I Wish that I Was Bulletproof

[Jennifer Moon]

It had been over a month since the pow wow in Walker's honor, and the only thing it had done for Jen was make her incredibly anxious. It had hit her - really hit her - that someone she had sort-of known was gone forever as she stared into the colorful fire that night.

On top of that, Makepeace had fallen ill shortly thereafter and been whisked off to some hospital. She didn't know if he would be coming back, and the thought made her sick. Jen couldn't even imagine how Becca must have been feeling.

She'd thought of them all as invincible. She knew that death was a thing, obviously. It was just supposed to be one of those things that only happened in movies and those awful after-school specials on television. It wasn't supposed to happen to people she knew. It just wasn't.

What if it had been her? It had almost been Wash. That thought alone was enough to send her into a full-blown panic attack. What if it had been her other friends? What if it was her brother? Her parents?

She couldn't bear to think about it, yet it seemed like that was all she had done over the past couple of days. She couldn't shake the feeling that death was lurking around the corner, ready to attack and take away someone she loved.

Sleeping was out of the question. Sleep meant losing control over her thoughts. When she did sleep, it was only in small increments of time - ten minutes here, a half-hour there - not enough time for her subconscious to subject her to another nightmare of losing someone. It was always someone different, too. And every time, she'd woken up in a panic, unable to breathe. So she'd stopped trying. She wished she knew how Wash had been able to sleep again, because she was ready to try anything.

Which is how, on this particular day, she found herself wandering through the woods, half-empty bottle in hand and a wonderful fuzzy feeling in her head, chest, and stomach. She had remembered the bottle of amber-colored alcohol that she had found in the Hippies' kitchen just a few days prior, and she had forgotten to replace it after she and Wash had been out on their Valentine's date. She had skipped every class she had this morning in an attempt to try and catch up on her sleep, but even with the help of the alcohol, the nightmares still came.

She stumbled as she walked, sloshing the liquid inside the bottle. Her feet took her to her little clearing, as if they knew she needed to be someplace that she could recognize. She sank down onto the ground, her back coming to rest against a rock as she pulled her knees up to her chest and took another long drink from the bottle, grimacing at the taste.

[Washington Kennedy Rockefeller]

Wash hadn't seen Jen at breakfast. Wash hadn't seen Jen in any of the classes they shared. Wash hadn't seen Jen at lunch. Wash hadn't seen Jen in their afternoon classes. And when Wash went to find Jen at the Hippies' legacy house, she wasn't there, either.

He could think of only one other place where she might be, which was her (their?) little clearing in the woods. He didn't quite remember where it was, though. He had always gone with her, so it took some time to find it. When he did, though, there she was.

"Jen! Jen, are you alright?" He walked over quickly and slid down to the dirt beside his girlfriend. "You missed a whole day." A whole day of everything.

[Jennifer Moon]

She had her head buried in her arms, resting on top of her knees, one hand still clutching the neck of the bottle tightly when she heard someone approaching. She had hoped that drinking most of the alcohol would help her sleep, and all it had done was make her miss classes. At least it had taken away most of the anxious tightness in her chest.

She was probably in trouble, but at this point, the fuzzy feeling in her head was telling her not to care. Everything was spinning - she squeezed her eyes shut to try and keep some kind of balance in her head.

"No," she slurred, not looking up to see who was speaking to her. Whoever it was sounded far-off, like they were speaking to her underwater and she was straining to hear the words. "'m so tired." Her words were jumbled together, although mostly understandable.

[Washington Kennedy Rockefeller]

He hadn't noticed the bottle in her hand, which may have explained her absence in everything all day. He didn't want to take it from her, though. Well, he did, but he wasn't going to. Yet. Unsure of what to do, he placed a tentative hand on her back and rubbed gently.

Wash wasn't sure if the jumbled talking was the drink or the sleep deprivation. "It's alright." Surely he could find a way to get her to sleep without finishing off the bottle. Was that the same stuff she had brought on the fake Valentine's Day? It hadn't looked good then, and it didn't look much better now. Then again, she had downed more than enough of it to do this to her.

[Jennifer Moon]

Her head finally lifted once she felt the hand on her back. "Wash?" she asked, blinking. It sounded like him, but the way that everything was spinning made it look like there were three of him sitting on the ground next to her. She shut her eyes again, the hand not currently holding the bottle moving to clutch at the ground for stability.

"It's not alright," she snapped, her eyebrows furrowing as she tightened her grip on the neck of the bottle. "You c'n sleep juuuust fine." She opened her eyes again, narrowing them at the three-headed Wash. "You were there and you c'n sleep, 'n I wasn't and I can't." She was slurring most of her words together, trying to string together what made the most sense in her head.

[Washington Kennedy Rockefeller]

"Yeah." He didn't really know what to do. "It's me." She was a fair bit worse off than he had been way back when, that strange night with Lyanna on the beach. She looked worse. She sounded worse. "It's me." He rubbed more.

"It's alright." What was he supposed to say? "It's all alright." She didn't get it, did she? "I can't sleep just fine, I'm still using the potion. You'll be fine." He was very lost in this. "I don't think the drink is helping, though." He made a move to grab the bottle.    

[Jennifer Moon]

She shook her head a few times before stopping, frowning because the motion had made her dizzier. "No, it's not alright. Whozit gonna be next, Wash?" Her bottom lip quivered as she looked up at him. "We can't have six months without someone getting sick or dying," she said, swinging her arms out wide. "What if it's me? Or you?" She sniffled, and the tears that had been threatening to fall all day came out in a rush.

