A Scar Away from Falling Apart • FOB/Young Blood Chronicles/Patrick Stump

part four

A/N: the finale!! i actually cried while writing the ending so good luck my friends

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Pain.

It erupted from her body, causing her to convulse and cry out. Her head was pounding at the speed of her quickening heart rate, her fingers trembling in constant fear. She wanted to squeeze her eyes shut, let the tears threatening to leak fall from her eyes. She wanted to sleep. But the wires kept her eyes open and staring at the pale ceiling, which was illuminated by images of the cult destroying instruments--destroying people and everything music related in sight. It was sickening.

Over the pain, she heard screaming...people were screaming at her. She couldn't make out much of what they were saying, but she was sure that it was those girls commanding her to give in to the cult. The pain, the screaming, the pain, the videos--it was all too much. She cried out again, her screams bouncing off of the ceiling and ringing through her ears on an endless loop.

She wanted it to end. She wanted out. She wanted to give in, to make it all stop.

But, then she remembered Patrick's promise. He would get her out of here. She just had to stay strong. She couldn't give in, as much as the girls screaming and the pain flowing from head to toe begged her to.

On the unpredictable screen of projected images above her, a bass guitar flashed quickly and she found herself thinking over the screams and the pain. She remembered running onstage with Maddie and Sophia and Ben. She was strumming the thick strings of her Fender bass, bobbing her head up and down to the hissing snare and crashing cymbals. They were playing one of their songs at a festival...the crowd was cheering...they were having the time of their lives.

A sharp blade dug into her forearm. Maddie and Sophia had left her. Ben was dead.

She yelped loudly, but the blade dug deeper into her skin and a high pitched voice shouted in her ear.

"Silence the noise!"

The crowd was silent, tension filling the air. They were waiting for the band to play their initial guitar riff. Katherine was thirteen. It was her favorite band. It was her first concert. Her mother had bought her the tickets for her previous birthday, and she was so psyched that she had even set up a countdown on her calendar. Her best friend had come too, and they were sporting t-shirts for the band. The two were on their toes...in the pit...right at the front. The lights flashed on in a moment, and music rung through the stadium--

Those girls screamed in her ears again, and the blade made another incision on her forearm. One of the girls dug their nails into Katherine's forehead. They yelled at her, using their techniques of persuasion to get her to pledge her allegiance to Courtney Love. She didn't want to--she wanted to get out of this. She couldn't take any more--

--the band was playing their hit song...Katherine and her friend were bouncing up and down to the singer's words. They were grinning from ear to ear, and the singer pulled the microphone out of its stand. He leaned forward to the crowd, and his hand brushed against Katherine's. She screamed...in joy. She was so happy then--

The girls were bending her arm in a way it wasn't supposed to. She didn't like this. She was angry and upset and tears were streaming down her face and she just wanted to curl into a fetal position and die. She yelped and begged for mercy, for them to let her go--

--Katherine was peering over to the stage, and suddenly a strong bass was humming under her feet. It shook the stadium, made her heart pump faster in her chest and her eyes darted over to stage right. The bassist was there--a long-haired boy with ginger hair and the proudest smile she had seen on anyone in her life. She observed the way his fingers traveled up and down the frets, his other hand sliding the pick across steel strings. The bass was powerful, it was beautiful. It was then she decided she wanted to learn bass. She wanted to make people feel the beat pumping through their body. She wanted people to experience the music, not just listen to it.