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He let go of the drink easily, willingly, and he informed her with great earnestness: "No more of that either. New leaf." Either this suggested troubling things about what Taym did with easy access to alcohol or the... whatever-it-was in the air was causing him to make some truly alarming decisions about personal ethics. "And no more--no more bitching on Twitter. Rep," he added through a self-righteous veil of tears, "can't help the fact that he's an antisocial monster with a lack of morals and no sense of basic human decency. He was born that way. He is ill."

Apparently the forgiveness only extended so far.

Taking the bottle, America turned and took what she felt was a discrete sip, while gently rocking with Taym. "Yeah, you're gonna be like...the man you were always meant to be...in both your body and heart. Good plan." Somewhere her mind was trying to recall various Hallmark cards that she'd throughout her life. There had to be something soothing and inspirational in there.

"Gonna be all plusses from here on out..." She took another pull and then waggled the bottle out to Nevada with a low, "I signed up to go from fantastic to even more fantastic, so I can't really complain. But if it's bugs again, I'm gonna get irate."

Her voice turned gentle again as she nodded to Taym, "That's right, it's like being mad at a dolphin...bear. A raging dolphin bear." Damnit Konstantin. "Ain't no point in hating a hater who's gotta hate."

Confessing her regrets to Lucky didn't make Mimsy feel much better. She was still buried beneath two decades of guilt, and it all gnawed at her as if she were covered in a thousand hungry insects. That truly would have been preferable to this.

Admitting her terrible transgressions her brother - if he still wanted to be her brother - did aid her in believing that he would flourish without her. For once, her actions were entirely guilt-free. She smiled at Lucky one last time, in a way that was hopefully comforting, and turned to listen to Robert.

What she heard were words she never wanted to hear. She struggled to remain upright, to avoid interrupting him, and reasoned that it was not so bad. No matter how many times she told herself that, however, it didn't stop her from acknowledging that he regretted this. It didn't stop that from hurting, and didn't stop her pulse from racing and fluttering with trepidation.

(It was only so long before he began to pity the one he left behind, and if he felt like he could fix her again...)

He was curled up, just as she had been, and she slipped her arms under his to tug him upward as soon as he finished speaking. Once she had enough space, she continued to nudge and move him like a needy housecat, until she could finally sit in his lap. She settled comfortably there, though it was initially difficult to prevent both of them from falling, because neither of them seemed particularly interested in doing anything other than slumping over in their misery.

Tucked safely under his heavy arms, she bit her quivering lip and reminded herself to breathe as she began to murmur to him, little whispered secrets shared in their cocoon.

"No, Robert...no. You are not." She rubbed her cheek against his, and gave him a chaste kiss, blinking away tears. "You are the best, and that is why I chose you. It was your good heart, your love, your acceptance, all so tremendous, that made me decide I needed you. I was the one who crossed that line. Your relationship meant nothing to me, because I was so certain that I needed you more. She was insignificant and meaningless in my mind, but I was wrong. She was someone who cared about you too. And I encouraged you away from that, because I needed you. I was selfish. I am always so selfish. I was the one who made you think that way. I deceived you into thinking that I was better. I pushed until you had no other option. Because...if you had said no to me, I..."

The thought of hurting him at all made her sick. The idea of killing him terrified her so much that she got goosebumps and burst into tears again. Her trembling hands clutched fistfuls of his shirt as she pressed her face against him, thin body shaking with panicked sobs.

"Oh, god, I am inhuman. I have felt things I should never feel when I think of your heart. I enjoyed thinking about blood on your hands. The thought of you..." She shivered, and it was born of repulsion this time. "I am sorry. My mind is filled with terrible things that I could never bear to repeat to you. I have so many revolting thoughts that I should never have about someone I love. And I love you. Ohh, how did I ever think that these ideas were anything less than reprehensible? My mind is a horrid place that frightens me now, and I never want to be lost in it again. I am sorry for ever humoring these thoughts. I am sorry in ways that words cannot possibly encompass. I always rely on words. They are capable of everything with the right logic, except...except this. How can I ever express how sorry I feel?"

