Ch 151

I came to with a violent jolt, hacking up lake water like it was poison. My whole body convulsed as I rolled onto my side, coughing so hard it felt like my ribs were going to crack in half. 

Cold mud stuck to my face, to my hands. Someone was behind me, steadying me with a firm hand between my shoulder blades, patting hard. I hated it. I needed it. 

The pressure forced more water from my lungs, and I gagged as it came up in bursts. I was choking, retching, spit, bile and lake water spilling from my mouth into the dirt. 

It felt endless. Every time I gasped for air, it ended in another wet heave. My body didn't care that I was awake now, didn't care that I was done drowning. It still needed to get everything out, and it was doing it the only way it knew how. 

It was ugly. I was shaking. I am miserable. I was soaked through, freezing. Mud, blood and lake water clung to me. My throat burned. My stomach cramped with every heave. 

I sobbed without meaning to, tears cutting tracks through the grime on my face. Not because I was sad. Not because I was afraid. I didn't even know why. It just happened. I couldn't stop shaking. 

The person behind me, still just a shadow, someone real but faceless in the haze, kept patting my back, murmuring something I couldn't hear over the ragged, watery coughs tearing out of me. 

I wanted them to stop. I wanted them to keep going. I didn't know what I wanted. Everything hurt. Everything was raw. 

And still... I felt nothing. Numb. Hollow. The same as before. Only now I was covered in vomit and spit and water and snot and tears, coughing up lakewater like it was my own blood. 

I gasped again, desperate for air, only to gag once more as another mouthful of water pushed its way out. My hands dug into the mud, nails snapping, scrabbling for something solid. There was none. Just dirt. Just cold. Just survival. 

I didn't say thank you, I didn't want to. I couldn't. I didn't look up. Even after my lungs and stomach were empty of water. I stayed there, hunched over, sobbing into the dirt. 

At some point, the coughing stopped. I don't know when. I just realized my body had gone quiet. Still heaving with silent sobs, maybe, but the violence had passed. 

My hands were still buried in the mud, but I couldn't feel them anymore. My fingers were tingling, going stiff. Cold or shock, I couldn't tell the difference. 

My chest ached like something had been torn loose inside it, but my brain refused to look too closely. Everything was... far away. 

My face was half in the dirt, and all I could see was the sky. Just this wide, pale-grey sky stretching over me like a lid. No sun. No clouds. Just blankness. And I stared at it, unblinking. 

It looked like it was pressing down on me. Like if I moved wrong, it would collapse and smother me. I wouldn't have minded. 

There was no thought. Just white noise. I couldn't think about the lake. Couldn't think about what happened before. Couldn't even name the feeling in my chest, it was too big, too strange, too scary. 

My brain just shut off the hallway that led to it. Slammed the door, turned off the lights. Nothing to see here. Keep moving. You won't understand. 

But I wasn't moving. I couldn't. The person behind me was gone now. Or maybe they were still there. I didn't care either way. They were part of the blur. 

My body felt like it didn't belong to me. Just this useless, heavy thing slumped in the dirt, eyes wide open, staring up at a sky that didn't care if I lived or died. I wasn't alive. Not really. I was just... here. 

The sky finally stopped shaking. Or maybe it was just me. My vision wasn't so blurry now. The tears had slowed, drying sticky on my cheeks, leaving behind crusted lines of salt and dirt. 

My eyes stung, but I could see again. That endless gray above me was still there, still pressing down, but now it looked less like a lid and more like a ceiling. So high up, such distance that was unreachable, and cold to all those who looked. 

I blinked. Once. Twice. My fingers didn't work when I tried to move them, but I felt the weight of them still buried in the mud. My mouth tasted like copper and bile. My stomach felt like it had turned inside out. 

Then I turned my head slowly. It felt heavy. Like I was underwater all over again. 

They were just... there. Standing a few feet away. Still. Watching. Two figures that didn't belong to the world I was in. The contrast was almost laughable—if I could laugh.

Itachi with his blank eyes and calm face, like this was just another quiet afternoon. Kisame, broad and monstrous behind him, arms crossed, water dripping off his sword like it was nothing. Like none of this was anything. 

I didn't even flinch. I wasn't even surprised. Just tired. So tired. Of course it was them. Of course it was. 

My throat burned as I tried to speak, and for a moment all that came out was a cracked, wet rasp. I swallowed, tried again. The words barely made it past my lips. Not a scream. Not a plea. Just a whisper. Barely loud enough to hear. 

"...You should've let me drown." Neither of them moved. I kept staring, not blinking anymore. I didn't have the energy to. Itachi's face didn't change. Kisame tilted his head, just slightly, like he hadn't expected that. 

Maybe he thought I'd beg. Maybe he thought I'd fight. That maybe I'd smile or laugh. But there was nothing left in me. Not anger. Not fear. Not even shame. 

I wasn't brave. I wasn't strong. I was just broken. Just something they dragged out of the lake. I looked away again, let my cheek sink back into the cold dirt. 

"I didn't want to come back." No one answered. Good. I didn't want comfort. I wanted quiet. I wanted this to stop. I wanted it to end. 

But... 

It seemed that it won't ever. 

I didn't think I had anything left in me. I thought I'd gone past it, past pain, past panic, past whatever came after nearly drowning in a lake full of my own failures. 

I thought I'd hit the bottom and found peace in the numbness. If you'd even call any of this peace. 

But I was wrong. So very wrong. My body always betrays me. It started slow. Just a hitch in my breath. A tremble that rolled up from my stomach and lodged in my chest like a trapped animal. 

