people wouldn't react so calmly, and I appreciate it... but if it's just because you're worried about me, it's okay."

Cassian's attention settled onto the window. A tiny bluebird wedged it's beak into the pile of food in the bird feeder outside. Sunlight poured through it's thin wings, and it's feathers glowed as it flitted around breezily. The wind could have carried it, and it's delicate innocence away, past the trees- to somewhere untouchable. Instead, it worked in harmony with the small creatures and nurtured it's flight instead.

"I already knew, Alaska." Still fixated on the world outside, he quietly said this. The glassy surface of his eyes reflected the bird, leaving his outsides to mirror a ponderous thought. "I told you, me and your mom talked." Darkness intruded his words, making his voice grey. It was as though the little bird could sense this, and it floated away as if going to seek shelter from an oncoming storm.

Alaska couldn't help the ounce of disappointment  she was hit with. She shouldn't have expected anything different. She imagined that phone call he spoke of. Her mother's wailing voice screaming through the halls. A harpy shattering the windows, and making the roof quiver. Had she called with the flames of their hellish argument still licking her heels? The second Alaska left the house to find momentary solace at Mason's home, maybe? It couldn't have been pretty.

"What did she say when she told you?" She wasn't even sure why she asked this. She almost certainly didn't want the answer. Yet, a broken little fragment inside still longed for her mother sometimes. Not for the person she was at the end, but the soul from the beginning. So, hearing any minuscule trace of her made Alaska want to viciously lunge for even a taste of the past. Even in this fucked up topic.

"You and I both know that me telling you wouldn't be helpful right now," he sympathetically replied. "But whatever it was, it doesn't matter, because she's not the one sitting beside you now." Cassian tilted his head away from her and back towards the window. Sadly, the bluebird didn't return and this time he stared at the empty feeder. His benevolence manifested in the air of gold which surrounded him. "I am. And as long as you're healthy and alive..." he scratched the back of his neck, and something almost apologetic burdened his expression. "I don't care if you like girls."

Listening to him was breaking through the surface of the ocean. Legs sore, weighted in the grueling currents, just trying to swim. It was the loss of air. Light headed, her vision dizzying until marbled in swaths of darkness. The secrets- all of them. They kept pulling her, further and further down until the sand swept her feet. Yet, here she was now, finally catching her breath. Her ears no longer muddled and muted, because she could hear something besides her cloudy thoughts.

Not to say she was fine now.

It wasn't so simple in this rocky, contemptuous foe of internalized beasts. If her overcast mind was an ocean, then she just managed to get her head above water. Her heart was still submerged, and the waves still crashed... but there was a lighthouse. In her sights, a lighthouse illuminating the fog. She could vaguely see it's shape, the light it emitted. It just lived in the distance- aloof, and waiting for Alaska to reach it.

To keep swimming.

She wasn't fine, but there was a chance she could be. If only she didn't give up. Though, that was easier said than done.

"Thank you, Cas." Alaska thumbed the rim of the mug, feeling each groove in the porcelain. She bowed her head, forcing away the burning behind her eyes. There would be time for tears when she was alone, after she'd given her puffy face time to recover. "For everything, not just you being okay with- well, you know." Her words were nothing besides a slowly spinning cluster of forget me nots. "I know I've put you through a lot since getting here, and it wasn't fair to you," she cleared her throat when the brittleness crept in.

"Let's just focus on the future," he dismissed in one easy sentiment. "There's no need to dwell on what can't be changed. Anyway, it's not like the circumstances leading up to all this have been very fair to you."

He had a point, just not one Alaska wanted to ponder.

"So, the future then?" She asked.

Lachesis was doing her work. Dispensing the threads of Alaska's fate, by attaching ornate ties of gold to her new path. All she had to do was follow.

Cassian folded his hands together gingerly, and set them on the countertop. "About that," he withheld the exhale eagerly awaiting his permission. Oh no. Alaska's instincts kicked in, blustering in and warning her about his off demeanor. "I have something to tell you, and I'm pretty sure you aren't going to like it."

"I'm pretty sure you're right, but continue."

"This morning, before you woke up, I made you an appointment with a therapist," he knit his brows while attempting to gauge Alaska's first reaction.

She frowned instantly. Swarms of preconceived notions bombarded her. "Crazy people go to shrinks," Alaska accidentally blurted out. Insane-asylum attendees, and madhouse members are who needed therapists, not her. Her skin crawled, like a plethora of bugs were creating colonies in her flesh. "I'm not crazy," she scoffed.

"Therapists aren't only for crazy people, Alaska," Cassian sighed. His furrowed brow was akin to the ridges on the spine of a leather-bound book. Deep, and worn, but determined to withstand the test of life. "The one I spoke to specifically focuses on adolescent traumas, and I think it could really help you, kid."

She wasn't so convinced. She wouldn't be able to stand sitting on a couch, spewing off her problems to a stranger. How could that help?

"Look, just try it and if it doesn't seem like it's helping after a few sessions, we can explore different options," he leveled with her. "Deal?"

Silence sang an interlude.

"Deal."

This was like the flowers icarus fell to. Every bone in her body was spent, and shattered. Her skin bruised, and teeth blood stained from the fall. The sun was undulating across her cooling skin, and there was some peace to it. The meadow ascended mortal fortitude, and asked for Alaska's trust that all would turn out well.
Each new possibility was an unpolluted petal. They absorbed the damage of her wings and cleansed the melted wax from her kindled back.

They were a grave marker and place of rebirth all at once.

~Do any of the characters remind you of someone you've known in your life?~

Hello lovely readers! How are you all doing? How are you liking the new chapters? How did you like this one? If you liked it, please be sure to leave me a comment and maybe a vote! If not, leave any feedback and thoughts you had! Thank you so much for reading, I truly appreciate any and all support! And have a wonderful day/night!