Finding Faith (Faith)

Fuck... fuck...

...FUCK!

Ace's heart felt as if it would beat right out of his chest as he quickly logged off the intranet server, his long fingers trembling on the mouse button. “Oh shit, oh fuck,” he chanted in a whisper. He couldn't believe what had just happened – and it was all because he couldn't take being called 'strange,' at least not after being told most of his life that the sun effectively shined out his backside. And partially because BlacKBiard had asked a dumb question, and Ace had given a snarky yet truthful answer. Ace knew that he'd fanned those flames, and now someone was going to kill themselves.

It wasn't worth it. For Ace, suicide was justifiable, at least the way he saw it. But for someone who had merely been insulted by an absolute tosser, it wasn't. Now, he had to go and find that person and try to make them see that it wasn't that bad, or else he would have another death on his shoulders. His mother died because he didn't try hard enough to stop her from going. Now, FaithFully might, for a similar reason. It wasn't going to happen.

The only problem was that Ace had no idea how to find this person. He didn't know if it was male or female, or what they looked like, how old they were... only that they would probably be upset. But then again, most of the people in that godforsaken place were upset. Still, though, Ace had to try. He picked his black bag up off the floor and slung it over his shoulder, across his chest before bolting out of the room as fast as his tiny stature would carry him. From the moment he left the room, leaving the computer to whoever else wanted to get verbally assaulted, his dark eyes searched almost unblinkingly for someone who seemed more off than usual.

It didn't take very long at all for him to realize at how much of a disadvantage only being there a week had him. The labyrinthine halls sprawled out farther than one would think from looking at them from the inside; the vastness of the building could only be perceived by looking from outside its walls.

Having searched what he thought was a good portion of the place, he hurried for the stairs, forgetting for a moment that he was on the second floor, not the first. That became immediately apparent to him. Ace had managed somehow to rush into the attic, and he didn't think he'd been seen. Someone would have tried to stop him.

“This is fucking brilliant,” he seethed. First, he was probably going to get in trouble for the chat thing. He hoped not, but with his luck, he doubted he would squeak by with just a gentle chiding. And now, he was upstairs. In the attic. Where residents weren't supposed to be. When they found him up here, things were just going to get worse.

Ace wandered quietly into one of the rooms and dropped his bag on the floor. Maybe, he would just wait there until the rush to get to the showers happened, and he would sneak down like nothing ever happened. After all, BB had been right. He was there because no one wanted him, and if no one wanted him, they weren't going to come and find him. It was probably because he was inherently excellent at messing up everything.

He lowered himself to the dusty planks and bowed his head, rubbing his temples, trying to will himself not to cry. Whoever that BB was was just downright nasty to upset someone else so badly, but what had begun to hurt even more now was that they had been right. Before he could stop himself, he was crying into his knees, the fabric of his jeans starting to stain dark blue with incoming tears. He was never going to find Faith. And now, he realized that he should have run to a staff member, because he was sure that they could have somehow identified who the person was, and went to check on them. But, no. Ace had been his stupid, caring but stupid self, and tried to go off on a wild goose chase himself.

And his desire to wipe himself right off the face of the Earth was once again growing unbearably strong. "Ace, you're such a fuck-up," he said to himself through his tears. "You're always a goddamn fuck-up!"

Faith hit the log-out button and sprinted away from the room without waiting to see if she was properly signed off or not. She didn't know or care where she was headed, just that she needed to get far away from the memory of fucking PotatoRiceBall and fucking LonelyGoatherd and double fucking BlacKBiard. She didn't have any idea whose those people were in real life, if they were male or female, if she had ever met them before. She just knew that BB, BlacKBiard, had said something that she couldn't deal with, so she was going to run until she found somewhere to hide so that she could deal with all the damn emotions rising up inside of her. The others had been nice, nobody had said anything terrible -PRB had stood up for her, in a way- but she had to escape. One cruel word from a stranger, fair or not, hit her ten times harder than any number of reassurances from anyone else. It took little to hurt her. Fuck them.

Running as fast as she could, her shoulder-bag hitting her hard on the thigh with every other step, Faith made it close to her dorm before stopping dead in the middle of the empty corridor. What if one of her roommates was in there? She couldn't run in and run out again, she couldn't deal with any human interaction. Hesitating, not sure which way to go, she tried to remember everywhere she knew in the school and came up with a blank. She'd only been to the rec room, the classroom, the dining hall...the attic.

It was easy to find her way back to the little staircase that led up to the attic, the 'Off Limits' sign being of no concern to her. Looking left and right quickly to check there was nobody to witness her flight, Faith sprinted up the small flight of stairs, slamming through the wooden door that was half-open, and letting out a shriek as her foot connected with something that was most definitely human. Body still going, she almost landed on top of the boy, managing to wave her arms enough that she maintained her balance. "Elias?" she asked tentatively, eyes still adjusting to the dim light. Before he could answer, she squinted and bit her lip. No, not Elias. A boy who had been in her class earlier that day, but not one she had taken any notice of. She had paid much more attention to the loud, scarier boys; not the quiet, shy looking ones.