She couldn't. That was the point. Tears overtook her words again, and she clung to him with desperation, finally managing a deep breath so she could speak once more.

"I guess...I am sorry for needing you. I am sorry that it had to be you. I am sorry for thinking that you were the only person who was immune to my sickness. I am a rotten thing in the shape of a human, and I spread a disease of destruction to everything that I hold close to me. You are still resistant, but it did not save you, and it is my fault for failing to care. I thought that I cared, but what I felt for you fell short of what caring should be. I still want to try care in a more loving way, but I am not sure that you would want me to. I failed you. I was wrong. I should have recognized what she meant to you. I was wrong to lead you down a path you never intended to go down. I never should have coaxed you into anything more than friendship, no matter how badly I need you. I should have listened to you when you said 'no', instead of listening only to what I wanted. Maybe then I would not have tried to cut--" She abruptly stopped and began to look more pale than usual, and took a moment to compose herself again. "Oh, goodness, I am a terrible thing. Maybe that could have saved you, if I just listened to someone other than myself. "

There was a sniffle as she paused to continue to calm herself, and she weakly kissed his neck, lips wet with tears.

"Please. Please stay with me. It is still selfish of me to ask. I know. I am so, so sorry. I will be a better person, instead of this thing. I promise I will. I know she made sense, and I might not make sense, but you make sense to me. Even though you make me think harder than I have with literal rocket science sometimes, you always make sense in the end. The equation is always balanced when the variable of you is included in the empty spaces of my formula. Nobody else can solve this but you. I am confident in my belief of that, and I know it is selfish, but I want to be better. I want you to help me be better. Please. I love you."

Even as she pleaded with him, for the second time this month, she could only think about how wrong it was of her to ask this of him. This was not like last time. This felt like it was all her fault, and if she truly loved him, she would let him go. She knew she had trapped him here, in lies and distractions and manipulation, and her chest felt tight with guilt of acknowledging as much.

"If you cannot love me, after all that I have said, I understand. I am selfish, and I want this to work, but I know who I am now. I never saw how disgusting I was, or how inconsiderate my actions were. I can only apologize for my behavior, and make promises, and hope that you do not regret loving me."

Noah wrote back, It's okay, you're not a stick in the mud anyway --

He intended to write more, but the room seemed to explode with too much anger and too many feelings, and he froze, clutching the notebook against his chest like a shield. When Peyton got up to yell at Rep, or maybe to punch him oh god no that was a terrible idea, the thought crossed Noah's mind that he should stop her. But he couldn't make his muscles unlock, and it was someone else who grabbed her arm and pulled her back to the couch, someone else again who comforted her.

His mouth curved down unhappily, and a little wrinkle developed between his eyebrows. "I'm sorry," he whispered to Peyton in a very small voice, and patted her back, once, with a shaky hand, before he retracted into a little ball of insecurity again. He was genuinely sorry. He wasn't entirely sure what he was sorry about, but he was pretty sure it was his fault, whatever it was.

Melvin showed weakness and it was enough for her to show some weakness too finally. It was hard feeling like her guard had to be up all the goddamned time and she was about to explain to him in a much calmer tone just why when he did a complete 360 on her. She was stunned as he took her hand in his hands and just stared with a horrified look on her face.

Then the apologies came. Some of it sounded like unapologies, but she knew him well enough at least to know this was him genuinely trying to be sorry. That was the scary part. "Err.... are... are you okay?" Her eyebrows raised and scrunched together with concern.

Jake reached over and pulled Sherry into some sort of awkward one-armed hug, and then proceeded to bury his face into her shoulder and cry.

Rep was used to guilt. It was what he ran on, only he didn't feel it in the same way other people tended to. He understood it in the way that an alien might understand the concept of love from a book, but it had never been the same as actually feeling it. As the mood in the room changed once again it felt like he was dying, the heavy weight of regret and guilt settling on him like an unbearable weight. It reminded him of the haunted house, of the pyramid head who had left him helpless, turned against himself, willing to cut himself to ribbons and let himself bleed to death in the fog.

