The Forgotten (Peter Pevensie x OC)

Chapter 22

Manic, melodic laughing filled her ears. It rang through her brain like the dinner time bell at the old professors manor. It terrified her.

It terrified her because she knew what it meant. It wasn't the first time she had heard it. Often, when she was little, and first struggling with nightmares and her overactive imagination and school and not having any friends and all kinds of other crap, she would hear it in her dreams. Those nights when she heard it in her dreams were the worst. She'd wake up to complete darkness, and it felt as though she shut down. Her mind went blank. She couldn't breathe. She couldn't think. She couldn't even call for help. She'd just sit there, back pressed against the wall as she sank to the floor, tears streaming down her cheeks as she fought against it all. Her emotions consumed her like a savage beast and it took everything she had to stay quiet. To not scream, or wail, or cry out, or even hiccup. Even as it broke, and thousands of overwhelming thoughts rushed through her head. So fast, and so strong, that she could barely register them. But not once, did she ask for help. Because everything had to be alright. Nothing was wrong, she was perfectly fine. That's what everyone knew.

But she would sit there, for who knows how long, trying to keep it all in. But she never once succeeded. Every single time, she'd be so focused on keeping it all in that a laugh would slip out. It was maniacal, it was crazy. She sounded insane.

It was the same laugh she heard right now.

Echoing through her, a memory of her childhood.

One she was reliving now.

Memories invaded her mind. Broken shards of her life, flickering somewhere just before the dark, empty places. But before she could see the full memory, they were gone. Into the scary, hidden abyss at the back or her mind. Replaced by something else.

It was like someone was flicking through her past. Erasing every last bit.

It would all be gone.

Everything.

Forever.

--

Her hand was icy cold. It burned his skin as he sat there. He could barely feel his own, he had been holding it so long. The tears he had let finally trail down his tanned cheeks froze when they fell on her skin. It was the first time he had ever felt her so cold. Sure, when Noah and Evelyn were younger she would wake up, cold, sweating and shivering, mumbling incoherently about voices and nightmares, terrified. But even then she would only feel slightly chilly. Not like now. Now it was like touching ice. She was frozen.

But he understood her.

He knew.

Evelyn had told him, once, when they were eight, what those nights were like for her. He could remember the crazed, maniacal, terrified laugh that would slip from her lips on those nights. She told him that it felt like she was standing on the edge of a cliff. With each thought, a little more of that cliff would crumble down into the darkness below, until she was only barely hanging on. That cliff was her soul, her spirit, her essence of self.

Her sanity.

And the dark abyss was the one place that was free.

It was crazy thoughts, out-of-control emotions, the truth about everything she ever knew.

It was everything that would send her into insanity.

But it was also the one place that she was truly, one hundred percent herself. To the fullest extent.

"In a way," she had told him, "It's freeing. No responsibility, no judgement, no worries about what others think. I can do whatever I want, and nothing and no-one can stop me.

"But it also feels like I'm trapped. Stuck in my mind, going around and around and round in circles until there's nothing left. And it scares me."

Noah knew what was happening.

Finally, after nearly sixteen years of keeping away, she had succumbed.

She was being dragged away into the darkness, if she wasn't there already.

Which meant that the one thing, the one thing he had ever prayed against, the one thing he had wished with all his might would never happen, ever, had finally happened.

He had lost her.

He wanted to scream. To cry. To break down on the floor. He wanted to destroy something. To rip something apart, limb from limb, until it was nothing but a pile of dust.

Just like what happened to Evelyn.

But he couldn't. Loss was nothing like he imagined. He imagined it would feel like losing everything. He imagined feeling sad, and angry, and confused. But instead he felt empty. He felt like he should be doing all of the things his pained heart told him to do, but he couldn't. He was drained. He couldn't feel. He couldn't function. He could barely think. All he could do was repeat the same thought, over and over.

She's gone.

She's gone...

She's...gone...

He knew she'd wake up eventually.

He knew she'd smile, stand up, walk around.

But she wouldn't be Evelyn.

The dark place in her mind was the place of insanity.

So when she'd wake up, she'd be that.

She wouldn't smile like Evelyn, she'd smile crazily, dreamily.

Her eyes wouldn't sparkle with excitement, or happiness, or wonder. They'd sparkle with the possibility of danger.

She wouldn't laugh the same way. She'd laugh the way she laughed all those dark nights when they were younger. The same maniacal, crazy way she had when he sat there, holding her, keeping her away from the brink of insanity.

But it was all for nothing.

Because she was gone.

Nothing.

Nothing but an empty shell of the sarcastic, excited, competitive, wonderful person she used to be.

And there was nothing Noah could do.