"Who are you?" she asked him, careful to maintain control of her voice. She didn't want to get into the habit of screaming at then crying with a stranger every time she came into the attic, that was for sure; it was going to be her safe place. Once she stopped random people from wandering in, that was. "I'm Faith. Why...why are you up here?" She couldn't ask him to leave, it was hard to be as blunt as that, but it was tempting. The boy sitting on the floor with tears on his cheeks seemed just too vulnerable, however; she didn't want a repeat of what had happened with Elias, the two of them crying together. She wanted to cry, but only when she was by herself and she could hit her legs until they were numb, or maybe find something sharp. And that needed to happen soon.

Eager to get Ace out, but also conscious of the fact that if she was obvious about it, he might get angry, Faith stood a safe distance away and watched the boy very carefully. He looked too fragile to yell at, and she wasn't in the mood to shout at anybody, anyway. For a brief second, she closed her eyes. Why, oh why, would nobody let her hurt herself in peace? It was worse than being in the psych ward - at least there, she could close her door and be alone in her room - until the nurse came along, that was, but she could keep track of the fifteen minutes passing pretty well, and hide what she was doing when she heard footsteps. At Highgrove, it seemed that people wandered freely in and out of her bedroom, at random intervals, never stopping to knock. Even in her attic, it seemed that there was always a delicate crying stranger.

For a while, Ace sat alone in semi-darkness, hugging his knees and sniffling as his narrow shoulders shook with violent sobs. He didn’t know anymore whether he was crying about Faith, or BB, or himself. Perhaps, and this was likely, it was a combination of the three. Ace knew he shouldn’t cry, because it didn’t solve anything. In his mind, he could see his father -- could he even consider Paul a father anymore? -- telling him, ‘Crying won’t help nothin’!’ as he drowned himself in another glass of scotch, which also didn’t help anything.

That insufferable bitch or bastard had figured out the triggers and had abused them. Ace didn’t like being called abnormal, because he wasn’t. He had always been perfectly normal. BB was probably jealous, or insecure. But God, they had struck him in a place that set him spinning into one of his painful downward spirals.

Nobody wants you.

No one did, anymore. His mother was dead. Paul didn’t give two flying fucks, unless Ace was a bottle of booze. The foster parents probably just felt obligated.

Little Orphan Acey, sitting alone, crying in an attic, because no one wants to love or care for a complete fuck up like him, his mind chided. He could argue that his grandparents wanted him, cared for him. But if they did, why was he not in Shimoda, instead of Bumfuck-Nowhere, England? Baachan’s heart isn’t that bad, he told himself. Not so bad she and Jiichan couldn’t take me...

It was too late for that, though. Again, he just hadn’t tried hard enough. He wondered, also, what they’d been told about this place he was going. It was probably sugar-coated with a cherry on top. They probably thought it was some boarding school, which Ace’s grandfather for some reason always thought Ace should go to for a while, anyway.

Suddenly, the door slammed open, and there was a shriek, and Ace felt a sharp pain in his left ankle. “Ffff--!” he winced, reaching down to grab it as he grit his teeth. “Who’s Elias?” he asked after a moment. “I’m not Elias. I’m Ace.” He sniffed and took one hand from his ankle to wipe at his cheeks. Finally he looked up. What had even happened?

“Why am I here? Why are you here? We’re not supposed to be here. I accidentally--”

Then, it hit him. “Faith?” he asked softly, more to himself than to her. Faith... FaithFully? Had he actually managed to find her? And she was actually alive, in one piece, unharmed as far as he could tell?

“Are... you all right?” he asked. “I was looking for someone, someone named Faith, or something. I’m not sure. Maybe there are more than one. I don’t know.” He didn’t want to bring up the chat, just in case there was more than one and this one wasn’t the one he was looking for. Or even if it was just a coincidence, and Faith online wasn’t really called Faith, or something. “There was someone called Faith that I was worried about,” he said. “Someone I talked to briefly... But I don’t really know them. I’m not even sure it’s you. Unless you know anything about... um... potatoes and rice, and frolicking.”

So, either she understood what he meant, or she would think that he was utterly batshit insane, and would leave him to his own dark and terrifying thoughts.

"Elias is-" she began to explain automatically, before pausing. Obviously, the boy -Ace- wasn't Elias, and there wasn't really a need for her to explain her past involvement with a random boy she had met up in the attic and cried with the day before. As well as making her sound completely insane, she didn't know that the kid wouldn't run and tell a staff member that she'd been trespassing - although, upon further consideration, she realized that he was breaking the rule as well. At least he isn't going to turn me in. "Never mind," was the muttered end of her sentence, a few seconds later. She just hoped he wouldn't push it.

