would you have the guts to say | alice & berlioz
Sometimes, Alice wondered if she should have been let out of the asylum so soon.
That wasn’t to say she wasn’t glad to be home. She was. After so many months with her visitors prohibited to the point where, for the last two months, they had been banned entirely, to be surrounded by her family again was incredible, and Alice had spent a few weeks under the radar, spending time with everyone, telling them all about the friends she had made, the type of therapy she had undergone, and what treatments the doctors had given her to make sure she wasn’t mad anymore. Well. That was how her parents put it – she was mad, of course, but not now, not anymore, and they knew as well as she did it was a lie. She was still mad, crazy, broken, whatever. She was just on pills that made her stop being obviously broken, which was all that mattered. She didn’t hear voices anymore, she didn’t see things and she was finally getting a good night’s sleep but she had spent the best part of seven months locked away with people who were far more mentally unstable than her, and she didn’t know how to explain to her family that the structured care regimen she had received at the start had quickly disappeared and that more often than not she found herself wandering among mad people and increasingly despairing of her chances to get out. She half-felt that the only reason she had even been let out so soon was because more people were admitted and they needed her bed. Perhaps, if they hadn’t, she’d have been left to rot there forever.
Still, she had been sent home and the long road to recovery had begun. An orderly had accompanied her to Valentina’s castle for a few days before bringing her back to her own house and since then she had begun to tentatively reach out to her friends again, trying to bring back a sense of normality as best she could. It would take a while, she knew, but if there was anything she could do to hasten the process, she would, and so shopping with Marie would be her first attempt. She was nervous to see her again, not in the least because of her appearance. Marie always looked flawless and though Alice had often lovingly ribbed her about her fashion choices, she knew that they were excellent ones, as she’d never once seen Marie have a bad day that related to fashion in any way. She, herself, had always been fond of whatever was clean and had complimentary colours, and had never paid too much attention to make up or hair products or anything of the sort but figured it was about time she started to. Her weight had plummeted due to her limited diet in the asylum, her skin lost much of its colour due to her confinement and her hair had had to be cropped in the asylum after one inmate took to pulling it. She had not, however, been the culprit’s only target; anyone in the asylum with long hair, bar Valentina, had felt their wrath and often came out of the experience with bald patches. As a result, she now sported a bobbed style, though she wasn’t especially fond of it and couldn’t wait to grow it out again. She hadn’t a clue what to do with it; when it was long, she could at least tie it up, but for now, she had resigned herself to looking like an idiot. Maybe she could buy a wig. Marie probably knew a good place.
These were the thoughts she dwelled on as she stepped up to the front door of the Bonfamille house, pale and shaking and filled with nerves. God alone only knew what Marie would think of how she looked. God alone only knew who she would see inside. Even the perpetually stoic Edgar seemed shocked to see her, though whether that was in relation to how she looked or that she had been released from the loony bin, she couldn’t tell. He led her through the foyer, their shoes clicking off the marble tiles and echoing in the empty hall, and left her in the living room, where she found herself hovering awkwardly, not sure if she should sit or not. She was tempted to just leave. Marie had been kind when they had gotten back in touch but to say Alice had become rather anxious was an understatement – she was jumpier than ever, and as likely to bolt at a sudden noise as a wild animal. Indeed, after only a minute of loitering, she decided she couldn’t do it and hurried across the room, pulling her cardigan closed across her old dress and folding her arms, glancing around furtively as she did so, only to stop dead in her tracks.
She knew, she knew, she knew she was running a risk of seeing him again, but after seven months of nothing, of silence, of complete and total abandonment, to see him standing there had the same impact as someone delivering a sucker punch to her gut. She didn’t know if he had seen her, and she stood, floundering, silently gasping for breath, searching for words, hateful, hurtful, loving, distressed, anything she had to say something she couldn’t just walk away and slip out and let that be that she had to say something something something –
“Berlioz.” Well. It was something, a flat statement with minimal emotion behind it, though that didn’t last; anger, no, fury rushed through her veins, the bitter taste of rejection in her mouth and she strode across the hall, eyes welling, face contorting, don’t cry don’t cry don’t don’t DON’T, and she unfolded her arms, raising one hand and bringing it down as hard as she could, hoping that it struck his face – her vision had distorted, tears fracturing the world into a thousand fragments, and she couldn't tell where the blow would land.
“I needed you,” she spat, shaking violently, trying to disguise the anguish in her voice under venom. “Where were you? Why? Why?!”
