Dressed In Black

As Bad As It Used to Be.

Zak's POV

I waited for Allison to come home from the canyon, where I'd assumed she'd gone. It'd been awhile since the last time, but i didn't blame her for wanting to get away for a few hours.

I heard her keys jingle in the door and the door open. The second she walked in, I heard a giant crash, and then her loudly exclaiming:

"Oh goddamnit!" I emerged from the living room to see her picking up everything that had been knocked off the side table. I bent down to help her, to see that she was fuming.

"You know, it stopped while you were gone." I put a hand on her shoulder. She brushed it off and slammed the front door shut. All I could do was watch her as she spread her arms out and starting yelling.

"Alright you motherfucker, bring it on. What do you want from me?"

"Allison that's not a good idea."

"Whatever! I'm having a shitty month and I am sick and tired of this spirit fucking with us. I'm going to stand here and yell at it as much as I want and you're either going to have to listen or go outside." I backed off.

"Look, either you tell me why you're here, why you want to bother us, or get the fuck out." We were met with aching silence-- which only seemed to make her angrier. "COME ON YOU COWARD! DO SOMETHING! SHOW ME SOMETHING!"

I just stared at her. Yet again, she had tears streaming down her face. I knew what she was feeling, but there was nothing that I could do about it but let her handle it how she wanted to. She was stubborn like that.

I heard a crash come from the kitchen, and she immediately trudged at it, fists balled at her sides. I followed her to make sure she didn't do anything crazy. When we got in, I saw a glass shattered on the floor. Before I could stop her, she grabbed another from the cabinet and slammed it down. "I can throw shit too!" She threw another glass down. Hearing it smash to the ground and reaching for another, I ran over to her and wrapped my arms around hers to stop her.

"Zak get off of me."

"Allison you have to stop."

"Get off!" she was jerking her shoulders to try to get me to let me go, sobbing and yelling.

"No! Stop yelling! You're going to get hurt!" I backed her up, just as another glass landed at our feet. And another.

Then silence.

We sat there as she tried to catch her breath, my arms still pinning hers to her body.

"I promise not to break anything else if you let me go." I sighed and released her, grabbing her wrist and whipping her around to look at me.

"What the fuck was that, Allison? I haven't seen you do something so stupid and reckless for a long time."

"I don't know."

"You don't know? You just smashed two glasses and yelled so loudly that the entirety of Nevada could hear you."

"I'm tired of crying! I'm tired of getting pushed around and holding back! I'm sick of everything and I can't stand it anymore!"

"You need to be more careful!"

"Like that's ever stopped you?"

"I wasn't almost choked to death, Alli! I wasn't breaking things! Why are you being so destructive?" I heard her exes words echo through my own and immediately regretted it when I saw saw the look on her face. She looked away from me.

"You too now?"

 "That's not what I meant. That wasn't a dig at you, believe me. I haven't gone that low with you, ever." She nodded.

"I'm sorry. I'm just so angry and I don't know what to do with it." she rubbed the tears out of her eyes. "I just want things to get better, Zak."

"It's okay. It happens."I pulled her into a hug and she stayed in my arms for quite some time. We cleaned up the glass and stepped outside for a breather.

"We have to get somebody here, you know. We can't live here with it. I can't let you get hurt." And more importantly, I couldn't stand to see her go back to how she used to be; I wouldn't let that happen.

There were nights when we had first met that could have been the end for her. Leaving everything in D.C. had been good for her, but her health wasn't. I would stay with her for days on end, if nothing but to make sure she didn't take her own life.

I knew that inviting her to be on the team might aggravate what she had going on, but she loved it. When she got better and wasn't so sick, I waited a while before asking, just to make sure that she'd be alright.

Now I was kicking myself. She was such a brave, strong person and she'd been through a lot. I knew that she was hurting from everything that'd occurred in the past few weeks, but I didn't know that it had been affecting her this much. I truly didn't know if she knew that it was getting bad again. She didn't like to talk about that, and I didn't want to bring it up unless necessary. I needed to get whatever was fucking with her out of my house so that she could go back to the way she'd been. She was my best friend, and the woman I wanted to have for the rest of my life. We would probably never be more than best friends, no matter how I felt on the matter, no matter how much I might have wanted more. Nobody knew me better than Allison, and there was no way in hell that I was going to lose her. I would do everything in my power to make sure that didn't happen.

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A/N:  I' m sorry for the short chapter, but I wanted to get something out. It was difficult to get this one flowing, I've been having some pretty fierce writer's block, but I think I've got it now.

Are you enjoying this so far? I want to know that I'm not making something that people hate, haha! Let me know :) Hopefully I'll have another chapter out at the end of this week.