Book 4: My Hands Are Tied (Axl Rose FanFic)

Ch. 11: Some Loser Lafayette Kids

⚠️TRIGGER WARNING: discussions of suicide⚠️

"He just has a very hard time relating to other people. Sometimes he just goes off the deep end and, if anyone can make sense to him in those states, I think it's me." -Izzy

"You know what they do to cops in prison?"

"He's all I had."

"I have no other goals."

"I just want to see him again."

I'd argued with Cook until I was blue in the face; she had a response for everything. And then, when she ran out of excuses, she simply refused to argue with me any further. She didn't want to live, hadn't wanted to live for years now. Her dad had been her best friend, her hero, and now he was gone. Everything and everyone else was just background noise until she could reach her ultimate goal of avenging his death. In the meantime, she continued to steel herself for her suicide, whenever that fateful day would come.

And to think that I finally met my match of crazy, I thought wryly. But at what cost?

Once again, we'd stumbled upon a key difference between us. I took my suffering and chose to fight back against it. Whenever life swung at me, I'd get riled up and swing back twice as hard. I'd go on living just to spite the universe, with my middle finger raised right up in fate's ugly face. That was how I'd always handled my problems. But Bernie, she took her misery and she let it consume her. She wallowed in it, bathed in it, lived with it everyday for years. She drank it up in her morning coffee, letting it rot her from the inside-out. Whatever fight that was in her appeared to me to have died right along with her father. I struggled to fathom it, but she seemed unable to see things any other way. Which meant she really meant it: she'd be dead at her first chance to get a gun aimed at that gang leader, and then...aimed at herself.

"I feel sick," I grumbled.

Izzy peeked at me over his sunglasses and through his greasy bangs. "Do you need to throw up?"

"Mmn," I grunted in response. I wasn't sure. Maybe?

"We can grab ginger ale on the way to the signing," Steven suggested, throwing on a denim jacket that was nearing the end of its lifespan.

"Or Tums...? No, wait...Pepto is better if it's for nausea," Slash rambled as he slid his feet into his boots one at a time. I assumed he was speaking from experience.

"It's probably just nerves. Drink some of this and you'll feel better," Duff insisted, shoving a bottle of Jack Daniel's in my face. The smell made me wrinkle my nose and sent my stomach into another series of somersaults. I shrank away from the bottle, my face all kinds of contortions and grimacing. "Oh...I think I made it worse."

We were all assembled in a huddle near the front door of the Hell House, the only uniform part of us being our sunglasses, as we were all perpetually hung over. We were readying ourselves for the contract signing with Geffen, dressing in our favorite outfits and standing around a giant keg left over from a party long passed that was more or less for decoration at this point. Or I guess more like furniture, since it made a decent footrest, which was exactly what Duff was using it for now. Meanwhile, Marc was at the foot of the steps, prepping his camera to take some pictures of us before the meeting.

This was supposed to be the single greatest day of my life, and yet, I couldn't focus on much else except Bernie and her fuckin' life. Or rather, the end of her fuckin' life.

"Alright...ready guys?" Marc lifted his camera to his eye. Like soldiers called to attention, we all perked up as best as we could and tried to look a little less hung over and hungry.