Slowly, building more and more as the sensations grew stronger he was beginning to remember why he had been so ready to die.

Everything he did was toxic, everything he touched went wrong and everyone he spoke to got hurt, when people said he was better off dead they were right, he could see clearly now what they looked at, a scale where all the bad he did outweighed the good, where he was a daily inconvenience they wanted removed. He was able to ignore them because they were outside his personal bubble of concern, but this feeling, this guilt consumed everything, it bled beyond his carefully constructed walls and embraced the entire world. It was too much to cope with and strangled him into silence, self loathing and hurt freezing him in his tracks.

Otto was what finally kicked him out of the self disgust so intense he could hardly speak, poor ******** Otto who had gotten caught in his lashing out at the world and set as an example to keep the wolves at bay.

He hugged the shorter man tightly but with the kind of tenderness normally reserved only for his fiancées. "I'm sorry." he said, the words strangled with emotion. "I'm sorry to you and everyone who has ever had to deal with me. I thought you were trying to hurt Ace and he's one of the only people in the world who just stands with me, I couldn't let you hurt him. But it wasn't ******** right to humiliate you like that. I'm. When I look at you I see a good man and I hate it. I'm afraid of it." He got Rep's face against his neck - fortunately he'd apparently bathed that morning so there was that. "Because I'll never be you, you sulk and s**t but under it you are decent and good. I call you small because I know you are a bigger man than me in a lot more ******** ways."

He finally relinquished the death hunter, letting him go as he realised even more deeply how repulsive a person he was and was jarred as he realised no one would willingly want to touch him and inflicting it on others was the height of rudeness. He resorted to hugging himself instead, as if doing so would alleviate this pain, worse than boredom, worse than physical agony, rooted like hooks in the very heart of him and pulling him apart. "I'm sorry Otto. I don't know why you'd want to touch someone like me either, you might get tainted by the ******** horrible thing that I am." he took a slow quavering breath and tried to steady himself. "You are a brilliant, successful attractive young man. Like really ******** hot. You deserve fifty girlfriends not just one who left you."

He couldn't cope with it, suddenly aware of all the things he'd done to others but helpless to change even a fraction of them, he tried to tell himself he was reformed and at peace, but there could be no peace when he looked at his past, the irreconcilable things he'd done and the innocent people he'd hurt.

Burying his face in his hands he was silent once again as emotions twisted tightly around him and would not let him speak. All those young optimistic girls he'd broken at nightclubs, the women who had to sell their bodies, young guys he'd maimed for no reason. His mother who he'd driven to OD. And the island, one long domino effect of failure.

He stammered to Harrison too. "And Ace. Ace I like. I'm sorry. I hurt you sometimes and I don't even mean to. You only ask for - for simple things and I can't..I can't even give those to you. I don't deserve someone like you, or someone like Jordan, I don't deserve anyone or anything. I deserve nothing more than to be dead. Everyone is right, that's all I deserve, to be out of their life forever. I'm just broken." His shoulders shook but it was anyone's guess if he was crying or not.

Cass' expression went from annoyed to extremely grim as it seemed the coin in the air finally dropped. There were feelings being vomited everywhere and she didn't even know where to start with them all. Albeit she didn't even have to start with any of them because this wasn't her session. Now she kind of wanted to ask about getting a feelstick of her own, though. But first, she had to prioritize what was going on and how she was going to respond to it.

First of all, she had Abbi suddenly moping about not giving her a Christmas present (Cass immediately thought about Dove and quietly hoped the puppy was alright...) and Cass really...hadn't expected anything from anybody for Christmas. In fact, she kind of loathed Christmas presents in a resentful way that only Marcus really knew so it'd be nice that nothing had really happened on the holiday.

"Hey, hey...it's alright...." Cass said, awkwardly stroking Abbi's hair and back and looking to Marcus with a look of 'help' before realizing...

"Oh no....."

He had it too.