He would have to seeher.His stomach twisted at the thought of the lead doctor of St. Dymphna’s psychiatric care. She was a master of hiding her delight for cruelty under the guise of medicine.
Brooks inhaled shakily in an attempt to clear his mind.
Rest.
If he was going to live through treatment, he was going to need rest.
He tapped his finger rhythmically against his chest to lull himself to sleep as he focused on relaxing each muscle one at a time, starting at his toes.
“Brooks?”Her voice was quiet, hardly a whisper.
“Siren?”
His finger stopped tapping as he waited to hear her speak up again. She’d been abnormally quiet these past few days and it worried him. Which was stupid, he knew.
She wasn’t real.
She wasn’t real, and yet the feeling that fluttered in his chest when she spoke… It feltveryreal. So real that he fucking hated himself for it. But there was something about the adrenaline of the past few days and the thought of what was to come that made him vulnerable. The doctor was going to make him forget, anyway. He might as well find joy in the quiet moments, right?
“Hey, you.”
“Long time no see,” he murmured sarcastically.
“Miss me, did you?”
“I wouldn’t say that. Mostly just worried that some other hallucination was going to take up residence if you left, and I was afraid she would be uglier than you.”
“That may have been the most pig-headed thing I’ve ever heard you say.”
“Nah, you’ve heard my thoughts. It gets worse.”
They shared a laugh, but the silence shortly after it died down was deafening.
“Siren?”
“Yes?”
Tears sprang to his eyes as emotion clogged his throat.
Fear, uncertainty, relief… All wrapped into one heart-stopping mass he couldn’t push past alone in the dark.
“Tonight… can we just pretend?”
“Yeah, Brooks,”she said after a moment, her voice raw.“We can pretend for tonight.”
A bit of the pressure eased from his chest. Tomorrow he would face what was to come, but tonight he would find solace in her voice.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“No, Siren, I don’t.”
He cleared his throat and urged the tears away. He may be talking to himself but he damn sure wasn’t going to cry about it.
“Doyou?“ He asked.
“What makes you think there’s anything to talk about?”
“You sound tired,” he whispered sympathetically. “Beaten down.”