Faith had to admire the kids logic; they were both technically breaking a rule, as he had pointed out. Ace appeared to have stumbled there accidentally, and decided to sit down and have a little cry; she had gone there deliberately, for her own crying session. There wasn't too much of a difference between them. "I was just...what's it to you, anyway?" She sounded a little defensive, and was about to apologize and maybe come up with a lie before registering that he had spoken her name again. "Yeah, Faith," she answered warily. "That's my name...why?" He was probably some psycho with a habit of murdering girls called Faith, she thought wearily. Or just a complete nutcase with a tendency to repeat names. Either way, she didn't want to be standing there chatting with him, especially not when she had blood to draw.

She stared at Ace as he babbled on, not catching on to what he meant for a few seconds, and freezing where she stood as soon as soon as she did. It was the mention of talking to someone called Faith briefly that did it, made her realize what he meant, and in that moment she envisioned various ways of killing herself. Jumping out the window, finding a cliff to throw herself off, cutting her wrists... She hadn't wanted to meet anyone from the chat; while two of them -not BB- had seemed nice enough, Faith knew that she had let the anonymity of online chat lead her astray. As well as being blatantly rude to somebody she didn't know -she'd only have done it if she knew the person, and felt safe around them- she had announced to the world that she was a self-harmer, as well as thrown it in BB's face. Said that she was going to cut because of them.

Faith swallowed. She considered denying it, briefly, but...what would happen if she was caught in the future? It was highly possible that a staff member would read the chat conversation and report them, or that she had left herself logged in, or any number of situations. Besides, she wasn't a liar at heart - only when it was really essential."That... I was...yeah," she gave in with a sigh. "Yeah, that was me. I'm FaithFully. Inventive, huh? And look, I'm fine, really. I didn't mean...wait, why are you crying? BB wasn't mean to you." Or had they been? She couldn't quite recall, the focus of her memory being on what had been said to herself. Maybe BB had been cruel to - who was Ace? There was PotatoRiceBall and another one, one who had left towards the end because things were getting too intense. LonelyGoatHerd, that was him. "Goat?" she asked. "Or...Potato?" It felt ridiculous to ask those random words, but he obvious knew what she meant. Faith just prayed that he wouldn't turn out to be BB.

Ace raised one eyebrow, dumbfounded as to why Faith was being so defensive. All he'd wanted to do was help, maybe avoid another crisis. Still, though, he explained why he was looking for someone named Faith, or at least possibly called Faith. And finally, she stopped moving, and it seemed to Ace like the girl had put two and two together, and hadn't come up with five. He lowered his eyes, nodding as she revealed herself, finally, as FaithFully. "Yeah, pretty inventive," he agreed. His name hadn't been particularly inventive either; it was just a silly food-related play on his ethnicity. Since people assumed the Irish only ate potatoes, and that the Japanese only ate rice...

But she had a fair point. Why was Ace crying? He shrugged and wiped his eyes. "Well... I mean, it... someone died, and it was my fault," he whispered. "Someone really close, really special. And it was my fault, because I could have stopped her. But I didn't. And... I didn't want that to happen to anyone else."

But, he thought, BB had been mean to him. BB had told him the words that he never wanted to hear, but pretty much knew were true. "She said no one wants me," he said, trying unsuccessfully to quell another pathetic sob. "And it's not true. I have family." But only part of that was true. He was legally an orphan, and he had aging grandparents on the other side of the world who were already health liabilities, and they couldn't take on another one, no matter how much they might have wanted to. And maybe they would one day, if he asked nicely enough, and explained his predicament. That was what always happened. Ace would think of a nice, polite explanation as to why he needed something, even if it was silly, and voila -- there it would be. That was especially true with his grandparents, who only had one grandchild to spoil.

"Potato," he said. "Anyway. I just... I'm sorry. I was just worried. I mean... there are reasons to, you know, kill yourself. I just wanted you to know that someone saying untrue things, I guess 'cause they're jealous or something, isn't one of them. BB has problems. I guess we all do. But maybe the things BB said were just because of the problems they have." He leaned forward, hugging his knees tighter. "But... I mean, you seem nice and all. So I just wanted to make sure you were okay. That you weren't, you know... serious."

Suddenly, it seemed weird to him why he cared so much about someone he hadn't actually even met, at least not in person, not until now. It seemed stupid. She was fine, and Ace almost felt like he wasn't even wanted there. But he was there first, really, so he saw no reason to leave, and really no reason to even say anything else if Faith was just going to go on being defensive. Ace lowered his head back onto his knees and sighed. This whole thing, this whole situation was completely stupid. Not just the Faith thing, no. Everything. He didn't think he should be here, because nothing was wrong with him. He just missed her; that was all. Any child would miss his mother.

