~ Insomnia ~

noun

{inability to sleep.}

Roxanne was loud.

And not just the way she talked, but her whole existence was loud. Her footsteps, when walking, were loud. And she never just walked, there was always a skip, a bounce. The way she interacted with her surroundings, and how she'd tap her fingers and tap her foot and kept on tap, tap, tapping for no reason. And whenever she found something funny, she never tried to mute it. When she laughed, she laughed. She didn't cover her mouth with her hand, she didn't look away or blush whenever a strange noise emerged from her throat. She was comfortable with who she was.

It was one of the many things Claire was secretly jealous of.

It was one of the many secrets Claire hid from her.

Claire was used to loudness. Not just any loudness, but Roxanne's loudness. It was a comforting kind of loudness. It was familiar.

Unlike the busy street at night.

"Ma'am, the cafe's going to close in five minutes."

Claire blinked, looked up and regretted it, looking back down again. Eye-contact. It became an unknown, scary factor to her. She tried to answer, and gulped instead, realising her voice was nowhere to be found. She nodded. She sensed concern, ebbing off of the waiter, as well as a small amount of compassion, but he gave her a smile and walked away.

She sat at a round chair and a round desk with one of those umbrellas attached to it, now closed, outside of a small cafe she'd never heard of. 

Claire wasn't sure why she was here, really.

She only knew that she couldn't really stay at the apartment, not when Roxanne wasn't in it. It didn't feel right, to stay and pretend as though nothing had happened, as though the lack of Roxanne's loudness was normal.

Claire stood, nauseous, and walked, stumbling once, maybe twice.

Roxanne. Mad at her. Thinking of her as a guardian angel. As a hero. It made her sick.

She was no hero.

She was not even a good person.

She was... a freak.

She'd always been a freak. An anomaly. A weirdo. Abnormal.

An angel.

She was never called that, before.

And now, many were calling her that. The hero of Crystal city. Their guardian angel. And many, many more names.

It was wrong. Sickening. It was-

Next to her, someone fell, right into the busy street. A car, nearing her. Too fast to stop at the right time.

Claire reacted.

Seconds later, Claire was awkwardly holding that someone by the waist, having to lean back and grip her arm tightly around the pole, to sort of hug it to prevent them both from falling.

The car flew past. 

No body got hit by it.

"H-holy shit- fuck- shit-!"

Claire would've grunted had she not lost her voice as she pulled that someone - a girl, she noticed - away from the impending danger. The girl's arms flailed before they landed on Claire's shoulder. Claire winced noiselessly at the hard grip.

Tear stains, running down her cheeks, ruining her mascara, glistening white against the dark of the night.

Eyes, red and blurry, colors undetermined, possessing a light hue.

Brown hair so dark it was almost black, pixie cut.

She was loud. Loud, not in an unpleasant way. 

Claire's chest suddenly was heavy, and it took her a moment to realise she was 'sensing' the girl.

Sadness. Fear. Confusion. Wanting to get away from something, from someone, from somewhere, from here, from this world, from her world. The fresh feeling of isolation, like no others. 

A fight with her mother.

A sense of longing and lost of a boy who had gone missing.

...

So, when I reread "Unravel", I noticed that something seems to be missing. And that something is mainly Roxanne's perspective on Angel. I get that "Unravel" focuses on the side characters, and Claire and Roxanne's friendship being put in a tight spot, but Angel is a pretty big deal to Roxanne. So I made this. "Insomnia".

While "Unravel" focuses on, well, unraveling some of the side characters. "Insomnia" will focus on our two main characters. It's why I labelled it as "Insomnia" and not make it a part of "Unravel". It'll probably last about 3-4 chapters, I don't know, I haven't finished writing it yet, but once this is done, we'll go back to "Unravel" again.

This story is still in chronological order, meaning you won't have to finish reading Unravel first before reading this. Just read as how you'd normally read a story.

That is all~

(Also, I kind of noticed this is the shortest chapter of Suffocating yet... huh...)