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He did have nice people in his life. He'd surrounded himself with nice, and excised the only thing that wasn't nice, despite how much that not nice had loved him. And not nice sat there, once more abandoned, as he refused to so much as sit near her.

She felt her blood boil underneath her skin, as it only did around him. Her fingers tensed, threatening to ball up, before she forced them to relax.

"Otto, sit." She demanded, pointing at the couch. "You need help. You figured that out. You did that. Not me. I just don't want you to forget that. Did you ever go talk to that guy you were thinking about talking to? I don't remember his name."

Maebe fought against the roll of her eyes when he admitted that he'd chickened out. The only reason she wasn't punching him was because she had no idea who Lex was, or whether he'd even have helped. It was a long shot, but it seemed like it might have been the only chance. And Otto needed a chance.

"Ami doesn't have the right to ask you what you were going to ask him, because that stuff is supposed to be confidential. And you're not supposed to know what to say until you get there. That's the point of all that psychiatric bullshit. You make breakthroughs. If you're lucky."

But they'd never worked for her, so she didn't have the heart to push the matter. She let it go with the wave of her hand, and turned sideways to flop her legs down on him. "Saying I don't know is not dumb. Not trying is dumb. Not caring is dumb. And since when are you the kind of guy who doesn't fight tooth and nail for the answers he wants? I feel like you're a stranger to me, sometimes. Like, that guy who wouldn't touch me because you needed s**t like ~emotions~ involved got killed in the field, and you got sent in as a replacement. And that's the thing, sweetheart. I think you're starting to feel that way, too."

She felt the sting of regret for being so brutal, but he'd never known her to be anything but brutal. This would be no surprise. Still, she knew she wasn't easy to talk to. She didn't like how easy she knew this could turn into a fight, if she wasn't careful. She sighed sharply, and shifted up towards the edge of the couch, pulling away from him. But as she did, she leaned forward and grabbed him by the arms, pulling him up towards her. This was the only way she knew to keep him from running from his problems anymore. And it hurt, with every touch of her skin on his, but she had to keep him from running. She had to try and be a Cami, and a Maebe, for once.

She was so very bad at it.

"Come here." She muttered indignantly as she pulled him up between her legs, and hugged him around from behind. She was never made for pure comfort, but she was trying, and she knew she would regret it later on. Later, in the solitude of her room, where she would cry and mourn all over again for the loss of something she missed so damn much. "Let me tell you how it actually works. You go to a car place and you tell them, hey, the brakes don't work. So they open up the hood and, wouldn't you know it - the brakes don't work because something is out of alignment and they have to replace a whole other part you never would have known is broken. You don't know that s**t. You can't see deep inside the car where they can. You wouldn't even know what to look for." Her hands brushed down his hair, and she wished she could dig into his mind with her fingernails and find what was wrong. "But they do. And you pay them the big money because they fix what you can't."

God, he still smelled the same. She'd almost gotten the scent of him out of her head, but now she gorged herself on it selfishly. She was going to regret it so much.

"I've told you once already." Maebe murmured, her voice just slightly slurred from intoxication. "My opinions are terrible. If I could solve all your problems, I would have done it already so that I wouldn't have to lose you. So you don't want to know my opinion. You need better."

But if Lex wasn't the option, who the hell was? Did she really think she was going to tell him to go to a superior? Those guys were ******** crazy. She wished she could have just told him to talk to Cami, but she'd learned the hard way that Cami had become part of the problem - just like she was. Otto couldn't find the help he needed because there was none to find. He shied away from thinking too hard about this because if he did, he would come to the same conclusion Maebe had belatedly realize.

He was really, truly alone.

"I wouldn't have gotten pissed with you for asking that, by the way." She murmured, her hands digging deeper into his hair. "I'm trying to help in the only way I know how. And that means, no fighting." Her finger reached out and lightly pinched the top of his ear before returning to its job. "Even if you are my favorite person to fight with."

She tried to think hard on why things felt so off since New Years. She remembered that vision as if she was living it that very moment, and somehow, despite how small and insignificant her time with Otto had been, it was that kiss that struck the hardest chord in her, even now. That boy had known who he was. What he wanted. And when he kissed her, she felt like she could have known, too.

