Another Way | Adopted by Gerard Way (Book Three)

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Trigger warning: childhood abuse

Harley had a nightmare. It was about Mason grabbing her wrist. He wouldn't let go, his fingers were wrapped around it and clamped down like they were made of steel, cutting off her circulation. She felt smaller and weaker with every passing second she couldn't manage to tear herself away from his grasp. She felt like she was shrinking down to the size of a small child. Her mouth felt wired shut so she couldn't even tell him to stop. Maybe she could get through to him with her eyes.

When she looked up, the face she saw wasn't Mason's.

It was a face she hadn't seen in many years, only glimpses of it in photos and snippets in old videos, but she recognized it immediately. He had dark hair and a square jaw, he always wore glasses that looked slightly too big for his face, and he needed a shave. He didn't resemble Harley one bit; she'd always looked more like her mother.

When Harley finally woke up it took all her strength to suck air into her lungs. It was as though she was learning how to breathe from scratch.

She noticed the edges of her sheets, which were drenched with sweat, were clenched tightly in her fists, but she didn't want to let go. She didn't even want to move until her heart rate had slowed down. The dark corners of her room were dangerous in her peripherals like the threat might be lurking there, waiting to pounce if she so much as shifted her weight.

She was pretty sure she'd never felt this scared in her life, but maybe she had. When she was little and innocent during a time she could no longer remember. She thought all the memories of those short years had long faded.

It was always as though there was a clear-cut divide in her head when she tried to look back on the small years of her life. Between the black smudge that was the first four years—she thought that was normal, that no one could remember being that young, but not even a fragment of her old house or her biological parents' faces surfaced no matter how much she willed it—and all the years that came after. It was like wading through tar to sort out the earliest memories: moving in with Evelyn and Emerald, starting school, lying awake at night hearing Evelyn scream and Emerald comfort her. That used to happen a few times a week and she didn't understand it at the time.

She supposed it was a good thing that she didn't understand it at the time.

But now the dark, inky clouds in the depths of her memory were beginning to part. The dream she'd had seemed to have unlocked some filing cabinet in the back of her head. Shreds of memory were fluttering out of the drawers like leaves caught in a sudden gust of wind. She caught a glimpse of her father's face, the echo of a high-pitched scream, the thud of a body hitting the floor, crying.

She shuddered, and suddenly her body unstuck itself from her bed. Her movements were automatic. She got up, put on a hoodie, draped a blanket over her shoulders, tiptoed down the hall, down the stairs, and out the back door. Just like the early morning she'd found Gerard in the circle in the woods that had ended on the brink of disaster. It was about the same time as well, around 5 AM, and she hoped that she'd be alone in the clearing this time. She wasn't sure how she could face Gerard after the party catastrophe last night and after the dream she'd just had.

She needed time to sort out what she'd seen on her own.

That was unmistakably her father's face, his rough hand grabbing her small arm. She pushed the sleeve of her hoodie up and glanced at her wrist, squinting through the darkness; just as she suspected, Mason's fingerprints stuck out in bruises on her skin. Maybe it wasn't her father's face. It could have been Mason all along with that dark hair. Her mind was just playing tricks on her, and the memories that flashed briefly each time she blinked were more tricks.