darker_london | Don't tell me where we're going (Cai, Rachel)

Cai came to, though a weighty sickness hung over him, so he kind of wished he hadn’t. He felt like if he moved he might throw up, and if he stayed as still and as quiet as possible he might be able to crawl pathetically back into unconsciousness again. But there was a whispering, a frantic whispering near his face and a thick smell of girl – perfume or just intense shampoos – and a faint movement of air against his face.

Rachel was sitting on the bed very close to him, flapping her hands near him like the wind would make him better. “Cai did I break you? Cai wake up!” There was a fear in her eyes he’d seen before, other times when he woke after gripping her hand and opening his eyes.

“Shhh,” he rolled his face into his quilt. They sat on his bed while they tried to summon visions; it was the most comfortable place for Cai to pass out. They’d started on the floor, but he found that even falling backward from a sitting position could still unpleasantly crack his head.

“What did you see?” she whispered nearby, her neck stretching down toward him, her hair sweeping the quilt near his face. There was dread in her voice, but hope too.

“A fight with your father, you and your father, about starting London College,” he said, staying where he was, on his side. He didn’t feel good enough to sit up yet.

Rachel pulled back though, and sighed in annoyance.

“It would help if you told me what you wanted me to see,” Cai pointed out, not for the first time. But this time, as the others, she folded her arms defensively and frowned.

“You might not believe me if I did,” Rachel said.

“Rach, I’m a psychic. And a Catholic. I’m good at belief.”

She shook her head though; she wasn’t going to risk that. Cai looked at her and realised he was wrong - she wasn't annoyed, she was... unsettled.

He was right, she was unsettled: Indigo was a monster. She’d seen it.

Indigo had even admitted she was a monster by threatening Rachel into silence. But Rachel’s mind had played tricks on her before.

Rachel’s mind refused to show her the memory of the death of her mother and brothers.

Rachel’s mind refused to show her the memory of her life in Plymouth, which consisted of a few months? –Weeks? – before the river. She remembered a bit from her life in the house before Plymouth, but those were memories she actively tried not to remember, not memories she actually couldn’t access. There was a difference.

Not that Rachel wanted to remember Plymouth or the river or her mother or her brothers. At all.

But she knew not-remembering was a problem with her brain. One of a long list of problems with her brain. Viciously bright highs, deadly lows, stealing, stupidity – a long list, yes.

So it was within the realm of possibility that her brain could have conjured Indigo’s condition. It was not unfathomable that her brain could have taken Zoe’s explanation of monsters and imposed it onto her own life. She might have imagined Indigo’s threats – or was it more likely that she’d caught Indigo doing something else, confronted her about it, and was remembering the confrontation all wrong?

Maybe?

She knew she couldn’t tell anyone else till she was sure that what she’d seen in Indigo’s room was real, and she couldn’t know that it was real unless Cai managed to see it too.

But so far all he’d seen were:

A fight with her dad before she started London College.
Part of her encounter in the dark room with Joshua Hardy.
Running away for two days when she was fourteen.
And Rachel kissing Danny in his bedroom.

Indigo hadn’t made an appearance at all, in monstrous form or otherwise. Rachel’s dread that she had made the whole thing up was growing with every failed attempt.

Cai sat up slowly, gingerly, like his head was made of bone china and neck was too weak to stop it smashing to the floor. “Can you at least tell me why you don’t think I’ll believe you?” he asked.

“Cai," Rachel shook her head one more time, "I don't even think I believe me.”