Roxanne couldn't find Claire, and she was terrified.

She called Claire. No answer. She looked around the changing room, knocking on each stall, hoping that the girl had found a cute shirt and decided she'd like to try it out. She gained no response, none from Claire, anyway.

She called, and called, and called again. Claire didn't answer. Something wasn't right. Claire always answered. Something definitely wasn't right.

She exited the changing room, walking around the clothing store. She stopped yelling out Claire's name when her voice cracked. She was still in pain. She was still shaking from distraught. But Claire was not here, and Roxanne needed to find her. Claire had to be okay.

"Ma'am, are you okay?"

Roxanne jumped. It was a man. A man with a beard and a beanie and a concerned look on his face. He was just a man worried for the state of others. A regular man.

But what if he wasn't?

What if he knew?

What if he was going to keep watching her, stalking her, waiting, waiting, waiting until she was out of sight, out of mind, alone in the dark, then capture her, and do horrible things to her.

"I- I'm fine."

"Are you sure?" He knitted his eyebrows, pursed his lips. He looked like he was going to call an ambulance. It might be a good idea too. Not the ambulance part, but the getting help part or calming down part.

But all Roxanne could think about was how he'd look with eyes darker than the night sky, a smile you'd have when you knew you were in full-control and the person in front of you had no control at all, no matter how much she wanted to pretend.

He made a move to reach out to her. She jolted and took a step back, away from him, the potential threat, the mystery man who could be more than just a man.

"Stay away from me."

He looked genuinely hurt. Roxanne bit her tongue, keeping herself from letting out another sob. She walked away from him, tried to forget him, tried to ignore all the stares she got from everyone around her, hugging herself.

Where the fuck is she?

She was sweating and freezing. Her mind kept thinking of the warnings everyone kept giving her, the warnings she ignored. Warnings about what they'd do to those who broke the unspoken rules. Those who were reckless. Those who were an idiot. Idiots get killed. Idiots never survived.

She went into one shop, tried to spot Claire, failed, and moved on to the next shop, and the next, and the next.

"Claire?!"

All eyes were on her. She was in public. She probably looked hysteric. Hell, she was hysteric.

"Do you need us to call the cops?"

"Who are you looking for?"

"You need to calm down."

Too many people. Not enough Claire. People couldn't be trusted. Nothing, no one. Everyone was out to get her. Claire wasn't. Claire would never do anything. Claire was Claire.

Vivid images conjured themselves inside of her head. Images of where Claire could be. Images of Claire alone, tied up, interrogated, hurt, used as bait, bleeding, crying, lost. It could happen. It could very well happen. She wouldn't be exaggerating. In fact, whatever they could be doing to her was worse, far worse, than anything she could've imagined.

Claire. Oh God, Claire.

Claire could be hurting, dying, dead already, and it would be her fault.

Roxanne found Claire, and she was terrified.

She ran to her, pushing everything and everyone that got in her way, and tackled the taller girl into a hug, crying ugly tears and sobbing unpleasant-sounding sobs into the girl's shoulder.

She's alive was all Roxanne could think.

Roxanne felt the girl squirm and hiss and try to move her shoulder away from her as though the physical contact hurt, but she couldn't bring herself to care. Even through her blurred, damp eyes, she could see people surrounding them, looking at them with worry.

"R-Rox- What are you doing?"

Her voice. Concerned and pressing and stiff and strained, but it was her voice, Claire's voice, and she was alive. Fuck.

Roxanne let out another happy sob.

"Rox, please. Christ, everyone's watching! You've got to control yourself!"

So Roxanne tried. She let Claire lead her to the bathroom, never letting go of Claire, cry and cry and cry-

"Roxanne, please let me go."

-until she realized why she was crying in the first place.

"Where were you?" She shoved Claire, hard. And she, for a moment, felt bad because of how shocked Claire looked. Then the back of her head pounded, reminding her of what had happened, and she knew it was Claire who should feel bad for her. "Do you have any fucking idea what happened-"

"Goodness, Rox. What was that, out there? Why were you embarrassing yourself?"

"Embarrassing myself?!" she roared, eyes wide, body trembling in anger and nothing else. "Is that what you want to call it?!"

"Yes, Roxanne! That's exactly what you did!" Claire's breathing was hard. A few strands of her hair escaped from her ponytail, giving her this wild look. She was glaring at Roxanne, like how you'd glare at someone who'd caused you trouble, and it made her take a step back and realize just how weird Claire was acting. And not the good kind of weird. "You cried and screamed in public. Everyone thinks you're a lunatic, Rox. Congratulations. And everyone sees me too. They see me, and they see me with you. And- and-"

"Why are you acting like this?"

