Øverturning the lies (a twenty one pilots fanfiction)

~Mari~

Mari tucks her unruly hair behind her ear. Again and again and again until the movements grow flustered. 

She can't even explain why she feels this way. 

But she dislikes it. 

She has nearly grown used to it but she still dislikes it. 

Hates it, truly. 

Life goes on all around her and it's so close to her but she can't be a part of it she simply can't. 

Talking and laughing...

Mari feels so out of place, wrong. 

"Mari," a voice says softly, causing her to turn around, looking for who was speaking. 

"Oh-uh-" every second she stood there, stupified by her own mind, was a second she could feel being filed away for later, where she could perhaps find in some dark corner  of her mind she would find the instant again. Find it in all its glory and embarrassment. 

But it wasn't truly that embarrasing, she was simply being overdramatic.

"Mari." 

In the end it was that touch that did it. 

Mari finally jerked out of her mind-if not completely, enough to be aware of what was transpiring around her. 

"I'm sorry..." Mari tries not to  survey the entire scene in front of her, survey it and crawl into a hole of intense self-awareness and self-hatred.

"No-I-" Tyler-it had been him all along-took his hand off of her own. "I'm sorry." 

The silence betwen them grows and stretches until finally Mari just says, as calmly as she can, considering the circumstances, "Did-did you need anything?"

It doesn't occur to her until she sees him drum his fingers on is leg-something that reminds her of her own strange things she does-that she wonders if he feels just as anxious as she does.

"Well..." Tyler says. "I don't know if this will help you-but it always seems to help me." 

He hands her a few pieces of paper, held together by a piece of-what else?-yellow tape, and a pencil. 

"Writing down my thoughts always seems to help them seem less scary," he says. "You don't have to try it if you don't want to-but if you do-" 

"Well," Mari says, "Thank you."

He smiles, just a little bit. 

But it makes her happy.

For a second. 

A sweet, split second. 

Because then Josh comes over and asks Tyler something, something Mari can't here. 

But it doesn't matter. 

Because he gets up and goes with his fren. 

He does look back at her apologetically, but that doesn't change the fact that he's gone. 

And Xavier...well, she has no idea where he is. But she doesn't have the mental energy to get up and find out. 

For what starts out as a moment she observes the world around her, wondering, waiting for something to happen. Trying not to see through the cracks in the world and just be there, in the moment. 

Until she begins to wonder something else. 

She begins to wonder why she feels so invisible.