I tried to swallow it down, but it clawed its way out, tearing through me with no mercy. And then it hit, a sudden, violent, impossible to contain cry. 

I cried. Not quiet tears this time. Not silent sobs. It was ugly. Loud. Full-body shaking, gasping, choking on my own voice. My shoulders heaved, and every breath was a fight, like I was being ripped apart from the inside out. 

My chest ached like it had cracked wide open. I curled in on myself, trying to hold something, anything together, but I was breaking. Shattering. Every piece of me falling in on itself. 

I didn't even know what I was crying for at first. Then it all poured out at once. I was tired. So tired. Of fighting. Of surviving. Of pretending like any of this was okay. 

Nothing was going right. Nothing ever went right. Every time I clawed my way out of one hole, I fell into another. And every time I thought, this has to be the worst it gets, life found a new way to prove me wrong. 

I didn't know what I was anymore, just this useless, broken thing that kept getting dragged back into a world that didn't want me. 

What was I even for? I was worth nothing. I am nothing. Every mistake I'd made echoed louder in my head than any voice could shout. Every failure replayed itself in vicious detail. 

Every time someone left, or hurt me, or looked at me like I was a problem to solve or a burden to carry, it came back, all of it. And I believed it. I believed them. 

Why wouldn't I? They were right. 

I screamed into the dirt, the sound raw and hoarse, torn straight from my lungs like it had been buried there for years. My fingernails scraped uselessly against the mud, my arms trembling from the effort to hold myself up. 

My body was on fire. My soul felt like it was burning alive. And still the tears kept coming, hot and endless, blurring my vision until the world dissolved again into gray. 

I was so fucking sad. I didn't even know how to carry it anymore. There was nothing left to hold onto, no hope, no light, no future. 

Just this ache in my chest that never went away. Just this awful knowing that no matter what I did, it would never be enough. I would never be enough. I was breaking. No, I was broken. And no one could fix me. Not even me. 

I didn't know how long I cried. Time had stopped meaning anything. But eventually, the sadness twisted into something else.

It turned sharper, hotter. It sat in my chest like fire, not water. I was angry. Not just hurt. Not just empty. Angry. At everything. At the world. At myself. At them. 

Why was I still alive? Why had they pulled me out of the lake? Why couldn't they just leave me there, in the dark, where at least I didn't have to feel anymore? 

I sat up, trembling, my body still wracked with aftershocks, teeth chattering, chest burning like I'd swallowed gasoline. I wiped my face with the back of my arm, smearing mud and tears across my skin, breathing hard. 

Then I screamed. A sound pulled up from somewhere deep and cracked inside me, a scream so loud it burned my throat. 

I turned toward them, toward the quiet silhouettes of Itachi and Kisame, still standing there like statues, watching from a distance like they hadn't just watched me come apart. 

"Why couldn't you just leave me there?!" I yelled, voice splintering. "Why couldn't you just let me die?!" 

They didn't move. Of course they didn't. Nothing touched them. Nothing ever touched them. But I kept going. 

"I didn't ask to be saved! I didn't want to be saved!" My fists slammed into the ground. "You think dragging me out of the water fixed anything?! I'm still broken! I'm still nothing!" 

I was shaking again, harder now, fury and heartbreak twisting together in a storm I couldn't contain. My hands balled into fists, nails digging into my palms, and I screamed again, this time with all the force of every horrible thought I'd ever had about myself. 

Then Itachi moved. Quietly, Calmly. Like he always did. I don't know what I thought he was going to do, say something, maybe. Or just keep walking. 

But when he stepped close enough, I saw the glint of a kunai at his side. His hand rested near it, loose, casual. I didn't think. I just moved. 

My fingers snatched it from his belt before he could stop me, before he even tried to stop me. I scrambled back, clutching it in both hands, blade pointed at my chest, just above where my heart was still beating. 

Beating like it was mocking me. Beating when it should've stopped years ago. By my hand. By Itachi's hand. By that damn truck's hand. 

I screamed again, at him, at the sky, at myself. "Why can't I just do it?!" My voice cracked into a sob. "Why can't I do it?! I want to. I want to so bad. I don't want this anymore. I don't want to feel like this anymore." 

But my arms wouldn't move. I stood there, frozen, blade pressed to my chest, and I couldn't push it in. Every part of me was screaming to do it. My head. My heart. My soul. Just end it. 

And still... 

...I couldn't. 

I looked up at him, eyes burning, lips trembling, tears falling again like they'd never stopped. "Why can't I do it?" I whispered. 

Itachi didn't say anything. He just stepped forward. And without force, without resistance, he took the kunai from my hands. I let him. I couldn't stop him. 

The weapon slipped from my fingers like it didn't even belong to me anymore. My legs gave out. I collapsed, choking on another sob, one hand still raised like I didn't know what to do with it. 

Then I felt him wrap his arms around me. No words. No judgement. Just silence and warmth. It broke me all over again. 

I fell into him, full weight, clinging to his sleeves like they were the only things tethering me to the world. My fists curled in the fabric. 

I buried my face against his chest, sobbing like I would never stop, like my lungs would give out before my grief ever did. 

I didn't say thank you. I didn't apologize. I didn't explain. There was nothing left to say. I just held on, hoping, desperately, hopelessly, that maybe if I held tight enough, I wouldn't disappear.

A/n I know, I know, I'm evil. But at least I never dropped this book, huh? Which would you prefer? Actually... Don't answer that. Anyway, have fun to those who are going back to school, or Uni, or even those who are in the workforce (if any), and enjoy the fall!!!! Enjoy~