"I'm sorry, then," Ace said softly. Sorry about what, though?

Faith's eyes widened and she stared at Ace. She understood the feeling that came with murdering somebody close to you, even if it was unintentional. She had done it, after all; it just wasn't something she ever talked about. "Who did you kill?" she asked, realizing a moment later that it was probably the dumbest question to ask. It wasn't as though she'd respond if asked the same thing, after all. "Sorry," she muttered. "I just...know what you're talking about." Not wishing to elaborate any further -he wouldn't want to hear the details of how she'd killed not only one, but both of her parents, and she didn't particularly want to share anyway- Faith changed the topic abruptly.

She started chewing on her lip as she stared at Ace, or Potato, as she had began to think of him. It was obvious that she needed to say something comforting; the hard part was thinking of what. "You're right," she told him awkwardly, wanting to pat his arm but knowing that touching strangers in dark places was a little dangerous. "You have family, of course people want you. She's just...what's that thing called? Projecting. She obviously knows that nobody wants her, and just...wants to make somebody else feel bad." As a spur-of-the-moment therapy session went, that was pretty good, she thought. Managing to insult BB and comfort Ace, all in a few clumsily delivered sentences. Maybe I should be a psychiatrist.

The urge to hug Ace for his little explanation of why she shouldn't kill herself because of BB almost made Faith cry. Almost. Folding her arms across her lap, she pinched the flesh just above her left elbow tightly, a move she used when in public. It was discreet enough that most wouldn't notice. "I...thanks," she told him, not wanting to let herself say anything more. Getting emotional would just lead to embarrassment. "I wouldn't top myself, don't worry. I'm a cutter, not suicidal. That's what I meant with the slitting my wrists thing... I just got all dramatic 'cause it was over chat. Sorry." She felt like the biggest idiot ever; having to comfort a boy who was practically having hysterics because of how much of a bitch she had been to somebody else over instant messaging. The only thing that would make the situation worse would be if security got wind of what had happened and got her into trouble, again.

"Sorry for what?" she asked. "I'm the one that fucked everything up... "

The boy was dumbfounded by the way Faith just asked it so casually: "Who did you kill?" He hadn't killed her; he had never killed anyone. He just... didn't stop her from doing what got her killed. But that wasn't killing her. And whenever he was told that it was okay, it wasn't his fault, and there was no way he could have known, he didn't believe them. Ace felt that he should have known. Whether it was possible or not was something he never considered.

He stared, surprised and a bit offended, at the girl. "I didn't... kill her," he sniffed. "I... no, I never killed her. It was a freak accident. I didn't mean to..." He just had to remind himself that none of it was his fault, he was told, and to accept the fact that she was gone. But he couldn't, because he wasn't done growing up yet, and he needed his mother. Hunching down even more, Ace hugged his knees more tightly and raised his gaze to Faith. How could she know? Had she accidentally done the same thing? He hoped not...

"Yeah, she's just bitter," he said, though he could actually have said that about himself. He didn't ever think it a good idea to just lash out at someone and tell them they weren't wanted. It also hurt that that was one of the things his father had said to him on occasion: "I wish I just didn't have you," he said after too many trips to his liquor cabinet. Ace wasn't that bad, he didn't think. And he thought that if his father wasn't such a mean drunk, he wouldn't have said it. "Well," he said, "if she's that mean to everyone else, then I suppose it's not surprising that no one wants her. Or him. Or... it. They could be just that much of an asshole, I guess."

He just watched and listened for a moment, then said, "It's... just... I was scared... I..." It was dark, but he held his arms out toward her, the undersides facing up, so that what little light there was caught the deep, long scars along each wrist. "Frolicking," he said. "It wasn't fun. It wasn't... something I would've wanted to do, I think." He sighed and folded his arms back around his bent legs and laid his head on top of his knees. They were still damp; the tears were still falling steadily onto them, though he'd stopped sobbing by this point. "I just thought that you meant that. And I meant, well, I'm sorry for misunderstanding what you were saying, I guess. But maybe it was a good thing. We met, and apparently don't hate each other... so I guess maybe we made friends out of it or something." Ace would have liked to offer her a smile, but he couldn't. It was the thought that counted, he guessed.

"No, Faith, you didn't fuck anything up."

He looked around then as he attempted to stop the tears and dry them off his cheeks. The place was colder than the rest of the building; goosebumps already started to pop up on his arms, and his skin tingled from them a bit. It seemed like everything old they could think of was just shoved here without second thought and that it would probably rot to pieces up here. And, of course, he recalled the fact that this was one of the places they shouldn't be.

"Maybe we should leave," he said. "Now that, well, everything's smoothed out. We're not allowed up here. I don't really want to be caught, you know?"