Dying to Breathe

9.7: drowning with you isn't so bad

A/N: Hey guys! Hope you're having a wonderful day. I've been busy tutoring my nieces. I hope you enjoy this newest update xx

Pls listen to I Don't Wanna Be in Love 

Chapter 9, Part 7: Drowning With You isn't So Bad

Penelope couldn't breathe.

Waves crashed over her, and darkness pulled her down; visions of Millie falling to the bottom haunting her like a memory confused for a nightmare—or maybe a nightmare confused for a memory. Reality, fantasy... it all seemed to blend and blur into one until there was no separating them.

Penelope could see that all-knowing, smug smile curl up along the corners of her sister's mouth; familiar words forming on her lips as bubbles of air left her lungs between them, emptying her of that crucial oxygen.

Finish our story, L

Millie reached out just as Penelope did—their hands so close to touching. Straining. Pulling. Grabbing... And then their hands collided. But instead of flesh and warmth, Penelope was met with the cold glass of a mirror. Millie's jade green irises twinkled, darkening until Sacramento green met her eye where the jade once was.

"No!" Penelope tried to scream, fighting the cold watery abyss surrounding her—holding her down.

She was so close—why did it turn out like that? Why—

"Penelope," She felt her watery prison turn into a warm grasping touch around her shoulders.

Where was Millie? She couldn't breathe—

"Come back." The familiar voice spoke with authority—his tone quiet but firm.

Come back where? She couldn't find a way out. She was trapped. Mirrors surrounded her. Water drowned her. Her and Millie were one in the same; connected but so apart. She could feel the liquid in her lungs, her lungs begging for a breath that didn't hurt; but who's lungs begged? Millie's or hers? She didn't know anymore.

Where was Millie?

"You're just dreaming—it's the drugs, Lulu. It feels real, but it's not." He promised as she struggled to find oxygen in the middle of the ocean as she continued to sink deeper into the warped psyche of who she was and wasn't.

"Millie..." She whimpered, calling out to her weakly. "I can't... not without you."

"Penelope, you can." The voice once again broke into her consciousness. "Just open your eyes."

Her body sluggishly responded to the demand; her eyelids fluttering open. For an unmeasurable moment of time, agate blue swirled in her vision—the dark threatening waves crashing around them in the water filled room as Riley became the center of everything. She could feel the water flowing around them as he seemingly pulled her into his gravity—keeping her grounded yet hopelessly sinking into the void with her. They fell into the depths of the oxygen depraved atmosphere, his cold emotionless eyes holding her captive as the ocean swallowed them mercilessly.

His existence made everything stop hurting. Her burning lungs no longer felt the pain of suffocation and her mind quietened—no longer scared of the inevitable... of losing herself to the sea.

"See," He whispered hovering above her; the bubbles slipping out of his lips and floating up and up and up... "You can."

She reached up, her fingers softly pushing the loose strands of hair back from his glowing eyes, "Drowning isn't so bad—not with you."