𝐑𝐄𝐃 𝐃𝐄𝐒𝐄𝐑𝐓 𝐂𝐔𝐋𝐓⁰²ʰᵉᵐᵐⁱⁿᵍˢ

17 all the broken things

writer's note: every chapter onwards starting with this one
will not be revised or edited, so there will be lots and lots
and yes, lots, of misspellings, grammar mistakes, and
missing words. sorry abt that.

asari
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The glass crunched beneath my feet. Wherever I swerved to avoid them, they were always there, waiting for the assault of my step. And they'd crunch like they felt the pain, as though they'd been the one being pierced through.

I ignored them.

Nothing was right about anything. Not the air, not the buzzed feeling in my head. Nevermind the strewn bottles, leaking ceiling, doors ajar, and the blasting silence that finally - finally - took its reign in my house. Not my home. Just my house.

I felt as though the throat-burning drink I'd had earlier haad finally churned into bile in my stomach, warmed by the acid and now starting to crawl its way up my throat.

My hand gripped, missing the neck of the vodka bottle Elaine had so brashly placed in my grasp.

Did I really drink all of that? My mind felt as though it was waving and dancing like a flag in the air, and my feet was trying to balance however best it could.

I stopped, my eyes falling before I quickly widened them at my brother's open bedroom door.

My heart seized at the sight of its missing knob. Instead, there was only a hole paired with deep, splintered dents - undeniably in the same size as our father's bullet knuckles.

One word slipped out when I hadn't meant it to. "No," I gripped my jacket closer to my chest and ran, ignoring the glass as it pierced the silence along with my laboured breathing. "No, no, no. Riel! Riel!" I let his name use my throat harshly, my vocal chords feeling strain of my loudest shout. "Riel!"

"Hey, wake up, Ase," I pried my eyes open through the thick stream of tears, an unfamiliar darkness greeting me when I remembered I was still in Luke's car. Luke's hands, now, on my arm, my shoulder, shaking me lightly as I felt a sob leave me uncontrolled.

I squeezed my eyes and let tears go before opening them to try and see my surroundings a little clearer. When I did, I recognised my apartment building right outside, shrouded in the velvet evening sky completely devoid of star light.

My eyes strayed back into the car and down at the slight weight on my chest, legs, and arms. Instinctively, I furrowed at the sight of a striped blue blanket fully covering me from the overly cool air of the car.

"Asari?" Luke's voice called to me, saying my name in substitute for are you okay? He'd leant closer and I could feel his concern by his steel gaze, furrowed and focused solely on me.

Despite how calm the night looked, everything in me fought with each other - mind with heart, heart with reason, and reason with loss. It was always those four making my already brambled mind an even worse battleground. And I wasn't doing anything to help myself recover from their downfalls. Instead, I went down with them.

I swallowed the weighty lump in my throat, realising how frightened I must've looked in the moment all wet-cheeked and flushed. I dreaded to know what Luke was thinking behind his pensive stare, still boring into me as though his eyes couldn't focus enough in a few seconds, so he had to stare longer and more in thought.

"Sorry," I quickly let the word escape before I had the chance to remember what he'd said earlier in. I hated the thought of getting on his nerves, or in fact, anyone's nerves. But when I looked towards him, expecting either a sly smirk or some smile with a hint of slightly suppressed annoyance, the kind you give to a small kid who's starting to bother you, I'm given a somewhat worried and pitied look.