Who Is Who? (Cate Blanchett x Female OC)

"Third Time's the Charm"

Chapter Five

Not proofread

Cordelia didn't feel like herself for the rest of the time on set - hell, she never felt like herself. She felt like different people combined or a weird mesh of emotions and unfound pain inside. Maybe, for a moment she thought, it was the voices. Anything that happened with her body was tied with the voices. But maybe it was just the white blotches in her vision, forming and disappearing every-so-often. 

The brunette didn't talk with her best friend that day either. Dabby, of course, as stubborn as she was, tried perceiving Cordelia's attention. Tried seeking her eyes a few times on set. But to no avail. And even when they got back home, when they were alone, the brunette just locked herself in her room. Without a single bite or a sip of water. She just locked herself and smoked the night away. As she did so often. 

Dabby found herself worrying - she worried a lot, as it seemed - about her best friend. Her obsession with smoking was getting too intense, too severe for her to ignore. Dabby noticed the way Cordelia never slept and the way she drank coffee as her life depended on it. For a time, it did look like her life depended on it. Dabby wondered if it actually did and if without it, Cordelia would just fall apart into small pieces of a puzzle. One the girl was too weak to put together. Dabby wouldn't know what to do if Cordelia fell apart. Put her back? Let her go? Who knew...

So Dabby let her friend abuse cigarettes and coffee furthermore, even when her eyes lingered a bit too long on the cup Cordelia held in the mornings. Even when Dabby found herself throwing out Cordelia's cigarettes slowly. One by one, so the girl wouldn't notice. The girl cared, she did, but was she too much of a scaredy-cat to address the issue? Did she have the guts to stop Cordelia?

It often felt like she didn't.

Cordelia was odd, most of the time. She looked like she was drowning. A puddle? A lake? An ocean? Who knew? And, why was she drowning? Dabby could never figure that out. She read Cordelia like a book, she did, but often that book was written in a cryptic dead language. One Dabby couldn't comprehend. So she was going in blind, trying to seek help for her friend. 

It was the morning after a late-day on set. A Sunday. Finally, a day to take a break before they came back to film again on Monday. The day, unlike so many in California, was darker than usual. The sky was under a blanket of clouds and it looked like rain was going to pour at any given moment. But it didn't. It looked like the sky was trying to hold it back. Cordelia just wondered what'd be like when it gave up. 

The brunette hadn't slept a blink that night. At one point wondering if she batted her eyelids at all. It was just a mesh of time in her head. Cordelia never knew what day it was. Friday? Thursday? Saturday? Hard to tell when you didn't sleep. Hard to tell when your head was screaming at you. 

Cordelia was taking slow sips from her cup as she stared outside of her room to the busy street outside. Even on a Sunday, California just couldn't shut up. The ringing of the car honks was getting to her head and the voices, but she kept still and ignored it. Mostly, anyway.

Then Dabby showed up from the bathroom with her hair wrapped in a towel and one around her waist. Cordelia only spared a glance at her friend before turning around, but she felt Dabby's stare at the back of her head. They didn't say a word. It felt like they were on a thin line all the time. In an intense atmosphere. 

Dabby broke the silence with a loud crunch of her apple. "You look like shit."

Cordelia let out a dry chuckle at her friend. "So very kind of you." She replied with a small, barely visible smile playing on her lips.