⌞ the chain ⌝

*⌞ five : paths⌝*

 (mentions of addiction, substance abuse, vomiting, depression)

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"Right now, you are going to show me these driving skills of yours."

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I sat across the table. Somehow, Lewis had gotten Nico to come out. Two fathers. I was fucked. Both sat there, not saying a word. I knew this conversation was coming. After all, I was barely seventeen and getting black-out drunk almost every night. It wasn't going to fly. Did I think I was going to get caught? Not really. I had tried to be as careful as possible with it all. Yet, here I was.

"So..."

They looked towards me. Lewis sat, without any expression, and that worried me more than the raised eyebrow Nico was giving me.

"Is there any alcohol in the house?"

"No, there's not."

That was the one rule I had set for myself. It seemed stupid now. But there was never any in the house, that way there was some form of control. I had seen what it did to Father and sometimes I saw him when I looked in the mirror. I could drink outside but never here.

"Is there anything in this house?"

I shook my head, trying to get something out of Lewis. But he just sat there. It scared me. I wanted to beg him to say something but that felt childish. They wanted me to act like an adult and I couldn't do that if I were begging for some form of information. Some reaction.

"Why?"

I raised my head from where I had been going to rest it in my hands. It was Lewis. He looked older, at that moment, like an actual father. I wondered if he saw me as a daughter. I knew I would never truly be his daughter, but there was always this nagging that we were some family, even if it didn't make sense to anyone else.

"Why....?"

"Why? After everything. Why?"

I sighed. "I truly don't know. I started racing... Mako invited me. And then Rev-"

"Who?"

I shook my head. "It doesn't matter. He is a friend. But after I won my first race, he and a few of the others took me to a party. And I took the drink that was put in my hand. I didn't like it at first but I realized that everything disappeared for a bit. I wasn't anyone in that moment, I was a normal teenager."

Not the daughter of a dead man.

But I couldn't say that out loud. I was supposed to be getting better. I was getting better. This was just something else. Something different. It wasn't technically a fallback, right? If I had never dealt with it before. Or maybe it was. I knew that my father was addicted to lots of things, I knew that I had a chance for it. And I still sat there and drank almost every night.

I heard the chair scrape against the floor; before I knew it, two sets of arms were around me. Something broke in me, then. I started to cry. It wasn't the broken sobs of the girl who lost the one person she had considered a father. No. It was the tears of exhaustion. I was tired of being someone that hid from my pain, I was tired of sitting all alone once the high left. I was tired of being a shell. And I finally cracked.

The two of them stayed there, holding me until I stopped crying. I had wanted to be strong for them and prove I could still be an adult. But here I was, a little girl. Just missing a life that I was never getting back.

"We have lots of things to discuss."

_

They stayed with me for a few days. Apparently, completely quitting drinking was hell on Earth. I felt like I was being dragged to the floor and thrown around all at the same time. I was sick for longer than I had ever been sick in my life and I wondered why people ever tried this stuff and then wondered why they ever quit once they started.

A few of the other drivers came to visit, using it as an excuse to see me. I slept too much to have an actual conversation with them, only waking up to throw up everything in my body. Thankfully, someone sat with me. It was always someone new when I woke up. Lewis, Nico, Dani, Seb, Jenson, etc. Sang stayed with me during the entire thing too. Never once leaving. His warmth and the subtle purring was enough to keep me grounded to the real world in the swarm of nightmares.

But three days later, I was well enough to get up. Walking to the kitchen, feeding my cat who finally left the bed. Trying to eat just the bare minimum so I didn't feel like I would pass out. The others had left. It was just me, Sang, and Nico now. He sat and watched, waiting for the moment I would stumble but still giving me the space to make my own.

"Are you going to say anything?"

He looked up from his coffee. "What do you want me to say?"

"Yell, lecture... hell, I don't know."

Nico sighed and stood up, walking over to help me take the seat across from him. "I will not be doing any of those things."

"Why?"

"Because you are a child, as much as you want to act like an adult. And you make mistakes." He took a second to find the words he wanted to use. "I have made worse mistakes in my life but I have grown from them, just like you're doing now. You have the world ahead of you, my tiny racer. And I just want it to be everything you want."

He patted my hand. I wanted to find words to explain that I wanted to be better; if it was better than my father, or better than the people who continued to fail me in my life. I didn't care. All I knew was I wanted to be better. But by the look he was giving me, I think he knew. Nico always seemed to know. Him and Lewis, it was like they could read my mind. Or maybe I had changed so much that I was able to show those emotions.

"Merci, Nico."

"Never thank me, kid. Just promise me you won't get rid of that smile that seems to win over everyone."

I chuckled and nodded. "You act like such a father, you know?"

"I only want the best for the little girl that was never given the childhood she deserved."

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a/n: i am so sorry for the long space in-between updates but life has been crazy. and i have been trying to focus more on the things i need to do for my career path and such. but we're back and im going to try as hard as i can to keep uploading at a reasonable time. as always, love it or don't :p