396 Miles From Home- an original story

Chapter Eight

"In the heat of the moment,

When fear has you frozen, you're crashing and burning

Don't fall too far from who you are

You can cut us, but we'll wear our scars."

~ Scars, I Prevail

A/N: Trigger Warning: talk of self-harm, panic attacks, and depression. 

Alec's POV

The next day, we were all running around Disney World like we were children. Which, I guess at Disney World, you were. Only Finley, Izzy, and Nelly had been to Disney before this, so the rest of us were sporting our first-time badges. The girls took a ton of pictures in their matching shirts in front of the castle. Plus, Finley had snuck off to meet her favorite Disney characters, Peter Pan and Wendy. We had all been having so much fun. We had eaten at the Be Our Guest restaurant and Finley had also gotten to meet Belle and try the 'grey stuff.' She was more excited than some of the younger children in the restaurant and we all were laughing about it.

The fireworks outside of the castle was the absolute best part of the entire night. Regardless of how old you were, seeing the fireworks behind Cinderella's castle and watching Tinkerbell fly over you, makes you believe in magic again. Disney had been such an amazing reprieve from all of the adulting we had been doing on this tour. It was great to have this break to be a kid again.

I had woken up late the next day and was rushing around to get ready. I had put the latch on my door, expecting someone to be coming for me while I was getting ready, and I wasn't wrong. I heard the knock and yelled at whoever it was to come in. I turned to see Finely standing in the doorway. Her eyes widened momentarily, either because she was seeing me shirtless for the first time, or because she had noticed the little white, self-inflected scars on my stomach.

"Glad to see you're awake. We thought you had died. Not answering anyone's calls and shit." She joked, smiling at me easily. I laughed and shook my head.

"Sorry. I was in the shower. I was about to call you back and see what was going on." I looked at her, her eyes flitting down to the scars again.

"Well, put a damn shirt on and lets go. We're leaving in thirty." She said. I laughed again and pulled my Gryffindor quidditch shirt over my head.

"Are you not gonna ask?" I questioned.

"About the scars? No. It's not my business and I know what they are." I smirked.

"I don't mind telling you and I know you wanna ask." She looked down at her hands as I sat down to pull my Converse on. She came and sat beside me.

"You don't have to tell me anything. You know that right?"

"Yes, I do know that. But I want to tell you." She nodded and I continued. "So, I told you that I had gotten put onto anti-depressants for a while. But it wasn't just for the anxiety."

"You had depression too?" I nodded.

"We moved to Toronto when I was thirteen, the same year I started to question my sexuality. I was kinda chubby and awkward and super quiet. It didn't help that I was a kid with a weird accent who had no friends. Liam had started playing baseball and hockey right away. He made friends fast and me, well, I got picked on a lot. I was so afraid to come out and I didn't know how anyone at the school would handle that. I had no idea what would happen and for a little bit, I hated myself for not being straight. But as soon as I told my parents, they put a stop to that self-hate. I met Jace when I was fifteen, the same year I started playing baseball and came out as Bi. I started losing weight and the bulling stopped for the most part, but I had been struggling for a while by then and was really depressed. I don't know why I started cutting, to be honest, but know I just look at it as the physical representation of the pain I was feeling, but I used it more as the way to stop the panic attacks I was having back then. The pain brought me back, cleared my head and washed away the panic. Jace found out somehow and helped me stop cutting. He made everything feel so much better. Obviously the depression didn't just go away, but he made my life better and gave me someone to talk to about all of this. He knew how it felt to come out and to be gay. To be lost in that fear for so long. I got low again when we broke up and that's when I finally told Liam about everything. He made me tell our parents and then I went to counseling. I stopped going when I turned eighteen and we started doing the band full time. I haven't self-harmed since. I've wanted to, but I haven't. I don't care that they're still there, or if people see, but I guess I'm a little self-conscious of them." I closed my eyes and laid back on the bed.