Touch; Ticci Toby X Reader

C. 08

The elderly nurse smiled at her kindly, "I changed your bedsheets since they were so worn out and replaced your toothbrush," The nurse pauses, her smile never flattering,  "Try to get some sleep."She left and locked the door behind her.

Y/N was then trapped in her birdcage again, feeling numb.

***

Joanne's face is dotted in brown and purple bruises, a dark black circle under her eye. Her nose had been split open on the bridge, a white bandage holding the flesh together. Four small stitches above her left brow and at the corner of her mouth. She looked terrible, yet a shameful satisfaction brims her.

Y/N was forced into a straitjacket before Joanne could come to see her. Her arms crossed over her chest, she felt so vulnerable.

"Even after I beat the shit out of you, you still show up."Y/N tries to offend her, raising her eyebrows unamused and in uncertainty. She really didn't wish to see her right now. She despised this woman with every fiber of her body.

Joanne frowns for only a second, she seemed to think about replying but she only stays silent. She reaches into her brown bag, digs around for a few seconds before pulling out a notebook. Her notebook.

She looks at her, furious as Joanne flips to the first page and skimming her eyes over it. Still, she says nothing.

Y/N wonders how much she had read, she was certain she has read all of it by the way Joanne looked at her knowingly.

Y/N was sure nobody would ever read the things she wrote down, knowing that this woman has read all of her thoughts from her mind fills her with dread. Her notebook was the only belonging she had, her notebook had served as a coping mechanism when nobody would be patient enough to lend her a hand.

Joanne looks up, her eyes unreadable. She must know the words kill her inside. She knows that Y/N is unstable, that she is so easy to play and meddle with. When she begins to read, she plays with the strings attached to as if she were a puppet.

"I was trapped in a wrecked cell, it wasn't only my body, it wasn't my soul. It was my whole world. The world took everything from me. My family, my friends...my home. I'm never to leave this room, they had told me after I had messed up. You're crazy, is what they would have been thinking."

"My head is trying to reason and I know I am breaking so, so slowly and painfully. I didn't have a clue where to go. It hurts. This cell, this dark, cramp cell is suffocating me and I don't know what to do anymore. I feel so helpless and just useless. I just want to die."

"I want to claw at these walls that surround me, yet I just misled an image of potential into fear and hurt that I would too, someday crumble apart. I still wait patiently for that day...but my patience is running low. Very low."

"Family and friendship... happiness and love have lost to reality and this gripping, heart-wrenching feeling in me, it has lost its meaning to through these disillusioned eyes of mine. I don't see it, the purpose of living while being stuck here."

"There is no reason, everyone who I have ever loved is dead or doesn't care anymore." Joanne pauses, "...So why am I still hesitating?''

She skips a couple of pages, spares her a glance then continued to read, "I always wish I could rip my heart into billions and billions of pieces, just to try and understand why life likes to do it so often."

Y/N knows it was no use to stop her, she feels her face become hot from shame and fury. Tears so close to breaching the wall she had made.

"Why life presses light, butterfly kisses to your scars and wounds, why life collects all of your tears in jars and holds it close to its heart, why life presses thoughts together that creates something so everlasting. Life does all of this, lulls you in its arms, dips you into warm, sweet honey just to throw you out and watch you break apart. And this repeats, and you will fall victim every time.

"Life is beautiful. But life is also like a rotten apple waiting to be eaten, waiting to make you sick to your stomach. Life starves you then you have no choice to take a big bite out of the rotten apple. Life has a cruel, painful truth deep within."

Silence.

She sets her notebook and a couple of new black pens beside Y/N and leaves without a word. Y/N is left shattered and doesn't know what to think anymore.

***

It has been three weeks, she thinks.

Joanne has stopped visiting her the day she gave her notebook back, along with new pens. She doesn't know what to think of the woman. So she tells herself to stop thinking of her.

Hearing a tap on the window, she turns around.

The man was there. A piece of paper pressed to the glass. It read,

Hello

Y/N stills, her movements slow as she slowly sits on her bed facing him. Her mind swarming with thoughts of surprise and disbelief.

Y/N takes out her notebook and a pen from in her pillowcase in a hurry. She was so eager to talk to him, to know his name. The man watches her.

She opens to the first blank page and starts to write the question she has been wanting to know for over two months now: Hello. What's your name?

She holds is up, her eyes curious. She could actually communicate with him. Even if it wasn't face to face. This was more then she had ever wished for, even with him being here reassured her loneliness. Let alone talk to him.

The man seems to be just as excited as her, his pencil in hand moving quickly.

Toby. What's yours?

His handwriting was quite messy but still readable. Toby. She likes his name. She used to have a pet fish named Toby when she was six.

Y/N. Why are you here?

He gives her a long sideways glance before writing again.

Because.

She furrows her eyebrows at Toby, displeased by his answer. The mouth guard on his face creased upwards. Was he smiling?

Instead of forcing an answer out of him, she sighs. Writing again.

What's the date?

He gives her a small stare, his mask no longer creasing.

(Day after birthday) ((a/n: may not be accurate to the story setting/weather.))

Y/N frowns and looks away. Three years since her family was murdered. Three long years since her life became miserable.

There's a moment of when neither of them writes back, everything she has ever wanted to question him about has been deleted from her mind. It was getting uncomfortable so she tries asking her question from before again.

Why even bother coming here?

Toby seems to think of a response. His pencil tapped against his paper as he was lost in deep thought. For a moment, she is so mesmerized by his simple motions.

I don't know.

Y/N meets Toby's eyes, giving him a dull, hard look.

This went on for a while. He eventually left, she didn't look away from his figure until he poured into the forest, disappearing from her sight. Even then, her eyes burned the spot where he just stood.

Toby... It's a nice name. That's her last thought before exhaustion cripples her body and she opens her arms to the sleep awaiting her.