Her shoulders shook as she cried, and she let the bottle drop into his hand, her hands coming up to cover her face. She couldn't let him see her like this. "I thought you stopped taking the potion," she said in a small voice, slurring and muffled by her hands. "You said you threw it all out."

[Washington Kennedy Rockefeller]

"It won't be anyone." Or at least it wouldn't be Jen or Wash. He couldn't protect everybody, but she wouldn't be too much of a problem. "Sometimes people die. It happens." He didn't feel very good at this. "You're not going to die any time soon. I'm not going to die any time soon." He'd come close at the lighthouse, but he didn't point that out. "We'll be fine."

He rubbed her back some more, and set the bottle down beside him. "I got more. After that night." She'd said he needed to sleep, and now he was. "I'm sleeping, though." That was the important part. He needed his sleep so he could do well in classes so he could graduate with good grades, get into a good school, get a good job.

[Jennifer Moon]

His hand on her back was helping to calm her down a little - it was a nice reminder that he hadn't left her yet. She wondered if he would still want to be together, even after seeing the way she was practically falling apart in front of him. He hadn't signed up for this when he said he wanted to be her boyfriend. The thought made her chest tighten and burn with each breath that she took. "I don't wanna lose you. Or anyone," she said, her face still hidden in her hands.

"I keep dreaming of losing people. That's why I can't sleep." Her shoulders sagged as she tried to take a deep breath, but the tightness in her chest didn't allow it and so she opted for short, quick breaths. "If I sleep, then everyone I know dies." Her head was still spinning, and her hands were wet from where she had been crying. "Did you go see the nurse? Is she nicer than the last one?" Jen asked, her head popping up to look at him.

[Washington Kennedy Rockefeller]

"We're all here when you wake up." They hadn't been together very long, but he had never seen her like this, nor would he have expected it from her. Then again, he had broken down on the docks without a drink, and he didn't think he had looked much better than this. "It's just dreams, Jen. Just dreams." And dreams were completely worthless, except when they weren't.

"What?" He really didn't want to lie to her. "Yeah, I did." He had had a bad headache the week before. "Yeah, she's much nicer." And cuter, but he left that out. "I'm sure she can give you something to knock you out." Perhaps something that wasn't going to make her do... this first.

[Jennifer Moon]

"But they feel so real," she whispered, her eyes wide. Each night it had been someone different, and each night it was a different path toward death. More often than not it was the Sins, but sometimes it was an accident or illness. And each time, they ended with someone she cared about dying. "I'm scared."

She began to cry again, and she leaned into him this time, needing to feel more than just his hand on her back. "I th-thought this would h-help," she said, sniffling, gesturing to the bottle of alcohol on the ground as the tears came down her cheeks. If Wash said the new nurse was nicer, though, and he let her give him the potion, Jen thought it was probably a good idea to go see her. She had been avoiding it simply because of what had happened with the last nurse.

[Washington Kennedy Rockefeller]

He kissed her cheek. "That was real. Your dreams are not." After all, he was still sitting there with her, right? "Don't be scared. You're here. I'm here." It would all be okay. When she leaned against him, he moved his hand over to her arm and kept rubbing slowly.

"Drinking doesn't help much." Was the stuff even good? He picked it up and contemplated it. "And this doesn't look good." Where was it from? It didn't seem recent. Or good. Or anything of the sort.

[Jennifer Moon]

She felt herself smile a bit as he kissed her cheek, but it didn't stop the tears from falling. Her head bent to rest against his shoulder. She knew this was real, and that dreams were just dreams, but when she was asleep it was very hard to distinguish between the two. Only when she would wake and struggle to breathe through the panic would she realize it wasn't real.

"It's so bad," she said, a laugh bubbling up from her chest. "It tastes very burn...y. Like someone melted Red Hots and mixed it in with rubbing alcohol. It's really gross." The first couple of swigs from the bottle had almost made her throw up, but she was so determined for the alcohol to help her sleep that she had powered through it. After a quarter of the bottle had disappeared, the taste hadn't really mattered much.

"Sorry for getting your shirt all wet," she sniffed, bringing her fingers up to swipe the tears from her cheeks.

[Washington Kennedy Rockefeller]

"That sounds horrible." He took a sip. She was right. "Oh, that's horrible." Why had he done that? Maybe to commiserate, he didn't really know. "You managed to down half a bottle of this. I'm impressed." He really was. He probably would've given up after two or three sips.

He looked down. She was right, his shirt was somewhat damp. He thought back for a moment to the last time his shirt had been wet with her. "It's fine. Don't worry about it." He pulled her toward him a little bit.

[Jennifer Moon]

"I'm a girl of many talents," she mumbled, letting him pull her closer. "Add drinking almost an entire bottle of whatever the hell that stuff is without puking to the list, I guess." The corner of her mouth turned up in a half-smile. Her head was still spinning, but Wash (and the rest of the forest) was beginning to look more like one person instead of three. Her cheek was pressed against the wet spot on his shoulder, and she wished he hadn't had to see her like this.

She supposed that she should go see the nurse in the morning. There was no way she was going in her current condition - showing up drunk in the school building was just asking for a detention. She had at least had the presence of mind to keep her drinking located to her room after Colby had left for class and out here in the forest. She settled into Wash's shoulder and sighed. "What'd I miss today?" she asked, tilting her head up to look at him.