IV. Defenseless
Lisa is spaced out when the clicking of the bathroom door brings her senses back into the present. Her immediate reaction is to jump off the seat and run toward the sound. She calls out her name which stays hanging heavily in the barely lit corridor. She notices the bedroom door isn't locked when the wind or perhaps her call out for Jennie swing it slightly ajar. Her brain is hesitant but her steps are quick to bring her closer to the doorframe where she hides half of her body behind the wall, resting her strangely shaking hand on the frame while peeking inside the room. All she sees: a small curled up body on the bed that's shaking.
"Jen?" she whispers, and it's not clear whether Kuma would catch it if he were there either. She feels like knocking on the door because the lines of personal space have been blurred by now, and so she does that.
"Jen, may I come in?" This one Kuma would definitely not catch even if he were hanging around right next by. She doesn't even expect an answer to be honest, so she's not too surprised when nothing breaks the silence in the air mixed with occasional hitches of breath.
She gets inside, tip toeing like a thief in her own room, shoulders tense while eyes fixated on her. It doesn't quite register in her brain why she's feeling guilty right now. She reaches the bed and the moment she catches Jennie's round welled up eyes glistening into her gaze while she's sobbing, squirming on the edge of the bed, her body tells her to kneel down. Something around the left side of her body falls heavy, and if she weren't too confused she'd guess it was her heart.
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry…” Her voice is doing weird things. She had thought she was feeling sure of herself and her decisions, but she can kind of hear it breaking if she looks at herself outside of her own body.
Jennie's eyes are just glued to her and, despite her whole body shaking, her gaze doesn't break away from Lisa's. That undones Lisa. “I'm an asshole. I'm an asshole.” She repeats in quick hushed whispers. Reaching out to her, and trying to make her sit on the bed, her own hand fumbling in darkness to hold her fragile spine, the other squeezing her hand.
"Jennie, please." She might want to feel least bit happy again above everything else, but she can't resist a crying Jennie, that's kind of an instinct after all the years.
"Baby, please. I'm so sorry. I fucked up, please. Sorry." Jennie feels like she's hallucinating the moment she notices a glint of spark in her eyes again; an old, forgotten thing. She probably convinces herself she was being indeed delusional yet again, but the moment Lisa drags her weightless body down onto her lap, and spreads her arms around her waist and rests her head on her tummy, she wants to forget that hallucinations exist.
It's as if she's trying to ground her, and it's as if it's working, but not really, because Jennie won't stop crying. She won't stop crying but her arms sprawl around Lisa's neck so tightly, as if she's really trying her best to be grounded somehow. Her messy hair now covering Lisa's face on the side, is muting her sense of smell, muting her really.
She’s barely managed to calm down, but her voice is gone now. It's the weirdest of things, cause she didn't even say a word. She wants to ask a million questions now, sniffing into Lisa's neck where she always used to find her comfort. Jaded really, although back to bed, she wants to ask "Have you really unloved me?" "How did you do that?" she wants to ask. "You didn't mean to say that, did you?" "What happened, where did it go wrong?" she wants to ask desperately, except she doesn't. For all the questions hanging in the air, she's lost her voice. She loses her wakefulness in the reign of exhaustion too after some time and gives in to sleep, except Lisa's lying next to her -- a small, defenseless Jennie in her arms -- wide awake.