Claire looked scared, and angry, and different.

The craze in her eyes reminded her all too well of Rick the last time she saw him. Roxanne found herself pressing her back against the wall, trying to put as much distance as she could with who was supposed to be her best friend.

"Because I lost something- something that's been keeping me- keeping me happy-" a hiss left her mouth, and Claire looked as though she was trying to control herself. "And now, I'm really not in the mood for your craziness."

Lost? Lost what had been keeping her happy? What?

"I don't understand."

And Roxanne wasn't sure she wanted to understand.

Claire's face was cold, expressionless and her voice was equally cold and calm when she said, "Of course you don't. You never do. You think you know the truth, Roxanne, but you don't." Stop. "You just listen to what you want to listen, ignore everything else, and call that small portion - that tiny little portion - as the truth." Claire, what the hell are you doing? Stop. "And everyone bought it. Everyone believed in your words. In this hero. Amazing, perfect hero-"

"I never said she's perfect-"

"Well, you made it seem that way!" Claire. You're hurting me. And Roxanne might as well said it out loud, because Claire looked at her again, and her face morphed into shame. The anger was still there, but it was subdued. Claire ran a hand through her hair, and she put her hands on the sink, leaning to it as though it was the one thing keeping her from falling. "Just... I, umm, I'm not in the best of moods right now-"

"Why is that?"

"Are you seriously interrogating me, right now?"

Was it possible to get high or drunk without consuming anything that made you high or drunk? Because right now, Roxanne felt both high and drunk. And she felt miserable and tired and weak. And she supposed she wanted to stop feeling that and feel more like Claire; more in-control, smarter, better.

"Yeah." Fuck, it felt so liberating to say that. "I wanna know why my best friend left me alone for one fucking hour. I know you love to flake and all, but I never thought you'd do it while we were doing something together, you know..."

The fucking tears were back at it again, messing up her voice and blurring everything she saw. She was desperate to get a reaction, any reaction. She wanted to wake up from this nightmare, so much so that she asked, softly and with a lilt, like singing a lullaby, "What even is your priority, Claire?"

Claire looked so broken, so hurt.

Then, she looked so, so disappointed, and she tried to cover it up with a mask of anger Roxanne could clearly see through.

"You did not just say that."

"Well," Roxanne barked a laugh far from happy, "you did not just flake on your best friend and let her get-" She stopped herself from finishing that sentence. She didn't know why. Maybe it was because Claire had been hiding so many things from her for so long, it felt fair to hide something from her for a change. "You did not just flake on me. You did not just ruin everything, all for the sake of your super awesome secret, but oh," she shrugged and fauxed her innocence, "you did. And now I'm not even sure if I should trust you anymore."

Roxanne was being petty, and she knew it.

But she also had been threatened to be killed countless of times on social media, then found out that those death threats were more than just threats, and she could very well 'disappear', and she'd witness a debacle between a mother and a daughter which proved that, yup, people were disappearing to who knew where, and she or Claire could be one of those people, and many, many more things.

So yeah, Roxanne knew she was petty, and she didn't give a single damn. She just wanted to wake up from this nightmare. Because that's what this was; a nightmare.

Claire, still gripping the sink like her life depended on it, opened and closed her mouth several times. No words came out of her mouth. Roxanne saw her struggle. A chuckle slipped through her own lips, painful and desperate for everything to stop. But nothing would stop, not for her. The world didn't work that way. Everything kept going, and going, and going, and Roxanne had to bear the knowledge of what she'd done.

Roxanne knew exactly what she'd done.

A small, barely visible tear left Claire's eye, and she wiped them away aggressively. She turned her back to Roxanne's and gave her one side-eyed glance before leaving the bathroom.

"Oh, flaking out on me again, I see."

And there was no answer. Because Claire left. And Roxanne was alone, just like in that changing room. Her body tensed. She looked at anywhere and everywhere, waiting for someone to kill her right here and now. It would be so easy, to just snap her neck or stab her or shoot her.

She waited, and waited, and waited, until she realized that she needed to get out of here lest she fell deeper into madness.

Roxanne stopped, shorter than a second, stared, and left.

There was a large crack on the marble sink, where Claire had gripped it, for far too long, for far too hard.

...

OOOF.

The drama.