"What was the difference between the guy you were in that New Years dream we all had, and the guy you are now?" She asked, in a small and tentative voice.

"I'm saying they're terrible because if I had the right answers, I would not have turned out the way I did. And the last thing you need is to turn into another me. You're already half way there." She bent her head down and rested her forehead on the back of his head. "Let's not go any further."

Otto sounded like he was trying to remember something traumatic and distant. She remembered the dream a lot easier than he did, and it troubled her to listen to him struggle.

"It is important. Those people were us if things had been different. They aren't other people. They're just our potential realized. That boy, that Otto, that was you. And you need to try harder to remember what it was that made him different." She sighed, and closed her eyes as she focused on her own hazy memories. If he needed an example.. if it was going to help..

"I know why I was different. I know what changed. And that was still me, just with better choices. Better options." Her hands, still lost in his hair, shook slightly. "If I could go back in time and choose, I'd choose her."

Maybe not spending his teen years in -

Yeah. That sounded about right.

"No, we can't. What happened, happened. There's no going back now. But if you're not happy with who you are, some of what you had to endure - that he didn't - might be at the root of it. Or it might not. I can't tell you for sure." Her body heaved in frustration. "I'm so bad at this. I want to help you so much Otto. You don't know how much I wish I could just - " Her hands, still in his har, wrapped around his scalp and just held it, firmly. "I want to steal all that fog away so you can see everything and say, hey, there I am, over there, it's easy now."

Her fingers relaxed, as did the rest of her body. "But I'm not strong enough to help you. I'm not strong enough to help myself. That's why you left me. That's why I lose."

She felt herself start to give up, little by little. It was a dangerous conundrum, knowing that Otto was so prone to doing the same, and she was the only thing stopping him in that moment. If she gave up, she knew they were going to be hopelessly lost.

"You can't?" She countered quickly. "'Cause... you seem to be doing that just fine with Cami... soooo." It was hard for her to hold her tongue in moments when she knew it would be better for both of them if she did. This was one of those moments. She couldn't help herself.

But she didn't get a chance to regret her decisions, because his words stung the way they had to. He admitted he never knew what love was, and even though it hurt, she understood because she knew what that feeling was like. To love someone so hard, so thoroughly, only to find in devastation that you're not sure you even knew what love meant in the end.

He turned to look in her eyes, and her expression was caught like a deer in headlights, mirroring the fear trapped in his with acute similarity.

"It's me."

She heard it in his words where he did not, and she swallowed, as her lower lip trembled with fear.

"You were safe, and better off, and then you met me, and - and your sign got knocked down - it's my fault. I did this. I did this to you, didn't I."

But she'd convinced herself now, and if Otto thought he was going to out-stubborn her, he'd forgotten who she was.

She did remember him pushing her. Changing her. Forcing her to see who she really was, and face that mirror head on. She remembered all of it, and there was a hard, violent difference.

"But you made me better. Your reasons might have been selfish, but I wouldn't change what you did to me for the world." She grabbed his hand, and slapped it hard against her heart. "You made me scared. You made me feel. And I think that's what I'm supposed to do. But everything I did to you, you seem to regret. You hate yourself now. All you ever do is say how much you've lost, how much better you were before - before me - and - "

But her train of thought derailed, when she felt his hand burn her skin. Her eyes flickered from his, to the lips just centimeters below, and then up again. She let out a staggering breath, and felt the gravity pulling her away from her thoughts, from her pain, and towards him instead.

Her fingers let go of the hand she'd pressed against her heart, because she didn't want him to feel her hands shaking anymore.

"You're wrong." Her words came out in a shaky exhale, betraying everything she felt at that moment. "You have to be. There's no other excuse. You tell me why you're so lost right now if it's not for me. You can't."

He owned his self-hatred, before her. She cringed, clearly unhappy with the way that sounded. "If you miss the freedom you had, then just take it back. Stop working so hard to live with what you've been dealt, and take what you really want. Not what feels good, or what's easy. Take back what you really want, already. Or you're just going to keep making things worse."