Friend is a Four Letter Word

[Hollyquin†]

[[Hayley Kelly (mentally) continued from Confiscate the Crown]]

...And everything was black.

Hayley didn't like black, well, okay, she liked black, it was up there there with her favorite colors (please don't bitch about how black isn't a color right now, she's really not in the mood) and it was reflected in her fashion sense. But she didn't like it when it was absolutely flooding her vision. When it was all she could see, because there wasn't a single positive cause for it she could think of. Either the sun had gone out or she was unconscious or dyino she couldn't be dying that was stupid. Hayley Kelly didn't die. Well. She hadn't. She wasn't right now. She presumably would, eventually, but that would be a long way away from here, back home, back with Johnny and her mom and dad and brother and Ema, wait, no, not Ema, because Ema would be dead. Wait, wasn't she supposed to not think about the future? Hadn't she said that? How she wasn't supposed to pretend everything was gonna be okay? Well, she wasn't pretending that, Ema being dead was nothing close to everything being okay, but maybe imagining that she'd get home, that she'd live through this, that was too optimistic in and of itself.

Whatever. She wasn't dead. When you died, wasn't there supposed to be a fucking light at the end of the tunnel or whatever, that you walked towards and then when you did that you died, there wasn't any fucking light here, just blackness and- ooh. Look, a light.

Don't walk towards it, girly. Stay the fuck away.

But it wasn't yellow, or white, or any of those normal light colors. It was...blue?

That light was supposed to take her away from here. But not in the metaphoric, take-her-soul-away way. In the hallucinatory-journey way. She was okay with that. Right now she was oddly okay with a lot of things.

She followed the light.


"...But I'd rather have you with me. Cause I'll never let anyone hurt you. Ever."

A voice floated through the space, a voice that sounded oddly like...hers, probably because it was hers, she recognized the words. To say they'd echoed through the darkness would be inaccurate, firstly because the words didn't so much echo as ring out, quite clearly, and secondly because the darkness wasn't dark anymore. There were lights and colors, congealing into odd formations, almost but not quite like scenes, like memories. She saw people in the blur, she saw herself, recognized her old purple dress, the one long-since abandoned, unsalvagable considering all the blood stains and salt water. She recognized the rest mainly by their hair color, considering their lack of clarity it was the only definite feature she could hang on to. Orange, there was Ema. Brown...Kyle. Yellow with bits of pink...blue...

Blue.

"If we want any chance of succeeding here, we don't just have to be ourselves. We're not good enough. We're stupid and angry and scared-"

Nonononono. Stop it. Stop.

-and that's exactly what they want us to be. We have to be better. We have to be brilliant."

Stop. Please. She couldn't stand to hear his voice right now, but it was there, so clear and perfect in her unconscious memory with the traces of his Scottish accent showing through so much more clearly in his moment of emotion. This was so long ago. This was a lifetime ago, and this boy would never speak again.

"Anyone who wants to go after Jonathan, go after him. But you're a player if you do and you're no friend of mine if you play."

Goddammit, goddammit, Alex, stop, for me, please, just-

"As for me, I'm going to the fairground. I'm going to find a way of this island. Damn it, I plan on living. There's too much of life I've not seen yet."


She wanted to cry. She couldn't cry, because she wasn't really there at all, these were just all colors that were whirling past her and sounds that had stored themselves in her unconscious mind and she couldn't do anything about them, really, but let them be. She followed the blue light and eventually the blue, Alex's blue, it faded away, leaving her lost again.


"Hayley.... Thank God you're alright...Y-you are alright, right?"

Fuck...brown. Kyle. Kyle. She couldn't take this. She needed to stop, she needed to wake up, to stop following the fucking blue light, but all she could think to do was run, and somehow she could control this, the ghost version of her, enough to rush past the brown. Past the blonde and pink, she really couldn't face Maddy right now, not after the way she'd left things with her body, and Ema...Ema seemed to avoid her grasp, constantly rushing ahead of her, past the blue light, Ema was on the other side of it, Ema was...

All of the colors, all of them, swarmed her, blocking her vision, making it nearly impossible to pick out the blue, the blue that was going to take her home, she was so sure of it. The voices assaulted her. She didn't want to listen.

"Yeah, it sucks to be me, I guess. Oh, and before you think that it can't get any worse... It's filled with fucking Kidz Bop songs!"

"Keep your hands where we can see them!"

"...See you tomorrow."

See you...

The betrayal in her friend's eyes. The hurt. The pain. That came through loud and clear. But they were dead. They were DEAD. They couldn't hurt her. They couldn't stop her. They couldn't stop her! All this was was her own brain and her own brain was a fucking idiot, she knew that better than anyone. Would it just SHUT UP though. Would it please just SHUT UP. She had things to do. She had a game to win! Because fuck needless optimism, this was HER FUCKING GAME. What the fuck did her poor dearly departed besties want her to do, exactly? Die? Nah. Nah, fuck that. Fuck that noise up and down.

Kyle understood. She missed Kyle. Kyle knew what she had to do and accepted it. But Maddy and Alex, hell...she loved them. Maybe she loved Alex a bit more than she'd want to admit, especially now that it was irrelevant. But they were just hallucinatory voices in her mind now. Their pacifism and heroicism and their incredible ability to basically give up all hope of survival- meant nothing, anymore.

It was unfair that Alex was dead, but she'd gotten over it once. She could get over it again.

She could follow that fucking blue light out of this place.

She was doing this.

She was making this transpire.


[[Hayley Kelly wakes back up in Confiscate the Crown]]