Kingdom Come Undone

Wasting Your Honor

A/N: Hi, friends. Happy to be here. :) Thank you for your patience. The end of the year is always hard for me to write. I get bogged down in the pressure of the holidays and my brain shut off for a good month there. All is well though. I hope you all are well, too.

Got some feedback last chapter about Emily's reactions being confusing or being cause for Alison to want to leave. I hope this chapter helps clear some of that up. I'd say that out of all of my stories, this Emily is the most like me mental health wise, and with that comes ideas of abandonment and unlovability. It's kind of one of my biggest fears that someone would see how my OCD brain would react to a certain issue and know in that moment they couldn't do it anymore. So, I'm sure I'm biased. In that fear lies my need to make Alison a character with her own previous faults and trauma and fears to the kind of person that wouldn't leave Emily. Not like that anyways... I tried to explain Emily's brain a little better this time around in hopes that maybe you'd understand Alison's reaction a little more too.

Thank you always for the feedback though. I post on here for fun and as an escape, and if my first story posted on here until now is any indication. Your feedback has consistently made me a better writer. And for that, I am forever thankful. Happy New Year. Enjoy :)

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My body felt weighed down the next morning. The burden and gravity of the night before collapsing in on my chest. Inhale and exhale thrown to the wayside because the throb of my own heartbeat is all I could focus on. Alison left our bed hours ago just before Jake was dropped off for the next few weeks with his upcoming chemo and transfusion around the corner. I was thankful for not being disturbed but also hated that she wasn't next to me. Her hands wrapped around me the night before had calmed me in a way I didn't know I had needed. Her warmth my last tangible tether to the world.

Eyes closed; I clung the room around me that I knew so well. Fourteen steps from the bedroom to the bathroom door. Twenty-two from that same door to the window overlooking the side yard. Four light switches. Fourteen light bulbs throughout both rooms. Five doors. Fourteen panels of repeating wallpaper against the long wall in the bathroom. Two coats of paint in the bedroom. Eight –

"Remember to go in quietly, Bug. She might not want anything, okay?" I heard Alison's whisper outside the door like a pin drop; the creak of the door hinges my second precursor. Five doors? Fifteen door hinges.

Jacob's giggle transported me back into the space as I opened my eyes toward the door. He was wearing pajamas still, a piece of pink construction paper in his hands while creeping toward me on his tiptoes.

My head lifted to meet Alison's eyes as she waited by the door. The blue in her irises piercing even from across the room. Every time I saw them together, I could only consider my fortuity in being able to love these people for the rest of my life.

"What is this?" I lilted, Jacob stopping in his tracks just steps from the bed.

His giggle broadened into a wide smile before climbing up on Alison's side of the bed to crawl over toward me. The construction paper in his left hand crinkling against the comforter never had a chance. "Mommy teld me you want to sweep in, so we fought we make you brefest?" As he finished his question, Jake reached forward to pass me the paper in his hands: a menu scribbled in crayon.

"Breakfast?" I smiled ear to ear, watching as Alison stepped fully into the room. "Come tell me my options, J." Lifting myself against the headboard, I extended out my arm for Jake to scoot into my side before looking back up at Ali. "You too, cutie."

He began speaking as Alison snuck back into bed, pulling the covers over both of their legs. "On the weft is all the things I make, and Mommy put extwa on the wight of things she make."